PG, but the only real reason that it isn't G is because it's live action. Like all family films, there's a little bit of peril for the protagonists. The villains, rival chocolatiers, often try to kill Willy Wonka. Also, there's just a handful of bad guys in the movie, but nothing that is honestly taken with a grain of reality. Still, live action movies tend to be PG at bare minimum.
DIRECTOR: Paul King My goodness, I wanted to like this movie. We have to establish some truths about me. While I like the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because I have a soul, it's not like the character of Willy Wonka is all that precious to me. I didn't care for the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But Wonka, somehow, has become something of a pillar of cinematic canon. Other fact about me? I like Timothee Chalamet because I think he's a talented actor, but I also think that casting tends to default to him too often. This is going to play a part in my dislike for this movie. Just know, as I stated earlier, that I really wanted to like this movie. I never thought it was going to be great. From the first images, I thought that Wonka was just going to be a movie that might have been aesthetically pleasing, but ultimately lacking any real charm of the original film. Again, I wanted to be wrong. I genuinely got excited when it hit Max because I knew that I would have a chance to watch it with the kids. I also knew that Paul King had given us some of the best family friendly films of recent history and that, at worst, I'd get a solid Paul King movie. Um...Wonka might have been worse than I thought when I started writing this. The biggest problem of Wonka is that it's just a movie. It's one of the movies of all time. This movie was hyped up for a while. Honestly, I don't know if that we ever really needed a Willy Wonka origin story. Much like the James Franco prequel to The Wizard of Oz named Oz, the Great and Powerful, we got an origin story that no one was really asking for. Origin stories are tough. Most of the time, they aren't needed. I'm not a fan of the Star Wars prequels. Solo: A Star Wars Story is fun, but completely unnecessary. Heck, even Wicked, I like the music and the spectacle...but the story? Meh. Maleficent, same deal. Honestly, Willy Wonka works better as the man behind the curtain. We discover all that we need to about the character from the original film. He's a recluse whose enigmatic lifestyle is suited only for himself. Part of the reality of the original film is that Willy Wonka is the quirky exception to a fairly mundane world. Instead, Wonka offers a Roald Dahl fever dream where everyone is just a little bit Willy Wonka and Willy Wonka is the most joyful chocolatier that ever lived. This is me saying what everyone else is saying about the movie too. Timothee Chalamet's Wonka is no Gene Wilder's Wonka. Gene Wilder's Wonka was a man who found joy in the death of spoiled children. There's an implication that the kids didn't die in his factory, but there was never the guarantee that the kids didn't die in that tour. There's a malicious glee in his eyes when terrible things happened to those children. (I'll even go as far as to say that the original ending to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory doesn't make a lick of sense because his character just shifts to like Charlie when he returns the candy. Okay, okay, he forgives Charlie for his good deed.) The problem is...what is Wonka really saying? It's almost revisiting a feeling more than it is actually offering anything new to the conversation. I feel like I've written this phrase before and it's not a new idea, but I get that there really are no new stories. It's something that I say, but don't really believe. But Wonka, for being such a talked about movie, feels incredibly lazy as a story. Golly, this movie jumps back to archetypes so hard that I don't know what to really say surprised me. I used to write "paint-by-numbers" a lot in my blogs until I got called out on overusing it (Ironic, ain't it?). There's a weird kismet to that debacle in Ireland with Willy's Chocolate Extravaganza and Wonka kind of having the same vibe. I'm not accusing Wonka of being AI generated, but it also mind as well have been. Both of these Willy Wonka-themed moments seem so uninspired by anything new that the concept of Willy Wonka is somehow tarnished by the existence of these things. I'm being hyperbolic, but not by much. I accused Rise of Skywalker of committing the worst crime a Star Wars movie could do: be just fine. Wonka is on trial for the same crime. The thing about a boring Willy Wonka property is that Willy Wonka is supposed to be marvelous. There's always supposed to be a trick up his sleeve. He's the master magician in the form of a reclusive chocolate maker. But there's nothing all that magical about Wonka. Wonka in this movie is quirky, but he rarely feels in control of his own world. The consequence of that is that these moments where Willy Wonka pulls out some fantastical creation all feels neutered. I'm trying to compare two parallel moments from the movies. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, there's a candy that causes Charlie and Grandpa Joe to float to the ceiling. Through belching, they come back down. Wonka treats it as this thing that he's been honing for years and hasn't quite perfected. It all feels like the obsession of a madman. Wonka has a chocolate that, lazily, does the same thing. It's a chocolate that causes people to fly around. There's no real danger to the chocolate. It just...exists. Now, a scene where people started flying because they ate chocolate should be whimsical. It just felt boring. It felt like the easiest magic that a movie could provide. Maybe Willy Wonka doesn't need to have a whole franchise around him. This is a movie that suffers from being an origin story and a wholly unnecessary origin story. It's honestly pretty boring. The performances are fine, but that's me being generous because I think that there's more that could have been done with the eponymous character. I don't want to attack any of these people because I like all of the people involved. But this movie was just...not good.
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PG-13. While, by no means, is this an offensive movie, it's more offensive than the tone implies. (Again, not offensive, just not as squeaky clean as people remember.) Sexuality is a common motif throughout the story. Jenna wakes up to a naked man. While no actual nudity, Jenna is scandalized by nakedness. Also, Jenna is obsessed with her own breasts. She also gets drunk as an adult, even though she's technically only 13. But it's a pretty tame movie overall. Also, the word "suicide" is thrown around pretty casually. The movie also has a 2004 attitude towards addressing homosexuality. Still, PG-13.
