Rated R for more concept than actual visuals. The protagonist is a bad person. She says awful things and uses people as things. As part of that, there's sexual manipulation and gaslighting ultimately leading to the suicide of one of the characters. It's a bleak movie that is meant to make the protagonist pretty unlikable. R.
DIRECTOR: Todd Field Again, if the vibe is to go with bleak movies, we have this one. For the sake of simplicity, when you see Tár written out, know that I'm copying and pasting it. When I talk about the character, Lydia Tar, please forgive the lack of accent because I get so frustrated with that. I can't have two things ready to copy. (Note, when I copy something, I can't change it from italicized to not-italicized easily). I was prepped to be obsessed with this movie. A while ago, Patton Oswalt retweeted a compilation video of the best movies from this year. One of the binding elements of the montage was footage from Tár, mainly because it was set to an amazing score and they used the scoring scenes to really stress the importance of music in film. Cool. I got behind it. These shots of Cate Blanchett scoring a hodgepodge of great movies got me jazzed to watch all of these movies, most of which I'm watching with this attempt to catch up before the Academy Awards. The reality of the situation is one that is quite different. Honestly, the montage video used this footage of Lydia conducting almost more effectively than the film itself did. Maybe it's because I want Tár to be a movie that it doesn't want to be. I wanted this to be a music movie, about the role of the artist and the passion that comes from the nuance of music. You know, Whiplash. I think I realized that I wanted it to be Whiplash when I started quoting Whiplash over Tár. For sure, it was to be funny. But it didn't change the fact that I wanted it to be Whiplash. I read a New York Times review of Tár that was pretty damning. I was most impressed that the author of the article pointed out that a colleague from the New York Times was in the movie as himself. Is this pointed out to make the review feel especially harsh. Now, the New York Times pointed out that this movie seemed to be an attempt to take down cancel culture. Read their article. I'm doing it an injustice by leaving it at that, but I'm working in jists right now. Yeah, Tár is a takedown of cancel culture. But I don't know if that's completely accurate. One read of the movie could be that it is aggressively anti-cancel culture. After all, there is the almost over-the-top scene where Lydia destroys a Julliard student for having poltiical preferences over the choices of symphonies performed. These are in the halcyon hours of the film, where Lydia can be written off as simply a bit eccentric or empassioned. If Lydia had spent the majority of the movie doing good work and it was that moment that brought her down, then I would agree with the New York Times that this is a movie about the power of cancel culture. But do you know what is really going on? Lydia sucks all around. One of the myths of cancel culture is that someone makes one mistake and their entire career is in the trash. No, most of the people who are cancelled have a long and continued history of being human garbage and that's why they eventually get cancelled. Hey, this is quasi-timely (despite the fact that I'm writing this way before I'm going to publish this). Let's look at Scott Adams, the newest "victim" of cancel culture. Scott Adams has often been pretty outspoken about his conservative politics. Yet, he has made bank off of his Dilbert comic strip. I don't get it. I wanted to like Dilbert, but most Sunday morning funnies aren't that funny. (Sorry, the handful of ones that I really like.) But Adams kept pushing that button and kept pushing that button until he said something that was once again beyond the pale. Lydia Tar isn't a moment of isolation when it comes to stuff against her. If anything, she's woefully naive about what it means to be in the spotlight. I don't think that Lydia Tar is Scott Adams. I think that Lydia Tar is Joss Whedon or Kevin Spacey. Lydia's sexuality plays a major part in her character's choices. From moment one, the notion that she is a lesbian defines her. In her rant against the student, she calls herself a "U-Haul Lesbian", meaning that she latches onto relationships very quickly. (Thank you, Urban Dictionary.) The typical crowd who bemoan cancel culture are white men. It's obvious why. For centuries (I wanted to write "millennia", but that might be a bit much for me to prove), white men have gone borderline uncriticized by any demographic. Telling the story of an alternate universe Lawrence Tar would have seemed too try-hard, wouldn't it? Instead, there's the spectre of cancel culture that can get anyone, including a U-Haul Lesbian. Tar acts like she can get away with murder in a lot of these cases. While there is a difference between suicide and murder, the film almost intentionally blurs the line between the two. The movie makes the direct correlation between Lydia's actions and Krista's death. Sure, Krista comes across as intense, but that's because she can trace all the negatives that come to her to Lydia. We actually know the truth of what's going on not through Krista herself, but through Francesca. What Tár absolutely nails is that Lydia is an unreliable narrator. From