KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he attempts a quick wee summary of his thoughts.
This Week:
TÁR (2022, d. Todd Field - Crave)
Love Lies Bleeding (2024, d. Rose Glass - rental)
The Mechanic (1972, d. John Boorman - AmazonPrime)
The Breaker Upperers (2018, d. Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami - Netflix)
Jim Henson: Idea Man (2024, d. Ron Howard - Disney+)
Cyborg (1989, d. Albert Pyun - DVD)
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A few years back, while shooting
Nightmare Alley, Cate Blanchett was renting a house in close proximity to my neighborhood. It meant that at any time I might be out walking the dog, and *BAM* I just run into Cate Blanchett. It sent cold shivers up my spine and riddled me with discomfiting anxiety. I just know I would get mush-mouthed, say something really dumb, and then have my knees buckle underneath me as I lay on the ground in a pool of my own drool while my dog would probably just lay down in proximity to me as she would think "this is what we're doing now." And then for weeks, or months, or the rest of my life I would have a surge of red-faced embarrassment and cold panic sweats every time I thought about it, which would be all. the. time.
Toasty's usually the one to talk about his anxieties in a review, and then have an inner monologue in italicized font, but yeah, there's a reason we're friends, as our stupid brains act so similarly stupid.
We shouldn't idolize people, full stop, but when we're in awe of someone for their talent, their looks, and/or their charisma, it's hard not to let a little worship slip into one's thought process. So that anxiety that I was feeling, that fear of embarrassing myself in front of Cate Blanchett, I thought came from a place of great admiration. It's true, I admire her very much. But I actually went down the list of Cate Blanchett films I had seen and, somehow, that list almost all leaned into the nerdier spectrum of her output (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Hannah, Life Aquatic, Benjamin Button).
So, if I was that worked up about running into the woman, what was it I greatly admired her for? I mean, I think of her entire resume like, Thor:Ragnarok probably ranks as more of a lark for her than one of her proudest moments, right? I tried to think of a movie that she starred in that I saw just for her, and I could not think of one. Almost every film I had seen her in was a byproduct of her being in a property or working with a director I already liked. No Elizabeth, no Carol, no Veronica Guerin, no Blue Jasmine....
...well, okay, no Blue Jasmine makes sense.
But right now, I'm perusing Blanchett's filmography and it's startling how few films Blanchett has been the legit star of. She's an immaculate supporting player or co-lead, elevating everything she is in and rarely getting the glory for it. Given her undeniable talent, it's legitimately ridiculous how few films she's been the only face on the poster.
When Tár came out it was an absolute critical darling, and seemed to be all over the podcasts I was listening to, praising Blanchett for her best work yet in a career of little but great work. Lydia Tár even became a regular punchline (not the but of the joke but the a referential joke for those in the know, as if Tár were a real public figure). I don't know why I didn't see Tár in theatres, if only to be part of the conversation, but once the sensation of Tár passed, it fell down my "to watch list".
Ok Kent, enough setup. You want to see more Cate Blanchett movies, so you watched a Cate Blanchett movie. Now tell us about the movie.
Like this post, Tár has a very long, ponderous, pretentious even opening act, about 40 minutes or so of this 158 minute film. In fact, it virtually opens with its closing credits in the tiniest font that almost seems a lampoon of the "you should have seen this blockbuster in theatres" regret. Yes, for those first 40 minutes, we get a lot of talk about classical music orchestration and conducting, first as an magazine interview in front of a live audience, and then as Tár guest lectures at some university or conservatory.
If it sounds off-putting, I won't say that it isn't, but it's also not as repulsive as it might sound. In a strange way, it's all done very inside baseball, so as a viewer, if you're not in the know (like me) you're on the outside looking in and striving to pick up as much meaning out of it as you can. All this pretentious patter and audience serves a purpose. Lydia is a horribly pretentious person, and is so goddamn full of herself and her status that she obsessively sanitizes herself after interacting with anyone outside her sphere, as if they're a taint and make her unclean.
The gist of Tár is somewhat of a me too story, a reckoning for the "elite" that think themselves untouchable and unimpeachable just because they have a certain status in one sphere of society, and think they don't have to contend with nay sayers or anyone who doesn't give a shit about their vocation.
Lydia has been stringing her assistant along for years (are they/were they involved?) with promises of advancement. Typical grooming shit. Lydia has another former "protege" that not only has she cut loose but actively has kept her from getting any work in the field. She circles, like a hawk, fresh meat in her orchestra, even while her longtime partner watches. Lydia is smart enough, loquacious enough, erudite enough that she can reduce almost any counter-argument to "fuck you you bitch", a retort she smugly acknowledges as defeat. She's a predator, and Blanchett is utterly compelling, and at times freaking scary without ever raising her voice or making a threatening motion. Blanchett plays Tár's as impervious to reality until she can no longer ignore it. Her Tár navigates an existence that she has crafted around herself to protect her, she's manufactured an identity that doesn't feel anything but self-satisfaction. But it is an identity that is definitely guarding something, and Blanchett straddles the line about whether that guard is holding something in or keeping something out.
