For a movie that starts out so political-seeming, albeit in the Brain Candy mold (think environmentalism and celebrity instead of the pharmaceutical industry and happiness) it's amazing how this turns out to be about nothing. Nothing happens that isn't in direct service to a particular joke. And while the plot is concrete and not difficult to follow, the action scene to scene is scattered and constantly mutating (no pun intended). This movie has no agenda outside of attempting to make you laugh. And let's face it, the goofs run the gamut in terms of being funny, horribly dated or just plain too weird. But it's that last point that makes this film noteworthy. It's not quite like anything I can recall. The practical effects (and the occasional early digital ones) and set/costume design are phenomenal in that wonderful 90s kind of way. They truly spared no expense on the final gigantic monster mutations. To what end this is trying to say anything, or even holds up as comedy, is secondary to all that. If you are checking this out in 2020, its visual style is most likely the reason why. That said, as a comedy, it is of an ilk that no longer exists. That joke-a-minute, pop culture skewering romp which isn't directly parodying a certain thing: they don't make these anymore. (I don't know if that's good or bad; just interesting, perhaps). And that final goof with the cactus shadow? Surprisingly nuanced and terrific.
Reviews
92 Reviews
Verotika
(2019)
Lolzotika
14 April 2020
I've been taking notes when I watch films at home recently and my final entry for the last of trilogy stories in this anthology was: "No idea on this one. Ha ha. Why did I take notes?" And that sums it up nicely, I feel. This is as comically bad as you've probably heard. I was planning on watching it eventually but made it a priority when I saw Red Letter Media had given it a 60-minute video. To echo some of their thoughts: I agree, it's mostly worth a watch for the lolz. But it's not on par with the great bad movies. Too many boring stretches that can't be saved by the copious naked ladies, which--if you thought Danzig had a weird, unhealthy relationship with women before...
I found the first entry to be the best of the bunch, mostly for those eyeballs but also for all the bad French accents. You could make a case for #2 with all its truly bad dialogue and acting, its nonsensical plot and so on, but those overlong stripper sequences took me out of it. And what can you say about that final story? The less the better perhaps. (The first two are probably solid 8s or low 9s, and the finale's a low 5 at best, so let's split the difference on the overall score.)
In closing, Danzig is a legend and one of the most underrated and influential musicians of all-time. The Misfits, to me, are the best punk band ever, sonically speaking at least. This wonderful failure of a passion project is just that. A dozen more crap films isn't going to change my opinion of him as an artist, and honestly I'd watch every single one.
I found the first entry to be the best of the bunch, mostly for those eyeballs but also for all the bad French accents. You could make a case for #2 with all its truly bad dialogue and acting, its nonsensical plot and so on, but those overlong stripper sequences took me out of it. And what can you say about that final story? The less the better perhaps. (The first two are probably solid 8s or low 9s, and the finale's a low 5 at best, so let's split the difference on the overall score.)
In closing, Danzig is a legend and one of the most underrated and influential musicians of all-time. The Misfits, to me, are the best punk band ever, sonically speaking at least. This wonderful failure of a passion project is just that. A dozen more crap films isn't going to change my opinion of him as an artist, and honestly I'd watch every single one.
The Long Dumb Road
(2018)
perfectly fine and totally watchable
8 April 2020
A perfectly fine and totally watchable coming of age / buddy road romp / odd couple riff. Firmly a part of an era which has been / still is very unkind for comedy. Doing its best to not offend but still, somehow, against all odds, be edgy. The lead actors (Tony Revolori, Jason Mantzoukas) have great chemistry and are very good in this overall. That it feels like it's carrying the torch for a subgenre that cannot and maybe should not exist is not at all its fault. But it's impossible not to see the shortcomings as it works inside that structure.
Vivarium
(2019)
more horror than sci-fi,
8 April 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Everyone's favorite "would-be couple" Jessie Eisenberg and Imogen Poots (The Art of Self-Defense, also 2019) are back in a big way. And the perennial nerd Eisenberg against type as janitor / mainly man? That might be the least believable aspect of this wacky film. No but seriously, this oddly timely film is a strong recommendation for me. E
I would say my main criticism of this is that it tries to play it a bit too smart (cute) for its own good. There's a thin line between legitimately, intensely smart and a kind of "Webster's defines..." faux intelligence. The title (umm, do you know Latin??) broaches this territory as do some of the fiercely transparent metaphors.
This film enters the metaphysical very quickly. Perhaps too early? I felt that way in the moment, but seeing how things play out, I feel it really works. And I don't care that the demon/quasi-satanic stuff is half-baked at best; that's weirdly kind of a positive for me, actually. Much of this movie is played out at face value. And since that face is the very definition of surreal, anything COULD happen next. The film, however, loses its sense of mystery in this regard, and that's undeniable.
Vivarium isn't deep or hard to figure out. It's more horror than sci-fi, though it would devotees of the latter would likely balk at that. What it does and does very well is encapsulate a mood inside of a succinct and lovely visual style ("sickening little clouds" as they're described by Poots). It's legit creepy and the small cast does big things inside of this unreal world. And it closes with an expertly placed XTC song. It's a good one.
I would say my main criticism of this is that it tries to play it a bit too smart (cute) for its own good. There's a thin line between legitimately, intensely smart and a kind of "Webster's defines..." faux intelligence. The title (umm, do you know Latin??) broaches this territory as do some of the fiercely transparent metaphors.
This film enters the metaphysical very quickly. Perhaps too early? I felt that way in the moment, but seeing how things play out, I feel it really works. And I don't care that the demon/quasi-satanic stuff is half-baked at best; that's weirdly kind of a positive for me, actually. Much of this movie is played out at face value. And since that face is the very definition of surreal, anything COULD happen next. The film, however, loses its sense of mystery in this regard, and that's undeniable.
Vivarium isn't deep or hard to figure out. It's more horror than sci-fi, though it would devotees of the latter would likely balk at that. What it does and does very well is encapsulate a mood inside of a succinct and lovely visual style ("sickening little clouds" as they're described by Poots). It's legit creepy and the small cast does big things inside of this unreal world. And it closes with an expertly placed XTC song. It's a good one.
Wounds
(2019)
What a mess!
5 April 2020
What a mess! This film is a total disaster that wants to be a dozen things at once and fails at being anything at all. It would be comically bad for Armie Hammer's performance; I don't think I've ever seen an actor try harder to make lemonade out of a lemon like this script. Unlike Dakota Johnson, who-speaking of phones!-is truly phoning it in with her acting (albeit in a surprisingly small onscreen role, given that she's billed as the co-star and is playing the girlfriend, but honestly this is the least of this film's problems).
Where to even begin?
