Onward (2020)

  God this year has lasted a century.  I no longer know what day it is or what is happening.

This film was unfortunately shafted by the Great Plague that has befallen us but the Disney Overlords were merciful (and wanted some sweet, sweet profits) so they dropped it on Disney+.  I think it's also available for rental on Amazon Prime, but $20 for a 48-hr rental is some gold-plated bullshit and I encourage you not to participate in it.

Ian (Tom Holland) has just turned sixteen-years-old.  His mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is worried that his birthday isn't going to go well for him and decides to give him a present from his late father.  It turns out to be a wizard's staff and a spell that will allow the dead to return for a day, so he can meet his dad for the first time.  His older brother, Barley (Chris Pratt), tries and tries to perform the spell but only when Ian touches it does the staff work.  Unfortunately, Ian's crippling self-doubt neuters the spell halfway, leaving the boys with only their dad's lower half and a rapidly diminishing timetable to get another Phoenix gem to re-power the spell.  What follows is a road trip/epic quest of puzzles, dangers, and self-reflection in a fairytale world that has largely dismissed magic.

It's not the best story Pixar has ever done but it is a great love letter to Dungeons and Dragons.  There are some truly funny parts and some touching ones (duh, Pixar) but it just didn't resonate with me as strongly as some others.  Obviously, your mileage may vary.  For what it's worth, my mom freakin' loved it.

Peeping Tom (1960)

  I can't remember where I heard about this movie but it was definitely in the context of it being a banned film.  When this was released in 1960, critics lost their shit and whole countries decried it as indecent, immoral, and not suitable for anyone under 16.  It wrecked the director's whole career.  So obviously I had to see it.

And it's pretty tame by today's standards.  I would definitely say okay for people over 10.  Any younger and you're probably going to have to explain voyeurism, which you may or may not want to do.

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a shy, retiring photographer and focus puller for TV commercials.  In his spare time, he murders prostitutes and films their faces as they die.  It's important to be well-rounded.  He also rents out the house he grew up in to Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) and her blind mother (Maxine Audley).  Helen takes a shine to Mark and he really wants to stop killing people, or at least not kill Helen, but he also wants to complete his masterwork of documenting his murder process before the cops get him.

If this had been made even five years later, it probably would have been hailed as visionary.  Unfortunately, Michael Powell had to wait over a decade to get vindication.  Since then, Peeping Tom has gone on to be consider a progenitor of slasher films, a meta commentary on film watching, and a masterpiece of horror.  And best of all, it's streaming for free on Tubi.  If you like cult classics, slashers, lurid psychosexual exploits, or stabbing British people, give it a shot.

Life Overtakes Me (2019)

  I didn't remember that this was nominated for an Oscar.  I didn't even remember to post it.  It was supposed to go up last week.  That's less due to it being boring or uninteresting than how much of a slog Les Misérables was to watch.  This is only about 20 minutes so it is comparably a breeze.

Did you guys know there's a condition called Resignment Syndrome?  Kids in Sweden, almost exclusively children of refugees, have been falling into comas.  Essentially, their lives are so filled with uncertainty, their little bodies just shut down.  The doc follows three different, formerly healthy children and their families to show the impact this has had.

It seems so fake but Sweden is noting hundreds of cases, way more than could be explained by people trying to game the system.  Not to mention the amount of time and effort it would take to fake it.  These kids are on feeding tubes, they have to have daily physical therapy to prevent muscle atrophy, they're missing over a year of their lives.  There are people monstrous enough to poison a child to try and garner sympathy but not hundreds in one place.  But as the refugee crisis worsens, experts and doctors fear even larger waves of Resignment Syndrome breaking out.

This is streaming on Netflix and it is a trip.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

  The sensibilities in this film are woefully outdated (though unfortunately still relevant) but it remains a damn good trial film.

Paul Biegler (Jimmy Stewart) is a former prosecutor turned quasi-retired.  He is nominally a defense attorney but spends the majority of his time fishing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Until the Manion case drops in his lap.  Army Lieutenant Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) is accused of murdering bar owner Barney Quill (uncredited, only shown in photos).  Manion doesn't deny the murder but his extenuating circumstance is that Quill raped Manion's wife, Laura (Lee Remick), causing Manion to become murderous in a bout of temporary insanity.  This was a very risky plea even in the 50s and Paul has his work cut out for him as Laura is known as a flirt and Manion has a hair-trigger temper.  Making matters worse, the district attorney (Brooks West) has called in a hotshot up-and-coming lawyer from the state capital named Charles Dancer (George C. Scott) to help him win against his predecessor in the office.

This is based on a novel written by a Michigan Supreme Court justice, in turn based on a man he defended in 1952.  So the legal bona fides are there.  It was directed by Otto Preminger, starred Stewart, Gazzara, Scott, and Remick, and was scored by Duke Ellington.  It might be one of the finest made movies to ever exist.  It was nominated for seven Oscars but was unfortunately going up against Ben-Hur and The Diary of Anne Frank.