Writer-director Field approaches his subject with the same fascination as a nature documentary. We're watching the alpha groomer in her natural habitat of environments that look the other way as they stand to benefit from her brilliance. Maybe certain audience members were utterly bemused by the opening acts of Lydia's pretentious ponderings on conducting and composition (it's deep in the weeds nerdy shit for classical nerds, so I shouldn't denigrate it, given how deep in the weeds I get on my own nerd shit) but what is hidden in those conversations is that Lydia, as much of a predator as she is, is also a victim of the patriarchy.
Lydia dismisses conversations around "female conductors" citing plenty of others (which I think runs like 5 or 6 and I wouldn't be surprised to find was a fairly exhaustive list of the most prominent names) and meritocracy. Lydia dismisses a student's objections to caring about the compositions of long-dead, straight, white, problematic men, the artist can affect how one responds to the art after all, but she excuses away any legitimate criticisms, and decimates the poor student that his "woke" attitude will limit him in his aspirations (as if there's no place for conscience in art... but Lydia mistakes the capitalistic structures she benefits from for artistic ones).
The clearest example of Tár's unconscious embrace of the patriarchy is how she models herself on her mentors, and her idols. Throuhgout the movie, when Lydia needs to have a promotional photo or album cover done, she goes to great lengths to recreate the wardrobe and poses of male conductors.
I won't lie, Tár is a long, and frequently uncomfortable movie. She is not an anti-hero, she is the villain of the piece, and it's a slow burn in revealing it all, until it finally explodes. But Field isn't satisfied for Tár's chickens to come home to roost, he also needs to show what happens when the mighty fall. Blanchett's performance of a humbled Lydia, her roots showing, and what extremes she has to go to in order to get even a tiny fraction of the glory and self-satisfaction she once took for granted...well, the ironing is delicious.
I don't have a place to talk about the truly bizarre closing credits music - yes, even though the credits run in the initial minutes of the film, there are still closing credits for the cast. After an entire film devoted to classical and neo-classical music, the end credits have a heavy techno thump which made me think we were watching Letterkenny credits or something.
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The trailer for
Love Lies Bleeding promised 80's tinged, neon-drenched, lesbian bodybuilders doing a murder or two with quasi-revenge thriller vibes. Um, yep it delivers on all fronts.
The plot finds Jackie (Katy O'Brien, The Mandalorian), a down-but-not-out female bodybuilder hitchhiking her way from Oklahoma to get to Vegas for a competition. She immediately gets entangled with the family of gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart, Panic Room), first with Lou's slimy, abusive brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco, The Afterparty Season 1) who gets her a job at the gun range Lou's estranged dad, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) owns and also runs his illicit gun-smuggling operation out of... and then Jackie falls into a torrid romantic entanglement with Lou herself.
When JJ beats Lou's sister half to death, Lou is so enraged she's ready to kill JJ but Lou Sr. talks her down. Jackie, having been fed a steady diet of steroids by Lou in prep for the Vegas competition, experiences serious roid rage and takes matters into her own hands. Things only get more complicated from there.
The film never questions whether JJ, a supreme piece of shit, was worthy of his fate, but whether there's justification in the increasingly extreme acts required to cover it up. This is, in its end, a love story, a very dark, albeit exciting, one about two women with pasts they can't seem to face on their own, but could perhaps together if they can only learn to trust what they're feeling.
Love Lies Bleeding is a very bold, stylized dramatic crime thriller that is inspired by the films of the era it's replicating, but with a vastly different vantage point than we'd see in such films from that time. It takes a very specific, bold visual swing in the climax of the film which very much fit the vibe, but may challenge many. For me it was actually the coda that followed the bold swing which felt unnecessary, except to say that the path these two women are on is probably only going to get darker.
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After watching
Hit Man the week prior, I had hitmen on the brain, and, well, this cult-classic of the subgenre on my list.
The Mechanic stars Charles Bronson at the height of his powers as a contract killer mainly doing work for an international criminal syndicate.
The opening sequence of The Mechanic runs a wordless 15 minutes in length as it takes us through Arthur Bishop's (Bronson) meticulous process for killing his target. It's both puzzling and riveting filmmaking that ends with a spectacular bang. It is also, without a doubt, the inspiration for the opening sequence of David Fincher's The Killer. Both are equally excellent in their own respective way.
From there Arthur meets up with what appears to be his girlfriend but turns out to be a sex worker he sees, and role plays with on an irregular basis. Everything with Arthur is transaction. He's approached by a member of the syndicate, "Big Harry", who seems to be at odds with the rest of the organization. Harry would like Arthur's help in smoothing things over, unaware that Arthur has been given his contract.
