In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

Darkest Hour (2017), directed by Joe Wright

Arguably never before has there been a more easy comparison between two films nominated for awards, with Dunkirk and Darkest Hour coming out in the same year. I am unable to resist doing so myself. Let's face it, how can one not compare the two? They're both about the same event from two different perspectives, one on the ground and the other back at home in London. These are two radically different films in scope, one takes place nearly entirely on set and the other outside, but again, they are about the same event. Comparing the two also very easily exposes the shortcomings of Darkest Hour. I know there are many Churchill fetishists out there, I have a family member who is one of them. I was told by him a while ago that I should watch Darkest Hour and Dunkirk as a double feature, but if I'd done so, this difference would have been even more pronounced. I may even feel negatively about Darkest Hour if I'd done that. What I thought about Dunkirk was that Christopher Nolan's direction really busted down the door to make an absolutely classic film, and in the case of Darkest Hour, the entertainment value is derived from one performance. That is one performance alone in a film with a large ensemble cast, I should note. With that knowledge, I am absolutely mystified as to how this was nominated for awards. However, as this year's Oscars may show, the people who vote for these things may have a huge anglophilia problem. Bohemian Rhapsody is all the real evidence you need to show it's the case.

If you don't know what Darkest Hour is about, I don't know what the fuck's wrong with you. The film begins in 1940 with the Labour Party demanding the resignation of Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) for reasons that most everyone is aware of. He was weak and he was a coward. Chamberlain wanted to handpick his successor, but for whatever reason Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane) has decided the time is not right for him to become Prime Minister of Britain. Chamberlain was also still the leader of the ruling Conservative Party, and in talks with King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn), it is clear that the King does not want this, but everyone has been left with no choice. If you have not realized, Darkest Hour takes some extreme creative liberties with how things worked out. Enter Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman). We pan over to his abode, where he gets angry at his new secretary, Elizabeth Layton (Lily James), because she did not hear him properly. Winston's wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) does not like this, so in the end Miss Layton returns with a telegram. The King has invited Churchill to Buckingham Palace to form a government, which as anyone could tell, is exactly what happens. Churchill is a smart man, so he includes Chamberlain and Halifax in his war cabinet as they receive news that Hitler has invaded Belgium and the Netherlands.

Churchill has a poor reputation in Parliament due to prior conduct, but the three parties thought he would be the best Prime Minister. He was the right man at the right job at the right time as it has been said. Churchill is instantly met with major problems, of course. He travels to France and the French PM finds him to be delusional, because what Churchill says is completely deluded. Inevitably, we come to the matter of Dunkirk. The British Army was trapped at Dunkirk, and Churchill gives an order to lead a rear-guard action so that the British can buy time to evacuate forces from Dunkirk. We then get to the real heart of the film, the War Cabinet Crisis. Churchill has an outburst at Chamberlain over his prior appeasement strategy, and eventually Chamberlain and Halifax decide to force Churchill's hand. They want him to negotiate for peace, and if he does not they will resign and force a vote of no confidence, to lead to someone challenging Churchill's position. In Halifax's diary, he had written that succeeding Chamberlain would be impossible, this aspect is not really covered in the film. These battles between Halifax and Churchill inevitably spiral, such as you'd expect, but Churchill is forced to consider the idea of suing for peace. And there's your film.

Obviously I left out some major details that happen after Churchill is forced to play his hand, but I think everyone knows what happens from there. Due to Dunkirk using fictional characters, as well as that film's willingness to discard of them, the difference in tension between the two films is quite incredible. This is where we get into the difference between biographies and original films. Gary Oldman's performance is fantastic, I think I'll wind up being in agreement with those who awarded him for that performance. Darkest Hour, however, is entirely reliant upon that performance. The inherent issue with biographies, and if you've noticed the reason why I rarely rate them as highly as other kinds of films, is because a biography really needs to bring some kind of technical innovation or events I don't know about in order to liven things up. The problem here is that I already knew about all this stuff. Most adults should know about this subject as well, and the evacuation of Dunkirk is something that was addressed in a film that arrived earlier in the same year. The release of Dunkirk undoubtedly works against Darkest Hour, but I think there are so many other good films from 2017 that do as well. I haven't watched them all yet either!

Where Darkest Hour really succeeds beyond Oldman's spectacular performance, is technically. Didn't I just say that thing about technical innovation? Space launches, unfortunately for this film and my view towards it, massively surpass those innovations with makeup and fat suits. Plaudits for those things were deserved, I'm not saying that. I also thought the room they used as a stand-in for Buckingham Palace was spectacularly decorated and adorned. This was something I thought every single time the room was on screen, so I thought I would mention it. I rarely mention set design, so that tells you just how much I thought it stood out. The state of the buildings was excellent too, and so was the cinematography. I can't compare it to the some of the other films as I haven't watched them, but there are countless very good shots of Churchill. So, technically, this is brilliant. Some of the other characters, like that of Viscount Halifax, are very well developed and nicely performed. I also never thought Ben Mendelsohn would make a good British king, but here we are. It also feels like this guy is in everything, even though he isn't. That's a good thing in his case.

Ultimately, with all those positives, I think Darkest Hour does have some complete failures to balance them out. The historical accuracy of these events is sometimes incorrect to a point where I could only wonder how the events could have been untangled in a way that everyone could understand. Truthfully, I could not come up with one. There's also some complete fabrications, like with Churchill riding on the London Underground. That scene is totally ludicrous and took me out of the end of the film. I also think that films such as this one, particularly with a figure like Churchill who did bad things, serve to whitewash his sins and make everyone forget about them. I told you about my family member, correct? This is what happens when films fail in that regard. Creatively messing around with what a figure like Winston Churchill really was, I think that's a problem. I do expect that this role is going to be revisited at some point as well, it would surprise me if it wasn't. There's too much ground left uncovered, but I hope that someone else writes the film this time. For my money, even though this is something I would call a good film with some extremely positive aspects, I think the screenwriter did not do what could have been done with the story. So, take it for what it's worth, but this film is not great and just below that. Perhaps if I was British, I would feel different. But I'm not. The film just isn't insightful enough, and I realized that this is currently somewhat high on my list, but that should go down quite a bit by the time I'm done unless 2017 sucked.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Darkest Hour
14. Spider-Man: Homecoming
15. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
16. It
17. Battle of the Sexes
18. Okja
19. Kong: Skull Island
20. It Comes at Night
21. Split
22. 1922
23. Personal Shopper
24. Chuck
25. Atomic Blonde
26. Wheelman
27. The Lego Batman Movie
28. Megan Leavey
29. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
30. American Made
31. Beauty and the Beast
32. Imperial Dreams
33. Murder on the Orient Express
34. The Zookeeper's Wife
35. Free Fire
36. Win It All
37. The Wall
38. Life
39. Breathe
40. The Man Who Invented Christmas
41. Sleight
42. Alone in Berlin
43. A United Kingdom
44. Trespass Against Us
45. The Mountain Between Us
46. War Machine
47. Happy Death Day
48. Justice League
49. To the Bone
50. Wakefield
51. The Hitman's Bodyguard
52. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
53. Sand Castle
54. CHiPs
55. Death Note
56. The Belko Experiment
57. The Great Wall
58. Fist Fight
59. Snatched
60. Wilson
61. Queen of the Desert
62. Sleepless

 

[909]

Us (2019), directed by Jordan Peele

Early 2019's most anticipated film by some distance is Us, so of course I was going to run out to see it as soon as possible. One thing I was thinking once I got in the theater was that people's expectations for this film are probably way too high. Get Out was a unique experience, there is no way to actually follow up on it. It is a unique film that addressed the problems of our time in a way that couldn't possibly be done again without feeling like a direct copy, so in the end, it's for the best that Jordan Peele did not go this route. If you don't want to be spoiled you should turn the hell around and exit this topic, because I'm going to spoil a lot. What Peele does instead of address race specifically is to create a story with a lot of subtext, there are many people who simply won't pick up on it. There are other things that are more obvious. I will admit the only thing I really picked up on in terms of subtext was the Hands Across America deal. The reason I know about this is because after that bullshit initiative to cure hunger by holding hands, I know that Ronald Reagan wound up saying that people were hungry because they were stupid. Do you not make the connection between that, the title of this film, and what it seems like this film is about from the preview? Maybe we're evil and we inflict these things upon other humans because of our natural instincts. Anyway, there are so many cultural references here that it's totally ridiculous, but that seemed more like an attempt to ensure that everyone remains engaged rather than anything else. Surprisingly, Us is a very slow builder. It is also extremely pleasing.

The film starts off with a video referencing the aforementioned Hands Across America, and alongside of the television there are video tapes like The Goonies, C.H.U.D, and The Right Stuff. Is this a Twilight Zone version of Climax? Not quite. It's 1986 in Santa Cruz, California, and Adelaide Thomas (Madison Curry) is on a vacation with her parents. They're on the boardwalk playing carnival games, and the mother Rayne (Anna Diop) seems to be angry at the father Russell (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) because Russell is acting like a typical dad who has had some alcohol. Anyway, when Rayne goes to the bathroom, Russell is tasked with watching his kid while he plays whack-a-mole. He does not. Adelaide wanders off and comes across a hell of mirrors on the sand under the boardwalk, she is annoyed as she seems to have never seen one of these before. While down there, she encounters a version of herself, but is unable to repeat the experience to her parents. There are flashbacks to this event throughout the movie, the story is not quite told at this point. We must move on though.

After that, we snap to the present day, with Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) going on a beach trip with her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), their daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and their son Jason (Evan Alex). Ade is not having the best time in the world because she hates Santa Cruz, but they have a beach house there anyway. This is, in my opinion anyway, the film's lone gigantic plothole, but there's also another way to look at that aspect. I will treat it accordingly. Anyway, they do have friends there who also traveled to Santa Cruz, Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker). Like the Wilson family, Kitty and Josh have two kids, twins Gwen and Maggie. Let's get to the more important part of this shit. There are some similarities to Ade's first trip to Santa Cruz. A man who was holding a sign referencing Jeremiah 11:11 in her past has been stabbed and appears to be dead in her present. The hall of mirrors is still there but has been rebranded from its previously bigoted Native motif into something referencing Merlin. I'm leaving a fuckload of details out in case someone decide they weren't going to stop reading this review, but Ade and this beach just do not go together. Jason wanders off and she has the idea that the same thing may happen to him as happened to her, but it does not. When they find Jason and go back to the house, later that night Ade wants to pack up and leave. They're not going to leave. As you can see from the preview, there's a family outside of the house. Gabe goes outside to warn them off the property, but they will not leave. When he wanted to get crazy, they got crazier and got inside. These people, whatever they are, they're US. Very much of this is explained inside of that house.

The relationship between the Tethered and their more privileged dopplegangers, I don't even know where to start with this stuff. My initial thought process was that we are unfortunate not to get more science-fiction like this. Another thought I had was that Winston Duke's dad jokes were fucking hilarious and served to make the early slowness of the plot quite enjoyable. I'm not trying to say the movie was initially boring, but I was saying that there's a massive amount of build to lead to what comes later. Fuck, I really just don't know how to go back to the Tethered. To make clear, I fully understand the juxtaposition of the scenario, but I'm more floored than anything else by the way in which some of these scenes were executed. There is one on the beach in the present that is super fucking easy to miss if you aren't paying attention, but I realized what it was at a later point in the film and was kind of freaking out in my seat. This kind of material, well, there's really a lot to it and I don't have space to focus my review around all of it or truly any specific part. What I do think is that this film was a fantastic idea, something that I think is going to become so much more appreciated over time. The amount of horror references is also totally staggeering, and each event in the film does one of my favorite things in invoking the question of "why is this happening?"

I thought Us was going to be a small scale film, but I will reveal one aspect of it, that it is not a small scale film and is far larger in scope than I ever expected. I think due to this, there is some shit that doesn't really go in junction with each other, but I'm more willing to forgive that when something is both consistently entertaining and ambitious as this is. I think on some level this is to poverty as Get Out is to racism, but I doubt that's ever going to be explicitly stated by Jordan Peele. If you start thinking about this too much, there are aspects of the story that do break down, but there are a ridiculous amount of other things that do not break down. To me, that is its big achievememt. More than that, there are numerous technical achievements here and incredible performances. There isn't a single bad performance in the film, but Lupita Nyong'o played the lead and therefore hers is the standout. Keep in mind that she had to play two characters, this is not an easy task. There aren't enough superlatives, and we'll see how things stand come the end of the year, but there will absolutely not be many better performances than this one. Also, keep in mind that Nyong'o has never been in a horror movie. So, think about the performance when taking that into consideration.

Overall, I think Us is a great film, but it isn't as good as Get Out. Us presents different ideas, and also it arguably has plot holes, but I think that it comes together very well. Some of the things that could be perceived as plot holes are also explainable, but I think ultimately, the main idea that there's always an actual Us out there, that's what really shines through. When you see this, you can make some guesses as to what I mean, but I think you guys have picked up on that point as well. I'm trying so hard to not get into major points as I could take pages upon pages writing about this, but in two years I think this is a film that will be even more positively received than it already is. As it relates to technical things, I guess I didn't address them yet, so I'll finish up with them. The choice in music and the score itself are absolutely brilliant, so was the cinematography from MIke Gioulakis. There isn't much surprise there although most people don't know who he is, but he was the DP for It Follows. So, yeah, he knows what he's doing. I do think that Us does suffer from a few instances of it being a little too obvious what's going to come next, but there are so many things in this that really resonate with me that I unabashedly loved the film.

