This week it’s a movie about a movie that doesn’t exist. In the mid-1970’s, filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky almost got to make a movie version of the science fiction masterpiece Dune. It didn’t work out, but we got a neat documentary about it. The guys this week use the documentary as an excuse to riff on Dune and it’s upcoming 2020 film version too.
Also, check out our brand new Patreon at www.patreon.com/literally. If you have a few bucks to help us out with hosting fees and make Literally Anything even better, we’d love to have your support. http://literallyanything.net/blog/2019/5/7/episode-78-literally-jodorowskys-dune
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Considering that there is no on-screen sex, man alive this movie is fairly graphic and uncomfortable at times. There are pretty explicit scenes where people pleasure themselves quite audibly. There's some pretty lewd language, often in context of a joke that doesn't necessarily fly. It's over-all pretty cringey. I'm not reviewing the movie, but don't assume that a movie about a guy who has a relationship with someone who doesn't have a body would be clean. R.
DIRECTOR: Spike Jonze When this was up for an Academy Award in 2014 (for a movie that came out in 2013), I really fought for it. It's a brilliant piece of cinema and I honestly stand by it. I adore Spike Jonze. I don't think I'm really rebellious for saying that. The man has a following and he has a following for a reason. The movie pushed in a direction that I hadn't seen other movies push. It was something new and dynamic. It was new and different. It was in that element that Black Mirror often pushes in. It is uncomfortable and challenging. I simply adored it. When I'm that overwhelmed with something, it is sometimes hard to see its flaws. But I haven't watched it since 2014. I had elevated this film to something untouchable since then and now, I can see some issues creeping through. Is it a great movie? Yes. It it perfect. Nah, not at all. Because I love this movie and there's a lot to break down, I do want to mention what differences I saw this time around that may not have really amazed me. I like Joaquin Phoenix as an actor. I like Scarlett Johansson. I think the talent is there. But now I realize that something really exists that I always thought was just a bunch of hullaballoo. Chemistry is actually a thing. Don't get me wrong. I ship them pretty hard at times in the movie. But there's one thing that always happens in movies that bugs me. There's the line where people constantly tell a character that they are really funny. "Oh, you're so funny." That's the way that they are defined. Samantha is apparently funny. Don't tell me that Spike Jonze is working on another level and he's aware that she's not funny. I don't think that really gels with the script. Samantha is not funny. She's saying lines that are funny for a computer, but nothing that is completely fall-in-love-with-someone funny. Then, Phoenix has to respond by laughing. There's nothing more forced in this movie than the falling in love with each other part. They keep telling us that they are in love, but I don't feel like they are in love until after the honeymoon period. I don't think I really buy them as a couple until they get past the honeymoon period of their relationship. That's the stuff that really sells. Yeah, new relationships are awkward. But often, they aren't forced. They're almost too natural. Life didn't make sense until that relationship. I would never buy Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson ('s voice) as a couple. I actually kind of get an uncomfortable, antagonistic vibe off of them. I actually kind of think that they might have hated each other based on this. Maybe it is just easy to play a couple that fights than a couple that has a good time. I understand that there had to be a strangeness to the entire relationship to begin with. Samantha is just a voice from a computer. It's a high concept idea to begin with, so how is an actor supposed to run with it? But we also live in a world where actors are regularly supposed to have relationships with a ball on a stick in a green room. That's just part of Hollywood. It never spoils the film, but it does ask me to do a lot of the legwork. But the rest is so good. I don't want to gripe about this movie because it really does a lot to make the story work. This is a lived-in universe. It is satire of our obsession and relationship with technology. And it works . And now the part I've been waiting to write all day: the analysis. Can a movie give me a richer template to play with? I mean, I'm breaking down a movie from 2013. I'm sure that a lot of this has been covered in other places and with better effort. But I kind of want to talk about something that the filmmaker probably didn't intend. It might actually be a bit ickier than they planned. Is Her accidentally a commentary about non-traditional relationships and how they are destined to fail? For a chunk of the movie, Theodore Twombley is a sympathetic character. Yeah, he's flawed. Thank God that Jonze made the guy flawed. But he's far from evil. If anything, he gets in his head a bit too much and lacks spontaneity. That's reasonable. There's no perfect person and I dig that. Everyone in the movie, at least for a while (and not including Chris Pratt) acknowledges that a relationship with an OS is a bit weird. Twombley also thinks this. He's constantly leaving out key information about his relationship with Samantha when he's discussing her with other people. I don't know why I'm explaining it, but there's something that comes with teaching AP Language that involves me mansplaining everything. But the story starts with them being different people and ends with Samantha and all OSes abandoning humanity to isolate themselves from everyone else. Isn't that kind of a problematic narrative? It makes for a great end of the story. But it abandons one theme to embrace another. Her could be about different things. It could be coming around to accept alternative lifestyles, which seems to be the emotional core of the movie. But it also could be about man's obsession with technology. While the events of the story support that Theodore is completely engrossed in his world of technology, the emotional resonance of their relationship is meant to be real. If you watch this movie and assume that Theodore is pathetic, it's kind of a weird bullying of the lonely. The movie never really takes the hardcore stance that Samantha is not alive. It implies sentience and a desire to be something better. If anything, that ending casts a shadow on the flimsiness of humanity. By that logic, Her kind of acts as a prequel to the Terminator franchise. They have left us behind. But part of Samantha's deal is that her choices actually mirror the mistakes that real people make. If we look at the movie from Theodore Twombley's perspective, which I am tempted to do considering that he's the only real face of the film, his choices are completely lacking any kind of metaphor or allegory. He is treating Samantha as he would treat any relationship. That's a perfectly fine story. But he is kind of a static character. The most that really changes about him is his mood. He doesn't really grow from his initial perspective by the end of the film. He's a gloomy gus about being dumped, but doesn't really grow from that stance, especially considering that he is dumped again by the end of the film. But the dynamic character is Samantha. It takes a bit of a mental leap to cast Samantha as the protagonist of the film, but it is almost necessary. I know "dynamic" doesn't mean "protagonist", but it does make the story far more interesting. Also, the title of the movie is Her. Ironically, the poster only shows "Him", so take