First off, it starts with a Conrad quote from the literary masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. And that says a lot about Wounds' biggest, most glaring flaw of all: it wants so badly to have MEANING. This technology! These phones! Look what it's doing to the youth, to SOCIETY, man? You could have made a movie about an evil cursed cellphone that seeks to awaken alien spirits (?)-which this movie is also about, believe it or not-and not tried to do overt social commentary. That movie might have also been terrible, but hey... options.
During one of the endless streams of bad dialogue, one character calls another character "a mock person." And that stuck with me, because this is a mock movie. It doesn't know what it wants to be. Hard horror. Satirical critique. Interpersonal relationship drama. But, in addition to Hammer giving it his all, the film looks like a film. It's visually competent and there are actually some nice shots. But, alas, this is a mock movie. It takes elements that would otherwise be a major or *the* major crux on their own (the college kids and the cellphone stuff, the Afghanistan war, Dakota Johnson being sucked into a laptop void, cockroaches! etc etc etc) and lets them all rot. No threads are either elaborated on OR completed. Your theory on what any of this means is correct. Congratulations!
You'll likely stick around for the "catch." Of course you will, even if you know it's gonna be incredibly underwhelming. Or in this case: absent. Everything is unearned and half-baked. And by the end of it, when the cockroaches are literally crawling on the camera lens, you'll be left wishing they'd been there the entire time to shield you from having watched this nonsense.
Where to even begin?
First off, it starts with a Conrad quote from the literary masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. And that says a lot about Wounds' biggest, most glaring flaw of all: it wants so badly to have MEANING. This technology! These phones! Look what it's doing to the youth, to SOCIETY, man? You could have made a movie about an evil cursed cellphone that seeks to awaken alien spirits (?)-which this movie is also about, believe it or not-and not tried to do overt social commentary. That movie might have also been terrible, but hey... options.
During one of the endless streams of bad dialogue, one character calls another character "a mock person." And that stuck with me, because this is a mock movie. It doesn't know what it wants to be. Hard horror. Satirical critique. Interpersonal relationship drama. But, in addition to Hammer giving it his all, the film looks like a film. It's visually competent and there are actually some nice shots. But, alas, this is a mock movie. It takes elements that would otherwise be a major or *the* major crux on their own (the college kids and the cellphone stuff, the Afghanistan war, Dakota Johnson being sucked into a laptop void, cockroaches! etc etc etc) and lets them all rot. No threads are either elaborated on OR completed. Your theory on what any of this means is correct. Congratulations!
You'll likely stick around for the "catch." Of course you will, even if you know it's gonna be incredibly underwhelming. Or in this case: absent. Everything is unearned and half-baked. And by the end of it, when the cockroaches are literally crawling on the camera lens, you'll be left wishing they'd been there the entire time to shield you from having watched this nonsense.
pleasantly surprised
5 April 2020
I was pleasantly surprised by this. I knew I would like it, but I didn't think I'd be as engrossed as I was. I think it goes beyond merely fan service and closure, and actually functions as a more meaningful postscript for the Breaking Bad universe than a film with a goofy title starring maybe the most polarizing major character from that universe should have any right doing. Personally, I forgot just how bleak the arc of Jessie really got in that final B.B. season. My goodness, he went through some stuff! (To say the least.) This movie provides a nice mix of flashbacks (most notably with the scene-stealing Todd performance of Jesse Plemons) and new plot points. Vince Gilligan hits all the beats of a good episode that never gets old over the stretch to a two-hour feature. And sure, the one flashback towards the end with you-know-who maybe didn't fully work for various reasons, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. There isn't really a reason to critique this outside of the realm of Breaking Bad fans because what crazy person is watching this as its own thing? I have no idea if it's a good movie fully on its own merit, but it's a good and welcome addition to the previously TV-exclusive universe.
Knives Out
(2019)
a completely enjoyable movie
5 April 2020
Knives Out is a completely enjoyable movie. That's it! I recommend watching it if it seems like something you might be into (well-acted mystery movies with well known stars). Why it feels like a slight to not bestow this film with an avalanche of additional praise, I'm not sure. There's an odd cult around Rian Johnson that feels manufactured. He's a really good filmmaker, both technically-speaking and at putting together a compelling story with his screenplays. He's no genius, however. This film is a super fun romp, but it's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Its twists aren't that twisty. Its Scooby Doo ending is highly Scooby Doo ish. I'm glad this film made a lot of money and has a lot of fans, because it is really good. That's it. That's the review.
Onward
(I) (2020)
A surprising delight
11 March 2020
The emotional hits in this aren't forced or cliched, and that's perhaps the highest praise one can bestow onto a kids movie, especially a Pixar movie wherein those elements can feel forced if not gratuitous. In fact, the true emotional arch is disguised for much of the film. This film both made me cry and surprised me! Also, there are several other thematic undercurrents at play, from the presence and/or lack of magic in one's everyday life to the power of believing in yourself. And on top of that, it hits all the usual comedic beats in the midst of some really creative action and tremendous world-building. It's a shame that this is underperforming because I would love to see some additions to this fantastical realm. What more can you ask for from a kids movie?
Adaptation.
(2002)
HEAVY META
11 March 2020
There is a line of dialogue around the climax of this film, written for the fictional Donald Kaufman, the twin brother of the fictional version of the man who wrote the screenplay, and it works as a nod to the kind of overtly cheesy but nonetheless sentiment-packed movie line that might end up getting quoted in high school yearbooks: "You are what you love, not what loves you." Filtering this through the lens of Adaptation, possibly the most meta film ever constructed, one can read that line as such: Charlie Kaufman is what he loves (screenwriting), and not what loves him." The second "what" in question is, perhaps, ambiguous, but maybe it's the film industry? It would not surprise me if he intentionally hid this notion into an otherwise straight-forward bit of quotable cliche (in fact, it feels all the more wholly fitting).
I would actually go a step further and say that this is not only the most meta narrative ever put on camera, but that Kaufman's screenplay is one of the best in film history, period. And Nicolas Cage is phenomenal and a big reason why everything works, but the idea is still BIGGER than he is (a feat in and of itself?).
The meta never ends. In my recent rewatch, I was able to detect more and more elements. Nearly everything that transpires is in some way, shape or form related to the idea of and relationship between frustration and creativity (or, in Kaufman's own words: "a passion for wanting to know what it feels like to know something passionately" and how that is a cursed existence in and of itself).
All of the other actors are more than game for this absurdism as well. Meryl Streep shines as Susan Orleans, the author. Chris Cooper is a delight as the sophisticated Florida Man, the subject. And in brief, but important roles, Ron Livingston as the pervert agent and Brian Cox as real life screenwriter guru Robert McKee are a delight. And Spike Jonze, a true weirdo in his own right, doesn't get enough credit for playing it mostly straight in the director's chair. He recognizes the talent of Charlie Kaufman and he lets the genius script do what it has to and speak for itself. That's the reason this film is a modern classic.
