Moonlight (2016)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Adapted Screenplay    Okay, so the Oscars are in about 15 minutes and I have seen almost none of the nominees.  I knew this was going to be an off year, but holy crap.  I think I only saw 16 out of around 54.  That is not a good percentage.  My plan was to watch a couple more today but I went to a brunch that turned into an eight-hour drinking session.

Don't judge me.

If I only had to watch one Oscar nominee this year, I would have liked for it to have been this one.  Moonlight is such a beautiful film.  Someone I read had described it as a tonal poem and they're not wrong.  It's hard to even come up with a synopsis that does it justice.

A withdrawn, emotionally abused Miami boy (Alex Hibbert) is taken in by the world's nicest crack dealer, Juan (Mahershala Ali), as a surrogate father, but soon realizes that Juan is also the one who sells crack to the boy's mother (Naomie Harris).  He grows into a troubled teen (Ashton Sanders) struggling with his own identity and sexuality, before becoming a man (Trevante Rhodes) who has embraced all the things he once abhorred.

You are doing yourself a disservice if you don't see this movie.  At the very least, this should win Best Adapted Screenplay, but I wouldn't rule it out for Best Director, and maybe Best Picture.  I'm turning off my phone so there are no spoilers for the actual winners, because I turn the ceremony on about half an hour late so I can fast forward through all the commercials.  I guess we'll all find out in about three hours.

Triumph of the Will (1935)

  And now we have moved from the progressive, inclusive, social flowering of the Weimar Republic to the Nazi regime. 

This is considered one of the greatest propaganda films to have ever been made.  Leni Riefenstahl was hand-selected by Hitler to be the National Socialist party's filmmaker of record.  It's supposed to be a documentary, in that it shows the massive citizen turnout for the 1934 Nazi Public Congress, but Riefenstahl staged and rehearsed a lot of scenes for maximum impact, which is not what documentaries do.

Parts of this film are intensely creepy, even without the historical knowledge of what this party did to scar the face of humanity forever.  The Congress was held in Nuremburg, and Hitler was staying in what looks like an honest-to-God castle.  It's 1934 so outside electricity is still hard to come by, so a lot of the night scenes are of people holding torches and milling around outside the castle.  But they're not there to destroy the monster, they're there to worship it.

The rest of the film, unfortunately, is just tremendously boring.  It's two hours of marching, which is impressive I guess because of the number of people involved and the organization it took to manage it, but it's a bunch of identically dressed people moving at the same time.  After the first formation, you've seen it all.  Yes, there are speeches given by famous Nazi leaders, including Hitler, but they are short and interspersed with the miles and miles of marching soldiers.

It is a notable film for the deft use of camera work.  Film is still in its toddler years here and cameras have only just been designed that are able to be moved with the cameraperson.  In a lot of previous films we covered in class, the camera was a heavy, static thing.  You kind of just set it up and had your actors move in and out of frame, like a stage play.  By 1934, the camera was unchained, so here you get aerial shots, pans, moving up and down, from a motor vehicle, and a lot more work with different lenses.  Now, we kind of take all that stuff for granted but this was revolutionary at the time.

I can't recommend this film, really, because of its horrible boringness, and also Nazis.  Be glad I watched it for you so you don't have to sit through it yourself.

Extremis (2016)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short   The tagline for this film (which  is very small because every poster I looked at was for the Extremis story arc of Iron Man) says "Between science and faith lies the ultimate choice" and it's a little misleading, I think.  I didn't get that sense from the film, but that might be because I'm not a terribly religious person.

In this 20-minute documentary, doctors and family members must decide what to do with patients who can no longer breathe on their own:  hook them to ventilators and medically keep them alive or take them off and let them die.

People.  For the love of everything you consider holy, take the time to have that conversation with your family before it ever becomes necessary.  It really is cruel to leave them to make a decision while you lie helpless in a bed in front of them.  Ventilator or no ventilator is a personal choice and I don't think you should be judged either way.  But make it easier on your family and make the decision for yourself.

That has nothing to do with the documentary itself, which isn't very good, by the way.  It's too short to have any sort of narrative arc, it doesn't introduce any of the doctors or patients, or provide you any reason to care one way or another.  The White Helmets was way better.

Rashomon (1950)

  Film education continues, just with a different part of the Axis powers.  (No, we didn't watch this in my film class, but how was I supposed to pass up that joke?)

