I'm gonna go on a 2019 in film tangent. Hopefully it doesn't derail your thread. The really good films usually come out during the last four or so months of the year, but this year is up there as one of the worst in recent memory. Even the indie films aren't really landing aside from a few. Looking at Box Office Mojo, at this point last year these movies all were released which were really well regarded by critics or just great films that went unnoticed
Black Panther, Game Night, Annihilation, Thoroughbreds, The Death Of Stalin, Love Simon (Didn't see it, but people seemed to enjoy it), Unsane, Isle Of Dogs, Outside In, A Quiet Place, Blockers, You Were Never Really Here, The Endless, The Rider, Avengers: Infinity War, Disobedience, Tully, RBG, Revenge, Deadpool 2, First Reformed, Upgrade, Hereditary, Won't You Be My Neighbor, Hearts Beat Loud, Incredibles 2, and of course Gotti
2019 is just unbelievably weak compared to that or most other years. Unless the second half picks up, it might be one of the worst years for film.
The only ones that were critically acclaimed that I haven't seen, that I could have seen were The Mustang and High Life. So let's say those were good. The difference between the #14 and #17 on my list is so enormous, talk about a steep drop off there. This year sucks. It's also a bit that the films that are good are now not even getting released wide enough for people to watch them.
None of these was even within 30 minutes of my house and I live in the LA suburbs, the town that makes all this shit. Totally unacceptable. When the only small release indie to get close to my house was a fucking Gaspar Noe movie (a great one IMO but it first came out last year), what do you even say to that.
Look at the nuance of this scene. On par with the opening of Goodfellas and one of Travolta's best performances. E from Entourage will be the next Martin Scorsese mark my words.
When I saw the review scores for Shaft, I knew more than I'd ever known before that I would disagree more with these scores than I have for anything else I've reviewed. I'm not saying this was some amazing shit, but I think that Hollywood elites have let their feelings towards off-color jokes cloud their judgment. Part of the reason comedy movies fail at the box office now is due to this, because nothing is allowed to be funny, because if something's not worth laughing at then there's something wrong with the entire film. I should also note that almost all the people giving out these bad reviews have white faces in their profile on Rotten Tomatoes. Not all, but almost all. They have probably never enjoyed a Shaft movie in their life and weren't going to enjoy this one. Their opinions should be automatically discarded and a person should judge the film for themselves. I saw Shaft in a theater full of people, I should also note that this was a theater full of people who left very happy, who laughed a lot. Nobody laughed at everything, but everyone laughed at something. I think the standard has become too high, where a movie is supposed to make a person laugh at every gag in it, but that has never happened before and certainly won't now. I can also not say this is a faithful Shaft adaptation, for it is not. Neither was the film in 2000. When it comes to movies like this one, I think about how characters like John Shaft and Harry Callahan were the superheroes of their time. Of course, this is not automatically a good thing, but that's how it was. In the case of John Shaft and some other characters (not Harry), a lot of people fail to understand that these characters are supposed to represent those bad things while making a person laugh at their warped worldview.
Shaft begins in 1989, with John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson) driving through Harlem while on his downtime during some case work. He's in the car with his girlfriend at the time, Maya (Regina Hall). Unbeknownst to the viewer until the end of this scene, his son JJ is also in the car. His case involved him tracking a man called Gordito (Isaach De Bankole), a drug dealer who runs shit in Harlem and has a huge gang. Anyway, after a shootout, we see that the kid was in the car, and as anyone would be, Maya is really pissed off. She decides that she's going to take JJ and leave, because while Shaft is living this detective life and making enemies, she doesn't want her son to have any part of it. So, we move forward through introductory credits, where there are some funny scenes of JJ getting Christmas presents from his absentee father. Eventually we land in the present, where JJ (Jessie Usher) is now a man, having just graduated from MIT and working for the FBI. Or, in a more fitting descriptor, he's working for The Man. Sorry, I couldn't help it. He has friends in New York City helping him on his way, a doctor named Sasha (Alexandra Shipp) and his best friend Karim (Avan Jogia). Karim is a veteran who had problems with drugs and alcohol when he returned from overseas, but he has recovered and is now doing well. Of course, JJ has a crush on Sasha. That's how this would have to be.
There's also the way some other things have to be. JJ works as a data analyst and not a field agent, so of course he has to be fucking weird and the complete opposite of his father. This film is cliched, but damn if it isn't funny. His boss is Vietti (Titus Welliver), a typical hardass who doesn't take any of his shit. He's assigning cases and the FBI is watching a mosque, but JJ does not draw this one and is told to shut the fuck up. Anyway, JJ goes out for drinks with Karim and Sasha, and Karim is called away to leave quickly. Karim has a charity thing going on, working for an organization he started that helps other veterans who had the same problems he had. Unfortunately, Karim dies that very night after being called away. The cause of death is an overdose, but JJ believes that's impossible because he wasn't using. Of course, he has the Shaft genes and he is going to investigate. Eventually though, he's going to need some help, and he has not seen his father in a very long time. His mother expressly forbids it. You think that's going to stop him?
The early scenes are a little touch and go as it seems like we're waiting a long time for John Shaft II to show up, but some of those scenes are funny and I was able to live with it. I do not think there will be a sequel as this has horrendously bombed, but I want to see this trio team up once again. The fact is, I know what I like and I liked this. I laughed constantly, even though some of the jokes were WAY too overboard for critics, and I did not laugh at all of them myself. I was a little confused by the direction of the film and I will address that in my score, there were a few scenes that felt like an homage to bad blaxploitation films, but nobody could have been that smart. I thought they were just badly directed in that case. If you watch a Shaft movie, you should know what you're getting into, so the commentary about those jokes is something I cannot agree with. The generational gap of the three Shafts is something I saw humor in as well. There's the one presented as being very old even though he's the same age as Samuel L. Jackson, the one presented as being a baby boomer, and his son who he cannot understand. Yet, the very old person from that generation finds the good in the younger person as tends to happen in life. I found that to be an interesting dynamic.
Shaft is a movie that I could see a lot of people hating, but I can also see people enjoying it although they'll probably never check it out. The plot is exactly what you'd expect from a detective movie like this one. It's cliched, but that isn't really what you're here for in the first place. I liked this quite a bit more than Men in Black: International, but the films are a bit similar in that they feature interesting characters burdened by a plot that isn't that great, although to varying degrees. Shaft's is merely not great, and Men in Black: International's is absolutely horrible. Shaft also does feature themes related to masculinity and what makes someone a real man, but I figured that you probably know that from the trailer and commercials. Where some people might find that tone-deaf, I find it to be on point and fitting for our current time. The film is funny, straight out. The way Jackson delivers his lines is exactly what I hope to see when I turn on a movie, and if a lot of people can't handle that, fuck 'em. I don't even care. The largest recurring problem with the two more recent Shaft movies is that Shaft is never in any real danger of dying, which is in contrast to the 1971 version. I can fully admit here that I'm giving the film the score I want to give it regardless of what logic may tell me to do. I do not often laugh this much when around other people, and I rarely laugh this hard. We'll see how I feel when I watch this with my dad at a later date, I won't write a review but I may quote this review and re-score the movie. SOME PEOPLE GAVE THIS MOTHERFUCKER A 7 AND I'M GIVING IT A 7.
7/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Us
4. Gloria Bell
5. Arctic
6. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
7. The Beach Bum
8. Rocketman
9. High Flying Bird
10. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
11. Captain Marvel
12. Long Shot
13. Shazam!
14. Paddleton
15. Hotel Mumbai
16. Cold Pursuit 17. Shaft
18. Happy Death Day 2U
19. Ma
20. Greta
21. Aladdin
22. Triple Frontier
23. Fighting with My Family
24. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
25. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
26. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
27. Brexit
28. The Dirt
29. Velvet Buzzsaw
30. Little
31. Alita: Battle Angel
32. The Kid
33. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
34. The Upside
35. Dumbo
36. The Hummingbird Project
37. Escape Room
38. Tolkien
39. Captive State
40. The Highwaymen
41. Pet Sematary
42. The Intruder
43. Brightburn
44. What Men Want
45. Men in Black: International
46. Unicorn Store
47. The Curse of La Llorona
48. Miss Bala
49. Hellboy
50. Glass
51. Dark Phoenix
52. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
53. The Hustle
54. The Best of Enemies
55. The Prodigy
56. Polar
57. Serenity
I think Shaft has a chance to get some decent legs if people give it a chance. It scored an "A" CinemaScore by people coming out of the theater, which is really high but I feel like that may be one of those movies that 'bombs' then finds new life 2-4 years from now with people going, "Why did nobody see this? How did this not do well in theaters?"
While I'm not done with 2017 yet, I believe this is the last of the Best Picture nominees I will watch. Sorry, but a man wooing a 17 year old boy is not for me and I will not watch that movie. Anyway, this was how I intended to close out with the nominees for that year. It turns out that I would not have nominated Lady Bird for Best Picture, but that's alright and that doesn't mean this isn't a great movie, which in many ways it is. I know by now that the perspective of the coming of age movie makes no difference on whether or not I find it to be good. Eighth Grade was the true test of this, and I really liked that, so of course I'd enjoy this. In some ways this is a spiritual sequel of sorts although the film I'm saying was a spiritual sequel premiered before the other was released. You can also tell very much that in some ways this is Greta Gerwig's biopic about herself, you just need to look at some material regarding her background to figure that out. Lady Bird does a great job at capturing the moment of what it would be like to be a girl in a predominantly white, religious high school in that part of the country during 2002. The film doesn't work without a good actress in the lead role to capture people's attention, but this is a film that was also heavily praised for one of its supporting performances. 2017 is a year with a lot of variety in terms of its best films, I find that there are not a lot of great ones, but the ones that are on that level could not possibly be more different than one another. The key to making something different than everything else is to add a personal touch, and Lady Bird has that.
Lady Bird is set in Sacramento during 2002, as already mentioned, and Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a senior in a Catholic high school. Christine has decided that she wants a new name, as some people do at that age. Hence, she is called Lady Bird. Lady Bird wants to get out of Sacramento because it has no culture, which is true because it does not. Her family doesn't have very much money to support these ambitions of higher education in a different state, but kids have dreams and hopes and don't always have a concept of such things. Lady Bird's mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf) is working double shifts at the psychiatric hospital, while her father Larry (Tracy Letts) has lost his job and is now unemployed. They don't have the best house or best car, but there are dreams. Marion thinks that Lady Bird is ungrateful for what she has and tells her so all the time, she's a hard ass and rides her daughter into the ground. Her brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) and his girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott) also live in their house, but they support themselves as best as they can by working at a grocery store. Times are hard. Lady Bird wants to get into university and the best path for her to have a good application is to join theater, because that's something she can do with her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein). Her school life, as stuffy as it may sound, is rather good. Her favorite teacher is Sister Sarah Joan (Lola Smith), and Julie has a crush on another teacher, Mr. Bruno (Jake McDorman). She thinks he will reciprocate, but of course he will not.
