R and a lot of this has to do with Safdie.  While there is language, a lot of it is tempered compared to something like Uncut Gems.  However, the bulk of the movie has to do with violence, drug addiction, domestic abuse --both physical and mental --and a scene depicting a pretty intense suicide attempt.  There is on screen blood, which is something that you have to get used to because one of the motifs is a commentary on the viciousness of the sport.  A well-deserved R.

DIRECTOR:  Benny Safdie

Yeah, I do think it is weird that Dwayne Johnson wasn't nominated for anything.  I'm just coming out and saying it.  He's incredible in this.  I'm even going as far as to say that I don't even know what I like anymore because I shouldn't like any of this.  I don't like sports.  I don't like biopics.  I don't like Benny Safdie.  You would think that I would be really annoyed under any other circumstance.  And while it isn't even close to my favorite movie of the year, I can't deny that there's an incredible amount of quality in this film.

The main draw is Dwayne Johnson.  I don't want to take anything away from Emily Blunt because her performance is (pun not intended) rock solid.  But if Mark Kerr (whom I mentally will be giggling that his name is "marker") is the cement of this film, my goodness, does Dwayne Johnson nail an incredible performance.  This is one of those performances that had me try to reach out to Johnson and congratulate him on one of those tour de force portrayals.  You know that Johnson had to think that this was going to be the movie that got him the Oscar, right?  To not even be nominated is kind of insane.  Between Hugh Jackman for Song Sung Blue and Dwayne Johnson for The Smashing Machine, it's kind of making me question the entire category.  Yeah, I'm griping a little bit because I really don't think that Ethan Hawke's nomination for Blue Moon is better than either performance I saw.  (Again, I really feel like I'm picking on Ethan Hawke, which is something that I don't want to do.)  

Johnson as Mark Kerr is both incredibly endearing and damning at the same time.  Let's put aside that, physically, he might be one of the only people on the planet who can embody someone like Mark Kerr.  He's this goliath of a man who is almost a child internally. (Note:  I also find it bizarre that the real Mark Kerr is in this movie because Kerr doesn't come across as sympathetic a lot of the time.) Johnson seems to understand that, while Kerr's devotion to the sport is his primary drive, he lacks even basic understandings of interpersonal relationships.  He thinks that he's the hero of his own story and that he is the victim of circumstance.  He isn't traditionally a "bad guy".  There are things that should absolutely be condemned for, but he doesn't do anything out of villainy.  If anything, his big push is that he is emotionally immature.  He feeds this toxic and self-sabotaging relationship with Dawn.  But he also is the quintessential "good guy" toxic personality.  He says awful things with a nice guy voice and is shocked when people are hurt by what he does.  I'm not saying that Dawn is off the hook.  Quite the opposite.  Kerr was clearly attracted to someone that he can pin as the root of his problems.  Every time that Mark does something toxic, Dawn will do something more toxic.  It makes him the good guy in every scenario because Dawn demonizes herself.  And Johnson gets that.

There are a couple of crazy things about the fact that Dwayne Johnson took this role, one of which makes me questioning everything that I thought that I knew about Johnson.  I read somewhere (the Internet!  It has to be true!) that Dwayne Johnson doesn't take roles where he loses a fight.  Yet, a lot of this movie is almost a commentary on being obsessed with winning and how stupid that really is.  One of the key character beats is in the first act of this movie.  Mark is being interviewed by a Japanese journalist about what it might mean to lose a fight.  Mark, after we witness him just completely destroy a bunch of fighters in rapid succession, stresses that he can't even intellectualize the question.  Losing --and I do believe that Mark believes this --is so inconceivable.  For the sake of storytelling, coupled with the notion that losing is something that everyone experiences, Mark loses his next match.  Sure, it was because the other guy broke the rules and the match as declared as "no contest."  (I'm pretty sure that means the whole thing was null and void, but what do I know?  I hate sports.) It doesn't matter for Mark.  Mark falls into a deep, self-destructive funk and his life falls apart.  But the insane part is...that's totally Dwayne Johnson.  Heck, there's a part of me that thinks that Dwayne Johnson is really angry for not getting nominated for Best Actor for the Oscars.  Yet, he can tell this story about a guy who crashes out over losing.

One of my complaints about biopics is that they tend to be about the same things over and over, especially when any degree of celebrity is involved.  Usually, people turn to drugs and there's this narrative of how they overcame those drugs to become the best in the world.  That's not this story.  I mean, it is.  Johnson said in an interview that The Smashing Machine was not a fight movie.  I agree.  It's a character movie that is tied to the notion of different kinds of toxic addictions.  Even though Mark starts his career on top, there's never a moment when he's not on drugs.  Sure, he doesn't necessarily come across as a traditional addict in cinema.  He's still charming to most people.  He's got this tiny little voice when asking for prescription narcotics.  But the fact that we never actually met Mark at the beginning when he wasn't addiction to some kind of drug is fascinating.  This isn't the story about how the fame got to his head and he took drugs as part of the lifestyle.  He was a drug addict and happened to be pretty good at beating the living daylights out of people.  Then, he falls off the horse and is really casual about his recovery.  I had to look it up because the movie doesn't really give us a definitive answer on whether or not Mark was honest about his recovery.  Apparently, after the events of the movie, the real Mark got addicted again and was homeless for a while.  But it is an interesting way to look at the notion of addiction.  Maybe it's a little unfair to paint the story of a comeback from addiction when he was still kind of cheating, but that doesn't make for an interesting movie.

I also loved that this wasn't just the story of Mark Kerr.  Using Mark Coleman as a foil to Kerr is such a tropey mislead and I love it.  Coleman is dorky dad.  I don't know what the real Mark Coleman was like.  Heck, I'm even going to go as far as to say that I'm a different dad than Mark Coleman is.  But we have this guy who seems to have some of his priorities in check contrasted against Mark Kerr, who seems to be a well-managed trainwreck.  It's fun.  But the funny thing is, the movie sets up this notion that the two will have to fight.  As much as Kerr claims to love the people he's playing against, he does take their slights quite personally.  The real weird part is that the fight never happens.  Literally, it seems like it is the climax of the film and that fight never happens.  I'm glad that the movie didn't engineer that fight for the sake of an audience.  That would have been a dealbreaker for me.  But the insane thing is that the Safdies kept on playing up the idea that Kerr would fight Coleman and that Kerr might actually really hurt this nice man who takes care of him.   And, as much as the film sells the fact that Mark is not right in the head due to Dawn's suicide, I also feel like he throws the fight.  I know.  This is headcanon.  But he is on the ground after absolutely wrecking this guy and it seems like that is the mentally healthier option.  I don't know.  I like it.

Maybe I'm just a big hypocrite.  But this is one of those movies that absolutely hit with me.  Maybe it's because I knew nothing about Mark Kerr as opposed to a documentary about Freddie Mercury.  It's not amazing, but the performances alone are worth watching.

PG-13 for getting a little bit depressing.  Like, there's a whole drug addiction story going on that gets pretty low.  While tonally this is mostly family friendly, I can't deny that there's some very mild sexuality.  At one point, Mike walks around in his underwear.  Something quite traumatic happens to both characters.  There's also some on-screen trauma that has blood in it.  There's also a character named "Sex Machine."  I guess maybe it isn't all that family friendly.

DIRECTOR: Craig Brewer

In a million years did I think I would really like Song Sung Blue, I would have been shocked.  Yet, here we are, making me question why I like some things and not others.  I know.  Some of the real film nerds are questioning all my credentials.  Again, I get it.  I am almost in a place where I feel like I have to defend myself by sticking true to my guns.  You like what you like.  I happen to like this.  I'll even go as far as to say that it's a pretty darned good movie.  I mean, I've liked things that I'm aware is crap.  This isn't that.  Instead,  Song Sung Blue might be one of the better movies I've seen this year.

I also had the same opinion about Flamin' Hot, so who knows how much goodwill I have to spend.