I would actually go a step further and say that this is not only the most meta narrative ever put on camera, but that Kaufman's screenplay is one of the best in film history, period. And Nicolas Cage is phenomenal and a big reason why everything works, but the idea is still BIGGER than he is (a feat in and of itself?).
The meta never ends. In my recent rewatch, I was able to detect more and more elements. Nearly everything that transpires is in some way, shape or form related to the idea of and relationship between frustration and creativity (or, in Kaufman's own words: "a passion for wanting to know what it feels like to know something passionately" and how that is a cursed existence in and of itself).
All of the other actors are more than game for this absurdism as well. Meryl Streep shines as Susan Orleans, the author. Chris Cooper is a delight as the sophisticated Florida Man, the subject. And in brief, but important roles, Ron Livingston as the pervert agent and Brian Cox as real life screenwriter guru Robert McKee are a delight. And Spike Jonze, a true weirdo in his own right, doesn't get enough credit for playing it mostly straight in the director's chair. He recognizes the talent of Charlie Kaufman and he lets the genius script do what it has to and speak for itself. That's the reason this film is a modern classic.
Back to the Future Part II
(1989)
This is the movie that got me into movies.
11 March 2020
This is the movie that got me into movies. In a sense, that is arbitrary information to anyone reading this review, but it means a lot to me. I was 8 years old and I can vividly recall walking down the aisle looking for a seat with my dad. We missed the opening scene (which, as it turns out, was a frame for frame reshoot of the ending of the original Back to the Future) and the credits were rolling on the big screen. I'll never forget soaring through those clouds in that perfect blue sky with that unmistakable and unbeatable theme music blasting. We found our seats and I settled in for 100 minutes of pure escapism, my little brain fully rapt for perhaps the first time. It was then I learned about the joy and, in my opinion, the necessity of doing that, of letting the mind go on an adventure. It's a feeling I continued to seek out for the next three decades to this present day
Aniara
(2018)
Unending charm, agonizing bleakness
11 March 2020
There is an unending charm to Aniara, despite its agonizing bleakness. This is a film that broke through: a Swedish language production with relatively small budget tackling one of the larger scale sci-fi landscapes, conceptually at least: a veritable small city housed on a spaceship heading to Mars. Occasionally, the set design and general look feels like a TV show, and still I found nearly every frame phenomenal. That it is based on a 1956 Swedish poem of the same name is all the more fitting. Small ideas made big and then, again, in the end, very small. Where it bites from preexisting, legendary works of the genre, it does so nimbly. It's hard not to see the parallels between the decay and collapse of MIMA and HAL 9000, however the disintegration of the former is quick, subverting expectations.
While this may be billed as a story about the dangers of overconsumption I saw it broadly as something much deeper, an allegory on faith. In fact, there seems to be multiple thematic elements at play, from the idea of the captain/pilot/driver as fatalist, to the inherent lie of freewill. It's a wonderfully paced film, utilizing its time jumps superbly. When it gets dark--and it gets DARK--it feels right. You'll leave this film feeling like there's no time like the present. An inspiring work.
While this may be billed as a story about the dangers of overconsumption I saw it broadly as something much deeper, an allegory on faith. In fact, there seems to be multiple thematic elements at play, from the idea of the captain/pilot/driver as fatalist, to the inherent lie of freewill. It's a wonderfully paced film, utilizing its time jumps superbly. When it gets dark--and it gets DARK--it feels right. You'll leave this film feeling like there's no time like the present. An inspiring work.
Ad Astra
(2019)
It's lack of a trick is kind of a trick
11 March 2020
In a banner year for artful and/or weird space sci fi, Ad Astra works because it's lack of a trick is kind of a trick. Whereas other recent films set among the stars have been propelled by big issues like climate change, this takes the inconceivable vastness and distance and makes it insular. As a metaphor for a fractured relationship between a father and son, it literally can't get any bigger (or more obvious). When it's all said and done, the facts are laid bare. There's no Christopher Nolan mindscrew or "too clever for its own good" twist. But it's not all daddy issues and voiceover, there's some dystopian geopolitical stuff bubbling under the surface that is interesting, and feels somehow stronger in its vagueness (I'm looking at you moon pirates and, of course, vicious space baboons will always rule). Ultimately, though, it's about Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones. We can't save the world if we finally learn to understand our parents and the motivation behind their life choices. It just feels that way.
The Art of Self-Defense
(2019)
Napoleon Dynamite with some pretty hardcore violence
6 March 2020
Like Napoleon Dynamite but with some pretty hardcore violence, and I'm not sure such thing can or is supposed to exist. There are certain lines that made me cringe, not so much from the awkward delivery but from the thought of them being forced onto the page, their genesis. What irks me even more is that there is a wonderful movie and message about toxic masculinity trying to break through. And an intriguing framework (in the form of what might be a little too obvious but nonetheless engaging, circular plot arc) is also in place. The failure here is all tonal. A black comedy still needs to have, you know, COMEDY. Jesse Eisenberg is fine in this version of his nervous white male, ratcheted up to new heights even. Alessandro Nivola is more than fine as the suspiciously cool sensei. That all the moving pieces don't ever fully come together is frustrating but when viewed as a total farce the film isn't bad. The parasitic relationship between fear and violence is a fascinating concept.
High Life
(2018)
Marron 7
6 March 2020
By the time Juliette Binoche Galapagoses Robert Pattinson and Mia Goth, in the Vonnegutian sense of course, you've surely long since made up your mind about this film, the first English language production from French auteur Claire Denis. This is a work of art, first and foremost. There is a motivational paradox at every turn, and you often won't like or fully understand the choices. The work is further clouded by a dialogue that is bizarrely stilted, almost non sequitur at times ("it stinks the usual stench, it gets me hard" ... "nothing's gonna grow inside of us" ... "it's just a new religion for you"). By the time we encounter a second spacecraft inhabited entirely by dogs some dozen or more years into the journey, time and space and all of reality has been fully fractured. We're left with mere metaphors, but what else were we looking for, hoping for to begin with?
The Theory of Everything
(2014)
Mostly boring biopic with vague intentions
6 March 2020
Mostly boring biopic with vague intentions. Eddie Redmayne goes full I Am Sam and I can't decide if it's better or worse that this character is based on a real person. In short: melodrama of the highest order, but a totally adequate telling of the background story of a notable life you likely aren't familiar with. The curiosity in me can't deny that even if I never care to watch it again.