As a note, I'm not sure anyone cares, but Climax really was a 2018 movie so I moved it to that list.

8.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Arctic
3. High Flying Bird
4. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
5. Captain Marvel
6. Paddleton
7. Cold Pursuit
8. Happy Death Day 2U
9. Greta
10. Triple Frontier
11. Fighting with My Family
12. Velvet Buzzsaw
13. Alita: Battle Angel
14. The Kid
15. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
16. The Upside
17. Captive State
18. Escape Room
19. What Men Want
20. Miss Bala
21. Glass
22. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
23. The Prodigy
24. Polar
25. Serenity

 

[909]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfenIwtoQzk

The Dirt (2019), directed by Jeff Tremaine

I think just about everyone would be skeptical of a movie about Motley Crue directed by the Jackass guy, right? I don't know how the director was chosen for this, but I have a few thoughts running through my head. When everyone hears about a music biopic, people hope that it isn't a bastardized Hollywood version of someone's story. I will tell you that it is one of those two things, but you'll have to read the whole review to figure out what. What I will say is that this is not Bohemian Rhapsody. There are things about it that are similar, but I would not call this a sanitized portrayal. What I would say is that the events presented in The Dirt are presented without commentary, you can make of them what you will. This is a dangerous road for a film to take because a lot of people are stupid fucking idiots that are unable to take those things for what they are. On the other hand, I think on some level, if you're intelligent enough to have Netflix, you should know the difference between right and wrong. Another thing I'm thinking is that some bad things that were written in their memoir were not placed in this film, so again, you can make of that what you want. There's a part in the book where they talk about raping someone, and the people in Vince Neil's car crash wound up brain damaged. He also killed his friend, but you know how those things are played on film. Take them for what they are worth. The band members are also producers, because after all, it is their story. Now, what I will tell you, is that a lot of the stuff in this movie, it's pretty fucking bad. I'm surprised this was even made.

Oddly enough, the events described in The Dirt made me want a Van Halen movie very much, even though I think punches would definitely be pulled in that case. The film begins with something that never would have been allowed in a studio movie, with all the band members trying to bang someone and some squirting involved as well. So, there's that. We snap back to 1973, with a very young, not quite Nikki Sixx screwing over his stupid mother Deana (Kathryn Morris) and having her thrown in jail so that he can get away from her. Eventually, he moves to Los Angeles, grows up, and changes his name to Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth). Nikki, as he tells it, is plagued by not having a father and attempts to connect with him. He fails. A year later, we snap over to the suburbs, where Tommy Lee (Machine Gun Kelly) lives with his family. At a diner, Tommy abandons his date and attempts to befriend Nikki, which seems to work out nicely for them both. Nikki is forming a new band, and they need a guitarist, so they place an ad. Answering the ad, we have a fat guy and Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon), a somewhat older guy with ankylosing spondylitis. He is in bad pain, but he can jam and he joins up. The trio then needs to complete matters with a lead singer, and Tommy says that he knows a guy. Enter Vince Neil (Daniel Webber). Vince brings along his girlfriend, she decides whether or not she'll like the music and encourage him to join. She does, and there you have it, a band with no name yet.

While they have no name, they have some ideas for one. Most of them are Tommy's and Nikki's, and they suck. One of the ideas does now, and wouldn't you have it, there you have Motley Crue. They go to their first gig and get in a fight, but people like the gig well enough and they start playing shows around Los Angeles. These shows lead to an ambitious executive at Elektra Records named Tom (Pete Davidson) signing them to a five album deal. They'll need a manager too, and at this point they break the fourth wall to point out that some of the things in the film are bullshit, or that people have had to be deleted. Doc McGhee (David Costabile) is their guy, playing the role that Paul Giamatti usually plays in these kinds of films. After that, they go national, and become the Motley Crue that everyone is well aware of. As far as debauchery goes, seemingly nothing is left out of the film. That includes Tommy Lee punching a woman in the face, heroin overdoses, Vince Neil's car crash, and so much more. I will take care not to spoil what so much more actually means.

I said that I want a Van Halen movie, because the story is better and they were a bigger band, but I'm not sure we'll ever get that. Anyway, one should take this presentation for what it is. These are guys who did really bad shit, a lot of it is shown to you, they had a fun time and hit rock bottom before coming back like they started out. That is literally what happens in all of this shit. The director seems to have no idea how to deal with the last half of the film once things start spiraling downward into addiction, but I thought the first half of the film was excellent. The cameos from people playing musicians I don't really want to name, they keep this film feeling alive. The start of The Dirt feels anarchic, there's seemingly nothign these people wouldn't do. Some of the montages and presentation of concerts and music videos, the scene when they show Tommy Lee strapped onto the rotating drumset as it goes upside down, that's my jam. It's a fun ride. I can't speak to the veracity of these events so I'm going to take them for what they are and not take them too seriously. I think everyone is well aware that by the standards most people should have, three of these guys (Mick apparently the exception) are pretty bad guys.

Even though this film has been given the Hollywood treatment, I'll still say that I like it. That being said, I do have caveats. The second half of the film should have been directed by someone else. The events in that section are simply not handled very well, when you'll see this you'll know what I mean. Related to that, due to the length of a movie, there are things that Motley Crue did or had happen to them that were not covered the way they should have been. We jump from time to time like the years don't even matter, with Vince Neil's daughter getting sick and dying being one of the more obvious examples of this strange time warp. Still, overall, I think I liked this more than Bohemian Rhapsody, which I'm certain I've overrated. There's a new song at the credits as I posted above, and I thought the credits themselves were pretty great. The performances, particularly that of Machine Gun Kelly, get the spirit of the time right. I never thought I'd say that. I'm not going to say they're great as a whole, but I thought the Tommy Lee one was very good. The first half of the film is so fucking crazy, I'm glad this got made even though it's not a fantastic film. So, take that all for what it's worth. I'm wondering if part of the point of this film was to make people feel guilty for enjoying the band's music. It goes far enough to that extent where the thoughts did pop in my mind. With all that said, when it comes to a film I give 6/10, you know damn well that means you can take it or leave it. For people who enjoy their music, or for those who like these music biopics, it's worth your time to turn this on. Just don't watch this with people who may be offended.

I may talk myself into liking this less if I keep going, so I think I'm going to stop. This film is mindless and if you think you're going to get any real insights into the life of a rock star, you won't. I think that's okay though, and bear in mind that I rate anything below a 6 a failure on some level. This barely passes the mark by that standard.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Arctic
3. High Flying Bird
4. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
5. Captain Marvel
6. Paddleton
7. Cold Pursuit
8. Happy Death Day 2U
9. Greta
10. Triple Frontier
11. Fighting with My Family
12. The Dirt
13. Velvet Buzzsaw
14. Alita: Battle Angel
15. The Kid
16. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
17. The Upside
18. Captive State
19. Escape Room
20. What Men Want
21. Miss Bala
22. Glass
23. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
24. The Prodigy
25. Polar
26. Serenity

 

[909]

Yiddish, subtitles

Menashe (2017), directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein

I assume that nobody expected I would watch a film in the Yiddish language, but here it is. I assume that the point of the film in the first place was to enlighten people on Hasidic cultural practices, shining a light on things that other Americans just don't know about. After all, this was an American production. The fact is that a lot of American people just simply aren't aware of the other cultures in our country. It doesn't matter which side that you come from, ignoracnce is prevalent and in many cases so is outright hatred. Numerous times in this film I had to Google things that I didn't understand, but I think that was the point of things. I couldn't imagine watching this in a theater when I'm not aware of these things and don't have the ability to find out what they are. To continue to harp on this point, that we don't know about this culture and that we are able to learn about it through a film, I always think that's great. It's the kind of thing I always appreciate, but the most important thing as far as my reviews of films go is one thing and one thing alone. Is the film good? Good is such a subjective thing. I think there are aspects of Menashe that are decidedly not good, and I'll explain what I think those are, but I think this film is extremely educational.

Menashe is a biographical story of sorts, with the titled man, Menashe, having been widowed. Menashe is a Hasidic Jew, and with his wife gone, his life has changed a lot. The way things work, his community does not believe he should have custody of his son Rieven (Ruben Niborski). Rieven, as a result, lives with the family of his mother's brother, Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus). Eizik's house is better for many reasons, the least of which being that he has more money than Menashe. For those who do not know, many people in this community do not have money as the circumstances do not allow for individuals to acquire it so easily. If you want to know more to that end, I'm unable to explain. Anyway, with these things being what they are, Menashe is tasked with finding a wife and holding down his very low paying job at a Jewish grocery market in Brooklyn. I feel very bad for this guy, let's put it that way. His first marriage, as he tells it, was not so good. He's reluctant to get married again, but the needs of the community require him to or his son cannot live with him. I must admit I do not understand why this is, it's perhaps an interpretation of the Torah, but I don't really know for certain. The easy answer would be, because it's tradition. To some people tradition matters.

Menashe himself is an unhappy man, he does not wear the traditional black coat and top hat in public. We are shown one attempt of a match making, that also does not go so well. He believes things that others do not, believes a little more in individuality, and as a result it will be difficult for him to find a wife. Maybe he's just torpedoing these dates because he doesn't want to be happy, or doesn't know what being happy even is? Eventually, things come to a head both at work and in Menashe's life. His boss is a dick, and Menashe owes money to people, but oddly this storyline completely disappears. It just turns out that Menashe is a really unlucky person. One day, he decides to do something about his problems. He goes to see Eizik, and Eizik looks down on him, so he really doesn't like what Eizik has to say about his life. So, in a bit of anger or rather of personal need, Menashe decides to take Rieven away to live with him. This leads to Eizik and Menashe having to see the rabbi (Meyer Schwartz), so they come to an agreement. Rieven can stay with his father, but he must be returned after a memorial service for Menashe's wife. After that, he really needs to find a wife.

The disappearing storyline, in combination with some odd cinematography, are the reasons I won't be giving Menashe a very high rating. It's still a good film, and as I already said, very educational. If you've read the story of this film, when it was shot, some of the people who were in it were left out of the credits so they didn't bring shame to their house. Some of the actors simply disappeared. Pulling off this project considering all that, it's quite an accomplishment. I also want to say that I think there are in some cases problems with these kinds of communities. Particularly in how much they control people's lives, and the inability with which people can leave said communities. There's been a lot of news stories in recent years, or documentaries for that matter, about those who leave extremist sects of Mormonism and how someone accomplishes that. But, let's make it extremely clear here. This is not Mormonism and people do not have those problems, it's simply hard to leave. I'm not trying to compare them, but I'm saying we know more about one sect than the other, and I'm not a fan of the way people can become controlled by doctrine. The thing about the film is, the subject of Menashe leaving is never addressed. I'm actually glad for that as the film probably wouldn't even exist if it did. Menashe does not want to leave, he loves his religion, and he also loves his son. It is just very hard for him to do something required of him because of how poorly it went the first time.

The human in me found himself feeling very bad for the film's subject, and at the same time really hoping things worked out for him, so it's clear that I liked the film. When I don't like something, I often don't feel anything at all. The disappearing storyline I am referring to is probably related to the actor also disappearing, because I kept waiting to see how Menashe would address his financial situation only for that to never come. As for the cinematography, there are so many close-ups on Menashe. This bothered me. I think I am actually saying that this film was poorly made, and it doesn't have the best story in the world either. In the end, though, while the story isn't particularly well written, I thought the educational aspect of this film was very nicely done. There are things that are not laid out as well as they should have been, but I think I understood the gist of the film and accepted the resolution to the problem. I also thought the father-son relationship was sweet, and over the course of the film the viewer was able to understand how these things all came to be what they were. Sometimes it's nice to see a movie where someone is struggling, but nothing magically comes along to save them from their problems, and we learn that other people have the same problems we all do. Those problems, however, are just slightly different based on where you come from, and if you haven't learned that as an adult, that's too bad. I was going to say that this film is probably best watched by younger people although I can't imagine a younger person actually doing so.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Darkest Hour
14. Spider-Man: Homecoming
15. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
16. It
17. Battle of the Sexes
18. Okja
19. Kong: Skull Island
20. It Comes at Night
21. Split
22. 1922
23. Personal Shopper
24. Chuck
25. Atomic Blonde
26. Wheelman
27. The Lego Batman Movie
28. Megan Leavey
29. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
30. Menashe
31. American Made
32. Beauty and the Beast
33. Imperial Dreams
34. Murder on the Orient Express
35. The Zookeeper's Wife
36. Free Fire
37. Win It All
38. The Wall
39. Life
40. Breathe
41. The Man Who Invented Christmas
42. Sleight
43. Alone in Berlin
44. A United Kingdom
45. Trespass Against Us
46. The Mountain Between Us
47. War Machine
48. Happy Death Day
49. Justice League
50. To the Bone
51. Wakefield
52. The Hitman's Bodyguard
53. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
54. Sand Castle
55. CHiPs
56. Death Note
57. The Belko Experiment
58. The Great Wall
59. Fist Fight
60. Snatched
61. Wilson
62. Queen of the Desert
63. Sleepless

 

[909]

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), directed by Martin McDonagh

I have no idea how it took so long for me to finally go ahead and watch Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri when I was eagerly anticipating the film before its release. I guess that's just how I am. What I was thinking when I was finally going to watch this, was that I hoped this wouldn't be like McDonagh's previous film, Seven Psychopaths. Fortunately, this was no Seven Psychopaths, although I must admit that I did laugh a few times. The comedy aspect, however, is almost entirely removed from this other than in the most dark sense. Or, for that matter, in the way that Frances McDormand wears the same jumpsuit all the time. I understand the outfit, but the jumpsuit is going to go down as an iconic costume. Whether you like the movie as a whole or not, McDormand's performance is on that level. So, get used to seeing that outfit in montages and news clips during every awards season. Anyway, I'm a bit surprised by this film because it isn't very much like In Bruges and the aforementioned Seven Psychopaths. I think In Bruges is a classic, so in some ways that isn't so great, but I think that overall, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is probably McDonagh's best film. Considering it seemed that a lot of people did not like the film's ending, there are quite a few who would probably take umbrage with that. There is something that actually bothers me about it though...