This really is one of the most essential films to see.  It's more than a classic.  Even if you don't like it because ambiguous or non-resolved endings make you crazy (like me), it's still a masterwork.  If you get the Criterion Collection edition, there's a great interview with director Robert Altman that highlights some of the important cinematography and direction choices in a way that breaks it down for the layman.

A married couple traveled through the woods.  The husband (Masayuki Mori) is murdered.  A bandit (Toshiro Mifune) is arrested in possession of the couple's horse and gear.  The wife (Machiko Kyo) is located at a temple, crying her eyes out.  Each tells their side of the story, which differ as to the events.  Then a medium (Noriko Honma) is summoned so the dead man can tell his version, which is different from both.  So who's telling the truth?  An eyewitness is revealed who claims that all three are lying, and he saw the whole thing.  But is he reliable?

I'm not asking those questions to be rhetorical, either.  The whole point of the movie is that you'll never know.  That might turn some of you completely off, which is why I'm making a point of telling you now, so you don't watch it and get mad at me.  But you should watch it anyway, if for nothing else, then for the sheer maddening frustration of this expertly crafted episode of Law and Order:  SVU:  Feudal Japan Edition.

Oh, yeah, because the one thing everyone agrees on is that the wife was raped.  But that's not the central crime here.  In fact, one of the implied stories is that she might have murdered her husband herself for judging her because she didn't immediately kill herself after being raped.  Because it reflects badly on him that she was dishonored.  Feudal Japan!

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (2006)

  This was the British answer to Agent Cody Banks.  Which isn't fair, since Britain already had good spy movies and there's no reason for them to also take the "shitty spy movies starring teens" genre as well.

Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfur) is an average teen boy until his uncle (Ewan McGregor) disappears and Alex learns that his uncle was not a mild-mannered banker, but in fact an elite spy who had been grooming Alex to join the family business since he was small.  While initially reluctant, Alex finally agrees to become a spy in order to investigate a billionaire (Mickey Rourke) who may have had Alex's uncle killed.

Honestly, I watched this much earlier in the week and I had this whole idea about how I was going to link the shitty plot of this 2006 nonentity with the current refugee crisis, but you'll just have to trust me when I say it was totally clever and mind blowing because I'm too tired (and slightly drunk) to bother remembering what I was going to say.

This is a terrible movie.

It doesn't deserve anything witty being said about it.  It's dumb, derivative, and wholly lacking in personality, despite having a Grade-A cast of Brits and Alicia Silverstone.  Parts of the fight choreography were done by Donnie Yen but there's so much boring crap to slog through, it's not worth it.  Not when there are actual Donnie Yen movies you could be seeing.

Trolls (2016)

Nominated for Best Original Song      This was super cute!

Long ago, trolls were kept by a race called the Bergens.  Only by eating a troll could a Bergen experience happiness, so they had a special ceremony once a year where they doled out one apiece and everyone was happy for a day.  Until the trolls, led by King Pappy (Jeffrey Tambor), escaped deep into the forest.  Disgraced, the head chef (Christine Baranski) vowed to find them again.  It took her 20 years before Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) disregarded all safety protocols and hosted the largest and loudest party possible.  Chef was able to snag enough trolls to buy her way back into King Gristle's (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) good graces, but Poppy and the resident doomsayer, Branch (Justin Timberlake), hatched a plan to free the trolls once more.

Seriously, this was friggin' adorable.  And the whole world looked fuzzy and huggable, like everything was made of felt.  I was worried that it would be annoying, or stupid, given that it's based off of a one-time popular doll from the 80s, but DreamWorks did a good job producing a script that is coherent and snappy without being glib or snide, and hiring some really talented voice actors.  Anna Kendrick is like sunshine personified.  My one complaint is that James Corden didn't get enough of a part.  It was criminal how underutilized he was.

I don't think this has a chance in hell of winning Best Original Song but it is totally worth owning.

A Man Called Ove (2015)

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Makeup and Hair    I have to hand it to the Swedish.  They have turned out some really good dark comedies the last couple of years.  Granted, my knowledge of Swedish national cinema begins and ends with Ingmar Bergman so I'm not any kind of expert.

Ove (Rolf Lassgaard) is a cantankerous old widower and car snob who finds purpose in tallying up the most minor transgressions of his neighbors.  After he is let go from his job of 43 years, he decides to kill himself in order to rejoin his beloved wife, Sonja (Ida Engvall), but is interrupted by the arrival of his new neighbor, Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), an Iranian immigrant and her Swedish husband, Patrick (Tobias Almborg).  After bonding over the fact that Patrick is kind of an idiot, Ove slowly begins to allow Parvaneh to know his story.

