Last Days in Vietnam (2014)

  Hey, you know that adage about history and dooming to repeat it?  We still haven't fixed that but we have started filming what it looks like!

In 1975, a peace treaty was signed between North and South Vietnam.  President Nixon promised South Vietnam that if the North reneged, American forces would step in and re-arm.  U.S. troops began leaving he country.

In 1976, Richard Nixon resigned.  In the grand tradition of quitting before you can be fired, he left his successor, Gerald Ford, an enormous mess to clean up.  The North Vietnamese army broke the Paris Treaty and began rolling south, prompting a series of cluster fucks and a huge humanitarian crisis.  

This documentary, produced by PBS, stitches together first-hand accounts and news footage to examine the men (not a single woman was interviewed) who risked their careers and their lives to bring as many South Vietnamese people out of the country as they could, using both authorized and unauthorized means.

A U.S. president ordered the removal of troops from a volatile country where their involvement had lost whatever popular appeal it might have once had, then leaves office, and the actual extraction is left to his replacement.  Meanwhile, people on the ground are desperately trying to do right by the native translators, workers, and support staff that will absolutely suffer if left behind for the oncoming enemy by cramming as many refugees onto transport as they can while the eyes of the world are upon them.  Sound fucking familiar?

Last Days in Vietnam is currently streaming on Kanopy.   Can't wait to see the sequel, Last Days in Afghanistan, in about ten years.

The Fountain (2006)

  I love Aronofsky, even when he's being weird.  

In the present, Tom (Hugh Jackman) works on an experimental cure for his wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), using a rare tree from Central America.  In the past, a Spanish conquistador searches for the Tree of Life in the New World for his queen.  In the future, transcended from time, a man searches for answers as to who he was and who he will be.

This movie is a love letter to death, to letting go, and the joy of looking into the unknown.  It's not going to be accessible to everyone and that's okay.  It's still really pretty to look at.  Visually, Aronofsky's movies are always a treat.  It helps that I really like death in all its permutations.  I love his fascination with Christianity, and he's the only director I can think of that truly uses it for mythology.  The Fountain is currently streaming on Tubi but probably won't be for long, so see it while you can.

Trainwreck (2015)

  So apparently if I don't schedule a post for Monday, I don't remember to do a post for Monday.  My bad.  Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Amy (Amy Schumer) has always run from anything resembling a real relationship but when she is assigned to write an article on sports doctor Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), she decides to give it a shot.  

That's basically it.  Standard rom-com.  Your mileage will vary depending on how much you enjoy Schumer's brand of humor and/or Judd Apatow comedies.  Personally, I found it crude and boring.  Tilda Swinton is phenomenal as Amy's horrible boss and there are supporting turns from Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Dave Atell, Randall Park, John Glaser, Ezra Miller, Marisa Tomei, and Daniel Radcliffe, as well as sports people like LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire.  People made a big deal about LeBron James' acting in this but I found him stilted.  

It's currently streaming on Peacock but you can do better.

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

  Content warning: anti-Semitism, racial slurs, anti-Semitic slurs

Yeah, this was not a fun watch.  And made more depressing by how little things have changed in seventy years.

Phil Green (Gregory Peck) has been assigned to write a magazine article on anti-Semitism but finds it slow going until he hits on the idea of going undercover.  Capitalizing on his newness in New York, he lets a rumor begin that he is Jewish.  Only his editor (Albert Dekker) and his editor's niece, Kathy (Dorothy McGuire), know the truth.  Phil soon discovers that bigotry is everywhere and even most insidiously in the people who hate anti-Semitism but allow it to go unchallenged.  

Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart pretty much had morals locked down in the 40s and 50s.  They loved those idealized crusader for justice characters, the kind of men Superman would aspire to be.  

You can't really say this movie is ahead of its time, because it's still happening.  Anti-Semitism is on the rise, as well as racism and homophobia.  It has something to say about the way good, upright citizens are complicit in allowing bigotry to flourish because it makes them uncomfortable to confront it, internalized anti-Semitism and self-hatred, and even the concept of White Lady Tears, though they don't call it that.  As a morality play, top notch, no notes.  I have a strong quibble about the love interest at the end of the movie because it feels like pandering, but I get why.  

As a bonus, Gentleman's Agreement features an 11-year-old Dean Stockwell, who just recently died.  He won a Golden Globe for his performance here and by God he earned it.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

King Arthur (2004)

  I took an Arthurian Legend class in college and I will never forget it because the professor was adamant that all Arthurian stories were fan fiction.  And she was right.  When you think about it in that context, you can get away with literally any time period, any silly tropes, anything you can imagine.