On the surface, this is a movie that almost shouldn't be a movie.  At least, that's what the first act and the trailers sell to you. This is marketed as a quirky take on the biopic.  Instead of being a story about Neil Diamond, this is a story about impersonators.  (Okay, I refuse to use the terminology that the movie stresses.  From an outside perspective, this is about the world of impersonators.) And for the first hour, it's just a good time.  I didn't think that I would have that much of a good time about some wholesome goobers falling in love and putting on shows.  They get this Big-Fish-in-a-Small-Pond fame and it's cute.  Heck, it's way more romantic than a lot of rom coms I watched, especially if you know about the people that they're based on.  (That is rude on my part, but it's also kind of secretly the charm of the movie.) But then, Act II starts and the whole movie just starts gut punching the entire time.  Like, Mike keeps on trying to get his American Dream as Lightning, but it also makes us question the role of the American Dream the entire time.

I'm going to be the annoying English teacher once again on this blog.  My American Lit class is all about the American Dream.  It wasn't part of the plan initially when I made up the curriculum, but it kind of just played out that every novel we read, somehow, tied into the American Dream.  If the point of the class is to explore how authors explore the American Dream, we have to define it first.  The definition we usually land on at the beginning of the year is usually something around the following:  The American Dream states that any American can achieve anything, regardless of background, as long as they are willing to sacrifice to achieve that dream.  Usually, the greater the dream, the greater the sacrifice.  Mike and Claire --whom I want to refer to as "Lightning and Thunder" because the names are easier to remember --initially have a managable dream.  It's actually silly that the dream balloons the way it does, but that's part of the charm.  Anyway, they have this dream to make money doing a Neil Diamond tribute band.  (I refuse to call it "an experience.") And it seems like the whole thing is without a big sacrifice.  Mike has to betray one of his morals (which I guess isn't a small thing, unless it is to "respect Neil Diamond") to get what he wants.  But if anything, the entire American Dream part of it is filled with perks.  After all, it's Mike's enthusiasm towards this project that causes Claire to kiss him to begin with.

But the second that the two face adversity (which, I have to admit, is not new to these two), that dream is the first thing that is sacrificed.  And if we look at it through the lens of sacrifice and the American Dream, the thing that is stopping Mike from achieving the thing he wants is the fact that he loves his wife so much.  Usually, when we're offered a dream in these stories, the sacrifice is one's own life.  (Ultimately, that happens.)  I suppose in The Great Gatsby, there's a little bit of a muddying of dream v. true love.  But this is a question of Mike pursuing the Neil Diamond Experience (oops, I did it) or sticking with Claire.  The odd thing is that Song Sung Blue almost corrupts the notion of the American Dream.  Mike goes and does karaoke hosting as Neil Diamond, but always acknowledges that it is almost a perversion of the thing he loves, which is "Lightning and Thunder: A Neil Diamond Experience".  It's not something that he has to discover. (If anything, Mike is almost too perfect of a character in the story, which I don't hate in this film.) He knows that he doesn't want to do the Neil Diamond thing without Claire by his side.  This is one of those American Dream stories where you think that the dream is one thing, but the real dream is the thing you have all along.  Yeah, it's one of those.  I don't care if it's played out.  It's done really well here.

I'm in a weird place where I'm accidentally going to have to criticize Kate Hudson and I don't want to.  The reason that I watched Song Sung Blue is because Hudson is up for Best Actress.  And here's the thing: she's great.  While I don't know if I would necessarily say "Best Actress", I also don't want to fight that battle because she really is that good. It's just that...Hugh Jackman is also incredible in this role.  Sure, Kate Hudson's Claire has to go through the drug addiction element of this movie and she pulls that off.  I don't want to be sexist (which is a big red flag to even write), but I feel like this is more Mike's story.  As much as Mike doesn't backslide into the alcoholism that the film teases throughout, this is a story about his internal conflict all the way through the movie.  Mike confesses that he's suicidal because of the way that Claire treats him and you really feel that.  There's a scene that is really messed up where Mike has a heart attack in a hospital.  He asks his stepdaughter to shock him and a lot of it isn't explained why he doesn't just allow a doctor to take care of him.  In that moment, there's this epiphany that I had that made me think 1) he probably can't afford another medical bill on top of Claire's current stay at the hospital and 2) he doesn't want to distract a single doctor away from Claire's emergency procedure happening in the room over.  It's really screwed up that he makes his stepdaughter do this, but also it's a heck of a performance.

But he also probably didn't get the nomination not because he didn't deliver a top notch performance.  He probably didn't get it because there were already five entries in the category and --I hate to say it --Kate Hudson probably just squeaked into her category.  (That being said, I didn't love Ethan Hawke's performance in Blue Moon.)   That's gotta stink because Jackman kind of crushes in a movie that most of the world probably isn't going to see.  Yet, it's one of those movies that makes you kind of get excited about life.  I keep wanting to tell people that not everything is about money.  Sometimes, we do things because they make us feel alive.  What Song Sung Blue does incredibly well is tease a silly concept and makes us remember that love and passion is always going to be more imporant than selling your soul.  The reminder that musicians are "broke as a joke" doesn't pull away from the notion that Mike and Claire should keep doing this act, as silly as it might seem to the rest of us.  And I don't care if the story over-dramatized the real events.  I know that Mike didn't get the heart attack and head injury the day of the big show where he was going to meet the real Neil Diamond.  But for the sake of storytelling, that's a fantastic third act.  

And I love that Claire is still in that world.  She is someone who found her exact role in this life and loved it.  I know that so much has been taken away from her, but that story seems like she would do it all over again in a heartbeat.  It's one of those genuine love stories that is about mutual love and respect.  Maybe the real Mike and Claire weren't that great, but I'd like to think that maybe they were.

PG mainly because I don't know if really young ones would like this movie.  This is a movie that deals with heavy themes without anything that is outright offensive.  There are themes of mortality, including the protagonist almost dying from slightly negligent parenting.  It gets a little anxiety inducing at times.  There are also themes of racial tension, mostly dealing with post-war fallout.  Also, the protagonist thinks she's God. Still, it is PG and appropriately so.

DIRECTORS: Liane-Cho Han Jin Kuang and Mailys Vallade

Oh man, I'm going to have to deal with a little bit of sacrilege here.  We all know that KPop Demon Hunters is going to win.  It's an incredible movie that changed the way we thought about animation and how we consume streaming content.  We all learned a little bit about the studio system at the same time.  And, maybe I'm just projecting my limited worldview on this film, but I hadn't even heard of Little Amelie before really watching it.  But as good as KPop Demon Hunters is, golly, Little Amelie might be better.

It takes a minute to start to like it.  I mean, this movie is simply visually gorgeous from minute one.  But I take more than a pretty landscape or dynamic animation styles to get sold on a film.  Little Amelie dares you to like it in its first moments.  It's heady as heck.  It takes more than a minute to figure out the narrator's perspective on the whole event.  Even though, apparently, this movie is based on an autobiography, the film itself seems impossible.  The narrator speaks about herself in third person, but refers to herself as God.  Like, I don't know how that's going to land in the fly-over states.  (Note: I'm aware this is a French film.  If I knew that it was based on an autobiography, I certainly hoped that I would realize that this is not an American production.) A lot of it because the protagonist so odd.  I almost thought that the movie might even border on fantasy because, even though we witness Amelie's birth and growing up, none of it seems possible.  

I had a sitdown about writing when it came to studying memoirs with someone who had her memoir published.  (I just realized that I lead a charmed life.) I always assumed that autobiographies and memoirs were written almost with clarity first and foremost.  That's apparently not at all true.  If anything, a lot of the great memoirs out there frame the real world from a unique perspective.  It's not that they're lying or anything.  It's just that authors try balancing a tonal point-of-view while relating something that is fundamental to the author's life.  It's entertaining while creating an emotional resonance with something that seems untouchable.  It's not like Little Amelie is trying to trick its audience.  Instead, Amelie tells the story from her perspective.  She had an abnormal childhood and looked at the world differently than we do.  Yes, it's confusing for the viewer because we're getting conflicting information.  One of the first lines of the movie is a doctor informing Daniele that her daughter would be a vegetable.  When Amelie sits placid for two years without moving or speaking, it's in line with what the doctor told Daniele.  So when Amelie starts not only walking, but speaking in full complex sentences, that godhood seems to make sense in a way that makes us question whether this is an autobiography or fantasy.