Ready or Not
(I) (2019)
A delirious delight
2 March 2020
A truly delirious delight And you don't need to be a genre obsessive to appreciate. Sure there are gruesome moments but the pleasure is in the mostly comedic performances. If it strives toward some satirical idea, it's subtle enough. This isn't trying to be Get Out. It knows it isn't. It's big dumb fun and that's fine. The crazy ending sticks the landing as well.
Dolemite Is My Name
(2019)
Delightful underdog story
28 February 2020
Without realizing it, I was in the sweet spot in terms of my preexisting Rudy Ray Moore knowledge and baseline appreciation for his art. I knew just enough to maximize my enjoyment of this biopic: A) I knew that I liked him, and B) his story arc was still enough of a mystery to keep the plot engaging. Dolemite is My Name, the true story of comedian Rudy Ray Moore and his charming if not misguided adventures in moviemaking, is as boilerplate as these films go, structurally-speaking; its tone has an almost Disney vibe, you know, if not for the plethora of F-bombs. With a screenwriting duo who know what they're doing (Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, Problem Child 1 AND 2) and a capable director in Craig Brewer, this movie is a delight, a touching underdog story that is also legitimately funny. The cast beams on screen, showing a true appreciation for the people they're honoring and the project as a whole; I can't recall a cast that looked like they were having this much fun making a picture. Of course, the glue is Eddie Murphy, really going all out for the first time in what feels like forever. If you've been on the fence, swiping past this 100 times on Netflix, stop! Give it a shot. You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
The Two Popes
(2019)
Better off as a stage play (that I have no interest in seeing)
26 February 2020
I don't know what to write about this movie. It might be worth it just for the "popes eating pizza" scene in which one pope says to the other pope, "that's mine, that's my pizza" (fast forward 90 minutes). But otherwise it's a perfectly average movie which, at its worst, piles on the mythologizing to a dangerous, maybe negligent degree. You'd be better off watching HBO's Young/New Pope if you want an interesting, critical look at the papacy, the Roman Catholic church and their myriad ugly flaws, and so on. If you want to watch Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce do accents and talk circles for the better part of two hours, then watch this. Outside of some Pope Francis flashbacks, it feels more like a stage play for the type of people who don't like to do much critical thinking but really want you to think that they do. Marone!
Mister America
(2019)
A difficult critique
26 February 2020
It feels odd giving this a lukewarm review. This is actually an incredibly difficult film to critique because one feels forced to look at it from perspective of the fan as well as the outsider. And there doesn't seem to be any "casual" fans of the On Cinema at the Cinema Universe, a network of media and shows that is so deep and winding at this point, it would be futile to attempt to explain in the confines of something like this beyond saying "it's a spoof of Siskel and Ebert" (and even that feels like too much and too little).
Personally, as someone who's consumed every second of the endless nonsense that is On Cinema etc., this felt a little flat to me, like they finally drove a joke into the ground beyond recognition. Perhaps, the restraints of the mockumentary format, which beckons for legitimization by attempting to unpack that aforementioned extended universe, a seemingly impossible task for the uninitiated and redundant for the believers. That isn't to say this isn't an enjoyable film. It has some great moments and any extra time spent in the world of these characters is never a waste. Especially Gregg, who--in perhaps a setting as far removed from Movieland as ever--still brings it back to his VHS tapes and popcorn classics, imploring the filmmakers to study the 1976 Disney flick The Shaggy D.A. to better understand what's happening with Tim (but to make sure to return the cassette when they're done). It's great.
Mister America also provides closure for the best thread On Cinema has ever stitched: The Trial. And maybe that's also where it suffers. The Trial was such a special landmark; it might never be topped. But the one thing we know is that Tim and Greg and company are always gonna try. By any means (or medium) necessary.
Personally, as someone who's consumed every second of the endless nonsense that is On Cinema etc., this felt a little flat to me, like they finally drove a joke into the ground beyond recognition. Perhaps, the restraints of the mockumentary format, which beckons for legitimization by attempting to unpack that aforementioned extended universe, a seemingly impossible task for the uninitiated and redundant for the believers. That isn't to say this isn't an enjoyable film. It has some great moments and any extra time spent in the world of these characters is never a waste. Especially Gregg, who--in perhaps a setting as far removed from Movieland as ever--still brings it back to his VHS tapes and popcorn classics, imploring the filmmakers to study the 1976 Disney flick The Shaggy D.A. to better understand what's happening with Tim (but to make sure to return the cassette when they're done). It's great.
Mister America also provides closure for the best thread On Cinema has ever stitched: The Trial. And maybe that's also where it suffers. The Trial was such a special landmark; it might never be topped. But the one thing we know is that Tim and Greg and company are always gonna try. By any means (or medium) necessary.
Wise Blood
(1979)
Believing in nothing is still believing
26 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The fantastic 1979 movie Wise Blood was directed by John Huston and stars the great Brad Dourif in a rare leading role. It is based on the debut novel of the master Flannery O'Connor. In Huston's 33rd feature film, Dourif plays Hazel Motes the young veteran of an unnamed war, returning home to a now deserted farm, his family gone. There's nothing for him there but he's very much concerned about his old chifforobe. He can't spell and Huston honors this fact by misspelling his own name in the opening credits, perhaps a meta commentary on the elitism inherent in who gets to tell stories and of what nature.
Hazel takes a train to the big city, sees an address for a lady of the night on the bathroom wall and hops in a cab; he's immediately mistaken for a preacher by the driver, the second time this has happened to him. He's very concerned that people know he is NOT a preacher. Later, he meets a "real" blind preacher, played by the legend Harry Dean Stanton, and the preacher's daughter Sabbath, played by the actress Amy Wright who beckons "I seen you..." A haunting plea that echoes the truth: all religion is founded on myth and the impossible. Hazel rips up the pamphlet she hands him.
A big theme of this film is loneliness, and how it can fully warp the brain if left unchecked. And there perhaps is no lonelier character than the dullard Enoch Emory who gets to deliver the titular line of the movie. He says he "knows things he ain't never learned... can feel his blood beating... Wise blood." Everyone wants to feel the power of god. Believing in nothing is still believing.
In the haunts of these religious quests, we find most of the characters are racist as the day is long. To them it is an undeniable truth. Wayward souls whose own self-hatred has turned outward, uncontrollably searching for some place to put it. And it's always been this way. "I don't have to run away from anything, because I don't believe in anything," Hazel says. His entire existence is a study in cognitive dissonance. He goes on to found the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ" and begins to preach his nihilistic message to anyone who'll listen. In a 2001 New Yorker piece, Hilton Als wrote "Motes has a grudge against Jesus: he equates Him with sin, or more specifically with the sins that he himself has committed and cannot escape-not in the eyes of his relatives, rotten with fake piety, who believe that only the Lord can wash him clean and are no better than (redacted) who think that the Lord will make them white."