Artorius (Clive Owen) is a Roman legionnaire in charge of an elite band of Samarkandian warriors in indentured servitude to Rome.  They are about to receive their discharge papers when they are tasked with One More Mission to retrieve a Roman family above Hadrian's wall before the invading Saxons kill them. Arthur and his knights must reconsider an alliance with the pagan Merlin (Stephen Dillane) to defend their adopted homeland.

This is a dumb movie by any metric.  The characterizations are poor, the dialogue is boring, and the script makes zero sense.  But who cares?  It's fan fiction!  Fuck it, Arthur is half Italian now.  The knights of the round table are Russian.  Guinevere is an archer.  Everyone is hot somehow, even though they look like they've never bathed.  Mads Mikkelsen has a hawk.  Your arguments are invalid.  This is not my favorite Arthur retelling but I'm not judging if it's yours.  You're allowed to like what you like.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

Earthsea (2004)

 I tried to watch this earlier in the pandemic and gave up after about half an hour.  Should have listened to those instincts.

Ged (Shawn Ashmore) yearns for a more exciting life than just being village blacksmith.  When the soldiers of King Tygath (Sebastian Roché) invade his island, Ged gets his chance.  He uses magic to confuse the soldiers and send them off a cliff.  A master mage, Ogion (Danny Glover), pulls Ged back from the brink of death and sets out to train the boy.  There is a prophecy that a mage could rid the world of the Nameless Ones, an ancient evil locked away beneath a temple and guarded by an order of priestesses.  King Tygath wants the release the Nameless Ones to grant him immortality and has corrupted one of the priestesses (Jennifer Calvert), hoping that she will become the successor to High Priestess Thar (Isabella Rossellini), and thus learn the invocation to open their prison.  Thar instead chooses Tenar (Kristin Kruek), who has a mysterious link with Ged, even though they are on opposite sides of the world.

This two-part Sci-Fi Channel original miniseries is so bad, it is shocking.  The video quality is fuzzy and looks like a bad VHS transfer, despite being digital, the CGI is a travesty, and the acting is atrocious considering the quality of performers.  It is dreck.  Skip it and read the book series by Ursula K. LeGuin instead.  Or, you know, don't, because I didn't like that either.  Earthsea is streaming on Amazon Prime's IMDb TV, which means it also has ads.  Just the worst, all around.

Omar (2013)

  No more introspection and grief!  Now it's time to solve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis!  

Just kidding.  There's no future here, just neverending conflict.  

Omar (Adam Bakri) can only visit the girl he likes, Nadia (Leem Lubany), by scaling the walls of the West Bank.  Nadia's brother, Tarek (Eyad Hourani), Omar, and Nadia's other suitor, Amjad (Samer Bisharat), are one of many liberation cells tasked with guerrilla operations.  Amjad shoots an Israeli soldier as part of a mission, but Omar is caught.  Faced with the choices of life in prison or becoming an informant, he walks a very dangerous line between the two sides, but it's nothing compared to the personal betrayals he experiences.

The last act was a little messy for me, personally.  It felt overwrought and tacked on.  I think there was enough drama without it but your mileage may vary.  Anyway, this was super depressing but it's streaming on Netflix, if depressing is your thing.

Wild (2014)

  I forget how good an actress Reese Witherspoon is.  Even when she's in crap films, she's extremely watchable.  She didn't quite "ugly up" here (or at least not enough to get an Oscar) but this is the most stripped down I've ever seen her.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) has decided to hike the 1000 miles of Pacific Crest Trail with no training or experience in order to regain some control of her life, which has spiraled into addiction and misery after the death of her mother (Laura Dern).  She sets out on her three-month journey weighed down by guilt and a mammoth pack of supplies, hoping to lighten both burdens by the end.

I couldn't relate to anything in this story.  I found all of her responses to stimuli completely incomprehensible, which oddly, made it worth watching.  I had no idea what was coming next at any point in this film.  

Really, the only thing I got out of it was that a woman could literally walk a thousand miles into the wilderness and still not escape creepy-ass dudes.  What the fuck is that about?  Wild is currently unavailable for streaming except to rent.  I got it through Netflix by disc.