In theater, Lady Bird seems to find herself and become more confident. She meets a boy, Danny (Lucas Hedges). They have an interesting little relationship, and Lady Bird really comes to like this kid. So, they go to his grandmother's house on Thanksgiving, which really makes Lady Bird's mother angry, but the house is one that Lady Bird had always dreamed of living in. There's a problem though, it's kind of important. When they go out to eat one time with people from school, Lady Bird walks into the men's restroom and finds Danny kissing some other guy in one of the stalls. So, that's that. After the fling is over, Lady Bird gets a job at a coffee shop and meets Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), a very douchey musician she saw at a show some time before. Lady Bird starts dating him, and it's time to drop Julie as her friend too because she's hanging with a new crowd. Her new bestie becomes Jenna (Odeya Rush), a girl who hangs out with Kyle's friends, and this leads to Lady Bird dropping out of the theater program. The ultimate point of the movie is, what exactly is Lady Bird going to do with her life? She wants to leave Sacramento, but her grades aren't that great. Her family doesn't have the money to put her through school, but she's sending out applications everywhere. She has to find herself and come to grips with becoming an adult, because a lot of children are cast out into the world and have to make the most of themselves.
From where I sit, Lady Bird is a rather joyful film, but from where someone else sits that may not be the case. I thought that this was the kind of movie someone makes when they've experienced these things and earned the cache to make the film before they've forgotten what all those experiences were like. The best coming-of-age movies I've seen were not directed by old people, unless I'm missing something or simply haven't seen them. The fact is that there's something here for everyone. When the film may feel like it's lacking in the meaningful drama that inhabits other great films of the genre, there's comedy and the feeling that we've lived some of these experiences. At my age, yeah, I guess some of us have. I didn't run off to buy a Playgirl when I was 18, but I know the feeling of that moment. There's some goofy stuff with the choice in music, but I can't really critique this as I was not a young girl in 2002 and do not know what they listened to. I think this was lacking Hoobastank, though. Lady Bird's greatest drama exists in the mother-daughter relationship space, where one person knows that they know better than the other about someone's future, and the other person knows that they can do better than what the other person expects of them.
Lady Bird feels like an authentic film, a movie that encapsulates the era and feeling of living in the US after 9/11. Everything is more important as ever, or maybe it isn't, everyone has their own unique experiences of the time. The film also boasts good craft, the cinematography and overall feel of the story was quite nice. Slick visuals are not always welcome in such a film and I was glad they were not here. The attention to detail, like with Ronan's face having acne scars, are well appreciate. She and Laurie Metcalf had strong performances, but Metcalf's was clearly the best of the year and I just don't know how anything could have surpassed that. We'll see when I check out I, Tonya in a little while. What I am now curious about is the roles that Greta Gerwig played in her past to inspire this directing effort. I've only seen one of them, so I am going to have to go back. It's as simple as that, and I don't know what she was doing, but it is now clear that I should know. I'm not going to say that the praise was overboard, but to me I don't see that this is the best film of that year, but it's very strong and great in its own ways. All the characters make an impact in their short roles, and the film has the levity that I think this story really needs. Stealing the gradebook without any goofy music or a chase scene? I'm there. Give me all those kinds of scenes instead of ridiculous cliches. I don't think the plot is the best in the world, but the film has strong substance, strong emotional connective tissue, and that's what's important.
8.5/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick 14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Lost City of Z
24. First They Killed My Father
25. A Ghost Story
26. Darkest Hour
27. Spider-Man: Homecoming
28. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
29. Sweet Virginia
30. It
31. Battle of the Sexes
32. Brad's Status
33. Okja
34. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
35. Kong: Skull Island
36. It Comes at Night
37. Crown Heights
38. Split
39. 1922
40. Personal Shopper
41. Landline
42. Beatriz at Dinner
43. Chuck
44. Atomic Blonde
45. Shot Caller
46. Brigsby Bear
47. Wheelman
48. The Lego Batman Movie
49. Megan Leavey
50. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
51. Marshall
52. Menashe
53. Walking Out
54. American Made
55. Annabelle: Creation
56. Beauty and the Beast
57. Imperial Dreams
58. Gifted
59. Murder on the Orient Express
60. The Zookeeper's Wife
61. The Glass Castle
62. Free Fire
63. Win It All
64. The Wall
65. Life
66. My Cousin Rachel
67. Breathe
68. The Man Who Invented Christmas
69. Maudie
70. Sleight
71. Alone in Berlin
72. A United Kingdom
73. Trespass Against Us
74. The Mountain Between Us
75. War Machine
76. Happy Death Day
77. Lowriders
78. Justice League
79. To the Bone
80. Ghost in the Shell
81. Wakefield
82. Bright
83. The Hitman's Bodyguard
84. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
85. The Mummy
86. The Greatest Showman
87. Rough Night
88. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
89. Sand Castle
90. The Circle
91. American Assassin
92. CHiPs
93. Death Note
94. The Belko Experiment
95. The Great Wall
96. Fist Fight
97. Baywatch
98. Snatched
99. Wilson
100. The Dark Tower
101. Queen of the Desert
102. The House
103. Flatliners
104. Sleepless
105. All Eyez on Me
106. The Book of Henry
107. The Space Between Us
The Dead Don't Die (2019), directed by Jim Jarmusch
When I saw the middling reviews for The Dead Don't Die, my initial assumption was that this was another case of a movie that people did not understand. While that was true, I do also understand those reviews and in some ways I tend to agree with them. The Dead Don't Die is a film that is absolutely not for everyone, featuring deadpan humor in the extreme to the point where I was the only person in a sparsely crowded theater laughing at the film. So, with that last sentence in mind, take everything I say now for what it's worth. The humor is for me but it wasn't for everyone else, which is apparently the case with a lot of Jarmusch's films. People say they're hit and miss, and I can see how that would be true. I know someone who said that Paterson was trash because of the goofy words on the screen, and while I agreed with the poetry on-screen being goofy, I looked past that and saw the merits of the film. The thing with The Dead Don't Die is that the crux of the film is such that you can't look past it at all, it's either for you or it isn't. This film, I should also note, is incredibly pretentious in this context. I liked it, but I also recognize that and feel obligated to point it out. The Dead Don't Die is heavily reliant on cameos in order to engage the audience and keep people interested, but some of those cameos don't land as well as they should, and what we're left with is a film with funny moments and characters that in some cases die too soon.
The Dead Don't Die kicks off in the fictional town of Centerville, with the police chief Cliff (Bill Murray) and officer Ronnie (Adam Driver) answering a call that was sent in by a local farmer, Farmer Miller (Steve Buscemi). Miller had complained about a local bum, Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), saying that Bob had stolen his chickens from his field. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. On their drive back to the station, the two officers notice that their watches no longer work, and for that matter neither do their cell phones. It's after 8 PM and it's still light outside as well, which sounds like a problem. After that, we kick over to the local dinner, where we meet Farmer Miller, who it turns out is a racist. Not a vocal one, but definitely one. He talks about Bob with Hank (Danny Glover), a local hardware store owner, and they also notice that the clocks don't seem to be right. The thing is, the clocks are right, but polar fracking has knocked Earth off its axis. These are the events that would lead to zombies coming out of their graves and shit. Let's continue to introduce characters, as we have a bit at the juvenile detention center. Of course, the kid is right all along, as Geronimo (Jahi Winston) tells fellow inmates Stella (Maya Delmont) and Olivia (Taliyah Whitaker) that fracking has finally destroyed the Earth as some of us believe that it very well may do.
The way this all plays out leading to the point of the film is strange, but I'm not done introducing characters. There's a guy named Bobby (Caleb Landry Jones) who runs a gas station in town, and he's into all kinds of nerdy shit, including zombie shit. He gets a delivery from an amusing cameo where one of those insane "news" tabloids states that the zombies are coming, but that's just another quirky scene in a film full of them. Once Cliff and Ronnie make it back to the police station, we learn that there's another officer, Mindy (Chloe Sevigny). All these people will have their own part to play in the events to come, and some of them will react differently to the coming zombie problem than others will. I really liked the news segments where Rosie Perez is breaking down the current situation, and the characters are caught listening to them numerous times. This is how we're introduced to a few of them. At the police station, there's an inmate who died in the jail, but nobody has come to pick them up yet. Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton) is the new funeral home director, but it isn't her job to do that yet. We are shown a scene where she's swinging around samurai swords while acting very strange. What do you think happens when the dead come out, anyway?
The scenes of the zombie apocalypse are good, but there aren't very many of them and there's some huge downtime between them. So, if a person is looking for zombie action, this is not for you. If you want dry humor while zombies are potentially the ones killing people in a diner at night, when they aren't really sure, this is for you. I'm in the middle on this one. There's only one piece of humor that I would consider to not be dry, the film is missing something though and I can't explain it. The scenes are not woven together the way I would have liked, the characters don't really pop off into reality the way they may have done on the page. I found the movie amusing, but that's it, it's merely amusing and doesn't cross over the line into outright hilarity. The title song that plays during the film, on the other hand, is really good. The meta humor that comes with said song, on the other hand, is not something I would have included in this film. The way these moments play out is just not very funny. The ending of the film, with Zelda taking a different path than everyone else, is another hit or miss moment that landed for me. The Dead Don't Die is also a very slow film, it should be said. I was surprised on some level that this was even released given how slow and unfriendly to the audience this film actually is.
What I'm curious to know is if The Dead Don't Die was intended to be a parody of other zombie movies where people are freaking out like crazy. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm interested and will eventually have to find out the answer. I also thought Tom Waits was great here, but that's no real surprise. In some ways he's wasted as well, most of what we see of him is behind a pair of binoculars. I do very clearly understand the heavy-handed play consumerism, but I don't really care about that and as a result I haven't mentioned it until now. I'm going to give this a decent enough score because I liked the humor, but the references to George Romero and the comments about another character being a cinephile, that stuff is just way too far over the top and meta for my taste. The cameos were welcome as a counter to that, and my review is disjointed because in some respects the film is made in a way that leads to a disjointed review on my part. These things are rather scattershot, yet all of them are worth commenting on in their own way. Overall, take the film for what it's worth. It felt like a filmmaker who was rambling about the things that were on their mind at the time, and supposedly the actors love making it, so the film was entirely worthwhile from that viewpoint. If I wasn't laughing, the film would have been abysmally unpleasant to watch.
5.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Us
4. Gloria Bell
5. Arctic
6. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
7. The Beach Bum
8. Rocketman
9. High Flying Bird
10. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
11. Captain Marvel
12. Long Shot
13. Shazam!
14. Paddleton
15. Hotel Mumbai
16. Cold Pursuit
17. Shaft
18. Happy Death Day 2U
19. Ma
20. Greta
21. Aladdin
22. Triple Frontier
23. Fighting with My Family
24. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
25. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
26. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
27. Brexit
28. The Dirt
29. Velvet Buzzsaw
30. Little
31. Alita: Battle Angel
32. The Kid
33. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
34. The Upside 35. The Dead Don't Die
36. Dumbo
37. The Hummingbird Project
38. Escape Room
39. Tolkien
40. Captive State
41. The Highwaymen
42. Pet Sematary
43. The Intruder
44. Brightburn
45. What Men Want
46. Men in Black: International
47. Unicorn Store
48. The Curse of La Llorona
49. Miss Bala
50. Hellboy
51. Glass
52. Dark Phoenix
53. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
54. The Hustle
55. The Best of Enemies
56. The Prodigy
57. Polar
58. Serenity
I felt weird as I was the only one laughing at the dry humor in this film, it was like the rest of the crowd didn't get it but it was to be expected with the cast and who wrote and directed this. But I enjoyed it, and especially Buschemi's character was pretty great.
