[10 for 10... that's 10 movies which we give ourselves 10 minutes
apiece to write about. Part of our problem is we don't often have the
spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie
(or TV show) we watch. How about a 10-minute non-review full of
half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]
In this edition: a hodgepodge
and...progress!
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On his "talk show", Eric Andre does some of these comedy bits, sometimes in studio with an unsuspecting celebrity guest, and sometimes in his man-on-the-street filmed. He likes to push things to extremes and absurds on that show, a mish-mash of Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast and The Tom Green Show. Thankfully, paired with his show director Kitao Sakurai, they've crafted a much gentler, less imposing comedy road trip in Bad Trip (the latest in the not-a-series series of unconnected "Bad..." titled films).
In the setup, Andre plays a member of the lost generation, a man with so little going on in his life that when a high school crush reenters his life in (briefly) 20-years-later, he takes an invitation from her to visit her gallery as a hint that he needs to just uproot everything (which for him is nothing) and drag his best friend (Lil' Rel Howrey) on a road trip from Florida to New York City. The trip requires them to borrow Howrey's sister's car - she won't mind, she's in prison. Of course she escapes confinement and comes after them with the ferocity of a demon on fire.
The "pranks" if you want to call them that, aren't punishing to watch, and generally lean on the better nature of the people involved, although Andre and Tiffany Haddish do tend to push hard to get people to push back, and surprisingly few respond in kind. The film kind of peaks with Andre performing a musical number in the real world to the confusion and confoundment of many bystanders, but again, it's a gentle pranking.
The gentleness makes it go down easier, and there were plenty of additional laughs, and even some impressive responses from the real players in the scenarios, but even still, it's hard to recommend something that made me so uncomfortable. But that's the point, isn't it?
[14:28]
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After watching Treasure Planet, I thought I would take a stab at the Muppet version of the story, and, well, I did that. Honestly, it's not that it's bad, in fact it's very well done, but, again, it really doesn't interest me. Like I noted in my Treasure Planet review, I don't care much for pirate stories, and that extends to pirates in space and Muppet pirates. And the Treasure Island story holds neither any mystery, nor any thrills for me. I find it pretty dull.
Really, I can't even tell you if I finished watching this.
[25:03]
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| Like Love and Monsters (aka Monster Problems), my cable service didn't get notification of the name change. |
Coming from two writers of the popular-with-Millennials animated series Gravity Falls, and produced by Kent-favourites Lord and Miller, and coming from Sony Pictures Animation (home of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Into The Spider-verse, two of the best animated features ever) there was definitely something behind all this worth paying attention to.
The story is about the Mitchell Family, centering on daughter Katie (Abbi Jacobson), who is moving away from home to go to film school, and her increasingly disconnected relationship with her very analog father (Danny McBride). On the day she's supposed to catch her flight to California, her dad surprises her with one last big family hurrah, putting everyone (including the pudgiest pug Monchi) into the station wagon and hitting the road, just as a Silicon Valley mogul launches his new AI robots who very, very suddenly take over the world and kidnap practically everyone, putting them into cubes and onto structures that will launch them into space. The stakes accelerate very quickly.
It's an absurd plot grounded in actual fears about technology, but it's not technophobic. It's a film that understands that technology has become a real part of the fabric of our world, and has allowed people many things, including creative expression and connection to a larger world and a sense of belonging where maybe they don't find it at home. Those things can't be denied. But there also has to be wariness and accountability in what we give up and who we give it up to.
But the real grounding force is the familial relationships... brothers and sisters, parents and children, and -- as a father of a daughter who is growing up way too fast -- the father/daughter dynamic. At its heart it's a story rooted in a parent accepting their differences with their child, and vice versa, and worrying less about who they will become, and understanding more about who they are. It's pretty nice.
Plus, hey, Olivia Coleman as the evil robot's overlord is awesome. Even that story is kind of rooted in a "daughter" discarded by her "father', kind of the other side of Katie's relationship with her dad.
The animation is great, the character animation is kind of bog standard caricatures of humans with big broad features, heightened for animated comedic effect, but the settings are beautiful, almost like rotoscoped real world environments. You would think the two would clash but they mesh well, and all the unexpected interjections of Katie's creativity into the proceedings continually make things delightfully interesting. A winner.
[42:31]
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When this film came out a couple years ago, I had little interest in it. Murder mysteries, while not something I'm abject to watching, aren't something I proactively go to see, especially when it seems like such an egregious vanity piece for its director/star. And my stepson's praise fell on deaf ears, mainly because his movie viewing experience is very limited and his critical faculties about films don't seem well developed.