Amelie (2001)

I know I've watched this more recently than 2013 because I showed it to Bethany, but I don't remember when that was.  So I watched it again.  Well, had it on in the background, anyway.  It remains completely charming and sweet.  It's currently unavailable on streaming, but you should own a copy anyway.  Originally posted 4/6/13.    I love this movie.  It's such a sugar rush, a complete confection of a film.  This is one of those great bridges that you can use to get the more reluctant people in your life interested in foreign cinema.  It's so easily accessible.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) is a young waitress living in Paris.  Having grown up with emotionally distant parents, Amelie is quiet and reserved but with an active imagination.  After a chance incident dislodges a bathroom tile and reveals a long-forgotten box of childhood memories for a former tenant, Amelie decides to return it to him.  The experience inspires her to become a regular do-gooder, interfering in the lives of her co-workers in order to improve or, in one case, punish the deserving.  It's funny, it's sweet, and it's instantly rewatchable.

The fantastically mobile-faced Dominique Pinon supports, as the obsessed-with-his-ex Joseph and he is great but Tautou really anchors this movie.  She is utterly luminous as the feisty but vulnerable Amelie. Really, if you've never seen this, you've done yourself a disservice.  I got it on blu-ray and the color transfer is phenomenal.

Rat Race (2001)

  This is a relentlessly dumb movie but it's not nearly as depressing as the previous three.

Six strangers win a special coin in various slot machines and are told by the casino owner, Donald Sinclair (John Cleese), that it enters them into a chance to win $2 million.  All they have to do is be the first to open a train locker in Silver City, New Mexico.  What they don't know is that the whole race is just for the amusement of Sinclair's jaded high rollers, who placed bets on which sad sack is going to win.  

This is a very slapstick movie with a lot of physical humor, which I have never cared for.  The cast is astounding with more cameos than I have the patience to type but it wasn't enough to make this enjoyable.  However, if you liked Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean, or Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Boat Trip, or Jon Lovitz in... anything, you might like this movie.  It's currently streaming on HBO Max.

God Loves Uganda (2013)

  Okay, seriously, this is like the third one in a row that's depressing AF, though this one comes with a bonus of Fury.

This documentary explores the connections between the Conservative Evangelical movement in America and the influx of money and missionaries to Uganda, leading to a rise in homophobic hate crimes and a bill introduced in parliament that would make some homosexual acts punishable by the death penalty.

It's not a fun watch but in this, the year of our apocalypse 2021, it's important.  This was filmed almost a decade ago and it's still incredibly relevant.  If anything, it was a bellwether for the continued swell of the Religious Right, for whom science is a filthy word and God only exists to protect rich white people.

You're going to want to watch something fun after this.  God Loves Uganda is streaming on Paramount+ but so is Reno 911 so just keep that in mind.

Ironweed (1987)

  This is turning into a depressing ass weekend.  Content warning:  homelessness, death of a child (described, not shown)

Francis Phelan (Jack Nicholson) left his family to become a hobo after accidentally dropping his son and killing him.  After 22 years, he finally returns to Albany, New York, but doesn't know if he can face his particular demons.  

This is kind of a Halloween movie, in that it's set on Halloween and features ghosts.  But it's much more of a Great Depression, grappling with guilt, and the Choices We Make kind of film.  It's a good movie if you are interested in any of those things but it does feel like you've been dragged for miles behind a slow-moving car.

Meryl Streep and Tom Waits support, and this is the feature debut (they'd done TV work previously) of Nathan Lane and Frank Whaley, playing a ghost and young Francis, respectively.  There are some other faces you'd probably recognize, depending on how my movies from the 80s and 90s you've seen.  Not in a hurry to revisit this one, but it's currently streaming on Kanopy, if you want to give it a shot.

The Wind Rises (2013)

  This is the most depressing animated movie I've seen in a while.  Definitely the most depressing Ghibli.

Jiro (Hideaki Anno) has always wanted his life to revolve around airplanes.  Bad vision keeps him from being a pilot, so he sets out to design them instead, taking inspiration from leaders in the field as well as nature.  He gets a job with Mitsubishi working on prototype fighter planes for the Imperial Navy.  Rumors of war circulate amidst economic hardships but life and love go on as he meets Nahoko (Miori Takimoto), a beautiful but fragile young woman, at a vacation resort.  

This is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the A6M "Zero" fighter plane.  If you are not familiar with the aircraft, fret not!  I Wikipedia'd it for you.  It started out as an engineering marvel, a spectacular dogfighter that gave an early advantage, but was rendered mostly ineffective as the Allied planes caught up and then surpassed it, so it was repurposed into a kamikaze vehicle.  

Yep.  This dude's lifelong ambition to create a beautiful piece of engineering and expand his country's aviation capability was co-opted into a death machine.  Ain't that a motherfucker?    

