Rated R for brutal '90s murder and sexuality.  I mean, let's throw some language and sexual assault and this movie really is going for a harder edge than you would think that this movie had.  Honestly, Silence of the Lambs came out the year before and I think that everyone wanted to add a little Jonathan Demme into their films, even if the genre of the film is romance.  R.

DIRECTOR:  Mick Jackson

Do you know how my brain works?  There are two reasons that I watched this movie.  (The first thing you should know about my brain is that it feels the need to justify something that doesn't need to be justified.  The second thing is that it may not always tell things linearly.) I watched this movie because I haven't seen it and other people had.  It's a modern classic amongst the masses and I probably could have gotten away with never watching this movie.  But since I pride myself on watching everything, I thought it was about time that I watched this movie.  The second reason I watched it is because I technically own it.  It was one of those movies that I got from MoviesAnywhere for linking my accounts and I hate that I own something that I haven't seen.  I mean, I wouldn't say this movie was anything special (I can't say "write home about" because I'm fulfilling most of the requirements for that phrase), but it wasn't terrible either.

1992 has a very specific aesthetic.  Like, The Bodyguard would almost come across as hilarious by today's standards.  But I can see Lawrence Kasdan just hammering away on a word processor or a typewriter (also, I have no idea what Lawrence Kasdan looks like, nor do I know his method of transcribing thoughts) and thinking "This is going to be as edgy as it gets."  I mean, I'm always going to associate him with Star Wars stuff and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then there's Mick Jackson.  Listen, I had to click his IMdB page to see what other stuff that Mick Jackson had done.  But I can't get past the fact that a guy named "Mick Jackson" specifically directed The Bodyguard.  That is the perfect name for a guy directing this movie.  Evidence, you ask?  The movie starts off in a parking garage.  Frank Farmer, a man whose name encapsulates his character both by having an alliterative name and the fact that it reflects his simple nature, has just gunned down an assassin in a parking garage.  Fine.  Sure.  But a guy named Mick Jackson making this movie in 1992 wouldn't just shoot the scene in the same way that Frank Farmer shot that guy.  Nope.  He's gotta have a crane shot up to the roof of the parking garage and show all the steam coming out of the pipes shot with a blue filter.  Because in 1992 thrillers, everything has to have a slightly distopian look to it. 

Like, I can't get over how hard-edged this movie about opposites attracting gets.  I mean, they go to watch Yojimbo. I  mean, this is a story written by a dude about how women are all over the place and men are a firm foundation.  Yeah, this movie was absolutely written by a dude.  Still, I'm going to explore the concept that this movie is really trying to appeal to all demographics without really having a cohesive element to it. (I like dunking on movies sometimes and The Bodyguard has a lot.)  I don't really understand this as a romantic movie.  I don't see this as romantic at all.  Rachel keeps changing her personality to meet the needs of the plot.  Actually, this is such male fantasy elements that I don't know why people genuinely love this movie.

There's a Taming of the Shrew element to the movie as well.  Rachel is meant to be incredibly unlikable from the beginning. We see Frank Farmer, seemingly sad and stoic --mirroring Yojimbo --and we instantly sympathize with him.  Because he has all of that mail stacking up in front of his house and he always seems to be right, he's our guy.  If anything, he's a bit too perfect.  His big emotional journey is that he has to get over the fact that he attended his mother's funeral the day that Reagan got shot.  (Not killed.  Shot.  And Reagan was being guarded, just by someone else.)  Rachel comes across as a stereotype of every celebrity that ever existed, which is funny because it is just Whitney Houston poking fun of herself a bit.  But Rachel is lackadaisical about her security.  She surrounds herself by sycophants.  But most importantly, she's incredibly rude to someone she hired.  I know, Frank is Bill's call.  But that doesn't mean that she has to be rude.  Okay, let's make Rachel more sympathetic without losing her goals.  Her goals: live the same way that she has been without risking her life.  Okay, there's ways to talk about that. But she berates Frank and calls him a waste of time.  That's not really redeemable.

But then Frank saves her from being swarmed at a concert she shouldn't have been at.  Tony fails to get her out of there and Frank saves her.  Okay, this is where I have the problem.  See, Rachel has been watching Frank.  And do you know what one redeeming trait she finds? Frank has been watching videos of Rachel.  What kind of narcissist finds someone attractive because a suitor is studying her films?  That's weird.  That's not healthy.  It all calls back to Frank being perfect and Rachel being pretty.  Okay, let's pretend that Rachel really did fall in love with Frank between seeing him watch her videos and saving her in that club.  What would Frank see in her?  Rachel has been terrible to him the entire time.  Then, it also comes down to his employer making a move on him.  We know that Frank isn't in this for the money, despite the fact that he said he was.  (Again, the Reagan thing.) But if he was, $3,000 a week is a lot of money for anyone.  He doesn't exactly live the high life.  That is straight up workplace sexual harassment and there is no such thing as HR.  But me pointing these things out doesn't make it very romantic, does it?  