Our film is set in a town called Ebbing, and it's in Missouri as you might expect. Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) drives down a road seemingly every day, and she sees three billboards with nothing on them. She's very angry that there has been no progress made into the death of her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), and it is time to do something about it. Mildred heads into town and buys the ad space from Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), and the stuff she puts on them, well, it's pretty bad. They say "RAPED WHILE DYING," STILL NO ARRESTS?", and "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?" Some people just break in the face of injustice, but Mildred is rather driven. The billboards make people in town very angry, most notably the aforementioned Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and a very stupid idiot cop, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). It turns out that more than anything else, Dixon has a reputation in town for being a racist fuck who tortured a black person. Willoughby himself is also quite popular, and he has pancreatic cancer, so people want those billboards down. As a result, when Mildred goes to the dentist, the guy is acting awfully strange. It seems like he may attack her, so she drills a hole through his fingernail. That's where we're at here.

Willougby, it may surprise you, is nice to Mildred despite this even though he doesn't like the billboards. He tells her that they probably won't find out who killed her daughter because this is the kind of crime where you just don't, but this won't abide. Eventually, things start to spiral out of control a little bit. Mildred is visited by her ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes), this is a visit that culminates in her son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) putting a knife to Charlie's throat. Charlie also blames Mildred for Angela dying, which isn't good for Mildred's mental state. Dixon himself is on a crusade to deal with these billboards any way possible, getting some encouragement in how to do so. When things really get ridiculous though, is one day when Willoughby does not go to work. He and his wife Anne (Abbie Cornish) go fishing with their daughters, and when the trip is over, they head home. Anne isn't feeling so good, and I've already told you guys that Willoughby has pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is very painful. Willoughby decides to pay for the billboards to stay up as some sick kind of joke, and commits suicide out in his stables. Things may, or rather they do, get a bit crazy after this.

Some of the plot threads in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri go unsolved, chiefly among them the question of who killed Angela. I found Willoughby's explanation to be quite satisfactory though. I also believe in some of the same things as David Chase, who said that people need to learn to accept the idea that all their questions about a television show may not be answered. Mystery is very important in television and film, but I do understand why people can't handle not learning what happened. The characters here are great, but I think McDonagh's films are a bit of an acquired taste. The things displayed in In Bruges really landed with me, but I know someone who deeply hated that shit. There are multiple scenes here where I was really rooting for something to happen, and despite that not happening, I liked the film a lot. The thing that happens at the end of the first act with Dixon, I must admit that I wasn't expecting that at all. Avoiding spoilers is a difficult task. To that end, there are some things that don't sit right with me. I don't like Peter Dinklage's participation in this movie, or his role for that matter. Martin McDonagh has done a lot of strange things in his three films, this is probably the strangest. I simply do not understand. A film like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri needs to triumph in its originality, but I cannot explain the inclusion of that character.

I think Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri thrives on its performances, and with numerous actors here whom everyone should know, the expectations for those performances should be high. Those expectations were met. I already said that McDormand's role is iconic, and that's true, I don't see people forgetting her performance anytime soon. Sam Rockwell's, I think people may have gotten the wrong idea from how his story ended. I didn't really see that as a redemption at all, this is someone who always wanted to take the next step to killing a person. He also enlisted the help of someone else in doing it rather than do it all by himself. I don't know if that was the intended meaning of those scenes, but that's what I got from them. I like Woody Harrelson but I must admit I don't know what he did to merit awards consideration at all. That just seems to be based on him being Woody Fucking Harrelson. It may turn out once I complete the year that there just aren't that many good acting performances. I can't tell you very many I've seen already to be fair. I also thought the cinematography was surprisingly good, and I say surprisingly because McDonagh used a standard Marvel cinematographer. Yes, that means I find Marvel's cinematography boring, because it is.

In the end, it turns out that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a movie I really liked, but I'm not going to be sure if I loved this until a few weeks from now. The scenes with Peter Dinklage took me away from the events a little bit. It's probably one of the best films from 2017, but that lone flaw I found with Dinklage's character is actually really big. The scenes seemed to exist merely to create another revelation. Regardless of that, my standards are not that fucking high. The mystery not being resolved is genuinely no big deal to me, I actually don't care about that. I found it to be quite realistic in pointing out that there's very rarely closure when these things happen, even though news programs would lead someone to feel otherwise. In the case of one in three murders, a killer is never identified. Even more often the killer is never convicted. Even when they are, does someone really get closure? I will say that the dark comedy in this film really hit with me. Seeing burn victims wince at the open flame while they're lighting a cigarette, as well as the other, very numerous crazy things that people say, I was laughing at this. I felt a little guilty at times, but if you didn't find the humor in this, I don't know. What I found I appreciated most about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and about Roma last year, or Fences, or The Favourite, or Dunkirk, or Get Out, is that I really couldn't figure out where any of these films were going from one scene to the next. The originality in all of them is something I appreciate. What's so original about Dunkirk, you may ask? It's that on the micro level, Christopher Nolan ensured that his characters could be very easily disposed of, and in many cases they were. That's why Dunkirk is staying at the top of this list and nothing is going to displace it, because doing that with a WW2 movie, I am not going to get over it.

9/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
4. Logan
5. Wonder Woman
6. The Big Sick
7. Thor: Ragnarok
8. Logan Lucky
9. The Beguiled
10. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
11. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
12. The Lost City of Z
13. First They Killed My Father
14. Darkest Hour
15. Spider-Man: Homecoming
16. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
17. It
18. Battle of the Sexes
19. Okja
20. Kong: Skull Island
21. It Comes at Night
22. Split
23. 1922
24. Personal Shopper
25. Chuck
26. Atomic Blonde
27. Wheelman
28. The Lego Batman Movie
29. Megan Leavey
30. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
31. Menashe
32. American Made
33. Beauty and the Beast
34. Imperial Dreams
35. Murder on the Orient Express
36. The Zookeeper's Wife
37. Free Fire
38. Win It All
39. The Wall
40. Life
41. Breathe
42. The Man Who Invented Christmas
43. Sleight
44. Alone in Berlin
45. A United Kingdom
46. Trespass Against Us
47. The Mountain Between Us
48. War Machine
49. Happy Death Day
50. Justice League
51. To the Bone
52. Wakefield
53. The Hitman's Bodyguard
54. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
55. Sand Castle
56. CHiPs
57. Death Note
58. The Belko Experiment
59. The Great Wall
60. Fist Fight
61. Snatched
62. Wilson
63. Queen of the Desert
64. Sleepless

 

[909]

Beirut (2018), directed by Brad Anderson

You know what I was thinking when I turned on Beirut? One thing running through my mind was that I have so much more of 2018 to actually go through, and I'll do that over the next few months. The other thing was that there weren't very many movies that seemed like spy thrillers in 2018. Now that I'm going back through the year, perhaps it's the case that there were more earlier in the year before I started going to the theatre. The other possibility is that studios really took films like The Girl in the Spider's Web and Operation Finale as their entries in the genre. That's not so good! I don't suggest that this film is a classic or anything of the sort, but this genre was really lacking in 2018. Going through my list makes that so much more clear, all there really was of quality was BlacKkKlansman and Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Those were really good movies at least! Beirut, I remember seeing, had some controversy over having a lack of Lebanese characters. This is true, but the film presents Beirut as being a playground for foreign powers. This was, at the time anyway, quite true. Of course, the situation was also far more complicated than any film could attempt to illustrate. So, with that in mind, take Beirut for what it is. I envisoned the film itself as Don Draper moving to Lebanon and becoming a diplomat of some kind. This is not very dissimilar from what the film actually was! In that way, this is probably Jon Hamm's best role on the big screen. In reality, it was Bad Times at the El Royale.

In 1972, Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm) is a diplomat who lives in Beirut with his Lebanese wife, Nadia (Leila Bekhti). When I typed this out, I was wondering about that not being a security risk. Apparently it isn't, and Mason has also taken a 13 year old named Karim (Idir Chender) into his house. Karim is a Palestinian refugee and he says he has no family, but I must admit without any bullshit that this is not true. During Mason's party, while Karim is serving dinner, Mason is met with a visit from his CIA friend, Cal Riley (Mark Pellegrino). It appears that Karim has not been truthful, but Mason has a very hard time believing what he's hearing. Cal tells him that Karim's brother Rafid (Hichame Ouraqa) is a full blown terrorist (is there any other kind) who has participated in the Munich massacre. At the same time, the party is attacked by the aforementioned Rafid, so it turns out Mason should have given him up as soon as possible. In the madness, Rafid and Karim escape with each other, but Nadia is held hostage. Unfortunately, this does not go so well either, and Nadia is killed. I must admit I was confused by how these events played out. It was also surprising, because of the hair and sideburns that Jon Hamm was sporting. He was also so much more happy than usual.

Now, we move forward ten years, to a more familiar version of Jon Hamm. He is an alcoholic who lives in Boston and works as a labor arbitrator, putting his skills as a diplomat to good use. Obviously, his career in the State Department had ended some time before that, and he is quite unhappy in life. We get a glimpse of his life as an arbitrator, it really isn't very fun. While at a bar, he's approached by an old client on behalf of the US goverment. The man tells Mason that he's been requested for an academic lecture at the American University of Beirut. Mason knows something's up because he's not a dumbass, but he's given $6,500 and a first class ticket. When Mason travels to Beirut, he's picked up and dropped off at his hotel, and eventually at the hotel bar, Mason is approached by a woman, Sandy Crowder (Rosamund Pike). It turns out that Sandy is a CIA field officer, and like it or not, Mason will have to come with her to a party at the embassy. At the embassy, Skiles is brought into a room with many govenrment officials, including another higher ranking field officer, Donald Gaines (Dean Norris); a Colonel sitting on the National Security Council, Gary Ruzak (Shea Whigham); and the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Frank Whalen (Larry Pine). They have news Mason probably does not want to hear. His friend Cal was abducted in country and the kidnappers requested Skiles as the negotiator. The kidnapper will not surprise you, and they know what they want. Karim demands his brother Rafid be returned to him, no matter what. If not, he will do something to Cal, and with the groups already circling around Beirut, this is not good. Cal is now a station and has a whole lot of information that is very valuable to the right buyer.

I probably revealed too much, but I don't know if anyone watches these films based on my recommendations anyway. As I already said, the situation is too complicated to lay out, but when the film moved forward ten years, the Lebanese Civil War had broken out. Beirut is a city that still has a lot of problems to this day, but not like it used to have. Anyway, I don't want to get into that because it's too difficult to explain and I admittedly can't keep track of every detail. In fact, I've always wanted to go somewhere like Beirut even though I probably never will. Anyway, as it relates to this point, I thought Beirut did a decent enough job of having an exposition scene that explained some of what was going on the ground at the time. I expected, as with most of these sorts of films, that there was a possibility a director would be an idiot and just label every part of that city as a warzone of some kind. They did not. With that being the case, I already liked this film more than most in the genre, or rather those centered around the Middle East. There are some disturbing scenes here as well, and it's also a period film, all of which seemed to be done on a budget. The fact is that the two largest roles were cast perfectly, and that this movie was made for them both. Jon Hamm really needed something like this to finally shake my perception of him as only being able to play Don Draper.

The events themselves are quite tense, much more so than I thought they'd be considering that this wasn't a large release. I'm left a bit to wonder why it wasn't. Prisoner trading, and the logistics of such, particularly in a very divided city, is inherently interesting. That much is very clear now. The dialogue between the characters is very good, there's some interesting scenery, and I thought this was a neat story. Boy turned terrorist often is. More than that, it's the interesting dynamics of what everyone's hidden agendas really are, nothing is quite as clear as it seems. I did find some of the balancing acts to be strange though. I was surprised that the film wasn't more choosy in determining who the good and bad guys were, the only statement as to the bad was the generic off-shoot terror group. The film also boasts some very surprising scenes, one of them being a bomb that I wasn't expecting to go off at all. With all that considered, I don't want to make more of this than what it was. It was a good, solid spy movie, there as some genuine intrigue and two good performances. I had some issues with a storyline related to Dean Norris' character that felt horribly hacked into the movie, but besides that, I liked this.

