PG-13, but it's a pretty brutal movie. Look at the subject matter. It's about police violence and racism. A kid gets shot on screen. There's some language. The language isn't rough enough to justify an R-rating, but it does have an f-bomb at the end. In terms of complexity, it is a pretty intense movie. I can't even say that it would affect the MPAA rating, but I wouldn't let a little kid watch this. A solid PG-13.
DIRECTOR: George Tillman, Jr. I don't know why I haven't felt like writing. I have had too much on my plate and I think my Weebly blog is the thing that has had to suffer. My eyes hurt and its been a month. Let me tell you right now, November isn't easy for teachers. For some reason, everything is scheduled this month and I just want to curl up in my blanket and get some rest. Also, I keep undertaking these major projects for the podcast and I just need something to go. But I actually had the good fortune / silver lining to be able to go out to the movies and see some new stuff. It's great. School gets out at 3:00, but I have to hang around until 6 or 7, so I go see a movie. Now, I didn't know much about The Hate U Give before going to see it. I heard that it involved a police shooting and that audiences tended to like it. I didn't know, however, that it was an adaptation of a YA novel. Apparently, not a lot of adults know about this movie. I can see why. It's progressive as all get out...and that's why I love it. I know. My stodgy conservative friends are quickly unfriending me right now. But The Hate U Give actually has a lot to offer. I'm not going to fawn over this movie because there's a lot that I would rework. But this is a really important movie...with some caveats. (I'm sorry that I've used ellipses twice in only a matter of sentences. I must be feeling...dramatic.) I think that my support of #BlackLivesMatter doesn't win me a ton of friends. No, I'm not anti-police. But I am trying to draw attention to a crisis that has been overlooked for far too long. The audience that is most aware of the plight of the minority. Now, if you are having a knee-jerk reaction saying that I'm painting in broad strokes, that's the issue with The Hate U Give. The Hate U Give is a message movie. It has a really important message and it is going to make sure that the message is going to come across. The movie is a plea. It dramatizes a real situation, but it doesn't allow for confusion. The problem there is that it can easily be misinterpreted as propaganda. That's not even a misinterpretation. That's just a personal interpretation. From the moment of the inciting incident to the finale, the movie is non-stop discussing institutionalized racism. This is great. This is terrible. It's great because it needed to be as clear as humanly possible. But who is it going to reach? It's going to reach me. I'm already on your team. I paid to see The Hate U Give with my own money. With a message this clear and this overt, it often comes across as preachy. Let me flip the table. If I watched a movie that was about the #AllLivesMatter movement, I would be rolling my eyes pretty hard. So what is the response to that? I don't know if there is a real right answer to that. But then you also have to consider that this movie is aimed at teenagers. You'd think that teenagers are pretty progressive. I just wrote so above. But as a teacher, often I find teenagers parroting what their parents tell them. I mean, I had a student visibly protesting studying John Lewis's March last year, so what do I know. The thing that stops this movie becoming a truly great picture for me, though, is the fact that it has to constantly reminds its audience that it is a YA adaptation. There are stretches of the movie that just completely fly. If I cut the movie well enough, I'm sure you could watch this as the next Do the Right Thing. The movie addresses elements of police brutality that I've never really thought about before. It manages to, on occasion, stress the nuance about white privilege. But for every success the movie has, it takes a couple of steps backwards. It's like, at regular intervals, the movie has to simplify things to address a more immature audience. First and foremost --and I know why they did it --they had Starr narrate entire sections of the film. For someone who wants a movie that shows instead of tells, these moments are fairly cringey. She talks like a teenager, which I suppose is fine. But it is very heavy handed. Starr gives a lot of exposition through her thoughts. I said I know why they do it. The book probably had a very unique voice. It also is a bit of the Anne Frank thing going on. By hearing about events through the eyes of a teenager, it grounds the whole thing in reality. But I don't want that. I want the director to find a way to communicate this stuff without huge info dumps. It also sounds a bit stilted at times. It's the adult trying to sound like a kid and that always throws me off a bit. Starr is also a bit too successful at convincing people. Because she's supposed to be this revolutionary character, she is a bit of a Mary Sue. She has flaws, but these flaws are very superficial. She's nervous to talk to the media, for understandable reasons. But she quickly gets over this phobia and knows exactly what to say when people are looking at her. Similarly, there are other juvenile elements to the movie. There are some tropes that just feel like they need to appear in the movie. Honestly, most of the stuff at school seems very CW. Chris, Starr's boyfriend played by K.J. Apa, makes absolutely no sense in this movie. Many of Starr's complaints about white sympathy can also be seen in Chris, but we're supposed to accept these flaws coming out of Chris's mouth. That dance is also just too much. I think it would be easy to toss Sabrina Carpenter's Hailey into that mix as well, coming off as a bit of a stereotype. But I've had students and, unfortunately, peers just like Hailey. As one dimensional as she comes off, I'm kind of glad that she's in the story. She's pretty unlikable and that's the point. I know that if I directed this movie, I would try to make her a bit more nuanced, but that's not accurate either. But I'm whining about ten percent of the movie. When this movie gets rolling and forgets that it is an adaptation of a YA novel, it is actually pretty powerful. This all comes from the inciting incident. The inciting incident is brutal. It pulls the movie right out of the soap opera trappings that surround the beginning of the film. What Tillman does, and I hope to goodness that it is intentional, is that it is a violent tonal shift from the artificiality of high school to the very real world violence that Starr is presented with. It seems like this movie is about a love triangle and teenage drama to the multifaceted elements of surviving racial violence. If you give The Hate U Give a real chance, it explores why something that could be written off as an accident is problematic in itself. I won't deny that it wants you to demonize the police officer. Many of the police officers in this movie come across as pretty unsympathetic, even antagonistic. But what the filmmakers want to stress is that, at its root, we have a foundational issue with racism in this country. Very wisely, one of the protagonists is a police officer. In the back of my mind, I have some of those racially motivated phobias. How could someone go out every night and risk their lives? The movie doesn't stray far from that question. It actually vocalizes it clearly. But it also addresses the issue that police act differently around different levels of income and different cultural backgrounds. It balances a very tough tightrope. Do you hate the police or do you hate the system that made police fear minorities? The one thing that The Hate U Give doesn't want to offer are easy answers. The easy answer, in this case, is probably wrong. When Starr isn't narrating, she is a compelling avatar. Again, I've never been a teen girl of color living in an economically distressed area. But what Starr offers is a well-rounded world of experiences that allow her to relate to multiple audiences. Starr has a foot planted in both the lower incomed and higher incomed societies. Placing Starr in both of these worlds shows that neither culture is right. One is definitely a victim, but neither culture takes care of Starr in this situation. The white-dominated upper crust is blind to Starr's struggle, thinking it understands what she is going through and minimizing it. The lower-income people of color often support her, until it goes against their self-interests. I'm actually a little taken aback by seeing Anthony Mackie in this role. He does fine, I suppose. But there could have been a much deeper character here. He's effective only because the story is not about him. The story is always focused on Starr and how she is reacting to the world around her. There are only a few people who never really cross into zones of betrayal. But these people are her family. There's an interesting subplot involving Starr's father. Starr's father is probably the best developed character in the story. He's a bit of Obi-Wan Kenobi when it comes to doling out advice, but he's got demons. I would have loved an Obi-Wan Kenobi with demons. He keeps making these bad decisions because his pride drives him to make these oddball choices. There aren't too many consequences for his choices, which is an unfortunate cake-and-eat-it-too situation. But I do like his character overall. I kind of feel like The Hate U Give is the anti-Blind Side. Message wise, it almost delivers the complete opposite message of The Blind Side (one of my least favorite movies.) But tonally, it paints with broad strokes, completely stepping over any misinterpretation of concept. Because my politics align more with The Hate U Give, I'm going to be as broad stroked and stress that The Hate U Give is the more successful of the two movies. But I don't like when I'm not allowed to come up with my own opinion. That's definitely a major part of this movie. But the alternative is that the message isn't picked up. Honestly, the movie would thrive so much if it wasn't aimed for younger audiences. I don't know if the Academy is going to pay attention to it because of the 10% that's so juvenile. The content is important. The movie is good. But I don't think I'll ever fall in love with it because I'm not the intended audience. Regardless, give it a shot. It's pretty powerful.