But what does Rachel see in Frank?  I mean, that date sucks.  Let me put that out there.  Rachel, the biggest celebrity in the world, is brought to a honky-tonk bar and she's just left alone?  They dance to sad cowboy music over a beer and she's like "Oh, my!"  It's not like Rachel talked about how she used to come to these kinds of places and thank God that Frank recognizes that in her.  Instead, Frank is just entertaining himself.  He's not meeting her halfway and seeing what she's into.  Nope. It's all about Frank here.  He takes her to see Yojimbo?  Listen, I'm a huge Kurosawa fan and even I think that's a bit selfish.  You know nothing about Rachel.  Also, it seems like Rachel knew nothing about Yojimbo before this moment.  She doesn't mention samurai movies once and you drag her to a movie that you've seen 50+ times?  Come on.  Warm her up a little.  Find out something about her and then consider taking her to Yojimbo.  OR take her to Yojimbo and then somewhere that she might like.  Instead, we get Frank's sad sack home where she's like, "Oh, a samurai sword. Let's sleep together!"  There's nothing there that's attractive.  Also, I really call shannanigans on the honky-tonk bar not recognizing Rachel and treating her like a normal person.  Is it because everyone's White and conservative that they wouldn't even recognize a fictionalized version of Whitney Houston?

I don't know.  I don't find anything redeemable about either one of them.  Frank is this male fantasy where he makes no mistakes, shy of sleeping with Rachel...which she initiated.  Rachel, for every step she makes towards being redeemable, she takes back almost immediately.  Honestly, she flipped out on stage and then she blamed Frank?  Okay, let me talk about that scene really quickly because I really have beef with that scene.  Rachel finds out that her sister had hired a hitman to kill her and it wasn't just an obsessed fan.  In the middle of nowhere, this hitman found them and hunted them.  Rachel's sister died because of this moment.  This is immediately after that.  It causes Rachel to act way more prudently (even though she keeps repeating that she's not going to let it change her life).  Why does she think that Frank put that fear in her?  You don't think that it could have been the hitman that full on killed your sister days before?  She literally survived an attack on her person and her son. (Also, she yelled at Frank for saving her kid off that boat?  Why can't the kid swim?  He's in a pool all day, every day.) 

I know.  I love tearing apart romance movies.  There's something structurally off about them that I just dig my claws into and it's not fair.  The worst part is that I kind of enjoyed it.  My dad hated Kevin Costner's acting and I think I do too.  But he does an okay job here.  It's very '90s.  I think that might be my biggest takeaway.  It is one of those movies that reminds me that so many films looked like that and I just accepted it.  But in terms of great films, I don't quite get it.  It's fine, I guess.

PG and mostly sticks to that.  There's some mild language and there's violence throughout, but the movie goes out of its way to make the violence seem a lot more tame than it had to.  My wife did comment that it seems like the turtles were probably killing all those people, but the movie almost goes out of its way to show silly violence than graphic violence.  PG.

DIRECTORS: Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears

I'm not 10-years-old anymore.  That's the only time that I probably really got into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  There have been so many shows and movies that have tied themselves to this franchise and I really haven't given a hoot about any of them until I saw the trailer for Mutant Mayhem.  Yes, Seth Rogen, this is what Ninja Turtles should be.  I'm sorry, Ninja Turtle purists.  This isn't even remotely what I grew up with.  It's almost like looking at something that completely missed the point and fixed it.

As an adult who is in a lot of fandoms, I always scratched my head at Ninja Turtles as a phenomenon.  One thing that I can say that gives Mutant Mayhem a pass is the fact that this is one of those things that thrives on being reimagined for a new generation.  The original Eastman and Laird has the most insular demographic ever.  It was almost inspired by the work of Frank Miller and indie comics.  It was violent and not funny, despite being an absurd concept.  It was also weirdly tied into the origins of Daredevil.  But Ninja Turtles didn't really explode until the Saturday morning cartoon, that made the entire concept fun and friendly.  But since then, it's been so many different things, all trying to put their own stamp on it.  Admittedly, a lot of those stamps have been trying to stress the "extreme" element of marketing to children.  I can't believe that it took Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg , of all people,  to point out that "Teenage" is in the title.  These are the guys who pride themselves on being adults that speak like teens, by the way.