her perspective, she is this tortured genius who does a lot of things right. She is a spouse and a mother. She may do some morally questionable things, like threaten a childhood bully when she abuses her kid. But these moments are, from Lydia's perspective, all towards good. After all, she creates beautiful music. She is a teacher, spreading her talents to the next generation of artists. If it was only Lydia's perspective, there could be some sympathy for her erratic behavior or her missteps. But it is through Francesca that we understand that everything that Lydia does is a game. Lydia is a master manipulator, gaslighting those around her and I wonder if she is even conscious of when she does it. I think that Lydia (as a battle between id, ego, and superego) knows what she comes across as. I know that she also makes conscious choices to ruin other people's lives. But these are blips on a radar that is overall, from her selfish perspective, morally justified. It's Francesca's need to get ahead that highlights Lydia's narcissism. It sounds like Francesca's the bad guy based on that sentence, but I'm talking about a genuine need. She has worked hard in a position that seems fairly thankless. She has been treated almost as a sexual creature (the movie toys around with the notion that Lydia and Francesca had a relationship with Krista), biting her lip when Lydia decides to ignore the clear history between them for her own successes. But we see that Lydia's entire relationship with Francesca is one of baiting the line. When Lydia asks Francesca to make a list of candidates and to include her own name on this list, there's this almost withholding attitude. From Francesca's perspective, Lydia is giving her conflicting messages. There's the interpretation that Lydia is being professional and needing to interview multiple people, but cheekily winking at Francesca. There's also the knowledge that Lydia is an awful human being and willing to torment the one person who is nearest to her. That moment is a choice. It's also a choice that I kind of want to unpack. Part of me thinks that Tar is a creature of survival. She isn't a long-term schemer. She is someone who does what she does in the moment and consequences are for later dates. There is a manic quality to the things she does throughout the film. Let's use the example of Francesca's job as our foundation. If she is a creature of instinct, avoiding the immediate small damage for greater danger in the future, then the choice to say "Feel free to include your own name, of course", then a lot of scenes kind of make sense. Tar's recurring problem is that she tends to #metoo a lot of women into places of power. Her relationship with Olga might be the most telling version of that. She is this girl who is visibly attractive and has zoomer fame. She's new; she's hip; she's trendy. But she's a reflection of Krista. I even get the vibe that Sharon is a version of Krista, just aged to a place of being a cover for Tar's real life. When Lydia drives like a psychopath, it's because her triage has caught up with her. That delayed expectation is now priority and it is hard to deal with. Maybe the New York Times thinks that the message of cancel culture is too simple on the part of Tár. Again, even from someone who didn't love it, I still liked it. Maybe the complaint is that there's more to explore because I don't buy the Julliard student scene as an all-encompassing damnation of Lydia Tar. It's just very telling. Lydia keeps burying herself and burying herself and she ultimately ends up cancelling herself. The movie keeps presenting Tar with outs that she continues not to take. She has a publicity team. We see them towards the end of the movie. That publicity team advises her to intentionally be picky with her projects. The idea is that she isn't cancelled; she's elite. Okay. But when the movie ends on the Monster Hunter children's orchestra, all of the things that happen to her are her own fault. The world wants to see Tar succeed. What Lydia doesn't understand is that people want her to be this big deal. She's an EGOT and people want to work with an EGOT. They just don't want her to suck. But she does suck. Absolutely, Lydia sucks as a human being. One could say that she sacrifices everything for the sake of the music, but as I stated, this isn't necessarily even a music movie. It's about the cult of celebrity and the lines that are crossed for the sake of popularity. Now. That all ties me back to my original point. Do I want the movie to be this? I don't know. I mean, it's kind of wanting a drama to be a comedy. It's stupid to complain about. It's a story that works. As a guy who thinks that cancel culture is just a whiny way of saying "consequences", I think the movie agrees with me. But, unfortunately, I'm probably going to forget the movie in a few years.
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Rated R for a lot of sex stuff. It's got a lot of sex and nudity, but I don't ever get the vibe of it being exploitative. The entire film is meant to represents what it means to live a full life. Part of life is sex and that's the situation of the movie. I will say, some of the sexuality gets weird. It's graphic in such a specific way that I couldn't even really give it context. Being R, there tends to be some language. But it is a gorgeous graphic film, at least. R.