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PG-13 for mild language and people dying. The space program is full of people dying in horrible ways. People attach themselves to explosives and then get rocketed to an area completely inhospitable to human life. People are going to die. Then, the people who know the people who died get mad and say mean words to each other. These words are interchangeable as expletives and the cycle of life continues. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Damien Chazelle Can we stop having controversies over stupid things? Honestly, I know we're entering Starbucks holiday cup season. But if someone is going to be controversial, can it be over something actually real? I just found out about the controversy this morning when I told someone "I saw First Man yesterday." I'm not an expert on it, but from what I hear, it's pretty dumb. I know. I'm not doing my due diligence, but I refuse to read up on that right now. I'm not going to be talking about the controversy outside of this opening paragraph. I'm going to analyze the movie from an entirely cinematic perspective and hope that covers whatever I need to say. Okay, I lied. It's called a "jump cut." The American flag is still on the moon. No, we don't see Armstrong put it up because having the flag up shows that time has passed. It's more artistic and finessed than straight up saying "Seven hours later" or whatever they'd do. Don't be horrible. It's so much better this way. No one is making a political statement. You are all the worst. I don't even know why I do this anymore. I am actually getting stressed out by my film blog and I don't even care anymore. These are the moments...these are the moments! When I die ten years early, it's because a controversy obsessed culture wants to nitpick stupid moments instead of appreciating the grand gesture of making a movie about the first man on the moon and how he beat the Russians to the moon. This right here is my mental breakdown. AHHH! First Man is fine. I was jazzed (pun intended) to see another movie from Damien Chazelle. It also stars Ryan Gosling. I've seen two movies from this guy: La La Land and Whiplash. La La Land and Whiplash are all about jazz. I know that First Man is about space and a true story, but I thought that somehow it was going to be a story about how Neil Armstrong really liked tenor sax or something. It's not that at all. What I love about Chazelle is that he has a way of making you look at something that you thought you understood from another perspective. I know there are all these La La Land haters out there. Don't be a hater. Just like stuff, like me. (Unless it's you controversy turds. I don't like you.) You see, I was big into space as a kid. I loved space. I went to Space Camp twice and to Space Academy once. Oh, you don't know what Space Academy is? Space Academy is for the older kids who did Space Camp too many times. That's how much I loved space. I knew that I would never be an astronaut because I knew that I could never wrap my head around the science. But one of the things that Space Camp taught me is that a ton of astronauts pass out or throw up on the way into space. I thought, "Nah, I'd be fine." If nothing else, First Man explained to me why I would totally throw up and hate space more than anything in the world. While vomit is not the central theme or motif to First Man, it does definitely stress the type of personality who could become an astronaut. Thanks to First Man, I understand that outer space is built for people who don't mind things rattling intensely and aren't claustrophobic. There have been a million space movies out there. If anything, we've demystified space travel through biopics. But space movies are always about how majestic space is. First Man doesn't ignore that majesty, but takes that majesty as something to be earned. There is nothing easy about what Armstrong is doing. He's super smart and he's okay with everything potentially blowing up at any moment. Chazelle gets such points for making this clear. Every movie tells us that people shouldn't do this because they risk getting blowed up. But First Man shows me why things constantly should and do go wrong when it comes to space flights. That's all great, but the core of First Man is actually along the lines of two central themes: man's coping mechanisms with family and death. The movie takes this really odd take that I'm not used to seeing. I'm watching Bojack Horseman right now. I'm on season two when Bojack is filming the biopic of Secretariat. The first version of the film demonizes Secretariat, showing all of his foibles. The second version of the film is happy-go-luck, inspiring people to be like Secretariat. I always wondered why we haven't gotten a Neil Armstrong focused biopic. It seems like a no-brainer, after all. But now I know why we haven't. Most people would view Neil Armstrong as just too regular to be the focus of a character driven narrative. I think Chazelle saw that as an opportunity. Heck, I'm right there with him because that's what I wanted to see out of Neil Armstrong. He's not a bad person, but he often has insecurities that damage his relationships with his family. There are times in this movie where Neil Armstrong is cruel. He's silent and removed from his family. His time with NASA sometimes comes across as suicidal behavior. He wants to run away from his problems and he holds the ones he loves at arms distance. Chazelle builds Gosling and Foy's relationship as something special. It is a marriage that suffers blows and damage. These impacts come from outside of themselves, like the death of their child or the loss of their friends. But it also comes from an emotionally broken Neil and a tired out Janet. But it's inspiring to see their marriage. A lot of times, I wanted to scream at the screen to appreciate his wife, but then I realized that I never lost a child to cancer. How would I handle it? How would my wife? I never knew that they lost a child so young. That would wreck most people, but they kept at it. I really like that. It's not a romance though. This is what marriage is. It's joking around with the kids and dealing with the funks that just don't make any sense. That's pretty nifty. But then it also brings in the themes of death. This is the through line of the film. This movie reminded me of stuff that I completely forgot about from my time at Space Camp. The thing about experimentation is that it comes at a cost. Experimentation is dangerous, as proven by that great biblical epic, The Incredible Hulk. But then there's experimentation as a race. People are going to die. I mentioned that other movies say that, but this is Neil Armstrong reacting to those deaths. They are grounded and sad. We now get to see these people as friends. I feel somewhat ashamed that I didn't recognize some of the names of the people because First Man made me realize that statistics were real human beings. I know. It's been done before. Thanks a lot, Anne Frank (dark joke, but that's a truth!). But we intimately get to know the guys who died. They were close to Neil Armstrong. Think about how disheartening it must be the guy who supplants the guy who just died. That guy was your friend. You might also die. But you don't care that you die because people are constantly dying around you. How weird is it, too, that I'm watching a movie about a pretty famous story and I'm actually surprised that some characters die? I remember when Titanic came out and I was one of the dorks who joked about "spoiling the ending". I'm the worst and I remembered why I hate myself. But this movie honestly caught me off guard. I forgot that Gus Grissom died while in NASA. That's bananas to me. I heard that story and never put the one-to-one about how mundane his death actually was. This guy was an American hero and he died in an extremely frustrating way. I love how this movie portrays the serenity of the moon. (Or the...Sea of Tranquility of the moon?) The movie is about chaos. Yeah, there's a lot of mundane. But everything about NASA is about parts rattling and things going wrong. Having Armstrong on the moon and transitioning into a steady cam is brilliant. A lot of this movie used shakey-cam, which is fine. But it is such a relaxing moment when it just...stops. This peaceful score runs throughout (which has more than a few hints of La La Land littering the movie) and that's fantastic. But it is Armstrong on the moon in his natural environment. I wanted the movie to be over because it is a smidge too long, but the moon was worth it. Also, I don't know if it was done for the sake of drama, but the landing was way more chaotic than I was ready for. Also, if you didn't know that Armstrong was the first man on the moon, don't consider this a spoiler. Consider it a basic education (you controversy starved plebian)! Rated R for language and violence. Don't get too comfortable folks. The violence sneaks up on you and catches you off guard. There's no steeling yourself from this violence. A casual conversation and then, SMASH CUT! Your heart is in your throat and you find yourself vomiting violently all over the place. For those who believe that the audience brings themselves into the content of the film, you can consider vomit as part of the movie. Okay, that vomiting stuff is hyperbole, but there's a lot of sneaky violence and regular language. There's also obscured nudity. (R)