After Harry is terminated, Arthur has an exchange with Harry's son, Steve (Jan Michael Vincent, Airwolf) who seems to have an interest and aptitude for Arthur's profession, so he take him on as a protege. In an early outing Steve loses the advantage on a target, leading to Arthur giving chase on dirt bikes through the hills and back yards of elite L.A. This was later taken by Bill Hader as inspiration for a similar L.A.-based dirt bike sequence in Barry Season 3. Again, both are equally great in their own way.
There's an inevitability to The Mechanic that mutes the journey somewhat. I've seen enough of this sort of thing to know where it's going. It could be the first, but it won't be the last. The film is also diminished by its lack of characterization for Arthur. It gives him the stoic rebel treatment, a man of skill but also luxury, and a man alone. Bronson was never really known as an emotive actor so there's no emotional component to his playing the role. Was taking Steve on a product of guilt or loneliness? I'm not even sure Brosnan knows, and he certainly ain't telling.
One other detraction, there's use of post-Woodstock hippie lingo that not only feels high camp but at this stage is somewhat indecipherable. I really didn't like it, and it kept coming up...even from Bronson! Even still, just to see the origins of the subgenre made it very worthwhile.
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We originally watched
The Breaker Upperers shortly after its debut on Netflix in 2018 (the dark year). It was recommended by some website or reviewer I followed and we were very entertained. I wrote a brief summary of my feelings on
Letterboxd (as was the style at the time):
New Zealand comedy gets me. Love it. I also love a best friend romcom (you know, where it's about the deep rooted platonic love of best friends... we used to call these bromances or chick flicks but they've transcended those problematic classifications into an integral part of the romcom genre). This one is going to get played again and again. It's self aware, it's woke and it's frigging hilarious. It may not be the tightest of executions story-wise but it's never not fun.Ugh, I hate that I used the word "woke" now. As usual, the man-baby clowns on the internet (and off) ruin everything, including words.
When we first watched it, we only knew a face or two in the production, probably from Taika Waititi's films. Jemaine Clement puts in a cameo, but otherwise it was just enjoying the delightful pairing of Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami as best friends who met after fighting over the same guy and 15 years later live together and run a proxy break-up service.
After years of performing the service, the cracks both in the viability of the service and in the friendship start to show. Jen (van Beek) just turned 40, is still single by choice but is having a bit of a crisis. Mel (Sami), meanwhile, is all about avoidance and what feels good now, and what feels good is pursuing the hot (and so dumb...and sooo young) rugby player (played by James Rolleston, the now grown up Boy of Waititi's Boy) who's come into their office to enlist their services in breaking up with his hard-as-nails girlfriend.
But one case, in which they pose as cops to tell a fragile woman about the death of her boyfriend (who really just skipped town) starts to break the friendship bond, as Mel wants to, well, basically provide an aftercare/friendship service and Jen basically wants nothing to do with other people and their emotions at all. The divide eventually explodes and then its up to Jen to realize her mistakes and profess her undying platonic love for her best friend.
Since the film came out, I've seen a bit more New Zealand-base programming, like Wellington Paranormal and Taskmaster New Zealand, and Sami has become a much-liked performer of ours from Season 1 of TMNZ, Our Flag Means Death and Deadloch, so I thought it worth a revisit. It remains very fun, and that kiwi vibe is just such a thick and delightful flavour, but on this go around, I found myself wishing for a little more of the conceit, of watching the shenanigans of the business play out, but it's obviously a film more interested in exploring the relationship dynamics, and I'm guessing better for it skewing that way. With our uptick in Kiwi media exposure there was a lot more familiarity with the performers this time around, which, given how much I enjoyed it the first time around, you don't really need at all.
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I hate writing reviews about documentaries, primarily because I don't watch enough of them to be able to discern good documentary filmmaking from bad. I mean, I've seen great documentary films, and I recognize them as such, but then there's this whole mushy middle ground of biographical documentaries that takes about two hours to cover someone's life and career. Depending on the person, compressing their life into that amount of time just isn't going to do it justice, and if it does do it justice, are they really that interesting a person?
Ron Howard's ode to Jim Henson for Disney is just one of many Henson documentaries that has been made in the past 30 years since the legendary muppeteer and filmmaker passed away. It's a documentary that involves his children and his Muppet family in the talking heads portions that kind of sticks to a consistent narrative while avoiding almost any drama at all.
What is absolutely clear is Henson was a man driven by creative impulses and a desire to fulfill those impulses, and puppeteering wasn't his original passion, but it just became the vehicle through which he could step up through the world of media and entertainment. He started his career with his girlfriend-then-wife Cheryl, and they started a business together. But once Cheryl started pumping out babies, Henson kind of left her to it, and proceeded forward on a career without her.