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Black Panther
10. If Beale Street Could Talk
11. The Sisters Brothers
12. A Private War
13. Avengers: Infinity War
14. Stan & Ollie
15. Green Book
16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
17. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
18. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
19. On My Skin
20. Private Life
21. Climax
22. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
23. Mid90s
24. Eighth Grade
25. Sorry to Bother You
26. Vice
27. The Old Man & the Gun
28. Suspiria
29. Vox Lux
30. Boy Erased
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Bumblebee
37. Mary Poppins Returns
38. Creed II
39. Hold the Dark
40. The Land of Steady Habits
41. Halloween
42. Ant-Man and the Wasp
43. Beirut
44. Mary Queen of Scots
45. Aquaman
46. Outlaw King
47. Overlord
48. Ben Is Back
49. Monsters and Men
50. The Mule
51. On the Basis of Sex
52. Bohemian Rhapsody
53. White Boy Rick
54. Papillon
55. Game Night
56. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
57. Instant Family
58. Alpha
59. The Front Runner
60. The Predator
61. Apostle
62. The Angel
63. The Commuter
64. Beautiful Boy
65. The Nun
66. Operation Finale
67. The Equalizer 2
68. The Spy Who Dumped Me
69. Bird Box
70. 12 Strong
71. Venom
72. Skyscraper
73. The Meg
74. Assassination Nation
75. The Girl in the Spider's Web
76. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
77. 22 July
78. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
79. The Little Stranger
80. Tomb Raider
81. Night School
82. The 15:17 To Paris
83. Peppermint
84. Mile 22
85. The First Purge
86. Hunter Killer
87. Kin
88. Hell Fest
89. Proud Mary
90. Robin Hood
91. The Happytime Murders
92. Slender Man

 

[909]

The Shape of Water (2017), directed by Guillermo del Toro

Did I ever think I would sitting here writing a review about a movie that featured a woman fucking a fish man? The answer is obviously not, but The Shape of Water is so much more than that. How is it? This is a film you may need to watch in order to understand that, but if you don't want to watch this, I have some explaining to do. This is a film that goes so far beyond what I would expect someone to make of this kind of movie, with touches from del Toro that are nearly entirely unexpected. I do not know how it is that I never had the film's ending spoiled for me. I'm very glad that it wasn't. From score to setting, to plot, to costumes, this really is what people said it was. Something I don't understand though, is how Michael Shannon received no recognition for this performance? That doesn't make any sense. In any case, I'm thinking about more than that after watching this, I'm stunned by the production itself. I cannot understand how this was accomplished, how they managed to make the fish man look decent, all of those things. Is this what happens when someone makes the movie they really want to without anything getting in their way? There's an easy answer to that question, but the film itself leaves so many other things in question. You know what else? The way in which del Toro blended so many aspects of 1960s society cohesively into the film without it feeling goofy or preachy, that's yet another of this film's many accomplishments.

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman living in Baltimore, she lives in apartment that rests above a cinema. Elisa is also mute, incapable of making sound, and has one neighbor, a closeted man named Gerald Giles (Richard Jenkins). There are hints that Giles was fired from his advertising job over matters related to his sexuality, he needs that second chance and has been continuing to draw ads for what seems to be a side project. Giles also serves as an interpreter for Elisa, who uses American Sign Language to communicate. Elisa herself works at a secret government laboratory, and with this being during the Cold War, before a man went into space I should add, secret laboratory means VERY secret. Given this situation, I should also point out what Elisa's job is, she works as a janitor. Zelda (Octavia Spencer) is her only friend at this job, and she also interprets for Elisa. Things are easier for Elisa than they are for many people, but her lack of voice comes from some scratch marks that are on her neck. They've been there since she was young. One day, the facility garners a new asset, captured from the Amazon by a Colonel, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). Strickland is in charge of handling the asset, the only person he reports to being a five star general. The asset itself is to be studied to see what advantages the Americans may gain over the Soviets in the Space Race.

Did you already figure out what the asset is? This is the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), who is amphibious as you may guess. Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) is supposed to study the creature and figure out what it may do for the country, but there's a catch, the doctor is really named Dimitri and he is not an American. Elisa is tasked with regularly cleaning the lab, one notable incident coming after Strickland has some of his fingers chewed off. In the meantime, we learn some things about Strickland's family, their place in the world, and about Giles. Giles fails to connect with anyone both in a professional and business manner, this leads to he and Elisa becoming much closer. Elisa herself becomes close with the Amphibian Man over time. We learn that he can communicate with her, that he isn't some savage creature, and who knows? He just may be a god-like being. Unfortunately, Strickland hates this creature and is intent on having it vivisected, but Dimitri disagrees with this. Dimitri reports back to his Soviet bosses and they don't tell him anything good, that he must delay the procedure by a week or kill the Amphibian Man himself. Meanwhile, Elisa did overhear the order from Strickland. Surely, she will do something, even though she's just a cleaning girl. Right?

The way these stories change from discovery science-fiction, to heist movie, to romance, to musical, to fantasy; and not necessarily in that order, it all speaks for itself. There's so much going on here and it's no surprise The Shape of Water is such a beloved film. I never would have expected this from a film with the content it has. If you describe any one part of this film to someone, it might sound like it's trash, but it isn't. There are moments here that surprised me quite a bit, even though I was expecting fish dick that never came. I'm now confused as to how that became a meme in the first place. Of course, there's stuff here that isn't for everyone, this is certainly a fairy tale of sorts, but I think that way of phrasing matters doesn't do the film justice. Guillermo del Toro also has a lot of projects that he's been sitting on, ones which he hasn't made or been able to get anyone to finance, and I'm wondering if more of them are as good as this. That's a question we need to see the answer to at some point. The performances themselves are excellent, with Hawkins and Shannon as the major standouts. Shannon is naturally drawn to these roles, but this is even better than what he did in Boardwalk Empire. Learning sign language on Hawkins' part, that's HARD. Major credit for doing that.

From a technical perspective, the film is a delight, with some surprising uses of color. Now I'm really confused about how this cinematographer went on to film Proud Mary. That makes no fucking sense at all. The lighting and all that just does not look real, and there are copious close-ups on the very evil Michael Shannon, which is what a film should have when the story is this naturally intense. I know I have complained about bad close-ups before, but the difference is that some of them are poor framing when we really need to see more than someone's exasperated, sweaty face. As far as the score goes, I think I'm going to be the guy who says that I don't like Alexandre Desplat's scores as a whole. However, this one has some neat touches and feels like a 1950s score for a movie set at sea. That was obviously the point. So, that's another bonus. I can't explain what makes a good score but I know what sounds good to me and what doesn't. The set design here is also completely ridiculous, nothing being topped by the room in which the Amphibian Man is housed for half the film. You just don't get much better than that. The costume of the creature, that could have been much worse. That's very difficult to get right, considering the costume here actually has to walk and stuff. I'm also drawn back to something del Toro said about shooting this in black and white, that would have been a mistake and his film wouldn't really be what it is if that had been done.

Now, obviously, the juxtaposition of disenfranchised groups going up against a crazy government backed white guy, that's not lost on me at all. It is, however, I think not what I find to be the best aspects of the film. As you guys may know, I am heavily drawn to technical achievements. First Man, Roma, Dunkirk have all been excellent in this way over the last few years, and now that I've seen the movie, I can add The Shape of Water to that list. I'm really big on this stuff. In years where there's no obvious films with technical mastery, it is very strange for there to then be years with multiple films that boast that. I did largely finish 2016 and am left with the mindset that it was a film lacking those huge technical achievements, with the exception of some scenes in Arrival. Then, the last two years we have quite a lot. I'm big on that, I love that shit. The love story itself though, that's the real winner here. Once again we have a victory for originality, I'm unable to compare this to something else when I take the conclusion of the film into account as well. Overall, I'm glad I shoved this into my list and watched it instead of waiting a few more months, that would have been stupid. Go get you something as good as that fish dick was for Elisa, we all deserve it.

9.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5. Logan
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Big Sick
8. Thor: Ragnarok
9. Logan Lucky
10. The Beguiled
11. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
13. The Lost City of Z
14. First They Killed My Father
15. Darkest Hour
16. Spider-Man: Homecoming
17. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
18. It
19. Battle of the Sexes
20. Okja
21. Kong: Skull Island
22. It Comes at Night
23. Split
24. 1922
25. Personal Shopper
26. Chuck
27. Atomic Blonde
28. Wheelman
29. The Lego Batman Movie
30. Megan Leavey
31. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
32. Menashe
33. American Made
34. Beauty and the Beast
35. Imperial Dreams
36. Murder on the Orient Express
37. The Zookeeper's Wife
38. Free Fire
39. Win It All
40. The Wall
41. Life
42. Breathe
43. The Man Who Invented Christmas
44. Sleight
45. Alone in Berlin
46. A United Kingdom
47. Trespass Against Us
48. The Mountain Between Us
49. War Machine
50. Happy Death Day
51. Justice League
52. To the Bone
53. Wakefield
54. The Hitman's Bodyguard
55. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
56. Sand Castle
57. CHiPs
58. Death Note
59. The Belko Experiment
60. The Great Wall
61. Fist Fight
62. Snatched
63. Wilson
64. Queen of the Desert
65. Sleepless

 

[909]

By the way I have a lot of trash next month to make up for watching all this good stuff.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

By the way I have a lot of trash next month to make up for watching all this good stuff.

I eagerly anticipate the trash heap you'll be spelunking!

 

[AA484]

I never even noticed the "disenfranchised group of minorities vs. evil white man" until people brought it up after. I guess I'm normal (or dense)?

 

[909]

Gloria Bell (2019), directed by Sebastian Leilo

Did anyone think I was going to swerve what so obviously felt like a movie for women? Fuck no, I'm built for this shit. After going to see Gloria Bell today, I am left to wonder how many directors have made remakes of their own films. There admittedly aren't too many of those coming to mind at this point, and in looking at the Wikipedia page for Gloria, this looks like a nearly exact remake. I saw that this was called a reimagining, but I don't think so. The question here is whether or not a direct English-language remake has artistic merit? Obviously, there's commercial merit because a lot of people in this country will not watch foreign movies as they don't like to read subtitles. Artistically, I actually do think there's merit in this. You know why? This story is one of the better personal films in recent memory with a female lead. I have read that this was more than a remake as basically every scene was exactly the same, but I don't see much problem with that either. My only problem with Gloria Bell is the way the film ends. Regardless of said ending being a tad bit flat, I think it's clear from my earlier comments that I really enjoyed the film. Now, that all being said, I wonder how I'd feel if I watched the original. In any case, I did not expect that Julianne Moore would still be doing nude scenes at her age, but looking like she does, then I understood why. Just giving people a reason to watch this if they don't already have one.

Gloria Bell (Julianne Moore) is a divorcee, living her life on her own, no matter what may come of it. Gloria's children are all grown up, and this film starts with Gloria going to dance clubs inhabited by other people her age, or in some cases rather older. If you want to see Julianne Moore singing in the car, this is your film. Gloria lives in Los Angeles, so it's fair to say there are a lot of single people her age in the area. She works as an insurance adjuster downtown, her kids Anne (Caren Pistorius) and Peter (Michael Cera) have their own thing going on. Anne is dating a surfer from Sweden, Peter is taking care of his son while his wife/girlfriend is off in the desert trying to find herself, or whatever idiots do. There are some funny comments made about this situation as time goes on, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, I realized some things about my own self while watching this, as when Gloria was talking to Peter, I realized how disappointing it is when your grown kid is not entirely paying attention to you and is more focused on their phone. Gloria is also occupied by some situations at home even though she lives alone, with her neighbor in the midst of a major mental breakdown and screaming loud enough for Gloria to hear everything, as well as a hairless cat constantly finding ways to get inside her house. Eventually she keeps the cat, which is what I would do too.

After some scenes where we continue to set up more of Gloria's life, and that she has a mother (Holland Taylor) who is now a widow, we get to move forward with the story. Enter Arnold (John Turturro). Gloria meets Arnold at a dance club, they hit it off almost instantly. When they go back to Gloria's house, some funny stuff happens that you'll have to watch the film to see, and I won't spoil it either. In the days following Gloria's night with Arnold, they contact each other again and go on a date. At the date, we learn that Arnold has been divorced for one year and Gloria for twelve, and that Arnold has two daughters who are heavily dependent on him. They are 27 and 31, but that doesn't matter, and Arnold excuses this as just how they are. When they call, he will answer and do what they tell him. That's just how it is. Gloria, by contrast, is very independent and will not do that. Things still go well, at least that is, until it's time for Arnold to tell his family about Gloria. He will not. That's obviously fishy, and Gloria realizes that too, this is no dummy situation we have here. Eventually, Gloria decides to take Arnold to her son's birthday party. At the birthday party, there's her ex-husband Dustin (Brad Garrett), who Gloria hasn't seen in four years now. Dustin is remarried to Fiona (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and Anne is there too. This situation is where things don't go so well, and I'll leave it at that. Let's just say this was one of the most awkward sequences I've seen in a while.

That sequence being as awkward as it was, I thought that really made the film. There's no amount of words I can use to describe the level of cringe I had here. I thought that overall, this movie was really sweet and that I found myself sympathizing with the lead character more than I thought possible when I went to see this. Julianne Moore, I don't even know what to say at this point. I know she's been in things that aren't good, but I have either not watched them, or I have and they've been deleted from my mind. She is one of the very best screen performers from this or any other country, that's for sure. Her ability to make this character to easy to understand, to feel like a real person, that's something a lot of actors just can't do. As a result, when good things happen it feels good to the audience, and when bad things happen you really feel those too. What I was thinking was that other than the copious amount of nude scenes, this would be a nice movie to watch with my mom. Copious is also not an overexaggeration. I thought the lack of melodrama was also fresh, the characters all stayed true to themselves, and that we didn't get any bizarre inclusions into the story that other films often have when attempting to tell a tale like this one. That's what separates the wheat from the chaff. I nearly messed up and didn't say anything about John Turturro's performance, which I also thought was quite strong.