DIRECTOR: Drew Goddard "Written and Directed by Drew Goddard" is starting to become one of my favorite things to see in a movie. He comes from genre. I remember when he was on the writing staffs for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Yeah, Lost didn't end so perfectly, but I don't think that anyone is really blaming Drew Goddard for that. But the moment that sold him to me, outright and resolutely, was Cabin in the Woods. That movie felt so low-budget in comparison. I mean, it sat on a shelf forever before it really saw the light of day. (I just made the Chris Hemsworth connection between Cabin in the Woods and Bad Times at the El Royale.) Now, part of me wants to keep El Royale at a distance. I'm going to step out of my natural love for things and look at things objectively. It's a movie that screams that it wants to be cool. While I was watching it, I didn't actually know that Drew Goddard had made it. I remember hearing that ages ago, but I put it out of my brain pretty quickly. So, not knowing that Goddard had his adorable mitts all over this movie, I kind of felt like it really wanted to be a Quentin Tarantino movie. It wasn't nearly offensive enough to be a Tarantino pic, sure. But the structure and the coolness of it all screamed Quentin Tarantino the entire time. But it's a really good homage to a Tarantino movie. Let's cut all of the nonsense and just come out with it. I really liked this movie. It's not perfect. It's not going to be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for me. (I want to lump these two movies together because I think Bad Times is going for the same demographic in terms of street cred.) But it is a very tight film. I know that Goddard isn't the first person to attempt this trick, but El Royale (I need to be consistent with my shorthand.) is aiming to be a movie where five different people, each with their own movie, run into someone else's movie by going to this hotel. There are five disparate protagonists, each seeming to be the center of attention of the movie. I suppose Cabin in the Woods kind of played around with this format as well, but El Royale is far more aggressive with its formula when it comes to implementing this idea on-screen. From the time we meet the main cast, I got the vibe that Jon Hamm's character was the central protagonist. Goddard gives Hamm the most clear goal. He has a time limit to do it and a plan that has to be executed. I'm not spoiling too much here, so I won't bother to bold it, but Goddard is the master of the misdirect. In an era where directors love subverting expectations, I think Goddard is the most playful of them all. Yeah, it's cheap in the long run. But in a time in my life that I watch a lot of movies once, that kind of surprise really gets me. It gets me all adrenaline-junkied and I love it so much. And there are a billion of these moments. A few of them are telegraphed, but a surprisingly low number. I watched all of the The Haunting of Hill House and none of those jumps got me. This is an action movie that doesn't necessarily have a goal of terrifying me and it got me guffawing with the release of nervous energy. To have major characters just leave the film unceremoniously is pretty great. Okay, "unceremoniously" might be unfair. But he Ed Starks us a lot. But that's what keeps it interesting the long run. Nothing is too sacred in this movie. It doesn't treat things as disposable. This isn't some bad horror movie where characters are just cannon fodder. Characters matter and you should enjoy your time with them before they potentially disappear from the film forever. I also really like the structure of a movie like this. I've only watched it once and I'm sure with multiple viewings I could appreciate it more. But this is the kind of movie where all the disparate stories interact with each other brilliantly. I'M NOW GOING INTO SPOILERS because I find myself dipping and dodging against straightforward talk. The opening of the movie is perfect. It feels very Coen Brothers, but in a good way. I say that because too many people copy the Coen Brothers' aesthetics and rarely are they as successful as the Coen Brothers. But it perfectly establishes the tone. And, AGAIN, violence unexpected. (Okay, a little expected. But I still jumped pretty good!) But then we get a very gimmicky setting. Probably the least favorite element of Bad Times at the El Royale is the actual El Royale. Honestly, it's just the sign. Everything else is great. I love the line going through the middle of the hotel. I kind of wish that it played a bigger part with the narrative of the story. I get that there is that whole police jurisdiction thing that is happening, but that is not even really addressed. Miles gives us this whole spiel about the importance of the line and it is kind of a non-issue for the rest of the movie. I mean, it is a cool look, but it is a bit of "cool-for-being-cool". But then the El Royale does actually get cool. It's one of those pervert hotels. Those things give me nightmares. Okay, not really. But the concept of the pervert hotel is completely unsettling. The idea that someone is watching you in a moment that is considered private is more than a little off-putting. I don't even do gross things, but I don't like them. The El Royale (I've lost my focus talking about structure and now I'm focused on setting.) brings up something I often think about. Drew Goddard must be pretty pessimistic because he wholeheartedly subscribes to an idea that I've feared and ruminated about for a while. In Bad Times at the El Royale, the world is a terrible place with a few good people in it. One of those good people is Darlene, but even Darlene isn't that good. She is, after all, complicit in a crime after the fact. Also, she places a dollar value over the death of a federal agent, but I get ahead of myself. By having the pervert room, we get the notion that everyone does something terrible in a hotel room. At least, the majority of people who use hotel rooms are doing something untoward. That's a pretty bleak view. I think that's the world of the cool gangster film, but it is wildly depressing to think heavily about. What makes people want to build this world and record folks? It's not pleasant, I'll tell you that. But since I took the long way around to talk about structure, I suppose I had better discuss that. The El Royale itself serves as the framing device for structure. Like Tarantino, Goddard uses the title card to break his film into chapters. These chapters are meant to be character names, but they are named after what room the character primarily inhabits. Very cool, but then there's Billy Lee, which breaks the format. It's minor, but it gets under my skin more than it should. These stories, once again, place focus on one of the inhabitants of the El Royale and makes them the protagonist once again. I love this. Each character has a pretty rich story. I did find myself a little bored at Darlene's backstory, but that's because everyone else's backstory is extremely intense. Having a grounded drama does slightly grind the movie to a slower pace, but it never really comes to a halt, so I forgive it. Goddard gives us three answers (metaphorically) with every change in perspective, but then introduces one or two new questions. That's really fun. But this brings me back to Lost. Lost loved that formula. Usually the balance was a little bit more off with Lost. It gave you one answer and then presented five new questions. Bad Times at the El Royale doesn't get that bad. It answers almost all of the questions. It throws one in your face. But there