Meanwhile, Enoch, a lowly worker at the local zoo who likes to yell at the apes, is equally consumed with finding meaning, albeit in his own infantile way. Disguised in a comically bad wig, he steals a "new" Jesus at the local museum in the form of the tiny corpse of a shrunken South American Indian, and then becomes obsessed with a King Kong knock-off called Gonga, cutting a line of children to shake his hand (a man in a gorilla suit) and ultimately jacking the costume to use for his own immature pranks. The powerless will look for power in any outlet they can grasp.
Sabbath courts Hazel in one of the film's strongest scenes. They talk over one another as they drive to a secluded woods. She reveals the fraud of her father who is in fact not blind and they make love on the grass. They could find redemption in one another, they could be one another's salvation, but Hazel can't see the forest for the trees. He continues preaching his anti-gospel and is spotted by a grifter (played by Ned Beatty) who thinks he's found a like-minded crook. But Hazel is the REAL thing. When Beatty's character shows up with a hired hand (the great William Hickey) to interrupt one of his roof-of-his-car preaching sessions, Hazel loses it. He tracks down Uncle Lewis and runs him over with his car. That car, a symbol if there ever was one, is then rolled into a lake by a cop. It's rock bottom for our pal Mr. Hazel Motes.
Hazel blinds himself FOR REAL with lye and starts to practice increasingly more bizarre forms of self-harm, including walking with rocks in his shoes, which we learned earlier via flashback he was forced to do in childhood. It's all connected. Eventually, he's wrapping himself in barbed wire. His landlady, a character who I'm sure is more flushed out in the book, becomes his caretaker and is the last human to fail saving him. He says he needs to pay; she says that people have quit doing that kind of stuff. Not Hazel.
Wise Blood isn't quite a perfect film but it has some great performances and strikes a chord in the way that American cinema of the 70s often can. I highly recommend.
Hazel takes a train to the big city, sees an address for a lady of the night on the bathroom wall and hops in a cab; he's immediately mistaken for a preacher by the driver, the second time this has happened to him. He's very concerned that people know he is NOT a preacher. Later, he meets a "real" blind preacher, played by the legend Harry Dean Stanton, and the preacher's daughter Sabbath, played by the actress Amy Wright who beckons "I seen you..." A haunting plea that echoes the truth: all religion is founded on myth and the impossible. Hazel rips up the pamphlet she hands him.
A big theme of this film is loneliness, and how it can fully warp the brain if left unchecked. And there perhaps is no lonelier character than the dullard Enoch Emory who gets to deliver the titular line of the movie. He says he "knows things he ain't never learned... can feel his blood beating... Wise blood." Everyone wants to feel the power of god. Believing in nothing is still believing.
In the haunts of these religious quests, we find most of the characters are racist as the day is long. To them it is an undeniable truth. Wayward souls whose own self-hatred has turned outward, uncontrollably searching for some place to put it. And it's always been this way. "I don't have to run away from anything, because I don't believe in anything," Hazel says. His entire existence is a study in cognitive dissonance. He goes on to found the "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ" and begins to preach his nihilistic message to anyone who'll listen. In a 2001 New Yorker piece, Hilton Als wrote "Motes has a grudge against Jesus: he equates Him with sin, or more specifically with the sins that he himself has committed and cannot escape-not in the eyes of his relatives, rotten with fake piety, who believe that only the Lord can wash him clean and are no better than (redacted) who think that the Lord will make them white."
Meanwhile, Enoch, a lowly worker at the local zoo who likes to yell at the apes, is equally consumed with finding meaning, albeit in his own infantile way. Disguised in a comically bad wig, he steals a "new" Jesus at the local museum in the form of the tiny corpse of a shrunken South American Indian, and then becomes obsessed with a King Kong knock-off called Gonga, cutting a line of children to shake his hand (a man in a gorilla suit) and ultimately jacking the costume to use for his own immature pranks. The powerless will look for power in any outlet they can grasp.
Sabbath courts Hazel in one of the film's strongest scenes. They talk over one another as they drive to a secluded woods. She reveals the fraud of her father who is in fact not blind and they make love on the grass. They could find redemption in one another, they could be one another's salvation, but Hazel can't see the forest for the trees. He continues preaching his anti-gospel and is spotted by a grifter (played by Ned Beatty) who thinks he's found a like-minded crook. But Hazel is the REAL thing. When Beatty's character shows up with a hired hand (the great William Hickey) to interrupt one of his roof-of-his-car preaching sessions, Hazel loses it. He tracks down Uncle Lewis and runs him over with his car. That car, a symbol if there ever was one, is then rolled into a lake by a cop. It's rock bottom for our pal Mr. Hazel Motes.
Hazel blinds himself FOR REAL with lye and starts to practice increasingly more bizarre forms of self-harm, including walking with rocks in his shoes, which we learned earlier via flashback he was forced to do in childhood. It's all connected. Eventually, he's wrapping himself in barbed wire. His landlady, a character who I'm sure is more flushed out in the book, becomes his caretaker and is the last human to fail saving him. He says he needs to pay; she says that people have quit doing that kind of stuff. Not Hazel.
Wise Blood isn't quite a perfect film but it has some great performances and strikes a chord in the way that American cinema of the 70s often can. I highly recommend.
F.I.S.T.
(1978)
The Irishman in reverse
25 February 2020
F.I.S.T. is a perfectly fine, totally hamfisted, occasionally boring, sometimes charming, overly long faux-biopic. There is a really strong 90-minute movie in here focusing on the late 1930s, pro-union scuffles in Cleveland, but when it attempts to flush out the story of "definitely not Jimmy Hoffa" and gray hair dye substitutes deaging CGI, the film gets bogged down. In the beginning, Sly Stallone, in his first post-Rocky role, is as charming as he's ever been on screen. Coupled with Bill Conti's terrific score and some great supporting performances, it's a masterfully painted if not paint-by-numbers work of art.
A Score to Settle
(2019)
So bad it's good territory
20 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
There aren't any explosions or fire in the 2019 Nicolas Cage movie A Score to Settle. But the background of the movie poster is still covered in flames. I think I could probably leave it at that, and you would understand what 'kind' of movie this, but where's the fun in that?
The movie begins with a flashback scene to the 1980s where a bunch of thugs are torturing a tied up thug by trying (and failing) to hit baseballs at him. We know it is the 1980s because they are playing opera music on a boombox. It's an insane scene where a young Cage (played by a different actor) tries to teach his boss how to swing the baseball bat properly then goes outside to look for lost baseballs before returning to find said boss brutally beating and ultimately killing the tied up thug with the bat.