So after years of this boasting about what a wonderful film, and a veritable lull in desirable content to watch, I reluctantly put on this modern interpretation of the Agatha Christie classic. And dammit if I wasn't tremendously entertained.
Branagh's clear enthusiasm for *finally* getting to portray Hercule Poirot doesn't just shine through but explodes all over the screen. There's an absolute giddiness Branagh has inhabiting the character, embuing Poirot with a zest-for-life that I can't find a parallel to in other films or film series. There's confidence, charisma, charm, intelligence, and just the smallest of hints of vulnerability in Branagh's portrayal. I mean, this is a cast, stacked with Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Dame Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Odom Jr., Daisy Ridley and more, and it's like it doesn't even matter the wattage of star power around him, Branagh owns the screen, and his lens as director seems utterly in love with himself. Only Ridley comes close to threatening to steal a scene and there's no way Branagh is letting that happen.
It's a big, bold, ludicrous performance and it makes every second of the film worth watching. I mean, it's a classic for a reason, but even if you know the story inside and out, you don't know this performance...unless you've seen it before... and if you have, it's still kind of worth watching again.
It's not the best movie ever, but yeah, I get why my kid's so enthused with it.
[55:07]
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It was only in the past year, listening to it being discussed on a podcast, that I learned it was a post-apocalyptic story where dragons, awakened in 1998, were the cause of the apocalypse. That was a twist nobody had explained to me, and if they had, my brain shut off at the mention of "dragons".
But damn if this wasn't a solid action-adventure film that takes its conceit completely seriously. I shouldn't be surprised. Even early in his carreer, Bale didn't really do frivolous, and here, with master of disaster Gerard Butler by his side, he brings us into a very different 2020 than we know today. McConaughey enters the picture as an overbearing American military major who is ready to sacrifice everything in order to take out the bull dragon, theorizing that there's only one alpha male that's seeding all these dragons. That bloodline must be thin.
It's a pretty cracking movie, and even nearly 20 years later, its effects (mostly) hold up. Director Rob Bowman, best known for his work on the X-Files, doesn't do anything too fancy, yet manages to elicit the better tendencies of James Cameron in his work here.
Surprising. Fun!
[1:06:13]
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A friend from work told me about Sing Street years ago, noting how much his teenage boys loved it, but that he greatly appreciated it to. Praise from teenage boys is unfortunately likely what kept me away from the film, but secondary sources recently vouched for the film, and, with the aforementioned lull in viewing schedules I put it on...completely unaware of what I was getting into.
Set in Ireland in the mid-1980's in the midst of a crippling recession, family budget constraints force Conor ( Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) out of his posher education and into (I assume, without knowing Irish education system) Catholic public school on Synge Street. It's a rough and tumble place, where instantly Conor feels like an outsider with his brown shoes and kempt wardrobe. He becomes an easy target for a bully, but he takes everything coming at him with pursed lips and a clenched jaw. He's got his own things going on.
His parents (Game of Thrones' Aidan Gillan and Orphan Black's Maria Doyle Kennedy) won't stop fighting and it looks like a separation is likely about to happen. Conor's older sister has her nose stuck in her books, science is her way out. His older brother, music obsessed, teaches him about contemporary music - Duran Duran, The Clash, Hall and Oates - as if that's all he has left, he missed his own window. But Conor's key fixation is the beautiful older orphaned girl who doesn't go to school, says she's a model and going to move to London any day now. But he's not a boy of simple crushes and inaction... he asks Raphina (an instant star-making turn from Lucy Boynton, not just playing the muse) if she will model in his music video for his new song, and she agrees. Now he just needs a song...and a band...
The story of Sing Street revolves entirely around Conor (for better or worse), both what's going on in his life that leads to the music he makes, and his ambitions both as a musician and as a possible boyfriend. It's a film about dreaming and making your dreams come true through hard work, studying, the right combination of influences and motivators, and more than a hit of talent.
I would have liked more time with Conor connecting with the other members of his band and the relationship there, the best we get is the few great moments of Conor collaborating with Eamon (Wayne's Mark McKenna). The music is really good, great at times, but other times seems a little anachronistic, less of the era and more of a modern interpretation of the era. But still, I thought this was a musical, and it's not, it's really an immensely enjoyable feature about music
[1:21:03]
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I was the same with Avatar. My distaste for James Cameron means I'm likely never going to watch Avatar (or it's 96 forthcoming sequels) in full.