This reminded me of Gran Torino when I was reading the synopsis, but aside from the basic "crusty old man learns to love other people again," the two films couldn't be further apart.  Partly because Clint Eastwood would rather be dead than caught driving a Saab, but also because A Man Called Ove is much more focused on community and finding a place for everyone in it.

I have no idea what its chances are in the Best Foreign Film category.  It's up against some seriously heavy hitters and the last time Sweden won was 1983.  That makes for some long odds.  (Plus, I haven't seen any of the rest of them yet.)  I don't think it has a shot in Best Makeup and Hair, either.  Usually, the Academy goes gaga over age makeup but I don't know that it was enough of a contrast this time.  Plus, it's up against two films with very heavy use of prosthetics and makeup effects (Star Trek Beyond and Suicide Squad).  If it did win, it would be a huge upset.

Mädchen in Uniform (1931)

  Hey, it's a German film that's not a repost!  Rejoice!  I had never seen this one before class last Thursday, but it's on YouTube in its entirety with English subtitles if you want to check it out.  That's how we watched it and it was fine.  It is black and white but this one has sound, the first one in our class to have such.

Manuela (Hertha Thiele) is sent to an all-girls boarding school by her aunt.  She finds it very difficult to adjust, and latches on to one of the teachers, Fraulein von Bernberg (Dorothea Wieck), developing an infatuation that she eventually confesses in front of the repressive Headmistress (Emilia Unda).

This film was notable in its time for being directed by, written by, and starring only women.  Also, for the strong representation of same-sex relationships.  By modern standards, it's nothing you can't see on regular network TV, but this was just before the Nazis came to power and made their concerted effort to destroy everything they considered deviant.

If you're the slightest bit interested, I do encourage you to check out the film on YouTube.  It's worth the watch.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

  I like to think that I'm a relatively intelligent woman.  And then I go off and do stupid things to myself, like watching Talladega Nights.  Even though I hate Will Ferrell's style of comedy.  Even though I hate NASCAR.  Hell, I don't even like the state of Alabama and I'm from there.

Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) is a champion race car driver in the world of NASCAR with a beautiful wife (Leslie Bibb), a huge house, and the love of thousands of adoring fans.  Thanks to all this, he's a narcissistic materialist who thinks nothing of using people, like his best friend Cal (John C. Reilly), for his personal gain.  The team manager (Greg Germann), who hates Ricky with a passion, hires Formula-1 driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) to teach the brash star a lesson in humility.  Disgraced after his first loss, Ricky moves back home with his mother (Jane Lynch) until his erstwhile father (Gary Cole) comes back to help Ricky recover his nerve.

This is a stupid, stupid film filled with only the most base humor.   I didn't laugh at any point during the runtime.

And yet *she said through gritted teeth* it showed a clear progression of character development, good use of action scenes, and managed its pacing well overall.  *Fight through the pain, it's okay, you can do this.*  So even though I found it completely devoid of humor, I cannot in good conscience say that it is a bad movie.  *Deep breaths.  Just grit it out.  It's almost over.*  I think it's actually a better movie than Man of Steel, or Batman vs Superman thanks to it actually having a character arc, and it's still a better relationship movie than the Twilight series.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll take the rest of the day to recover from the torture of having to say nice things about a Will Ferrell NASCAR movie.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

  No, this isn't nominated for anything and yes, I'm aware I'm really far behind in that regard.  You will allow me my fleeting moments of pleasure!

John Wick (Keanu Reeves), assassin extraordinaire, is out of the game, for real this time, as soon as he retrieves his car from some unfortunate Russian bastards.  But you can't just dip your toes into this water without expecting to be pulled all the way under.  John had signed a marker in blood to one Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) to get out the first time, so when Santino comes calling, John knows what he has to do.  And then promptly DOESN'T DO IT, thus kicking off a shitstorm of epic proportions so that when he finally does decide to uphold the marker, it's so much worse for him than if he had just agreed in the first place.  But it's John Wick.  Fuck him over at your peril.  And for God's sake, don't touch the man's dog.

This will never be as good as the original, which slid in like a thief and shot my heart full of holes.  But it is a worthy successor, building on the world of the first film, and offering so many badasses just lurking around every corner.  There are tender moments, and funny moments, but the payoff here is the beautiful, glorious, stupid amounts of action.

Yes, I loved it.  Of course I did.  This is the best acting (actual, for-real acting) that I've ever seen from Keanu Reeves.  The scene with the tailor and sommelier alone was worth the price of admission.  And the one with Common and the silenced pistols!  And the sumo guy!  And the pencil, oh God, the pencil scene!  *froths at the mouth with joy*

I love this freakin' series.  I hope they do at least five of them.