DIRECTOR: Gary Winick Guys , I'm not the guy who should be writing about rom-coms. I know. Everyone loves them. For the most part, including in this case, I don't. I really don't. I don't want to be a judgmental turd about rom-coms. I don't want to be sad about what makes lots of people happy. But my snobbery has officially ruined me for bubble gum rom-coms. I also know that 13 Going on 30 is one of those universally loved rom-coms. No one is going to be a fan of this blog because I'm going to write about how my life is the hardest for having watched this movie. I will say that I watched it at the perfect time. I had just finshed Mysterious Object at Noon, a movie that moved in the complete opposite direction as 13 Going on 30. Mysterious Object is pretention weaponized. It's so indie and so anthropological that I couldn't really find much enjoyment out of it. Now, I don't really choose what movie I watch next. I have a weird algorithm that picks my next movie, but I didn't exactly mind something mindless like 13 Going on 30 showing up as the next movie. Okay, that kind of changed when I watched it. The thing about rom-coms is that I don't really find them all that funny. I also really get frustrated with the worlds that these kinds of movies build. I also have to confess something here. It's pretty bad, especially considering that I claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of film. (I hate me too, guys. I hate me too.) I've never seen Big. I honestly should watch it right now, but I just got all of these great movies for my birthday and I need to knock them out over the course of a year (a self-imposed quest). So even though I'm going to make a natural comparison to Big, just know that I haven't really seen it. Let's talk about what I do like about this movie before I start being a bit of a bully about a lot of people's favorite film. If I am going to watch a rom-com, I don't necessarily hate the high concept element involved in something like 13 Going on 30. Both Big and 13 play on the knowledge that putting a kid in an adult body can lead into all kinds of fun hijinks while simultaneously providing commentary on the loss of innocence that comes with aging. 13 Going on 30 does this well. One thing about putting Jennifer Garner as the adult Jenna means that she's instantly worthy of our trust. Garner absolutely nails the silliness that comes with a story that pits a 13 year old in an adult body. Garner's smart enough to do something that other actors might ignore. It doesn't carry all the way throughout the film, but Garner, for the most part, plays Jenna as someone who is faking it until she makes it. Yeah, there's some yellow flags that people aren't picking up on Jenna's new reality, but that can be written off by the rules of rom-coms. But the coolest part about a story involving the loss of childhood joy is the idea that Jenna is the most evil character in the story. One of the key plots in the story is that Poise magazine, a publication that Jenna has idolized since she was a child, has a mole inside the organization. Mentally 13 Jenna is mortified that anyone could possibly do something so diabolical that she steps up to the plate to save the publication. Narratively, the film sets up Judy Greer's Lucy as the spy. After all, she's the antagonist of the film. She is as shady as can be in the film. Yeah, for anyone invested in the plot, we are all aware that Jenna is the criminal. The character has to come to grips that it takes a villain to get as much as she does in 17 years and Jenna is too successful to be a good person. But the movie, for all of its criticisms of the adult Jenna, intentionally tries to divert the gaze away from Jenna's greater crimes. Jenna goes from icky to villainous with that revelation and I really like that. I like that we have to question how to succeed in America and it's 13 Going on 30 that doesn't shy away from that question. But that's all that I really like about the movie. Okay, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner have good chemistry. But also, Matty is getting married? I know. The rom-com has normalized the notion of the romantic obstacle. In real life, Matty and Jenna are terrible people. Like, we would hate them in real life for doing what they did to Matty's fiancee. I don't know why rom-coms do this. I don't necessarily creating an obstacle to a story through character. After all, things can't be easy. An to give 13 some credit, Matty doesn't leave his fiancee. Instead, Jenna rewrites history, which is far more drastic, yet somehow morally better for me. But let's criticize Matty for a while. Matty is aware that he doesn't love his fiancee. He knows that he loves Jenna. Fine. But Matty chooses to lead this woman along in a life of misery because he's ultimately too cowardly to make a change. I would say that's not morally wrong, but he does kiss Jenna. He continually puts himself into situations where he's going to feed his attraction to his childhood best friend. There's really no excuse when that kiss happens. He also decides to keep that moment to himself. It's all kinds of gross. Also, I've never really seen a movie that ignored its central conceit. Jenna, in an understandable moment of panic, flees to find Matty, the one person that she knows exists in both time periods. It's Marty McFly looking for Doc in 1955. These are people of trust. Now, Jenna infodumps on Matty about her reality. She's holds nothing back. She confesses that she is a 13-year-old girl in a 30-year-old body. She even goes down the exact minute that she leaves her old body and travels to the future. It's not hidden. Now, the onus on Matty isn't to believe her. I mean, it's an option. It's actually an option that would make for a far more interesting, but less romantic movie. But the alternative is that Jenna has had a mental break, forcing her to believe that she is a 13-year-old girl. I get the vibe that his is the thing that Matty believes. That's a red flag, right? Okay, he thinks that Jenna is a 30-year-old woman who believes that she's 13. Yet, he keeps putting himself in scenarios where he's going to indulge whatever feelings he has for this woman. Is he okay with falling in love with a woman who believes that she is 13? I mean, she flirts with middle school boys as a 30-year-old. Everyone oddly seems like "That's so Jenna", which doesn't seem like that's at all Jenna. Sure, Matty doesn't see that, but he's also in on the secret. It doesn't matter how attractive she is. She continually tells Matt that she cannot remember anything beyond the closet when their friendship fell apart. Are we supposed to be rooting for those two? I mean, I kind of was because they're both so charming. But that's also the biproduct of a movie that ignores the key idea behind the movie. The bigger problem in terms of enjoyment is the fact that a movie that is fundamentally about what it means to be a child has never met a thirteen-year-old. Those bookended sequences in 1987? Especially the first one? Good golly, no kid acts that way. They got every childhood behavior from Disney Channel original programming. I'm not saying that kids don't model archetypal behavior. But there's nothign realistic about the script for young Jenna and young Matty. These characters are silly. Don't blame the '80s, by the way. That is too much. None of these moments read as authentic. Oddly enough, Jennifer Garner portrays a 13 year old better than the preteen that probably plays her. And none of that is really that kid's fault. The script is just so awful and such shorthand for what kids really go for. And a lot of that comes from the fact that no one really puts investment in making rom-coms somehow grounded. Rom-coms tend to be about establishing a tone. After all, I did watch the "Fun & Flirty" edition of the movie (BTW, making custom special editions based on lines of the movie was one of the worst DVD trends). The movie was so focused on lightheartedness that we sacrifice any real character for the sake of a good time. Again, I shouldn't be writing about these movies. I don't like them. There are rom-coms that I like, but I like the stuff that takes itself a little more seriously. I like when these film deviate from the formula. Golly, I'm so sorry everyone, but 13 Going on 30 does almost nothing for me. I enjoyed having something light to watch as a palatte cleanser to Mysterious Object at Noon. But the movie itself isn't...good? Again, continue liking what you like. This movie doesn't do anything for me though. Not rated, and I don't even know what you could rate this movie. It's almost stream of consciousness. There really isn't anything all that offensive. At one point, the narrative shifts to the teacher being a dancer, with the implication that she might be a stripper. But nothing is ever shown that might be even slightly offensive.
DIRECTOR: Apichatpong Weerasethakul Ask me if I want to write even a few words about this movie. The answer is a resounding, "No!" I have no desire to write right now, but I really don't want to write about this movie. I know I have nothing of substance to contribute to the discussion about this movie and that makes me a bad blogger. Honestly, I ran into a unique set of circumstances while trying to watch this movie that makes me completely underqualified to write about this movie. I watched the first hour on a treadmill, not understanding a bunch of it. I then Wikipedia'ed it, understood something absolutely crucial to watching this film and finished the movie. What I should do is rewatch the film with the important piece of knowledge that I should have gotten and then write about it. But the problem was...I really wasn't having a good time with this movie. I can't imagine sitting through it again, especially after just powering through it the first time. The funny thing is, I thought, "A Thai movie from 2000? How exciting." But then I found out that it was filmed in 16mm black-and-white and then blown up to 32? Come on. It's almost like the director desperately wanted to look like a movie from a bygone era. It's like the movie was trying to spend all of my goodwill. It's an obtuse film that doesn't look very pretty and really asks you to invest in that premise. I tried, guys. I was excited. With a movie named Mysterious Object at Noon that was made in 2000? That should have been completely up my alley and it did borderline nothing for me. It's not even a one-star movie. I can at least have a strong opinion about a one-star film. This is 2 out of 5 (something that I never mention in my film blog. That's usually reserved for Letterboxd). It just is nearly impossible to write about this without having an insane level of investment that I just didn't have. If this movie is great to people, good. Continue it being great. This hit none of my buttons, mainly because I refuse to watch it again so soon with the knowledge I now have. The knowledge I gained, by the way, was that this movie is done in the "exquisite corpse" fashion. I've learned this term before, but I rarely run into actual examples of it in practice. An exquisite corpse is a type of art that starts with one person coming up with a premise that people continually contribute to and add to the original piece. The goal of the exquisite corpse is that we should have something very different than what we started with at the beginning. It is a communal experience that is more about the relationships between artists than the final product that is actually made. Here's the problem. I walked into this movie wondering if it was a documentary or a fictional narrative (or a weird hybrid of both.) From my perspective, there were moments that felt really grounded and real. People seemed to be talking about real problems and real issues and I thought the movie was a study of life in Thailand in 2000. But then we'd have a scene that was acted out. Then it got bizarre and borderline silly with some of the choices. What started as a story between a teacher and a student became an alien doppleganger story that had almost no consistency between the other scenes. Now, what I assume was supposed to be the takeaway in this film was the myriad of personalities in this village in Thailand. The things that was a unifying force was the story that was being grown between the many many people involved in telling the story. The moments where we got to see people just exist in Thailand was interesting in the same way that the Maysleses had with cinema verite documentaries. I actually really like those documentaries a lot and there are elements of that inside Mysterious Object at Noon. But