The ending though didn't fit the meta context of the rest of the film though, but that was the worst I could say about this.
The Disaster Artist (2017), directed by James Franco
I have a bad admission here. I have never seen The Room and I will now probably wait around a year to do so. Is The Disaster Artist a film that would benefit from knowing the source material? Almost assuredly that's true, but I think I loved most of the film anyway. I am a big fan of projects that lampoon filmmaking and the general machinations of Hollywood, this is one that really works on that basis alone. It does matter to have seen The Room, but in this way it feels like it doesn't, to know the source material is to have expectations of every scene and the film may or may not meet them. That's how I see it, anyway. The Disaster Artist feels like an embodiment of how a film should mix its humor. There's something here for everyone, even though the film fits into the general pattern of a buddy comedy. Somehow it does, I should say. Making a movie about the making of a bad movie seems like it shouldn't work, because the comedic talent and acting ability required to pull that off is an unreasonable expectation, but when it happens this well, it's great. I was curious to know what the point of making such a film was, but it's obvious. There are a lot of fans of The Room, and making a movie that honors their dedication to that film is an obviously wise creative and financial decision. Maybe if James Franco hadn't done bad things this would have launched his career to another level.
The Disaster Artist kicks off in 1998, with Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) taking acting classes in San Francisco. At these classes, he encounters Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) while Tommy is doing a recreation of a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. His performance is hilariousness, and Greg loves it, which leads to the two of them becoming friends after practicing another scene in the middle of a diner. The reality of the scene in the acting class was that Tommy was called up there after Greg had completely shit the bed and been criticized for not being fearless, which Tommy was. Tommy has some ground rules about their friendship, he wants Greg to not ask him anything about what he does, where he gets his money, or where he comes from. Rules are made to be broke, of course, but these two are close friends. Eventually, they have conversations where Tommy tells Greg about how he really wanted to be an actor, and Tommy makes the decision that they should turn their dreams into reality. He has an apartment in Los Angeles that Greg did not know about, and he wants them to move down there to stay and become actors. Greg decides that he'll join him, and despite the protestations of his mother (Megan Mullaly), it's going to happen and they head down to Hollywood. There's a fantastic montage after this, I laughed very hard many times, and that's what you need to know about the film. It's very funny.
When they head down to Los Angeles and get started, Tommy starts taking method acting classes taught by someone who looks like Bob Odenkirk, and Greg takes some pictures and gets an agent who we never see again (Sharon Stone). Greg also starts dating Amber (Alison Brie), which makes Tommy quite jealous. He had his best friend and moved down to Los Angeles with him, and some woman is coming between them. This is how he thinks of it anyway. Tommy isn't able to find work, but he and Greg have a revelation. They just need to...MAKE THEIR OWN MOVIE. The movie, of course, is The Room. To make it, they need money, and it turns out that Tommy Wiseau has a whole lot of it. To make a movie, they'll need a script, which Tommy writes. They'll need an assistant director, Sandy Schklair (Seth Rogen). A director of photography is also required, that's Raphael Smadja (Paul Scheer). Do they need love interests for the film? Yes, they do. Robyn (June Diane Raphael) and Juliette (Ari Graynor) will suffice here. They also need an older woman for one of Tommy's written scenes, so they have Carolyn (Jacki Weaver). They also need equipment, which they get from Peter (Jason Mantzoukas) and Bill (Hannibal Buress). Lastly, they need some actors for side characters, Philip (Josh Hutcherson) and Dan (Zac Efron) will suffice. With that, IT'S TIME TO MAKE A FUCKING MOVIE.
The Disaster Artist is funny enough simply as a buddy comedy where two guys want to make a movie. Even if The Room turned out to be a good movie, The Disaster Artist would be a strong film because of the humor and chemistry between the brothers acting out these two parts. When you add in the making of a horrible cult film, and when they show clips from it at the end of the movie, it all comes together into one of the better comedies in recent times. There were also surprisingly poignant moments, the best example being the one during the movie's premiere. I can't speak to whether or not all the performances in The Disaster Artist are faithful representations of the actors in The Room, or of the characters that were in The Room. I just know that I liked it and that this is a great example of a quality film where people are trying to live out their dreams. I don't think that watching the other film is a requirement, I really don't. The characters have the feeling of being authentic, the performances are strong, and most of all they're hilarious. There is no exposition in the entire film either, nothing that explains why Tommy is this way, and the questions everyone would have going into a viewing would still remain when the film is over.
In short, this is the kind of cult movie about a cult movie that it isn't surprising people heavily enjoyed. The Disaster Artist features a great performance by James Franco, hilarious scenes for days, but I think there's a lack of an attempt to figure out what makes Wiseau tick. This isn't necessarily a complaint, but some scenes like those would have fleshed the film out to a great extent. You would also think that a film with as many side characters as this one would go off the rails and become hard to keep focused, but The Disaster Artist does not have those problems and the side characters have their funny moments before the film moves on from them. In the end, I wonder what Wiseau thought of all this. The ending of the film depicts a man who couldn't handle the criticisms leveled towards his film, someone who was in tears before deciding to cover for himself by claiming this was supposed to be a comedy all along. Knowing that it wasn't, knowing that someone is or at least was masking their own pain before coming to grips with reality, it makes me wonder how they felt about The Disaster Artist. The Disaster Artist is directly making fun of its subject while at the same time bringing their pain and anguish to the screen for other people to see.
As it relates to The Room itself, I intend to watch it but I couldn't be more confused by the copious use of green screen.
8/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2 23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes
33. Brad's Status
34. Okja
35. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
36. Kong: Skull Island
37. It Comes at Night
38. Crown Heights
39. Split
40. 1922
41. Personal Shopper
42. Landline
43. Beatriz at Dinner
44. Chuck
45. Atomic Blonde
46. Shot Caller
47. Brigsby Bear
48. Wheelman
49. The Lego Batman Movie
50. Megan Leavey
51. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
52. Marshall
53. Menashe
54. Walking Out
55. American Made
56. Annabelle: Creation
57. Beauty and the Beast
58. Imperial Dreams
59. Gifted
60. Murder on the Orient Express
61. The Zookeeper's Wife
62. The Glass Castle
63. Free Fire
64. Win It All
65. The Wall
66. Life
67. My Cousin Rachel
68. Breathe
69. The Man Who Invented Christmas
70. Maudie
71. Sleight
72. Alone in Berlin
73. A United Kingdom
74. Trespass Against Us
75. The Mountain Between Us
76. War Machine
77. Happy Death Day
78. Lowriders
79. Justice League
80. To the Bone
81. Ghost in the Shell
82. Wakefield
83. Bright
84. The Hitman's Bodyguard
85. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
86. The Mummy
87. The Greatest Showman
88. Rough Night
89. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
90. Sand Castle
91. The Circle
92. American Assassin
93. CHiPs
94. Death Note
95. The Belko Experiment
96. The Great Wall
97. Fist Fight
98. Baywatch
99. Snatched
100. Wilson
101. The Dark Tower
102. Queen of the Desert
103. The House
104. Flatliners
105. Sleepless
106. All Eyez on Me
107. The Book of Henry
108. The Space Between Us
When it comes to 2018's Mute, I think this is a film that perhaps better than any other defines a film that is complete shit when the people making it did not think it would be shit. This isn't a case of actors making something fun when knowing the material sucks, they all tried their best and this was the end result. The script, such as it is, is one of the most nonsensical things of last year. The film makes absolutely no sense at all. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that Duncan Jones stated this was a spiritual sequel to Moon. Has anyone ever insulted their own work to this extent? I don't understand how anyone could make a comment like that. I also can't imagine how a person could start their career with quality and descend to this level so quickly, but that's what the film is. It's one of the worst movies I've seen from 2018, but it isn't the absolute worst. That's one of the only compliments I intend to be giving here. I think what we have in Duncan Jones is a director who knows how to create a good world for his characters, but doesn't actually know what to do with those characters. The characters in Warcraft and Mute never come to life, and in the latter case absolutely none of them feel like real human beings. The film is bizarre, enough so that I was intrigued to see things out to their conclusion. Even in wanting that, I encountered another issue, it was that the film is far too long and tries to keep the viewer on the string well past the point which anyone could feel anything for what's taking place in front of their eyes.
Our film begins with a childhood accident, one can presume that it is of our lead character or it would not be here at all. Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) was an Amish boy in Germany in the distant future. He was swimming in a lake or river somewhere, and there was an accident where a boat's engine had impacted his chest and left him unable to speak. His mother was very devout and did not believe in the the technology for surgery, so Leo did not have surgery at all. When the film kicks forward to Leo as an adult, the world is even more futuristic, and I will have to give a compliment to that as well. Duncan Jones is, at the very least, very imaginative in the sense of creating intriguing worlds. The menus and graphics for everything were rather incredible. Anyway, Leo has had to adapt with the world because the times demand it. He lives in Berlin and works at a strip club, he is a bartender even though he tries to avoid technology in line with what his mother thought. I know this makes no sense. Leo has a girlfriend, Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), and she also works at the place as a cocktail waitress. This club is the place where we get to know almost everyone involved in the film. Luba (Robert Sheehan) is someone else who works there, and he's Naadirah's best friend that she confides in. She tells him that she hasn't told Leo about her past or how much she needs money, or for that matter what she does to get it.
The owner of the club is Maksim (Gilbert Owuor), and he's a criminal of course. One night, some British guys are harassing Naadirah and Leo isn't going to stand for that, but she tells him that she need the job and he needs to relax. Later that night, or some other night, she goes to Leo's apartment and needs to tell him something. Leo tells her that she doesn't have to tell him anything, and it's time to flip over to the other side of the story. Maksim is a mafioso, he has guys of his own, and they need help from surgeons. Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) was already in the club, so we've met him, but Duck (Justin Theroux) is his partner and best friend. Bill wants to get out of Berlin, and the political situation is such that he's gone AWOL from the military. Bill and Duck are Americans, they were deployed, and Bill just doesn't want to back to Afghanistan. He also now has a very young daughter, Josie. Duck intends to stay in Berlin, but Bill needs papers from Maksim, and the British guys Leo was told not to beat up factor into that plan. Of course, Leo gets into another disagreement with them, this time Naadirah isn't there, and he gets into a full blown fist fight that leads to him losing his job. When he gets home, he can't find out where Naadirah is, it seems that she has disappeared. A guy like Leo? He has nothing else good in the world, people shit on him all the time because he can't speak. He is going to find his girlfriend.