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

Nominated for Best Actress and Best Costume Design    This was a really cute film.  Light and fluffy, very sweet, and a nice counterbalance to the dark, depressing usual Oscar fare.

Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) is a New York socialite, heiress to a multimillion dollar fortune, and patron of the arts.  She is also, quite possibly, the worst opera singer ever known to man, a fact kept from her quite carefully by her husband, St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant).  Madame Florence sails through life in blissful ignorance until she decides to make a recording and delivers it to a local radio station.  It becomes their most requested album and Florence decides to capitalize on this outpouring of public acclaim and give a concert at Carnegie Hall, donating a thousand seats to veterans returned from World War II.  Bayfield and Florence's pianist, Cosme (Simon Helberg), scramble to try and mitigate the experience before Florence is exposed to outright mockery.

The synopsis makes it sound kind of terrible, but I assure you this is an adorable movie.  There's no sense of mean-spiritedness about it, or commentary on people taking advantage of a wealthy, deluded woman for their own gains.  Florence is portrayed as being held in the fondest regards by pretty much anyone who came into contact with her and even Bayfield's manic stacking of the deck in her favor comes across as an act of love, not self-interest.

Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep so you know you're going to get quality.  I've never liked Hugh Grant, but he does his best.  For me, the real standout here was Simon Helberg, who totally shed his Big Bang Theory character to play Cosme.  His subtle humor, mostly in facial expressions and line delivery, were perfect.  He stole every scene he was in, for me.  I'm actually a little disappointed there hasn't been more love for him this season.

The Best Actress race this year is a tough one, even for a veteran like Streep.  This is a good role, but I don't think it's her best.  Costume Design is harder to predict, since it comes down to expertise in details, but I don't think it has much of a chance there either.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects    Ugh, this was such a good movie!  Laika is one of those film companies that has not put a single step wrong, as far as I'm concerned.  Their stop-motion is some of the most beautiful and seamless I have ever seen, a fact that has been recognized by their nomination for Best Visual Effects, putting it in the same rarefied air as The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Kubo (Art Parkinson) is a young boy in hiding from his grandfather, the Moon-King (Ralph Fiennes), who must locate three pieces of magical armor in order to be safe.  To help him on his journey, he has Monkey (Charlize Theron), a charm brought to life by his mother's magic, and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), a samurai whose memories were wiped after the Moon-King and his twin daughters (Rooney Mara) destroyed the Beetle Clan stronghold.  He also has his magical ability to animate paper by playing on his shinsen, a three-string guitar-like instrument.

I bought this back in November on the strength of Laika's previous work.  I had wanted to see it in theaters but I just didn't make it.  Since then, it's languished on the shelf in my apartment, just waiting for me to get to it.  Now I'm kicking myself for not watching it immediately.  I can't even begin to tell you how good it is.  Miles better than Zootopia.  If it doesn't win Best Animated Feature, I'm going to be so disappointed.  Visual Effects is a much harder race.  I think that will come down to technical expertise and what the Academy is impressed by seeing.  I certainly don't feel qualified to judge which is better, seamless stop-motion or CGI that looks real as life.  Both are essentially sorcery, as far as I'm concerned.

Metropolis (1927)

I think this is the first film I've ever posted three times.  Again, with the German film class.  Get ready to learn some things, people.  This is also from the Weimar period, though much further along.  Again, you can see themes of totalitarianism, rejection of authority, a strong streak of communism, and also a reaction to technology in general.  Particularly, it shows the upper classes blindingly seduced by easy (and therefore evil) technology in the form of a beautiful but unattainable woman, who is also a popular demagogue engaged in stirring up the masses to both turn on their betters and destroy themselves in the process.  No foreshadowing there.  Posted previously 30 Nov 13.

I finally got to the Completed version.  It was still at #50 in my DVD queue but first on my streaming.  Meaning right now I probably have enough movies on my list for the next decade.

Anyway, I have to say the restorers did a great job putting the pieces back in and tying together the parts that are still missing.  The added footage was badly degraded and you can immediately tell which scenes were recovered because they look almost like they have a black stocking over them.  Still, this is a classic work and to have found any of the lost footage at all is amazing.

It's such a highly stylized film, really beautiful in its art and symbolism.  I would really encourage anyone interested in the beginnings of film to check it out.
Originally posted 7/18/11    I think this might be the oldest movie I've ever reviewed on this site.  It's certainly the first completely silent one.

