I Saw This!! Oscar Bait Edition

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(yes!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Like, stoopid Pootin bad.

For the past few years (decades?) I've been pretty bad about seeing the Oscar nominated movies. The truth is, the types of movies that generally get nominated for Oscars aren't my preferred style of movie.  Then again, they're few people's preferred style of movie.  What the Academy Awards, and the attention they garner, present is the opportunity for the everyperson to elevate their movie-watching game.  But as the years drag on, it's become evident to me that the "elevated cinema" the Academy is interested in rewarding tend to be cut from the same cloth, more often than not.  They pepper in a populist choice or two for best picture (otherwise relegating them to technical categories) and they will often seed in a few dark horse choices for performers and picture, but the majority of their selections seem obvious...well, obvious for the academy.  This is not to say that nominated films and actors don't deserve the accolades, but they're rarely daring, and so often flooded with biopics and melodrama.  This isn't the Palm D'or.  There will be no Oscar for something like Titane.

This year, as a half-assed exercise I tried to jam into my viewing cycle some of the more notable nominated movies.  There was really no rhyme or reason for why I watched what I watched except that I made a list, sectioned off into "Must See", "Maybe" and "Nope".  Most of this ranking was based off critical reaction from the various movie podcasts I listen to or film reviewers I read.  My top three Must See movies, well, I still haven't seen, mainly because they're not on one of my streaming services yet (these were Licorice Pizza, Drive My Car, and The Worst Person In The World all which remain on my must see list even post-Oscars).  A couple on my Nope list actually won awards (Belfast, The Eyes of Tammy Faye), and most of the big winners were in my "Maybe" list.

all is not ok

The Awards ceremony, as you may have heard, was a bit of a shit show in the last hour.  There's enough commentary on the slap that I won't spend much time on it except to say I felt very anxious when it happened and really bad for both Chris and Will...Chris is a hapless victim of whatever trauma Will is clearly working through.  A great essayist on Black culture on youtube, Fiq Da Signifier, did an off-the-cuff video on his Patreon delving into it with empathy for both men as well as its stupidity but the layers of context, both personal and cultural, that underpin it (a condensed version is public on youtube). 

The rest of the night was about the most enjoyable Oscars ceremony I've seen in years, and yet there's heavy criticism that the humour of the ceremony (basically roasting the nominees and film in general) and its weird editing of the technical awards (plus those stupid Twitter fan-voted categories that were naturally usurped by the Snyner-bros) was just chasing an audience that really doesn't care anyway.  Movies, as a thing, are becoming less and less relevant.  Kids would rather play video games, watch other kids dance on tik tok, watch other kids play video games on youtube, and binge anime and manga.  Television has caught up to and sometimes surpassed film in quality, and there's no shortage of content to pull people away from theatres, nevermind the impact of the pandemic.  The relevance of the Oscars maybe should pull inward.  Instead of trying to appeal to a broader crowd, it should really go insular, and make the Academy Awards show more of a fly-on-the-wall, real insider-like ceremony. 

I dunno.  Let's talk about some movies I watched.  I was really keen to write about these before the ceremony, but I ran out of time, and I'm a lot less interested in doing so now.

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Being the Ricardos (2021, d. Aaron Sorkin - AmazonPrime) was on my "Maybe" list.  I thought that the choices made for Lucy and Ricky were a little odd, as Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem aren't exactly known for their comedic chops.  But as Oscar co-host Amy Schumer so astutely pointed out on the big night, Being the Ricardos is not a comedy.  It's a moment in time drama about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the prime of their run of I Love Lucy.

This is a movie from Aaron Sorkin, who, as a writer and creator, and I guess filmmaker, appeals so distinctly to Boomers.  The Social Network is his only work that stands outside of the rest of his output, mainly because of the the Fincher-factor.  But if you will recall the short-lived Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which premiered alongside the other show that was about Saturday Night Live (but not SNL in name), only one was a comedy and one was a drama about comedy.  Well, it's the same thing here.  Sorkin isn't interested in making a funny movie, nor is he really that interested in what made I Love Lucy or its stars funny, he's interested in the drama behind the scenes.