That's what makes the movie work.  It's so simple, but reminding us that the protagonists are teenagers who have real problems beyond pizza is great.  Teenagers, for all of their bravado, aren't good at a lot of things.  I mean, the turtles are good at fighting...kind of.  They're better than anyone that we know, which is impressive.  But it has that same mentality of Johnny Football Hero.  Just because a high school student is the best quarterback you've ever met, he's ultimately a big fish in a small pond.  I mean, that's at the crux of this story.  There's a lot of moments where the turtles just get destroyed by Superfly and a physical contest is a waste of time. But even more than the physical fighting element of the story, these four kids aren't good at basic things.  That's what I love about the story.  It almost captures the story of being a teenager more than it captures the problems of being a superhero.  (I mean, that's what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are, right?  They're superheroes and I just find it weird saying that in text.) 

I'm actually surprised to find my students so lukewarm about the movie.  Maybe it's too on the nose or maybe I'm trying to pretend that being a millennial still gives me some street cred when it comes to America's youths.  In the same way that Stan Lee used the word "mutant" to stress a sense of otherness, Rogen and Goldberg do the same with the word "mutant" in Mutant Madness.  I've never seen a Ninja Turtles thing with the focus on characterization so front and centered. (I suppose the original film probably touched on that a bit, but this movie puts it at the core of the movie.)  I love that the story that really focused on the notion of being a teenager is also the movie that stresses that teenagers just want to be liked.  The turtles' otherness pushes the entire story forward.  Yes, there is Superfly's plan to wipe out all of humanity and that is there for the sake of having a plot.  But there's such a moment of happiness when the boys discover that there are other mutants out there.  That's something that isn't really addressed in superhero stories.

I'm going to use the first Spider-Man movie as my example because it gets close.  Peter, for all intense and purposes, is the only superhero out there.  The Daily Bugle loses their minds over the fact that there's a wall-crawling menace out there.  It's why he's so shocked to discover the Green Goblin who also seems to have abilities.  I had a student write about the "You're just like me" trope, where villains try to corrupt the hero by stating how similar they are.  But Peter immediately realizes that Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are nothing alike.  It kind of deflates that entire premise.  But the turtles, when confronted by other mutants, find a kinship.  They feel this immense guilt when it comes to trying to stop their plan.  They know that there's this objective evil (killing all of humanity), but they also sympathize with the reasoning behind it.  After all, the turtles, to a certain extent, view humanity in the same way that the creatures do.  I've never seen that level of group commitment to doing something wrong.  Now, because the turtles know right and wrong and view themselves as heroes, they eventually do the moral thing and crash the car carrying the equipment.  But I do like the teenagers have a fundamental need to be liked.  They go along with something they know is wrong because a need to be liked.  It's Peer Pressure: the Movie.  

Because I liked this movie so much, I'm going to get something that's under my craw out.  I was preaching how much I applaud not being tied to canon.  But for some reason, the fact that Splinter wasn't human somehow bothers me.  I don't know why, guys.  It's not like this is my fandom. I should be absolutely cool with this change.  I mean, it is central to the plot that Boomer Splinter is xenophobic and stifling the turtles when it comes to cultural experiences.  Splinter needs to be afraid of humans and have a deeply rooted fear of those humans for the story to have any emotional resonance. But it's weird.  Because as goofy as it is that this is a franchise, I also know that it has a very deep sense of canon behind the characters.  One of those ideas stems from Splinter being a ninja master before he was turned into a rat.  Yes, the YouTube video thing got me.  I thought it was very funny.  But also, I can see being mad about how my fandom was kind of teased for being silly when I would be very much into that specific thing.  That being said, I don't hate J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, so I guess the takeaway really just is "Be cool."

You know what else gets the chef's kiss?  The casting.  It must be nice to be a friend with Seth Rogen because he will cast you in things that are fun.  "And introducing Paul Rudd"  has to be one of the best casting choices I've ever heard.  There's a deep cut level to making all of those other mutants appear in your movie.  I'll say this, this easily could have been a Shredder and the Foot Clan movie.  I love that it is not because we've had so many of those that we don't need another one.  But also, you should make your big bad the center of the second film so they aren't ignored in the service of the protagonists.  But allowing all of these deep cut mutants show up in this movie was such a joy.  Mondo Gecko is this standout character that really feels like a fifth turtle.  Really, I don't know how they pulled this off, but considering that they made this a first movie in a series, the extended cast really gets some attention.  It's not like the boys aren't the center of the film, but between April and Mondo Gecko, there's a lot to like here.  Yes, the barf joke is gross, but I love it.  (Do I put "onscreen vomit" in the MPAA section up top?  I'll get back to you on that.)