With Waterworld it was straight up rejection of Kevin Costner, who at the time was the most boring performer in Hollywood (he's been surpassed by many, but he's still top 10). My sister, as well, was a big fan, and he was one of those "screen idols" that girls seemed to be all over at the time, and you know, being a teen boy, you just kind of reject those guys straight out. Couple that with the disaster-in-the-making that was this film's exorbitant budget, and it seemed like there was nothing for me with Waterworld.
What I didn't know was that the film just needed time. Time for me to dismiss it so heavily, to put it in that "do not touch list" for so long that, at a time like now, where I just want a dose of the nostalgic, of filmmaking that was almost entirely practical, but still big budgeted for the era, and big on ideas, and most of all new to me. There aren't many of those discoveries left for me. At this stage in my sci-fi back-fill the few features from before the year 2000 that I've left to discover tend to be direct-to-video, no-budget B-movies, stuff I can ignore.
Waterworld opens with the famous "In a world..." voiceover guy providing a brief introduction to the world of water, followed by Costner's "The Mariner" pissing into a plastic jug, pouring it into a tube and out the other end clearer liquid which he drinks. Effectively this movie opens with Kevin Costner drinking his own piss.
From there it was all a discovery, finding out that Costner isn't playing the heroic rogue, but really a guarded asshole who keeps everyone at arms' length. He's a mutant, with webbed toes and gills, and when people find out they not just reject him, but want to murder him something fierce. There's a reason he hates humans. But when the floating refuge he's visiting for trade is attacked by the Smokers - the merciless band of jetski riding pirates led by a somewhat cheerfully evil Dennis Hopper - he escapes thanks to the help of a woman and a little girl. In return he reluctantly grants them refuge aboard his boat, but he seems to regret it at every turn.
The little girl, though, has a map tattooed on her back, the fable is that the map leads to dry land, something that nobody really believes exist, yet hold out hope for. As such, the Smokers pull out all the stops to take on the Mariner, and in turn he finds just a little bit of connection with humanity.
I wasn't expecting, basically, Mad Max on water, and it's pretty much just that. Certainly not up to part with Fury Road but easily in line with Beyond Thunderdome. Easily. It's like it's on the other side of the world from Mad Max. Written by Kent-favourite David Twohy (the Riddick series), this film takes full inspiration not only from Miller's classic film series, but also Marvel Comics, seeding in the X-Men's struggle for acceptance, and Namor: The Sub-Mariner's notorious antisocial attitude.
The film runs a little long. There's maybe too many loving shots of the boat sailing, but for the most part it's a very enjoyable picture throughout. Even Costner's lack of charm works for the emotionally-stunted Mariner here. And all those swashbuckling swinging about the boat maneuvers Costner pulls are genuinely cool looking.
Yeah, a lot of the picture looks like it was inspired by a stunt show (and not a movie that became a stunt-show) but it's still pretty impressive the whole accomplishment building a world and multiple different societies and appealing characters and even a child character that is far more charming than cute or annoying. I'm for certain going to be watching this again...perhaps many more times.
[1:42:10]
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Possessor, the first film from Brandon Cronenberg (yes, he is the son of...), is kind of a similar premise executed very differently. In Possessor, Tasya Vos (sounds like a Star Wars name) is a corporate assassin who has her consciousness injected into others so that she can get close to her victims. The process is far more rigorous than in American Ronan and it is much more scarring on the psyche of Tasya. In her daily life she has a husband and a child, but she's somewhat estranged from them, and it's clear from the POV Cronenberg gives us that Tasya is, well, a psychopath. She doesn't have any real emotions for her family, she's only pretending to. It's not fully clear if she was always a psychopath or if the job - and the damage the process inflicts- progressively made her one.
Her latest job is a multi-day infiltration, but she's put into the mind of a drug abuser and depressive, which makes retaining control of his psyche very difficult. The film, following the very grotesque accomplishment of her goals, then falls into a war of psyches as the host seemingly regains control and our POV switches to him.
It's a story that, on paper, seems intriguing, unfortunately Cronenberg leans to heavily on the sensationalism of it all, marrying cold sexuality and disturbing, gory violence in an uneasy blender (gee, wonder where he learned that form) that only distracts from the psychodrama at play, to the point that I missed the film's transition from Tasya to her host.