The length of time which it takes all these events to play out is thoroughly displeasing. The film is overindulgent and needed numerous plot points removed from it entirely. I haven't even stated half of the things that happen here, and all the things I didn't mention were pretty bad. Mute is a pretty bad film as a whole. The commentary on a futuristic hellscape such as the Berlin shown here, that commentary doesn't even exist. These things are shown, it is clear that the director does not like the idea of these things, and I suppose that's really all that's said. This doesn't feel like a world inhabited by real people. All of the characters, without exception, are pretty bad. Leo being a mute merely serves to make the lead character a plot device. He goes in somewhere and fucks shit up, he can't say anything because he can't ask questions, and this means the viewer receives no answer to the questions that should be asked. This makes Bill's share of the film essential to understanding the plot, and unfortunately this section follows around two really bad characters. One is a sociopath and the other is a pedophile, the pedophilia is ignored by the person who isn't one, and the contrast of these two characters says it all. The length of the film absolutely killed me because I could not handle these three leads.
I can't get into a film like this one when I'm struggling to understand why Leo is an Amish bartender who refuses to get surgery to fix his voice years after his mom is gone, while he's doing things that aren't fitting with his religion and fornicating with a woman. Could anyone understand that? According to IMDB, this film's tagline is "he doesn't need words." Leo really fucking does need words! This kind of protagonist is absolute nonsense that needed to be left on a page, or rather made into a book. I'm not saying that every film with a mute lead character has these problems, but the film requires him to beat people up and find answers to his questions. This format simply doesn't work. I already stated my complaints about the voiced characters and how they provide said understanding to the plot, but the way this all comes together is also horrible. Obviously, I really didn't like this film and I'm struggling to properly state why I feel this way, but I think I've mentioned enough. I was kind of bummed out, I thought there was a good film buried in the first few minutes, but the concept just doesn't work. I did find some humor in the cameos of Sam Rockwell's character from Moon, but that's also a problem, that shit wasn't supposed to be funny at all. I thought Moon was a really serious film, one that posed a lot of questions and didn't bash the viewer over the head with a hammer at any point. This is the opposite of that, and it seems from the cameos that Duncan Jones doesn't understand why Moon was a good film in the first place, so this guy is just an idiot who suckered good actors into being in his shitty movie.
3/10
2018 Films Ranked
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. Suspiria
27. Vice
28. The Old Man & the Gun
29. Vox Lux
30. Bad Times at the El Royale
31. The Other Side of the Wind
32. Searching
33. A Simple Favor
34. The Hate U Give
35. Unsane
36. Disobedience
37. Boy Erased
38. Bumblebee
39. Mary Poppins Returns
40. Creed II
41. Hold the Dark
42. The Land of Steady Habits
43. Halloween
44. Ant-Man and the Wasp
45. Beirut
46. Mary Queen of Scots
47. Aquaman
48. Outlaw King
49. Overlord
50. Ben Is Back
51. Monsters and Men
52. The Mule
53. On the Basis of Sex
54. Bohemian Rhapsody
55. White Boy Rick
56. Papillon
57. Game Night
58. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
59. Instant Family
60. Alpha
61. The Front Runner
62. The Predator
63. Apostle
64. The Angel
65. The Commuter
66. Beautiful Boy
67. The Nun
68. Operation Finale
69. The Equalizer 2
70. The Spy Who Dumped Me
71. Yardie
72. Bird Box
73. 12 Strong
74. Venom
75. Skyscraper
76. The Meg
77. Assassination Nation
78. The Girl in the Spider's Web
79. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
80. 22 July
81. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
82. The Little Stranger
83. Tomb Raider
84. Night School
85. The 15:17 To Paris
86. Peppermint
87. Mile 22
88. The First Purge
89. Hunter Killer
90. The Cloverfield Paradox 91. Mute
92. Kin
93. Hell Fest
94. Proud Mary
95. Robin Hood
96. The Happytime Murders
97. Slender Man
When a franchise hits four movies, the obvious concern with that third one is whether or not the people involved know how to keep the franchise fresh. I thought the third film was the best one of the bunch, it's practically impossible to follow that with something of equal quality, and I'll be the first to admit that Toy Story 4 is not as good. It doesn't have to be as good, it needed to be great in its own way, and that's what Toy Story 4 was. I thought that the story would have been over after Toy Story 3, and I didn't know how they could make another film, but I'm glad that they did. I do not think it is even slightly possible to make a fifth one, but I suppose we'll see. My own Toy Story story goes all the way back to when the first film went into theaters and my dad took my brother and I to see it. My mom was in Indiana at the time, I don't recall ever going without her to the theater prior to that, but we loved the movie. Afterwards, whenever it was released, we bought the Toy Story game for Sega Genesis. That game was really hard, like all the other Disney games of the time, but at least with Toy Story we were able to clear a few levels. The thing that keeps Toy Story fresh is the franchise's ability to take extremely long hiatuses between films. They aren't churned out on anything resembling a regular schedule, it's easy to forget that the movies exist, and when one of them is announced that serves as a reminder of what came before. These memories and what people bring into the theater are what makes this series important.
Toy Story 4 begins with a flashback to the time between the second and third films, because what happened to Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) and why the toy wasn't in the third film needs to be explained. It's a stormy night at Andy's house, and the R.C. Car is being swept into a storm drain. The car is trying its best, but it's going in. Woody (Tom Hanks) and the other toys must undertake a rescue operation, but while this is happening, another person goes into Andy's house. The man has bought Bo Peep and the lamp for his kid, but Woody hates the idea of his friend being taken away. Bo tells him that it's part of being a toy, that the toys will be passed on and taken away, that's just how it is. Then, she and the box she's in departs. Of course, we have to continue forward, to the point after Andy donated his toys to Bonnie, making all the toys happy to be regularly played with once again. Bonnie is scheduled to head off to kindergarten, and Woody being the toy he is, he's worried about this and wants to make sure she's okay. Before leaving, she certainly was not. I should provide some backstory here. Woody has been neglected in the time after being donated, but that is something which he is determined to ensure does not last. Bonnie doesn't have a great first day, but Woody has decided to sneak into her backpack for this reason. He places a spork and some other stuff from the trash on her desk, which will lead to something being created and becoming her favorite toy.
Forky (Tony Hale) is the result, and when Bonnie puts Forky in her backpack, he comes to life. This shocks Woody, but what he doesn't understand is Forky's existential crisis. Forky is made to go into the trash, not to be a toy. Forky tries to throw himself into the trash over, over, and over again. Before this happens, we see all the toys from the past movies adjusting to their new roles. Eventually, Bonnie and her family go on a road trip in an RV. They bring all Bonnie's toys along with them, but Forky still believes that he belongs in the trash. This culminates in Forky taking a dive out of the RV window, but Woody thinks he can make it five miles before the morning, so he jumps out too and finds Forky. After a talk, they start heading back to the RV park where the family is staying, but there's an issue of sorts. When walking through the town, Woody sees Bo's lamp at an antique store. He cannot help himself, he walks inside. He and Forky encounter a doll, Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), and Gabby has control over these ventriloquist dolls. Anyway, Gabby offers to take them to Bo, but Gabby really wants Woody's voice box. He escapes the store, but he's lost. Forky remained behind in the store and the entire purpose of this journey was to bring Bonnie's favorite toy back, but Gabby is trying to take part of Woody away for herself. Woody has the strong need to find Bo Peep though. At the same time, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) wants to bring Woody back to the RV, he's going to try his best and will not be deterred.
I have very few complaints about Toy Story 4, but I think I should get them out of the way to start things off. I think the inherent logic of the universe established in the other films is played around with a little too much. I do not like the toys being animated in such close proximity to aware human beings. I also would have liked more focus on the toys from the original film, but that didn't happen and it is what it is. Now that those things are out of the way, I thought this was a great film although not as good as the others. The final twenty minutes or so of Toy Story 4 may have had the most emotional impact of the entire series though, I felt myself being really bummed out until the mid-credits scenes came on and cheered me back up. I think, not to spoil anything, that this series is over now. What really says a lot is that the filmmakers were able to make a spork into an interesting character, one that gives the film the humor it needs in order to balance things out. Another thing I would say is that Toy Story 4 doesn't hit the happiness button for an adult the same way the other films do, but there's nothing automatically wrong with that, this statement also seemed to not apply to the kids who were there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that a franchise like this means different things to different people, and that the people who watch these films will get different things from them. The largest praise I can give is that nobody is getting bad feelings from the film.
Considering that this is a film series about toys who have humanity, my expectations for these films shouldn't be so high, but the general quality of these is so high that I can't help myself. Toy Story 4 matched my expectations and then some, which is a rarity with the films that came out this year. The only franchise movie that met my expectations at all was Avengers: Endgame, the rest absolutely did not. I can't explain why, but they didn't, and because of that this has been a terrible year for films. I don't watch a lot of animated movies, and I know some critically acclaimed ones were released, but I can't testify to the quality of them. The reason I watched Toy Story 4 is because of the attachment to the story, because it started when I was a kid, and those are things that some people just can't let go. Toy Story 4 is a charming movie, it's heartening, simple as that. I'm also going to point out that this film is beyond strange and not what I would have expected from a Disney movie's plot. That's part of why I had such a good time and have been this verbose about a cartoon when I never watch them or have interest in them. Anyway, I don't think this is the best film of the year so far but it's pretty damn close, and I think this is almost certain to get Oscar recognition in multiple categories.
8.5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame 3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Rocketman
10. High Flying Bird
11. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
12. Captain Marvel
13. Long Shot
14. Shazam!
15. Paddleton
16. Hotel Mumbai
17. Cold Pursuit
18. Shaft
19. Happy Death Day 2U
20. Ma
21. Greta
22. Aladdin
23. Triple Frontier
24. Fighting with My Family
25. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
26. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
27. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
28. Brexit
29. The Dirt
30. Velvet Buzzsaw
31. Little
32. Alita: Battle Angel
33. The Kid
34. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
35. The Upside
36. The Dead Don't Die
37. Dumbo
38. The Hummingbird Project
39. Escape Room
40. Tolkien
41. Captive State
42. The Highwaymen
43. Pet Sematary
44. The Intruder
45. Brightburn
46. What Men Want
47. Men in Black: International
48. Unicorn Store
49. The Curse of La Llorona
50. Miss Bala
51. Hellboy
52. Glass
53. Dark Phoenix
54. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
55. The Hustle
56. The Best of Enemies
57. The Prodigy
58. Polar
59. Serenity
Did you stick around for the end credits scene? GF and I were ready to leave, but we started talking to a couple people who were still there and just by chance caught it.
Did you stick around for the end credits scene? GF and I were ready to leave, but we started talking to a couple people who were still there and just by chance caught it.
I thought the movie was just fine but with how perfectly and beautifully the third one ended, it seemed kind of unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. I won't be mad when they crank out more of these since most of the characters are terrific but the story will always end at 3 for me.
Did you stick around for the end credits scene? GF and I were ready to leave, but we started talking to a couple people who were still there and just by chance caught it.
So, you know how the lamp comes out and stomps on the I in Pixar in order to take it's place at the beginning? At the end, Duke Kaboom comes out and does the same thing on his bike while doing some poses. Then the Combat Carl dressed in white, who had his high 5 attempts ignored during the film, comes out and successfully high 5's Duke.