Cage is imprisoned for almost two decades for these above shenanigans. We later learn that he took the fall on purpose in exchange for two things: $450,000 cash and the promise that his thug pals look after his motherless son. Only one of those things actually happens. He's released early from prison because of insomnia, which, sure that checks out.
I'm going to spoil this movie right here and now because it's the only way I know how to do this. This movie is built upon a "twist." What makes the failure of this "twist" that much more condemnable is that it is so clearly aiming for "smart guy filmmaking" territory, and landing not among the borders, not in the periphery, but in a completely different stratosphere. It is a complete failure.
Cage meets his now young adult son Joey in the middle of the road in the middle of the night after being released from the prison because of insomnia. This felt odd! Like, he just shows up in the middle of the road in the middle of the night? They're both walking? The thing with these bad movies is that you are prone to suspend your disbelief when it comes to bad writing and dumbfounded plot mechanics all the time. It was very strange, but at no point was I thinking to myself "Oh, this is a Ghost Son; he's not really there." But, lo and behold, this is a Ghost Son! This is also, as it turns out, a baseball movie.
Cage returns to the hiding spot where the thugs have left the payoff cash and the murder weapon baseball bat for some reason. There's also one of Joey's old baseball cards in the suitcase. If you're wondering who the heck that baseball player on that card is supposed to be, I'm right there with you. There's not much information on a team called the Portland Gladiators let alone a player named Joe Kenneth (this film is set in Oregon, although that isn't important and never specifically comes up outside of this card), but I was able to discern that they were a minor league team who won a championship in their only year of existence... 1896! That is such a weird fake baseball card to make! In this reality, are the Portland Gladiators a real team, perhaps even a pro team? They must be if this card is worth a lot of money, right? Who cares! There is so much more garbage to get to.
We are then subjected to the first of many incredibly bad music choices with an atrocious singer-songwriter song set to some b-roll of the Northwestern landscape and some primo "I'm a free man" faces by Cage as he basks in the sun.
Father and son go to a super fancy resort hotel that we learn Cage's late wife took him to before he went to prison. You know, the kind of romantic place you want to revisit with your adult son whom you haven't seen in 19 years and who isn't actually there. Cage makes the first of many inexplicable "jokes" that do not land at all, but which I find endlessly funny because of that fact.
Then we get the first vague indication that his Son is perhaps a Ghost Son (a figment of Cage's imagination), as Cage is forced to order a ton of expensive food and dine on it alone.
We then get some more father-son bonding with some more baseball-themed memories. We learn Cage made and sold (!) baseball bats in prison. You know, that famous prison activity of making to-order wooden baseball bats for profit, ah yes.
Cage goes to see a gun salesman named Sleepy, but Sleepy is dead. However, Sleepy's kid (female) is there and she sells him a nice and good gun, fresh off the boat from Italy.
We're then introduced to Benjamin Bratt's character (people just call him Q now) and learn that Cage's character is named "Frankie Fingers."
The problem with this being a Fight Club type scenario is that there are far too many scenes where he and his son are together in public. For every "hint" we get that this might be Cage's warped reality, we get scenes like Ghost Son just getting fitted with a new suit at a store? How? And furthermore, the cause and resolution of this phenomena makes little to no sense. Is he hallucinating because of the fatal sporadic insomnia? Is he knowingly projecting because he can't psychologically deal with the loss? Who knows.
After spending a decent chunk of the 450K by Pretty Woman'ing his son, they share a painfully awkward conversation that takes place back at the hotel after their shopping spree. Ghost Son tells his dad that he should chat up the prostitute (Simone) who is getting her shoes on literally ten feet away from them. Remember: HE IS NOT REAL. HE IS NOT THERE. CAGE IS TALKING TO HIMSELF. Then we have back-to-back sex scenes that feel beyond forced.
Before meeting up with the hooker Simone, Cage had a run-in with her pimp. You know, the kind of pimp who hangs around outside super posh resorts way outside of town (the classic pimp spot). He'll return later no doubt.
We get more "jokes" that fails to make any contact whatsoever, and more excruciating dialogue. At this point, we're about halfway through this mess and it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a revenge movie since there's been very little by way of, you know, getting revenge. So Cage tries to get some revenge on one of the thug underlings called Dragon and is casually very misogynistic in the process of failing to get that said revenge. After Dragon escapes, Cage has this really weird and tonally off encounter with Ghost Son where the latter refers to having sex as "making mercury," which super grossed me out for some reason and I am sorry but I will not be googling to see if that is an actual term people use for having sex.
Part of the reason why the Ghost Son "twist" doesn't work is that we know this kid is a junkie, he looks like a junkie; all his sudden disappearances and funny behavior are easily explained by that.
Anyway, Cage tracks down another thug and this guy just immediately gives himself up and is shot in the head while Cage eats a Slim Jim.
Then Cage sings the Judy Garland era standard "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" as he has a confrontational sing-song chat with Benjamin Bratt at the bar. An increasingly delirious Cage commandeers a bellboy and gets him to teach him how to use a smartphone. Cage gets the bellboy to look up every nursing home in the state so that Cage can hunt down the elderly thug boss and beat him to death with the bloody baseball bat from before.
But the pimp from before shows up to compare sex workers to "feral cats" and to briefly thwart Cage's masterplan, but Cage is armed and ready with some combat moves and some "egg" puns.
Then we get The Big Reveal™ of the "twist." It just happens. There's no real inciting incident, no setup. He just visits his wife's grave, glances over and sees the grave of his son and acts like that was his reality the entire time?!? WHAT!
I was, of course, anticipating a stupid twist. But the rub of this that makes no sense is such: if Cage actually believed his son was alive AND the thugs came through with the $450,000, why was he even interested in getting revenge in the first place? We're also immediately alerted to the fact that Q (Bratt's character) is actually the bad guy and the head thug Max in the nursing home has actually been a vegetable for almost as long as Cage was locked away in jail. No need to beat a helpless coma victim with a 20-year-old bloodstained baseball bat! It was actually Q's fault his son is dead. That's good I guess.
Before he stopped by the nursing home, Cage returned Simone's scarf which flew off her head earlier in the movie, which was very thoughtful of him. Simone's son is named Joey, because OF COURSE HE IS!
He shoots Dragon in the groin before killing him and then goes to the church to confront Q on Q's daughter's wedding day, and Cage has his full-on Cageian freak-out moment that was brewing the entire time, and was worth the wait honestly.