The moment-in-time the film is engaged with is a fraught one... Lucy has been accused of being a communist as McCarthyism is on the rise, Desi is facing infidelity accusations, Lucy is now pregnant which you couldn't be on TV at the time, Desi is feeling his control on the show slip away, there's fighting with everyone: producers, network, writers, sponsors, cast members, and each other.  It's a lot.  There's no calm.  Sorkin puts you at the center of a storm with no respite , the dialogue is non-stop (a Sorkin specialty).  There are flashbacks, showing how Lucy and Desi first met, or some classic Lucy bits, and there are wholly unnecessary and distracting "modern day" talking heads trying to editorialize what we're watching as we watch it. 

The point is, less than halfway through the film I was exhausted with it.  I got the gist of what Sorkin was doing and I really didn't care.  As great as the actors all were (Kidman especially really did something special and disproved the nay-sayers) it's a tiresome movie, and not something I felt I needed to finish.  I'm much more interested in Amy Pohler's documentary, Lucy and Desi, which is probably time better spent.

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Given that my wife loves Shakespeare and generally likes the Coens, it's surprising that it took us a couple months before we decided to sit down for The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, d. Joel Coen - AppleTV+).  I neither love nor hate the Shakes, but it always will take a little motivation to get me to partake.  In this case, I believe it was a podcast talking about Kathryn Hunter's contorting portrayal of the witches.  And they were right, it's amazing.  The witches of Macbeth are usually three performers, but here, Hunter plays them first as a singular being with three voices, and through Coen's direction and Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography, there's one amazing shot of the witch reflected in two pools of water that makes them three.  

I was immediately smitten with Denzel Washington's performance as Lord Macbeth.  What I'm used to with Shakespeare is people adopting an accent and being theatrical, saying words but rarely in a way that seems to convey real understanding of what is said.  Most actors just seem like delivery vehicles for the word, and the performaces often seem set aside from the language.  Denzel, however, speaks his lines as if he understands the intent of every word.  He's not emoting while regurgitating, he's full-on inhabiting a role, not just doing a Shakespeare.  Expressing my delight early in the film, my wife pointed out that it was a massive step forward since Washington was in Much Ado About Nothing, which she opines was a terrible performance (I haven't seen it).

The set design is, for a second time this year (beside Villeneuve's Dune) to employ really brutalist design, very sparse, with big slabs of flat, unadorned surfaces, and a lot of sharp angles casting shadows.  Shooting in black and white, it's very striking, and the lighting so very precise as to create hard lines of black against white.  It's all quite staged, and yet it's something more than a play, but also not a conventional film.

A favourite critic of mine, Alonso Duralde, asked what the purpose of this adaptation of Macbeth was... as in Why now? What's it saying?  And ultimately if the movie disappointed him it's in not having such a purpose.  It really was a production put on by Coen to appease his wife, Francis McDormand, who really wanted to play Lady Macbeth.  I'm sure if like, say, West Side Story there had been some sort of modern commentary made, then the film would have been critically loved, rather than just liked.  I kind of agree.  But as *just* a presentation of a Shakespeare work, it's really pretty good.  I only nodded off once.

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There's not really a good poster for this moive.
This is perhaps the most interesting but it's also
the most off-putting "theatre kid" version

Basically at the bottom of my "Maybe" list was Tick, Tick...BOOM! (2021, d. Lin Manuel Miranda - Netflix).  I talked about my feelings on musicals in my West Side Story write up, but that's not the be-all and end-all to my feelings on musicals.  It's an ever-evolving opinion.  I started that review stating that "I don't like musicals", and by the end I had proven that untrue.  But I certainly don't have passion for musicals.  I don't avidly seek them out, I don't care much to listen to cast recordings (last week I queued up the 1999 Broadway revival of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" on Spotify but am unlikely to ever really listen to it).

So what finally drew me into Tick, Tick...Boom!, a musical biopic about the guy who wrote Rent (a musical I've never seen, which, while beloved in its time, has been critically reassessed in the past 15 years)?  It's kind of sad, honestly, but the draw was two-fold: first, seeing Andrew Garfield again in Spider Man: No Way Home reminded me that I do like him as a performer, and then finding out that Toast and Kent's favourite switching princess VanHudg was in it (only to be disappointed in how minimal a role she plays).