I think one of the aspects that appears to be prevalent in the remake is that the director decided to cut out characters he thought were unnecessary. I do think there's an inherent issue with remaking a story that's already been told, but if you haven't seen Gloria, this remains an original story. The ending, I will say, is not exactly what I would have wanted and I found it to be a bit weird. It shows that life continues on, that's what I thought of it anyway. In any case, I think this is a uniquely strong film. Often, these kinds of films spend too much attention on the family members of the woman, but there aren't even that many of these movies anyway. Instead, things are changed to where Gloria is literally the entire focus of the film, every scene has Gloria in it, and there's absolutely no exception to that. I really, really liked this and I'm going to give it a high rating. The use of color and the score are also exceptional, and for that matter so is the choice in music from the past. One thing I found a little weird is that I'm getting to a point where I enjoy stories like this more than seeing some guy with a gun go crazy on some terrorists. Perhaps that's just part of growing up. If you watch this and don't like it, I don't know what to say about your taste. Fuck you guys, I guess.

8.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Gloria Bell
3. Arctic
4. High Flying Bird
5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
6. Captain Marvel
7. Paddleton
8. Cold Pursuit
9. Happy Death Day 2U
10. Greta
11. Triple Frontier
12. Fighting with My Family
13. The Dirt
14. Velvet Buzzsaw
15. Alita: Battle Angel
16. The Kid
17. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
18. The Upside
19. Captive State
20. Escape Room
21. What Men Want
22. Miss Bala
23. Glass
24. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
25. The Prodigy
26. Polar
27. Serenity

 

[909]

Told you guys about balance...

All Eyez on Me (2017), directed by Benny Boom

The picture posted above brings a very obvious question. Is a film good enough just because the actor is someone who looks exactly like the subject? The answer, obviously, is that it isn't. All Eyez on Me is one of the worst films I've watched in a while, bad enough that I didn't even want to write this. There are some easy explanations why the film is that bad though, this probably won't be a long review even though this film rings in at 135 minutes before the credits. So, obviously, this is very long. Obviously, I am telling everyone here they should not waste their time. Anything you may have hoped to be in a Tupac biopic is not here, and what there is, is filmed in a way that isn't very interesting at all. I'm left with the strongest feelings of frustration when it comes to All Eyez on Me, so much of what's here also feels like fiction due to how lazily the film was made. I think this feels like someone thinking they could make a film like Straight Outta Compton, but they had no talent with which they could do so. Of course, due to that lack of ingenuity, I was left super bored, and matters only got worse as the film went on. Did you ever think that a movie would film the death of Tupac, end a film there, and have no real insights about it at all. That's what we get.

Starting off with a sequence of scenes that takes us to four different places in Tupac's (Demetrius Shipp) life. We open with Tupac in prison after being convicted of illegal touching, and Tupac is being interviewed. Subsequently, parts of this story are told through flashback. First up, we see Tupac's very young childhood, with his mother Afeni (Danai Gurira) being acquitted of a supposed attempt to carry out bombings in New York. After that, we move forward again, with his step-father Mutulu (Jamie Hector) attempting to avoid capture by the FBI on murder charges. In this case, it would seem that Mutulu actually committed the crimes he was accused of. Eventually, Tupac sees a failed FBI raid on his house, and he also moves to Baltimore, where he meets Jada Pinkett (Kat Graham). This narrative is super fragmented, but after this scene, Afeni then sends Tupac to Oakland. I can't tell you what's going on here because I swear she said she wasn't coming, but in the next scene, she's buying crack from a dealer in Oakland. I cannot easily piece together this narrative at all. We go from scenes where Tupac has joined Digital Underground, to leaving the group just as fast. None of this, and I really mean none of it, makes any sense at all. People like Leila Steinberg (Lauren Cohan) go straight in and straight out of the film. It's a joke. Eventually, Tupac does settle on a constant manager, Atron Gregory (Keith Robinson).

I don't know how to properly address the second part of this usual wrap-up. We're shown pieces of Tupac acting in movies like Juice, performing with Biggie (Jamal Woolard), and how he wound up in jail again. We're shown him signing with Death Row, with a good performance from the actor playing Suge Knight (Dominic L. Santana). We also see some collaborations with Snopp Dogg (Jarrett Ellis), some scenes with Kidada Jones (Annie Ilonzeh), and eventually we circle back to Jada Pinkett. What I can tell you is that this film is really shitty.

I just, I don't know man, I can't actually review this. I've never been more disappointed in a movie about a subject I felt like there needed to be a movie about. The film is so badly directed, other than Demetrius Shipp making an electric Tupac, none of this shit really feels real. I don't know how this film cost so much to make or even how it got released. There's a massive audience for a movie like this, or at least there was. That shit is dead and buried now. There's no focus here at all, and no montages at all. It turns out that because of that, the film is very long. This movie doesn't even get a clip of Tupac filming the 'California Love' video? Fuck this movie bro. I don't want to waste more of my time talking about it, and you DEFINITELY shouldn't waste any of your time watching it. This was horrendous. You know why it's going last on my list? Fucking up an original story is one thing, but to fuck up the story of someone with a massive legacy, that's very hard to do. There was no story at all.

2.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5. Logan
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Big Sick
8. Thor: Ragnarok
9. Logan Lucky
10. The Beguiled
11. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
13. The Lost City of Z
14. First They Killed My Father
15. Darkest Hour
16. Spider-Man: Homecoming
17. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
18. It
19. Battle of the Sexes
20. Okja
21. Kong: Skull Island
22. It Comes at Night
23. Split
24. 1922
25. Personal Shopper
26. Chuck
27. Atomic Blonde
28. Wheelman
29. The Lego Batman Movie
30. Megan Leavey
31. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
32. Menashe
33. American Made
34. Beauty and the Beast
35. Imperial Dreams
36. Murder on the Orient Express
37. The Zookeeper's Wife
38. Free Fire
39. Win It All
40. The Wall
41. Life
42. Breathe
43. The Man Who Invented Christmas
44. Sleight
45. Alone in Berlin
46. A United Kingdom
47. Trespass Against Us
48. The Mountain Between Us
49. War Machine
50. Happy Death Day
51. Justice League
52. To the Bone
53. Wakefield
54. The Hitman's Bodyguard
55. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
56. Sand Castle
57. CHiPs
58. Death Note
59. The Belko Experiment
60. The Great Wall
61. Fist Fight
62. Snatched
63. Wilson
64. Queen of the Desert
65. Sleepless
66. All Eyez on Me

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

I find it funny they cast somebody to play Jada Pinkett when Jada Pinkett has barely aged in the last 30 years as it is.

 

[909]

I find it funny they cast somebody to play Jada Pinkett when Jada Pinkett has barely aged in the last 30 years as it is.

It was because they completely fabricated nearly everything with "Jada" in it. This movie made Bohemian Rhapsody feel like the Goodfellas of music biopics. If not for the Tupac performance I would have given it a 1.

 

[909]

Unsane (2018), directed by Steven Soderbergh

Once the credits were rolling for Unsane, I was thinking that there's really only one filmmaker who would have ever tried to make a movie like this and weave these things together. Of course, this is what Unsane really had to be after all. I did make the mistake of watching this after High Flying Bird, Unsane being when Soderbergh was actually testing out the process of filming with an iPhone. There are some major problems in comparison to this year's film, enough that I want to talk about them first. The picture quality is really bad, and when the camera is moving quickly, the problems are even more noticeable than in High Flying Bird. To say the picture quality is bad is an understatement, it's actively distracting. In the dark hallways of a mental hospital, it's actually quite rough to follow. With that being said, Unsane brings so much to the table. I really do mean so much. I will probably spoil over the course of this review, so be warned if you choose to read it. I know a lot of people won't see what I'm seeing here, because this film also does have problems beyond the filming quality, with Claire Foy's accent being chiefly among them. She slipped out of it a few times and I certainly noticed. I do think another criticism is that Unsane presents itself as a horror movie, but it isn't actually scary. Never mind that, that's never mattered to me before and it doesn't now. Everyone disagrees on some things.

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) has a very bad name, but the film isn't really about that, she is troubled. She has moved away from Boston to escape a stalker, but the triggering in her life is still pretty bad. When she goes on a Tinder date, she tells the guy that he'll be able to fuck her, but that he should never contact her again. They get back to her place and start kissing, but she freaks the fuck out and locks herself in the bathroom. The guy leaves like everyeone in that situation should do. Afterwards, she calls her mother Angela (Amy Irving) and we get some insights, and later on she goes to a facility called Highland Creek so she can talk about her problems. During the appointment with the counselor, she talks about her thoughts of suicide as a way of escaping being stalked. The stalker? A man named David, this thing haunts Sawyer as much as something possibly could. While at the appointment, she signs some papers without reading all of them, she thought she was going to get extra counseling. Wrong. Instead of getting extra counseling, she has signed herself up for a 24 hour hold, this was a massive mistake. When she tries to call the police, she's dismissed because officers frequently get these calls and nobody believes them. So, basically, she's stuck.

At night, Sawyer is brought to a room with Nate (Jay Pharoah), Violet (Juno Temple), and Jacob (Raul Castillo). Jacob is kind of a creepy guy, and Violet is straight out crazy. Violet threatens to cut Sawyer's hair off with a shiv, which leads to Sawyer trying to leave. When Jacob approaches her, she knees him in the nuts. Then, when the door opens, Sawyer sees an orderly who triggers her. She slaps the fuck out of him, then is restrained and sedated. After this incident, Sawyer sees the doctor, who tells her that now she has to stay there all week and take medication. Sawyer subsequently learns that Nate has hidden a cell phone somehow, and that he speaks to an unknown person on the other end. The thing is, Nate seems to believe Sawyer and decides to let her use his phone. When she does, she calls her mom, who travels down from Boston to confront the administrator. Here's the thing. Nate is convinced that the entire mental facility is an insurance scam where they run game on convincing insurance companies that the person is not well. The facility then collects for a week and drops them. Nate is absolutely convinced of this shit, he's not going to let it go. Here's the other thing. Sawyer's stalker? She's convinced that he's at the hospital. The orderly's name is George Shaw (Joshua Leonard), the stalker's name is David. Stalker-ish things are shown to the audience as coming from George, but are they really happening?

The twists and turns of this story really work for me, and I say that only Soderbergh would have made this because the events are infused with corporate malfeasance. He loves that shit, so do I, and that's part of why I liked this so much. What's crazy is that all scams like this are now ignored because people largely don't want to know about them, but they do happen. I also really liked the presentation of the film as being a MeToo story. I haven't seen all that many of those in the time since the movement started, or at least nothing I'd classify as really being one. Unsane presents the argument that maybe people should believe women when they're telling their stories, because very often they're true. No shit, right? Other than Foy's occasional accent problem, this film is very well cast. Everyone slides seamlessly into their role, and incel in Unsane is the very picture of an incel. It's uncanny. There's also a great cameo and you can probably figure out who it is. The games this film plays with perspective kept me wondering what was actually real for longer than I really should have. Of course, when a movie goes down this route, there are also going to be issues with pacing once those revelations come to light. So, I reiterate, I like this despite it being a flawed film.

The flaws are easy to ignore because I enjoyed the story so much, and despite all those flaws I was left reacting to practically everything. I won't say this is a masterpiece or anything, but even though there are failings in the filming technology, there are also successes in the direction. The hallways are very well lit, and the quality of the picture makes things look like something from an era gone by. Unsane is also nicely edited, and I found myself thinking that some of the presentations of the mental hospital were like the stories I've been told by someone I know. I should ask them if they've seen the movie, but I don't want to make anyone mad. The beginning of the film also works for me as we dive straight into the events without very much buildup, and it turned out this was a story that didn't need build. I also appreciated the ending. For our lead character to have gone through all that and have remained entirely untreated, certainly to never seek treatment once again, now that's a good story. Of course, man, if you aren't ready for ridiculous, you are turning on the wrong movie. This also isn't a horror movie as the marketing suggests, so in that way it fails, but it succeeds in most every other. I'm glad Soderbergh didn't retire and I'm glad that he's going to continue to do weird shit like this as long as he can get financing. Netflix, you know what to do.

7.5/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Black Panther
10. If Beale Street Could Talk
11. The Sisters Brothers
12. A Private War
13. Avengers: Infinity War
14. Stan & Ollie
15. Green Book
16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
17. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
18. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
19. On My Skin
20. Private Life
21. Climax
22. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
23. Mid90s
24. Eighth Grade
25. Sorry to Bother You
26. Vice
27. The Old Man & the Gun
28. Suspiria
29. Vox Lux
30. Boy Erased
31. Bad Times at the El Royale
32. The Other Side of the Wind
33. Searching
34. A Simple Favor
35. The Hate U Give
36. Unsane
37. Bumblebee
38. Mary Poppins Returns
39. Creed II
40. Hold the Dark
41. The Land of Steady Habits
42. Halloween
43. Ant-Man and the Wasp
44. Beirut
45. Mary Queen of Scots
46. Aquaman
47. Outlaw King
48. Overlord
49. Ben Is Back
50. Monsters and Men
51. The Mule
52. On the Basis of Sex
53. Bohemian Rhapsody
54. White Boy Rick
55. Papillon
56. Game Night
57. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
58. Instant Family
59. Alpha
60. The Front Runner
61. The Predator
62. Apostle
63. The Angel
64. The Commuter
65. Beautiful Boy
66. The Nun
67. Operation Finale
68. The Equalizer 2
69. The Spy Who Dumped Me
70. Bird Box
71. 12 Strong
72. Venom
73. Skyscraper
74. The Meg
75. Assassination Nation
76. The Girl in the Spider's Web
77. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
78. 22 July
79. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
80. The Little Stranger
81. Tomb Raider
82. Night School
83. The 15:17 To Paris
84. Peppermint
85. Mile 22
86. The First Purge
87. Hunter Killer
88. Kin
89. Hell Fest
90. Proud Mary
91. Robin Hood
92. The Happytime Murders
93. Slender Man

 

[909]

A Ghost Story (2017), directed by David Lowery

The first few scenes after I'd turned on A Ghost Story, I was thinking that anyone else who did so better have has some patience. I was also thinking towards the end of the film that Terrence Malick would probably have appreciated this very much. It's going to prove very difficult for me to describe A Ghost Story because it is what it is, it's completely opposite from everything else that gets made. I have heard from some people that they hated this, that is their prerogative although I do not understand. I did understand the point of the film, and I did find it to be an effective presentation in making one thing about love, loss, and time. That isn't to say I think this is a great film because I'm not going to go that far. I will admit that I found the film to be a little too slow, but regardless of that, there's enough here that I'm going to be thinking about the film for a while. That scene full of gas station philosophy, that's exactly what the events needed, and that may be what sticks with me more than anything else. There are bonus points to be had for the film remaining small in scope, that's for sure.