every time I would get invested in something real, we were thrown back into the exquisite corpse. And I'll tell you what? I don't care about that story. Storytelling is a specific thing. Maybe this is me gatekeeping more than I should, but the practice of the exquisite corpse, from my limited snobby perspective, should be a showcase of talent. What we get with the exquisite corpse is a reminder of why improv and understanding of structure really matter. There was a comic book and an adapted cartoon of something called Axe Cop a while ago. I never got into it. I read a little bit of it and it wasn't for me. The conceit of Axe Cop was that a comic book writer / artist took an improvised story by his son or nephew and adapted the story quite seriously. The joke was that the narrative was absolute chaos. Kids aren't really all that interesting storytellers. The main reason that kids aren't all that interesting storytellers is that everything is about escalation. Everything has to be more interesting than the previous scenes. I'm not saying that I'm perfect at that. Everyone struggles with storytelling. But that's why authors plan. Some authors can even pull off the exquisite corpse model. There was a run of comic books (I think about Ka-Zar and the Savage Land and another with Spider-Man...) that used the exquisite corpse conceit to tell the story. The point was that one author would write a story about the protagonist, putting him in a seemingly unfathomable cliffhanger. There seemed to be no way out. The goal of the author was to dig a really deep grave and see if another author could dig his or her way out. It was a fun game. But those were authors who knew structures and could plan before improving the whole thing. Listen, I'm spiraling. I don't mind spiraling in a blog like this because I don't have a lot to contribute. For all of my textual vomit that I'm offering here, I understand it isn't about the quality of the exquisite corpse in Mysterious Object at Noon. The point is that we get this insight into Thai culture and the people who contributed to this story over a dedicated amount of time. I get that. We all acknowledge that the story that was created is probably a bit of crap. They didn't even film the last sequence with the boys and the tiger, mainly because you couldn't have multiple tigers and aliens fighting on this kind of budget. The movie even reminds me in what seems to be an after-credits sequence that the story doesn't matter. We see footage of people playing soccer and having a good time in this village. Heck, we almost get ten whole minutes of just coverage of people doing innocuous things because the director is reminding us that his is about the people, not the story. But then why invest so much time in the adaptation of the exquisite corpse? Honestly, that was the stuff that drove me more crazy. It seems like there needed to separate this documentary from others which are just analyses of the human person. Part of the exquisite corpse is a question asking "What is art?" I don't know if the Mysterious Object story really at all tries to answer that question. If anything, it is an attempt to rein in chaos. Again, if it is just about the people, then we get to see people having a good time contributing to a greater tapestry. But the actual art itself is honestly pretty darned terrible and inconsequential. (See? I'm back to griping about this.) What's worse is that the Mysterious Object story is just distracting from me getting to know these interesting people. There's a couple arguing on a train. I want to know all about them. Instead, we're desperate to get back to this story that's just unintelligible. I know that I'm going to login to Letterboxd and it's going to be a 4.0 or something. I'm just going to be sad because my dumbness didn't really give me a good insight into what this movie could be. If I write any more, you know I'm just trying to pad out a bad film blog. Maybe there's something good that I should have picked out, but I almost just left frustrated with this movie. Meh. TV-14. First of all, when would this have been Rated TV-14? Is it shown more on TV and that's why? But the bigger thing is that this movie is not only incredibly sexual, but also is fundamentally about rape. While none of this is shown on screen, that's what the movie is about. There's also naked children on screen, but never in a sexual context. Also, just for your Criterion Collection Bingo card, we get unadulterated footage of a slaughterhouse with bonus points that it has nothing to do with the story.
DIRECTOR: Lino Brocka Today is going to be a stressful day and I'm really hoping that I can write a lot before anyone really talks to me. I've jumped back into the Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project boxes because it hurts me that I've posted about Box 1 and Box 3, but not Box 2. The experience in these boxes is interesting because it is an offering of what other, underrepresented countries have created cinematically, but it's also through the lens of Martin Scorsese and the World Cinema Project. For a movie like Insiang, it's both a blessing and a curse. These movies tend to be...depressing? I mean, it's not absolute. The Criterion Collection as a whole, as obsessed as I am with Criterion, has a mood to it. Often, these movies don't tend to be fun. It's not an absolute thing. You could rattle off a whole bunch of really fun movies in the box set and you would be right. But when I'm exploring and going blind into these movies, they tend to be somber looks at the world. In most of these movies, we tend to show the worst of humanity through the filter of sheer misery and depression. Insiang really lines up with that for about 90% of the movie. I tend to watch Scorsese's introductions to these movies because, as per the purpose of the World Cinema Project, these are directors that have been ignored by the first world. I haven't heard of Lino Brocka before. I don't know much about Filipino cinema. I wanted to at least get a handle of what went into making these movies. (For those not in the know, these introductions are two minutes. Often, it's just Scorsese explaining why this film was packed coupled with a one-line about the movie and some of the director's contributions to cinema.) With Scorsese's introduction, I knew that this movie was going to be about sexual assault. I didn't know how far it would go. But I colored the movie through that lens. I knew it was a Criterion film. I thought, for sure, that the assault would happen in the first act. (Spoiler: It doesn't. It almost doesn't happen to later in the second act.) But I was watching the world, per usual, show the dregs of civilization and how people treat each other terribly. I wanted to write that men treat women terribly --which this movie is definitely about. But this is really also about how women treat each other terribly. Again, all we have is Insiang. Insiang, as the protagonist (who oddly isn't featured for a lot of the first act), is almost sacrificial in nature. The movie starts off with three strong characters. This trio is typical in these kinds of stories. Three have influence over Insiang. Tonya, Insiang's mother, is greedy, especially in terms of her sexuality. She flaunts her insecurities of being with a much younger and ruthless man, Dado. Dado is a sadist. He is the rapist of the story. He's a more silent Stanley Kowalski. Then there's the frustrating Bebot. Bebot is the earliest example in cinema that I can think of that shows the myth of the nice guy archetype. He acts nice, but is potentially one of the grossest characters in the story. The development of both Tonya and Dado are slight shortcuts in terms of characterization. Tonya has one of those scenes where she kicks out family members over small financial troubles, stealing back the clothing gifted to her nieces. I mean, you know what you need to know about Tonya from moment one. There's a moment of misdirect, where we might have questioned how static of a character Tonya really is, but that's almost immediately taken back. Dado is even more of a shortcut. Hulking and nearly mute, Dado has a heart tattoo that says "Dado" over his chest. We get who Dado is pretty quick. Again, there are moments where I thought that they were going to try to redeem Dado and I nearly turned off the film. (I'm glad I didn't because the movie is almost entirely defined by its final fifteen minutes.) But Bebot is the character that I get most invested in. Bebot is heroic by default for most of the movie. He sucks. Oh my goodness, does he suck. But we don't know that going into the movie. One of the major questions that the first acts asks is, "Does Bebot overcome his own insecurities to be the man that Insiang needs?" That's not the question of the movie. It's a complete mislead. Ultimately, Insiang is a fascinating movie because it seems like it is going to be some low-hanging fruit. We think it's going to be about misery the entire time and that Insiang is just going to become Tonya as she grows older. Nope. Not that at all. Insiang almost becomes a commentary on other films that deal with rape. It teases telling the same story. It seems like Insiang is going to embrace the worst case scenario. We know pretty quickly into the film that Bebot isn't going to become this grand hero. But it really is about how it shouldn't always be the man's story in every case. Bebot sucking is probably the most realistic version of what goes on in real life, given that he uses Insiang for sex instead of fighting Dado. I'm going to go even further, stressing that Insiang gives him a reasonable --if not slightly challenging --option of getting married and moving out. He then stresses that Insiang never trusts him. She imbues him with trust and he instantly betrays that trust. But that's why the third act works so well. It's not even the whole third act. It's the last fifteen minutes, as I said earlier. The movie really made me think about that natural cycle of misery and that hurt people hurt people. But instead, we get this sweet revenge story. I have to be honest. When Insiang starts smiling at Dado, I really almost quit the film. Honestly. Okay, I told myself that I was going to quit the film, but I never do that. I was just ready to write a scathing blog about the trope of the victim loving her rapist. When it came down, in the final minutes, a story about how a woman uses her sexuality to destroy her enemies, coupled with the notion of how she refused to be a victim, despite a lifetime of being told that she was...yeah, that was good. I know it was probably a run-on sentence, but I really wanted you to feel the exasperation of that moment. I mean, the back of my brain tickled the notion that this could all be a revenge story on a grand scale. But with so little time left, I didn't think that they could squeeze that in. I don't know if I like the final beat though. Again, the revenge story is pretty tightly packed in. There's never really a wink to the camera that lets us in on the protagonist's plans. But part of the real joy was the fact that Insiang's mother Tonya is equally culpable for all of the horrors that happened to her. Now, the Catholic school teacher is all about forgiveness. But I don't love that Insiang says that she loves her mother. It's a bit that almost seems contrary to the message of the film as a whole. Insiang is overlooked as an actual threat throughout the film. She's the prize for people as opposed to showing any sense of agency or pride. It seems like, to everyone else, Insiang is just Insiang, unthreatening and accepting. When we discover that all of that is a bit of a show, it's a heck of a dismount. But then saying that she still loves her mother, it's a bit of a Nerfed ending, slightly undoing the powerhouse of a hit at the end of a film. All this being said, I don't know if I loved it or not. I mean, the end makes it pretty great. But I also know that this isn't necessarily a movie I could recommend to...anybody? Part of it comes from the almost soap opera quality to the whole movie. It's good. It's not a soap opera. But a lot of it seems a bit underbaked. Either way, I enjoyed it a bit. Rated R for so much stuff. Like sooooo much stuff. It's got sexuality, nudity, abortion, drug use, statuatory rape, and language, including homophobic slurs. There's also some mild violence. Honestly, despite having seen this movie before, I forgot how much lewd content was in this movie. I knew there was some, but this is kind of a filthy movie. Like, Fast Times fans, what are we really fans of? Okay, that's me gatekeeping. I apologize.