I keep making this same stupid comparison, so please forgive me.  I really like when stories take the To Kill a Mockingbird format of storytelling.  There's something so innocent about all of it.  What I'm talking about is the fact that there is an adult narrator focusing on childhood.  But the story isn't necessarily about childhood.  In fact, it is about something quite deep and heavy.  But instead of making the movie about the deep and heavy thing, which often comes across as a sledgehammer of themes, the audience appreciates a sense of dramatic irony seeing adult themes through a child's eyes.  I can't diagnose Amelie.  There's something off about her.  As an avatar, she's actually hard to relate to because she is special.  Her unique insight into the world is fun to watch.  But there are a lot of moments that she's just a kid and that a lot of it can be chalked up to the universal growing up experience.  However, as much as this is about Amelie's childhood, this is a story of belonging in a place where you aren't supposed to belong, coupled with a heavy dose of forgiving something that really doesn't need to be forgiven.

As much as we bond with Amelie, this is more of a story of Nishio-san and Kashima-san and how different generations process trauma differently.  The easy answer to how Nishio-san and Kashima-san process the war could be written up to the fact that Kashima-san was older and lost people that she held onto differently.  It would be easy to say that Kashima-san took more trauma during the war.  Instead, I don' think that the movie lets Kashima-san off the hook so easily.  There's a talk where Nishio-san talks about being buried alive.  Because Amelie is so intense (I said I wouldn't diagnose her, but I can't ignore that there's something seemingly neurodivergent about her), Nishio-san must relive that moment of being buried and it is traumatizing.  But because Nishio-san was always open to forgiveness, that trauma comes across as oddly healing for her.  Instead, Kashima-san almost becomes a straight up villain in this piece that is oddly grounded for as weird as the movie gets.  When Amelie almost drowns for the second time (a situation that probably isn't normal, Mom and Dad!), she sees Kashima-san.  While it is Kashima-san that saves her, the reality that she has been presented is that Kashima-san is willing to let a gaijin child die because foreigners --as a collective unit --caused the death of her loved ones.  It's a heavy idea and it's much more interesting through the eyes of a child.

My wife kept getting stressed out by it because the parents were so hands off as parents.  If there is one thing to be said about Amelie, it's that she bonds with people who aren't her parents or her siblings.  Sure, there's an important moment where she acknowledges that Andre is her sibling.  But to say that she bonded with anyone biologically related to her is a fabrication.  Still, I wonder what the film is trying to imply about found family.  It's not that I don't understand stories where children find more love from a nanny than a biological parent.   It's not like I watch Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music and just go cross-eyed.  But the relationships that Amelie fosters in this movie are more about being treated as an equal, which is odd because Amelie still desires incredibly childish things.  It's just that the way that they speak to each other almost comes across as peers.  It's not just with Nishio-san.  The same holds true for her grandmother, who is her first understanding of death in the film.  If I keep coming back to To Kill a Mockingbird, that's probably what makes Scout so close to Atticus.  These are adult figures that understand that children have an innate need to be respected.  I question my role as a father with my children.  I'd like to think that I'm pulling this card with them.  But I also sometimes understand that sometimes that hugging these kids and getting them bowls of cereal is an act of love as powerful as showing a child a book of demons.  (I know that they aren't demons.  They just look demonic.) 

Golly, I cannot stress how beautiful this movie was.  Just to look at it, it becomes clear how next-level the animation is.  And it's a small story that hits hard.  I do love how Ghibli Kids picked this up for distribution because that is very on brand.  

Rated R and exclusively for dialogue.  There's suggestive dialogue.  There are some sexual encounter stories.  Nothing too vulgar, but not exactly clean either.  This is more along the lines of swearing and drinking over the course of a moderately short film compared to some of the faire we receieved with other Oscar nominations.  There's also implications of adultery.  Also, a character dies from alcoholism. 

DIRECTOR:  Richard Linklater

Once I knew that it was Richard Linklater, everything made sense.

I have mixed feelings about Linklater.  There are times where I think that he is sublime.  Then there are times where he seems to handicap himself under the guise of the quintessential indie director.  It's not that I ever dislike Linklater.  It's just that these movies tend to be more intellectual than vulnerable.  That might be a little unfair.  He cut his teeth on this kind of filmmaking and he's always been embraced by it.  I don't deny that part of me finds this kind of filmmaking charming.  For example, I mostly like the Before trilogy.  There's something really punk rock about the whole thing.  But do I have fun with these movies?  I can't say that I really do.  

I'm also going to confess something that I find to be quite rude of me.  I don't love Ethan Hawke.  I don't hate Ethan Hawke, by any stretch of the imagination.  This is extremely hurtful and i don't want to be hurtful, but I always look at Ethan Hawke and am always aware that he is acting.  I show this video on Stanislavski and the Method to my performing arts students.   There's a clip from Before Sunset where Ethan Hawke is going into one of his longer monologues.  And it's very good.  But Hawke's performances rarely feel lived in.  If anything, they feel quite performative.  It's funny because the video clearly disagrees with me.  

So when I found out that Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke were going to reunite for a film where Hawke is going to spend the majority of the film monologuing, I wasn't surprised by what I saw.  The funny thing is that I found this movie more annoying before I knew that Richard Linklater directed it.  My first line is no lie.  There's something comforting knowing that Richard Linklater is pulling this card.  Blue Moon, as a whole, feels like a play.  Heck, it feels more like a play than the other Linklater films that use the same format.  A lot of that comes from the fact that this is a bottle story.  Lorenz Hart, one of Richard Rodgers's collaborators, is wildly jealous of Oscar Hammerstein and the duo's work on Oklahoma!  As he laments this travesty, it becomes quickly clear that this is a sad man looking down the barrel of a career closing.  He's forced to deal with his own obscelecence and that calls for an embrace of his own alcoholism.  

To be fair, Oklahoma! does kind of suck.  I know that's not supposed to be my take on this film.  We're supposed to immediately understand that Hart is just a sad, small man losing his time in the sun and that's completely communicated throughout the film.  But from my perspective, I was like, "Yup.  This is a dumb musical."  I know that I'm in the minority who hate this play.  It's one of those classics that I'll never really get behind.   But I also don't like Rodgers and Hammerstein, so there's that.  

The point of the whole thing is that we get a look into the sad life of one of history's forgotten.  I've been embracing this headcanon that even classics disappear.   Generations keep removing more and more things that were once considered sacred.  With the case of Hart, it's a blessing that his works still are played.  But the name of Lorenz Hart is something that has slipped through the cracks for me, someone who prides himself on being pop culture literate.  (To Hart's defense, I always considered music to be my weakest obsession.) 

Ethan Hawke's Hart is meant to be obnoxious.  I mentioned that I don't necessarily love Ethan Hawke's acting and I'm going to say something paradoxical and a little bit mean.  Hawke is up for Best Actor this year for this performance and I kind of get why.  I think that this is the best thing that Ethan Hawke has ever done.  The part that doesn't mean to be catty is that it isn't the most impressive thing ever.  Say what you will about Hawke's Hart, it is borderline line just a gay stereotype.  The film establishes that Lorenz Hart wasn't so much homosexual as much as he was open to any relationship.  The term that was used in the film sounded dated, so he may be pansexual or he might be something else.  But the thing that I'm concerned about is that we've seen this archetype before.  I don't know how Lorenz Hart talked in real life.  For all I know, Hawke's performance is dead-on perfect.  For all I know, Hawke captured every mannerism available.  But when it comes to looking for a Best Actor performance, I don't know if he did anything that difficult.  I honestly feel like I could take the script and deliver a similar performance if it didn't feel so regressive.

I don't know if I've been completely explicit on how I didn't hate this.  My wife, she hated this.  I think she mentioned that this might be one of her least favorite movies that she's watched for the Oscars.  I don't think that.  We're both anti-biopic when it comes to Oscar season.  There are too many and they tend to tread the same ground in an attempt to gain accolades.  But on the grand scope of biopics, this is the kind of biopic that I kind of like.  I don't like when we get a rehash of a celebrity's whole life.  Those stories tend to get repetitive.  Instead, I like when a biopic highlights an important (or, in this case, average) day for the person and we glean what we can by how they react to these circumstances.  With Blue Moon, I get that the premiere of Oklahoma! might be important for Richard Rodgers.  But for Lorenz Hart, this is a day that probably mirrors a fairly regular event for Hart.  Yeah, Rodgers and Hammerstein's big success probably hits harder than some things, but the movie implies that Hart is this catty about most things.  That opening to his character, where he and Eddie discuss the best and worst parts about Casablanca kind of gives us insight into how Hart views the world.

