Free Solo (2018)

  This was one of the big documentaries from last year with everyone and their mother hyping about how tense, how suspenseful, and how pants-wettingly terrifying it was.  So I was expecting a lot which is probably why I was underwhelmed.

Alex Honnold has made a living as a professional rock climber and motivational speaker.  He has climbed some of the most challenging peaks in the world but his secret dream was to free solo (aka no ropes or safety equipment) the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.  After nearly a year of training, injuries, and personal growth, he and a camera crew set out to document his historic achievement.

The camera crew, themselves all professional climbers and colleagues of Honnold, become the emotional heart of the film.  They know exactly how dangerous this attempt is and really struggle with their own worries about putting Honnold in more peril by being distractions at a critical moment, not to mention the logistics of trying to place the cameras in order to capture the climb itself.  They worry more about his safety and stability than Honnold himself, seemingly.  He must be one of those people that's just absolutely magnetic in person because I could not otherwise understand his appeal.  He seemed totally devoid of personality that was not related to climbing and every attempt to humanize him just fell completely flat.  It's bandied about that he falls somewhere on the autism scale with his mother suggesting Asperger's Syndrome and an MRI showing a low amygdala response, but it also seems kind of like the filmmakers filling for time.

Just to clarify, it's not a bad documentary.  Just not nearly as gripping as I thought it would be considering it's a dude climbing 3000 ft up a straight cliff face where a split-second could determine the difference between life and being splattered across half a national forest.

Period. End of Sentence. (2018)

  This won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, one of the categories I didn't complete this year.  It was better than End Game but still felt a little slight.  Of course, it's hard to do a deep dive in less than 30 minutes.

In Hapur, India, a new type of manufacturing machine gives poor women an opportunity to earn money outside of the home (many for the first time ever) while quietly challenging the stigma surrounding menstruation.

It doesn't seem like such a big deal here, but in parts of the world --even highly developed countries like India-- access to cheap sanitary napkins can make a world of difference.  These girls talk about how they are not allowed access to temples because the gods don't listen to menstruating women and how much of a hassle it is to make it to school when they have to go home to change three or four times a day.  The few men interviewed thought that menstruation was some kind of disease that mostly girls get, which means there are some dudes just waiting around wondering why they haven't gotten their periods yet.

The film doesn't have enough time to do more than skim the surface of this issue and give a brief, uplifting vignette at the end about how all the women were impacted for the better.  Maybe it can pull a White Helmets and get a full-length documentary next year with more follow-up.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)

After the death of Jason Todd (Jenson Ackles) at the hands of the Joker (John DiMaggio), Batman (Bruce Greenwood) becomes even more solitary, shunning help from his first Robin, now Nightwing (Neil Patrick Harris), in thwarting the crime lord Black Mask (Wade Williams).  But a new boss named Red Hood has come to town to settle a number of scores and Batman soon finds himself facing the ghosts of the past.

You know, I had always heard that DC's animated films were so much better than any of their live action ones (except for the Nolan trilogy) and it's true.  This is hands-down the best tackling of the Killing Joke aftermath I've ever seen.  Of course, if you're familiar with the story, nothing in the film will come as any sort of surprise.  Still, it's absolutely worth watching.

Cold War (2018)

  Imagine if Fellini directed Trace of Stones with Roger Deakins behind the camera.  That's pretty close to what Cold War is like.

Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is working on a commission in 1949 to put together a troupe of pretty young villagers to sing and dance traditional folk music (because communism) when he meets Zula (Joanna Kulig), an ambitious young woman with a difficult past.  Over the next fifteen years, their paths merge and diverge a handful of times because, as much as they are besotted with one another, they cannot successfully cohabitate.

Yeesh.  There's a lot to unpack in this movie.  Joanna Kulig is magnetic, channeling the star power of a Brigitte Bardo or Marilyn Monroe, which is great because her character is kind of a blank slate.  The film doesn't follow Zula at all; it's more occupied with showing Wiktor's obsession with her than giving her any kind of agency.  She never escapes the fantasies of the men in her life and is irrevocably shaped by them.  Her career is dictated to her, first as a means of fulfilling her probation, then as a way to make various men happy.  To his credit, Wiktor seems like he's genuinely interested in her success but he comes very close to outright pimping her to a movie producer for a boost she's plainly apathetic towards.  Their relationship doesn't seem romantic (healthy isn't even on the table) so much as it does gross and manipulative.  AND HE'S STILL THE NICEST DUDE IN THE FILM.  The toadying propaganda stooge Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) is a grease stain made flesh.