DIRECTOR: Amy Heckerling I get that it's a true story. But, like, is it? I mean, sure, there's nothing in the movie that absolutely couldn't happen. But doesn't it seem a bit archetypal and tropey? This is something that I've tried to wrap my head around. Archetypes and characters come from an element of truth. There has to be something real about an archetype for the archetype to work. But the bigger frustration that I've been dealing with is...are most people archetypes? Part of that question burdens me with a harsh truth: I don't think I'm an archetype. I think I'm dynamic and that I refuse to be categorized into a box. But from an outside perspective, I'm probably the tropiest turd in the bunch. That being said, onto Fast Times at Ridgemont High! I always wondered what the fascination of Fast Times at Ridgemont High were. It's an odd story. It has that nostalgia mainline that movies like American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused have, but in real time. I suppose that there are a handful of intense Gen Z movies out there today, like Bodies Bodies Bodies or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, but those tend to be genre films that embrace the culture of the era. Fast Times at Ridgemont High has the structure of a movie that was almost giving an imaginary version of the '80s. It's really weird that this movie came out in 1982. '82, in my head, was sad basements and old gross ashtrays. But Fast Times at Ridgemont High is bubblegum pop and neon lights extravaganza. The thing that people always claimed the '80s were? That's Fast Times from Ridgemont High. Now, probably because of Cameron Crowe, there's an interesting examination of what it is like to be a high schooler. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that high school, for me in the '90s, was not that. But then again, we're dealing with archetypes that don't necessarily align with me. If I had to identify as one of the characters from Fast Times, it would probably be Mark Ratner. Yeah, he's called Rat. It doesn't match his personality, but when your last name is "Rat" and you hang out with Mike Damone, you get the name "Rat." I think a lot of us are watching Fast Times and mirroring Mark Ratner. It's easy to throw the nerd archetype at him (and maybe it's just because I identify with his character so much), but I get more of an Everyman vibe from him. The thing is, as socially awkward as Ratner is, that's mainly because high school is a socially awkward time. Crowe wrote the book almost based on Mark Ratner. Ratner is potentially the only completely sympathetic and likable character in the thing not because other people aren't likable, but more because he's the most grounded. Most of the characters in Fast Times are almost inflated versions of real people because that's where the story and humor lie. I'm going to go to the most extreme version of reality and talk about Spicoli first. Spicoli is...a lot. It's really weird seeing Sean Penn play this role and I'd love to see him revisit Spicoli today, but only as a gag. I couldn't handle a follow-up to Spilcoli in any real way. (Note: I Googled it. Apparently, there was a table read of Fast Times where Shia LaBoeuf did this really intense version of Spicoli in front of Sean Penn. Yeah, that's not what I was really looking for.) Now, part of me has always treated Spicoli in this way. Spicoli is a caricature. He's where we get that surfer brah stoner character. Sorry, there's a difference between Cheech and Chong stoners and Spicoli stoners. Mainly, Spicoli isn't as funny. I know. Comedy is subjective. But as much as Spicoli is a caricature, he's also weirdly empathetic. I went into this viewing of Fast Times with an attempt to humanize even the silliest of characters and there's something interesting happening with Spicoli. I really feel like Spicoli is meant to be a bit of an empathetic character to a certain extent. I still find it weird that Sean Penn --intense Sean Penn! --played Spicoli. But Penn couldn't help but give Spicoli a bit of sadness. Spicoli seems to be unphased by the reputation he's earned. He's Ridgemont High's resident loser. No one thinks well of him. Even Brad finds Spicoli's lack of motivation tiresome at times. But Spicoli seems sad a lot of the time. His voice and his conversations may read like, "Life's a party", but he's always kind of just depressed that people aren't treating him better. Before I go into Mr. Hand, I would like to stress that the whole ending with Mr. Hand seems absolutely absurd. But if I treat it as something that really happened, it only works because Spicoli is a little bit sad. Mr. Hand is at Spicoli's house because he's making a point. Part of it comes across as he wants this kid to pass his class, either because he's a nice guy underneath it all or he just doesn't want to deal with Spicoli again. But Mr. Hand's entire bag of tactics consists of humiliating students into submission. Mr. Hand goes to Spicoli's house with the intention of shaming this kid and ruining his night. It's a power move. But Spicoli, over the course of the evening, is grateful to the teacher for spending time with him and making sure that he understood American history. That only kind of works if Spicoli is kind of sad inside. The righteous character who finds mondo waves would be put out by Mr. Hand's aggressive invasion. And don't get me wrong, he puts out bummed vibes initially. But by the end, Spicoli is that teacher story that never exists. By being a bit of a stickler and offering a firm hand, Mr. Hand (oh! now I get it!) gets through to the wasted youth that have pillaged his precious time. That doesn't exist. But Spicoli's enthusiasm and gratitude towards Hand only kind of exists because Hand's the first person who really believed in him. That's supposed to be uplifting, but it seems like it is a pretty low bar to set. Now for the sex stuff. I almost don't want to talk about it. It feels...I don't know, gross? Now, I have to give Fast Times some credit. The statuatory rape is supposed to be gross. But also, there's that odd encouragement that Stacy gets from her friends. I hate to be belaboring "the point", but is that really how aggressively sex is viewed in high school. Like, the girls as the pizza parlor almost seem feral about it. It almost seems like there's no such thing as a red flag in terms of danger when it comes to what girls will do to lose their virginity in this story. And once Stacy loses her virginity in the most base, depressing way ever, she becomes ravenous for it. Now, my job isn't to shame people. These are fictional characters. But Stacy almost becomes inhuman about finding another suitor after Ron disappears from her life. Part of that comes with shame. She's confused and frustrated. There have to be self-esteem issues when it comes to losing what she considers to be a first love. But the way that she treats Mark becomes almost predatory. She can't understand that not everyone has the same drive that she does and treats him like a pariah. Even more so, she seduces Mike knowing that Mike is Mark's best friend. You can almost tell that this was written by a dude. It's not letting men off the hook. The movie ends with Mike looking pretty darned scummy. The odd thing is that there is a character shift for Mike. Again, Mark is the only character that comes across as sympathetic. But for a while in the story, I was actually rooting for Mike and Stacy. Mike is probably my favorite character in the movie until he sleeps with Stacy. Here's this guy who is almost aware that he's an archetype. He's the most self-aware character of the film. He actually lets the veil fall from time-to-time. But ultimately, Mike is this kid stuck in a persona of himself. He loves being kind of scuzzy and removed, but shows moments of vulnerability, fear, and sweetness. He's intimidated by Charles Jefferson's fame. He doesn't want to get in trouble when it comes to being a parent. He's also the guy who comes running to help his friend, despite claiming to be busy. Ultimately, to give the movie a happy ending, Mark forgives Mike. It's weird to think that the film ends with Mark and Stacy together. Sure, at their core, they have the most similar personalities. But their choices have deviated them to a point where I call shannigans that these two immature kids could move their baggage aside. Honestly, for a comedy, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is incredibly depressing. Like, it's great. I don't love it, but I found it fascinating while watching it a second time. It's when I stopped thinking of it as a fun cult movie that I found something to really tear apart. But is it fun? I don't know. I think it's a depressing movie with some fun parts. Not rated, but there's the old standard murder with swords business that we've grown so comfortable with. I watched this about a week ago, so I apologize for not having anything specific, but I kind of remember some almost nudity in the film. Listen, Zatoichi movies have made their beds. We know what to expect in these films.