Casablanca is a movie he adores.  The amount of passion that he speaks about this film is telling.  But he can't even really enjoy the film.  Even something that he adores, he can't help but see that he wasn't somehow involved in it.  His critique is how he would have altered lines to make it suit more of his tastes.  But here's the thing about Casablanca.  Lots of people have criticized it.  Some would even argue that it doesn't really deserve its prestigious reputation.  But the amount of nitpickiness that Hart throws into a movie that doesn't really harm the film in any way is more damning of Hart's own personality than it is of the film itself.  The faults that he has with the film are innocuous.  If anything, some of those lines are beloved.  That's almost the point of it all.  As much as I also hate Oklahoma!, it is a beloved piece of work.  While Hart sees his criticism as proof of his elite sensibilities, it's more a commentary that there's something human in art that he is missing.  Yeah, I probably have more in common with Hart than I care to admit.  But the fact that Hart only sees Oklahoma! as something that morons can appreciate makes him a bit of a monster.  Add to that is the notion that he lies about it so he can get ahead.  The movie is him groveling to this man whom he's insulting for the majority of the film behind his back.

This movie was inspired by the letters that Hart sent to Elizabeth Weiland, who is played by Margaret Qualley.  I get the vibe that this whole relationship was added to make Hart moderately sympathetic.  We get, from moment one, that she's never into him.  Really, the narrative is more along the line is about whether she even considers him a friend or is just using him for social promotion.  It's a bit depressing, which I always appreciate.  But I don't know if it is a key component to the story.  Sure, the film is based on those letters.  But his relationship with Weiland kind of feels like an afterthought to the film.  Maybe we get a little something in terms of character because, as observant as Hart is about the minutiae of art, he can't apply that critical analysis to his own life.  He knows when lines ring false, but he can't even see that this gorgeous young woman is using him for advancement.  It's a bummer and I wish it was more woven into the main story more.  But that also might be the truth of Lorenz Hart.

I just don't see the overall importance of it all.  That's so unfair on my part because not every movie needs to be important.  Instead, I can't help but feel like I watched something clever instead of genius.  The "why" of it all seems so small that I'm left a little disappointed.  I'm glad I watched it.  I think it's good.  I just don't really see the greatness of it all.

Rated R and justifiably so.  The most obvious read of this is how bleak the movie gets.  I know that shouldn't be a reason that a movie is rated R, but if you watch it, you'd kind of get where I'm going with this.  This movie is meant to upset you to the core.  It's a little bit of a torture film, only the torture is almost all emotional.  There's a lot of drinking and drug use in the film.  The characters are almost constantly swearing.  Someone gets a compound fracture and it shows.  It's a lot all the way through.

DIRECTOR:  Mary Bronstein

I'm writing against the clock.  I meant to get a lot written last week, but Weebly died and now I'm stuck playing a lot of catchup.  I have three movies to write about and one hour to do it.  I am quite aware that this is an impossible task. But if I can get this blog out there, at least I won't feel bad about myself.

Most of the time, when I watch movies where the only reason that I'm watching the movie is for a performance, I'm usually confused why the film wasn't nominated as well.  This one I kind of get.  Rose Byrne absolutely destroys in this piece.  Honestly, tour de force acting performance.  Considering that Byrne traditionally has comedic chops involved in her better performances, watching her know exactly how much to push for the camera is incredible.  This is a performance that is sadistically comedic.  There are moments when you laugh, but not because something is traditionally funny.  It's almost shocking how rough things go for Linda.  A lot of that comes from a woman dealing with burnout making incredibly poor choices.  But also, the world is so unfair to her that it almost becomes comic, which is a real dark laugh to have by the way.  I think we're all aware that we shouldn't be laughing at a mother taking care of a daughter who is dying of an eating disorder.  But A24 keeps piling on the crap all the time and, at one point, you find yourself laughing rather than crying.  And a lot of that actual artistic satisfaction comes from Byrne herself.  I get her nom and why the movie wasn't nominated for anything else besides this point.

It's not like the movie is full-on bad.  I am mostly glad that I watched it.  To quote Doctor Who, "Sad is happy for deep people."  I don't necessarily hate sad things.  If anything, I've been accused of the opposite.  I often find myself crapping on things that are too joyful because I want to feel a healthy dose of misery when I absorb entertainment.  (Oddly enough, I'm really enjoying Song Sung Blue, so the world is all topsy-turvy right now.)   It's just that A24 tends to get in its own way more and more.  I've been kind of feeling this for a lot of the A24 entries.  I don't know if there's a big voice at A24 who keeps putting the same motifs into each entry that it releases.  But someone there is really embracing a sense of existential dread and wants to make the visuals match that sense of impending doom.  I don't think I need a better example of something being aggressively A24 like the hole in Linda's ceiling that keeps drawing her back.  Golly, it almost feels like Neon is making fun of A24 with that hole in the ceiling.  

But here's me, trying to find a justification for all of the hole stuff.  The hole thing would be catastrophic for any family.  It's a violation of a safe space.  The movie has to throw these characters without a community into a space that is incredibly toxic for them.  The hole represents what is keeping them from a sense of normality.   (I oddly don't actually believe this analysis because it seems like Linda has been self-sabotaging from moment one.) But the thing about the hole is that it is a different problem than what she has with her daughter.  Her daughter is  a problem that is sucking up all of Linda's investment.  Everything that she does is an attempt to give her daughter a normal life, but that eating disorder doesn't allow her to have that normal life.  The hole, as much as it sucks, is a problem that can be solved.  It can be solved as long as you are able to give it proper focus and attention.  Yeah, when Linda looks into that hole, she sees the overwhelming scope of the universe.  It's a hole apparently built on lies (an idea that I'm still struggling to wrap my head around).   It hurts people like Jamie, who underestimate how dangerous the hole really is.  But all of this reading feels more like an A24 addition.  It's something ominous and normal.  I'm sure that it messes with people who have that phobia of holes.  Honestly, the visual associations with the hole in the ceiling are cool, but I feel like I've seen this before in A24 films.  Yeah, there's a glorious misery that comes when Charles gets the hole fixed because he's a man and men only listen to other men.  But it's something that is a bit forced in a sotry that may or may not need it.  (Basically, I'm accidentally arguing whether or not this film needs to be as artsy as it is.) 

What's really frustrating about this movie is the scope of performance quality.  As I stated, Rose Byrne is divine in this movie.  No notes.  Crushes it.  I'm also going to give points to Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky.  Both of them are incredible performers.  The thing that drove me nuts (and I feel like a real heel for saying this) is the daughter and Christian Slater.  I'm mostly talking about the voices.  One of the slightly gimmicky things about If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is that Linda's family is rarely shown on screen.  I think a lot of that has to do with creating a sense of isolation about this woman.  Also, we want this story to be about Linda and not about her daughter, so showing Linda's investment in this treatment is paramount.  But maybe it's the VO element of it all, but these characters are frustrating.  Let me be clear, I think that annoyance is built into the film.  We're supposed to be annoyed with Linda's daughter because Linda is annoyed with her own daughter.  That madness that is building up comes from the shrillness of her daughter constantly asking for more help and making poor choices.  If we spent the movie feeling sympathy for this character, the film wouldn't make a lot of sense.  

But the voices kept on pulling me out, especially considering that Byrne's performance is so grounded.  Like, she was having appropriate reactions to just the most over-the-top prompts.  Her child was shrill.  Charles was abusive and lacked even the most rudimentary elements of sympathy.  Maybe this is all because we absorb all of these characters through the filter of Linda, who is a walking case of burnout.  The problem is that, when you are watching the movie, you are also getting stressed out.  There becomes a point where this is all un-fun.  Yeah, you are laughing, but you are only combatting any vulnerability because you can only take so much bleakness before it has no impact.