So that's what's good.  What's bad is A) the treatment of Laura Manion, a rape victim who is never treated like a victim during the course of the movie.  She has almost no agency and her rape (when it is believed at all) is referred to only as it affects her husband.  The prosecution brings up her clothing and personal habits, implies that she was cheating or that "married women can't be raped" and does everything possible to degrade and denigrate this woman on the stand.
B) the entire mental health aspect.  A lot of their concepts of shell shock, neuroses, and dissociative states are just really outdated.  That, at least, is to be expected.

It really is a phenomenal film, as long as you watch with the caveat that it gets these things terribly, terribly wrong.  It was a product of its time and that should be addressed.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Les Misérables (2019)

  God, this movie was a hard watch.  It took me four days to get through it.  I am not in the mood for social commentary dramas at the best of times, much less when we're on lockdown in our homes and idiots are speculating how many of the vulnerable should be considered an acceptable loss so their 401ks don't take a hit.

Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) has just joined an elite inner city crime unit and is placed on a team with Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga).  He is very quickly uncomfortable with the other two's willingness to harass and terrorize the residents of Montfermeil, famous for being where Victor Hugo wrote his novel Les Misérables.  The cops' continual draconian behavior leads to intense confrontations after a kid (Issa Perica) steals a lion cub from a traveling circus, breaking the very delicate balance between the local drug lord trying to keep the peace (Steve Tientcheu) and the leader of the local Muslim Brotherhood faction (Almamy Kanouté).

Everything in this movie is just uuuuugggggghhhhhh.  The cops are all bastards, the community is divided, everyone distrusts everyone else, and the kids are all caught in the middle with no hope.  Yeah, it's a very good film and timely and filled with tension, good performances, and excellent pacing.  Would I ever watch it again?  Fuck no.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

  Tyler picked the movie last night.  I guess he was tired of our real-life apocalypse.

Things have settled down for Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) over the past ten years but domestic bliss doesn't suit some of them as well as others.  Little Rock in particular longs for the company of people her own age.  After Columbus' proposal to Wichita goes awry, the ladies take off for the open road.  Columbus attempts to move on with Madison (Zoey Deutch) but when Wichita unexpectedly returns with news that Little Rock ditched her for a New Age hippie named Berkeley (Avan Jogia), he and Tallahassee immediately join her in a rescue mission.

It's been ten years since the last Zombieland but the sequel loses none of the self-aware charm.  Also, the mid-credits scene is pure gold.  If you are looking for a warm, funny, nostalgic-without-the-schmaltz escape from reality, you could do a lot worse than Double Tap.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

  Really wish I hadn't seen Due Date first, as it's a carbon copy of this movie.  (Also because it's not very good.)  I also wish this had held up better.

Neal Page (Steve Martin) is a marketing executive in New York City trying to get home to his family in Chicago for the Thanksgiving weekend.  Through a series of misfortunes, he ends up repeatedly thrown together with Del Griffith (John Candy), a traveling shower curtain ring salesman with a sunny personality and zero sense of personal space.  The two men end up on a cross-country road trip by plane, bus, cab, and rental car as everything that could possibly go wrong does.

I get the message it was trying to convey, about learning to listen to people who are very different in order to find empathy, and that is admirable.  But everything else about these two men is the worst.  Neal is an entitled douchebag and Del refuses to take responsibility for any of his faults.  They are both assholes.  Forced interaction with an extrovert is in my top three ideas of Hell but I would also include spending any amount of time with either of these characters.

Currently streaming for free on Tubi or on Amazon Prime.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

I watched this again, now that I'm going back through my server.  I wasn't sure if it would hold up to a second viewing, but I actually liked it more this time around.  It's like an anti-rom-com.  The whole point of the Adjusters is trying to keep these two characters from seeing each other and I think that's hilarious.  Originally published 23 Oct 2011.    I wasn't completely sold on this movie from the trailers but it's pretty good.  It's funnier than I thought it would be.  The chemistry between the two leads is solid without being soap opera-y, which is a big thing when you're dealing with themes of destiny and The One.  Tip the scales the wrong way and you've turned it into a farce.

David Norris (Matt Damon) is a New York congressman who just lost a campaign for Senate.  On the cusp of giving his concession speech, he meets a ballet dancer named Elise (Emily Blunt).  She inspires him to give a great speech and then disappears.  A couple of weeks later, he sees her on a bus and they strike up a conversation.  Seems innocent enough, right?  Except David was never supposed to see her again.  Now his entire future is in jeopardy because of a shadowy, haberdashed group called The Adjusters.  They groom humanity along its rightful course according to the Plan.  Any deviations from the Plan are dealt with, unobtrusively if possible, definitively if not.  David needs a little help from a sympathetic Adjuster (Anthony Mackie) and a whole lot of luck if he wants the future he's dreaming of instead of the one that's been decided for him.