The film very subtly implies that Henson was somewhat of an absentee father and husband, driven by his creativity, but it never dwells on the fact even though it seems to keep coming up without really directly being addressed. That all his children seemed to enter the entertainment field in some respect speaks to their desires to be closer to their father. There is a telling moment where Brian Henson, a bit of a gearhead and electronics whiz, starts working with his father on advanced animatronics, and he says working and playing with Jim as opposed to his father was a completely different experience.
Henson's early career pre-Sesame Street could support a two hour documentary of its own. I managed to catch part of Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street documentary a few weeks back and for the 20-25 minutes Idea Man covers that subject, one should really just take a complete 2-hour detour into Street Gang instead. Likewise, the origins and operations and ending (and attempted revivals) of The Muppet Show are pretty glossed over and need more detail. There's probably a full documentary worth of story behind The Dark Crystal and there's at least a YouTube video essay worth discussing Henson's sale of his business to Disney, plus I would maybe like to see the event that was Henson's funeral in full... in other words, there's so much more to this story.
While yeah, there were the requisite greatest hits moments of Henson's work in the Muppets and Sesame Street that pulls out the feels, and Idea Man does give a good overview of what Henson accomplished in his life and a sense of what was left unfulfilled for him. For as successful as he was, Henson was not a mainstream guy. He was a weirdo, and it was almost a fluke that he managed to turn that weirdo energy into something the public responded to at large, but it was clear from his non-Muppets output that his hippie-jazz sensibilities were a niche product.
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For the longest of times, Jean-Claude Van Damme's second starring feature,
Cyborg, was a joke. That tacky-looking videocassette cover seemed to be everywhere, but word of mouth was that it wasn't even a so-bad-it's-good type of movie. When JCVD hit it big in 1990 with the one-two punch (
err...roundhouse kick?) of
Lionheart and
Kickboxer -- which, alongside
Bloodsport, might well just be the same movie -- he solidified his on-screen persona, as well as the type of movie he would star in. A low-budget, no-plot, post-apocalyptic wasteland action movie from the dying days of Canon films, at the time seemed like the kind of thing an up-and-coming actor does just to have a gig, and once they get big, are embarrassed by.
But as direly cheap as Albert Pyun's cobbled-together Cyborg is, JCVD actually comes out pretty clean from the affair, and might I actually say, it's a pretty good physical performance. It's not great acting -- nobody's ever asked him for that anyway -- but the man takes his lumps in the picture and it's wonderful to see him "fight wounded". In the 80's and 90's seemed to be stages to an action star's career where they start out as human beings and then wind up as superheroes. The earlier stages, where they are vulnerable, capable of being injured and they carry those wounds with them, oh, those are far more interesting. There's a sequence in this movie where JCVD's character gets to face the wasteland warlord who murdered his surrogate family, but he's already beaten off a half dozen other guys, been on the run for hours, and is just done. He tries his roundhouse kicks which have no power and are just shrugged off by his massive opponent. He's beaten down once more and awakens literally crucified on an inland derelict ship's mast. It's surprising.
Look, don't get me wrong, Cyborg is a bad movie. It's been said that it was cobbled together at the last minute from the remnants of Canon film's cancelled Masters of the Universe sequel and a cancelled Spider-Man film, both of which Pyun was to direct, and it's been said Pyun wrote the script over a weekend to preserve the budget (I didn't fact check that). While I don't see anything recognizably He-Man or Spider-Man about this, I can totally believe the script was tossed off over a weekend. There's not much here. It's basically Escape from New York meets The Road Warrior, but without really developing a personality for the lead protagonist (named...Gibson Rickenbacker? Seriously? I don't think that was ever said in the film) and with a director whose shooting style can be described as "good enough, moving on".
As abysmal as the first act of this film is (Gibson is paired up with no less than three women in the first 10 minutes of the film, one of them in flashback) the second act is a bit of a corker. What starts off as a heroic journey where Gibson and his female sidekick pursue the big bad wasteland gang rescue a cyborg they've taken hostage...the tables are turned, as the cyborg has Stockholm syndrome and Gibson and friend become the pursued. In a way, Pyun managed to fall into an accidental subversion of the genre that still plays pretty fresh.
The final act seems... far fetched, the timeline of events don't make a lot of sense, and Gibson should still be half dead, not mounting another very physical assault, but the rain-soaked atmosphere (there are some very wet sets on this movie) provides a definite mood for the climactic showdown.
Canon Films as a label has developed a cult fandom over the past dozen years or so, and so has the late Pyun, whose repertoire I've been poking at (eg. Nemesis, Dollman) and left underwhelmed . I'm not really a connoisseur of trash cinema, but I do so delight when trash accidentally crosses over into something, if not good, then unexpectedly interesting.