Documentaries like Human Flow often leave me without words and too depressed to write anything of consequence. So, I'm going keep this short and to the point. Human Flow seems to have been filmed over a whole year, it is a documentary that seems to be a cry for help on a subject that needs so much more exposure. The refugee crisis did not stop, it merely faded out of public consciousness because it is easier for people to ignore that this is happening than it is for the world to do something about it. The focus of Human Flow winds up being on migration to Europe, it's unavoidable for that to become the focus due to the amount of people entering Europe and the ease with which someone can make a documentary film. There are many clips from Middle Eastern countries, but naturally those are more dangerous, the stories are more difficult to expose, and I applaud the filmmakers for going there at all. The goal is not to merely report and show our current refugee crisis, but those that we have forgotten long ago. The camps in Lebanon, the prison camp of Gaza, Calais, Jordan, Egypt, the list goes on and on. These are still refugee camps but the end result of the lack of resolution to these situations and the unwillingness of the governments housing refugees to do something about it has led to those camps becoming people's homes. They are born in them, they never leave, and presumably they are going to die in those camps as well.
This film can best be described as an epic, Human Flow is careful not to focus too much on any specific group of people, the film is keenly aware that there are too many groups of refugees on our planet and shows as many of them as possible. The thing I found most depressing about Human Flow was the inevitable likelihood that there will be more refugees and a world more and more unwilling to house them. We are going to have to learn how to live with one another because countries are going to become less inhabitable. This leads to a lot of moral questions about bad people from those countries that I cannot answer or even begin to put down. Their existence is what jeopardizes the refugee, leads to xenophobia, and to countries disallowing them from entry, but the film is apolitical and entirely focused on the refugee and not why these things are happening to them. There is no way to answer these sorts of questions in any case, all matters are complex beyond a simplistic paragraph or two. A refugee is stripped of their humanity, of their home and their rights, of their ability to have food, but it's better than what's currently going on in their countries and that's what we know. I am also a believer that in some of the cases where these people come from, the refugee crisis is a long time in coming, these are groups that have wanted to leave their awful conditions for generations. Social media, in some cases the new lack of brutal dictator, the ease of transportation, and the desperation when the conditions have never improved is what has led to this.
The director himself is a refugee, he is rich but he was also a political prisoner and is unable to return home. His experiences as an activist serve to drive the film, he knows what people need to see and how to bring it to us. Human Flow has what I would consider to be haunting cinematography. The images show the world as it is, a beautiful place to be certain, but it is one that humanity has done a horrible number on. We accept that people have to live next to sewage and shit, to burn and pillage as they please, to imprison groups of people, this is just how it is. I think there are a few problems with the approach of the director though. I loved the grand scope of the film, but the way it is filmed presents a problem where the imagery is not gritty enough. I don't think I care for the tracking shots here at all even though I understand the point of them. Human Flow has no levity, which I thought was fine, but it's very difficult to recommend that someone watch this as a feature. Human Flow also lacks a driving point and doesn't outlay what it is attempting to achieve, and the subjects aren't shown for very long as things skip around. I think this is still a strong documentary and intelligent piece of filmmaking. There are so many devastating things shown here, when the film was over I had nothing to say, but I've pushed through to provide some information because it's eating away at me. What I think this film is most effective at doing is making sure that people understand the grand scope of this crisis, and the failures of humanity are here for all to see.
In a rarity, my brother had gotten around to seeing a film before I did, when he saw Late Night in Las Vegas last weekend. Now it was my turn, and while I wasn't as jazzed up about the movie as he was, I would say it was quite good. Amazon Studios, on the other hand, may not quite be as pleased. They shelled out a lot of money to have the honor of distributing Late Night, and it isn't going too well for them. They will certainly lose money, not that they don't have it, but this reinforces something I've been saying all year. Comedy is dead at the box office. For good. Nobody is paying to watch these movies anymore when they can see shitty comedy on Netflix. So, it's dead, and I don't know what the future of this genre will be. I will point out that the comedic aspects of Late Night aren't the best things about it, there isn't a lot here that will make you slap your armrests. The strengths of the film lie in its drama, in the chemistry of the cast and their ability to bounce off one another, and of course in what the two leads bring to the table. A lot of people didn't care for Kelly Kapoor but I'm not one of them, I thought she was a good character...but this is not that kind of performance from Mindy Kaling. It's different, and it's nice, which is what I thought of the rest of this movie. Of course, maybe comedy isn't dead, and what gets people in the theater is something a bit more than just nice. I don't know though.
Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a talk show host in New York City who has been doing this job for a long time. Much too long, in fact. Her show has become stale, and the fact of the matter is that she is also very rude. She has a writer room, it's full of men and I cannot name all of them because they all weren't important. The ones that were, were Mancuso (Paul Watler Hauser), Reynolds (John Early), Tom (Reid Scott), Charlie (Hugh Dancy), and Burditt (Max Casella). The team's leader is Brad (Denis O'Hare), who takes all the jokes the guys write, picks the best ones, and places them in the show as need be. Tom is also the head monologue writer, so they all have a system of white male mediocrity even though the film doesn't come out to say as such. The film establishes that Katherine has been a late night host since 1991, the only woman in the field, but the makeup of her writing team says it all. Some guy walks in and asks for a raise because he had a family, but he's rebuffed and Katherine gives him a speech about how he hasn't done anything to earn a raise. The ratings have been sinking for a long time and so is interest in the show. Caroline (Amy Ryan) is the network head and she's getting restless, enough is enough and the show needs to deliver. Katherine has been avoiding her calls, so overall this isn't the best situation for a talk show. When the complaining man is fired, a replacement is needed.
Enter Molly (Mindy Kaling), a woman from central Pennsylvania who was working at a chemical plant. How did she get this opportunity? She won an essay contest that would allow her to meet an executive, so she met the executive of the network's parent company, which allowed her to get a meeting with Brad. Unbeknownst to Molly, Katherine needed a new writer and demanded a woman, so this works out to her benefit. When she makes Brad laugh, she gets the job for 13 weeks. It's time to make shit happen. These things with Katherine and Caroline, they're about to get a lot worse though. Caroline wants to fire Katherine after this season and replace her with Daniel Tennant (Ike Barinholtz), a horrible comedian who has a large and faithful audience. This leads to Katherine wanting to make changes to the show, but when she meets her writers, that's not exactly how things work out. This just isn't who Katherine is, and she's also distracted. Her husband Walter (John Lithgow) has Parkinson's disease, and he thought that Katherine knew all along the show sucked. Of course, the new writers don't much care for Molly, because she has no experience in this business and is trying to tell people what to do. That she's a lifelong fan of Katherine's is no consequence, she is not safe from the barrage everyone faces. The simple fact is, they have to fix the show. If they can't, it's gone for good, and there will be no more chances for Katherine to have another show.
Late Night is the kind of movie that brings a timely message, one that means to tell the viewer that society is going to continue to push forward. Either you will be left behind or not, but the meritocracy is here and it is coming harder and harder. I found this to be a better drama than comedy, but that isn't to say the movie isn't very funny. I laughed good quite a few times. Everyone here is really well cast, and Kaling having written this part for herself leads to it being different than the other parts she's also written for herself. The best comedies of late have tended to veer into dramatic tones, and the writing of her own character is part of why that's the case. Kaling is not grating here, she's normal, she doesn't like being shit on, but it happens to her all the time. Molly is an appealing character. There are also a few good jokes about how awful late night television is these days, particularly as it relates to Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon is horrible so I laughed quite hard at this. The way the show is revamped and one of Katherine's first segments afterwards bombs is also quite poignant in the way that some people are perceived to be unintelligent and are talked down to because of that.
Late Night isn't a perfect film, but I think Emma Thompson had a near perfect performance. For someone who isn't a comedian to have this level of timing, there aren't enough words but I thought it was fantastic. Ike Barinholtz also made for a solid facsimile of Dane Cook. I don't care for the way some of this film plays out near the end, particularly as it relates to Katherine and Caroline's show being cancelled storyline. It ends pretty badly and much too quickly, I didn't find it realistic in the least. The thing is, at the same time, it's not the most important of the storylines. The thing that carries the most importance is the relationship between Katherine and her new writer, the only woman on staff. I have left out some other storylines that I either liked or didn't care for, but ultimately the film comes down to the above. I think there's also good bits with how Katherine needs to adapt to the changing world and how other entertainers have had to do the same even though they may not want to. In the end, Late Night is not going to be a film where a lot of people see it and tell you this is the perfect film for the time. Films that focus on the inside of show business though, I have said this before but I love that shit. This is no exception and I left the theater with a smile on my face.
7/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Rocketman
10. High Flying Bird
11. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
12. Captain Marvel
13. Long Shot
14. Shazam!
15. Paddleton 16. Late Night
17. Hotel Mumbai
18. Cold Pursuit
19. Shaft
20. Happy Death Day 2U
21. Ma
22. Greta
23. Aladdin
24. Triple Frontier
25. Fighting with My Family
26. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
27. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
28. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
29. Brexit
30. The Dirt
31. Velvet Buzzsaw
32. Little
33. Alita: Battle Angel
34. The Kid
35. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
36. The Upside
37. The Dead Don't Die
38. Dumbo
39. The Hummingbird Project
40. Escape Room
41. Tolkien
42. Captive State
43. The Highwaymen
44. Pet Sematary
45. The Intruder
46. Brightburn
47. What Men Want
48. Men in Black: International
49. Unicorn Store
50. The Curse of La Llorona
51. Miss Bala
52. Hellboy
53. Glass
54. Dark Phoenix
55. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
56. The Hustle
57. The Best of Enemies
58. The Prodigy
59. Polar
60. Serenity
The Outsider is Mr. Zandvliet's follow-up to Land of Mine, which I thought was a great movie. Land of Mine was about land mines after World War II, when German prisoners were forced to clean up the mess their superior officers decided to make when they placed land mines all over Danish beaches. These two movies could not possibly be more different than each other. Zandvliet continues with the post-WW2 motif, but this one isn't good, it isn't nearly as related to World War II. In a sense, it's an examination of what could happen to an American who stayed in Japan, but it's a horrible one. This film is too long, it does not need to feel like this, and it's extremely boring. I think I have a lot to say about this one, but I'm struggling with an opening paragraph. One of the questions I have here is why Jared Leto would go from playing the Joker to this, it defies all logic and his character looks too much like the Joker to see anything else at all. There is nothing even slightly good about this, what I'm curious to know is why the director would go from making what he made to making something so absurdly unrealistic. I'll try to help you understand the premise so that you can see exactly what I mean. I'm laughing as I write this because as I'm formulating the sentences in my head, this sounds crazier and crazier. How did this even get made? The Outsider was in the can for over a year before being dropped on Netflix last March, so I'm sure everyone involved knew this wasn't any good.