And that's basically it. Total unearned B.S. all the way around, anyway you look at it. There are some awkward flashbacks to the thugs actually executing Joey, and Cage is watching it happen somehow in his memory? Q's daughter--a character we've just met for the first time--is the one who shoots Cage for some reason but the bullet is basically ineffective? No worries, Cage staggers out of the church and there are a bunch of cops waiting outside the church to unload a ton of bullets in slow-motion into our anti-hero's body. Ghost Son returns one more time (this time in Official Ghost Attire) to say what is on everyone's mind watching the film at home, that "this kinda sucks..."
Ghost Son asks his dad what he's gonna do now and Cage says he's gonna ask God to forgive him and then Ghost Son just laughs at that??? You can't make this stuff up.
In many ways, this is a painfully terrible film. So why am I giving it a 7? Because I found it to be truly, legitimately "so bad it's good." Part of the reason I started watching and rewatching the Cage filmography was to uncover a few hidden gems among the late 2010s Cage collection, and I can proudly say that I found one here.
The movie begins with a flashback scene to the 1980s where a bunch of thugs are torturing a tied up thug by trying (and failing) to hit baseballs at him. We know it is the 1980s because they are playing opera music on a boombox. It's an insane scene where a young Cage (played by a different actor) tries to teach his boss how to swing the baseball bat properly then goes outside to look for lost baseballs before returning to find said boss brutally beating and ultimately killing the tied up thug with the bat.
Cage is imprisoned for almost two decades for these above shenanigans. We later learn that he took the fall on purpose in exchange for two things: $450,000 cash and the promise that his thug pals look after his motherless son. Only one of those things actually happens. He's released early from prison because of insomnia, which, sure that checks out.
I'm going to spoil this movie right here and now because it's the only way I know how to do this. This movie is built upon a "twist." What makes the failure of this "twist" that much more condemnable is that it is so clearly aiming for "smart guy filmmaking" territory, and landing not among the borders, not in the periphery, but in a completely different stratosphere. It is a complete failure.
Cage meets his now young adult son Joey in the middle of the road in the middle of the night after being released from the prison because of insomnia. This felt odd! Like, he just shows up in the middle of the road in the middle of the night? They're both walking? The thing with these bad movies is that you are prone to suspend your disbelief when it comes to bad writing and dumbfounded plot mechanics all the time. It was very strange, but at no point was I thinking to myself "Oh, this is a Ghost Son; he's not really there." But, lo and behold, this is a Ghost Son! This is also, as it turns out, a baseball movie.
Cage returns to the hiding spot where the thugs have left the payoff cash and the murder weapon baseball bat for some reason. There's also one of Joey's old baseball cards in the suitcase. If you're wondering who the heck that baseball player on that card is supposed to be, I'm right there with you. There's not much information on a team called the Portland Gladiators let alone a player named Joe Kenneth (this film is set in Oregon, although that isn't important and never specifically comes up outside of this card), but I was able to discern that they were a minor league team who won a championship in their only year of existence... 1896! That is such a weird fake baseball card to make! In this reality, are the Portland Gladiators a real team, perhaps even a pro team? They must be if this card is worth a lot of money, right? Who cares! There is so much more garbage to get to.
We are then subjected to the first of many incredibly bad music choices with an atrocious singer-songwriter song set to some b-roll of the Northwestern landscape and some primo "I'm a free man" faces by Cage as he basks in the sun.
Father and son go to a super fancy resort hotel that we learn Cage's late wife took him to before he went to prison. You know, the kind of romantic place you want to revisit with your adult son whom you haven't seen in 19 years and who isn't actually there. Cage makes the first of many inexplicable "jokes" that do not land at all, but which I find endlessly funny because of that fact.
Then we get the first vague indication that his Son is perhaps a Ghost Son (a figment of Cage's imagination), as Cage is forced to order a ton of expensive food and dine on it alone.
We then get some more father-son bonding with some more baseball-themed memories. We learn Cage made and sold (!) baseball bats in prison. You know, that famous prison activity of making to-order wooden baseball bats for profit, ah yes.
Cage goes to see a gun salesman named Sleepy, but Sleepy is dead. However, Sleepy's kid (female) is there and she sells him a nice and good gun, fresh off the boat from Italy.
We're then introduced to Benjamin Bratt's character (people just call him Q now) and learn that Cage's character is named "Frankie Fingers."
The problem with this being a Fight Club type scenario is that there are far too many scenes where he and his son are together in public. For every "hint" we get that this might be Cage's warped reality, we get scenes like Ghost Son just getting fitted with a new suit at a store? How? And furthermore, the cause and resolution of this phenomena makes little to no sense. Is he hallucinating because of the fatal sporadic insomnia? Is he knowingly projecting because he can't psychologically deal with the loss? Who knows.
After spending a decent chunk of the 450K by Pretty Woman'ing his son, they share a painfully awkward conversation that takes place back at the hotel after their shopping spree. Ghost Son tells his dad that he should chat up the prostitute (Simone) who is getting her shoes on literally ten feet away from them. Remember: HE IS NOT REAL. HE IS NOT THERE. CAGE IS TALKING TO HIMSELF. Then we have back-to-back sex scenes that feel beyond forced.
Before meeting up with the hooker Simone, Cage had a run-in with her pimp. You know, the kind of pimp who hangs around outside super posh resorts way outside of town (the classic pimp spot). He'll return later no doubt.
We get more "jokes" that fails to make any contact whatsoever, and more excruciating dialogue. At this point, we're about halfway through this mess and it's easy to forget that it is, in fact, a revenge movie since there's been very little by way of, you know, getting revenge. So Cage tries to get some revenge on one of the thug underlings called Dragon and is casually very misogynistic in the process of failing to get that said revenge. After Dragon escapes, Cage has this really weird and tonally off encounter with Ghost Son where the latter refers to having sex as "making mercury," which super grossed me out for some reason and I am sorry but I will not be googling to see if that is an actual term people use for having sex.
Part of the reason why the Ghost Son "twist" doesn't work is that we know this kid is a junkie, he looks like a junkie; all his sudden disappearances and funny behavior are easily explained by that.
Anyway, Cage tracks down another thug and this guy just immediately gives himself up and is shot in the head while Cage eats a Slim Jim.
Then Cage sings the Judy Garland era standard "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" as he has a confrontational sing-song chat with Benjamin Bratt at the bar. An increasingly delirious Cage commandeers a bellboy and gets him to teach him how to use a smartphone. Cage gets the bellboy to look up every nursing home in the state so that Cage can hunt down the elderly thug boss and beat him to death with the bloody baseball bat from before.
But the pimp from before shows up to compare sex workers to "feral cats" and to briefly thwart Cage's masterplan, but Cage is armed and ready with some combat moves and some "egg" puns.
Then we get The Big Reveal™ of the "twist." It just happens. There's no real inciting incident, no setup. He just visits his wife's grave, glances over and sees the grave of his son and acts like that was his reality the entire time?!? WHAT!