Unlike many a Letterboxd hipster millennial, I've not tired of Lin Manuel Miranda.  I don't spend much time on social medias and I haven't seen a million Miranda memes, but it was evident that much of Tick, Tick... Boom!'s initial lack of resonance was this Maranda lash-back.  Yet, the opening five minutes of the film just pulled me right in.  Garfield, on a stage, before a live, if smallish, theatre crowd, fakes playing the piano but belts out the opening number so hard it looks like the veins in his neck are about to explode.  I can't even remember the song, but the emotion and investment Garfield exhibits just blew me away.  We're so used to lip synching on screen, that when we see someone *actually* belt out a tune on camera it's really, really powerful ...see Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables or Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls...this is just as revelatory.

By the end of the film, I was just completely enamoured. While not a single song stuck in my head, I found more than a few of them, most of them in fact, to be surprising and likeable, as opposed to static and du rigueur.  The film is adapted to the screen from Jonathan Larson's biographical stage musical, which is about how he tried to make a dystopian sci-fi musical out of college and, despite garnering some good attention, failed.  Of all the musicals I've seen, I've never seen an autobiographical one, and it's such a more intimate experience than the usual fare.  Only once, during an early number, cutting between different members of the ensemble in different locations singing and dancing, did it feel theatre-kid stagey.  Otherwise there's a rawness that feels so very fresh.

The film jumps between the live, on stage performance of Garfield-as-Larson, and the story in the film as he tells it.  A lot of the musical numbers are done within the story as Larson tries to bring his first effort, "Superbia" to life.  He's a struggling artist, working at a diner, often sacrificing his relationships for his art.  It's a real "how the bread gets made" story, behind the scenes of how young theatre talent evolve into broadway hit makers. It's certainly not a world I've been exposed to, although it mirrors most my-life-is-my-art narratives.

I'll get to Will Smith in the Venus and Serena superhero origin story shortly, but I thought Garfield's performance was the strongest of the five nominees this year (and I actually saw all of them).  I should also note that Tick, Tick...BOOM! made the top 5 list in the oscar's Twitter fan vote for best film (not that it really was a realiable measure of anything considering the bad faith incel edgelords who stacked the vote for an unheard of Johnny Depp movie and Snyder's Army of the Dead).

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Summer of Soul (or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021, d. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson - Disney+) was the obvious frontrunner for best documentary feature.  It's an uplifting story of discovery and rediscovery, while also grounding itself with an honest portrayal of the social politics of the time.

The Harlem Cultural Festival was held over 6 weeks in 1969.  It was a respite from the overwhelming events of the era - the deaths of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Kennedys, the civil rights protests- turned-horror shows, riots - there wasn't a lot to celebrate.  But Black music was only getting more powerful, more prominent, and a definite unifier of the community.  The festival was a sponsored event, and was put together in part with the goodwill of John Lidnsey, the then Mayor of New York who was invested in the well-being of the Black community, if only for votes, but maybe more.

The Festival featured acts like Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, Nina Simone, B.B. King, David Ruffin, Gladys Knight and the Pips, as well as activists and leaders like Jesse Jackson, and comedians Moms Mabley and Willie Tyler & Lester.  The crowds were packed show after show after show, this was something monumental.  The moon landing happened during the festival and, at least for the attendees, was a distant second of interesting things happening at that time.

The festival organizer had the forethought to film the entire event, and worked with the production crew to ensure the stage and space was set up in a way that would take advantage of the natural light.  The hope was to sell the footage to a network for replay but the narrow-mindedness/systemic racism of 1969, the networks thought it wouldn't attract viewers or sell ads, and so the footage was stashed away in a basement for 50 years before being recently rediscovered and restored.

Questlove's documentary isn't just playing footage of the Festival, which, on its own, would have been astounding.  It's an examination of the times in which the Harlem Cultural Festival inhabited, but also the director gets talking heads of people who were actually there, both performers and attendees.  Some who were there were only children, and without much documented on the festival, had thought it was perhaps just a dream, and are moved by seeing the footage.

Seeing these in-the-moment performers, some at the height of their popularity, some just starting to explode, is pretty powerful stuff.  Most "live" musical performances from the 60s is talk show footage where the singers are lip-syncing to album tracks and pretending to play instruments.  Sly and the Family Stone singing "I Want to Take You Higher" live is like an aural explosion.  It moved me, as did Stevie jamming out on his organ, so blissfully, and Nina Simone proselytising Black love and self love is so full of power and beauty.