The Outsider refers to Nick Lowell (Jared Leto), who is for some reason imprisoned in Osaka after the Allied occupation of Japan has ended. He is the only gaijin in this prison, he hardly understands the language, and this is a situation that I would not want to be in. He seemingly doesn't care for this situation either, and because he can't speak Japanese, the guards treat him like shit. Most of the people in there are Yakuza, and at the very start of the film, he saves a man named Kiyoshi (Tadanobu Asano) from being hanged to death. Saving Kiyoshi, it turns out, was a very beneficial move that set a lot of things in motion. Kiyoshi is part of the Shiromatsu Yakuza clan, he wants to repay the debt by getting Nick sprung from jail. But first, Kiyoshi must do something to get out of jail himself. I don't want anyone to watch this, so I'll just spoil the movie. He has to knife himself in the gut in order to make that happen. When everyone gets out, he is offered a job by the Yakuza. There is an American with a factory, Anthony Panetti (Rory Cochrane). Nick is sent to deal with him however he must, and it turns out that things aren't going to go well for the Shiromatsu's. Anthony has already been talked to by a rival clan from Kobe, the Seizu's. They sent an American the first time they met him, and that made the deal happen. Nick responds to that by beating the guy to death with a typewriter.
Nick's solution to everything is to respond with violence, and when his backstory is filled in later on, we learn that he may have committed war crimes, and that may be the reason he wound up in prison. The Outsider is just not the kind of film that expands on these things or bothers to make sense. After this happens, the Shiromatsu clan retreats to their strip club. The Seizu's walk in, and there's a disagreement that nearly ends in a shootout, it is further confirmation that Nick is dangerously aggressive. Kiyoshi likes this and tasks Nick with more violent jobs, and there's other ones like driving his sister Miyu (Shiori Kutsuna) home. Nick winds up sleeping with her, but there are some issues even though he becomes more involved with the clan. That night Nick slept with Miyu, he was followed by Orochi (Kippei Shiina), the #2 in the clan. Their leader is Akihiro (Min Tanaka), a much older man who won't take any shit. Over the course of the movie, we see some rituals done to and by Nick, in some ways they feel like fetishizing of the Yakuza and I don't particularly care for them. I suppose the best way to end this paragraph is by talking about the impending war between the Seizu and Shiromatsu. Yeah, it's definitely going to happen and this gaijin is a large reason why. He's coming into the clan and doing more and more things for Akihiro, this isn't going to be something accepted for long.
The best way to describe this movie is that it is a much worse version of The Last Samurai. It's worse because the Yakuza are not something to be respected and the director centers his movie around trying to do so. Their traditions and what they do to people is not to be respected, they are bad people. I haven't seen The Last Samurai in an extremely long time, but while both films feature a white protagonist doing foreign things for a group of people, The Last Samurai has more respect and honor for the traditions displayed in the film. I won't say this is a white savior movie because there is not a single good character in this movie. I found Nick to be a destructive force who brought harm to everything he touched, to be a bad person who was said to have committed war crimes, and I don't understand the logic of anything that I just watched. The length of the story just kills me, and this blatantly attempts to be a Refn flick and simply cannot match up. We have a protagonist who doesn't talk, surrounded by other people who have to drive the story, but in this case the director doesn't know how to pull that off. The film is also not visually pleasing at all, everything is played too safe in that regard. The film contains just about every cliche you can think of. Silence it certainly is not, and this may be the worst case of an gaijin infiltrating Japanese society that I have seen.
To the point of the man becoming Yakuza and all that stuff, it's complete bullshit and I think just about everyone knows that. The plot is also telegraphed, so there's no solace to be found in that either. The point where this guy is getting tattoos all over himself without knowing what they mean is a parody of sorts, I don't know how anyone could have thought those scenes were a good idea. Every character presents similar problems to me. The hot sister only exists so that Nick can fuck her, because of course she would want to bang the American guy. The characters that can and can't speak English also amuse me for various reasons. I don't think this would have been good, but The Outsider would have been better if it was focused on the Japanese perspective of having an American come into their clan and do all these things. This is simply a really bad screenplay, a film that should not have been made. I have to cut myself off here, everything about this was boring and the film was very difficult to get through. There are no redeeming qualities I can think of at all, the only thing that wasn't a failure was the craft of filming the picture. One thing to keep in mind is that there is nothing worse than being bored.
2.5/10
2018 Films Ranked
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. Suspiria
27. Vice
28. The Old Man & the Gun
29. Vox Lux
30. Bad Times at the El Royale
31. The Other Side of the Wind
32. Searching
33. A Simple Favor
34. The Hate U Give
35. Unsane
36. Disobedience
37. Boy Erased
38. Bumblebee
39. Mary Poppins Returns
40. Creed II
41. Hold the Dark
42. The Land of Steady Habits
43. Halloween
44. Ant-Man and the Wasp
45. Beirut
46. Mary Queen of Scots
47. Aquaman
48. Outlaw King
49. Overlord
50. Ben Is Back
51. Monsters and Men
52. The Mule
53. On the Basis of Sex
54. Bohemian Rhapsody
55. White Boy Rick
56. Papillon
57. Game Night
58. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
59. Instant Family
60. Alpha
61. The Front Runner
62. The Predator
63. Apostle
64. The Angel
65. The Commuter
66. Beautiful Boy
67. The Nun
68. Operation Finale
69. The Equalizer 2
70. The Spy Who Dumped Me
71. Yardie
72. Bird Box
73. 12 Strong
74. Venom
75. Skyscraper
76. The Meg
77. Assassination Nation
78. The Girl in the Spider's Web
79. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
80. 22 July
81. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
82. The Little Stranger
83. Tomb Raider
84. Night School
85. The 15:17 To Paris
86. Peppermint
87. Mile 22
88. The First Purge
89. Hunter Killer
90. The Cloverfield Paradox
91. Mute
92. Kin
93. Hell Fest
94. Proud Mary
95. Robin Hood
96. The Happytime Murders 97. The Outsider
98. Slender Man
Every time I see Jared Leto, I just get irritated. Also, this was originally supposed to star Tom Hardy and was also meant to be Takashi Miike's english language debut. What could have been.
Every time I see Jared Leto, I just get irritated. Also, this was originally supposed to star Tom Hardy and was also meant to be Takashi Miike's english language debut. What could have been.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), directed by Luc Besson
In Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, we have a film that received some truly horrible reviews. I am curious to know why the lead actor was cast when everything was so obviously wrong with his casting, and why he wasn't replaced at any point during the film. High concept science-fiction has gone by the wayside because of how much it costs, because there is very little reward at the end of creating something original. The fact is that people don't really want to see original, huge budget science-fiction. I do not understand why someone would make this film with that in mind, but they did. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is adapted from a French graphic novel that I know absolutely nothing about, that I'm sure nobody else outside of Europe knew anything about either. Surely this could not have been something a person imagined would make so much money? Except, obviously they did, and when a film bombs to this extent there are major ramifications. As soon as the film bombed, Luc Besson was encountered with rape accusations, which I'm sure are true because they nearly always are, corroborated by multiple actresses who said the same thing. I am not sure what to think about that, but there is a trend that these accusations come out when someone's power and status has waned. Anyway, fuck this guy, but I'll still watch his movie because I'm curious. I'm going to see Anna as well because the preview interested me. But, as it comes to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, I would say that someone should ignore the reviews and judge for themselves. A person may like this, or they may find the film far worse than what they thought it would be.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets boasts one of the most audacious film openings that I've ever seen, it's nearly impossible for me to describe what happened but I can tell you some of what happened. The film starts off at the point of our joint mission to space with the Soviets, and we establish the International Space Station some time after that. As that goes, along come races of different people from different parts of the galaxy, and they create a cluster of ships and technology. Once it becomes so enormous it may fall out of orbit, it is relocated to deep space and called Alpha. In the end, Alpha becomes inhabited by about 30 million people or so, who come from thousands of planets. The film subsequently kicks over to a planet which is clearly not Earth, called Mul. There are creatures who live on Mul, they fish for pearls that contain large amounts of energy, then there are small animals who ingest the pearls in order to replicate them. Wreckage from a battle above comes down through the sky, then an enormous spaceship falls and causes an explosion that pretty much serves to kill everything on the planet. A few of the people are able to trap themselves in a discarded vessel that had crashed on the planet some time before that, and they also trap themselves inside. Unfortunately, the princess of the planet does not make it, but she sends a telepathic message to someone.
The telepathic message is sent to Valerian (Dane DeHaan), a major in the United Human Federation. This is a world government formed by Earth's countries, it has been tasked with preserving peace across the galaxy. Major Valerian has a partner, Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne), and she doesn't put up with his shit at all. He has a major crush on her, and this is one of the worst facets of the movie. They have a mission, even though he has received this signal across time and space. The mission is to retrieve a converter that is able to replicate anything it eats, and there's no surprise that this is the animal from Mul. The animal is one of a kind and owned by someone like Jabba the Hutt, Igon Siruss (voiced by John Goodman). For some insane reason, Valerian asks his partner to marry him and that's dropped on us out of nowhere, but she doesn't want to because he's a scum. When they arrive on the planet their mission takes place on, we learn that the converter absolutely is the animal seen in the mission. Here's the deal. Their commander is Arun Filitt (Clive Owen), he is stationed on Alpha. He says that the center of the station has been infected and is now toxic and the infection is growing. This converter is very important, but why? What is the infection in the first place?
You see, the plot for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is pretty much all over the place. I didn't know how to end my synopsis because it takes so long to get to the point of the film. You would have to be on LSD to come up with some of the shots and concepts seen in this film. The colors of everything, the ideas for these aliens, the costumes are all beyond ridiculous to an extent that is still impossible for me to believe. The side characters were far more excellent than the leads, which is another big problem. Dane DeHaan must have been asked to do a Keanu Reeves impression, and it was absolutely terrible on every level. The role desperately needed someone with the charisma to match the side characters played by people like Rihanna and Ethan Hawke. The lack of that just kills the plot absolutely dead, but this isn't a wonderful script in any way either. It takes far too long to get to the point and I thought there was some difficulty with tying everything together. There were loose ends left with the intention of creating a sequel, but I thought there were more than merely loose ends. The performance from DeHaan, I've already mentioned it but it defies description. The movie is so full of extraneous parts that everything he does is overshadowed and I'm left wanting to see more of those parts than I do him. The film is about what happens when groups of people come together, the cover-up that may result from doing bad things, but in the end it's mostly about Luc Besson wanting to dress people up about crazy costumes and go crazy with his CGI budget.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets should have been a good film. All the elements are here to ensure that's the case, but the title character and plot torpedo the shit out of that notion. I will admit that I could very easily have loved this film, but the stuff with Valerian himself is absolutely laughable on every level. I don't understand how someone could create a world that I perceive to be so interesting and bog it down with something so bad. I don't think the film would have been a success in any case, largely because when it comes to space epics, all people want is Star Wars. Nothing's going to change that either. Ultimately the film also drops too much information on the viewer, but in some ways that's appealing to me. Why? I can manage to keep up with it is why. I'm surprised that I agree with HQ in the case of a film such as this, but oddly enough I really do. There's a bit of camp in play here as well, and the film is too long, but again I appreciate that a film drops a lot of information on me when the information makes sense, which this does. The exposition is on point, but the lead character is not, and he's really bad. I don't know what to say about that, but Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets does receive a passing grade from me. What that means is, I could watch it again without changing the channel. The visual effects are enough on their own.