I am ashamed to say that I had never seen Fritz Lang's Metropolis before.  I had heard of it, of course, what geek hasn't, but I had never actually sat down and watched it.

It stands up surprisingly well for being 84 years old.  I mean, think about that.  That is older than all four of my grandparents.  Do you have a living relative that was old enough to have seen this movie?  Forgetting the fact that it's a German film and was cut to pieces in most cases, did they like it?

The version I saw was the 2001 F. W. Murnau Foundation version that had been restored.  In 2008, about 30 more minutes of original footage was found in Argentina and New Zealand and a Complete Metropolis was released in 2010.  That one is in my queue at #447 right now.  What?  It'll give you something to look forward to. 

Yes, I cringed a bit leaving that sentence hanging on a preposition.  No, I'm not going to change it. 

Movie.

It is 2026.  The world is divided into the rich ruling class and the poor, who live completely underground.  Freder is the son of the city's founder, Joh Fredersen, and lives a life of ease, cavorting around with weirdly-costumed nymphs in the 'Garden of the Sons' until a woman from Below brings up a gaggle of children to the garden.  Suddenly suspecting there may be more to life than what he knows, Freder heads down into the lower-class ranks and trades places with a worker named only 11811. 

In the pocket of his worksuit, he finds a map leading him down into the catacombs even further beneath the city where the woman he has been searching for, Maria, is preaching to the masses, promising them the arrival of a Mediator to act as the heart between the hands and the head. 

Little does he know that his father and the mad inventor, Rotwang, are spying on the meeting.  Joh Fredersen demands that Rotwang make a Machine-Man (android) that looks like Maria in order to incite the proles into open rebellion so that they can be crushed and their spirits broken.  However, Rotwang is still pissed that Fredersen stole the woman he loved and decides that his mechanical Maria will destroy Metropolis. 

It has elements of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frankenstein, The Time Machine and probably more. 

Also, a seriously bitchin' table lamp.  Honest-to-God, this was my favorite thing out of the movie.  I would put one of these in my apartment RIGHT NOW if I could find one. 

This is definitely a must-see for sci-fi fans.  I'll probably end up owning the completely restored version at some point.  

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919)

Here's another from my German film class.  This comes to us from the Weimar period, just after the tremendous rout Germany suffered in World War I.  It was written by two former soldiers, disgusted by the excesses of authority that they witnessed, and also informed by one writer's brush with what may have been a serial killer.  According to one source (Siegfried Kracauer), the pair intended the story to be a damning indictment of totalitarianism, but it was changed by the director to include a normalizing frame story (the bit at the beginning and end where it's revealed that the narrator is untrustworthy).  This has raised debate throughout the decades in film and history circles, as you can imagine.  Kracauer isn't exactly objective, seeing as he was a German Jew who fled the Nazis and then wrote a book called From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film.  The parallels are certainly interesting, and the sensationalism is good reading, but other scholars tend to dismiss Kracauer's claims as half-baked.

You don't really need any of that to enjoy the film, which is still one of the most original ever produced.  I certainly didn't know anything about it when I saw it on Netflix.  But it does add a little bit more heft to consider the timeframe in which it was made and the insights it provides as to the mindsets of the common people of that time.  German films in this time tended to rely exclusively on studio works, which could be tightly controlled and further innovations in camera work, editing, and lighting effects which wouldn't have been available even five years beforehand with The Student of Prague.  Comparing the two films highlights the stability and openness of the Student versus the insecurity and inward-looking Caligari, created after the breakup of the German Empire and the largest war of nations they had ever known.  It's easy to extrapolate a national feeling from both films, but of course, it's not a complete one.  Originally posted 05 Feb 12.    This is a silent film from Germany that was one of the very first horror movies.  It was restored in 1996 by the Film Preservation Association and given a brand new score.  It's more notable for use of art direction than anything else.  Everything is crooked and sinister-looking.

The town of Holstenwall is having its annual fair when a creepy old dude shows up, announcing himself as Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and presenting as his exhibition Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a somnambulist.  Francis (Fritz Feher), the narrator, and his friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski)go to see the sleepwalker who can answer any question.  Alan asks how long he has to live, which is never a good question to ask just in case you don't hear an answer you like.  Cesare says until dawn the next day.  Sure enough, Alan is murdered in his bed, the second of a string of mysterious murders since Dr. Caligari came to town.  Francis decides he will not rest until he finds the murderer.  It's not long before he comes to suspect the creepy doctor and his live-action puppet especially after his fiancee, Jane (Lil Dagover), is kidnapped.