is one choice that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I STILL HAVEN'T STOPPED SPOILING EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS MOVIE, SO JUST STAY WARNED. Father Flynn discovers that the pervert room and instantly starts scrounging around for the film. Miles told him it was someone he knew doing horrible stuff on the film. (We find out that someone famous and dead had sex in that room.) But why is Father Flynn losing his mind. He doesn't know who was on that reel. He just knew that it would be someone recognizable. Is the assumption that anyone famous caught with their pants down would be remarkably valuable? Honestly, like his reaction is pretty intense. He tears apart the room. Well, he quickly discovers it, but he's aggressive about it. He then keeps it a secret. Well, fine. But that doesn't really play withe the rest of the film. I also have a love/hate relationships with one of the plots. Like, it works really well for the twist with Rose, but I don't love the cult stuff. Emily does crazy immoral stuff and comes off like the WOAT of the movie from the first moment that she enters the story. Why is she drawing that much attention to herself if she's actually the one in the moral right in the story? I guess you can be kind of a turd and still do the right thing, but the cult revelation kind of takes the movie to the next level. Goddard sells the cult stuff well, which keeps me on board. But it doesn't really feel like the rest of the movie. Billy Lee also doesn't fit in so tightly with the rest of the story. Chris Hemsworth, I think you are a good enough actor to keep your shirt buttoned. I don't need Thor pelvis. But I love Miles. I don't know why Miles's story resonates so well with me. The entire movie, he keeps saying that he's done awful things and that he needs absolution. Catholic movie geeks, is Miles's confession valid? I could go into that, but I really like the fact that he's desperate to get back to the Church. It's not a perfect portrayal of repentance, but it is pretty darned good. Anyway, I actually really loved this movie. I know this is one of my more rambly and spoiley reviews, but please check out this movie anyway. I actually might watch this one again. I know that I said that I wouldn't, but what do I have going on that's so great? TV-14 for the ol' fashioned thumb gouge. What? I'm spoiling something? It's Shakespeare! You had your chance. It's not like the story hasn't been around. You know what? Lots of people die. They die horrible death. There's violence and weird incestual kiss. Just all kinds of stuff. Regardless, TV-14.
DIRECTOR: Richard Eyre I just podcasted about this. Keep an eye on this space (or literallyanything.net) for that information. But you'll be hearing some of this stuff twice. This space is mostly devoted to my more nuanced thoughts on King Lear. And I'll be honest. King Lear is the one that fell through the cracks for me. I never had this as part of a class or anything. I know a lot of Shakespeare. You'll have to trust me. It's something I nerd out on. But you'd think that I'd get Lear at one time or another. Nope. It never happened. I got some of the adaptations and modernizations, but I never actually got Lear before this point. So this is a unique situation for me. I have to not only critique and analyze a movie, but I have to do it from a fresh perspective on a story. And that brings me to my first point. I don't know King Lear enough to watch this movie in isolation. I had to do a ton of reading early in the movie. The thing about this movie is that I had to look up motivations. King Lear tends to be a four hour production. This version is less than two. There's a reason for that. A) Short movies are the best. And B), this movie tries to make the movie as grounded and modern and political as possible. So to do that, it amputated anything that didn't exactly fit within that mission statement. Shakespeare in the modern era has this problem. It's so cool to transport a classic story with a universal theme into another era. The temptation is that it mostly works. It actually works too well. But there are moments. Oh, boy-oh-boy, there are moments. These moments really kill it. King Lear tries simply to remove these moments. They do a pretty good job, but by removing these small moments, far larger moments are thereby affected. From what I read, King Lear is mostly about elder abuse. The story is about daughters who do not love their father causing mental damage to a dying old man. They treat him poorly so he leaves their homes. This is central to the plot. We have a daughter who loves him and two daughters who don't. The two daughters gain power of his estate by claiming that they love him the most and then want nothing but to be rid of him. Because they are so rude to him, he loses his mind and that's the story. But this is a political version. The story is grafted to contemporary London. It is, genre-wise, a political story. But the old one only uses politics as a setting. It is much more about family and that's what the movie kind of gets wrong. This adaptation of King Lear really becomes more about dementia. The two daughters only do him small slights. Honestly, they become evil after Lear falls into his early stages of madness. That's really confusing. We know that the sisters are evil, but that's just because of the mise en scene and performance styles. That's a huge problem. I wonder if I would have thought of this when I was watching the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, which is also pretty darn short. Really, this is great to watch for production value and acting. The movie isn't really marketing itself to anyone but the Shakespeare fan. Watching this from fresh eyes, I could see all of the cracks in the story. But I still really enjoyed it. Honestly, this might have been the most flawed movie that I've seen in a while that I've still absolutely loved. I've had this theory for a while that Anthony Hopkins might not be the amazing actor that I've always thought that he was. I've just noticed that Hopkins is always playing Hopkins. It's just that Hopkins himself is compelling to watch. I know that this is a type of acting. I have a theatre degree. You can tell that I have a theatre degree because I spell it with an "-re" instead of an "-er". But I might have to back that up a little bit because Lear is a great character for him. It's this role that lets him get bombastic and play these different levels. Lear can easily be a screaming role. It's about madness and the temptation to go big has to be constantly present. There's a little bit of overyelling in this one, but Hopkins manages to make Lear a character who is sadly losing his mind. It reminds me of this character who is fighting with dementia. Again, I don't love that it seems so removed from the sisters' sins, but from a performance perspective, that becomes really interesting. He really is convincing. Part of that comes from the entire building of Lear. He looks like everyone's grandfather. We're not talking about Uncle Ben. That's the grandparent we've been sold in Hollywood. Anthony Hopkins looks frail. He looks like someone who is desperate to have control over an uncontrollable life. It just so happens that Lear is a monarch. But he humanizes this role. Lear is not removed from the story. He makes Lear, appropriately, the center of the story. I'm actually applauding that Hopkins is stealing every scene. I'm not saying that the other actors aren't great. I'm going to get into that. They are absolutely stunning. But no one really holds a candle to Hopkins in this one. I think that the director wanted it that way. There's this amazing cast and a really complex plot, but that all really seems secondary to focusing on one man and the fact that he is losing his mind over the course of two hours. I applaud that and sneer at it simultaneously. Again, the rest of the cast is amazing. Watch those opening credits and tell me that you aren't wildly impressed. The opening shot made me think that this film was inspired by Steven Moffat's Sherlock. It didn't help that I noticed Andrew Scott in the opening credits after that. For a second, I was worried that he didn't have too big of a part, but he really gets the second best performance in the film. I saw a "Popular on Facebook" clip of Scott doing "To be or not to be" from Hamlet and I knew that I wanted to see him do more Shakespeare. While I don't think I got chills from King Lear like I did from that