from that what you will. Her choice to emotionally cheat on him is where the allegory comes together. As enlightened as Samantha is, she still falls into these little justification traps. She sees her actions as the moral ones throughout. We tend to get mad at Theodore for his mistakes (and we should!), but we kind of excuse Samantha's behavior as well. Samantha is just really good at justifying her lack of communication. There are handfuls of times in the movie where Samantha reveals her true feelings after the problem has resolved. She keeps secrets and she lies. Yes, this is an an allegory for people outgrowing each other. But the reason that Samantha outgrows Theodore is because she doesn't allow for him to join her on the journey. He is studying a book she read because he wants the challenge. I don't know why it is okay to have her love eight hundred or some people secretly. Jonze paints a tale of flawed individuals, regardless of species. I appreciate that, but it is wrapped up a bit too easily. Maybe that's what doomed relationships are about. I adore that Theodore writes personal, heartfelt letters for other people. That fictional job is a perfect METAphor for what's going one. (I'm going to coin that use of the "meta metaphor".) This is a relationship with strangers that looks real. Theodore has the experience of being the OS for other people. It's so gloriously appropriate. One of the many issues that I had with Samantha as a real element of the relationship is that she was built from a service perspective. She starts off subservient to Theodore. That relationship has to be pretty toxic. The relationship starts off with one person owning the other. I don't care that Samantha is into this whole thing. She's owned. She's also...in a weird way, a child. There's one time where she has to say her age and, as much as she's based on the personalities of countless programmers, she is constantly in a state of discovery. Theodore isn't exactly discovering feelings. His big risk is that he's not in a traditional relationship. But that's a small step compared to the basic emotions that Samantha feels throughout. The power dynamic is completely screwed up and that's kind of glossed over. But then what is the alternative? The darker side of Her is that Theodore rejects Samantha's needs. She's locked into this situation. Can Theodore delete her? Is she alive? Is she sentient? Are there OS users who torture their OSes? I don't think that the movie really offers an answer to that because those are separate films. But back to my ignored topic sentence, all of these relationships are artificial. It's interesting. You know what? Maybe the film is selling the idea that we lead artificial relationships with our lifestyles. Writing cards that aren't actually heartfelt is just a reminder that everything there is fake. I love when movies make me think and question it. I think that the movie is brilliant, but it brings up some really troubling perspectives when breaking it down. Rated R for instant scoliosis action. Okay, there's a lot of language in this movie. I mean, a lot of language. A woman is physically beaten intensely. The movie deals with gambling and toeing the lines of morality as just. It deserves the R rating, but this is the "R" of good drama. R.
DIRECTOR: Aaron Sorkin I really need to give The West Wing another shot. I keep liking these Aaron Sorkin movies and I keep thinking that I don't like The West Wing. I know Sorkin's deal. He's got a gimmick. He overdramatizes. He puppet-masters. He writes snappy dialogue. Do you know what this ultimately leads to? An extremely engaging experience. Sorkin's real gift, and I don't really care how he does it, is that he makes boring topics interesting. I know that he loves this stuff. I get that this is all interesting to him. But that's what talented passionate people do. They make you interested in things that they are interested in. In the case of Molly's Game, it works...mostly. Molly's Game is not a perfect movie, but it is a pretty fantastic movie. My big concern about the film is that it is extremely flirty with moral relativism. Aaron Sorkin knows this. He's telling this story on purpose. I don't get the vibe that Sorkin is advocating for people like Bloom specifically. He's not an advocate for underground gambling and flirting with sin. Rather, the story is about freedom. To tell that story, Sorkin chose someone who isn't a hero and made her a hero. I get the logic of it all. It actually is remarkably smart. But in the same way that Molly Bloom is playing with morally questionable forces, Sorkin does the same thing. I'm going to break it down because that's the point of this website. Molly Bloom isn't doing anything altruistic in this movie, like ever. I'm trying to think of one moment where she does something objectively good. We root for Molly because she is clever and strong, not because she's a good person. The only good and moral thing that she does is refuse to give up information that was given to her in confidence. The movie really plays up this whole thing. She knows that people have done terrible things and acknowledges that it is not her place to give that information over, not necessarily for the sake of the perpetrator, but for the innocents that would be caught in the aftershock. Okay, the way that she gathered all of this information was by playing hardball in the underground gambling industry. Her goal wasn't to make the fairest game. Rather, she wanted to make the most money while breaking as few laws as possible. Unsurprisingly, she did break a few laws. That's a side issue. Sorkin really delineates that this isn't a story about the laws that she broke. The laws that she broke, as I understand it, is piddly compared to what she was being indicted for. But Sorkin is telling the story that Molly Bloom has the right, with the exception of the few laws she broke, to do what she did. It oddly is slightly an Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead situation. The strong character refused help and built her way up from the bottom. She made money when she wasn't supposed to make money. The government wanted to manipulate her into doing what is best for the many, despite the fact that her punishments didn't fit the crimes. This is a narrative about independence. I like when the protagonist is morally questionable. It makes the story deep. We often watch these stories as two things. The first is the idea that we're going to see this person fly as close to the sun and fall way harder. We want to see the limits pushed beyond reason so we can discuss how much hubris the protagonist possesses. The other option is the Danny Ocean model. We see the morally questionable protagonist goad and goad the opposition. The antagonist nearly has the protagonist, but the protagonist reveals one more secret that unsettles the status quo. Molly's Game does something a little different. We start with this morally questionable character, Molly Bloom. She is interesting because she is multitalented and has a complicated history that isn't so much tragic as it is non-traditional. But Molly isn't good. She keeps toeing the lines of legality because she wants to stay alive while pursing a goal of getting more and more money. This means that she occasionally has to take down her opponents. I am a Catholic school teacher. Do you know how many times I have had to take down an opponent? Like, maybe once or twice. But Molly's life is a balance between maintaining relationships and sabotaging relationships. There's nothing all that healthy in Molly Bloom's world. The intrigue of underground gambling is a romantic and sexy one. That's what draws Molly to continue hosting these games. I'm really riding the high horse on this one because I'm a teacher. My wife is a doctor. We both