This is one of the very first movies to use a flashback as a narrative and the first to have a "twist ending", which confused the fuck out of me because I wasn't expecting it at all.  I thought it was going to be a take on Frankenstein, not M. Night Shyamalan.  It is an interesting movie, and if you like old films, you should probably check it out.

OJ: Made in America (2016)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Well, this is certainly the longest documentary I've ever watched for the Oscars.  I don't know if that's how it aired at Sundance (it has to have played in a theater for at least a week to qualify for a nomination) but on my TV, it was a 5-part miniseries with each segment clocking in at an hour and a half.  That's seven and a half hours total, if you're counting.  That is a lot of time to spend on O.J. Simpson.

I wasn't even mad about it, though, because it really is an excellent documentary.  I was never one for the sports and I was in junior high when the trial was going on, so you could say my O.J. experience was fairly limited.  I certainly hadn't connected it to the riots that occurred in L.A. over a series of police excesses and abuses of power.

In case you were living under a rock or not born until 1995, let me run down the history of O.J. for you.  O.J. Simpson started out as a college football superstar in the 1980s in southern California.  He was signed professionally by the Buffalo Bills and had a rough couple of years until their management changed.  Then he pretty much single-handedly turned the team around.  Having had a taste of obscurity during those dark times, O.J. started courting other career options, cultivating relationships in entertainment and corporate sponsors.  He became the face of a national Hertz car rental campaign, and parlayed that into a full-blown career as a spokesman, then an actor, appearing in several movies, including the Naked Gun franchise.  Along the way, he divorced his first wife and married Nicole Brown.  Some years later, Nicole filed for divorce alleging physical abuse.  In 1994, Nicole and a waiter from a nearby restaurant, Ron Goldman, were murdered outside her house.  O.J. was arrested after a bizarre low-speed chase and went to trial.  He hired the Johnnie Cochran firm to represent him, and they proceeded to wipe the floor with the prosecution, securing an acquittal for their client.  The Goldman family retried the case in civil court and got a guilty verdict, which required O.J. to pay $33 million is damages.  Which wouldn't have been a problem back in his heyday, but with the turn of public opinion against him, was a little harder to manage.  In 2007, O.J. and a bunch of cronies were arrested in Las Vegas after (again) a bizarre robbery/kidnapping involving boxes of sports memorabilia.  He was sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Okay, now that we've gotten all the background out of the way, let's talk about the documentary itself.  Not only does it have exhaustive interviews with his friends, co-workers, sponsors, and lawyers, it also talks to members of both the Brown and Goldman families.  It presents background information about the Rodney King trial, the Watts riots, and several other (we'll politely call them) conflicts between the LAPD and predominantly African-American residents in South Central L.A.  It presents a portrait of O.J. as a charming manipulator and opportunist, concerned more with his personal fame than any social issue.  Several people remarked that he went out of his way to avoid being considered "black," using his popularity to cultivate relationships with powerful white men for his own personal gain.  His divorce from his first wife, a black woman, to marry Nicole Brown, a white one, seemed to cement his place in society in his eyes.  During his trial, his $50,000/day legal team turned the case from a mountain of physical and circumstantial evidence into a treatise on race relations, painting O.J. as another black American being unfairly treated and even framed by the predominantly white LAPD.  The prosecution did their best, but the trial came down to which side the jury liked better and also the chance to settle some old scores.  A couple of jurors admitted that they voted to acquit not based on evidence but as deferred justice for Rodney King.

In hindsight, this is less about O.J. as a black man in a white society as it is a triumph for rich people against the system.  Do you think there would have been as much furor over this case if he hadn't been represented by one of the best and most expensive lawyers in the country?  Would the verdict have been the same without the expert handling of the jury and manipulation of the witnesses and prosecution by the defense?  Do you think the penalty would have been as high in the civil case if it hadn't been held in a predominantly white area?  Was his 2008 sentencing a backlash for what white Americans saw as a travesty of justice?

I'm not a sociologist, I'm an English major, so I can't give you statistics or studies done on institutionalized racism, but all you have to do is look at the Freddie Gray or Ferguson, Missouri trials to know that not only is it a thing, it's still happening.  This would be the part where I have some sort of epiphany, or hopeful speech prepared as a beacon in the darkness, but I'm not that clever or well-informed, I'm afraid.  I don't have any answers or solutions and it would be hopelessly naive at best and arrogant AF at worst of me to suggest that I do, in fact, have any clue what it's like to be black in America.