Facebook clip, he is still absolutely marvelous. He has a lot of moments that kind of made me want to giggle if I took them out of context. But Scott almost embraced the more risky stuff. If I was an actor, I would have been terrified by what the director would put me through. But Scott not only makes it works, he makes the scene better with his performance. Those choices go from dangerous to brilliant. He portrays homeless insanity in the weirdest way, but it is so compelling. Again, there is some damage to these moments when it comes to how truncated this version of Lear was. We don't get a lot of Edgar's choices when it comes to his father because there is so much editing going on there. The odd thing is that it is such a compelling part of the entire story. Then there's the genius element of pairing him with Jim Broadbent as Glouchester. I get a little moment of joy whenever I see Jim Broadbent in stuff. I'm shameless because he plays a lot of parts like he plays Glouchester. He's a character actor and we keep seeing that character. But that character makes a lot of sense with Glouchester. Also, eyeballs. I'm just saying. Eye. Balls. But Scott and Broadbent almost have their own little play outside of everything that is going on in the story. I'm not the first person to ever say the following cliche, but there are only fifteen British actors and every single one of them seems to be in this movie. (Accept my hyperbole before you start nitpicking.) I don't think anyone is miscast, but I also feel like I have to point out Emma Thompson and Emily Watson. While their part is completely decimated by a movie that focuses too much on character and not enough on plot. Christopher Eccleston is also in it. I want to point him out because he was the Doctor, but he's not in the movie a ton and he's just fine. I have to kind of comment on Shakespeare because this is my first time experiencing King Lear. The "not recognizing disguises" trope really doesn't work in Lear as it might with other Shakespeares, mainly because of the trope of sightlessness. When we are told that people are in disguise, we simply have to accept that other characters wouldn't recognize them. But Glouchester loses his eyes. He recognizes Lear from his voice, but doesn't recognize the voice of his own son. I know that Scott does a voice for a lot of it, but he kind of abandons that voice as the story progresses. Also, Kent is just absurd that no one recognizes him. There's a entire montage of Kent shaving his hair and his beard, but he looks the exact same. It's borderline silly. It's used twice. In the same play. I know that there's probably a crazier record in the Shakespeareiverse, but I don't love it, especially in a tragedy. So I like King Lear. This production was good enough to make me want to really study Lear. I want to see a full production. I want to straight up read it. I want to have a class that is patient enough to study it. The performances are excellent. The tone is absolutely fabulous. I mean, it's not functional as a movie on its own, but I'm oddly forgiving of that this time. Regardless, I had a really good time with this and I'd love to see more. For once, I advocate for a four-hour director's cut. Literally Anything: Episode Fifty-Three -Literally Doctor Who Season Eleven (Episodes 1-3)11/7/2018 Mr. H finally suckered Mr. Henson into watching some Doctor Who! The boys talk about the new season of Doctor Who starring the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker!
http://literallyanything.net/blog/2018/11/6/episode-53-literally-dr-who-season-11-episodes-01-02 Not rated, mainly because I think they didn't know what to do with this one. This reads a lot like a Hollywood pre-code movie. It's wildly suggestive, but even more so. Let's call it, this would be a solid R simply because of the content. It's about pedophilia at its most base form. People treat each other terribly. The IMDB Parents' Guide is hilariously missing the mark. Under "Sex and Nudity", it says mild because none of it actually happens on screen. And that's where this feels like a pre-code movie. It's fundamentally about sex, but you don't actually see any of it. The only thing I can actually put under here for explicit content is that someone gets shot. Not rated, but it should be R.
DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick FilmStruck is dying, guys. I had all these movies that I wanted to watch when I got FilmStruck, and within a month or two of getting it, it says that it is dying. How depressing is that? I've never seen either adaptation of Lolita. It always seemed pretty gross to me, but I also wanted to knock out one of the more important Stanley Kubrick movies that I've never gotten around to. When you sign up for Stanley Kubrick, you are often signing up for uncomfortable content. He's never been lumped in with the "shock" directors, but many of his movies often are fairly shocking. We watch them for their brilliance, but they cannot be divorced from their uncomfortable content. There's a certain voyeurism that comes from watching a Kubrick film or a Tarantino film. We want to know how gross the movie can get and I think that Kubrick plays with that idea a lot in Lolita. To romanticize this movie is gross. When I saw that FilmStruck stuck it under "romance", that just gives me all of the creeps. It's a gross, gross film and I just think that FilmStruck didn't know what to do with it. But it is structured like a romantic drama. There's a few people in the world whom I will always assume know what they are doing. I'm not going to criticize certain choices because those choices aren't accidents. Kubrick is very deliberate with the format he is presenting here. Although the movie looks quite old (I keep thinking how structurally formatted this movie is to the pre-code movies), this is 1962. Kubrick had already made Spartacus (with a nod to that movie in this one!) in color. He was already becoming the Stanley Kubrick of repute. Sure, he hadn't made 2001 yet or some of his other monumental films, but he was aware of how to make a movie by this point. But he makes this movie in the form of a romantic drama and that's a really odd choice. Why would Kubrick do that? He has to be commenting on the stigma of sexuality. I'm not going to be the guy who comes forward and say that we've come so far as a culture that the sexualization of children has gone away. Sorry, but I know that the CW still exists and that there's a type that keeps getting put on billboards. But Kubrick makes this movie that is meant to make you forget that you are watching a commentary while you are constantly reminded that you are grossed out. Don't worry, there's constant reminders of how gross the content is. He's not going to let you off the hook that easily. But the way the movie is shot looks so safe. It's actually one of my odd comments on the movie. The opening scene of the film is very much in the vein of Stanley Kubrick. It's how he got me on board. But the rest of the movie doesn't really look like it was directed by him. I'm always associating Kubrick with precision and this movie feels almost intentionally sloppy. It reads very much like a soap opera in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing. I'm not saying that there isn't technique. Quite the opposite, but Kubrick wants you to forget that the camera is there. These aren't insanely lit. On the contrary, the lighting is typical five-point lighting. Everything is bright and clean and, well, like a soap opera. That soap opera is what makes the movie watchable. While I prefer something more along the lines of The Shining from Kubrick, with content like this he needed to make something that could justify a two-and-a-half hour runtime. There's a lot of content in here, but it never feels all that boring. That's all fine and good, but then you realize that there isn't a lot of plot. The first half is actually saturated with plot. We know where the movie is going. This might be my 21st century look back and know how Lolita affected pop culture. We know that James Mason is going to try to seduce Sue Lyon despite Shelley Winters being there. It's what makes the movie sick. Knowing where the movie is trying to go makes this plot very intricate and complex. We know that Humbert (actually "Humbert Humbert", which I'm not sure why that is part of the narrative) is going to make a really gross decision along the way and it's interesting to see which gross path he's going to take. I'm going to start spiraling