DIRECTOR: Alejandro G. Iñárritu How? How is this only up for cinematography? This might be one of my favorite movies that I watched this year. What I'm discovering as I power through the 2023 Academy Award nominations is that there are some weak choices with many of the nominees. Maybe, just maybe, I'm putting too much stock into Bardo. But I don't want that to be true. Sure, Bardo fits into two of the categories of movies this year: Overly long and overly sexual. I've been griping that all of the Oscar noms this year are either too long, too sexual, or two depressing. I guess Bardo, to a certain extent, fits into all three of those categories. But I'll say, Bardo does those three traits better than its competition. Let's go right for the jugular! Absolutely, Bardo should win for cinematography. I'm worried that it won't, but it is far and away the most gorgeous of the movies in the category this year. I'm not going to necessarily diss other movies that are up for cinematography. But there are moments of genius in the other movies. In the case of Bardo, every shot is perfect. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so taken aback as I have been with some of the visuals in this movie. The same thing could have been said about Birdman. But with Birdman, there's a certain gimmickiness (that I adore and don't want to downplay) that almost robs the importance of visuals. Birdman can be accused of hiding behind its single take attempt at cinema and that seems to pull away from what I consider to be completely brilliant with this movie. If you really wanted to make the argument (an argument that I probably wouldn't win), you could say that Bardo's vulnerability is lessened by its visual art style. After all, there's a line in the movie that says as such. Silverio is arguing with Luis on the roof and Silverio accuses himself of being too artsy to have any real message. But by pointing that out, the movie almost acts as a defense of art. Silverio is a quasi-documentarian. Points to the movie for openly embracing such a weirdly specific profession; one that mirrors the director while giving the filmmaker time to comment on verisimilitude and truth through visual storytelling. Like, is anyone not convinced that this is an accusation that people have given the director over the course of his career? His visual sense is a feast. His use of colors and perspective? Gorgeous. The mise en scene, both digital and practical, are perfect. It's so tempting to write off a movie that is that visually appealing because it's the director's wheelhouse. But I actually related to Bardo more than I ever thought possible. Now, I'm not a successful artist in any stretch of the imagination. Like every frustrated writer, I keep having to put off my dreams of creation. Yeah, it's an excuse for not writing my book. But also, there are some valid concerns in here. Concerns that are echoed through the movie. Silverio deals with the consequences of putting his artistic career first, a sacrifice I'm not willing to make. But Bardo deals with mortality in the most head-on way imaginable. I think only Inarritu is the only guy who can tell this story the way he did. Bardo manipulates time in a way that is somehow tied to visual. It takes you a minute to realize that this is about time passing and about maturation. Silverio is always visibly older in the movie. Colored grey, even when he's a child in his imagination, Silverio is fundamentally the same man, only prioritizing different things in his life. I would be remiss if I didn't say that Silverio's story is a bit of a cautionary tale. One thing that is almost just punching you in the face is that Silverio is never really all that happy. There are moments of bliss, when he's dancing in complete ecstacy. But his happiness is always about missing out on something. At certain times, it's professional respect from all. At other times, it is a lost child or a lack of love in his family. One that got to me, among other thing, is the absence of a father. It's seeing his mother slip away from dementia and not being able to do much about it, especially considering that there is something blunt and violent in the way she communicates with Silverio. Yet, it never feels like Inarritu is speeding through these moments in life. (I apologize for not writing his name with the proper accents. I don't know how to, which may show my imposter syndrome, despite having written this movie blog for the better part of a decade.) Instead, it all feels like a well-executed balancing act. If I told you that this was a movie about losing a child and subsequent loss of potential, that would be an accurate descriptor of the movie. But it would also underserve so much more than that. Each one of Silverio's issues are at a 10 and I don't know how the director pulls that off effectively. I do want to talk about the role of parenthood plays out in this movie, mainly because I'm a parent who has dealt with loss. Now, before some of the people in my life start freaking out that one of my four children died, slow down. They're fine. I'm talking about what it means to lose a child through miscarriage. I'm going to choose my next words very carefully, because I have an intention that may not be communicated properly. Miscarriage is potentially one of the most emotionally crushing thing for women. Their bodies physically suffer from any pregnancy. Then there is the bond that happens from the physical presence of another person inside you is something that I will never be able to completely understand. But Bardo deals with what I deal with. The miscarriages we dealt with were, in the grand scheme of things, fairly early on. First trimester. Bardo had the child come to term, only to die in the first 30 hours. Okay. But those weeks and months after a miscarriage move painfully slow. It's in those moments that we think of