Leviathan (2014)

  Another day, another depressing ass feature this time courtesy of Russia.  It's rated R for "graphic nudity" but I have no idea why.  There's nothing graphic in the entire film.  Even violence is mostly alluded to, rather than shown.  The only scene that remotely involves nudity is a woman walking into frame with no underwear.  And it's roughly 30 seconds of film.  MPAA are a bunch of conservative prudes.  However, I will give a content warning for suicide and marital rape.

Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) is involved in an ongoing legal dispute with his town's corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov) over an eminent domain buyout that grossly undervalues his property.  The case is being stymied in the courts and Kolya's lawyer (Vladimir Vdovichenkov) resorts to blackmailing the mayor with a folder full of evidence.  The mayor retaliates, bringing the full weight of his power against Kolya.

No shit, this was depressing as fuck.  It's apparently meant to reference the Biblical story of Job, which is not great, if any of you have read that.  The whole moral is to meekly accept your lot in life and find peace with it.  Not an inspiring tale for anyone being ground down by the system.  It's not streaming anywhere, which is probably good.  

Animation and Acting (2016)

 This doesn't have a poster because it's just one of the little bonus features on Finding Dory.  I needed a palate cleanser after the run of shitty/depressing movies I've watched recently.

It's only about seven minutes long and doesn't go in-depth into the processes; it's just a cute little behind-the-scenes look at how the voice talent and the animation talent work side-by-side to create the characters in the movie.  If you're a fan of Disney animation, Pixar, or live action shows like Critical Role or Dimension 20, you know how important voice acting can be.  

Animation is frankly undervalued as an art form, because people write it off as for children.  Animators work in a variety of genres and you should support any of their efforts to unionize because I guarantee they have created something you love, even if you don't realize it.  They need stronger protections from the entertainment industry that frequently treats them like disposable objects.  Because we live in a hell-scape.  If you own Finding Dory, this is one of the featurettes on the blu-ray and it's probably on Disney+ as well, though I've never looked for it.

The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

  I'm assuming this is one of Christy's.  I can't imagine any other way it would have gotten into my queue.

Hazel (Shailene Woodley) is a teenager with cancer, a fact she's used to push everyone away from her in an attempt to minimize the eventual pain of loss.  Then she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a smug teen cancer survivor and amputee.  It is love at first chemo.  (I'm so sorry.)  

Look, if you're super into tragic love stories, this is probably great for you.  I fucking hated every minute I watched.  The whole "cigarette as a metaphor" thing made me want to scream.  It's a deeply teenaged navel-gazing exercise in melodrama.  That is not my thing.  If it's yours, great.  Have at it.  It's currently streaming on Disney+ right now.  

The Insult (2017)

  This movie made me so tired.  Content warning:  war violence

Two men, both scarred by the Lebanese Civil War, escalate an insult into a national courtroom drama.

This is why mental health services should be paid for by national funds.  And also why toxic masculinity should be stamped out.  I can't even write about this right now.  There are so many parallels between Christian nationalists as portrayed in Lebanon and the ones here in America right now.  The movie wants you to have sympathy for Tony (Adel Karam), a racist espousing genocidal ideals, because he had a traumatic experience in childhood that he repressed.  Nope.  Your personal trauma doesn't give you the right to say other people shouldn't be allowed to exist.  It also doesn't shield you from the consequences of saying that in public.  

There's a lot in the movie about who gets to call themselves a victim and that's also bullshit.  You can be a victim while also being a perpetrator to someone else.  It's not either/or.  And there's zero point in trying to compare traumas.  It's all subjective.  What is deeply hurtful to one person might be shrugged off by another.  That doesn't invalidate that person's feelings.  But it also doesn't mean they can retaliate based on their hurt.

Therapy.   Therapy for everybody.  And communications classes.  If you allow your country to be torn apart from the inside, the least you can do is provide fucking counseling for people afterwards.

The Insult is streaming on Kanopy. 