Taken 2 (2012)

  Movies like this are why I have a "meh" tag.  Like, it's not good by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not so bad that I want to kill it with fire.  It just sort of exists.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is trying to reconnect with his daughter (Maggie Grace) after the kidnapping incident from a couple of years ago.  All she wants to do is have a normal life, including passing her drivers' test, and making out with her new boyfriend (Jon Gries).  Meanwhile, Bryan's ex-wife (Famke Janssen) is having a rough time in her marriage.  Being a generally good guy, Bryan invites the ex and the daughter to visit with him in Istanbul for a bit, after the culmination of his body guarding job.  He is completely unaware that the Albanian human traffickers he handily dispatched in the first movie had a host of relatives now out for his blood.  They kidnap him and his ex-wife, which is a Bad Idea.

This falls under the "Shameless Grab for Cash" category of movies.  The first Taken was surprisingly good and very well-received so of course the studio immediately had to make as many in the same vein as they could before everyone got tired of it.

That's not my biggest problem with the movie, however.

I thought Maggie Grace's character was supposed to be college-aged in the first movie.  How is she 22/23 and not have a driver's license?  Is she supposed to be 16?  That makes no sense.  If she's sixteen for the events of this movie, that means she was 14 for Taken 1.  Maggie Grace the actress was 29 in 2012.  She's a beautiful woman (and I say this with all the love I can muster) but what the fuck is she doing trying to play a teenager?  Does Hollywood not have age-appropriate people?

This is the kind of stuff going through my head as I'm trying to watch this movie.  It was very distracting.

The Naked Gun (1988)

  Okay, so this is one of those untouchable movies like Airplane or Spaceballs that you just do not talk shit about.  Except, unlike those other two films, this one has not held up well to the ravages of time.

Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) is an L.A. police officer assigned to the prestigious Police Squad division.  While investigating the shooting of a fellow officer (O.J. Simpson) after a drug bust gone bad, Frank stumbles upon a plot by a prominent businessman (Ricardo Montalban) to kill Queen Elizabeth II (Jeanette Charles) during her visit to L.A.

Honest to God, this is a terrible movie.  It's one stupid, slapstick gag after another with no attempt at originality or genuine cleverness.  Of course, I'm coming at this now with 20+ years of watching some of the best comedies ever made.  I remember seeing this as kid and thinking it was funny, although now that I'm considering it, I never tried to watch it ever again.

This kind of physical comedy doesn't appeal to me unless it's paired with a truly witty script.  As always, your mileage may vary.

The Jungle Book (2016)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects    This was an interesting film, not just because of the amazing advances in technology since the 60s which allowed this to be live-action* but also because of the shift in message of the new version.  More on that in a minute.

Mowgli (Neel Sethi) has been raised by wolves in the jungle after having been found as an infant by Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) the panther.  He doesn't fit in, however, since his development rate is so different than his furry brothers and he cannot keep up with their games without resorting to "man tricks" like using tools and non-linear thinking.  He is generally accepted and loved despite these differences.  The notable exception is Shere Khan (Idris Elba) the tiger, who hates Mowgli for what he represents:  mankind and their associated incursions and unintended consequences.  Bagheera decides that for Mowgli's safety, he must be returned to the man village.  Along the way, they are separated and Mowgli comes under the care of Baloo (Bill Murray) the bear.  Initially, Baloo is only interested in using Mowgli for his own ends but soon comes to care for the boy.  Baloo agrees to help Bagheera take Mowgli back to the village, but when Mowgli learns that Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) the wolf has been killed by Shere Khan, he is determined to go back and face the tiger.

Okay, here is where the rubber meets the road.  In the original Disney movie, Mowgli is caught unawares and defenseless by Shere Khan but a fortuitous lightning strike creates fire in the dry grass of the plain.  Mowgli ties a burning stick to Shere Khan's tail and scares the big cat away.  Then he goes to the human village, sees a girl, and happily follows her into the village to be with his own kind.

In the NEW movie, Mowgli sneaks into the village to steal a burning torch, intent on using it against Shere Khan.  While running back to the wolf pack, embers drop behind him, setting fire to the surrounding jungle.  Khan points this out as Mowgli's inherent human failure to refrain from destroying everything he touches.  In disgust, Mowgli puts out the torch and calls on the wolf pack to aid him, basically slowing down the tiger so he can think of something smarter.  He races into the inferno and uses "man tricks" to lure the tiger onto a dead branch, which breaks and sends the tiger to a fiery death while Mowgli swings free.  He then rejoins the wolf pack, his adopted family.