potential. Yes, there's something silly about the way that Bardo approaches the metaphor of a child trying to escape inside of a mother, ill-equipped to deal with the harsh realities of the real world. But it also is a great image. We still pray for the lost children that have been miscarried. Part of the pain of the father of a lost child is not only the death of a child (one that must be buried because you have to be strong for a spouse), but also the fading away of one's wife. Bardo uses metaphor through imagery of what it means to lose the notion of self. Silverio, for all of his faults, is obsessed with his wife. As angry as she gets with him often through the movie, he loves his wife and she seems to love him. Silverio doesn't often comment on the child that retreats inside of her. He doesn't make demands of her to move on from that pain that is constantly surrounding her. It's why the beach scene is so good. Golly, that was the thing that my wife and I took away from this movie. I don't know if I'll ever forget it. (Until I write this for another year). There's this image of a tragically small naked child swimming out to sea. The whole thing is a metaphor for moving on and making peace with one's trauma. But it's this cool shot where a human child (who, at that age, would be unable to crawl, so you know, art), mirrors a turtle safely escaping into the ocean. I like the idea of an unborn child be a turtle escaping into the ocean. There's something about releasing that child to be what it is or what it was meant to do without us. We'll never be able to affect that kid. My fandoms and personality will never come into play into that kid's life. I am very confused what an afterlife will look like with this kid. But then again, I also struggle to figure out what an afterlife will look like, period. But a baby turtle is asked too much of it from the moment it is hatched. It's a gorgeous shot and on that merit alone, there's beauty in the storytelling. Am I going to get every bit of this movie? I don't think that's possible yet. Do you know what Bardo almost requires? It requires watching every few years. Silverio's journey through maturity until his death speaks to men (if not everyone) at different times in their lives. It's not like sections of this movie didn't work for me. They all worked for me. From beginning to end, even with the long run time, I found it fascinating. Of course I latched onto the baby leaving the family. That's where I'm right now. My kids are not at the age that they will hate me yet. Right now, I'm Dad, the unconquerable. But Silverio's kids grow rapidly. It's why the three hours are needed for this film. It's entire lifetimes squeezed and analyzed. Maybe Bardo is Silverio's entire life flashing in front of his eyes told in the medium that he helped create. I don't know. It's one of the better movies I've seen this year and I don't know why it doesn't get way more attention than just cinematography. Couldn't we at least give it Foreign Film? Sure, All Quiet on the Western Front is going to win that. But it doesn't mean that I won't huff. PG-13, but I saw it with my kids. Honestly, the most offensive thing is violence. One of the key conceits of the film is that Kang the Conqueror far outmatches Scott Lang as a villain and that means that Scott doesn't really hold his own in a fist-fight. There's something that happens to kids when they see lovable heroes get wrecked. But I don't remember much else besides swearing. There's a word that isn't formally swearing that gets thrown around a lot at the end of the movie that I don't want my kids using, but that's pretty tame. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed SO MANY THOUGHTS! First, it's the first 2023 movie of the blog! It's always in February, but man, I'm writing this in late February. Usually it's early February. But whatever. Second, tea helps my productivity. I found such a wealth of things to talk about in my last blog once I had a cup of tea that you might think that I come across as manic. Do you know why I think that? It's because I think I'm coming across as manic. The third thing is the big one... YOU ALL BE SOME HATERS! Honestly, I'm not mincing words here. I get the idea of superhero fatigue. It has to be real. I'm not suffering it outside of DC CW superhero slate, which for some reason I've decided to finish. If you have superhero fatigue, okay. I get it. Maybe take a break from superheroes for a while. But also admit that it might be a "you" thing because Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania might be one of the best things that Marvel has put out. My wife can attest to this: I often leave Ant-Man movies with a"meh" attitude. I left that first movie questioning whether Marvel had made a big mistake. It was my least favorite Marvel movie for a while. Ant-Man and the Wasp came out, and I acknowledged it was better than Part 1, but it was still far weaker than the other entries. It's not that I didn't like the character, because Ant-Man was great in the other movies he was in. But I left Quantumania thinking that this was the first great Ant-Man movie. I don't think your crap prepped me for that. Sometimes, I acknowledge it is because of low expectations that I came out so pleased. No, I think this is on you. It's popular to crap on Marvel movies right now because you have somehow made the Infinity Saga sacrosanct. But I'll tell you what? These movies, especially Quantumania, are great and I'm going to do my best to tell you why. (I feel like a Snyderverse fan right now and I don't like it.) This is such an ambitious movie. It's a movie that shouldn't be made. Marvel infamously has had this pride in its heavy-hitters. It's guys like Captain America and Thor that have to be your sacrifices to show how bad a bad guy really is. The opening of Infinity War shows Hulk and Thor get wrecked by Thanos. Again, I'm