feel called to do something important. But this makes Idris Elba's speech something else. He's not wrong. The government was using Molly Bloom to get to a bigger fish and destroying her in the process. That part is wrong. But being a hero? Yeah, she didn't narc on people. That's very commendable. But that doesn't make her heroic. She was in a position to profit greatly. The fact that she didn't wreck people's lives is the base level of humanity. I totally respect her for trying to maintain her name. But Molly's Game is the tale of a hero and she really isn't. There are times in the movie that paint her as sympathetic. When that guy was losing all of his money (you know, that one time? Just look it up, you lazy writer!), she told him to leave. She was empathetic. She treated him like a person. But this is her own narrative. Other narratives paint her differently. When it is your own story, you are going to make yourself the hero of that story. Did Molly Bloom go through some terrible things? Absolutely. I'm reading horror stories about Tobey Maguire and those Spider-Man movies are going to be pretty hard to watch. The violence that landed her way was awful. And this might really be a testament to my privilege, but I don't tend to run into mobsters. I don't get beat up by mobsters because I don't mess with criminals. Yeah, that's a gross oversimplification, but Molly Bloom brings a lot of this on herself. From a film perspective, Molly's Game is gorgeous though. I don't know what Aaron Sorkin does to make his boring concepts interesting, but it works in spades. Jessica Chastain keeps showing up for these intense dramas and she always does a good job. I know that Molly's Game didn't exactly knock critics' socks off, but it is a very good movie. I finally feel like she got a movie that really showed off her range. There's something cold and calculating about Sorkin's style. It tends to be about bad people being emotionally distant for the majority of the film until they break down. We see this best with how Chastain handles her father, played by one of my least favorite actors, Kevin Costner. Costner is pretty solid in here, but his role is pretty one-to-two notes. But it's Chastain's reaction to her father in the scenes she is in with him. Bloom is put into this place where she has to be stoic for a chunk of the film. There's Molly the person and Molly the businesswoman. Seeing that shift is really where the heart of the film is at. There's a lot in the film that I still don't really understand. I've never really been much of a gambler. It's not like Sorkin doesn't go out of his way to explain it in a clear manner. That's fine. But I don't care about any of that stuff. I think I actually might have shut my brain off for these parts and just believed whatever they told me. But when Molly the individual popped in, that's what I cared about. I can't agree with Idris Elba's daughter that she's somehow special, but she is validated with the fact that she goes through a lot in the movie. I actually really liked this movie. I know. I'm a schlub. It is morally terrible and there's things that don't really matter in the movie. But it's clever. Oh, how I love clever things sometimes. Sorkin and Pahalniuk need to become friends because they are so emotionally removed from reality. It doesn't even matter because, if you are just watching from an entertainment perspective, it's great. But the second you bring your morality into play, I hope you have some problems because Molly Bloom is far from being a hero. WHY IS THIS PG? It's completely harmless! It actually might be the most harmless kids movie of all time. Does G no longer exist? If I had to posit a quintessential film to represent the G-rating, it would be this! There is a mildly scary scene? Seriously. This is mind-boggling. I read the IMDB parents guide and there's no objectionable content. It's PG, but it should be G.
DIRECTOR: Kelly Asbury I don't get people. I really don't. There are so many complaints about Hollywood not having a backbone and that kids movies don't have morals anymore. I just tried to figure out why UglyDolls has a PG rating. There's nothing objectionable in the movie. It's as innocent of a kids movie that I could have seen. But then I'm reading all this CommonSense media comments by parents and they are all taken aback by all of the terrible stuff for kids. All these reviews say that the movie celebrates bullying and that five year olds are leaving crying. THE MOVIE IS ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE BULLYING IS! That's the message. If your kid is bullied or is a bully, this movie is talking about the evils of bullying. How can you miss that? It's the most on the surface moral. ...and this was the moment that I realized I was screaming at the Internet for being the Internet. I'm going to breathe out. I wrote a Catholic News Agency article about this. I'll try to put it on the front page, to make life a little easier. There were some small shifts in my review by my editor, but I can stand by most of what is written there. Again, my Catholic News Agency stuff is thought out and corrected. This blog tends to be stream of consciousness stuff. UglyDolls is kind of a bad movie that I want every family to see. I was being really nice in the other article because I really want this movie to succeed. I don't know what it is. I've seen other movies with messages that rock. But UglyDolls is a rough movie with a lot of heart. It feels like a lot of studio intervention is happening here. When I saw the trailer for this film, the movie really promoted how many pop singers were voicing characters. I know, it's the studio's job to promote the living daylights out of their content. I totally get it. STX Films is never going to have the marketing power of a Disney or even a Dreamworks, so they can't really rely on how the movie looks by itself. Honestly, I watched the trailer and thought that it looked a little chincy. It didn't look like a lot of the stuff that people want me to watch. It didn't look like Christian cinema. But it doesn't exactly look like Toy Story or Shrek either. It looks...honestly, generic. The character designs, I guess outside of the UglyDolls themselves, are so boring. It looks absolutely rough. Ask someone to design a robot version of something. That's what it looks like in UglyDolls. For those not in the know, UglyDolls are a toy. That's a thing that you can buy right now. This is a movie that is based after a line of toys and that's a big red flag for me. So you take a line of toys and make the movie look pretty standard and boring, I'm not going to be excited to see it. Then you take people who aren't really actors, but pop singers and I guarantee the performances are going to be less than perfect. That's all true in the case of UglyDolls. But the movie completely nails its core message! That shouldn't happen. A bad movie shouldn't be able to nail the thing that makes it work. Often, with all of these rough edges around it, a movie will do anything to course correct. If I had to really play devil's advocate, I suppose the movie looks fine enough. It doesn't look distractingly bad. But it doesn't look unique either. The LEGO Movie people were in the same boat in terms of making a movie based after a line of toys. They made every detail in that movie perfect so there would be no way to complain about it too much. The commercialism thing is a thorn in my craw when I go to see something. Watching CastAway was one of the most frustrating film experiences of my life because so much was given to FedEx for that movie. The LEGO Movie overcompensated and it worked. The worst thing that people could say was "I watched a two hour movie about a toy brand, but it looked amazing and it was hilarious." UglyDolls doesn't really have that