The cinematography is gorgeous but didn't draw me in like Roma did.  It felt like I was looking at a particularly good painting, not a living landscape.

I have a pretty high tolerance for films like this but even still, I was glad it only had an hour and a half runtime.  Amazon paid a lot of money for it so if you have Prime, give it about fifteen minutes to absorb the atmosphere and then switch to something more fun.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

  I'll be honest, I just didn't get the point of this movie.  I don't recall ever reading Maurice Sendak's source book and it was very difficult for me to care at all about the protagonist or any of the characters.

Max (Max Roberts) is trying to cope with being a small, creative child with no friends.  He wants to be included in his sister's (Pepita Emmerics) circle but can't hang with the older kids.  He's upset his mother (Catherine Keener) is dating again but can't express his sadness and resentment other than by acting out with animalistic violence.  In desperation, he runs away to an island populated by monsters who soon make him their king, but Max earns no respite from his anxieties.  Carol (James Gandolfini) also has explosive, violent tempers, Judith (Catherine O'Hara) is an acid-tongued bully, and the others would totally be okay with eating Max given half a chance. 

I'm sure there was some kind of lesson here about learning to move on and stop trying to find magical solutions to your self-centered problems, but I could not get past what a total brat Max is.  His constant screaming and howling were irritating beyond belief and not even some top-notch CGI and pitch-perfect voice casting could overcome that.  Like, that kid needed fucking therapy.

It didn't help that the sound of the movie was totally scattershot.  The dialogue was incredibly quiet but the music was super loud so I was constantly fiddling with the volume.  The whole experience was just not worth the hassle.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

  This is the Christy pick for March.  She made it easy this time because it is streaming on Amazon through the Starz add-on.

Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) is an inventor living with his father (Lionel Jeffries) and two children (Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall), fulfilling that Loving But Distracted Dad trope when he meets Truly Scrumptious (Sally Anne Howes), the heiress to a local candy magnate.  She takes him to task for not making sure his kids are going to school, or you know, are supervised in any way, and he tells her she's a busybody for showing human concern.  His kids like her, however, so he attempts to mend fences by inviting her on their random picnic, where he spins a fantastic yarn about a flying car, an evil Baron (Gert Fröbe), and a land where children are outlawed.

I never saw this when I was a child, which is when you'd have to see it, I think.  As an adult, I found it too long and too cloying.  The dance numbers are well choreographed but the songs are too simplistic and repetitive.  There were also too many of them.  Obviously, the gender politics of the film haven't aged well, but more than that, I just didn't buy the two leads as romantic.  It was very much two people who just agreed they liked the same children.

If you have a strong sentimental attachment to this film from your own childhood, you're probably going to want to show it to your kids.  For me, though, it's a miss.

Captain Marvel (2019)

This was supposed to be posted on Monday.  :-(    Is it me or does 2019 feel like it's just starting and January and February were leftovers from 2018?  This feels like the first release of the new year, maybe because it's kicking off blockbuster season, and maybe because it's the last lead-up to Avengers:  Endgame.  We are in the home stretch, people.  Just don't die before the end of April.

Vers (Brie Larson) is a member of an elite team of Kree warriors, locked in a battle against the shapeshifting Skrull.  She has no memory of her life before waking up six years previously on the Kree world of Hala.  While chasing a Skrull cell, Vers crashes onto planet C-53, commonly known as Earth, and discovers that the Skrulls are looking for a woman named Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Benning) that they believe holds the key to a faster-than-light engine.  The more Vers investigates, the more she comes to believe that she personally knew Dr. Lawson, that she had a life on Earth as a human, and that her identity is actually Captain Carol Danvers, USAF. 

I'm trying really hard to be vague about the plot because it works better if you uncover the layers just like Carol does.  A number of actors in the film go against type and it's so much fresher to experience it, rather than have me tell you about it. 

In many ways, this is a prototypical Marvel origin story.  Carol Danvers is set up as an above average person (fighter pilot) who suffers a serious personal loss (missing memories) and must decide where her loyalties lie in a world of shifting allegiances (Kree/human) based on her personal integrity.  You can sub in Stephen Strange, Tony Stark, or T'Challa in the above sentence and get the same effect with just a few detail shifts.  Does that make her story any less entertaining?  No.  Less valid?  No.  Less important?  No.