A Ghost Story is a film with an easy explanation. A musician (Casey Affleck) lives in a crappy house with his wife (Rooney Mara) in Dallas. She wants to move because the house sucks and he does not. One night, there's a sound on the piano they cannot find the origin of, it is what it is. Shortly after, the husband is killed in a car accident outside. At the hospital, the wife sees the body. The man subsequently awakens as a ghost covered in the sheet, and wanders back to the house. The ghost is tied to the house. He sees things he does not want to see, he has no choice. Time passes on slowly, only becoming recognizable to the ghost when there is activity. That's all I want to say about the progression of the story.

The sadness once the husband dies, I tried to find some humor in it but I also found the key scenes to be quite profound. I had visions of seeing people run out of the theater instead of watch the film to its conclusion. The cinematography and the score are both fantastic, there aren't enough words for the quality of the score. I decided to turn on the Knight of Cups score, which was similarly excellent, and I just how realized exactly how similar these two films are. One is better than the other because it makes far more sense, but I think everyone who has seen both films can point out those little intricacies. Again, I have said before that I do not have the ability to recognize music to an extent where I could tell you why the scores are similar, I simply know that they are. As far as production goes, I am also very impressed by the way Casey Affleck was able to move around in that sheet while using hints like posture to give some kind of insight as to what the ghost's emotions were. I thought this was a little disturbing actually. The idea of being trapped in a space for the duration of time until a point at which you can depart that space, that sounds awful. When the YouTube life advice doofus starts talking about our mortality, this scene works as subtle exposition. It's a great scene.

The tiny budget does become apparent when staging set pieces, like Casey Affleck's death, but I don't think this is much of a big deal at all. The film is well cast, even when things move...beyond...buut I don't think A Ghost Story is really about something like that. It's about life and death, about things that people remember and don't, about the importance of moments in one's life that someone won't forget. That's what we're shown by the ghost, that's what I took away from the events. I do also think that the film becomes more interesting once we move forward to different scenarios. The scene where Rooney Mara eats pie makes for difficult viewing. Overall, I don't know if there's much more I can say about this other than that the film made me think. A Ghost Story could have been totally ridiculous and stupid, but I didn't think that it was, and that the film was quite engaging once the early scenes were over with. But, make no mistake, this is a very odd film and some patience is required should someone decide to watch it. If you don't have it, don't bother. There are people who liked this much more than me too!

I nearly posted this before addressing something I had to, but I should point out that when I realized the ghost had supernatural powers, that took me out of the film a little bit. When I think about all the scenes that followed this, particularly the one where the ghost is floating through grass or the construction shown in the image above, that supernatural stuff really feels out of place. The piano scene is acceptable but the rest is not, from my point of view.

7.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5. Logan
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Big Sick
8. Thor: Ragnarok
9. Logan Lucky
10. The Beguiled
11. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
13. The Lost City of Z
14. First They Killed My Father
15. Darkest Hour
16. A Ghost Story
17. Spider-Man: Homecoming
18. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
19. It
20. Battle of the Sexes
21. Okja
22. Kong: Skull Island
23. It Comes at Night
24. Split
25. 1922
26. Personal Shopper
27. Chuck
28. Atomic Blonde
29. Wheelman
30. The Lego Batman Movie
31. Megan Leavey
32. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
33. Menashe
34. American Made
35. Beauty and the Beast
36. Imperial Dreams
37. Murder on the Orient Express
38. The Zookeeper's Wife
39. Free Fire
40. Win It All
41. The Wall
42. Life
43. Breathe
44. The Man Who Invented Christmas
45. Sleight
46. Alone in Berlin
47. A United Kingdom
48. Trespass Against Us
49. The Mountain Between Us
50. War Machine
51. Happy Death Day
52. Justice League
53. To the Bone
54. Wakefield
55. The Hitman's Bodyguard
56. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
57. Sand Castle
58. CHiPs
59. Death Note
60. The Belko Experiment
61. The Great Wall
62. Fist Fight
63. Snatched
64. Wilson
65. Queen of the Desert
66. Sleepless
67. All Eyez on Me

 

[909]

Dumbo (2019), directed by Tim Burton

Here's the thing about this year's Dumbo movie. I absolutely hate Tim Burton. His style has always bothered me, and truthfully I can't even say which of his films was the last one I liked. I don't even know. With that in mind, I went into Dumbo with guarded thoughts, even though I was looking forward to seeing how some of these actors would be used I also thought Dumbo would be a gauge of how receptive people will eventually be to all these live-action Disney remakes. I was surprised this was made so quickly as part of that project, to be honest. I thought Dumbo was one of the absolute hardest films they could have adapted, and I think after watching this that my feelings are somewhat vindicated. Again, I do not like Tim Burton, but he's not the largest problem with Dumbo. I do think that Dumbo will make some money, but in the end it may actually not be that much. There's a reason for this. The screenplay is not very good, and this doesn't stay true to what Dumbo is actually supposed to be. Instead, it's imagined as being something else, which has strengths as well as weaknesses, but I don't really like this. It turns out that I do want the Disney remakes to stay extremely true to what they are, and that when you throw the talking mouse out of the picture, this was never going to be as unique as the original. I'm not saying I want talking Jim Crows, but you know, I wanted something more.

It's after World War I, and we are presented with the picture of a traveling circus which is currently in Sarasota. The Medici Brothers Circus is run by Max Medici (Danny DeVito), who apparently does not have a brother. Returning home from the war is a veteran and equestrian performer, Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell). While Holt was gone, he lost his arm in the war, and in addition to that his wife has died. His children Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins) have been guarded over by the circus in Holt's absence, something which he is appreciative of. Milly is a girl who is interested in science and Joe is a nice kid, these kids are the most cookie-cutter characters in the history of Disney movies. It felt like they were literally only there because Disney mandated there be children in the movie who helped Dumbo. Speaking of Dumbo, let's address the rest of the circus. They have a snake charmer, Pramesh (Roshan Seth); a strong guy, Rongo the Strongo (DeObia Oparei); a "mermaid", Miss Atlantis (Sharon Rooney); and a few other assorted people you'd expect to see on a circus. More than anything else though, there's Medici and his monkey. In the midst of financial difficulties, Medici has been forced to sell Holt's act, the circus horses. Holt is subsequently reassigned as a caretaker for elephants, which he really doesn't like.

There are a few elephants in the Medici Circus, but most important among them is the pregnant elephant, Jumbo. I'm gonna skip over a ton of stuff to avoid spoiling the movie. As you may know, Jumbo gives birth to an elephant with huge ears. Medici is afraid of this because he thinks nobody will want to see the new act, so he demands that the ears are covered. They do not stay covered, which leads to the elephant being given the name of Dumbo, and an accident. This accident is pretty bad, so Jumbo and Dumbo are separated. When the kids are comforting Dumbo, they learn that Dumbo's ears are so big he can fly as a result of flapping them. Dumbo is able to do so because feathers trigger this ability in Dumbo, and this leads to Dumbo actually flying during a show. I'm leaving out so much of the story here for the purposes of not spoiling the film, but I will spoil this part because these people are in the trailer. After word spreads, Medici is approached by the owner of an amusement park in New York City, it is called Dreamland. The owner is V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), he presents himself as the king of the circus business. Colette (Eva Green) is a French trapeze artist, and Vandevere has a plan. He wants to partner up with Medici and create a show where Dumbo can fly with Colette on his back, an insane idea if I've ever heard of one.

Spoilers below.

One of the many differences between this Dumbo story and the other one, beyond the talking animals, is that this is a Disney film that oddly rails against the idea of there being a Disney in the first place. I don't know if that's what Tim Burton intended as he's made tons of money from Disney in the past, but that's what I saw here. I do think Burton is a hack, and a lot of this film works to support that opinion. To take this story and be unable to play with my emotions in the least is really bizarre. My brother was telling me that he didn't want to see this because the cartoon was something he found sad, well, this isn't sad at all. I felt nothing when the film was over. The only emotions I felt were in the first half of the film when Frank Reynolds was dominating the proceedings of a circus. This? Give me all of this. I was smiling the entire time this was happening and I think most people here would be too. The problem is that Vandevere is a representation of Disney and also of Donald Trump, which feels really weird while watching this? There's a scene where he doesn't get his way, doesn't understand the consequences of what happens when he doesn't listen, and goes full Trump. This was all I could think of as the film was closing. I also don't know who had the bright idea for Disney to make a film where a tiny circus is absorbed a conglomerate, the conglomerate subsequently lays off all the absorbed workers and keeps the animal captive that they deem to have the most value? This is extremely weird, but I did like this even though I'm not sure that was supposed to be the intention. The final shots of the film indicate that it wasn't. So, Tim Burton is simply a stupid hack.

With all that in mind, and what I'm telling you about this film being unable to garner real emotional attachment, it shouldn't surprise anyone here that I think this is a really average film. There are some moments of inspiration even after DeVito's character takes a back seat, one of them being a very large parade, and the aforementioned final shots as well. I also thought this was a visual feast, which is pretty much the only thing Tim Burton really brings to the table at this point. It may not surprise you that this film has an Oscar winning production designer, Rick Heinrichs, and he probably deserves more of the credit than Burton for any of this. He has also worked on most of Burton's films in one capacity or another. I rarely think to give credit for down the line crew, but I think this guy did a great job. I think that overall, there's some attachment to Dumbo itself that is preventing me from giving the film a bad score. My mind is telling me that I should, but I don't think I can. I'm having some memories of my attachment to the character when I was young, and of DeVito's performance, and that's proving difficult to overcome. This isn't a good film, but I do think it's serviceable. Serviceable for $170 million, by the way, is a sick joke. I don't know how Burton keeps getting projects, but after this doesn't profit to the extent Disney would have liked, maybe that's the end. I hope so. He almost ruined this.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Gloria Bell
3. Arctic
4. High Flying Bird
5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
6. Captain Marvel
7. Paddleton
8. Cold Pursuit
9. Happy Death Day 2U
10. Greta
11. Triple Frontier
12. Fighting with My Family
13. The Dirt
14. Velvet Buzzsaw
15. Alita: Battle Angel
16. The Kid
17. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
18. The Upside
19. Dumbo
20. Captive State
21. Escape Room
22. What Men Want
23. Miss Bala
24. Glass
25. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
26. The Prodigy
27. Polar
28. Serenity

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Sleepy Hallow is his last good movie. Although I didn't see Corpse Bride which might have been good.

 

[Gary]

Sleepy Hallow is his last good movie. Although I didn't see Corpse Bride which might have been good.

"Corpse Bride" is fine, but I really dig his "Sweeney Todd" movie.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

I didn't watch that as Depp fatigue has fully set in. Especially Depp/Burton.

 

[The Thread Killer]

I know it's 25 years old now, but Ed Wood is one of my favorites. Actually, looking at his filmography...Sleepy Hollow might be the last really good film he made, and that was 20 years ago.

 

[One Epic Winter (OEW)]

Dark Shadows and Big Eyes were just fine. Peculiar Children was dogshit though and I've said this before but Alice in Wonderland is one of the worst big budget films of this decade.

Agreed that Ed Wood is his best film.

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

Are we forgetting Big Fish?

 

[One Epic Winter (OEW)]

I was referring to his work from the past decade but I liked Big Fish.

 

[909]

John Wick (2014), directed by David Leitch and Chad Stahelski

I've said what I wanted to say many times before, so I'll spare everyone. I am surprised that John Wick was even made considering that in the years after this film, most movies made with this size budget wind up bombing even when they're good. John Wick and Atomic Blonde are some exceptions, and no surprise that there are people talking about fusing these franchises together somehow. I don't know how that would work out, but after finally checking out John Wick, I really need to see it. I am a little bit surprised that people distilled the events down to John Wick's dog even though that's not what the movie is actually about, but people do what they do. I remember a lot of individuals talking about that at the time of the movie, but to me, that's not really what this is about. What John Wick is, is a triumph of choreography and stunts, of the goofy CGI blood, of fun more than anything else. When you turn a movie like this on, you feel like Batista, saying "GIVE ME WHAT I WANT," and these movies don't usually do that. John Wick is not one of those movies. There are some early issues with pacing, and maybe the story doesn't make the most sense in the world, but John Wick absolutely gives you what you want.