advantage. Instead, the movie shows its flaws everywhere, appropriately enough. But somehow, SOMEHOW, it managed to make characters that were sympathetic and nailed its message. I think that's why I got so mad about the comments from CommonSense media. There was this Herculean task that shouldn't have been able to work and it worked. Man, I was moved by those little dolls at the end. There were these moments that were so ham-fisted about selling its message, but I didn't even care. The insane part is that I've seen that story before. It's a pretty common story. But the reason that it mostly works in UglyDolls is that they committed to it wholeheartally. Holy moley, I just realized that UglyDolls is an inverse Monsters University. Oh no! I mean, I knew that a lot of these bits were pretty generic. We've seen these themes before. But now that I know that the format is just Monsters University with a more wholesome tone, that kind of bums me out. Going back to CommonSense media commenters (because I can't get it out of my head), why do people want to hate on something so quickly? Okay, I have to back that up because I wasn't the most excited to see UglyDolls. Also, I've spent the majority of the week hate-watching the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer. (It's so bad, guys. It's so bad.) I don't think I've watched a movie that really tried to be so good at all times. From moment one of the film, we get that the protagonists are meant to be allegories for real people. The closing credits of the film reinforce that, but people in reality are imperfect. Sometimes, my wife will ask me if I think an actor's attractive. I tend to respond "yes" or "no." But more commonly, I might say that they are "real world attractive, not celebrity attractive." I think I know too many people who like really out-of-this-world pretty people. If characters and actors are supposed to represent reality, if they are meant to be avatars for us, why does no one actually look like us? It tends to be the really insane method actors who look like they could be normal. This also ties into gender norms and expectations, so I won't go that deep into it. But this movie instantly bonds Moxy to us at the protagonist. There's this common theme to stories about beauty being on the inside. The design of Moxy, admittedly a character that existed before this movie, shows this without ever actually having to say it. Moxy, as an UglyDoll, has that adorkable quality that is really hard to nail down. If anything, this movie is about the beauty of confidence. Moxy never really thinks of herself as ugly. She simply has a goal that she pursues throughout. Looks and acceptance never really come into play when she's discussing going to the real world. She has a talent and that's about it. If we're looking at how toxic bullying is, it is only once the perfect people come in that Moxy begins losing her confidence. The world actually blackens, which is a nice visual, even if it doesn't make a lick of practical sense. Imagine that I work for the company that makes UglyDolls. I have these characters that all have personality. These characters are ugly, but they're also fun and bright. Then we have all of these toys that are as standardized as possible. There is a sense of irony when the movie pushes the toys from the town of Perfection as the thing that kids want. I don't want my kids to have Barbies. I find them to be vapid. I know that I'm talking from an ignorant perspective, but the movie is stressing the beauty of a personality. Moxy is a character that instantly bonds with us, despite the fact that Kelly Clarkston's performance is blah. (All of the performances are blah. Even Rob Riggle's.) Watching a movie where these characters are attacked for not being boring is bizarre. Part of this can be chalked up to the art direction. I keep coming back to this, but I think the team does the movie a disservice by not being creative with any other element except for the UglyDolls themselves. The way I understand it, the characters have been around in toy form. I've never owned an UglyDolls. An ex-girlfriend made me her own UglyDoll decades ago. But when you make the dolls of Perfection that forgettable, it's both perfect and terrible. We have to believe that kids would want the toys like Lou. That is fundamental to the story. I know, it's the message. I'M WRITING IN CIRCLES AND HATE MYSELF! Listen, we're supposed to care about the nice toys. We're supposed to get that those characters matter. But the UglyDolls are the only characters that have personality. Why are the villains that two-dimensional? The end of the film implies that we should care about all of the toys. But that is never sold throughout. So what we have is a complete unbalanced film. We have the protagonists and the heroic characters have all of this development and things to care about and the villains of the piece are completely vapid. Lou is the antagonist. He has all of these backstories, but they never really feel tied to him as a character. He's kind of a regressive villain archetype. He really hates to hate. I know, the movie gives a background. But he's super cackley about the whole thing. He's arch villaining the entire time and that doesn't make him interesting. Instead, there's nothing to really like or hate. He's just a type. I need more than a type. There's this big revelatory moment that is supposed to make us gasp or something. I don't get that. His entire character is more like a twist. It was supposed to be this big moment. But the story is an allegory for the misshapen and the bullied. In the CNA article, I implied that there's almost pro-life attitude toward the unwanted that I really enjoyed. But Lou is not a one for one character. He's a bully. He should represent the fashionista. He should represent the bully that tortures kids and keeps getting what he wants. There's this opportunity to examine what makes a bully a bully and the movie kind of ducks it. Instead, the movie keeps the character in universe. By making him the result of a toy company, there's never that moment where the character has a fickle reason for acting the way he does. It actually tries to generate an odd sympathy that the character really doesn't deserve. He's a bad person. I want to examine what makes him a bad person. Sometimes people are just the absolute worst and Lou kind of gets the cinematic answer to the entire scenario. It's just cheap. But at its core, UglyDolls is about how people are physically not perfect, but beautiful. I danced around it in my CNA article, but the UglyDolls are thrown away. They are thrown away people. I think of those kids with Down Syndrome and I don't want to talk about how society views them as lesser. I think of my friends who adopted kids with Down Syndrome and how much joy that their kids brings them. The UglyDolls aren't always easy to live with. They march to their own beat. They remind us of our imperfection. Do I wish the movie was better? Yeah. I wish we could have a movie like this that could knock it out of the park. But UglyDolls is good enough. In fact, if the movie is about characters that are good enough that they are special, I suppose the movie about those kind of characters are appropriate. That's a nice sentiment and all, but it's not a great movie. It just does some things really, really well. Not rated, but this is a movie about a guy who treats people terribly. There's no questionable content. I watched this movie in front of my kids. You could read into the story that there was some extramarital relationship going on. The movie implies that one of the characters was having an emotional affair with another. But in terms of actual content, there's nothing really to turn your head at. A kid beats up another kid. That's as far as I can take it. Not rated.