It's a big deal that this is the first female-led Marvel movie since this sets the bar (and opens the door) for other female characters to take center stage.  You can bet that if this had gotten bad or even middling reviews, someone would be pulling the plug on the Black Widow movie this very instant.  In that respect, I think Marvel made the right call by having a more generic storyline that doesn't risk polarizing critics and audiences.  They've got this down to a science at this point. 

Larson is great as Captain Marvel, bringing a ton of energy and steely-eyed fierceness to the role.  Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg reprise their roles as Agents Fury and Coulson, respectively,  like they've been playing them for the past decade.  Ben Mendelsohn and Jude Law are always top-notch but they really come out swinging as combatants on opposite sides of an alien war. 

Of course, the true standout of the movie is Goose, played by four excellent cat actors.  I am here for her spin-off, whenever that may be.

Bird Box (2018)

  This is the Christy Pick for February, but with all the Oscar shenanigans, I'm just getting to review it now.

Malorie (Sandra Bullock) is one of the few survivors of an apocalypse.  Five years previously, the world was suddenly taken over by unnamed creatures whose very image drove people to commit suicide or become dangerously unhinged.  At first, Malorie finds refuge with a house of other survivors, but as time goes by, they are winnowed down further and further, until only Malorie and two children are left to seek a possible sanctuary down a very dangerous journey by river.

This became a huge Internet phenomenon and pop culture touchstone.  Between it and A Quiet Place, I'm pretty sure camping rates dropped precipitously.  If I had to choose, I'd give the edge to Bird Box, only because A Quiet Place made me so irritated.  Bird Box isn't without its flaws, but it has a terrific cast and a better mythology.

Trevante Rhodes is the post-apocalypse boyfriend we all need.  John Malkovich is the most John Malkovich-y cantankerous old man ever.  Jacki Weaver is strong, even in such a small role and Tom Hollander should be the next Bond villain.  Leave Rami Malek alone, and choose Tom Hollander.

That being said, the film has received some criticism from people in the visually impaired community about how blindness is treated in the film.  Hollywood has a long history of fetishizing certain disabilities and blindness is one of its top three favorites, right up there with losing a limb and savants.  Bird Box certainly isn't the worst offender when it comes to representation but the resulting "challenge" and memes could definitely be considered offensive.  That's less about the movie, however, and more about how people are garbage.

If you're in the mood for something that's horror-lite, go ahead and click on Bird Box.  It's not going to keep you up at night but it's worth a lazy, rainy, Sunday watch.

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

  I had this disc at home but I didn't get to see it before the Oscar ceremony. 

Detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is newly hired to the Colorado Springs police department as their first black officer.  Stallworth wastes no time applying for undercover work, first infiltrating a lecture given by Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), one of the original founders of the Black Power movement, and meeting the lovely Patrice (Laura Harrier).  Then Stallworth sees an ad in the paper for a membership drive by the Ku Klux Klan and decides to begin an investigation into the hate group, posing as a white man.  His partner, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), plays Ron in face-to-face meetings, working through the local chapter all the way to meeting the Grand Wizard, David Duke (Topher Grace). 

This is based on a true story, adapted from the book by Ron Stallworth.  It's one of those stories that sounds insane when you hear the pitch and then gets more crazy as it unfolds.  As a film, it works seamlessly.  Spike Lee is a consummate professional whose work has been critically lauded (but rarely recognized by the Academy) for decades.  He knows how to frame a narrative.

I have read some criticism about the film being too soft a look at racism and the deeper experiences of African-Americans and I think those points are valid.  It is definitely packaged for a white audience with the inclusion of Driver's "I never understood until it happened to me" narrative arc.  It's almost certainly designed to preach to the choir, as well.  Unlike the softly-spooned we-can-all-get-along-if-we-try message of Green Book, BlacKkKlansman swiftly points out that we have not progressed all that far in the almost 50 years since Ron Stallworth picked up the phone and dialed up his local white supremacists. 

Should you see BlacKkKlansman?  Yes.  It's a fascinating story expertly told.

Julia (1977)

  You may be interested to know that the Oscars have frequently been a source of controversy.  Vanessa Redgrave, who won Best Supporting Actress for this film, was booed for criticizing protestors outside during her acceptance speech.  I can't imagine someone getting booed now, considering how political speeches have become so mainstream.