into theories about what Kubrick is trying to say with this story. Please bear with me, because I know that people have probably analyzed this piece far better than what I'm about to present. It's interesting to see the amorality of Humbert from the beginning of the chronological narrative. (I'm not talking about the Quilty sequence at the beginning of the movie. I'm talking about the four year time jump.) Humbert, especially played by Mason, seems like the type that would be a noble protagonist. An intellectual and kind looking man, it seems like he is plagued by immorality all around him. Lolita's mother is aggressively sexual. His friends seem to be open-minded about sexuality. He actually seems like milktoast. He is uncomfortable when confronted by any remotely sexual activity, even avoiding dancing because of his discomfort. But he actually proves to be the biggest deviant of them all. He enjoys the illicit nature of his feelings and keeps a secret diary. It actually mentions in the movie that the diary is only giving more into the grossness of the whole situation. The juxtaposition between Humbert's well-mannered exterior and his interior perversions might be the message. When Lolita's mother discovers his sickness, she's completely taken aback. Part of that, from a character perspective, is because she is rejected in exchange for the closest person in her life. (It feels like this has happened before, but that isn't explicit.) But the sexual deviant of the story is dethroned by Humbert. This can take the theme into two different directions. The easy interpretation is that looks don't always mean content of character. I like this theme, but it lets a lot of people off the hook. With this interpretation, Lolita is more of a cautionary tale, simplified into a really basic "Never judge a book by its cover" moral. Only, you know, referring to pedophiles. The alternate is possibly a more damning criticism. Is it saying that anyone can become a pervert? Are the most conservative of us harboring something super gross inside? While this is an impressive and far more interesting interpretation of Humbert, I don't know if the story really supports that? He is quick to ramp up the story to murder. He makes active choices that are meant to be evil for evil's sake. But this also leads me to question Humbert's choices throughout the story. There are all of these moments where I don't understand Humbert's thinking. It is clear through his diary entries that he intends to seduce Lolita. I've actually never seen a character with such single-purposed motivation. But then he does all these things throughout the story to delay his gratification. He marries Lolita's mother, which kind of makes sense in a backwards way. It keeps him in the picture. But then when SPOILER, she dies, he makes up this whole story about how she's in the hospital. Okay, it's a weird choice. On one hand, it doesn't make Lolita distraught. Okay, I can see that. Also, Humbert becomes this trusted individual in her life, changing their relationship into something that it wasn't before. But by this logic, Humbert is betting on seducing Lolita before his lie is discovered. With a lie like that, there's a timetable in the picture that wasn't there before. It's too big of a lie and it is too easily discovered to be a lie. This is where his motivations confuse me. He takes Lolita to a hotel. All of the situations are leading them to sleep together. There is only one room with a big bed. He tries to get a cot to be noble and maintain the facade. But there are no cots. Lolita straight up comes onto him. She lets her intentions known and lets him know that her feelings parallel his feelings. But then he goes out of his way to maintain the illusion. He's going to be discovered very soon to be a liar and his game will be up, but he is constantly delaying. Now, I think this might come down to James Mason. I think that there's something pretty complex going on here and Mason might not be performing the nuanced layers that the film needs. I haven't read the book, but I have a feeling that Humbert is disgusted by himself and wants to do the right thing. But his evil nature is probably fighting against that surge of conscience and he doesn't know what to do. Okay, the film doesn't sell that. He just kind of comes across like a crazy person. It's only though the suspension of disbelief that his plan works so well. By no means should it have, but it does. I'm about to close up, but I do want to point out how much I love Peter Sellers in this movie. His character doesn't really make a ton of sense to me. There's a moment that it almost crosses over into the goofy, solidifying the soap opera nature of this movie. But it doesn't really change the fact that I love Peter Sellers. I'm going to be a hypocrite again and say that his character almost shouldn't be in the film. He's this over-the-top, outrageous element to what should be a very small story. But he manages it like a complete champ. He is so good and that opening scene in the film remind me that I'm watching a Stanley Kubrick movie. He's weird and eccentric, while being gross as well. Sinc the perspective is that of Humbert's, we never really get a full view of his narrative or perspective. He's this outside force that is almost an agent of chaos in Humbert's small worldview. Regardless, despite the fact that his character doesn't make a lick of sense, I like his performance a lot and he adds a lot to the story. I don't know if I love this movie. It's very watchable. Like a Stanley Kubrick film, you know you are watching something very impressive and you can marvel at it. But like with some art, you can appreciate the message and the skill while being completely skeeved out. Lolita kind of fits into the category of grosser Kubrick films like Eyes Wide Shut or Full Metal Jacket that does shock, but is still a pretty amazing film. It doesn't necessarily feel like his other films, but I'm willing to bet that it is all by choice. PG-13 for all of the beheadings. Really, just a string of horrible on-screen deaths. Some of them are quick. Some of them are painfully long. There's also an absolutely terrifying spider. I actually forgot how scary Shelob is because I weirdly handled it well. It doesn't make it un-terrifying. Out of the three movies, this is the one with the most scary things and the most insane violence. Blame it on the fact that it is the most war movie of the three, but there's a lot of gross death. PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Peter Jackson Okay, the extended edition might be too long. I can't believe I'm saying that. When the extended editions were coming out, I was jazzed as all get out. "More content?" Of course! This was the era before I realized the value of a theatrical cut and that "director's cut" didn't mean "better". The Lord of the Rings movies were and, I suppose, still are different. When The Lord of the Rings gives you more content, you are going to go even deeper into Tolkien's canon, and that's pretty awesome. But The Return of the King is far too long of a movie. I'm not even saying the stuff at the end. Being amazing and unique, I'm going to stand by the fairly long epilogue. I love that stuff. It's the added war stuff. It has to be added war stuff, right? I haven't seen the theatrical cut since seeing it in the theater. Like many people, The Return of the King might be my least favorite of the trilogy. But like most amazing trilogies, the worst of the three is still a pretty amazing movie. I'm going to tear it apart first because it is foremost on my mind. War scenes and action stuff have a real tipping point before they get boring. It's really weird that it works that way. The right amount of action gets me fired up. I talk about how awesome individual fight scenes are. (I'm occasionally more bro-ey than I care to admit.) But if there's too much, it all becomes a wash. No individual moment stands out and it just because spectacle. It's like eating icing. A taste of icing gets you excited. But straight-up eating icing by the bowl leaves you feeling gross. It's the problem that I have with Michael Bay movies, in particular the Transformers franchise. I'm not saying that The Return of the King is like the Transformers franchise. We're still within the realm of good story and good characters. The action sequences are a bit much with The Return of the King, but it is still focused on the characters and the narrative for the most part. I often don't like spectacle for