DIRECTOR: Kimiyoshi Yasuda I'm going to start doing these movies differently. I don't know why I'm writing about this now, but I feel like writing it is somehow a contract that I have to abide by. I am never going to get through the Zatoichi box set at this pace. I think I'm going to watch all of the movies on the disc back-to-back-to-back. I know it probably will be nearly impossible to write about these movies, but I just need to knock these out. The only problem? Zatoichi's Cane Sword is the last film on the disc. Sometimes, I watch these movies and get mad. I honestly do. It's so hard to watch Zatoichi movies and find no changes in the story. Part of this is on me. I don't have to complete franchises. But I love having said that I have done everything in a series. I'm even reading the non-Ian Fleming James Bond novels. But I like these stories as long as something is different in them. I'm going to give Zatoichi's Cane Sword some points for its A-plot. The key concept in this film is that Zatoichi is not allowed to use the eponymous weapon in this one. Because of overuse and slight flaws, Zatoichi's sword has one more cut left in it. I'm sorry, that's not even fair. He's got one more kill. I love how the blacksmith can recognize that. It specifically has one more kill and that's something that actually can change the dynamics of the story. One of the major problems I had with The Batman was the reliance of a giant action setpiece in the third act. Now, before I really go into this, I would like to point out that Zatoichi does murder a bunch of dudes at the end of the movie. As much as I liked this one for being a little bit different, it ultimately follows the same rules for a lot of Zatoichi movies and has the protagonist butcher scores of dudes with a sword. That still happens. Back to The Batman and Zatoichi. The first two thirds of both movies are drastic departures from the other movies featuring the same protagonist. Batman and Zatoichi movies tend to be a lot of violence throughout and we know that both characters are going to win their fights because they're Batman and Zatoichi, respectively. These are both characters that have been trumped up to guaranteed-win status. There's almost no threat to these characters because they've been Mary Sue'd to oblivion, ultimately relieving the tension that has been placed upon what should be suspenseful situations. But The Batman created a story that is fundamentally mental gymnastics ends with this big brawl involving Riddler copycats and blowing stuff up. The thing that makes Zatoichi's Cane Sword work is that the story hinges on him trying to figure out ways to redefine himself in the wake of a realization. Now, if you were anything like me, you were asking "Why can't he just get another sword that isn't a cane?" Sure, the movie doesn't really talk about that. I mean, the cane sword kills a lot of dudes because most of his foes are surprised to see what appears to be an unarmed man open a fresh can of killing upon trained assassins out of nowhere. But really, that's also the job of a sword. We live in the world of Zatoichi. So much of these movies ask us to ignore basic conventions. It never answers how Zatoichi is better than sighted opponents or how he solves the dice thing every time. Heck, in this one, we're not really allowed to question how Zatoichi trips on barrels that bump into his knees. But the cool thing is that, one of the recurring themes of Zatoichi is that he doesn't want to be Zatoichi. That idea is now getting a little played out because we realize that, if there's a problem he's going to face it head-on because he'll realize that the greater good is going to overwhelm his desire for a peaceful existence. But the notion of the cane sword having a degree of fragility to it, a sense or mortality, makes the problem physically verifiable. The problem has been taken out of his hands. We know that he's going to use it. I mean, that's the Chekhov's gun of the whole film. It's called Zatoichi's Cane Sword. That thing is going to get used. But the extra layer to that notion is that Zatoichi isn't just trying to embrace a peaceful lifestyle. It's the knowledge that, if the sword breaks, he dies. What the movie does extraordinarily well (and I'm not really sure how it pulls this off) is make you understand that there's a sacrificial element to the blade. The Macguffin and the protagonist are linked inexorably and that Zatoichi isn't attracted to the violence. He's genuinely a hero because the use of that sword means death. In the dream sequence, we see the breaking of the blade and the imminent death that occurs immediately after the shattering of the blade. Yet, the third act begins with Zatoichi making the choice to use the blade, despite the almost certain death. When the blade doesn't break, there's some stuff to unpack. Ultimately, it becomes the story of how Zatoichi, with his Incredible Hulk Bill Bixby-like journey is an inspiration to others. I mean, it's a little telegraphed. I can't deny that it is a little telegraphed. These movies aren't complex. But the story doesn't become about Zatoichi. It becomes about the people around him. The blacksmith was so moved by Zatoichi's sacrifice, coupled with the artistry of the sword, that he was moved to repair the sword instead of hoarding it for himself. He sees the sword as something sacred, ultimately acknowledging that the sword can only be complete in the hands of a master like Zatoichi. I can't tell you that the blacksmith sees his own death and trades Zatoichi's intended sacrifice for himself. That's a stretch, but it does feel like that a bit. It's what makes Zatoichi's Cane Sword work better than the final act of The Batman. The Batman's third act feels tacked on, like it needs to be there because Batman needs to fight people. Cane Sword ends with a fight that, for once, feels earned. Maybe it is a bit silly and goes on longer than it needs to, but it is the natural resolution for a character who has been through stuff. It, for the first time in a long time in this series, feels like Zatoichi is making a choice against his better judgment and that's cool in the story. But is the movie great? No. Absolutely not. I mean, we still have a lot of those same beats that we get from other Zatoichi movies. Heck, in some ways, Cane Sword doubles down on tropes that we've seen painfully beat into the series up to this point. My goodness, the gambling? I have been complaining about the reliance of gambling as a means to show that Zatoichi is in charge in these films and this movie only locks it canonically in. What started as a masseur who enjoyed his bit of gambling from time-to-time has turned into Zatoichi full-on deciding that is his means of income. Everything in this movie keeps coming back to those stupid dice. While I will give Cane Sword some leeway in terms of complication of story because it does have a more approachable B-story than other films in this series, there are desperate attempts to complicate the narrative to stretch out the film's runtime. There are characters who seem important that are barely in the movie. I want to be invested in them, but so much of the movie is in the dialogue about what characters have done off-camera. So good things? Physically verifiable problem for Zatoichi to solve. It actually changes the dynamics of the story and brings us something plausible with the ending. But in terms of going back to the same well for story beats? Yeah, not a fan of that. PG-13 and, for my money, it might be the most family friendly of all the Ghostbusters movies. One of the lines that Ghostbusters movies have to tread is that trifold line between horror, rebellious comedy, and being family-friendly. It's managed to pull it off every time, to various degrees of success. While still holding true to all three elements, Frozen Empire was way less scary than I thought it would be. It's got language. It's got some inappropriate jokes. They went over my ten-year-old's head. If the kids can handle other Ghostbusters movies, this one is less offensive.