I can only imagine that someone is working on securing all the song rights and shopping all this footage around to streaming services for a hefty penny, because all of this is gold that needs to be shared and preserved.

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Now as powerful as Summer of Soul is, my pick for best Documentary for 2021 is Flee (2021, d. Jonas Poher Rasmussen - AmazonPrime).  I'm sure most people are wondering just what Flee is.  And maybe their only familiarity with it is the fact that it was nominated for Best Documentary, Best Animated and Best Foreign Feature at the Academy Awards this year, a first that's not likely to be repeated any time soon.

This film burrowed deep and moved me to tears, frequently. It is indeed an animated documentary, as adult Amir (the animation is in part used to conceal his identity) details to the director (and long-time friend) his harrowing story, and revealing the truth of his story for the first time.  The retelling captures the temperature shift of politics in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, from peaceful and prosperous to war-torn, to having to run following the fall of communism only to wind up in a differently bad situation in the only country that would take them as refugees, Russia.  Life in Russia seems a miserable experience even in the best of circumstances, but as a POC refugee, it's a literal hell, facing harassment the most from the police.  Amir, in the retelling, it is evident, has PTSD from his time there.

The attempts to leave Russian to the Scandinavian countries are heart wrenching and horrifying.  Having seen dramatizations of the horrors of human trafficking on TV and movies, I knew things could get really really bad, and was preparing for the worst in the telling. But reality isn't TV or Movies, most of the time, and where we may think the worst is death, sometimes surviving these situations seems even more the worst-case scenario, the scars they leave on one's psyche.

We see, intercut with Amir's narration of his history, his life modern day, and the toll his past trauma has had on his relationship with his fiancee.  It's not a documentary just about a particular place or event, it's rounded picture of one very specific story that puts us deep into Amir's whole journey over 30 years.  That Amir is gay is just a subtle undercurrent.  Coming out stories tend to be center focus of entire documentaries, here, it's just one small facet that Amir didn't have the luxury to contemplate for a very, very long time, and once he did it frightened him intensely.

In one of the most moving aspects of his story, Amir tells of finally feeling settled into his new home in Denmark, prospering in school, and feeling resolved enough to visit family in Sweden (he told the Danish authorities that his whole family was dead when seeking asylum...his fear of being found out, and the repercussions that may fall  is why he remains anonymous in the film).  But after years separated he feared his family finding out he was gay, that as alone as he has been at least he knew he still had family elsewhere.  He feared his family would reject him, ostracise him, and that he would truly be alone.  Amir's narration throughout the film is so matter-of-fact for much of it, a steely, shut-down demeanour he's had to adopt to survive, but the vulnerability is just boiling under the surface, all the hurt and pain and trauma, yes, but also the joys and triumphs appear to be too much, too dangerous, threatening to crack the facade.  But when it cracks, it's one of the most affecting moments I've ever seen, and it makes me tear up just thinking about it.  I've tried to retell this moment to a few people and I myself break down from the weight of it all.

Flee was not destined to be the best animated movie in a year where Encanto so expertly defied all-ages animation conventions.  Flee's, rotoscoping is effective enough to do the job its there to do, and that its animated allows the "flashbacks" to contain details that may otherwise be hard to recreate.  Meanwhile, the film also intercuts footage from global news sources in live action as grounding points during transition times... it's very effective and captivating.  Flee I knew would also not be the best foreign feature because a couple of heavyweight entries in that category (Drive My Car, The Worst Person in the World, both critically adored juggernauts), which I kept hearing about for months, yet nothing about Flee.  But I thought it had the best shot at winning best doc, and likely would have if not for the potency of a very American story in Summer of Soul.

The journey in Flee is so alien to me, but it is told from its first person perspective so beautifully, that it removes the separation.  Amir's weary animated face and burdened tone are so empathetic, that even though you may not relate to his experiences, you can indeed feel the weight they have and how those memories and his fear weigh down his life.  The events in Afghanistan, like those in Iran as detailed in Persepolis are exactly what fervent conservatives are trying to push around the globe, police states that will only prosper for those who fit the mould and fall in line.  It's a beautiful, powerful, emotional movie, but take it also as a warning.