Like Into the Spider-Verse, this is one of those movies that makes us care about a franchise again.  I do think that Mutant Mayhem took a lot of notes from Spider-Verse, but that's not a bad thing.  I'm sure that I'm not the only one who is going to make that comparison, also considering the art style (which is a bit intentionally uglier with Mutant Mayhem).  But considering how many attempts that there have been to make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles relevant again, this is the movie that did it.  I applaud Paramount for allowing this movie to be made.  Sure, it's not like Seth Rogen is unknown, but smart animation isn't necessarily the easiest sell.  I loved this movie and I can't wait for a sequel.

Not rated because it is a Mexican film from 1934, not an American film from after 1970.  It's funny, because I'm going to write what might be considered offensive in this movie and the movie is as tame as can be.  Um...one of the monks tries bludgeoning another monk to death with an oversized crucifix.  The movie is fundamentally about an affair that spirals out of control.  Um...it seems worse than it is.  Still, not rated.

DIRECTOR:  Juan Bustillo Oro

It's Star Trek Day and I'm pressed for time.  I tend not to write these things on weekends, but I also want to get it out before the weekend because I have goals to watch a ton of movies that I'll eventually have to write about.  It's not like I want to do Dos Monjes a disservice, but also...I don't have that much time.  If this comes out on Friday and has a decent length to it, we'll both be shocked.

I am going to tell you the odd perk about the Martin Scorsese box set.  Because the movies are from all over the world from different time periods, the movies I'm watching have a kind of schizophrenic personality.  I took a hard left from Pixote going right into Dos Monjes (not my normal philosophy, but I really didn't want to stop the treadmill to switch discs) and it was a trip.  Before I watch these World Cinema Projects, I admit that I know little-to-nothing about these films before I go into them.  That's kind of the point, right?  The World Cinema Project is meant to bring to light movies that were influential in the language of film and culture, but for some reason have been forgotten to history.  After Pixote, Dos Monjes might have been exactly what I needed.  It's about 80 minutes, so I'm already rooting for this movie. (For a guy who devotes so much time to movies, it's weird that I'm all about the short movie.) But also, it's a precursor to Rashomon, a movie that I swore to have reviewed, but that clearly isn't the case here.) 

It's funny because I'm going to start my unit on German Expressionism today and here I am, talking about a film that embeds itself in Mexican Expressionism.  Before I go all grandiose about the movie, I just want to stress how awesome this movie looks. If this movie didn't have the aesthetic it had, I could easily see this film being reduced to simple melodrama.  But the visuals compliment the story so well, that the whole work is elevated.  It's not a perfect movie.  I'm actually probably going to whine how Rashomon did the whole concept better (but later!).  But the movie takes an 80 minute storyline, which is really two about-thirty-five-minute stories with bookends and creates a really tight narrative on how there might not be objective truth?  I'm going to embrace the phrase "objective truth" because the Catholicism surrounding the film.  One of the biggest frustrations about my faith since Trump is the skewing of the concept of objective truth.  I know.  Ironic, isn't it?  But our protagonists (odd way to put it in a movie where you don't know who the main character is) are monks and there is so much religious imagery, that I'm going to embrace the concept of objective truth.  

It's odd writing these things, by the way.  A good part of my soul wants objective truth to be a thing.  But I have to look at the movie from Oro's perspective.  We are placing these two monks in the same scenario and stressing that their stories thrive on their differences.  The facts, for the most part, are the same.  Juan even stresses as much about Javier's testimony.  Juan acknowleges that Javier is telling the truth about the events leading up to Ana's death.  What Javier is advocating for is the notion of perspective.  While this is super cool as a concept, I'm glad the movie doesn't just rest on its laurels here.  I mean, for the most part, Juan is right.  Most of the beats of Juan's story match the beats of Javier's story.  But it's the small stuff that brings me joy.  Not everything is the same.  Some of it would come down to interpretation.  This is where stylistic choices and metaphor almost transcend literary and cinematic terms. 

In the first story, Javier sees himself as the noble victim of circumstance, both between his health and Juan.  In that narrative, Ana absoltuely loves Javier and Juan's advances are fully unwanted.  But Javier, in that story, is the hero.  He's the one who has all of the goals to achieve.  He needs to win over Ana.  He needs to survive to see his children.  He has the love of a woman that is so clear and delineated that there's no room for love to fall apart.  But in this story, he's wearing grey (code for "White Hat") and Juan is wearing black ("Black Hat").  Juan's story sees Javier never as a villain, but as a selfish jerk.  He is a burden on Ana.  While Juan's story takes place often devoid of Javier there, because he wants to give context to Javier's story, what scenes he's in make him seem clingy and frustrating.  That makes sense.  After all, we're all the heroes of our own narratives. But the color scheme is inverted for these stories.  In this version, it is Juan who is the White Hat and Javier who wears the Black Hat.  It's super cool.  This is a long way of me filling in space saying, "While Juan says that everything Javier said was true, the clothing proves that something there is either a lie or misremembered."