My bigger question is "Why is everyone so mean to Linda?"  I get it.  Linda probably isn't the easiest person to get along with.  She is a husk of a human being after going through all this stuff.  (I just remembered the hamster stuff.) Again, I keep repeating myself (thus am angry at this blog entry), but we're seeing things through Linda's eyes.  I have to guess that she's an unreliable narrator because I refuse to believe that everyone is as aggressive with her as the film projects.  I'm actually surprised that she isn't more frustrated with everyone treating her as if she's fragile.  But no one treats her at all nicely.  Let's use her daughter's doctor as an example.  Dr. Spring is hostile with her.  Maybe she's using her big voice to snap Linda out of whatever haze she's in.  Maybe she needs Linda to step up and make better choices.  I'm sure that's part of being a medical professional.  It might not be all rainbows and calm words.  But it feels like Dr. Spring isn't ready for anything that Linda is throwing down.  There's a part where Linda  finally makes one of the group therapy sessions that Dr. Spring has been pushing for the bulk of the film.  Instead of ever positively reinforcing Linda for making the attempt, Spring feels flummoxed by Linda's combativeness.  If anything, as challenging as Linda is, what Linda attacks Spring with is pretty tee-ball worthy stuff.  She says that she does feel guilty for what happened to her daughter and supposes that the other women in the room also feel that way.  Why isn't Spring ready for that?  Instead, it makes it look like Linda is the one who is out of line when she's dealing with her daughter's deteriorating health.  

This attitude is consistent for almost every NPC in the story.  I love Conan's therapist character, but he's all over the place when it comes to reacting to Linda's needs.  That's a script thing, not a performance thing.  The only character that is even remotely a character with layers is Jamie, who tries his best to help a woman who is spiraling.  Yeah, he sucks at it because he has no investment in Linda.  But at least we see this character reacting to a woman hitting bottom with a modicum of compassion. Sure, that compassion involves Jamie trying to get her to buy drugs.  But as much as he's hustling her, he does seem to feel for her situation.  These are all bleak characters and it gets to be a bit much.

I want to like this movie so much more. I love elements of the movie a lot.  But good golly is A24 once again didn't get into their own way.  There's an incredible story and an incredible character study here.  But gut punch after gut punch only exhausts, not makes us sympathize.

Unrated, but this is as tame of a film as you can imagine.  It's a sweet story about retirees who all share a history of music.  If you are being incredibly crass --and I beg of you to examine yourself --one of the outfits that one of the subjects of the documentary wears is more revealing than she's aware of.  There's no sexual content in this and could be viewed by any audience.  At most, there is discussion about the role of mortality.

DIRECTOR: Yvonne Russo

Oh man, if I wasn't exhausted, this would be one of the cheeriest blogs I've had in a while.  I mean, this is one of those weird writing assignments that I'm doing because it's up for Best Song.  It's not going to win.  Absolutely "Golden" is going to win.  But, once in a blue moon, one of the Best Song category movies actually ends up being a decent movie.  I understand why it didn't make "Best Documentary Feature", mainly because it's more adorable than impressive.  But sometimes an adorable movie needs to be enjoyed and if it takes a "Best Song" nomination to get eyes on this movie, then who really cares?

Maybe there are only so many themes that we can talk about.  Perhaps because I'm now middle-aged that stories about how people confront the end tend to make their way into my view.  (That sentence got away from me.) I don't want to make a blanket statement and say that Viva Verdi! is the movie that redefined the aging doc.  If anything, Viva Verdi! is super safe and by the book, if I was really breaking the movie down. But Yvonne Russo made something that somehow hits me harder than a lot of the other movies that try to take on the same concept.  Part of it comes from the fact that the English teacher side of me has been aggressively defining my day-to-day.  I've been really riding the "Embrace your Passions" attitudes for the past few years.  Since Covid, I've been reading a ton more.  This blog is an attempt to watch everything in the hopes that I live a fuller life.  I know.  Some people climb Everest.  I write a blog about art.  But there is something truly beautiful about the artist and Viva Verdi! kind of captures not only kindred spirits, but people who pulled off my dream.

I know.  I shouldn't be so jazzed to try to get into a retirement home at my age.  I just think that the folks as Casa Verdi kind of changed the tone on what it means to grow old.  Yes, there are people in this movie who are very sad.  Aging has to bring with it an exhaustion about the end.  Lord knows that I'm already feeling that.  But this is potentially the most upbeat story of people facing their twilight years that I've seen outside of fiction.  I'm not exactly making a huge leap to say that the thing that is coloring such happiness is the fact that these are artists who continue to do the thing that motivated them their entire lives: create art.

My mom is the age of a lot of the people in this movie.  (I think my mom looks younger than a lot of the folks in Casa Verdi, but that's a different story.)   I worry about her a lot.  She's a retired widow and I don't really see her find a lot of purpose in the day-to-day.  Golly, I hope that this doesn't get back to her, but there seems to be a desperation that I never saw in her for some kind of purpose.  I don't know if I can give her that purpose.  She was a nurse for her entire life.  When you retire from nursing, you don't really continue doing anything medical --outside of being on the receiving end of medical procedures.  The residents at Casa Verdi, however, while physically looking older, don't seem to have that existential angst that my mom has.  These are people who have held onto these gifts that I thought would start fading given their respective ages.  In a million years, I wouldn't have thought that 90-year-old ladies could still be professional opera singers.  I used to listen to these Doctor Who audios done by the original cast members from the '60s.  They sound old.  But in the case of these performers, because they have taken such great care of their instruments, they don't really seem to miss a beat.

​Okay, they maybe miss a beat here-and-there. (Note: Weebly went down and lost a bunch of my writing at this point.  I'm not sure what is going to be repetitive and what isn't.  Also, because of the website being down, I now have the worst backlog I've had in a long time.  Yay.)   There's a heartbreaking moment when an opera singer of advanced years is crushing it.  She's hitting these notes that you wouldn't think a 90-year-old could hit and, at the climax of the piece, her voice gives out.  This was a central plot point of KPop Demon Hunters, so this isn't exactly something unrealistic.  I just thought that all voices kind of faded over time.  I listen to these Doctor Who audio plays, performed by the original cast members in a lot of cases.  Doctor Who started in 1963, and there are still actors playing the same roles.  But their voices have changed over time.  Part of the ask is that the audience has to understand that these people have aged with time as well.  Still, while watching Viva Verdi!, you wonder what makes a professional singer able to hold onto that quality of voice that should have gone with the time.

That end swept the rug from out under me.  I know that this was made in 2024, but the realisation that this movie was made a few years before it premiered was heartbreaking.  If this is a study of mortality

Rated PG-13, but it slightly (but only slightly) pushes that limit.  The big thing is that there is an f-bomb in the movie.  But if I was really being sensitive to things that my kids shouldn't watch, I'd want to include the paradoxical dangerous, near-death moments coupled with the fact that these characters just tend to walk away from events that absolutely should have killed them.  Also, there is a scene where two characters sleep with each other.  That scene is pretty tame, but it still is in the movie.

DIRECTOR:  Joseph Kosinski

Okay, there are some downsides to expanding the Best Picture category to ten films.  When they first made the ten films thing, I got excited.  It opened the door to nominations that might have been a little riskier.  But F1 might be the example of a movie that almost makes no sense as a Best Picture nomination, not because it's bad, but because it is possible the most average movie that I've ever seen.

Like, I could almost see F1 get nominated MAYBE for cinematography.  It's not a poorly made movie by any stretch of the imagination.  These cars are filmed beautifully, but that's not an excuse to call this a Best Picture. This is a movie that seems like a summer blockbuster.  Now, this is me arguing against myself.  I've been saying for a while that the summer blockbuster has been snubbed by the Academy.  But I'm looking at 2025 in isolation.  This has been a year with some incredible movies.  I was a big fan of some of the movies that came out in 2025, most notably Superman.  Superman was one of my favorite movies of the past few years, especially when it came to genre storytelling.  But here's the rub:  I wouldn't be throwing a stink about Superman getting snubbed if it wasn't for something like F1.

I get Superman not getting nominated.  I don't agree with that course of action, but I at least get it.  The Academy has been notorious for kind of being snobbish towards fun movies.  I actually find how much the Oscars embraced The Lord of the Rings shocking.  Those are incredibly quality films that changed the landscape of visual storytelling, but they were still incredibly fun.  F1 is fun.  It's not the most fun.  But it's a movie that is trying to be fun.  But it also kind of lacks any kind of deep quality.  I knew what movie I was seeing before I saw it.  Honestly, I looked at the poster, guessed what the movie was going to be, and was mostly right throughout.  Now, there's this thing in my film class talking about the joys of meeting expectations and the joys of defying expectations.  Sometimes people want what they want.  But when I think of Best Pictures at the Oscars, I want something more than "predictable fun".  Continue making movies like F1.  I don't care.  As you see, I eventually get around to them.  (Although, to be self-critical, I might have only watched this movie because it got the Oscar nom.) It's just that I don't see what all of the hullabaloo is about.