I was, of course, anticipating a stupid twist. But the rub of this that makes no sense is such: if Cage actually believed his son was alive AND the thugs came through with the $450,000, why was he even interested in getting revenge in the first place? We're also immediately alerted to the fact that Q (Bratt's character) is actually the bad guy and the head thug Max in the nursing home has actually been a vegetable for almost as long as Cage was locked away in jail. No need to beat a helpless coma victim with a 20-year-old bloodstained baseball bat! It was actually Q's fault his son is dead. That's good I guess.
Before he stopped by the nursing home, Cage returned Simone's scarf which flew off her head earlier in the movie, which was very thoughtful of him. Simone's son is named Joey, because OF COURSE HE IS!
He shoots Dragon in the groin before killing him and then goes to the church to confront Q on Q's daughter's wedding day, and Cage has his full-on Cageian freak-out moment that was brewing the entire time, and was worth the wait honestly.
And that's basically it. Total unearned B.S. all the way around, anyway you look at it. There are some awkward flashbacks to the thugs actually executing Joey, and Cage is watching it happen somehow in his memory? Q's daughter--a character we've just met for the first time--is the one who shoots Cage for some reason but the bullet is basically ineffective? No worries, Cage staggers out of the church and there are a bunch of cops waiting outside the church to unload a ton of bullets in slow-motion into our anti-hero's body. Ghost Son returns one more time (this time in Official Ghost Attire) to say what is on everyone's mind watching the film at home, that "this kinda sucks..."
Ghost Son asks his dad what he's gonna do now and Cage says he's gonna ask God to forgive him and then Ghost Son just laughs at that??? You can't make this stuff up.
In many ways, this is a painfully terrible film. So why am I giving it a 7? Because I found it to be truly, legitimately "so bad it's good." Part of the reason I started watching and rewatching the Cage filmography was to uncover a few hidden gems among the late 2010s Cage collection, and I can proudly say that I found one here.
An imaginative dissection of the chaos that is young adulthood
14 February 2020
Part of life is exploring new things. I have never been drawn to anime or Japanimation, so I sought out this film as an experiment. After watching this, I can say that I am still not the audience for it. But I can see the appeal, especially here. The Night is Short, Walk on Girl does an exemplary job of capturing a feeling. With a masterful, almost classic Hollywood score and brilliant visuals, it tells the story of the mostly metaphysical if not wholly surreal journey of two young, college age people: an uptight, down on his luck boy and the titular girl, a carefree, impossibly charismatic character with an unquenchable thirst for life. Lots of funny stuff happens like a silly group line dance that reoccurs, meeting a character named Don Underwear who won't change his underwear, everyone gets a mysterious virus by the end and at points the film becomes a straight-up musical number. There are plenty of tropes and gender politics explored, though some of that is lost on me given the cultural differences. The most interesting stuff that seems to transcend language, etc. is the dissection of the chaos that is young adulthood. It can feel so hard to fit in. You drink too much, or not enough. Just landing on the right way to act moment to moment can be a perilous task. I've been there.
Diamantino
(2018)
Crazy
6 February 2020
I tried to conjure up an absurd math equation which addressed the moving pieces that constitute Diamantino's 'plot' and gave up after "Comically evil twin sisters + Childlike megastar athlete ÷ (lesbian government spy couple - undercover refugee) = ..." The beauty of this is in not knowing what will happen next. Many movies can and actively do strive for unpredictability, but here is the rare reality of that achievement realized. It's cheap, in a way, just attempting that. I don't believe this film comes together in the end, but it has a lot of fun trying.
The central visual idea, which is plastered on the movie poster and might just be the only thing you know about this even if you don't totally about it, is that Diamantino (definitely not Ronaldo) is an internationally famous Portuguese soccer star who loves putting nutella on things and who, when 'in the zone', transports to a magical land of pink clouds and giant fluffy dogs. It's a visual metaphor for something that the viewer will likely either get immediately or scoff at. Thankfully, I found myself among the former.
The visual FX themselves are charming. Not just the green-screened pups bouncing (and eventually launching off into space) but the weird poorman's Minority Report tech setups and computer OS designs. Their feeling unreal added to the flow of this in such a nice, lowkey way.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the overtly political elements of the story bogged things down, but at times their prevalence made some of the general wackiness feel like shtick instead of an inspired genesis, and even more of a bizarre pairing when the film transforms into a full-on love story.
While it's far from perfect, I would definitely recommend this as something you need to see to believe, and the less said the better.
The central visual idea, which is plastered on the movie poster and might just be the only thing you know about this even if you don't totally about it, is that Diamantino (definitely not Ronaldo) is an internationally famous Portuguese soccer star who loves putting nutella on things and who, when 'in the zone', transports to a magical land of pink clouds and giant fluffy dogs. It's a visual metaphor for something that the viewer will likely either get immediately or scoff at. Thankfully, I found myself among the former.
The visual FX themselves are charming. Not just the green-screened pups bouncing (and eventually launching off into space) but the weird poorman's Minority Report tech setups and computer OS designs. Their feeling unreal added to the flow of this in such a nice, lowkey way.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the overtly political elements of the story bogged things down, but at times their prevalence made some of the general wackiness feel like shtick instead of an inspired genesis, and even more of a bizarre pairing when the film transforms into a full-on love story.
While it's far from perfect, I would definitely recommend this as something you need to see to believe, and the less said the better.
Cold War
(2018)
A Star is Torn
6 February 2020
Told across various European locations over the span of 15 years, Cold War, shot in wonderful black and white, is a short feature-length film that feels like a series of connected short films. Characters don't so much as age, but are leveled by time. What we get to see has nothing on the abyss of stories lost in those gaps.
Music ties it all together. Music is everywhere, floating, impenetrable. It can mean so many things and it can mean nothing, perhaps at once. Drunks in a passing trunk sing, the flippant metaphor of insular pop rings hollow, rollicking folk survives all violence and time, Bill Haley & His Comets descend from space, political posturing does what it can to tear out the heart and too often succeeds.
On a personal level, this failed to resonate fully with me for various reasons (I... "do not love Poland..."). But here now I am too smart and have been doing this too long to fault the film for that.
Music ties it all together. Music is everywhere, floating, impenetrable. It can mean so many things and it can mean nothing, perhaps at once. Drunks in a passing trunk sing, the flippant metaphor of insular pop rings hollow, rollicking folk survives all violence and time, Bill Haley & His Comets descend from space, political posturing does what it can to tear out the heart and too often succeeds.
On a personal level, this failed to resonate fully with me for various reasons (I... "do not love Poland..."). But here now I am too smart and have been doing this too long to fault the film for that.
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