But this leads me to a confusing ending of the movie.  (This also might be one of my final paragraphs, if not THE final paragraph because time is short and so is this movie.)  Listen, I want to keep the chaos of the end.  The end is visually *chef's kiss*.  It's perfect.  It's what I love about expressionism and it gets appropriately weird.  The monks with their abstract saints are fabulous.  Also, it's really cryptic with its end.  We have Javier and Juan as their respective monk names.  Javier is wearing the grey tunic and Juan is wearing the black tunic.  Cool, the movie is maintaining its visual language and I like that.  It also keeps the two characters visually distant, considering that everyone looks the same in a monestary.  But if we associate grey as being good and black as being evil, it means that Juan's story is less than noble.  Don't get me wrong.  Even after seeing Juan's side of the story, I still see his story as the less admirable take on the night's events.  But if the movie is stressing that truth isn't as clear as black-and-white, then the ending kind of steps on its own toes.

Now, Oro does one thing that kind of forgives that.  The absolute final shot has either Juan or Javier (probably Juan, based on the events of the story) reaching up to God.  It is shot from the rear and we never see the person's face.  This is the character wearing the black robes.  While I want to intrepret this as Juan reaching up for forgiveness for his crimes, like I said, we never see his face.  Technically, if we're trying to maintain the notion that everything is about perception, that last shot may save the notion that Juan was wearing the black robes to begin with.  I don't know.  It's just a thought.

Maybe that wasn't going to be my last paragraph because I just remembered my strongest argument.  I will always love Rashomon better.  I know.  The movie came afterwards and is way more famous.  But this movie leaves out one important narrative: Ana.  Ana is so central to the story and we never get her perspective.  The thing that Rashomon does so well is the concept that everyone has a drastically different take on the same events.  But the most important one, in the case of Dos Monjes, is Ana's.  Ana is the woman character in the story.  She's really relegated by the two narratives as the woman to be possessed.  When Rashomon makes that shift in perspective, we see how much different the actions of the male characters is. Ana has the added bonus of representing the dead.  Now, the weirdest element of Rashomon is the notion of the dead giving testimony.  But Dos Monjes almost needs it.  When talking about objective truth, Javier and Juan tell stories that are too similar.  I want the bananas other versio of the story that contradicts everything that is said.

Still, this movie slaps.  I wasn't ready for it.  I never knew that there was a Mexican expressionism movement and it got me good.  It's so good.  Yeah, Rashomon is better, but who cares?  It does it for me.  

TV-MA, and basically for everything.  I'm going to intentionally be verbose on this so anything offensive doesn't show up in the preview of this page, but this movie is incredibly uncomfortable because every awful thing imaginable happens to children.  I don't know.  My Criterion Collection is starting to have me own movies that are kind of gross.  I'll talk more about this later.  Use your imagination.  All that and more happens.

DIRECTOR: Hector Babenco

Okay, sometimes I feel like Criterion needs to prep me for a horror show of misery.  I mean, I knew what I was getting into with Salo.  It had a reputation for being just brutal.  (Note: While Pixote is brutal and miserable, Salo is still way more unwatchable.) In the Realm of the Senses?  That one was my fault.  I wasn't the most cinematically literate when I went into that movie.  But Pixote was part of a box set by Martin Scorsese.  It's like walking into an independent bookstore and seeing one of those "Blind Date with a Book" books, only to find out that something abhorrent is going on in the book and you just wanted something interesting from another country.

Now, I'm going to go pretty intense with the concept of what is exploitation in this blog because it is fundamental to the movie, but I would like to start off by saying that it has good intentions.  The other movies I referenced are a little bit morally darker than Pixote.  Pixote is a weird movie because it is a rallying call against juvenile reform in Brazil.  Thank God I watched the Martin Scorsese introduction to this movie because there was some key information that so necessary to understanding this film.  Just because I assume that many people haven't seen Pixote, let alone watched the optional introduction by Scorsese, let me fill you in on the important things to know.  Hector Babenco was exclusively a documentarian before this point.  While researching and prepping for a documentary about reform programs in Brazil, he got booted by the people he was exposing for their crimes.  He still wanted to raise awareness for the plight of the criminal youth, so he simply adapted a book about the topic using real kids who had lived in this situation.  From a cinematic perspective, it looks nothing like a documentary and does have a quasi-traditional narrative.  That being said, it toes that line between fiction and nonfiction.