spectacle's sake. I need something more and the action sequences don't forget the major conflicts of the story. When I get bored with hordes of people and orcs getting beheaded, I then think of stuff like Gandalf versus the Witch King. It's very brief, but it is great. Honestly, adding the Witch King to the fights make the story worth telling. This kind of spins off into my second beef. This isn't the beef that many people have with the movie. I'm not talking about the eagles. I actually think that the eagles work narratively and I think that people just like trying to find loopholes. The big problem is the Army of the Dead. If there was ever a deus ex machina, it would be the Army of the Dead. They aren't teased throughout the series. Honestly, Aragorn and his companions are just camping near their stronghold. He is told this story and it is remarkably convenient. They need guys. These guys are bound to listen to Aragorn (I'm doing shorthand, guys. Don't comment.) and they come to his service. They can't be killed or defeated because they are already dead. Well, yeah. You could have one ghost on their team who can just kill everyone and that's still a cop out. It kind of undoes all the actual impressive stuff from the Battle of Minas Tirith. Structurally, though, it doesn't matter. This is why I slightly forgive this cop out moment. The entire movie is a giant battle. Like I said, I don't really love that, but whatever. The movie posits that the Battle of Minas Tirith is the battle of the film. It's like the Battle of Helm's Deep on steroids. But it really isn't the central battle of the film. It isn't what the story is hinging on. It's an obstacle disguised as a central plot point. The actual battle is actually the one that is scaled down. The real battle that we have to care about is the battle at the Black Gate. If the Army of the Dead showed up there, it would have been deeply problematic. But since the Battle of Minas Tirith, sorry to say, is kind of filler spectacle, it works. (I like the Battle of Minas Tirith. I just don't love it.) There is a real threat at the Battle at the Black Gate. It is a suicide mission and people expect to die. I suppose the Battle of Minas Tirith is a suicide mission, but it is one that they kind of have to fight. But now I'm done dunking on the story. (Wait, I also wish that the movie was more Frodo and the Ring-centric, but it has enough and that stuff is grat.) Frodo and Sam's story is what really gets me watching. I wish it wasn't almost the B-story of this movie, but I'm going to let it go. The metaphor of the ring is in full scale. Everyone gets the idea that the ring represents evil and sin. It's palpable. But I love how the Ring is more along the lines of the addictive property of sin. This is going to get cornball, so feel free to tune out. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. The movie starts off with one of my favorite tonal shifts I've ever seen in film. We get pre-ring Smeagol and his fishing buddy that has an absolutely brutal murder against the backdrop of a Shire-y looking place. I know a lot of this is Peter Jackson and not Tolkien. Forget that. But Smeagol quickly devolves into a murderer. His addiction is immediate. I always wondered why Smeagol went so nuts and Sam and Frodo are able to handle it for way longer before losing their cool. It's such a cool idea behind addiction. Some people are born pre-disposed to addiction. But, giving into vice time and again creates addiction. Frodo is able to keep that monkey on his back because he's built to resist. (I both love and hate me at this moment for that sentence.) We see this slow build until Frodo reaches the mountain. I binged all three movies this week, so bear with me. In Fellowship, he makes dumb decisions because he thinks he can handle it. We start to see the weariness and dangerous moments in Two Towers. We enter Return of the King with a full on drug-addled Frodo Baggins. He doesn't trust his best friend. He's strung out all of the times. He makes the worst decisions because he can't tell the difference between right and wrong. He destroys everything around him. The decisions he makes at the end are the inevitable. It makes the ring a very real threat. It's odd to think that all of this is about a bit of jewelry, but both the book and the movie does this absolutely phenomenal job of imbuing this object with so much threat and malice. But this also leads me to some complex moral stuff that I totally dig. The complexities of morality are what give this blog life. Frodo begs Sam not to hurt Gollum. He believes that Gollum is still able to be good. Elijah Wood crushes it in this moment. He is fighting for Sam not to kill his friend, Frodo. We watch as Frodo and Gollum become sympathetic partners. They lean closer to each other's personalities. As much as Gollum is rubbing off on Frodo, Frodo is rubbing off on Gollum. This makes the end decision that Gollum make all the more impressive. There's something remarkably cornball about Gollum making a change for good at the end. It seems to oversimplify the nature of sin and addiction. Also, if Gollum changed for good, that would imply that Frodo would change for evil. And he almost does. SPOILER STUFF: It's weird to think that Frodo has to live out the rest of his life knowing that he didn't make the right choice at the end. Really, the end is forced upon him. There's something similar to Moses and the desert in that regard. I have always been kind of thrown by Exodus. Moses constantly endures these trials, time and again. He does all this good in the name of good, but drops the ball on the one yard line. (I made a sports reference. Be proud.) Moses taps on the rock twice. Frodo makes it all the way to Mount Doom and can't throw the ring in. It's only because of Gollum and Gandalf's cryptic prophecy being played out that works. It's a satisfying ending as a viewer, but that has to be extremely frustrating from Frodo's perspective. He's still the hero of Middle Earth. Aragorn and Gondor all bow to Frodo, but do they know that he stumbled at the last second. It's not downgrading all of the amazing things that Frodo did to get there, but it is interesting to think about. What is that saying about sin? I go back to the addictive nature of sin. We lead good lives and could be the best of our kind, but it stands to reason that sin still will always have power over us. As mundane of a moment as it is, Old Bilbo asking for his ring back is really telling. He's always going to have that temptation, regardless of what is physically manifested ahead of him. It's kind of powerful. Can I tell you how scary the Shelob scene is? I talked about this early on, but I am actually shook. I read the book and I knew that Shelob was a character. I knew that it was going to be scary when I was going to see the movie in the theater back in 2003. But this time, my goodness. It's the most intentionally scary spider scene that I've ever seen. That character is terrifying. I'm amazed that I can watch that. I might be able to watch movies about spiders again because I could handle that scene. Back when I played Resident Evil 2, I would unload all of my rocket launchers on regular spider villains. I don't need to be watching that. This is all meant to be a compliment, but good golly, that is scary. I know. A lot of you can handle it. But that stuff is messed up. I'm super glad that I actually mostly pulled off my Lord of the Rings binge that I've always talked about doing. These movies are absolutely phenomenal. I don't know if binging is the best method for consuming these movies because there is so much action and war stuff that it can get a little tedious. But as individual movies, they positively crush. Oh, and don't complain about the epilogue. I've been on board for so long that I long for a return to normality. Also, I'm still the hobbit character who likes things nice and peaceful once in a while. I actually have an agenda with this analysis! I've always wanted to teach Persepolis, the graphic novel, in my Catholic school. The thing is, I can't deny that there's some questionable material in the book and the movie. The movie deals with Marjane's sexuality, drinking, smoking, and mild drug use. These are the central ideas behind the movie, but they do ground the issues of the Iranian Revolution with these very real problems that a teenager deals with. There's also some language and animated violence. It's PG-13, but I can see some people seeing this through an R-Rated lens.