As an American, it is especially awkward finding Jiro sympathetic since, you know, wrong side and everything, but it's important to know these stories, because otherwise all you get is propaganda from the winners.  The film is beautiful, naturally, and the English dub (*spit*) has an incredible voice cast.  The Japanese sub is the preferred version and HBO Max has both, but the sub is unavailable on mobile.    

Draft Day (2014)

  My mom recommended this to me three or four years ago even though neither one of us gives a shit about football.  Liking the sport probably adds to the experience, but it's really not necessary.  The movie stands on its own.

Sonny Weaver, Jr. (Kevin Costner) is under a lot of pressure.  He is still grieving the death of his father, a beloved coach for the Cleveland Browns, where Sonny is General Manager.  His girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) has revealed she is pregnant, the Browns owner (Frank Langella) is pressuring Sonny to "make a splash" and he has just been pushed by the Seattle Seahawks into taking their number one draft pick in exchange for the Browns' next three first-rounds.  The entire future of the team is riding on Sonny's decisions and he is not making them in a vacuum.  As the clock counts down to the televised draft, he must decide whether or not to draft a promising quarterback (Josh Pence), a legacy running back (Arian Foster), or a middle linebacker from nowhere (Chadwick Boseman).  You can't please everyone and everything has consequences.

It's a little more heartwarming than Any Given Sunday but I'd put it on the same level.  Maybe more like Moneyball.  Anyway, you don't have to know anything about football because the football is not the point.  The point is about the choices we make and how you can't always see the endgame; you just have to make the best decisions you can in the moment.  A movie like this is pretty much made for cable reruns.  It's great for putting on when it's a cold, rainy Sunday or like Thanksgiving after you've stuffed yourself.  You don't have to debate whether or not it's worth looking for the remote to change the channel, you can just let it play and have a nice evening.  It's currently streaming on Peacock.

CBGB (2012)

  If nothing else, get the soundtrack for this movie. 

Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman) hasn't let failure stop him before and he's not going to let it now, on his third attempt to create a thriving bar in the Bowery.  Originally envisioned as a Country, Bluegrass, and Blues bar, Hilly soon gives in to a local punk band, Television, looking for exposure.  A musical revolution is born.  But bad accountancy, a loose regard for health and welfare, and a changing New York landscape sees CBGB on the cusp of ruin.

There are a ton of biopics about musicians. Dozens of documentaries about musical trends.  But this is primarily the story of a musical patron, that rare creature that just...lets artists do what they want.  CBGB gave fledgling bands a place to experiment, to be themselves, and to find their voices.  Blondie, Talking Heads, Velvet Underground, Patti Smyth, and countless others got their start on the disgusting, not up-to-code stage.

This is a fun movie, regardless of how you feel about punk music, and it's always nice to see Alan Rickman.  There are a ton of cameos by people you'll recognize and the end credits are cute too.  It's currently streaming on Tubi, Vudu, and the Roku Channel.

Dune Part One (2021)

  I've never read Dune, I have no interest in reading Dune, and I liked the David Lynch movie.  Now that that's out of the way...

Paul (Timothee Chalamet) is the heir to the House of Atreides, a rising star in the empire.  His family has just been given control of the planet Arrakis, home to a psychedelic dust that coincidentally is the most valuable substance in the galaxy.  Paul's father (Oscar Isaacs) understands that this is not a gift; this is a test from an insecure emperor looking to hobble one, perhaps two, dynasties by pitting House Atreides and House Harkonnen against each other.  You can tell Harkonnen are the bad guys because they have no eyebrows.  Paul is excited to go to Arrakis because he has been having dreams about being a space messiah but is a little worried about seeing everyone he loves die in an ultimately pointless battle over money and resources.

Okay, so this is a completely beautiful film.  The space scenes are gorgeous, the actors are gorgeous, and every attention has been paid to making this seem as real as possible.  As a movie, it's fine.  I think it cuts off a little abruptly, like it's a two and a half hour prologue, but it doesn't feel like 150 minutes when you're watching it.  I find Chalamet to be a little stiff as an actor but that seems to fit this character.  Isaacs and Rebecca Ferguson absolutely walk away with this film, all respect to Josh Brolin.  

The real question is, do we need another giant multi-movie adaptation of a White Savior narrative?  There's already Discourse online about how frustrated Middle Eastern, North African, and Southwest Asian people are about the cultural appropriation embedded in this film.  And right on cue, there are a bunch of white people arguing about how it's a sci-fi classic and a product of its time.  Personally, I'd love to see a Dune retelling a la Wide Sargasso Sea about the actual Arrakian hero and the white guy who takes all the credit, if someone wants to write that book.

It's currently streaming on HBO Max until 24 Nov.