DIRECTOR: Gil Kenan Okay, the reviews are just upsetting me. It's kind of like being a Snyderverse fan right now, only a lot of people don't like the Snyder stuff. I don't know. Because I'm being super cryptic, I'm just going to spell it out. I don't honestly know how you can detest Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. I can see how you might not be in love with it. It takes a lot to win love from an audience. But considering that the reviews for this movie are abysmal, I'm going to question what is happening. Now, I'm playing subject to algorithms. From my perspective, there's a very loud audience who says, "This movie was super fun and the critics are wrong." I happen to be in that camp. That's a problem because the algorithm might be feeding me what I want to see. I can't definitively say that audiences like this movie and it's just the critics because, honestly, I really liked the movie. So I went to the mattresses and read the criticisms. Most of them are very odd. I want to talk about those in a second. There is one review that is incredibly illuminating. The review, which may have been the New Yorker, stated that the movie is too Gen X for its own good. This brought up a paradox. The thing about that review is that it is accurate. I can kind of get behind that read of the movie. The reasons I loved Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Ghostbusters: Afterlife is because they felt like really authentic Ghostbusters movies. But the reason that they feel like real sequels to the original movie is that they use the original movie as a template. To a certain extent, there is some degree of nostalgia fandom happening. I can't deny that. I do argue that Frozen Empire is not a nostalgia movie so much as it is understanding that there is a way to make a Ghostbusters movie and they use the foundation to do that with these newer sequels. But the problem with attacking Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire by saying it is too Gen X for today's market is saying that they fundamentally don't want Ghostbusters. I'm all about changing things up. Growth or death. But it isn't like we've been getting Ghostbusters movies every year and that we're saturated with this franchise. A lot of people keep pointing to the 2016 Ghostbusters: Answer the Call as wokeness destroying a franchise. First of all, if you say "Wokeness ruined something," I automatically write you off. It's not female ghostbusters that make a movie bad. I wanted to like Answer the Call so badly. It was bad because it missed out on some of the specific tonal issues that make a movie a Ghostbusters movie. I hate to be advocating for a formula when it comes to making movie, but Ghostbusters is a tough nut to crack. The thing about Ghostbusters is that the original movie has the weirdest strucutre of any big budget movie. I remember watching a Cracked video where they dared someone to tell me what the movie is about. IGN came out very loudly and started saying that they actually wanted ghostbusting in their Ghostbusters movie. That's actually a pretty hot take, because that's not what the original movie did. A lot of both Ghostbusters 1 & 2 are the guys investigating this big bad on the horizon. There are small moments in the story where they confront the forerunners of the big bad, but ultimately the third act is the confrontation with the beast. Ultimately, the movies are based in a lot of exposition and character, leading to the duel between the ghostbusters and the well-explained evil. Guess what Frozen Empire does? Exactly that. Part of the problem with people advocating that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has is that there isn't enough action. These aren't action movies. These are horror comedies that have some action in them. I adore that thing that I only get out of a Ghostbusters movie. I honestly don't know another franchise or film that nails exactly what it means to be Ghostbusters. A movie like Frozen Empire is a rare film that isn't afraid to be with its characters through silly and serious times until the final act. Now, all of this sounds like that Gen X criticism is accurate. The criticism that this is just another nostalgia trip seems like it might carry some weight. I would argue against that. While I adore Afterlife, I can give you some points that say that Afterlife is just fan service. (I really can't. I think it's perfect. I want to take that sentence back, but I'm making a point about Frozen Empire.) Structurally, Frozen Empire owes a lot to the original films. But in terms of actually straying from what is safe, Frozen Empire should get a medal for not checking boxes. I'll give you one moment that I think is a bit of a sin: the explosion of the containment unit. Okay, you're calling back a little too hard and I don't love that. But Frozen Empire is establishing that there is a wide world of old gods who are willing to destroy the world and they're not all named Gozer the Gozarian. On top of that, we don't always need proton packs to solve the problem. One of the things that the previous films established pretty early on was that Egon was going to save the day through inventing a gizmo. They might have to misuse that gizmo, like crossing the streams, but that was going to solve a lot of the problem. Instead, Frozen Empire establishes that everyone can't be Egon Spengler. Sure, there's an entire science division. I love that because it gives Winston agency over this entire franchise that he absolutely needed as a character. But I like that a different group of heroes has a different approach to beating the bad guy. Sure, we still have Phoebe who has a very Egon approach, closing her character arc showing that she can hold her own when everyone doubts her. I like that. But the real resolve comes from the other nerds in this group who have different approaches. One of the hearts of the Ghostbusters is Ray. Ray, despite being the drive behind the entire franchise, both in-universe and out, really kind of gets ignored in terms of how to handle things. Ray's the guy who believes from moment one that the lore is real. He's the guy who isn't trying to science everything away. Instead, it's his passion for the history coupled with Spengler's obsession with numbers and facts that makes the entire concept work. Having the ending that this movie does gives Ray a lot more credit than he's gotten in the past. But the best part about Frozen Empire is the human element of the whole thing. For a second, I want to talk about how Walter Peck, who worked for the EPA and was basically disgraced in the '80s for his annoying (albeit, real-world hero) views on ghostbusting. For a while, I thought that he couldn't possibly be elected mayor, but I'm literally sitting and waiting for Donald Trump to lie his way back into the Oval Office. So I guess Walter Peck makes sense. But the human element is just all of the emotional connections that this movie makes. Phoebe is in isolation and she almost gets into a relationship with a ghost named Melody. I love that, because she's alone, she can't have a sounding board for bad ideas. I also really dig that I didn't see the value that Melody has in the movie. That's something that seemed pretty sick. But then there's all of the commentary on aging and finding value plus the nature of the new family and the found family. All of it works. The B-plots work fabulously with the A-plot and I don't get how people can detest this movie. The pacing is weird because that is the pacing of a Ghostbusters movie. I don't want a super action movie where everything is tongue-in-cheek. That's not the franchise that we're trying to sell here. You can say it's copying too much, but that's only in terms of where things fall, not what things fall there. It's a significantly better movie than critics made it out to be. We, as a culture, seem to be done with a good time. I'm not saying that every movie has to be a good time. Bummer films are great. But Frozen Empire delivers on everything promised and more. It's a great movie that checks all the boxes. Not rated, but there is some casual conversation about one of the protagonists threatening to rape one of the characters. There's also a throughline about adultery. A woman is also burned to death for being a heretic. Nothing visual is really shown in any of these stories, but the stories are fundamentally about these immoral actions. Still, not rated.
DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman 1957? Really? I thought that this was way earlier of a movie. This is the first time that a date caught me offguard. Sorry. Let me start again. I'm no good at interpreting Bergman films. I'll admit it. I crapped the bed when it came to breaking down Persona. Some things are just too smart for me. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't write about these things. After all, if I only wrote about the easy ones out there, that wouldn't contribute anything to the discourse. If I screw up again, like I realistically will, I apologize. I like the challenge. Just know that I'm in an overwhelming state of anxiety when I write these things. The Seventh Seal is the Bergman that most people know. The stills from the movie alone make every cinematic montage talking about the major movements in cinema. I bet my dad loved this movie. I mean, I really like the movie. I don't think I love the movie. I'll explain that in a bit. But I think that my dad was probably all over this movie. He was way smarter than I'll ever be and I need to stop comparing myself to him. But this is more of a commentary on taste and hobbies than it is about braininess or bad self-esteem on my part. My dad was into this era of history. He loved the Crusades and King Arthur and legends. I bet he loved The Canterbury Tales. He died before I even knew what The Canterbury Tales were. Me? I can't stand The Canterbury Tales. It's not a flattering trait for an English teacher. We're supposed to be obsessed with The Canterbury Tales. But between having a rough professor in college who taught that to me and having class after class find the text too frustrating without enough payoff, I can safely say that I'm not a fan. But what I like about The Seventh Seal is that it makes me almost love the idea of The Canterbury Tales because The Seventh Seal, from my limited perspective, pulls off what the original tales tried to. It doesn't hurt that we're looking at similar motifs and images between both works either. The Canterbury Tales has a framing narrative of a wager during a pilgrimage about who can tell the most fascinating story. It's a pretty loose structure, allowing the author to tell a variety of stories commenting on the different social aspects of society. The Seventh Seal gives a more concrete framing story. Antonius Block is playing a game of chess against Death to win his life back. The game is slow and he meets a variety of people while Death chooses his next move. During this time, Block vocalizes his own frustrations while other people's tales --both involving Block and not --color society at the time. Honestly, The Seventh Seal feels like a spiritual and more successful sequel to The Canterbury Tales. (That was a sentence that frustrated generations of scholars because I took two seminal works about fate and society and simplfied that arguement into "one's better".) Like most of Bergman's works, all of which are challenging, The Seventh Seal isn't about one thing. Bergman's really good at making me trip over my words in an attempt to distill art into concepts that are ephemeral. I can only talk about the things that either I grasped or spoke to me personally. And, Geez Louise, does The Seventh Seal reflect so much of what I believe when it comes to matters of faith. I love the fact that the entire movie balances itself on an irony that the protagonist just cannot see. The opening of the movie is the establishment of the chess game. Block is talking to the embodiment of Death. Now, one could argue that the personification of Death is a metaphor and that Bergman is only using an actor to play Death to stress that lower-case death comes for us all and cannot be tricked. But Bergman makes it very clear in this movie: Death is a creature that looks human. Block is not the only one to see this specific manifestation of Death. Death is also crafty and disguises himself as other people, interacting with Block and others throughout the movie. Death is a character that is both literal and figurative in this movie. Yet, Block's major frustration is not the attempt to save his own life. Don't get me wrong. He's literally doing that. But he doesn't want to die because he loves life so much. He does so because he questions his own faith in God. Now, this is where I love the movie as a Catholic and as a lover of film. The English teacher / film nerd in me adores the notion that someone who is talking with a supernatural manifestation of Death questions the unimaginable. He begs God to give him a sign to turn an abstract faith into something tangible while he's talking with something abstract and impossible to imagine. Death, ironically, is the very sign that Block pleads for and he can't comprehend that. Part of that comes from the notion of the era that the film is set in. But the reality is that Block laments not having a greater concrete understanding of the notion of God. The Catholic in me --a Catholic who is often incredibly frustrated with his faith --understands Block's frustration. Block and I have the same issue: we may not believe in God, but we need to believe in God. I almost want to let that sentence lie because I'm having breakthroughs right now. I want to add something to it because I want to make my life not seem as bleak as Block's. I want to live in a world where God exists, thus I will continue to believe in something that naturally seems to elude me. Block and I have a similar skepticism. Sin is an active choice to do something wrong, to turn away from God. But belief, true and earnest belief, is almost like an emotion. When I don't believe in the chupacabra, there is an element of choice in there. I can choose to research the chupacabra and that very choice to research is part of my belief. But if the data says "There is no chupacabra", from that moment, there isn't a choice. So much about just existing in the world is a test in the existence of God. For all of the majesty of nature and humanity, there are more grounded explanations that can derived from science. (I'm also in the camp, thank goodness, that doesn't treat science and faith as mutually exclusive things). Block, from his confession to Death, has a similar yearning. He wants to believe in God, especially if he's in sight of his end. Oddly, I stopped fearing death a while ago. That has little to do with this, but it's where Block and I separate. I've made peace with a potential eternal silence. But the thing that gets me is that there is this recurring theme of Christians kind of being terrible people throughout. It's a time of the Crusades. Plague has ravaged the land. Things are bleak. But one of the incredibly visceral images that I retain from this movie is the burning of the heathen. It's very Joan of Arc. All of the stories, even though they have slightly different focuses, are about people touching on elements of faith and morality. (Okay, the guy who sees visions is his own thing.) But there's this whole discussion of faith being run through a world where the actual behavior that Christ encouraged is ignored, despite the notion of the moral majoirty seems to be causing problems. Yeah, it's a story about frustrating faith. That's why this movie hits with me. Yeah, I could go deeper. But sometimes a movie just talks to the things that are on my mind. It may frame a story differently than what was intended. But I don't even care. I like this movie for what I think it is about. Not rated, mainly because this is a spectacle Vegas experience. It's kind of like a Planet Earth or a Koyaanisqatsi where there's a lot of visually intimidating things, but nothing that would be even remotely considered offensive. Considering that Aronofsky is a vehement atheist, there seems to be respect for the notion of religion in this one. For an Aronofsky movie, it's actually quite tame...mainly because he knows this film's intended audience.
DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky I really went back and forth about writing about this movie. It's only 55 (? I counted 45) minutes long. It's more of a planetarium show than it is a traditional film. But it's Darren Aronofsky and it does have a science-fiction plot running through it. Listen, I'm going to write what I'm going to write and we'll see how much I get out of this. It may not be much, but I'm already giving myself Brownie points for writing about this movie at all. Also, I'm going to be one of the rare film blogs that has this Aronofsky movie on his page. If you hadn't guessed, we went to Vegas this weekend. The Sphere is the only place you can see this movie. Listen, I love me a good planetarium IMAX movie. If I want to avoid dancing around it, Postcard from Earth might be the most impressive IMAX movie ever made. IMAX movies only tend to go so far. In terms of expectations from an IMAX movie, there is some warping of the image, mainly because a two-dimensional image is being beamed onto a round space. But Aronofsky does the thing that most people don't. In a lot of cases (with some forgiveness for warping), Aronofsky uses such advanced technical techniques that makes the audience really feel the experience of seeing these things up close. Like Planet Earth, it's a breakdown of everything that makes life on Earth the way it is. As part of that, Postcard from Earth is one part nature documentary and one part social criticism. The thing about Aronofsky that I respect, but often don't enjoy, is the idea that he is going to be incredibly challenging with his movies. Sometimes, it is at the expense of the story. When I think about mother!, there was a lot that I liked, but his own hubris kind of got in the way. This is him holding himself back. There's something paradoxical about the very nature of making a spectacle piece like Postcard from Earth that Aronofsky is really treading here. One of the things I've noticed about the big name Vegas shows is that they often aren't challenging. That's an oversimplification, mainly because I'm trying to make a point. The other show we saw was The Beatles: Love through Cirque de Soleil. Was there something political? Sure. Was it the most easy to ignore political message in the world? Also true. Aronofsky is making Postcard from Earth in that vacuum. He's making something that needs to be visually spectacular before going into his political message. I know that the message that we're destroying our planet is polarizing (no pun intended) to some people. But I also feel like it is a message that we were inundated with growing up. I mean, we're the Captain Planet generation. The notion that people are ravaging the Earth isn't anything all that new. It's weird that this movie can get people riled up as much as it does. Postcard from Earth does something really smart to get that message out though. The majority of the movie is the spectacle you want. Transitioning from a standard 16:9 narrative about humans waking up from a deep sleep in space (which has meh special effects), the movie shifts into the full sphere full of 4K (8K?) visuals about the history of Earth and the dynamics of nature. Because that shift is so impressive, coupled with rumble seats that give it that extra RPX experience, the movie wins its audience with an intense overwhelming of the senses. In the final 30% of the movie, however, it reminds us of that science fiction element promised at the beginning. It becomes critical of humanity and the notion that we are the ones solely responsible for this change. I suppose in my current hippie years, I'm incredibly moved by such a message. The movie works on the visuals of juxtaposition. The first 70% of the movie in IMAX is about how gorgeous things are. It celebrates man, despite damning him later. It shows the greatness of man in his environment. But then Aronofsky takes us through the visual consequences of that genius and specialness unchecked. Yeah, if we can terraform distant planets and moons, why don't we just terraform Earth? I think its a metaphor and a lovely shortcut story of how we can't afford to live on the place that gave us life. While I find effective, I know that it didn't necessarily work for everybody. But it should be taken into account, this is a very impressive pseudo-documentary. If this wasn't framed by a science-fiction premise of people awakening on a distant planet, ultimately, this would be Koyaanisqatsi. It is an accusatory look at our world. Me? I love when things get political, especially when it is well-executed. That's this. But not everyone digs it. It's a beautiful looking movie that may be pulling its punches for the sake of views, but it is pretty darned impressive. Good art tends to change society. While I think that the current climate (pun, unfortunately, intended) might not be receptive to such a message, I don't know if that falls on Aronofsky exactly. In a perfect world, he'd hit even harder. But it is impressive, in the way that things in Vegas should be impressive. Rated PG-13 for some somewhat unsettling images. It really depends what your buttons are. For most, it is probably the animal cruelty. For some, it's the mutilation and violence. Sometimes, that violence leads to death. But if I'm talking about everything that happens in this movie, there's also off-screen affairs and language. But there's nothing really in this movie that feels R-rated, so rest in the knowledge that messed up stuff is often just messed up.