not going to poo-poo the other Marvel movies. Infinity War and Endgame might be near perfect movies and I'm not disparaging that for the sake of defending Quantumania. But doesn't Thanos kind of get nerfed when Cap, Thor, and Iron Man hold their own against him. But I think that Marvel's smart to not hand off all of their stories to the same crop of characters. Yeah, Cap and Iron Man aren't there. But it's not that Marvel doesn't have heavy hitters. We could have seen Captain Marvel get wrecked by Kang for no reason. Instead, Marvel delivers on its promise given by Spider-Man: Homecoming. (It is in this moment that I realize that Weebly didn't save the majority of my writing and that I'm going to have to repeat it. This is a sad day.) Kevin Feige loves Spider-Man. He absolutely should. The reason that a lot of us love Spider-Man is that Spider-Man's descriptors are "Friendly" and "Neighborhood." Homecoming was an attempt to bring street-level storytelling to the Marvel Universe. The only thing is, they escalated Spider-Man quickly. By the time that the second movie came around, Spider-Man had been to space. Heck, the movie even addresses that there's nothing small-time about Spider-Man. In Far from Home, he's fighting international threats that could have killed millions. Sure, Homecoming had Spider-Man fight the Vulture, a guy who was defined by being ignored by big-time superheroes. But the need for that small-time hero was already gone by his second outing. To a certain extent, the same could be said true of Ant-Man. Ant-Man, after all, was arrested as being a compatriot to Captain America during Civil War. And, yeah, Scott Lang was important in Endgame, but almost because of the role that Hank Pym played more than anything else. With Scott's second movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, he's still fighting this teeny-tiny (no pun intended) threat. Sure, he was at the Endgame battle. But compare his contribution in the battle to Peter's. Peter has this whole Pegasus sequence and Scott just explodes out of rubble. I bet you he smooshed a bunch of bad guys. We didn't see any of that. So when Scott gets his own movie in the Quantum Realm, it almost feels well-deserved. (Because I'm working off two different drafts, I'm not sure if I mentioned that this is the first Ant-Man movie I've liked from the word, "Go".) Yeah, the rules of the Quantum Realm seem to change a lot. But I write that off as different rules for different sizes. But Scott kind of deserves to fight something bigger. He's been written off too many times, much like Hawkeye. (As much as I loved Hawkeye as a Disney+ property, that story has a tiny scale.) Yeah, it's weird putting Ant-Man against the ur-threat of post Infinity Saga Marvel. But Scott barely manages to come out alive in this movie. It's honestly almost a little sad to watch such a chipper guy take such a beating in this movie. As much as the promise was to have small time stories, it's really about seeing how our small time characters have just as much heart and drive as the heavy hitters. Ant-Man has kind of earned that. But then there are the complaints, "How can Ant-Man beat Kang the Conqueror?" Okay. You all thought, with your dirty little thoughts, that Ant-Man could beat Thanos, so chill out. I think the real question is how Ant-Man could beat Kang the Conqueror fairly. That question shouldn't bother you that much. There's so much that screams that Scott barely made it out without even making a dent to Kang overall. Instead, the real interest of the movie is that Scott has his own Star Wars world in front of him. That's what makes the Quantum Realm scary. Let's pick apart alien universes and what make them interesting. I remember watching Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and being pretty meh about the whole thing. I wasn't the only one. As pretty as Valerian was, it felt pretty flat because I didn't care about the bad guy. The Quantum Realm becomes the focus of the movie. So much is about what makes this world tick in a way that it shouldn't. After all, Scott and Hank are both confused by the very different world that they're exploring. (Part of that comes from retcons and I can admit that.) But knowing that Kang is down here makes the whole thing scary. Think about the emotional ramifications of Ant-Man versus Kang. Thor or Captain America versus Kang, you want to see the slugfest. We've gotten that before. But Scott is wildly outmatched, making the inevitable confrontation a real scary thing. The fact that Scott wins is the underdog tale of legend. By no means is Scott supposed to win that fight, but he does. And it is because the lovable goofball has resigned himself to dying. He sees this greater good. He does all of this for his daughter and he gets wrecked. It's the Little Engine that Could or the Earth on Turtle's Back. It's that trope that we don't get to see too much in Marvel because most of the superheroes in the MCU are just so darned successful. Scott is always there with the assist, not the win. He's a guy who knows to pass the ball. No one takes him seriously, so it becomes this confidence thing down there. And the Quantum Realm is built for him. There's no one with predispositions towards him and he has to rally everything himself. It's great. I'm ranting at this point and I have been slacking on writing. I could keep going with this for a long time, but Quantumania is one of the best Marvel movies I've seen in a really long time. I'm sorry that the world is tired of Marvel movies. But this is not the failure that people are making it out to be. It's a great sci-fi action comedy that sets up a lot of stuff in the MCU. I can't wait to own this one because I can see this one as part of the regular rewatch rotation. |
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
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