So, John Wick (Keanu Reeves). Some may not have the stomach for this, or think it's stupid, but I don't really care. John loses his wife to a terminal illness, after which he receives a puppy from his wife that will help him cope with her death. The puppy is named Daisy. John makes a connection with the puppy over the course of the day, because he's alone. He and his wife did not have kids. At a gas station, John has an incident with three Russian guys. Iosef (Alfie Allen) is their leader, and he's a piece of shit, but he also wants to buy John's car. John is not selling his car. The car? It's a 1969 Ford Mach 1. There is no way on this planet I would ever sell this car if I had it. Later that night, unfortunately, these guys have followed John back to his house. Once they get inside, they knock John out, kill Daisy, and steal his car. Obviously, I wouldn't react like John, but I would be pretty fucking mad. Iosef takes the car to a chop shop run by a man named Aurelio (John Leguizamo), and John is apparently familiar with people like Iosef. John knows exactly where Iosef would go, at which point we are told by Aurelio that he punched Iosef and kicked him out of his shop. Aurelio tells John who did it, and there's no coming back from here. Why?

John learns that Iosef is the son of Viggo (Michael Nyqvist), who just so happens to be the man in control of the Russian crime syndicate of New York City. There is so much more to this though. It turns out that John knows Viggo, there's a reason why. John had a previous life as a hitman, which he was able to leave by doing a job or Viggo that Viggo was certain would kill John. Viggo is told about John, and that leads to an incredible monologue which takes place mixed in with footage of John preparing for problems. Problems? A lot of them. Viggo also offers a contract on John to John's mentor, a hitman named Marcus (Willem Dafoe) who had spoken to John during his wife's funeral. Subsequently, John checks into the Continental Hotel, a place in New York City where criminals stay when they need shelter. Business is not allowed on the property, and they have rules that must be followed. The hotel manager (Louis Riddick) is kind of the creepy sort, and Winston (Ian McShane) is someone I'm sure will play a larger part in the following two films. Anyway, John's goal? He wants to kill Iosef for the pain and suffering he's caused. There's nothing that's going to get in his way, he'll stop at nothing.

Alright, so as it relates to the issues with pacing, I thought the start of this movie was a little difficult for one introducing a new action franchise. I don't often complain about things like this, but it was slow enough to be quite noticeable. Now, on the other hand, for that to be one of the film's only problems is a pretty good sign. I think another one is the way one of the final fights ends. Either way, this is a hell of a ride while it lasts and I enjoyed it the whole way. The gun fighting is realistic to the point where it might actually be too realistic, even though the blood, as I think I mentioned, is obviously not. The performances, you know, they are what they are. I'm not saying anyone was terrible, but I don't think anyone was really great with the exception of Nyqvist. His lines were delivered with aplomb, without exception. Even if those lines may have been bad, they weren't bad because he was delivering them. Keanu's performance, I wouldn't say that was great either, but it was understated. This was a neat touch considering there's only one other person I could see doing this role, that being Liam Neeson. If Neeson had done this role, this would feel like just everything else though. The casting here ensures that John Wick does not. That's probably the film's greatest triumph.

There are lots of action films similar to this one of course, but I said that John Wick feels unique. The reason it feels unique is because of the approach to each individual scene. there are lots of movies that try to create their own universe and fail entirely, one of the reasons this doesn't is because the attempt in doing so isn't so pervasive that it ruins the film. Instead, we have a movie where the greater workings of creating a franchise exist outside of the revenge story. This, of course, is something I like. I don't know how someone could watch this and get the idea that his lust for revenge is merely driven by the dog, but rather what the dog represents and that those people decided to fuck with him. I'm not going to go overboard here because I think this is a really good movie, but it has been reviewed to death and there's really nothing I think I can add. The casting decisions here were great, even when the roles were quite small themselves. The movie is cool, that's what it is. The copious amounts of killing and gun shit, it may surprise you but that doesn't bother me at all. What you hope for is that a movie gives you what you want, and this one does. That's all that matters to me. The scene in Viggo's club where Iosef is hiding, that's obviously the best one of many great action pieces. I don't think I need to tell you that. All the franchise ideas are great too, I'm looking forward to seeing more.

7.5/10

 

[909]

The Beach Bum (2019), directed by Harmony Korine

It should come as no surprise that The Beach Bum is a movie you'll either really love or really hate, considering who wrote and directed what turned out to be another hedonistic romp that reviewers either loved or hated. Neon seems to be a distributor that specializes in releasing such films, like Vox Lux and Assassination Nation for example, but nothing could really prepare you for The Beach Bum. The Beach Bum is a movie that features more sex than I think I've seen in a film for quite a while, and admittedly more laughs than I've had in around a year. That's not an exaggeration either. Given what I just said, you can see which side of love or hate that I fall on, but remember I am a guy who grew up on Cheech & Chong. A film like this one is something that feels like it's made for me, it's something I needed in life. The initial trailer felt hallucinogenic in that I have never envisoned something I never knew I wanted so much, and rest assured I have not been disappointed. The Beach Bum is a trip, one that when the novelty of it begins to wear off, the film is just about over as it should be. That, of course, is how a film should really be. Granted, I will not say this is a great film and there are reasons for that. I unabashedly loved it though.

The Beach Bum is Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), a poet living in the Florida Keys. This man is a local legend, a celebrity, an electric piece of what makes Key West into what it is. Moondog spends his days getting high, drunk, getting into poon, and doing all kinds of other weird shit, if you can figure out what other weird shit would even be. How could Moondog afford this lifestyle? His poetry is a legitimate thing, he has written books. His wife Minnie (Isla Fisher) is very rich, she doesn't care what he does as long as he's happy. So, that's that. I will point out from here that what plot there is, is also quite minimal and doesn't really matter. You can either choose to enjoy this film or not. Moondog might look like a bum, but he isn't actually a bum. The dead tooth is just decoration it seems, an irrelevance that has no impact on the quality of his life. His daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) is getting married, but in the meantime, we are introduced to some other people in Moondog's life. Moondog's agent Lewis (Jonah Hill) really needs Moondog to write his next book, and it appears that's a commonly held opinion by the people around Moondog. In order to write it, he carries around a shitty typewriter and gets to typing whenever he sees fit.

When it's time for Heather to get married, Moondog is banging some sleeze in the back of a burger joint, this is just how the guy is. Everyone eating finds this quite amusing. Afterwards, Moondog makes his trip to the wedding, which is hosted by Lingerie (Snoop Dogg), Moondog's friend and Minnie's lover. I'm gonna leave out a massive amount of details as always, but my favorite part in this sequence is a scene where Lingerie shows Moondog a Christmas tree made of marijuana that he found in an isolated pond in Jamaica. Anyway, let's talk about after the wedding. Once the wedding is over, there's an issue with Moondog's life. He is going to be without home or money, effectively becoming an actual bum. The journey from this point could not be more ridiculous. All those other people in the trailer factor into the story somehow, but this is a ride. It's a ride that I didn't want to end, where I wanted to see the side characters much more, and ultimately you can't really predict where any of these things are going.

Everyone knows that Martin Lawrence and Zac Efron are in this, but their roles themselves are highly amusing. I thought Lawrence's was the best side character of the bunch, which means that I think this is the first good thing he's done since Bad Boys II. A lot of people don't think that's any good either. Now, to that point, I think this is a film that has heart even though nothing in the promotional material seems that way. Moondog has chosen to live the good life, but it is a choice with consequences. Said consequences are not focused on very much here, but there's enough. I think Moondog is going to go down as being one of my favorite characters on screen. The performance is spectacular, everything here feeling improvised, so it probably was. There's only one poem that Moondog recites multiple times in the film, and it's a hilarious one. I don't know what people think of these drug fueled journey movies, but I'm all about them. This movie, to that end anyway, is exactly what you'd expect. The point, I thought anyway, is to show people a caricature of someone who decided to shut off the world and delve into their own happiness even if to the detriment of others. The detriment, though, I don't really see very much of that.

Is this one of McConaughey's best performances? I think most people would agree that it is one of them, but a lot of the people who don't like this have a problem with the film as a whole. I am not one of those people. The ending feels like the most tacked on, ludicrous scene that anyone could imagine, and I think I loved that too. The Beach Bum takes on what people expect to get out of society and runs over those concepts because clearly some people don't agree with them, and I really appreciate that. There's a part where some random guy is driving his wheelchair and gets his head bashed in with a bottle, it's entirely played for laughs, that's just what this is. Seemingly this is offensive, and I guess that it is, but this is someone's vision of this kind of life and you have to accept it. Or, in the end, you don't. Moondog is an asshole, that much is true, but one may find the character to be quite brilliant and enjoyable.

In closing, I should talk about the technical aspects of The Beach Bum. This film has great cinematography, which is one of the least surprising things about it. Have you seen any of Benoit Debie's movies? The Sisters Brothers also boasts this, but The Beach Bum is a different style of movie. The moments in the film are shown in scenes that I can't really describe as completed scenes. Montages? Kind of, how do you describe this shit? The essence of the film is to capture the moment and this is accomplished superbly. The score, also, is not what you'd expect. John Debney is a composer who has worked on things like The Jungle Book, or Evan Almighty. Yeah, the score is exactly like that. You know how much I loved that shit? It felt perfect. I feel like this movie was filmed on the fly and that there were all kinds of ideas jammed into it as production was going on, and that's probably the best way to approach a movie like this one once the director can get a quality cast. Trust me when I say nothing could prepare someone for this cast of characters, and that holds true whether or not you like this. I know I'm in the extreme minority of people on the internet but I don't give a fuck. I'll watch a movie with Matthew McConaughey playing a bum who parades around in a thong and like it. Much like similar movies from the 70's that I loved, I'll probably watch this again.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Gloria Bell
3. Arctic
4. High Flying Bird
5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
6. Captain Marvel
7. The Beach Bum
8. Paddleton
9. Cold Pursuit
10. Happy Death Day 2U
11. Greta
12. Triple Frontier
13. Fighting with My Family
14. The Dirt
15. Velvet Buzzsaw
16. Alita: Battle Angel
17. The Kid
18. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
19. The Upside
20. Dumbo
21. Captive State
22. Escape Room
23. What Men Want
24. Miss Bala
25. Glass
26. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
27. The Prodigy
28. Polar
29. Serenity

 

[909]

Lowriders (2017), directed by Ricardo de Montreuil

For the first time, tonight I decided to tell some of my own experiences with lowriders to people here, all of which I said were true. I think that was the only time I mentioned this. The funny part was that I also have a video tape of my cousin bringing his lowrider to my third birthday party, but I no longer have anything I can watch that video tape with. Everyone knows enough about lowriders to have some base knowledge of the subject, right? The intention of creating a lowrider was to have something different than what white people had, or so I've been told. Lowriding culture is definitely a thing here in Los Angeles, because of course that's where it all started. I did not expect to see a movie about this subject. Not just now, not in the past, but ever. It's a new time I suppose. I'm not surprised if people haven't heard of this film because I suspect that it didn't get much play outside of this area in the first place, but to be honest, I'd never heard of it either. With a respectable $6 million take, it appears that enough did, and there we have a film. What's it about though? You'll have to read on if you want to know that. I think this is a film with heart, but it also has an enormous flaw that soured me on the movie. I actually feel bad that I wonm't be giving this a good rating though.

Danny (Gabriel Chavarria) is a young adult who likes to draw graffiti on bridges, but most would call it street art. It's quite nice. The beginning of the film features Danny with his friends Chuy (Tony Revolori) and Claudia (Yvette Monreal), they're going out to drink a little and dance a little. On the way home, Danny needs to take a piss, so he has Claudia pull over on one of our bridges that crosses the LA River. Danny doesn't really only need to take a piss though. He climbs over the bridge wall and starts tagging it, and Claudia has some good things going for her, so she wants absolutely no part of this. She bails and leaves Chuy with Danny. Of course, here comes the cops. Danny and Chuy run as best they can, but inevitably they're caught and booked. Chuy doesn't know anyone else to call, so he calls Miguel (Demian Bichir), Danny's dad. Danny is displeased with this, but you know, it isn't always up to you who bails you out of jail. Or is it? I don't know anything about that shit. Anyway, it turns out that Miguel and Danny have some friction in their relationship and with good reason.

Miguel, as you may expect, owns a lowrider shop, which is how things tie back to the title. Miguel's problems with Danny largely stem from how Miguel was as a father, he wasn't a good one. He was drunk all the time, and Danny's mother died while all that was going on. Danny is not the only one who feels that he was mistreated. Francisco, or "Ghost" (Theo Rossi) is Danny's brother, he is a fair bit older than Danny and has stronger memories of the way his childhood was. Ghost has just gotten out of prison and he was there for a while, and it turns out that in addition to how Miguel treated him as a kid, Miguel also failed to visit him in prison. This isn't good. Miguel has now remarried to Gloria (Eva Longoria), who for whatever reason plays little part in this movie other than showing that she provides stability for her husband. Miguel no longer drinks either, but that doesn't really matter to Ghost. Ghost wants to get to know his brother better, but there are a few issues in the family that have to be settled. One of them is Elysian Park. There's a very important lowrider contest there, and both Ghost and Miguel will enter. Danny wants to get closer to Ghost because he's been gone so long, but what's the deal?

I did leave out that Danny has a girlfriend, Lorelai (Melissa Benoist), but I found it difficult to work into that last paragraph. Anyway, I think this is a film with heart, with some pillars of a good story, but ultimately there's a creative decision that I find to be stereotypical and bothersome. Why do the Mexicans have to resort to violence when there's friction and conflict? Do you see what I mean? I could just put down my score after that and it's easily justifiable, but I'll go on. I do not see why a rare Mexican-American drama film has to have such content. We don't need that. The dramatic content is also not all that great either, the soul of the film really works but the rest does not. On the subject of said soul, that's just something you'd have to watch to understand what I mean. This is a coming-of-age movie where the protagonist learns to embrace his heritage, roots, family, whatever you'd call it. Perhaps the best word to use would be tradition. This is what the film should have been about, with less conflict and more scenes where the young man learns about himself and his past. I don't like the need to bring gang shooting into a movie like this, it bothers me greatly.