The root of it all is Tasya is an immoral and reprehensible character, and her job is disgusting. If we're supposed to get any sense that she's maybe in turmoil over whether to be a "regular person" or the vile assassin, the film never reaches it. It always seems clear she is just gone. As such, I was never rooting for her to accomplish her mission, and when her host regains control I was on his side.
There's an American Ronan way to tell this story, but Cronenberg had no interest in an action movie, this is just an exercise in grotesqueness, both visually and psychologically.
[Mini horror-not-horror: But is it horror: yes, it is]
[1:56:33]
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This should be quick.
Saturn 3 is an also-ran to Alien, an attempt to make a science-fiction/suspense-horror movie, but why, oh why bring on the director of Singing In The Rain for such an endeavor. There's conflict here. It's not that Stanley Donen had objection to the special effects gags of a horror movie, but he doesn't seem to have the capability to frame or light or guide the actors through the proceedings as if it were a horror movie.
The story is so outdated. On an isolated research station on the third moon of Saturn, a couple (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett) are working on new ways to grow food for a struggling humanity back on Earth. A flunked major has killed and replaced the pilot who was to arrive with new resources to help in their research. He's played by Harvey Keitel, but his vocal performance is dubbed over so that he sounds very robotic and monotone (I'm sure Keitel's natural vocal performance would have been more interesting at least). Of course the new guy sees a hot woman with an older guy and gets ideas. He also builds a robot who takes on his own brain pattern so suddenly we get Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel and a robot all being toxic males treating poor Farrah like she's a prize to be won or possession to have.
It's a stupid, outdated premise that doesn't even need to exist anymore. We should just burn every copy of this movie, delete it from every hard drive. It doesn't need to be. Poor Farrah and poor Kirk both bared all in this movie... THIS MOVIE! I guess if you're going to do a nude scene or two, do it in a movie nobody will want to watch.
[Mini horror-not-horror: but is it horror? Ew, not even]
[2:05:57]
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Neither glorifying nor demonizing the nomadic lifestyle, Chloe Zhao's Academy Award winning Nomadland is a measured view into an American subculture. It understands that, for some, the lifestyle is borne out of lack of options, but for others it is decidedly a choice, an inescapable way of being. Through Francis McDormand's Fern, we meet much of the former, but Fern herself is decidedly the latter.
Fern takes seasonal or temp jobs at an Amazon facility, at various RV parks and state parks, at roadside stands, an industrial turnip farm and more. Zhao's film is sort of a fictitious travelogue but one that you can tangibly feel is grounded in reality.
In a weird way, watching Nomadland felt kind of similar to watching Waterworld, about two very isolated people who aren't incapable of being congenial or social but choose not to. They could have deeper relationships, but it's not their way. The open road, or open sea, is their home. There's a connection there that they seem to have is greater than human connection. Likewise, Nomadland has this quasi-post-apocalyptic feel. The desolate rural towns full of abandoned buildings and forgotten histories, the strange industrial complexes that seem so unreal in juxtaposition. The varying alien terrains that Fern travels. It's not that far off from sci-fi, except that it reflects all too much a painful reality.
It's a film that (gently) hints for you to confront your existence, the societal constructs you dwell in, and what the meaning of freedom really is. Neither sweet nor bitter, it's a film that balances on the cusp of beautiful, but it's always awash in greys and hazy blues that just hold it back from anything too evocative. There is a weight on the soul of these travelers, something that keeps their feet on the ground, and yet they move and keep moving as if the weight were nothing at all.
It's a film devoid of tension, and yet it's a film that actively engages you as a viewer. It's like an open wound being cleaned, kind a good, healing ache of a watch.
[2:17:10]
-fin-
YOU ... NEVER ... SAW ... WATERWORLD ... BEFORE ??
ReplyDeleteWow. I just love this movie, and even rewatched it again a week or so ago, just because. Its so dumb and silly and over the top but I love the Grouchy Mariner and his pee drinking. This time round I even really enjoyed Smoker Dennis Hopper, because he is just so detached from reality.
Nope. Never. I've been so anti-Costner for so long...and Waterworld was just kind of a joke in name only for so long, like Ishtar.
DeleteBut I see the appeal and I thought Hopper was really kind of perfect...his adversary is just so... nonchalant about... everything.
I'm surprised you aren't also similarly surprised I've never seen Reign of Fire lol.
DeleteBoth these films seem like primo Toasty shelf staples.
Both are, indeed on The Shelf. I think I knew already that you hadn't seen Reign, but I also already know your lack of interest in generic fantasy, i.e. dragons.
ReplyDelete