That's your trivia for today.

The film itself is much more tense than I was expecting.  I didn't really read anything about it ahead of time.  I just knew that it had won three Oscars and that it starred Jane Fonda and Redgrave.

Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) is finding her first play very hard to write so she leaves longtime lover Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) behind and goes to Paris, where she unsuccessfully tries to track down her childhood best friend, Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), once a scion of East Coast bluebloods and now a medical school student in Vienna.  Julia is caught under the crushing wave of Hitler's occupation of Austria and asks an enormous favor of her newly famous friend:  to smuggle some of Julia's funds into Nazi-held Berlin to fund the resistance.

It's a very heavy film, based on Hellman's own story, and intercut with a series of flashbacks showing Lillian and Julia growing up together in a way that doesn't seem gimmicky or forced.  The homoeroticism is heavily implied but never outright stated and Lillian actually punches a man (John Glover) for suggesting there was more to her and Julia's relationship.  Keep an eye out for a brunette Meryl Streep in a very early role as well as Hal Holbrook and Maximillian Schell.

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

  Maybe it's just seeing this so soon after Loving Vincent, but I really didn't need another movie about Van Gogh's last days.

Vincent Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) struggles to find peace so he can paint, moving from Paris to Arles in search of the perfect place.  His mental health issues and inability to relate to the villagers cause him to be ostracized, further exacerbating his mental decline.

Dafoe is excellent, as always, but this movie really has no reason to exist.  It's not compelling, it's not presenting any new information, or new angles on existing information.  It's fine enough but there are better films about Van Gogh out there.  I'm surprised it was nominated for anything but if it had to be, Dafoe performance is the standout.  Otherwise, this movie is a hard pass.

What's Your Number (2011)

  Believe it or not, this is not the Christy pick of the month.  (I actually didn't get to her Feb pick, Bird Box, because of all the Oscar shenanigans. I'm hoping to get to it this weekend.)  This rom-com nonsense comes to you courtesy of the random shit on my inherited server.

Ally (Anna Faris) is young and struggling with her identity after losing her job.  On the subway, she reads a magazine article stating that if a woman has too many sexual partners, she'll never find a husband and that the magic number is 20.  Ally does some counting and realizes she's at 19, so she vows to not sleep with anyone else and to go back over all of her exes to see if one of them was actually Mr. Right.  To this end, she hires her commitment-phobic playboy neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), to help her track down all her missed opportunities.

Here's how this is going to go.  First, I'm going to discuss the (very short list of) things I liked about the movie and then I'm going to dive in with the things I hated about it and rom-coms in general.

Faris and Evans are actually really good together.  I'm so used to Evans as the rather dour Captain America that I had forgotten how good he is in a comedic role.  Faris has never been one of my favorite actresses.  I particularly loathe her open-mouth dumb blonde routine but she has the kind of sparkly joy with Evans that shows they are a particularly good pairing.  Also, about half the cast are straight out of a Marvel movie so it's kind of hilarious to pretend they are all undercover.  Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie, Martin Freeman, and of course Evans, appear, as well as a bit from New Spock, Zachary Quinto, Joel McHale, and a voicemail from Aziz Ansari, who I only know as Tom Haverford at this point. Bitch might be dumb but she's got great taste in men.

That was all the positives.

I probably shouldn't have to tell you why romantic comedies are horrible.  You already know that they are soulless, by-the-numbers slogs lacking in originality that promise specifically white upper-class women the kind of rose-tinged future that comes from adhering to rigid, controlling social norms.  Telling a woman that her value hinges on some arbitrary number of sexual partners is demeaning and plays into a host of patriarchal propaganda regarding the myth of purity as a tool to keep women subjugated.

Ally and Colin are both cowards in their own way and the movie vaguely tries to show some vulnerability but can't escape the tropes of the genre.  Colin realizes that he really likes Ally because she's the only woman he's talked to for more than a day, you know, like a real person with thoughts and feelings, without sticking his dick in and Ally realizes she likes Colin because he's the only man that lets her have her own personality rather than pressuring her to subsume her interests to his own.  That's not a great basis for a relationship but it's a start.  Unfortunately, the movie just kind of brushes off its hands at that point, slaps a "Happily Ever After" sticker on the side, and walks away secure in the knowledge that the pretty people have found each other and that's all the audience ever wanted anyway.  It's lazy and reductive but it's also not the worst one I've ever seen.