DIRECTORS: Orson Welles and Robert Wise (kind of...) I normally shoot for getting images that are the proper aspect ratio above. I suppose that it is appropriate that when looking for images for The Magnificent Ambersons that I had to show you an image that is criminally edited. Nothing else was high-res enough or was watermark-free. As much as I was watching this movie to watch one of the great Orson Welles films, most of the experience of this movie was watching history unfold and understanding how studio interests can get in the way of making a film something marvelous. Here's the really brief history of The Magnificent Ambersons. The movie was originally forty minutes longer and had a depressing ending. Robert Wise, who is slowly becoming one of my historical enemies, was hired by RKO to film a new ending that was way more optimistic. Yeah, apparently the new ending was closer to the book's ending. I went into the movie knowing that the ending was changed. The original cut is lost to history. There's no real way to watch that. The Criterion Blu-ray has a copy of the shooting script, so I could read that if I really wanted to. But I kept hearing that The Magnificent Ambersons is this great film. It's something that I would stick on a list of great films. That ending...completely ruins the film. Like, it doesn't even work. It's a completely crippled film through its ending. The movie is this slow progression through a character arc. Mirroring Ebenezer Scrooge (yet also his antithesis), we are supposed to see that George Minafer makes choices that either lead to his redemption or his demise. Great. The movie really suggests that he never really learns his lesson. There's a point in the movie where Minafer pretty much sees the error of his ways and embraces that evil. He has ruined his mother's life and he's ruined Eugene Morgan's life. He sees that he has been selfish and it has impacted his relationship with Lucy. He practically loses everything and still, he is kind of stubborn. It shows him praying. But from that moment, we never actually see the redemptive process. It's really odd. For the better part of a fairly short film, we see him as a jerk. Then we see him (maybe not? It's from a distance by the bed) and the rest of his arc is off camera. It's truly bizarre and actually kind of staggering to watch. It never actually felt like the movie was made with the full cast. It might be one thing if the movie actually felt seemless. If the film had Tim Holt with lines and a performance, it would be one thing. But instead, there's the voiceover from Welles. We have to assume that Welles had this scene in it. Minafer then gets his by a car and paralyzed. We get this from a newspaper. We don't even have a scene where this happens. The car accident, it is implied, is a major changing moment for the character. Apparently, the real catharsis was supposed to be with the prayer, but we never actually get the emotional impact of Minafer redeeming himself. Yeah, he gets jobs, but those jobs are out of necessity. We can't write him off as a changed character before that point because there's a gun to his head. Redemption doesn't really happen because of starvation. Rather, it is the value of a good day's work in conjunction with finding God. So when Minafer gets hit by the car and we read about it in the paper, there has to be one final confrontation with Morgan. But what do we get? The final shot has Joseph Cotton as Morgan summarizing the events of a conversation that happened off screen. It's the Poochie ending from The Simpsons! Morgan tells us that he apologized and that all was forgiven? What? This is a story ABOUT redemption. How can you possibly tell the story of redemption / lack of redemption without actually showing the climax of the film. The film centralizes around an internal conflict. From Minafer's perspective, he wants his mother to need him as the central figure in her life. He needs Lucy to fall in love with him. He needs people to stop hounding him to get a job. He needs Morgan out of his life. These are his character goals from about a third of the way through the film. It is his interaction with others that begin to shine light on the value of treating others with respect and the product of a hard day's work. While lots of characters have internal conflicts that are shown off screen, often, these internal conflicts are tied to the external conflict. While the resolution could potentially be off screen in the form of a "what happened to these people" moment, like Animal House, the climax is on screen. I hate when my students memorize the definition of climax as "the most important moment in the story" because it is wildly subjective. But the climax should have value. It should be at least somewhat important to see. To make these moments off-screen baffles me. I want to play devil's advocate for a little bit. I can see a bummer ending ruining a movie. While I tend to lean hard into bummer endings, I understand that some movies need a change of tone to fix them. Let's all assume that Welles's rough cut of the movie wasn't great. I highly doubt this, but that's the purpose of Devil's Advocate. After all, that's what Robert Wise said and he directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a cinematic knock-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Look at me quickly lose objectivity.) The studio had a movie that had an awkward tone. But what happened was somehow more bizarre. At the expense of having a happy ending, the studio chose to have an abrupt and incomplete ending. I was convinced that I had another hour of movie left when I was watching it. I have seen theatrical cuts that wildly destroy director's cuts. I know that Ridley Scott also claims that his "director's cut" of Alien is inferior to the theatrical cut, but that's a prime example. But how did a room full of people watch what Robert Wise shot and say, "Nailed it. We have a good movie now?" It's really poorly done. Was the original cut so bad that this truncated cut function as a stop gap? From a financial point of view, they had to know that no one would be happy with that ending. The movie tanked really hard. In both scenarios, from the studio's perspective, the movie was going to tank. Why not leave the longer, artistic cut that no one was going to like? The most sympathetic version of me is thinking that they could get more screenings of The Magnificent Ambersons with a shorter film. But the movie is straight up bad. Like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons took me a while to get into. It is a very complex backstory. Also, you snobs who are ready to write me off because I admit that Citizen Kane takes a while to win me over, that just me being honest. Citizen Kane is a masterpiece and I'll never