6/10
2017 Films Ranked
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. The Shape of Water
4. Get Out
5. Good Time
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Mudbound
8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
9. Logan
10. Baby Driver
11. The Post
12. Wonder Woman
13. The Big Sick
14. Lady Bird
15. Wind River
16. Thor: Ragnarok
17. Logan Lucky
18. The Beguiled
19. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
20. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
21. Brawl in Cell Block 99
22. John Wick: Chapter 2
23. The Disaster Artist
24. The Lost City of Z
25. First They Killed My Father
26. A Ghost Story
27. Darkest Hour
28. Spider-Man: Homecoming
29. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
30. Sweet Virginia
31. It
32. Battle of the Sexes
33. Brad's Status
34. Okja
35. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
36. Kong: Skull Island
37. It Comes at Night
38. Crown Heights
39. Split
40. 1922
41. Personal Shopper
42. Landline
43. Beatriz at Dinner
44. Chuck
45. Atomic Blonde
46. Shot Caller
47. Brigsby Bear
48. Wheelman
49. The Lego Batman Movie
50. Megan Leavey
51. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
52. Marshall
53. Menashe
54. Walking Out
55. American Made
56. Annabelle: Creation
57. Beauty and the Beast
58. Imperial Dreams
59. Gifted
60. Murder on the Orient Express
61. The Zookeeper's Wife
62. The Glass Castle
63. Free Fire
64. Win It All
65. The Wall
66. Life
67. My Cousin Rachel 68. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
69. Breathe
70. The Man Who Invented Christmas
71. Maudie
72. Sleight
73. Alone in Berlin
74. A United Kingdom
75. Trespass Against Us
76. The Mountain Between Us
77. War Machine
78. Happy Death Day
79. Lowriders
80. Justice League
81. To the Bone
82. Ghost in the Shell
83. Wakefield
84. Bright
85. The Hitman's Bodyguard
86. XXX: Return of Xander Cage
87. The Mummy
88. The Greatest Showman
89. Rough Night
90. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
91. Sand Castle
92. The Circle
93. American Assassin
94. CHiPs
95. Death Note
96. The Belko Experiment
97. The Great Wall
98. Fist Fight
99. Baywatch
100. Snatched
101. Wilson
102. The Dark Tower
103. Queen of the Desert
104. The House
105. Flatliners
106. Sleepless
107. All Eyez on Me
108. The Book of Henry
109. The Space Between Us
That's one of the few films that I genuinely don't understand how anybody can give it a 4/10 or lower type score. The plot is messy, the lead actor is one of the worst casting decisions in a movie, but the visuals and the ambition are just so larger than life that it has to count for something.
I've also noticed Besson has this weird thing about casting... flat actors in general for his films. Even going back to Leon and The Fifth Element, while good actors in Jean Reno & Bruce Willis, they've never resonated with me as super charismatic. Especially opposite Gary Oldman or Chris Tucker and even Natalie Portman (IMO) had a bigger vibe when on screen with Reno. Then you follow that up with the casting of Jet Li in Unleashed opposite a fun performance from Bob Hoskins to the casting of Scarlett Johansson in Lucy and it becomes a noticeable casting quirk of his.
I should start this review of Child's Play with a bad admission. I have not seen the other Chucky films, I don't even know what they're about other than that I know they feature a doll that kills shit. This approach allowed me to go into 2019's Child's Play with an open mind, I can't compare this to anything else if I haven't seen them after all. The problem is that I didn't think this was any good. I know, it got good reviews! That doesn't always matter, just because someone found merit in something doesn't mean that I found enough merit in the same thing. There's definitely merit here but almost none of it relates to Chucky, or rather I should say to how the story concludes. I understand perfectly well why someone would make another story in this franchise, it's 2019, this is the year of unnecessary sequels and remakes and reboots. On some level this was necessary in that it seems a lot of people wanted to watch it, but the plot is a mess. The things I liked about Child's Play are almost exclusively in the first half of the film. Unfortunately, this is a case where trying to modernize a story contributes to the film's downfall. That all being said, it isn't completely terrible, I just don't want to watch the movie again. Take that for what it's worth. One bonus worth pointing out before I start, is that Child's Play is so short that if you don't like the film, it'll be over before you know it. I can also admit that I did laugh quite a bit.
Kaslan Corporation is a group that has their hands in all sorts of things, and it seems that the world in Child's Play is effectively run by their phone apps. Their CEO (Tim Matheson) has just launched Buddi, which is a new form of doll that is connected to the cloud, that takes videos through its eyes and can be used for all sorts of different things. If you need an Uber, just use Buddi and he'll get you one. Plug him into a cord and you can see these videos, and Buddi will learn new things the more you interact with him. Sounds great, right? That's what you'd think until you see how these things are made. At a factory in Vietnam, where this corporation exploits cheap labor of course, these Buddi dolls are assembled by the underpaid and overworked. One of the employees is about to be fired for poor work, they cannot handle this as obviously they need their job. This leads to the bastard taking the computer chip and turning off all its safety features, which allows the toy to potentially become violent. For whatever reason, once they're done, they head up to the top of the building and jump down, killing themselves. What sense does that make? That's hardly the last strange plot decision in this film, I thought this was the writer wanting to do something to make people talk in the aftermath of the Buddi introductory scenes. Whatever.
Of course, nobody caught the Vietnamese guy reprogramming the doll, so it was thrown in with everything else. Karen (Aubrey Plaza) is a single mother who lives in Chicago with her son Andy (Gabriel Bateman). Andy is deaf and in need of a new hearing aid, while Karen is working double shifts at the local version of Walmart. They've just moved to Chicago, and Andy has no friends, something which bothers his mom greatly. Karen has a boyfriend as well, Shane (David Lewis), and Andy doesn't care for Shane or even want to be in the apartment while he's around. One day, someone returns a defective Buddi doll, or at least it looks defective in some way. Anyway, the person doesn't want it anymore, so Karen blackmails her boss so that she can bring the thing home as an early birthday present for her son. At first, Andy doesn't really want it, but once it's activated, things start going well. The doll names itself Chucky (voiced by Mark Hamill), and it seems to be malfunctioning, but nothing's too weird at first. Eventually Andy becomes attached to the doll as his home life gets worse, as Shane becomes more involved with his mother and hates the kid more and more. As I already said, the violence proofing was already turned off, and this doll is going to get violent because that's how it goes. Next door, they have a neighbor, Doreen (Carlease Burke). Doreen's son Mike (Brian Tyree Henry) is a detective who stops by to visit somewhat regularly, and he talks to Andy from time to time. Andy has also made friends, Falyn (Beatrice Kitsos), Omar (Marlon Kazadi) and Pugg (Ty Consiglio). They seem to like Chucky too.
I didn't know how to close things out because this story becomes a mess the longer it goes, but the early moments where this is more comedy than horror sat very well with me. I think the premise is as a whole something that cannot be taken seriously as a rule. I found it more funny than anything else until Chucky finally killed someone who was good, which is something that took far too long. This hasn't been a good year for film but even more so it's a bad year for horror. Very little of this has been worth my time, and some of the movies that are, are those that have a lot of humor. I have no emotional attachment to the character so maybe I'm not the best person to review Child's Play, but again, I just can't get scared by something like this. The app thing is a nice take, but the integration of it into the film is not so good. I do not understand what relation the app has to the doll because it wasn't explained well enough why someone would want to plug the doll into their phone with a USB cable. The film takes a long time getting to the point where a Buddi doll can learn these behaviors by doing what their owners tell them, that they aren't inherently programmed into the doll. Chucky would not have killed anything had Andy not pushed the right buttons in order to lead to that, but the things that happen after that point are too ridiculous for me. The film also relies on the old trick where you think someone died and they didn't, which is a sign of creative bankruptcy from where I sit.
I am keen to point out that Mark Hamill does a great job with the voice of Chucky, reminding me many times both of Brigsby Bear and his time voicing the Joker in animated material and video games. Aubrey Plaza, is...you know, I'm just going to leave it at that. Anyway, this could have been so much better and never matched my expectations once the first thirty minutes passed. It's hard to get invested in this movie, in large part because Chucky is doing things that you would want the horror villain to do all the way until the very end. When I want something and the villain gives it to me, I'm left feeling a bit empty about what I'm watching. The villain shouldn't be pleasing to this extent. Or should they? Is that how the original films work? I can't say because I haven't seen them. I thought there were good things and I thought there were bad things. Child's Play is an average film in large part because I'm having to say there's good and bad in absolutely everything that exists in the film. While the story goes off the rails, the gruesome aspects that exist in the ending are rather nice, but they probably should have been in much more of the story. A horror movie that cuts away from the doll killing the person is not what I thought this was supposed to be about.
5/10
2019 Films Ranked
1. Booksmart
2. Avengers: Endgame
3. Toy Story 4
4. Us
5. Gloria Bell
6. Arctic
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
8. The Beach Bum
9. Rocketman
10. High Flying Bird
11. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
12. Captain Marvel
13. Long Shot
14. Shazam!
15. Paddleton
16. Late Night
17. Hotel Mumbai
18. Cold Pursuit
19. Shaft
20. Happy Death Day 2U
21. Ma
22. Greta
23. Aladdin
24. Triple Frontier
25. Fighting with My Family
26. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
27. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
28. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
29. Brexit
30. The Dirt
31. Velvet Buzzsaw
32. Little
33. Alita: Battle Angel
34. The Kid
35. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
36. The Upside
37. The Dead Don't Die
38. Dumbo
39. The Hummingbird Project
40. Escape Room
41. Tolkien
42. Captive State
43. The Highwaymen
44. Pet Sematary
45. The Intruder 46. Child's Play
47. Brightburn
48. What Men Want
49. Men in Black: International
50. Unicorn Store
51. The Curse of La Llorona
52. Miss Bala
53. Hellboy
54. Glass
55. Dark Phoenix
56. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
57. The Hustle
58. The Best of Enemies
59. The Prodigy
60. Polar
61. Serenity
I felt the same way......at first I thought this might work out (although as you said, the "creator" character was a bunch of hot garbage that made no sense), but then as the film went on it began to fall apart and into so many offshoot directions of the core story that I was kinda dizzy with it all. I didn't care for the look of the doll either really, either.
I had read recently from the filmmaker that legally, they could not reference or homage any of the Chucky series aspects or themes, characters, etc, (except anything that was present in the first film) so that explains why they went in such a different direction. I just wish that direction would have been a bit more coherant and not a jumbled up clusterfuck of concepts.