Okay, with that out of the way, I'm going to give Pixote points.  Normally, I would prefer if movies weren't necessarily vulgar.  I would blame the old man that I am on trying to keep movies clean, but I don't see a scenario where I would really get excited to watch something that toed the lines of taste.  Even when I was really into horror movies, there was always a line of "too far."  Now that I'm older, that line of "too far" is getting closer and closer, but I acknowledge that I've always kind of had that. Normally, I'd rail against these films, talking about how only truly artistic pieces should be touching on these subject matters.  It's that old chestnut: "I'll know it when I see it."  Pixote almost gets a pass.  I say "almost" for an important reason that I'll cover in a second.  Babenco is making this movie trying to wake up society to the unseen evils around them.  He really wants to stress how horrible it is to be one of these kids who are being abused and killed without raising any flags.  To do so, he doesn't want to go the Hollywood route of saying that this is a hopeful world.  There is a bit of distance between saying that someone was sexually abused and knowing the brutality of that abuse.  So I get Babenco's reasoning.

The only problem is, isn't he proliferating the very problem that he's trying to stop.  It's not like this is a movie where adults are playing children and showing the awful things that are going on.  These are kids who have to enact the very exploitation that really happens.  With the specific case of Pixote, they were kids who experienced this trauma in real life.  I mean, the real tragedy is that Fernando Ramos de Silva, the boy who played the eponymous protagonist, died at age 20.  It came from living this lifestyle.  He was functionally illiterate because he never received a proper education from this life he led.  Once this movie was over, basically, he had to go back to a version of this life because he couldn't memorize lines for other movies.  If you watch de Silva in this movie, it's mindboggling how good he is.  The kid is acting based on real experience and it is heartbreaking.  But this onus is kind of placed on Babenco. I know that he's got this good intention of trying to stop the system from swallowing up these children,  but he has a very real opportunity to help this kid and instead he just does what his oppressors did, only with a more noble intention.

I think I had the same righteous fury when it came to Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.  There was another movie that wanted to attack society and wanted to stress the evils that were unseen by the bulk of people.  But what it ultimately led to was the exploitation of his son and the lack of a healthy discussion about how that happened.  I don't know.  I really like Pixote as a concept.  I think there is a way to tell this story without being this intense. But I can also see the dangers that Babenco would run into.  There was probably a binary decision to be made:  go easy and not potentially make the impact needed or go hard and morals be damned.  I don't know.  This movie is such a knockout that I have a hard time coming down on a side that I should take.  I mean, it is tragic as heck knowing how this turned out.  But when progressive politics force the voice of the oppressed to become the oppressor, there's a problem there.  I guess I know that that we should be fighting the good fight against those who embrace the status quo, but this is the reason that people come down against the vocal.  It's because there's a hypocrisy that is skin deep.

In terms of story, there's something going on here that is hard to absorb.  Yes, Pixote follows a narrative that I could summarize for you. But this narrative is an exploration of character and setting and not so much with plot.  Because this is serving the role of a documentary without actually being a documentary, stories don't necessarily have clean resolutions.  Instead, Pixote is almost an observer of the many crimes that take place in this world.  It's odd, because the movie introduces Lilica and her crew as absolute monsters, first and foremost.  They rape a kid violently and Pixote, in horror, watches from under his covers.  Yet, Lilica becomes one of the more sympathetic characters in the movie.  Sure, we never really trust Lilica.  Lilica, like all of the kids in the movie, are fundmentally broken people.  They are motivated by self-interest.  But Lilica also takes a shine to Pixote throughout the movie and that's really all that is necessary to stand out as "one of the good ones" when the world is this bleak and desparing.  

But the message at the end, man, I have so many thoughts about it and I don't know how to really parse them out.  The movie ends with Pixote accidentally killing one of his friends and murdering an American john.  Even though Pixote does more and more adult things in the movie, it's hard to forget that he's a kid. But the final sequence has him regress to the mentality of being a toddler.  When offered comfort that toes the line between empathy and sexuality, Pixote starts breastfeeding on a prostitute who has recently self-aborted her child.  (I told you, this movie is potentially the most graphic thing ever.)  Her entire character is both a desire to be a mother and a loathing at the prospect of being a mother.  Pixote, when he breastfeeds on her, is initially embraced and comforted by words like "Mommy's here" until he is thrown away, and humiliated for thinking that this woman could be his mother.  The movie then ends with an oddly sunny shot of Pixote walking the rails, implying that his journey will continue to be a series of dark adventures into the despair of the homeless juvenile. 