This represents a totally different ideology.  It is no longer "fish out of water has adventures but finally goes back where he belongs" but "fish develops personal sense of identity through trials and along the way opens others' minds as to the subversion of traditional labels."  Now whether that is good or bad depends on you, the viewer, but I couldn't get over what an interesting change it was and what it says about us as a society (our values and cultural conditioning) now as opposed to fifty years ago.




*ish.  It is 90% CGI so the term "live" is a little misleading, but the little boy was human and some of the cinematography was real (maybe).

Jim: The James Foley Story (2016)

Nominated for Best Original Song     Another day, another hideously depressing documentary.  This one comes courtesy of HBO.

Jim Foley was a freelance war correspondent who was taken hostage by ISIS in Syria, held for over a year, and finally executed by beheading in 2014.  The footage was uploaded to the Internet and broadcast around the world.

This documentary is not political, or activist in the sense that those things are the focus.  The filmmakers cannot shy away from larger arguments, such as US foreign policy and the plight of refugees, but the purpose of the film is to celebrate Jim Foley as a brother, friend, and comrade.  The film interviews his brothers, sister, parents, former co-workers, and other prisoners held captive with him to craft an elegy to a fallen friend.

If you've been feeling too happy, maybe taking all the good things in your life for granted, or just in the mood to have glass ground into your soul, I would recommend watching this.  Otherwise, for God's sake, run far away.  And don't listen to the song, a weepy Sting ballad called "The Empty Chair."  You don't need that kind of misery in your life.

Swordfish (2001)

  Hey, remember this movie?  Me either!  You kids today may not know this, but back in the late 90s-early 00s, we were terrified of technology.  Between Y2K and this new-fangled thing called "hacking" people were simultaneously intrigued and scared shitless.  And that has been History with Lucy.  You're welcome.

Stanley (Hugh Jackman) is a convicted hacker who has been forbidden to ever touch a computer again.  He's mostly content working an undefined blue-collar job somewhere in Texas when he is approached by Ginger (Halle Berry), a mysterious and beautiful woman offering him a ton of money to meet with her super-rich, super-insane boss, Gabriel (John Travolta).  Gabriel needs a hacker to break in to a government slush fund and siphon off over $9 billion to fund some bizarre shadow war with international terrorists.  Seriously.  And he's willing to kill multiple American hostages as a smokescreen so the FBI agent (Don Cheadle) chasing him doesn't figure out the big picture.

I can't even begin to unpack the mentality of a lone billionaire declaring war on the rest of the world and being totally unencumbered by a checks and balance system.

So we're just going to leave that out and talk about the rest of the movie.  I don't want to say that this is the tipping point for John Travolta's career slide into irrelevancy.  I haven't put any research into his filmography.  I will say that this is when I totally wrote him off.  All I remember about when this movie came out was the buzz that Halle Berry --who had refused for years-- would be topless.  And then there was a collective "eh" *shrug* afterwards.  When it came out, it was flashy, had a lot of star power, and Hugh Jackman was still relatively unknown.  Now, fifteen years later, it's practically unwatchable.  Like, Showgirls levels of over-acting, bad dialogue, and taking itself seriously.  Avoid.

Big Top Pee-Wee (1988)

Since I seem to be having the worst time trying to get posts out on Monday because of work and classes, I'm going to start posting on Fridays and see how that works out.  You'll now see posts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.    Holy God, this was a weird movie.  When I was a little kid, I remember seeing Pee-Wee's Playhouse on TV but I don't remember watching it regularly.   Then Paul Reubens had a major scandal and the world essentially forgot he existed.  Some artifacts remain, like this film.

Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) is running a farm with his pig, Vance (Wayne White).  He has a fiancee (Penelope Ann Miller) but dreams of falling in love with a girl on a flying trapeze.  Then a huge storm blows into town and deposits a traveling circus right in his backyard.  Pee-Wee is all about helping the ringleader (Kris Kristofferson.  Seriously) put on the best show he can, not the least because they also have a beautiful trapeze artist (Valeria Golino), but the town elders are very anti-fun.  Pee-Wee has to overcome their resistance in order to prove to the trapeze artist that she is the one for him.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what audience the movie was intended to entertain.  It is a bizarre amalgam of trained animals, sexual innuendo, and social commentary.  The only reason I added it to my queue is because it's the feature film debut of both Benicio Del Toro as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy and Dustin Diamond, who played Screech in Saved by the Bell.  Which is hilarious, considering their respective career paths.