One of the most bananas things about F1 is that it really expects you to shut your brain off to jargon.  I've always been (no pun intended) cold towards John LeCarre stuff.  He's the spy guy who always keeps his spy stories jargon heavy.  It's meant to give the film a sense of authenticity.  Now, I'm not saying that stories shouldn't be deeply accurate.  But there are tricks to welcome a new audience into these stories.  Usually, when movies are throwing around racing jargon, there's some guy on the side asking "What is going on?" and the film will have the good graces to explain that, using that character as an avatar for the audience.  I mean, there are definitely moments where jargon is able to be deduced through context.  I found out that warm tires are better than cold tires and that milliseconds and fractions of seconds are incredibly important when it comes to racing.  But I have no idea what "dirty air" means.  I have no idea what "C for combat" means.  I got the "C for chaos" thing does.  "C for chaos" explained itself pretty quick.  Sonny would mess up the track by sacrificing his own car so that JP could get ahead.  Okay, that makes sense.  The problem with the "C for combat" element was that it looked like every other racing thing in the movie.  I didn't really see how building the car for "combat" meant anything besides the fact that it was an extremely fragile car.  

The more I think about the movie, the more low-key bothered I am by the artificial tension between Sonny and JP.  I mean, it's the core of any buddy duo.  There has to be something internal that is stopping you from getting your external goal.  We knew that this was going to be a rookie versus old-timer story.  It's right there on the screen.  (It's also weird that Brad Pitt is embracing the "old guy" trope, but also becoming this generation's Robert Redford.) Okay, there's the narrative that JP hates losing the center of attention because he's a big fish in a small pond.  But JP starts trusting Sonny and Sonny really does have his best interest at heart.  Obviously, part of the narrative is that JP is incredibly immature and starving for attention, so he causes his own downfall.  But in an attempt to make it look like these are two stubborn idiots on equal footing, it puts a lot of the blame on Sonny.  I never really understood that.  I'm talking about the accident in the rain.  The first act of the movie shows Sonny being bad at this.  I get it.  It's "I'm not great, but I'll get better by the end."  But Sonny's internal conflict isn't how good a driver he is.  His internal conflict is the fact that he can't work with a partner.  So the message that is hammered his way through the first act or so is that he needs to put his teammate's needs in front of his own.

And he does it.  That entire race that leads to JP's accident is Sonny doing the thing that people have been giving him crap about the entire time.  But the movie shifts responsibility to Sonny.  JP's mom blames Sonny for the accident.  Everyone seems to blame Sonny for the accident.  I know that it's a sign that he's repeating the past, but that's not what the story told us up to that point.  Sonny is punished for doing the right thing and makes him unlearn his lesson for the sake of stalling the picture.  From there, the movie gives JP a lot of little devils that hang out on JP's shoulders.  Everyone is planting the seed in JP's ear that Sonny is trying to take his place and I get all that.  It just feels like the first third of the movie would have actually been way more powerful if that artificial tension wasn't there.  Imagine if the movie started off with JP mad at his racing team for constantly letting him down.  In comes this legend who is trying to figure out how to do this again.  And the two trust each other, like they do in the final act of this movie.  Then, Sonny gets a bit too enthusiastic and repeats the mistake of his past, causing JP to crash.  That moment, when all of those selfish members of JP's entourage start planting ideas in JP's head?  That's the internal conflict.  That's far more interesting to me.  I don't need the second act to simply repeat the first act's beats.

Honestly, the whole thing feels a little empty to me. I wonder if I would be so let down if I wasn't watching it as an Oscar condender.  But I hear that this movie is going to be sequelized because it made so much money.  There's something completely vapid about that attitude.  The story is told.  If this is the story of a man's second chance to undo the past, why would I need another story?  The guy won.  And if I'm so prescient about what the first movie was about, I can already tell you what the second movie might be about.  Theories!  1) JP is winning race hand-over-foot.  When he starts losing his way or his love for racing, he turns to Sonny to remind him that it's all about the basics of racing.  2) JP takes a rookie under his wing, but lacks that spark in motivating or bonding with this racer.  He brings Sonny in to get another look at this kid.  3) Sonny has chased every race available and finds himself lost, unable to deal with himself.  JP has to trade places with him to remind himself what racing is all about.  See?  These things write themselves. I want more than this.  This was as formulaic as you can get.

Unrated, but it would be R-rated for the f-word.  Man alive, does Diane Warren find cursing to be fun.  I'm going to talk about this a lot, but most of the documentary would probably be considered PG if Diane Warren didn't make her entire personality about being just a little bit vulgar.  There are some heavy issues late in the film involving sexual abuse that should also be considered, but much of the questionable material comes from Diane Warren's comfort with her middle finger.

DIRECTOR:  Bess Kargman

Oh man, I'm not going to be the hero of this blog.  I want to be.  I want to be on the right stuff on everything, guys.  But, honestly?  It is really hard for me to be pro-Diane Warren.  She's not a monster or anything.  If anything, she's quite sympathetic.  (Okay, she's a little sympathetic.)  But Diane Warren might be the poster child for Hollywood being completely disconnected from your average American.

I don't think I like Diane Warren as a person.  Here's me immediately backpedaling.  The movie says that Warren was diagnosed as being on the spectrum.  She said that she was diagnosed as Asperger's, which I don't think is a formal diagnosis anymore.  I have to take her quirks as something that might be beyond her control and something that should be celebrated.  But one thing that drove me absolutely crazy the entire movie is the fact that every photo of her is with her middle finger up.  It's not that I'm against people who are crass or even crassness in itself.  It's that she has basically defined herself by how counter-culture she is by picking the safest way of manifesting that counter-culture attitude.  The fact that her offices and her home are covered in things that she has purchased reminding others that she's "not like other ladies" has an irony that is somewhat lost on her.  All of that stuff exists because these attitudes replace actual personalities.  Everyone's entire take on Diane Warren seems to be that she's a little bit of a rebel.  But Warren, from my perspective, seems to be almost predictable in her behavior.

Also, it is really hard for most of America to feel bad for Diane Warren not getting an Academy Award.  It's part of the narrative of the documentary, but I honestly could not care less that Diane Warren didn't have an Oscar.  Like, there's a lot of footage in this documentary of Diane and her friends watching with baited breath to see her have to lose yet another Academy Award.  But in those announcements, I'm listening to who won the Academy Award against what song she had offered and I kept on thinking, "Yeah, the better song won."  It's not that Warren hasn't had bangers that maybe should have won.  The Aerosmith song from Armageddon probably had a bit of a shot to win.  

The insane thing is that this whole documentary almost feels like an awards push for Warren to win an Academy Award for the song in this movie.  It's actually really weird that "Dear Me" is up for an Academy Award this year because that song is...not great?  I know.  Music is incredibly subjective.  Most power ballads don't really move me.  I'm not saying that Diane Warren isn't incredibly talented.  I'm not even saying that some of those songs aren't absolutel bangers.  She has an insane back catalogue of music.  Like, hit after hit after hit.  But I do want to stress how people talk about how Oscars work.  Remember when Leo got the Oscar for The Revenant?  Like, The Revenant was fine.  I enjoyed it.  But we also knew that Leo got it because it was due.  This is a movie that is almost entirely about how Diane Warren deserves an Academy Award not for her current work, but for stuff that she lost out to twenty years ago.  We all know "Golden" is going to get it and Diane Warren will be disappointed, despite getting an honorary Oscar lifetime achievement award.  

The funny thing about me being so cynical about this documentary is that it actually has a beautiful message...if it wasn't for the way that Diane Warren lived.  Warren's story is kind of beautifully painful.  I wish she didn't suffer the things that she did.  But from an optimist's perspective, this is one of those Little Engine that Could stories.  She was raised in a house where her mother was unfeeling and adamant that Diane had to be a teacher or a secretary.  She got terrible grades and had (and I'm really trying to downplay this moment) unfortunate looks.  She wasn't interested in boys or girls.  She just wanted to play her guitar and make songs all of the time.  With the support of an open-minded father, she was able to get her music heard by the right people at the right time.  And when she got her break, she kept grinding out hit after hit, not because she was getting paid astronomical amounts of money, but because she loved writing music that much.  This should be the story that I'm recommending to everyone.  After all, I tend to not shut up about the role that art should play in our society.