Now, I like the idea of the motherhood angle, especially when talking about child psychology. There's the theory that unless a child meets certain childhood markers, they will never be able to move mentally onto the next stage of human development.  Sure enough, Pixote shows that in this scene.  Even though Pixote does drugs and has killed someone, he hasn't mentally grown beyond that of a toddler.  He has never been dependent, so he hasn't shed his need for dependence.  I also like the fact that this story won't end for Pixote.  This is not a problem that is solved with a quick moment in time.  But the sunniness of it all.  That's weird.  The funny thing is, the sun in that last shot let me know that the movie was ending.  It's such a stark contrast to the gloominess of the rest of the film that it let me mentally close the book on this movie.  It's just that the sun implies that things are hopeful when they absolutely aren't.  One of the things mentioned in the reform school was that the world out there was worse than in there.  Whiel I do think that concept is debatable, there is evidence that all of the characters who escaped are either dead or lost with the exception of Pixote, meaning that the sunny day might be a bit of a mislead.

But it is a story about setting.  Problems never resolve.  Sure, we find out what happened to the drug dealer who cheated them.  That's satisfying, if unrealistic.  But the deal that they made with...the other drug dealer (?) Cristal never gets paid off.  I kind of like that.  If the meaning of Pixote is that not everything is tied up with a nice little bow, it works that way.  Also, it is a reminder that Pixote will never find a place that he can call home.  If he went home, Cristal will get him.  But that just screams, "Brazil is a place you don't want to get stuck in if you are in the wrong social class."   It's pretty impressive.  

I don't know if I could love the movie knowing, intellectually and morally, what is happening here.  It's so important and so icky at the same time.  But man alive is it shot well and nails the themes of the film. Even after writing all of this, I'm still not sure what to believe about the movie.  I'm about to go to Letterboxd flummoxed, I'll tell you.

R for lots of language, some sexuality, and a long scene involving nudity.  Like the rest of the Before trilogy, Linklater and the actors create worlds around people talking frankly.  Because these characters are the way that they are, this often means that conversations meander to sexual topics, often with the intention of appearing somewhat raw.  This is the one of the three that is potentially the most R-rated, whatever that means.

DIRECTOR:  Richard Linklater

I want to write all of the time.  I also never want to write, so I guess that first sentence is untrue.  I just had one of those moments where I realized that I have time to write and I really wanted something to write, so I finished the movie that I was slowly working my way through a bit early.  The worst part is, there's a good chance that this blog won't get finished until Tuesday.  I suppose we'll find out later, won't we?  Anyway, I started this trilogy with my wife on board.  She didn't really like it that much, but it also was one of those examples of '90s Linklater.  It was romantic enough and that was enough to try the second movie in the trilogy, Before Sunset.  My wife straight up didn't like that one.  I was still on board.  I feel a bit bummed because I wish we finished the trilogy together.

But then again, I don't.  I'm a big fan of This is 40, an underrated Judd Apatow film.  This is 40 would come out a year after Before Midnight and that would make the most depressing double-feature about marriage in people's 40s.  I'm in my 40s.  In fact, like This is 40, I'm exactly 40.  I love This is 40 because it is earnest and funny.  It says a lot about the frustrations about being in the exact scenario me and a lot of people are in.  But This is 40, for all of its commentaries about the frustrations of marriage, is at least a celebration of love. The movie shows them at their worst, but also shows them at their best. It may leave a little bit of a fairy tale in there with how the movie ends, but I don't think that Apatow's ever claiming that his marriage is terrible.  Linklater is hitting a lot of the same beats.  He has the same outlook about fighting and marriage when we are where we are.  It's the frustration of kids and family and romantic love taking a back seat to responsibilities.  But I don't get much optimism out of Linklater.  Before I have some people almost typing things (very few people ever argue in the comments about my reads on things), I know that Before Midnight heavily implies that Jesse and Celine patch up their relationship post-credits.  But Before Midnight really screams that someone has shattered the vase and it is going to take a long time to find middle ground.

It is odd what causes the whole thing.  Linklater teases a concept that is both relatable and seems bigger than the lives of the audience.  I have to admit, I'm pretty vanilla.  I relish the concept of being a big fish in a small pond.  I live in the suburbs.  I have too many kids.  I want to be a writer, but also love that I'm a great teacher.  My wife lives near her parents.  She has too few kids (the same amount that I have) and is well-established in her career.  We don't have the drama that Jesse and Celine have.  There's no infidelity on either person's part.  We tend not to have arguments that last forty minutes.  Our arguments last a few minutes before someone needs to go cool down.  It takes a couple hours to days, but we're never in "Let's burn it all down."  At least, I'm not.  Geez, I hope my wife isn't either.