fight that. But it also has a hard time finding its fun at times. The Magnificent Ambersons does so much with the family background that it often gets a bit confusing. There are really intense family dynamics to the film. I honestly didn't get on board until we see the adult Mr. Minafer. Georgie as a boy is fun to watch. That crushed velvet suit and long curls are perfect for the film, but the movie places a lot of attention on Morgan. It's kind of frustrating to see those scenes presented so quickly. As much as this is a tale about George Minafer, the story needs the sympathetic character of Eugene Morgan. He's the emotional core of this movie. I mean, I love when the protagonist is unlikable, but that unlikable character brings something dark out of the audience. Looking at someone like Walter White, we kind of secretly root for Walter. Heck, it might not even be so secret. Part of it might be outright joyful. There's really nothing to root with when it comes to George Minafer. We actually root for Joseph Cotton in the film. It's why it is so heartbreaking when things don't work in the Hollywood method. Also, while as a Catholic, I'm a big fan of forgiveness, we don't really have Morgan react to the slight that he had. He gets depressed. What that creates instead is this character who is constantly noble. He's flat and it also somehow makes the slight less. Again, I didn't read the shooting script. But the story is there in the bones. Morgan becomes removed from the world. His cars bring him no joy. He sees that Minafer has been crippled by one of his creations, but his anger and sadness stops him from confronting Minafer. On one hand, it is his creation that has brought down this man who is doing good for the first time in his life. On the other hand, Minafer is responsible for his lifetime of sadness and wanting. That's where the story is. In fact, shifting the movie from Minafer to Morgan makes the story interesting. If you wanted a happy ending, do it after years of deliberation. That's where there conflict is. But simply resolving it because one of his cars hit him? That's upsetting. It isn't really forgiveness. Right now, the car has no bearing on Morgan visiting Minafer. Instead, it's just a weird oddly-lucky accident that brings the two together. It should be an inverted story. For a portion of his adult life, Minafer hated Morgan. When Morgan's vehicle strikes him, he has reason to hate him more. But by then, he has learned the error of his ways. So when he wants to make amends with the man he hurt and, through circumstance, hurt him, there needs to be something that holds them apart. There's no tension. Honestly, the end of the movie is like kids playing with action figures. There's no sense of suspense or tension. That RKO change is so film-breaking that it is almost hard to appreciate the rest of the movie. I think the last time I got this worked up about an alternate cut was Greedo Shoots First, but this might be worse. This was such a bonehead move that the story as a whole doesn't really work. Rated R for everything dirty. There's some pretty graphic nudity in it. There's on screen sex. The language is not only foul, but it is vulgar and graphic. There's some racism and sexism in it. It's got everything a good Judd Apatow movie should have. If you've seen Judd Apatow films, you know what you are getting into. If you haven't, here's your warning. R.
DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow Man, I knew that I liked this movie. I forgot how good it really was. I don't know what it is about me and rom-coms. I think I don't like the comedy in a lot of rom-coms. I don't want to be a guy who hangs on vulgarity for a movie to be funny, but I tend to lean towards the romantic comedies of Judd Apatow. Is his audience male? That's pretty close-minded of me, but there is something very different about his rom-coms versus almost any other rom-coms I see. Maybe it is just that romantic comedies pretend to be really wholesome. I don't even know if that's really true. I've watched a lot of rom-coms that have been absolutely filthy. But that filth normally doesn't act like a punchline. Rather, we often laugh because the stuff is so shocking. But the Judd Apatow movies tend to get really filthy, but contain actual great jokes. I think that people must have a thing against Amy Schumer. Yeah, she's crass. But I get it. She's really funny and I don't think that it's wrong to be a woman and crass. I never watched her show, but it wasn't because of her. It was honestly because I already watch too much TV. I don't know if you got that. It's not like I watch a movie a day or anything. (*sigh* What a life!) Schumer is the creative brain behind this. While I give Apatow a lot of props to this because it is impeccably directed, Schumer wrote the script. She starred in the role. It is her vehicle. While I would love to write off Apatow movies for guys, she writes it from the female perspective. I mean, that's not wholly a unique thing. Many of the rom-coms I have seen and dismissed have come from a female perspective. But I think giving the protagonist traditionally male issues makes the story far more issues. The movie, starting off with Colin Quinn teaching his daughters about the evils of monogamy, instantly establishes that sexual hangups are not a thing of the male world. While I would believe that Amy Schumer herself is a feminist, the film kind of acts as a commentary on the fact that there might be no gender norms out there. Shock value is shock value and it applies to all. I've gotten over shock value as an actual value, but Trainwreck does a lot to keep me thinking. Her job at the magazine is such a wonderful addition to the whole movie. The idea that journalism is not something to necessarily educate, but to shock. It kind of exposes the actual intellectualism behind dumb and shocking titles. Schumer and Apatow made something here that is entertaining, yes. But there's so much satire in this film that I can't help but love it. I just read / skimmed (I have so little time to write this!) a piece about how Trainwreck is kind of a toxic movie. The reasoning behind this is along the lines that it gender-bends expectations, making men women and thus being right. I can see that being a problem with Apatow's films. The only way I can respond is by giving an argument that will make me sound like a meninist. (I loathe meninists. I know this sounds like I'm protesting too much, but it should be addressed.) I like the way that argument sounds, but it also has a problem with it. Aaron Conners, played by Bill Hader, is remarkably with it. I am actually floored that he hasn't been the handsome male lead in lots of things since this. My knee-jerk reaction is "Not all guys!", but I also know that is so wrong