It's based on a story by Philip K. Dick, which makes a lot of sense, since it is a beautiful concept.  I'm sure writer/director/producer, George Nolfi, did a lot to polish it and develop the characters but all of my praise ultimately goes to Mr. Dick for so many of the great science fiction ideas of the last half century.

Citizenfour (2014)

  I have worked in the Intelligence Community for many years.  I have friends who work there still.  There is a lot of controversy surrounding Edward Snowden even now, so I was interested when this got nominated for Best Documentary a few years back.  It took a pandemic for me to finally get around to it but that's neither here nor there.

Edward Snowden, a contractor working for NSA in Hawaii, reaches out to a documentary filmmaker and a Brazilian journalist for help in exposing the extent to which the government and private companies are collecting data on American citizens and foreign allies as well as enemies.  He fears that the amount of information will be weaponized by an increasingly partisan political system.  To confirm, he leaks a large amount of highly classified data to be used by the documentarian and journalists around the world.

We can go around and around whether Snowden was justified in blowing this particular whistle.  The one thing we can agree on is that this documentary is incredibly boring.  It's hard to make people typing look cool.  The doc was clearly trying to stay on the Wanted Man angle and I get that it was probably harrowing but they never actually show any threats to Snowden or the journalists.  It's just a series of hotel rooms and video chats.

If you already had an opinion of Snowden, this will likely not change it.  If you don't know who Snowden is because you are too young/weren't paying attention to the news/thought it was overblown, maybe give this a watch.  Currently streaming on Tubi for free.

45 Years (2015)

  I forgot that it was Monday yesterday.  What even is time, right?  All this working from home...  Really, though, I probably would have forgotten what day it was anyway.  I'm terrible at space-time continuity.

Anyway, here's this movie.  It's boring and British and made no sense to me whatsoever.  Enjoy!

Kate (Charlotte Rampling) is planning a 45th wedding anniversary party at the end of the week for herself and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) when Geoff receives a letter from the Swiss government.  Fifty years ago, Geoff had been hiking in the Alps with his then sweetheart, Katya (Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Film), but she fell in a glacier fissure and died.  Now he has received notice that they found her body.  Suddenly, Kate is filled with insecurities and jealousies over a woman who --I cannot stress this enough-- has been dead since before she met, much less married, her husband.

I just didn't understand anything about this movie.  I don't get what Kate's problem was.  It's not like he had an affair.  It's not like they found Katya alive.  Obsessing over "what if" in a multi-decade relationship is just insane to me.  "But what if she hadn't died?"  But she did.  Years before you even met that dude.  He's not allowed to have dated anyone?  Is that not completely insane?  "But would you have married her instead?"  Bitch, yeah, probably.  They were dating.  And then she died.  Ergo, no longer dating.  WTF.  People are stupid.

This is on the Criterion Channel for some unfathomable reason.

Torn Curtain (1966)

  I thought I had seen all of Hitchcock's movies but I had missed at least one, because I never knew Paul Newman and Julie Andrews made a movie together.  It's not my favorite Hitchcock but it is very suspenseful.

Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) is an American physicist on a European convention tour with his girlfriend/assistant Sarah (Julie Andrews), a doctor in her own fucking right and a peer in the field but whatever, the 60s, when he starts behaving oddly.  Sarah becomes increasingly suspicious of his attempts to ditch her and get her to go home so she follows him on an impromptu flight behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin where she is horrified to know that Michael plans to defect because the American government won't fund his anti-nuclear weapons defense.  Of course he's not really a traitor, he's a spy sent behind enemy lines to get the missing piece of information from a Russian scientist (Ludwig Donath) so the Americans can scoop the Communists.  He was supposed to go alone but Stand-By-Your-Man Sarah wouldn't abandon him so now he has to figure out how to get both of them back to safety before the East German Secret Police catch them.

This is kind of like if True Lies wasn't a comedy.  It's pretty predictable in that I didn't believe for a second that Paul Newman was going to defect to East Germany but it really maintains tension throughout and works very well as an escape film.  It was on Amazon Prime but I think it was scheduled to come off at the end of March so I might have caught it on the last day.

Anna (2019)

  You want to talk about a law of diminishing returns.  Yeesh.  Luc Besson has been making the same movie over and over and every time it gets a little less smart, a little less cool, despite newer effects, newer actresses, and more style.

Anna (Sasha Luss) is a Russian assassin placed in a top-tier modeling agency as a cover so she can fly around the world completing her assignments.  She is promised her freedom after five years but soon finds the constant lying and killing to be a real drag.  And that's before she's caught by CIA agent Lenny Miller (Cillian Murphy) and forced to become a double agent.

As long as you're not expecting high art, this is a fun popcorn movie.  Great for those isolating-in-place days when you're mindlessly scrolling through every streaming service you have looking for something, anything you haven't seen before.  If you just want to watch pretty people be violent, here you go.