When I first started going to the theater, I had badly wanted to see Leave No Trace. Ben Foster in a realistic drama? Sounded great to me. The problem was that there wasn't any theater near me showing the film, therefore I never saw it. It took until now, this long point of working through a backlog, to finally get something I'd wanted to watch for nearly a whole year. Was it worth it? That's something I can answer in the affirmative, this was a quality film the whole way around. There's a lot that goes into making a film like this one, I didn't initially know that Leave No Trace was adapted from a book, but I was going to say that it takes a very intelligent original script. The film also requires the subject to be handled with the care it deserves, for there to not be anything unrealistic in the film. Everything must remain grounded, when a wrench is thrown into the mix it needs to be for a damn good reason. Leave No Trace didn't have the emotional impact on me that it seemed to have on a lot of other people, but as I sit here longer and longer, the more impact the film seems to have had. Leave No Trace is rather unique in that it approaches a problem not yet addressed by media in the aftermath of our wars, of a homeless crisis that is wildly unreported upon, and the subject itself is one that explains why some people do this to themselves. The question one must pose to themselves when they decide to watch a movie is what they hope to get from it. If the answer is something realistic, something that feels real, made with craft and care, then you should probably watch Leave No Trace.
The setting is Portland, Oregon. Will (Ben Foster) is an Iraq War veteran who has major PTSD, he and his 13 year old daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) live in a public park that could best be described as the woods. I don't actually know where this is, and I can't admit to knowing anything about Portland in the first place. Their life is rather easy even though they live outdoors. They catch rain water and drink it, they play games like chess and Tom learns how to read and write. This is a choice on Will's part because he cannot handle society, it's simple as that. The details are not filled in, but that's more because the viewer does not need to know all of them in order to get the picture. Will and Tom sometimes walk down into Portland when they need more food to store, but they do eat well. Will needs money to do that, obviously, but he manages by selling his VA-issued medications to veterans who want and need them. The medication does not help him, so he doesn't take it. He still suffers from dreams at night, waking up to the sound of helicopters, who knows what he did overseas. Tom is educated even though she does not school, and they do drills during the day to ensure they are not caught. The problem with this is that they did not account for one thing. One day, Tom is reading out in the woods and a jogger hears her. When the jogger hears her, here comes the police. With the police comes a dog who can sniff the two out, which was not expected. Will is summarily arrested.
When Will is arrested, this is not good, the crime is that they were living on public land. Rather ironic considering that public land is supposed to be owned by the people, and that they were living safely. The question, obviously, is whether or not Tom was receiving the proper care a child deserves. Someone who lives outdoors cannot possibly be cared for properly. The two are taken to Social Services, where both are questioned about their lives. There are questions that Will simply cannot answer about his psychological state, but he is a veteran and this is to be expected of our veterans. The woman questioning Tom finds that she is cared for and educated, so there's no need to separate the two. The way it goes is that a farmer, Mr. Walters (Jeff Kober), he had seen their story on the news and was interested in helping. They are given a vacant house out in rural Oregon and things that will help them build their life back together. Will is given a job packing Christmas trees and Tom is supposed to go back to school. Helicopters are required to transport these trees, which Will simply cannot handle. They are also asked to go to church and deal with other people, but Will has problems with social interaction and can't take very much of that either. Even though Tom makes a friend while out one day, that simply isn't going to last. Will cannot stay in the house and Tom is his daughter. With no destination clear in mind to travel to, Will decides they should leave the house.
I usually say that a film picks up after a certain point, but when it comes to Leave No Trace that point never comes because the film already started at an elevated level. The ending of the story, such as it is, is rather sad. I have read a good complaint about Leave No Trace that I can't automatically disagree with, but I don't feel like posting it as it will taint my review. What I thought was that Leave No Trace was a great achievement in screenwriting, and that this film has been heavily ignored despite its accessible subject matter. Once again, we have a case of a movie that is tied to something very important and people don't want to watch it. In this case, the homeless crisis and how we treat our veterans is in play, but the veteran is given his medication and does not want to take it. So, to me this is more about the causes that lead to homelessness and how people deal with that. Some people, sad as it is, cannot be helped. There is no logical reason for this. The film is inherently sad as a result of this, and Leave No Trace makes no large statement attempting to solve these problems, it merely shows them to you. In showing them to you, they feel more important. There's absolutely nothing here that I would classify as being goofy. I think I am going to wind up haunted by this film, it has brought my mood down from excellent to dreary and an hour later those feelings are not gone. We'll see what I really think tomorrow.
Now that it is tomorrow, I find that the craft of the film also matches the sensitivity of the subject it handles. The cinematography is excellent, and you'd think that a film full of greenery would automatically bring that to the table, but they don't. Into the Forest is one notable example of a film that does not. The great cinematography is also not just in the forest, that would be absurd. There is one notable shot inside of the house that I thought exemplified what it would be like to tame a wild man. Will is sat on a couch wearing normal clothes that frankly look like shit and don't suit him, waiting for a daughter to come home when this was never a problem before, crawling inside of his skin because he can't handle it. The space which the character is allowed is not existent in the scenes when they are living in the woods. Anyway, I know the director has created two nicely acclaimed films before, but I have not watched either of them. I really need to because it feels like everything in her film mattered and had importance. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the story, rather I fully engaged in the experience of it and felt the lows. This is a great film, probably one of the best of 2018 even though I'm nowhere near finished with the year. There were things I missed in theater, foreign films that have value, and other films that came out before I started going. I do expect this will land somewhere in the top 20 once I've completed this list, though.
9/10
2018 Films Ranked
1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting 9. Leave No Trace
10. Black Panther
11. If Beale Street Could Talk
12. The Sisters Brothers
13. A Private War
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. Stan & Ollie
16. Green Book
17. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
18. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
19. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
20. On My Skin
21. Private Life
22. Climax
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
24. Mid90s
25. Eighth Grade
26. Sorry to Bother You
27. Suspiria
28. Vice
29. The Old Man & the Gun
30. Vox Lux
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. Disobedience
38. Boy Erased
39. Bumblebee
40. Mary Poppins Returns
41. Creed II
42. Hold the Dark
43. The Land of Steady Habits
44. Halloween
45. Ant-Man and the Wasp
46. Beirut
47. Mary Queen of Scots
48. Aquaman
49. Outlaw King
50. Overlord
51. Ben Is Back
52. Monsters and Men
53. The Mule
54. On the Basis of Sex
55. Bohemian Rhapsody
56. White Boy Rick
57. Papillon
58. Game Night
59. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
60. Instant Family
61. Alpha
62. The Front Runner
63. The Predator
64. Apostle
65. The Angel
66. The Commuter
67. Beautiful Boy
68. The Nun
69. Operation Finale
70. The Equalizer 2
71. The Spy Who Dumped Me
72. Yardie
73. Bird Box
74. 12 Strong
75. Venom
76. Skyscraper
77. The Meg
78. Assassination Nation
79. The Girl in the Spider's Web
80. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
81. 22 July
82. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
83. The Little Stranger
84. Tomb Raider
85. Night School
86. The 15:17 To Paris
87. Peppermint
88. Mile 22
89. The First Purge
90. Hunter Killer
91. The Cloverfield Paradox
92. Mute
93. Kin
94. Hell Fest
95. Proud Mary
96. Robin Hood
97. The Happytime Murders
98. The Outsider
99. Slender Man
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017), directed by Chris Smith
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is a documentary I wasn't too sure that I should watch. I have not seen Man on the Moon, but it turns out that seeing the film is not a deterrent to watch the documentary. I'm going to be shorter than usual because there's no reason to set anything up. The film is about Jim Carrey's decision to method act as Andy Kaufman. The film decides to focus on how zany and goofy it was rather than the actual impact of his method acting and how harmful it was both to himself and to the other people on set. I am perhaps not the best person to talk about this film after the fact because I already did a lot of my talking while I was watching things. The film is largely made up of unearthed footage from the shooting of Man on the Moon, but there are two other factors. Effectively this is a documentary about Jim Carrey, one which is narrated by himself in both the past and present. The documentary is also directed by someone who has a clear fascination with Jim Carrey, he has included a lot of things that I found amusing, but those things also serve to muddy the picture up and distort what I thought the documentary should be about.
Ultimately, the focus of the documentary is wrong. I think this is a good documentary because the footage from Jim's past is illuminating, it lets us know what kind of person that he is and how committed he was to his craft. This, however, is not a good thing. There is no reason to take method acting to this extent, this is also not a proper application of the medium. There is nothing in method acting that states you are supposed to be a cunt to everyone you're involved with. Was Andy Kaufman? I don't know, but there's something to be said about separating yourself from a character. If Daniel Day Lewis was playing a bad person, there's no requirement for him to go out and kill someone. The problem with the documentary is that the director is incapable of making this distinction where the method acting of Carrey playing Kaufman and Tony Clifton is not just a joke gone bad, but a joke gone offensively wrong beyond repair. It's not a joke at all, the movie shouldn't be about Jim Carrey being so zany because he became Andy Kaufman, but the director is incapable of making that more clear. I thought Jim Carrey was actually trying to say that, but he's either too much of a narcissist to know how, or the director did a poor job of making that clear with some of the background footage he was showing. I haven't decided yet.
There are other issues with method acting as it relates to a dead comedian. When the joke goes too far, it's way too far. Kaufman's family member who was on set found it cathartic, but the other actors who knew Kaufman certainly did not. There's a bit of gall to act like such a douchebag when there were people on set who knew Kaufman. The stuff with Jerry Lawler was absolutely ridiculous and stupid, but I think there's something more insipid about that than meets the eye. There are scenes where people are goading Carrey into saying bad things about himself under the guise of being Kaufman, and that's where I found some poignancy in the film. Carrey seemed a bit unable to admit that to himself when talking in the present about this, and while the whole situation as engineered was certainly his fault, the encouragement people were giving him to destroy his own mental stability is rather beyond the pale. The way people would laugh at Carrey as Kaufman saying horrible things about Jim Carrey was rather sad. I think the documentary is good even though the director seems to not realize that.
I also think that a lot of the people who reviewed Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond seemed to land on the side of the director and not quite understand what they were watching. There are certainly ways to say this is a bad documentary. Jim Carrey is an asshole and there is nothing good about what he was doing, end of story. In that way, it is illuminating because we see the side of method acting that we haven't often seen before, method acting gone wrong. The whole documentary is rather surreal. Let me explain what I mean. The focus of the documentary is off to the point where a magazine wrote this in their review:
"Jim & Andy is fascinating, but it lands on a weird message: Thank goodness Andy Kaufman existed so Jim Carrey could play him in a movie."
Doesn't everyone see the sickness in an industry where someone can type that out with a straight face and mean it? The problem with this documentary is that the director is unable to pose those questions to Carrey, because he's intimidated by someone he thinks is a comedic genius or because he knows Jim wouldn't answer them. I don't know which is true. That's what's wrong with this documentary. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond could have been an all-time classic documentary though. What was needed was for someone to push the right buttons, and those buttons were there to be pushed in order to make Jim Carrey answer why he did these things when filming Man on the Moon. It seems to me that his sadness and mental problems are of his own creation, but that's a question I have that will remain unanswered. If every documentary was like this, where the director incorrectly focused on someone being wacky instead of why they were driven to do these things, that wouldn't be so great. The counter is that there's so much enlightening material, it takes the viewer deep behind the curtain to see the production of a film that sounded thoroughly unbearable to be a part of. For that reason alone, I liked it.
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