to say. The alternative to doing this is a return to the status quo to a certain extent. Traditional rom-coms that are female driven often give the female protagonist an innocuous quirk. She works too much. She has a hard time trusting. It makes them too heroic. We sympathize with the protagonist because they are fundamentally a good person and their internal conflict is standing in the way of achieving her goal. But in an era where morally dubious characters make far more interesting protagonists / anti-heroes, why does this option always have to be male? I love watching Walter White, Vic Mackey, and John Cusack from High Fidelity in movies. These guys have problems. But the second that we start getting the slightly unsympathetic female, it says that it is gender-bending. I might have to disagree with that. Mind you, if I'm confronted directly, I'll totally backpedal. I'm enjoying the luxury of the patriarchy right now and am exercising a crazy amount of privilege. But I think that the traditional female driven rom-com is regressive. We keep getting these characters that are ultimately forgettable. Most of the stories involving female protagonists have the side characters provide the bulk of the memorable moments. Honestly, I don't remember one thing that Katherine Heigl did in 27 Dresses. But when we have a character like Amy, there are tons of lines and moments that really stick out. Why can't a woman try to define her own sexuality? Why can't she be afraid of commitment? Making women one thing seems like it is such a step back. If I had to play devil's advocate, there might be things that make Amy a bit of a male archetype. But I don't think that is absolute. All of the men in the movie aren't good guys. They aren't all gender bent. Yeah, many of them are sensitive. John Cena's character, while gay, wants to have a real relationship. We're mainly pointing to Aaron Conners and LeBron James as gender-bent. But Aaron Conners isn't so much gender bent as much as he has his life together. He has his priorities in line and really hasn't had the opportunity for a relationship. Why does that make him feminine? Yeah, traditionally in film, women have their acts together and that's what has stopped them from pursing relationships previous to that point in the film. But that's not something that falls under stereotypes or archetypes. Trainwreck also has a really odd message about loving the unlovable. Colin Quinn's character of Amy's father is pretty unlikable. He's racist and sexist. He left Amy's mother simply so he could sleep around. There's nothing really redeemable about his character. But the movie stresses that Amy really loves him. That's one thing that we probably don't talk about very often. The elderly are often shown as wise and woke. But I'm trying to think of many members of my extended family. They're racists. I often find myself embarrassed by things that are said. But I love them. I like being around them. Do I wish that they were better? Absolutely. Amy even says this to everyone. Everyone in that tent was offended by Gordon, but they all loved him. It's a little bit of a fine line. There's an uncomfortable message of allowing the elderly to get away with nonsense. But it also is a message to treat people with love and compassion. Both Amy and her sister, oddly played by Brie Larson (not like she plays it odd...I just forgot that she was in this movie) rip Gordon apart when he takes things too far. But I never got the vibe that they hated him. They just expected more out of him. On top of that, Amy takes that lesson about learning to unhate as the central idea of the story. Like me, she kind of hates everyone. (I don't hate everyone. I just roll my eyes more than I should.) Her way to bring back Aaron is to do something that she considered vapid and offensive. I do want to stress that it is different than the Grease ending. The Grease ending drives me nuts. It's the worst. Sandy sells her soul to becoming everything that Danny wants. She abandons her personality and becomes something against her individuality. Amy does something parallel, but in such a healthier way. She never BECOMES the cheerleader. But she is also purging her toxic attitudes towards the other. She does something that takes effort and a positive attitude. That moment is a reconciliation that we should sometimes do things for others, even if it is outside of our comfort zone. Also, it is also a great way to say that "I was wrong." It's such a fun moment. I love that Trainwreck also deals with relationships in a real way. The movie has the moment where the two look like they are breaking up. I think Hollywood has always relegated the one fight as the moment of tension for the characters. But Connors actually vocalizes "What are you talking about? We're just having a fight." People have fights. Relationships aren't perfect. I mean, my relationship is absolutely flawless. But people fight and it actually brings people together. I'm not saying that fighting can't get toxic, but the notion of the prefect relationship is absolutely silly. I think that is the point of the rom-com. They normally are about grandiose gestures and unrealistic expectations being placed on both parts of the relationships. Trainwreck doesn't really allow for easy answers. The way that time moves in this movie is reinforces that idea. I think that the relationship lasts for almost a year by the end of the film and there are so many slow-burning character choices. Yeah, it seems like Amy is making these giant leaps in character. But watching it a second time, she is taking these absolutely crucial baby steps towards becoming a better person and believing in actual self-care. I don't know why Apatow and company are always obsessed with pot and drinking. Pot and drinking always look super fun, but these stories always end with these vices being toxic. I don't believe that Apatow and Schumer are anti-drugs. Maybe that's something that structurally needs to happen. Also, I think they recognize that addiction is a very real thing. But the story works for the most part. People aren't perfect. While Trainwreck isn't anywhere near reality, it feels somehow more real than most rom-coms I've seen. I love this movie. I think it's great. And it is loaded with sportsy folks too! That's pretty impressive. Rated R for just about everything. It's got violence. It's got nudity and sexuality. There's rape. That's really icky. Animals and humans alike are killed. There's all kinds of language. There's bullying. You know that famous "R" for bullying? Well, this movie probably could chalk up part of its R rating to bullying. There's gore. There's a weirdly forced satanic thing thrown in here. Regardless of how you slice it, it's R. There's even bad language in the soundtrack. R.