DIRECTORS: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi I think that Marjane Satrapi gets directorial credit in the same way that Frank Miller got credit for Sin City. When a movie is a direct adaptation of the graphic novel (or as close can be approximated), many of the panels of the graphic novel are used as storyboards for the final result. But I don't know this for sure. I do know that this feels like a very close adaptation to the book and that's pretty impressive in itself. Before I go further, I do feel like I have to make a confession. Both the book and the movie do a fabulous job teaching about the history about the Iranian Revolution. I know way more about the Iranian Revolution than I did before I read this the first time and I probably know way more about it than those who haven't personally experienced it or read the book. That being said, I feel wildly unqualified to give the details about the Revolution. I still don't get major parts of it and I've read this book multiple times and own the movie. This is all on the table and it probably should color my review of the film as a whole. Basically, I'm not always a big smarty pants about everything. Although if you did think that prior to this review, I can live with that opinion of me. I keep coming back to this book. Admittedly, Persepolis is one of the more important graphic novels of our age. It's on a bunch of book lists and many schools teach it. (Again, not mine and I don't know how it would go over.) No one ever forces me to read it, but I do find excuses to read it every so often. This is a bigger testament to the book than it sounds because I almost never re-read things I don't have to. I have too much on my pile that will go untouched when I die because there is just too much content out there to absorb. I've only seen the movie once before though. This movie is oddly enough, so darned true to the book but kind of feels like its own thing. Satrapi made Persepolis, the graphic novel in a style that almost ignores juxtaposition at times. There are entire theories about how the juxtaposition between panels affects storytelling. Satrapi's storytelling almost is a series of related vignettes that are in chronological order, but when discussing these moments in terms of film, they rarely cut on action. Rather, our brains fill in a lot of information between panels. As such, it maintains this simple aesthetic throughout the piece. It works really well. The movie, by the very nature of movement, somehow becomes more complex. The narrative has to be fluid and paced, something that the graphic novel really never had to worry about. I don't think that the film version of Persepolis is complex. But I do think that the directors had to look at the art style to maintain the vision of the original work. The art style is what really sticks out to me as the signature of Persepolis on the film. (I'm really pretentious right now.) When a team of artists adapts still models into fluid action, there are choices that have to be made. If you showed me a panel of the book and a frame of the movie, I should be able to tell which came from where. But the art style is the best interpretation of Satrapi's art from the book. You can tell that this is Persepolis, but it somehow just seems more alive. It sells me really quickly. At the beginning of the film, Satrapi is a child and it takes a childlike perspective on very complex matters. But the movement of young Satrapi moves her from general impetuosity to more of a complex rapscallion. Honestly, I always thought of Satrapi from the graphic novel as aggressive and kind of a brat at times. I find the animated detailed version of the character still to be misbehaved, but in a charming way. Perhaps when she is chasing down a child on a bike with nails to kill him, that's a bit much. But I have a far easier time forgiving her for stuff like that than I do with the still image. This art style really plays up to the dreamlike qualities that the book presents. Often in the story, Satrapi presents many of her dreams. Or memories take on dreamlike elements. It is in the movement that defines the tone. I'm really glad that the filmmakers decided to do some cool stuff that takes advantage of the animated format. There are two related scenes when Satrapi falls in love in Austria. It is Satrapi falling in love and Satrapi falling out of love. The narrative tells the story pretty well even without the visuals to support them. But the filmmakers made cars float. They made boogers dangle. The environment of Austria changed and melded to match Satrapi's emotions and its so effective. I mean, the directors knew that it was effective. The flying car is probably the most impressive image from the trailer. It's stuff like this that makes Persepolis a joy to watch. It's weird that Persepolis is a glorious watch. It's a real bummer of a story. Marjane Satrapi does not paint herself in a very pleasant light and the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution is constantly tragic. But through visual storytelling, there is a punk rock quality to the whole thing. Listen, I'm as straight-edge as they come. I'm so straight-edge, there's nothing even rebellious about it. I will always think that a good time is a Coca-Cola with a pizza, not lots of beer. I listen to film soundtracks when I write reviews on my film blog. I have three children and I teach in a Catholic school. There's nothing at all rebellious about me. I would loathe knowing Marjane in real life, but her story is so cool. Marjane Satrapi's memoirs are the equivalent of reading The Catcher in the Rye for me. It's Easy Rider. She is just the right level of counter-culture that I get really excited. Again, I would never want to do anything like what she's doing. But the fact that she is wearing a misspelled "Punk is not Ded" [sic] jean jacket in the middle of conservative extremism Iran is fascinating. Satrapi also doesn't really like this version of her. She's constantly pointing out her own foibles throughout the story. Her grandmother is her voice of her conscience. The thing is, her grandmother is great...for a lot of it. She waxes poetic on how awesome divorce is and I can't really get behind that. But she inspires Satrapi while holding her to task. It's so interesting to think that the story ends when Satrapi is 21. She goes through so much throughout the story. Few of these are accomplishments, but the inspiration in this movie is survival. She survives an oppressive government. She survives homelessness and being without her family. Marjane (I hate referring to the author as "Marjane", but she is the character as well as the author and that makes the relationship something different.) makes mistakes. Some of these mistakes I would avoid. Some I wouldn't be able to. But this is her tale, warts and all. The narrative is spurned forward by a sense of regret. But she is often unapologetic for our mistakes. There is one mistake that almost feels confessional in the story. It is far more honest than I could ever be on screen and I applaud Satrapi for putting it in the story unbroken. I don't know if her grandmother vocalized her frustration with Marjane in the same way it is presented here, but it is extraordinarily effective. Satrapi also discusses her own battles with depression. I actually don't know if she is formally depressed. She paints her doctor as a bit of a quack who kind of ruined her life with prescription medication. But it is interesting to see how depression kind of paints everyday interactions. I return back to the idea that Persepolis feels more like real life than other memoirs that I've read. As large in scope as the setting is, the story is fairly mundane. It is the tale of adolescence and the frustrations with not really understanding how the world works. A teenage girl, regardless of cultural background, can easily find herself lost, especially when alone and working with poorly treated depression. She is not a hero, but she is definitely the hero of her own story. I love the fact that she talks to God. (Maybe not so much to Karl Marx, but if you read the book, there's a bit more that ties those two together.) I don't think that Persepolis is fundamentally a story about faith. But faith kind of colors the whole thing. The movie can't not deal with the problems of religion versus faith. I'm a huge proponent of religion, but I can also see why people turn away from it. Satrapi has this wonderful relationship with God, despite all the trials it endures. She starts the story as wanting to be a prophet and breaks her relationship with God when undergoing trials. It is definitely a background element, but I also appreciate that my faith often parallels Satrapi's. I really want to teach this book, but I can see it going poorly. This film is such a wonderful companion piece to the graphic novel and I applaud it for all of its success. If I had to be nitpicky, the soundtrack is pretty garbage. It sounds cheap compared to the rest of the production, but that is something that could pretty easily ignored. I love this movie and I'll probably revisit it...you know. Once I have a second to rewatch something. (Who am I kidding? I'm the author of my own stress.) We can't end October on a bummer! The boys discuss the Halloween episode of The Goldbergs entitled "Mister Knifey-Hands". Enjoy this mini-sode while you are still feeling all Halloweeny.
http://literallyanything.net/blog/2018/10/31/mini-episode-03-literally-the-goldbergs-mister-knifey-hands |
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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