And I do like that a lot of these songs have to do with Warren's life.  I mean, I suppose that I'm still wrapping my head around the notion that Warren basically led a celibate life and wrote song-after-song about the affairs of the heart.  The movie does address Warren's sexuality, having her specifically say, "I'm straight."  The weird part is that it never brings up the notion of asexuality.  I don't want to imbue her with that label.  If she isn't, she isn't.  But the movie kind of treats asexuality as a non-option.  It seems like there's actually a lot more going on with this woman than what the documentary really presents and I kind of want to know more about this.

But maybe that's me just being frustrated with the documentary.  I suppose my big annoyance with the film is that it has a lot of the same problems that fan documentaries have.  Warren is so focused on her work and on her cat.  I don't know that there's really a full-length documentary there to unpack.  The big reveal is the reveal that happens in the first moments of the film:  Diane Warren is the name behind most of the biggest songs of the 20th and 21st Centuries.  That's really cool. But we don't really get anything too damning on her.  Instead, I'm now placing a lot of stock on what they aren't showing me.  While Warren spends a lot of money taking care of animals (a valid bit of philanthropy), I'm kind of amazed that she doesn't have more investment in changing things for people who are actually struggling.  Some of that probably comes with her place on the spectrum.  A running theme is that she finds more companionship with pets than she does with people.  But she does have people in her life that don't really feel like friends so much as they are assistants.  She seems so far removed from the plight of the common man that it makes me wonder who she is.  

I want to use the most vulnerable moment of the documentary as an example of this.  One of the moments that actually pushed against Diane Warren's comfort zone is the song that she wrote for Lady Gaga about the time that she was molested.  It became this beautiful moment at the Oscars with all of these survivors of all genders came on stage and let people know that sexual assault is a far more prevalent thing than people care to acknowledge.  Considering that it was in the shadow of the #metoo movement, it seemed like this was the activism that I was looking for in Diane Warren.  But her reaction (which I keep on having to contextualize in her potential autism) was more about how she didn't win despite how powerful that scene was as opposed to the impact that the Oscars had.  To really drive that point home, Lady Gaga and the performers were backstage celebrating how vital what they had done was and Warren seemed to be sulking that she didn't win another award.  That's a bummer because it took some of the impact of that moment away.

I do want to be gracious, however.  People feel what they feel in the moment.  I can only react as an audience member does.  I wish that she had more empathy towards others.  I wish that her entire personality wasn't crass and rude.  I wish that this was a story of all the good that she had accomplished with these songs.  It oddly diminishes what is ultimately a very impressive life story of artistic achievement and passion.  But in an era where it feels like we have to struggle to have basic human rights, I don't really feel bad that Diane Warren didn't get an Oscar for songs that weren't as good as the winners.

PG-13.  It's weird to think of prestige in terms of "PG-13."  Like, there's stuff.  There's the silhouette of a married couple in bed together.  Nothing vulgar.  But, like, just enough to make everyone in the room feel uncomfortable.  The kids weren't watching this movie, but they were in the room.  I don't even remember vulgar language because the protagonist is so soft-spoken.  I'm sure that there was something more than nothing said in there, but nothing really stood out.  Also, this is the story of the death of a child.  If anything, this is a story about mortality, so there is death as a motif that sometimes gets uncomfortable.

DIRECTOR: Clint Bentley

Holy moley.  Clint Bentley loves Terrence Malick.  Before I go too deep into that, there's going to be a lot of scatterbrain in this blog.  La La Land is playing in the background and I'm trying to ignore this truly amazing movie.  But I will acknowledge that, in no way, am I good at multitasking.  So if I come across as all-over-the-place, that's the reason.  

Okay, Terrence Malick.  I was not a big fan of Clint Bentley's script for Sing Sing.  I thought it was overly sentimental and a bit manipulative.  Now, Bentley didn't write the script by himself for Train Dreams.  It was based on a novella and he wrote it with someone else.  Maybe this is a guy that I have to pay attention to.  Like many film snobs, I like Terrence Malick.  If I didn't know better, I would say that Train Dreams is a Terrence Malick movie.  It's beautiful in its paradoxical smallness and awesomeness.  It's shot beautifully.  It is a small story of a small man.  People act like people.  Honestly, the greatest compliment that I can give Train Dreams is the fact that it is a lot like Malick because I feel like Malick gives us better insight into the nature of the soul than he does focusing on bombastic, over-the-top moments.   That's kind of funny because The Tree of Life has dinosaurs in it.  Train Dreams doesn't pull that card.  The closest thing that Bentley does in terms of pulling grandiose moments is his use of fire and really stressing how long a life really is.

I don't know why I was so hung up on the aging of Granier.  One thing that I don't think a lot of stories get right is how much society changes in a single lifetime. Maybe it is because we have had these major technological shifts a while ago and that the past twenty-six years have felt ultimately stagnant.  But Granier's youth is a setting where you could just find a plot of land, build a house by hand, and have the ultimate settler fantasy.  But by the time he dies, he watches television of John Glen going to space.  It's weird to think about that kind of stuff.  Like I mentioned, this is a story about mortality and with mortality comes ideas of aging.  One of the key ideas is the fact that people become obsolete.  When a chainsaw shows up in this story about lumberjacks sawing things by hand, it was such a small moment in terms of how much film was used.  But from a narrative perspective, it spoke wonders. 

Maybe that's why I'm so impressed by this movie.  Nothing in this film is really telegraphed.  Nothing is a sledgehammer.  It's a movie that asks for investment.  I don't find that investment hard.  Maybe that's why Malick and Bentley are obsessed with making a movie so darned pretty.  It's easy to invest in a movie where sunlight cuts through trees and silence isn't quite silence.  Instead, it's heartbeats and birds.  Speaking of the sun cutting through the trees, it almost feels like there's foley to the light cutting through trees.  Yeah, yeah.  We all know that light doesn't make a sound.  But what I'm ultimately dancing around is the notion that this is a movie that embraces the senses while keeping the story fundamentally about Granier and his quiet pain.

I won't deny that this movie is a bummer.  It is a bummer.  A lot of Academy Award nominees tend to be bummers.  But the message I take away from this movie is that life is built upon tragedy.  Granier doesn't have a rich life.  He found true love.  He compounded that true love by becoming a father.  But all it took was one tragedy to reshape how the rest of his life was going to play out.  The real villain of the piece is hope.  Because it isn't exactly cut and dry what happened to his wife and daughter, there's this expectation that is placed on himself to wait for his life to return to normal.  When he loses his family, he eventually rebuilds his house.  When cutting season begins, he goes off and does that in the hopes that his wife and child will find the home that he recreated for them.  It's brutal.  And there's this small betrayal when he finds embers (pun intended) of happiness.  The fact that he instantly finds some degree of solace in Red Dog doesn't change the main character and his internal conflict.  He still has nightmares about the house catching fire and his wife trying to save their daughter.  SBut we get something that Shakespeare points out in Hamlet.  One of Hamlet's self-aware commentaries about the world through his eyes is that the world is an untended garden.  He knows that there is beauty in the world, but it is flat and sad.  When Granier embraces the companionship of Red Dog, he sees the beauty of that dog but still aches for the fulfillment of fatherhood.

There's something really mean about the ending of this movie.  It's the girl that he starts calling Katie.  If the villain of the piece his hope, Katie is the ultimate gut punch.  Late in the film, Granier wakes up to hear whimpering outside.  There, he discovers a girl barely alive.  Her leg is broken and we're all teased with the notion that this might be his daughter coming to look for him.  But the narrator almost dispells that notion pretty quickly.  The temptation to see that girl as Katie is all that Granier can see.  We want it to be Katie.  We almost need it as much as Granier does.  After all, the world, from Granier's perspective, contains the same cruelty as an absentee father.  When she's gone in the morning (although, I do have to question how she not only got out there on a broken leg but got so far that she was unable to be found), we have confirmation that either she didn't exist (not my first theory) or that she isn't Kate.  Yet, that's the slow misery of the world.  It's not that the girl that Granier thought was Katie was cruel.  She was probably confused and had no idea how she got in this bed.  She was on the run and kept going.  Yet, her small action affected Granier throughout.