The lead performance is also not that great, but Demian Bichir is always good and he carries this film a really long way. This role couldn't have been that easy as Bichir is not from Los Angeles, but I really couldn't tell. I should also point out that there are aspects of the family feud that are interesting, but ultimately, I think that this isn't what the film should have been. I rarely say that, but when I do, it's with good reason. The film isn't too well directed and isn't too well written, but I did think there was a good storyline with Lorelai. What her character represents is like gentrification, of ignorance, and I thought that plot point was well paid off. Now that all being said, I think there are hardly any films that serve a Mexican-American audience and that a studio really should get to work on some. In the last year or so, the only ones I could really think of that I saw were Creed II, Sicario: Day of the Soldado (from my experience, seriously), and The Nun (also featuring Bichir). I think everyone can see that there's a big gap here. I also think Hollywood knows it, but it's not like they're doing anything about it. They have decided that the audience is better served by watching the exact same films as everyone else, but I think the past of the industry has shown this is not true. Maybe I'm wrong, but my brain and the sheer amount of material I've watched is telling me that I'm not. When they can't make one without having gangs and shooting, I don't know bro. That's not right.

5.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5. Logan
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Big Sick
8. Thor: Ragnarok
9. Logan Lucky
10. The Beguiled
11. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
13. The Lost City of Z
14. First They Killed My Father
15. Darkest Hour
16. A Ghost Story
17. Spider-Man: Homecoming
18. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
19. It
20. Battle of the Sexes
21. Okja
22. Kong: Skull Island
23. It Comes at Night
24. Split
25. 1922
26. Personal Shopper
27. Chuck
28. Atomic Blonde
29. Wheelman
30. The Lego Batman Movie
31. Megan Leavey
32. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
33. Menashe
34. American Made
35. Beauty and the Beast
36. Imperial Dreams
37. Murder on the Orient Express
38. The Zookeeper's Wife
39. Free Fire
40. Win It All
41. The Wall
42. Life
43. Breathe
44. The Man Who Invented Christmas
45. Sleight
46. Alone in Berlin
47. A United Kingdom
48. Trespass Against Us
49. The Mountain Between Us
50. War Machine
51. Happy Death Day
52. Lowriders
53. Justice League
54. To the Bone
55. Wakefield
56. The Hitman's Bodyguard
57. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
58. Sand Castle
59. CHiPs
60. Death Note
61. The Belko Experiment
62. The Great Wall
63. Fist Fight
64. Snatched
65. Wilson
66. Queen of the Desert
67. Sleepless
68. All Eyez on Me

 

[909]

The House (2017), directed by Andrew Jay Cohen

I was thinking of making all kinds of horrible jokes at the start of this, but I'm afraid I've both had enough of said terrible jokes and that nothing I could say is as bad as what I just watched. So, I'd rather not. I'm not sure why I turned this on other than that I am attempting to be comprehensive with 2017, and as a result I'll be watching quite a bit of trash over the next few months. That's fine as I usually don't watch trash movies, and they're different. I've said before that I prefer bad comedy to bad drama, but what about when it's so bad that I didn't laugh even at how bad it is? That doesn't happen very often with me, so you know how I really feel about this movie when I say that. The poster for The House does leave little to the imagination here, obviously the two lead characters run a casino of some kind. However, having not watched the trailer, this was not what I thought it would be. It's actually a hell of a lot worse, something that never should have been made. It's no wonder that comedy has gone to shit when the premises are this bad and when the lead actor has appeared in countless movies as a lead without changing his act a single time. We don't need this anymore. The last good thing Will Ferrell did was what, Step Brothers? Not trying to count animated movies there, but that's pretty bad.

Scott (Will Ferrell) and Kate (Amy Poehler) are parents to Alex, who is headed off to university. They're on a visit at Bucknell, which is where Kate and Scott went to, and it turns out that Alex decides to go there during her visit. She also gets accepted, which leads to hopes that Alex will be funded by their community's scholarship program. Unfortunately, she is not. A city councilor named Bob (Nick Kroll) plays a large part in deciding that the city council will not fund these scholarships so that they can build a community pool. I guess this is a political statement of some sort, but I don't really care. Scott and Kate are then forced to try begging for loans, a raise, etc, but they're rebuffed at every turn. Enter Frank (Jason Mantzoukas), Scott's best friend. Frank is getting divorced from Raina (Michaela Watkins) because he has a gambling problem and a porn addiction, both of which Frank denies in the way that people typically do, but he still wants to go to Las Vegas. That just gets thrown in there somehow, but anyway, Kate and Scott go with him.

Upon arriving, we get basically no buildup or anything and shoot straight over to a craps table. Imagination is not on the agenda here. Scott decides to play and does well, but ultimately he says something he shouldn't say and the couple loses the money they were intending to win college tuition with. Back at home later that week, Frank decides to pitch an idea to Scott and Kate. His plan? He wants to start a casino at his house, because the house always wins. He thinks he can get his wife back if he does this, and he also believes that his friends will be able to get the money they need for college. In order to evade detection, his scheme revolves around the idea that people in the town will be able to park at the grocery store, go in and buy something so they can explain their whereabouts. Meanwhile, after they're done with that, they go around the back and walk through a wooded path to his house, knock on the back door, and head on in after giving a password. Sounds like a plan, it's not a bad one anyway. Problem is, that guy Bob is an annoying, terribly unfunny piece of shit, and he'll have problems when people aren't paying attention to him.

I think I've been able to illustrate that this film just isn't funny or original at all, and other than Jason Mantzoukas this is a total waste on every level. I have no idea how movies like this one even get made, and never once did I get the feeling that anyone was invested in ensuring this film was successful. For whatever reason a lot of people still find Will Ferrell amusing, I genuinely couldn't tell you why, but this material is even beneath him. This genre where middle aged people go extreme just isn't my favorite either, so keep that in mind as you read everything above, should you read it at all. Everything here is ridiculous on every level, and anyone with a brain should figure out that it's impossible for them to have enough friends to get them to fund someone's college tuition through gambling. Who do they really know anyway? Two of them are fucking losers and the other one gets laughed out of the building when asking for a raise. There's just no ingenuity or imagination to any of the proceedings here.

I need to reiterate that I didn't laugh hard a single time and only laughed a few times. There were some things here that I just couldn't bring myself to laugh at, and I was in a really good mood when I turned this on! Where things really blow apart, is that we're supposed to feel bad for someone whose parents can't pay for their education when almost everyone who goes to school these days is forced to go into insane student debt. Get that bitch a loan and stop wasting my time.

3/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. The Shape of Water
3. Get Out
4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
5. Logan
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Big Sick
8. Thor: Ragnarok
9. Logan Lucky
10. The Beguiled
11. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
13. The Lost City of Z
14. First They Killed My Father
15. Darkest Hour
16. A Ghost Story
17. Spider-Man: Homecoming
18. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
19. It
20. Battle of the Sexes
21. Okja
22. Kong: Skull Island
23. It Comes at Night
24. Split
25. 1922
26. Personal Shopper
27. Chuck
28. Atomic Blonde
29. Wheelman
30. The Lego Batman Movie
31. Megan Leavey
32. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
33. Menashe
34. American Made
35. Beauty and the Beast
36. Imperial Dreams
37. Murder on the Orient Express
38. The Zookeeper's Wife
39. Free Fire
40. Win It All
41. The Wall
42. Life
43. Breathe
44. The Man Who Invented Christmas
45. Sleight
46. Alone in Berlin
47. A United Kingdom
48. Trespass Against Us
49. The Mountain Between Us
50. War Machine
51. Happy Death Day
52. Lowriders
53. Justice League
54. To the Bone
55. Wakefield
56. The Hitman's Bodyguard
57. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
58. Sand Castle
59. CHiPs
60. Death Note
61. The Belko Experiment
62. The Great Wall
63. Fist Fight
64. Snatched
65. Wilson
66. Queen of the Desert
67. The House
68. Sleepless
69. All Eyez on Me

 

[muzzington]

I took the leap and watched The House mainly because Mantzoukas was in it.

Not sure why I didn't enjoy it exactly. It has a lot of people I find funny in other things in it but it just felt so shallow.

 

[909]

The Hummingbird Project (2019), directed by Kim Nguyen

I first saw the trailer for The Hummingbird Project when I was at an indie theater seeing Arctic, and my initial impression was that this could be something I really want to watch due to the potential for attention to detail. While that attention to detail is here, and while my expectations in that regard were met, this feels like a film that could have been great and didn't get over the line. Unlike a lot of people, I don't really mind these movies about Wall Street, nor do I find them particularly boring. I also enjoy Jesse Eisenberg's performances when he isn't playing Lex Luthor, so this felt like it was up my alley. In some ways it is and I'll get into that, but I should point out that only one of the characters here is really likable at all. This is something that hurts the film a lot, and then you take into account that there are some issues with whether or not the events portrayed here are functionally impossible. They probably are, but I always like stories where people have to achieve their impossible dream, whatever it may be. There's some other weird stuff here too, and this feels like it's a true story even though it's not. Instead, we have a really weird movie where the two lead roles are the opposite of how I would have cast them, yet both of them fit seamlessly into these parts. It's kind of odd, like the film as a whole is.

Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgard) are cousins who work at a trading firm on Wall Street, the specifics of their employment are not made entirely as clear as they should have been. At the start of the film, Vincent has a meeting with Bryan (Frank Schorpion), at which Vincent tells Bryan his plan. It appears that Bryan is a major investor of some kind and Vincent has to sell him on his plan, which he is able to do. What's the plan? Vincent is the hustle man of the duo, he has an idea to get mega rich with a little bit of hard work. The plan is to run a fiber optic cable from the Kansas City stock exchange to New York City, this is something that would cost a lot of money. As a result of having this fiber optic cable, they would be able to code things in away that allows them to automate trades faster than everyone else and therefore make a shitload of money. I have just massively understated the process of everything, but Anton's role in the process is to program the network and automate things. He's a very intelligent guy and as you see, they made Skarsgard a dork to play this role. I was impressed with this transformation. The trading firm Vincent and Anton work at is run by Eva Torres (Salma Hayek), a savage and ruthlessly demanding boss.

Of course, I'm talking about running a physical fiber optic cable all the way from Kansas City to the New York Stock Exchange. You know how ridiculous and hard this would actually be? It's impossible I'm sure, but Vinny and Anton need a construction guy with the knowhow and ability to get the right contractors to do this work. Enter Mark (Michael Mando), a specialist in this field who isn't much of a people person. Mark slides into the team and becomes essential to Vinny, doing what they need him to do. The thing is that Anton and Vinny really need to quit their jobs in order to take this project on. Anton doesn't have a way with people, but Vinny is able to convince him that he's being used and Eva doesn't care about his project, which is true. When they quit, Eva tells them that she won't forget this, and most assuredly she will not. Mark and Vinny head to Kansas City to start the project, and the land purchasing goes well enough. There are some major obstacles though. Firstly, they need to find a way to drill under the Appalachian Mountains on protected land, which is difficult but not impossible. The actualities of using the drill there are harder than getting clearance to use it. Then, there's Eva. Not only would she not let this go, but she's set on finding away to do a connection that runs even faster than the Zaleski's, and failing that she may just get them in trouble for fucking her over.

The performances in this film, as I said, are reversed from what I would have done. Eisenberg as the hustle is weird, and so is Skarsgard as the dork, but I really thought this was good casting. The story itself, is obviously about greed and the way such things may impact humans. People will go very far to make a lot of money, and when others are presented with the real world ramifications of doing so, they just can't handle it. The Hummingbird Project is also weird in that our journey is about running a line of cable through a forest. This is a film made by smeone who really, really wanted to make a unique film about Wall Street and not follow any of the tropes seen in this subgenre. To that end, the film works because it does not do that, but I still feel that there are some missed opportunities here. The ending is something I loathed, I also don't appreciate the effort to make more of this story than what it was. There isn't much opportunity or opening for some kind of moral triumph here, but Nguyen tries his best and as a result those parts of the movie feel very clunky. Still, I do really enjoy how far the film delves into direct market access. It's a thing, and it's also basically cheating, but that's how these firms stay ahead and participate in high-frequency trading.

The Hummingbird Project has had mixed reviews, which would indicate that people feel similarly to me about this one. I think the film lacks some style in addition to the things I've already discussed, but I also think this was alright and not boring even though it very well could have been. That shit where a movie about something like this tries to answer questions about how people live their lives though, I'll give that a swerve. However, even with the inclusion of such things, I don't think this was a bad film. The lead performances are good enough, but a movie where the events feel so important needs to have a little bit more levity. The cinematography is rather workman-like, and for that matter so is the music. It's easy to see why this film was dropped at this time of year after being shown in Toronto back in the fall, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It just exists. I made some changes to my rankings list too.

5.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Us
2. Gloria Bell
3. Arctic
4. High Flying Bird
5. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
6. Captain Marvel
7. The Beach Bum
8. Paddleton
9. Cold Pursuit
10. Happy Death Day 2U
11. Greta
12. Triple Frontier
13. Fighting with My Family
14. The Dirt
15. Velvet Buzzsaw
16. Alita: Battle Angel
17. The Kid
18. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
19. The Upside
20. Dumbo
21. The Hummingbird Project
22. Escape Room
23. Captive State
24. What Men Want
25. Miss Bala
26. Glass
27. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
28. The Prodigy
29. Polar
30. Serenity