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan It's weird. This was the first Christopher Nolan movie that I left thinking "It's alright." I watched it back in 2006. I own the Blu-Ray of the movie. I may or may not have watched my Blu-Ray copy of The Prestige. I can't promise in either direction if that is true or not. But I was obsessed with Nolan before this point. I was a big Memento nerd, which is now a movie I'm afraid to revisit because it might scream late-'90s / early-2000s a bit too much now. It mostly comes down to the third act. All these blogs get spoilery, so I'm just going to establish that this one is going to get spoilery really early. One of my big thoughts on Nolan is his use of the twist. He's never as bad as Shyamalan, who often needs his twist to work for the sake of the movie to work. Nolan just likes turning things on their heads so that people don't necessarily see what's coming. Like Interstellar, the twist in this movie could be seen as a bit polarizing. See, the problem I have with the movie is that the twist is a genre swap. I'm not talking about a Parasite genre swap. The genre swap in Parasite is a swap between two realistic genres. It goes from drama to thriller / horror. If you were in a horror movie, most of your life probably looked like a drama or a comedy. That's a natural progression of what reality would look like to you. But The Prestige goes from realistic genre to science-fiction and that bugs the heck out of me. The conceit that The Prestige is that we have these two vicious geniuses of illusion. The rules are that there is a trick behind everything. It's about how far you would go to make that trick seem credible. Now, to Nolan's credit, the key idea behind these illusions is that there has to be great sacrifice. Borden's major sacrifice (among many) is that he has to split his life 50/50 with his twin brother. When Borden is the twin, he has to live a life of anonymity. His brother, reasonably, does not share his affections with his wife. A natural result of that is the dissolution of a happy marriage with the woman he loves. But Borden understands that. It works with the story, especially considering that Cutter guesses Borden's secret to a certain extent. The issue I have is that Angier's secret is a bit of a cop-out. To not mince words, Nikola Tesla never invented cloning. It's actually kind of weird that Nolan would even imply that Nikola Tesla was even interested in cloning or duplication, considering that his passion was focused on dispelling fears about current and creating efficient means of power. But instead, it's a science that, as far as I know, he had no interest in. It's kind of like hiring Albert Einstein to make a sweet Vegan burrito. Like, I get that it takes a science to create a sweet Vegan burrito. It's just that Albert Einstein was a nutritionist. That's not his cup of tea. The reason that we had Nikola Tesla in this movie is that we had to have a scientist who had a valid scientific background, but was also disavowed from his community. Also, it's rad to put Nikola Tesla in things, especially if he's played by David Bowie. Now I'm writing for serious. I've been writing slow and crappily this entire blog because I've been distracted and I've danced around a point that I absolutely need to make clear right now. This second watch kind of changed things for me. I was ready to put this movie as background noise. (Okay, that's not true. I knew that I was going to be writing about this. I was dismissive, that's true.) Going into the movie with a knowledge that I wasn't going to like the cloning bit as a solution for the murder that is teased in the beginning of the movie, I watched it just as a movie about two obsessed magicians. Oh my goodness. This is a movie that works so darned well, especially if you can get over the cloning bit nonsense. This is a movie about escalation. I do love how many people side with Borden over Angier. I'm on Team Angier for a lot of the movie. Not always. I would be real monster if I was always on Team Angier. But Nolan creates a narrative where sympathies start dwindling given enough rope to hang oneself. On top of that, I find it weird if you end up on any side completely. Both men prove to be absolutely monstrous. One of my students pointed out that the cloning story is almost its own movie that doesn't belong in this movie. I then proceeded to tell him that movie was already made and it was called The 6th Day. I'm sure that I just woke up a memory in someone out there reading who hasn't thought about The 6th Day in a God's age. I kind of agree. Like I mentioned, Nolan's obsession with giving a film a twist or a turn sometimes hinders him. I'm not saying that Nolan's other films aren't about character. They have been and he really is marvelous about making strong character films. But like Oppenheimer, this is a movie about self-destruction. As much as Borden hates Angiers and Angiers hates Borden, they are almost two people pointing guns at their own heads. There's a sick level of respect for the enemy that drives these characters. Angiers has an intense hate for Borden that is quasi/sorta valid. It took a discussion with the students yesterday to understand why Borden didn't know if he tied the right or the wrong knot. (I don't know why the other Borden didn't confess to the other brother outside of the understand that Borden literally was one part of an evil twin situation.) His wife dies and Angiers just needed an answer. That actually is a valid reason to go full big-bad. But there's the moment. As much as you could say that there are two protagonists to the film, the movie really does follow Angiers far more than Borden. The moment that I am talking about is when Olivia confronts Angiers on his motivation for revenge. There's a shift that is absolutely well-earned when Angiers shifts his vengeance from his wife to jealousy over brilliance. Now, Nolan's kind of a genius for how he sets this up. There are steps all along the way that point to one direction and then there's the real drop. It's the magic trick all along the way. Angiers is wrathful about his wife's negligent death. Borden gets a family and a career. Borden has everything that Angiers wants. Angiers keeps one-upping him in terms of showmanship, but not in quality. It all seems like it is an extension of the initial death, but that shift happens oh-so-subtlely. One of the key concepts in the movie that Angiers never understands is the notion of the trick being everything off-stage. But in his own way, he's tricking himself by the life he leads. It's really this cool concept and I love it. I am more cool with the cloning plotline in the movie. After all, Angiers can't understand that living a life of illusion is where great magicians are made, so he feels the need to make real magic. I get that it fits in his character. But it still is this festering sore in the middle of a very well made movie. The frustrating part is that the movie gets so close to perfection only to fumble something that is so crucial to the story's dismount. |
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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