I can't help but have this also be a story about karma.  One of the earlier events of the film is the fact that Granier fails to save Fu Sheng.  Fu Sheng ends up being a ghost for Granier throughout the story.  Every time you forget that he exists, he sits there and watches Granier bear his cross by a fire or something.  The really odd thing is that this is almost a tale of what hurts a sensitive soul.  Granier isn't one of the people who killed Fu Sheng.  If anything, Granier is one of the few people who stands up for Fu Sheng.  Fu Sheng, in his fear, thinks that Granier is one of the people trying to kill him and kicks him off.  Yet, Granier views his failure to save this man as a lifelong condemnation and a justification for all of the bad things that happened to him.  I get the vibe that those who killed him barely remember that time.  It was such a casual attitude of anti-Asian sentiment that it was done without pomp and circumstance.  Yet, for Granier, that failure equates almost to complicity, which colors the way that he views the cruel world around him.

I really liked it.  Is the movie incredibly small?  Yeah.  Absolutely.  I know me and, as much as I'm applauding it now, there's a good chance I will forget about this movie given any reasonable amount of time.  Still, Train Dreams is powerful.  It's a beautiful film and I am giving Clint Bentley another chance. 

Not rated, but this would 100% be an R-rated movie given the chance.  It's straight body horror in the vein (no pun intended) of The Substance.  While it isn't straight gore or torture throughout, when it gets sadistic, it gets really really bad.  This movie is meant to make you cringe in one way or another.  There was a point where I was watching through my fingers, as if that made a difference.  There's also sex and nudity coupled with a lot of vulgar language.  Still, not rated.

DIRECTOR: Emilie Blitchfeld

I like jump scares.  I know.  A lot of people really, really hate jump scares.  But jump scares are a good time.  They make you laugh.  You are caught off-guard and the same trigger that makes funny things funny is what makes a jump scare effective.  You were expecting a left turn and you got a right.  You have that burst of adrenaline immediately followed by a healthy come-down reminding you that you are safe.  

There are no jump scares in The Ugly Stepsister.

Nope.  The other kind of scare in horror movies is the gross-out.  I don't care for the gross-out.  The gross-out is (as everything on this page is, of my opinion) the thing that turns horror folks densitized.  I'm not saying there aren't good gross-outs.  I'm a big fan of The Evil Dead movies (for the most part).  I really like when gross-outs get silly.  But we're not there.  The Ugly Stepsister is the kind of gross-out movie that bums me out.  Part of the reason is that I feel like, while the message of The Ugly Stepsister is an idea that should be repeated, we've seen this story incredibly recently in The Substance.  Listen, I didn't like The Substance either.  There have been a bunch of plastic surgery horror tropes lately.  It is almost in vogue.  And we're kind of losing the message through all of the gore we are sitting through.

Genre has always been a great way to talk about society's ills.  I'm a big fan of the original Friday the 13th.  Friday the 13th, no holds barred, established that there are morality rules to horror movies.  The reason that the camp counselors were all being hunted down was because they partook in sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.  It's what Randy talked about ad nauseum in the Scream films.  But the thing about the slasher films and their commentary on bad behavior is that it kind of made that behavior punk rock for its audience.  Of course people were going to partake in illicit substances while watching these films because it was almost giving the middle finger to the fates.  If Jason was going to get you, well, you were going to go down swinging.

The body horror trend of showing self-mutilation as a story to show how absurd these characters are is not that.  At least, I certainly hope that it is not that.  Between The Substance and The Ugly Stepsister, we have these protagonists who lose all sense of humanity in the process of trying to beautify themselves.  Now, I'm writing this as a CIS-gendered white male whose body issues, while present, are pretty mild.  But these movies should be attacking body image problems as they go on.  But the thing is, there is an element of sadism to these films that I don't really get from movies like Friday the 13th.  Don't get me wrong, there is an audience out there who watches Friday the 13th and just wants to see cruelty to teenagers.  In fact, there are a lot of people who watch for those reasons.  But when I watch a movie like The Ugly Stepsister, I can't help but get this sense that I want to see the protagonist go through absolute hell for nothing.  Like, the movie just keeps punching and punching and torturing its main character for behavior that is almost sympathetic.

I'm going to try and talk about how the movie strives to degrade the protagonist's morals as the story progresses, so remind me to do that.  But Elvira's initial desire to be pretty is incredibly sympathetic.  In a story of absolutely miserable human beings, Elvira has poor body image.  I would say that she has a great personality, but she is constantly overlooked by everyone around her.  Even Cinderella, who comes across more noble by the end of the film, is beyond cruel to her.  It does that old trope with retelling of fables.  Like with Maleficent, the only way to make a villainous character heroic is by turning a different heroic character into the villain.   There's a story happening with Cinderella / Agnes here that we get enough of to give us hints for motivation.  But the thing that's bugging me just enough is that I don't really get the beats for motive changes. Here's my generous take on who, I think, Cinderella is in this movie.

If I am to take the events of The Ugly Stepsister without adaptations of Cinderella to help me out, Agnes is a mean sister.  She just lost her father, but understood that her father and she were using Elvira's family to financially survive a crappy situation.  She's cruel to Elvira, not allowing her to use her brush when Elvria seems to be open to embracing Agnes as a sister.  She never really cared about loving the prince.  Instead, she has been sleeping with the stableboy, whom she adores.  When Elvira tattles on Agnes's secret rendezvous (which I'm not sure why she does, outside the budding feeling that Agnes is competition for the prince's affection), the family tacitly agrees to start calling Agnes "Cinderella" and begin months long torture of this girl.  At this point, Cinderella becomes the heroine of the story, even though we don't have much interaction with Elvira and Cinderella together.  Mother still views her as the victim of the story and gives her a maggot-seamed blue gown.  The two of them make eye contact at the ball and Elvira goes into a rage, trying to murder Cinderella for taking her man.  

But Agnes wasn't a good person when the story starts.  Yes, I do sympathize with the fact that she had just lost her father.  But the two of them were con artists.  Ultimately, Agnes makes Elvira an enemy by being so cruel to her when she tried to borrow her hairbrush.  She confesses to only wanting Elvira's money, and yet it is Agnes who ultimately wins her dreams.  But the tragedy that the movie doesn't really address is that she doesn't love the prince.  She loves the stableboy, who flees nude into the forest.  Why he's nude at that moment?  I don't know.  We also know that the prince is a monster, having sex / implied raping women as he comes across them.  His friends even comment that his genitals are diseased and rotting away, which is meant to stress how naive Elvira is.  But if Agnes runs off to her happily ever after, it seems like she will just be miserable with this inhumane jerk who may give her a sexually transmitted disease.  Again, these are the problems when you make everyone in your story terrible.

Also, the wicked stepmother is still a terrible person.  If this is a story from another perspective, explaining why Elvira is known as one of the ugly stepsisters, her personality doesn't make a ton of sense.  I will begrudge that her intense beauty regimen, which stresses barbarism, may be driving her insane.  But Rebekka is cruel to everyone from moment one.  In almost every other adaptation, it is assumed that the two stepsisters are cruel because they were raised to be cruel.  The part that doesn't make a ton of sense to me is that Rebekka is consistent.  From moment one in the story, we understand that she is always looking out for herself.  As much as Rebekka is enabling and even pushing Elvira, it is for her own benefit.  The prince offers financial security.  I'm never quite sure how much Rebekka understands that she had been had by Agnes's father.  It really reads that she's just a selfish character, especially in that moment when Alma catches Rebekka performing lewd acts on one of the prince's cronies.  Why would Elvira be so innocent and then go so evil given Agnes's small cruelties when she is raised in a cruel household?  Again, we could always write it up to the beauty regimen, but it reads a little bit false.

I guess the thing that is bugging me is that this movie feels even tonally like a copycat of The Substance.  Would this movie even exist without The Substance.  For all I know, this was in production before anyone even had a chance to view The Substance.  Still, there's an overall vibe of copying.  It's really well done, even if it isn't my cup of tea.  I'm just not a fan of this nor am I a fan of The Substance.  Put them together, and I'm just bummed out.