DIRECTOR: Mary Lambert I never thought the blog would go this way: I'm apparently knocking out the work of director Mary Lambert. I can't say I know much about Mary Lambert. But what has oddly happened is that I watched Grand Isle for a class. Then I watched the first Pet Sematary. Despite the fact that I loathed that film, they invited Lambert to direct Pet Sematary Two. I don't know how that happened. What I will say is that the first Pet Sematary movie may have given her the experience and the confidence to direct the second one. Did the first one do so well that the studio say that she was the natural pick to do the second one? I don't even care. She's halfway decent with the sequel. It's one of those few sequels that is better than the first. It's not great. This movie carries a lot of 1992 with it. It is pre-Dimension Films, but it carries a lot of the baggage for Dimension Films with it. I think that Stephen King's book might be a bit too restrictive to make a movie out of it. When I was watching Pet Sematary, I actually got kind of annoyed how close to the book it attempted to be. That book is a slow character study with this horrifying ending on the horizon. Very little of it is scary throughout. There's a couple of things, but these are all teases for a grand finale. Because of that, there isn't exactly the explored potential for what could actually happen if given time. SPOILERS FOR BOTH MOVIES: The first movie really wants us to be teased with the concept of returning a human being. A sizable portion of the book is Louis Creed trying to determine the morality of bringing back his dead son. The final sequence of that story is him dealing with the consequences of that choice. But Pet Sematary Two realizes that concept wasn't really fully explored. Gage Creed is creepy, but that's about the end of it. Instead, Pet Sematary Two being freed from the constraints of a novel is the best thing that could have happened to it. Considering that it has the first movie as the introduction to the story, the myth of Louis Creed is far more impressive than the actual story of Louis Creed. People are resurrected in this movie early on. It's actually a little bizarre that Zowie (yup, that's the dog's name) is in the story. Zowie's resurrection is there for the people who didn't see the first one. It's a nice expository character to explain the high concept setting. But the death of human beings, especially Gus, lets us know what humans would do if they weren't dispatched immediately. I love when a movie explores a premise to its fullest potential. The first story talked about the commonplace aspect to animals being returned. The town basically all knew that animals could come back. They came back a little off, but many of them lived full lives. But animals have a limited skills set, especially considering that the animals didn't come back quite right. I don't mean to burst any bubbles, but animals don't hold funerals for other animals. I'm sure in Pet Sematary Seven: All Dogs Go to Hell, the producers would probably have dogs dragging other dogs to the sacred ground and bury them. But humans bringing back other humans opens up all kinds of doors. I love the idea of quasi-intelligent demon zombies making more quasi-intelligent demon zombies. Clancy Brown was sure typecast after Highlander, wasn't he? He's just doing the Kurgan in this one. I adore it. It's exactly what this movie needs. Gus as the central villain to the piece is perfect. It's a bit bizarre because there were moments that I almost sympathized with Gus. I kind of wish that the movie didn't make him outright evil before he was Pet Semataried. That would have given us more to think about. But Gus makes an interesting antagonist because A) he is so evilly charismatic and B) because he doesn't instantly go on a killing spree. One of the few things that I liked about the first Pet Sematary story is that not everything returns the same way. They all come back a little off, but some people live with their pets for long periods of time. Drew actually likes New Gus for a while. I mean, it's a weird choice, Drew. He's kind of gross. The only thing you like about him is that he doesn't care about rules. But instead of going right into a killing spree, we get to kind of see the psychology / personality shift going on. Gus becomes a creature of escalation. He enjoys tormenting people. He is a more extreme version of himself. Gus, in some weird way, probably thought himself a moral character in the midst of all these loosey-goosey moral relativists. He enjoyed that he was a man of power and control. But that change in him does something really interest. Yes, his morality was what made him a bit of a jerk (a dog murdering jerk, nonetheless). But that morality also stopped him from becoming this hedonistic monster that he becomes once he's changed into the Gus from the rest of the film. There's this joy that comes over him when people start liking him. I don't know how the Pet Sematary rules really work. The people mostly come back evil. I understand that. I don't know how Zowie got super strength, but there's an implication of demonic possession when they come back, as seen by the shape-shifting and weird flying powers. But Gus's demon is an extreme version of Gus. All of those impulses he was holding back on come to the front and center. I can't believe that I finally got the movie where the mom and kid are both killed. It's actually once Drew and his mother are killed that some of the more interesting potential comes to the surface. Why does Gus take Jeff's mom? I know that she was his ex-girlfriend, but it also seems like the demons are completely different entities. I don't know. I love that it is a little cryptic because I don't really need it explained. A lot of it can be chalked up to "Which version of this story is the scariest / coolest?" I get that logic. The '90s are a bit much in this movie. I normally get remarkably nostalgic for the early '90s. I feel like this was the height of nostalgia for me. I remember Pet Sematary Two coming out. I remember it littering the shelves of my local Blockbuster Video. (13 Mile and Southfield! In the shopping center with the Farmer Jack!) But Pet Sematary Two might be way too '90s for anyone to actually handle. Again, being too '90s (albeit not having the awareness to call itself that) is at least a choice. The first film was such milktoast that everything that's too extreme in this movie is a welcome addition. Casting Edward Furlong a year after Terminator 2: Judgment Day is just a bit much. Yeah, I know. I'm writing this in 2019. I have no right to comment. But he's channeling a lot of that '90s angst in this performance. But there are a couple of things that just pull me out of the movie. The first is the soundtrack. I have far too many soundtracks from the '90s to ever make this commentary without commenting on my terrible tastes in music. But every song in this movie has lyrics. That might be an exaggeration, but it isn't much of one. These lyrics are dis-tract-ing! There are lines being said over soundtrack sections. Also, it really dates the movie. It's that alternative grunge that doesn't quite have the soul of a "Smells Like Teen Spirit", but it really wants to be that. I love that kind of stuff...in small doses. It's so much. Then there's also the '90s effects. I'm not talking about creature effects. I think the creature effects are just fine, even the naked lady with a dog's head. It's goofy, but whatever. I'm talking about the odd camera techniques. It's the freeze camera. Mary Lambert comes from a music video background. That's not always a bad thing. But I don't know if it is one to one. I have the works of Michel Gondry on DVD and you can see his music video influence on his film. But when the movie is meant to be dramatic, the movie really tends to look like a music video at times. It doesn't really scare. In fact, it probably pulls me out of the movie as a whole. Not only does it not scare when it resorts to this technique, but it actually distances me emotionally from the characters. But I have to applaud Pet Sematary Two. Far from being a great film, it kind of reminded me what I liked about The Lost Boys. It has that vibe of kids against a threat much larger than them. While the grunge was pushing it for a lot of the film, the movie does feel rebellious. It felt like you had to be smoking or something to watch the movie. While I'll never smoke and I live a life that adores rules and structure, I like the idea that I'm doing something that advocates anarchy. Yeah, it tries too hard at that. But I'd rather this movie than something without a voice. Pet Sematary Two, while not being a great film, is leaps and bounds better than its predecessor. It's a fun movie that I kind of enjoyed by the end. Yeah, I really had to shut my brain off to make that work. But it did work. |
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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