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In his 5-minute long, tear-filled, rambling acceptance speech(/apology) for Best Actor at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, Will Smith was having a moment. Having just barely an hour before stomped up on stage and slapped Chris Rock in the face for a stupid joke Rock made about Jada Pinkett-Smith's hair (Rock apparently unaware, like I was, of her alopecia), Smith was attempting to explain, but not condone his own actions.  He was regretful, apologetic (though not to Rock), and a mess of emotions poured out.  This angst-invoking drama soiled the evening, ruined Questlove's ability to give an acceptance speech for best documentary feature, and basically will be the thing Smith is most remembered for in spite of a massive career.  But, letting go of this, what was evident from the "speech" was that playing Richard Williams had a profound affect upon him, one that he's still wrestling with in his inner monologue.

Richard Williams was the overbearing, overprotective, and complicated patriarch of the Williams family that birthed two of the greatest tennis stars in history.  His unapologetic and relentless efforts in coaching and then bullying their way into an otherwise closed, elitist system made a huge impact in what was (and by-and-large still is) a predominantly white, upperclass sport.

Williams worked a lot to ensure his five girls would have the best they could possibly get.  When he was home he was making sure everyone was studying and setting their ambitions high.  Nobody was going to get in the way of their success, even if it meant he had to take a few lumps, and in one particular moment, consider killing a man, in order to keep them safe.  

His hucksterism, his ability to promote, was shameless, but it had to be. His dishevelled appearance and stilted gait was likely to get him arrested if not for his disarming smile, pluck and civility.  It didn't hurt that, when put on display, Venus and Serena had the goods.  But the most telling aspect of Willaims was that he always wanted his girls to enjoy life, to enjoy what they were doing.  The only pressure he put upon them was to be as good as they wanted to be.  Getting into country clubs or competitions put them in stark contrast with the mostly white kids who, after a loss, would berate themselves followed by a berating from their parents.  He led with love...mostly.

I wasn't thrilled with King Richard when it was announced.  A Venus and Serena movie but centered around their dad?  In the lead into the Oscars though it became evident that, as producers, this was a story Venus and Serena wanted told, their father, in spite of his flaws, made them what they were.  They could not be where they are without him.  He was one in a hundred million, so driven to see his children succeed, even if his initial motivations were perhaps self serving.  Watching the film, you almost have to see it from the perspective of his children to get it.  From outsider standpoints he's a challenging personality, but to those girls he was their dad and he fought tirelessly to give them everything he thought they deserved.

Will Smith doesn't disappear in the role...he can't.  He's Will Smith.  But it's a performance delivered with conviction, one that seems to have resonated with him deep down.  It's evident he has some hurt in his past, relating to his own father, and mother, and that in being a father and a husband he may have some guilt.  Playing Williams, he said, taught him about protecting your family at all costs....  Smith talked about having to protect his co-stars, particularly the young girls playing his daughters.  Through his connection with them he started talking at Venus and Serena in a balcony booth, as if he had to protect them as his own daughters.  We don't know Smith as a method actor, but somewhere in the making of King Richard and likely in writing his own memoir, not to mention the public display of their private life his wife started relating, he got lost, confused.

It's a good movie, but not great.  It's a superhero origin story for Venus and Serena, and the last act is largely young Venus (Saniyya Sidney) in the spotlight.  The film shows us some of the hardships, but seems to whitewash what I'm sure was plenty of racism along the way.  The filmmakers want this to be that  pleasant type of Oscar bait that's an uplifting experience for everyone ... and nothing tamps that sentiment down like white guilt. 

Honestly, I would like a sequel, but with more focus on the two champions in their teen years and more insight into their lives, thoughts and experiences.  And maybe less of an intensive experience for Smith.

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Dune (2021, d. Denis Villeneuve - in theatre) was probably the big winner of the evening, pulling in many, many technical awards.  Toast and I have been ...what's the opposite of working on?... noodling with a collaborative review for months now, not getting very far...but one day it will come together... so you can wait until then for our thoughts...but the short answer is Toasty loved it, and I liked it, but sure to like it more when Part 2 comes out and tells a complete story.

-fin-