But that's Linklater.  Linklater, for all of his grounded storytelling, lives in a world that probably mirrors his own.  He's not one of us. There's elements of him that mirror us.  The fact that he can wax poetic about things for hours seems like it is a human trait.  But Jesse is also a published author.  In fact, he's such a published author that other authors invite him to trips to Greece so that they can talk about philosophy and art.  You know, the things that a blogger from the suburbs can't really pull off because my pond is too small.  Jesse, for all of his characterization as a typical American, lives quite the life.  I know that divorce is common.  I'm not getting divorced.  (Note:  I actually hear that a lot in podcasts and interviews, only for it to come back later to bite them.  I don't see it in the cards.) He lives in Europe while his son is with his (anecdotally) emotionally abusive mother.  Celine is...a lot.  Like, we're supposed to see her as quirky, but she has a lot of larger than life baggage that keeps coming back.  Everything about Jesse and Celine is wired to bring about conflict and romance.  They're almost weaponized as characters.

​I get it.  Films need to be about conflict.  Linklater has an hour 40 to get these characters through their paces.  The other movies have these conflicts, but the conflicts tend to be hiccups against the greater questions of "Will they? Won't they?"  But they are together. They have been for a while.  They have kids together.  These kids aren't babies.  They have been through it and have experienced the trials, tribulations, and blessings of marriage.  But Linklater doesn't wipe away their insane baggage.  Because, they're right when they complain about each other.  I mean, they're really mean about it and I hate that people get that way, but they're right.  Jesse and Celine are insuffereable.  They both make good points, but their own neuroses drive me up the wall.  But that's what good characterization is, right?  I mean, if someone created two perfect people, we would get bored.  This would all be Hallmark.  No, we're not rooting for people (correction: We're not supposed to root for people), we're rooting for love to triumph.

It's odd.  Jesse and Celine have real problems.  We're supposed to think that Jesse cheated on Celine, which is gross and depressing.  I mean, Linklater claims that he read a study that 72% of women have cheated and 70% of men in long term relationships.  I call shannanigans on that one, but I'm also --as a reminder --incredibly vanilla.  So we get these real world problems through the context of infidelity and unbearable / unforgivable sadness.  It's a bummer and it kind of holds the movie back because the fight that they have in that third act is marriage.  Take all of the grandiose things that Linklater attributes to Jesse and Celine and there's something there.  It's the fight over a stupid hotel room or a vacation that someone didn't want to take.  It's the fight over things that have no right answer, like wanting to take care of Henry, despite the fact that it would involve losing the perfect job.  It's about the small stuff.  But those small things are able to be fixed and addressed when there isn't this huge thing hanging over their heads.

Because I word-vomit all of my thoughts into these blogs, I'm going to write this paragraph dealing with something that is poorly made and underbaked.  There's a scene where Jesse and Celine visit this old Greek church dedicated to the patron saint of the blind.  Celine, in her typical cynical fashion, itches to make blasphemous jokes because they are alone.  But she comments that Jesse was raised Catholic and there is something sacred in this location that he cannot move past.  Cut to the end.  While Jesse is also torpedoing his relationship with Celine (I'm not giving him a pass for how things turn out towards the end), Celine is the one adamant to let the whole relationship die off.  She finds the public narrative of how they met trite and annoying; a fairy tale from her perspective.  It's Jesse who is willing to do the fairy tale thing and try to rescue it.  It's heavily implied that if Jesse didn't chase after her and make that dumb time-travel narrative (which Celine points out is immature and too Hollywood), that relationship would have ended.  I wonder if there is a tie to the notion of Catholic marriage and the need to try to rescue something that should be bonded for life.  (Although, it is stated that they technically aren't married.  It does seem like a technicality in terms of analysis.) 

The entire Before trilogy hits me weird.  I like it.  I do.  But it is also such a cynical look at love.  Okay, that's not accurate.  There's a time that it is a celebration of love, but it really keeps reminding us that there's something less than glorious about love.  Part of my read on that is because of my dislike of Jesse and Celine as protagonists.  They are insufferable, which I think comes from a lot of improv and forced chemistry.  But I also like that these movies kind of exist.  I wish they saw the world through a happier light, but that's not Linklater's view of the world.  Yeah, I'm glad that he implies that they stick to it.  But I don't want to live in a world where people think that this is what marriage really is.