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

  Ah, summer blockbuster season.  Still a little anemic thanks to the pandemic that no one wants to acknowledge, but ongoing nonetheless.

After a series of setbacks and losses, Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth) finds himself at loose ends.  Even traveling with the Guardians of the Galaxy has paled, so when he hears of a new villain named Gorr (Christian Bale) tearing through the various pantheons in a quest to kill all gods, he leaps at the chance to return home.  In his absence, New Asgard has become a tourist town, run reluctantly but competently by Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), until Gorr steals all the Asgardian children.  Thor expects to step in and be the hero once more, but finds he has unexpected competition from his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who has become The Mighty Thor, wielder of Mjolnir.  Jane is using Mjolnir's magic to stave off her cancer while she looks for a cure, enthusiastically wearing the Thor mantle if a little inexpertly.  The three superheroes travel to a conclave of the gods to spread the warning of Gorr the God-Butcher and hopefully raise an army to rescue the kids.

This was not as good as Ragnarok.  It was never going to be.  The hype was just too much to surmount.  Honestly, I don't think it's as good as Thor, though it's still slightly better than The Dark World.  The problem remains the same:  Marvel has never known what to do with Jane.  They tried Basic Love Interest, Unwitting Power Vessel, and Dame Not-Appearing-in-This-Film and it just all falls flat.  There was a shot here with Jane as Equal Power Level but they whiffed it by still trying to tack on Basic Love Interest v2* (Now with Tragic Overtones!).  It didn't feel organic and the connection --or re-connection in this case-- felt forced.  I think they would have been better served by having Thor and Mighty Thor come to terms with each other as exes they still have to work with.  That's a fascinating dynamic that has never been explored in any of the movies.

So, as a superhero movie, only 2.5 stars.  As a comedy, I'd give it 4.  It is candy-colored, slapstick silliness with whiplash turns to Bale's evil kidnapper menacing a cart full of children like he's auditioning for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  The Korg schtick is starting to grate on my nerves, and having him voiceover the beginning and end as well as play a side character was a little too much for me.  But your mileage may vary.  It's currently playing in theaters but I'm sure it'll be on Disney+ in a couple of months.

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2010)

  Whoo, boy.  I don't know what kind of shit Angelina Jolie was going through when she wrote this but I have to imagine therapy is cheaper.  

Content warning:  rape, war crimes, dead child, abuse, concentration camp imagery, and violence

Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) was a promising artist with a rich future ahead when war broke out in her home country of Bosnia.  Targeted for being Muslim, Ajla is separated from her sister (Vanessa Glodjo) and sent to a camp as a sex slave for Serbian soldiers.  The camp leader, Danijel (Goran Kostic), recognizes Ajla from when they used to date before the war started and "saves" her by telling the others she's his personal property.  

Jesus Kentucky-Fried Christ.  Do not watch this movie.  There is no redeeming value to be had and you can learn more about the Bosnian genocide from Wikipedia or Quo Vadis Aida.  Besides, this isn't a war movie.  It's a domestic abuse movie.  Danijel uses his power to hold Ajla against her will, repeatedly terrorizing her while telling her it's romantic, buying her gifts to keep her docile, and telling her it's her fault when he's angry.  And it ends just the way you expect.  It's free on Tubi but that is not enough of a reason to put yourself through this.  

The Normal Heart (2014)

  This only took me four days to get through!  It is absolutely devastating to watch, though, so buyer beware.

Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) has looked for love his entire life, from his brother (Alfred Molina) to a string of lovers but his internalized self-loathing for being gay has sabotaged everything.  Then he meets Felix (Matt Bomer), a handsome self-assured fashion reporter for the New York Times and it's everything Ned could have dreamed of.  Except gay men are starting to die.  A mysterious disease, first thought to be a rare cancer, is affecting predominantly homosexual men.  Only one doctor (Julia Roberts) is sounding the alarm, herself a polio survivor, that this could be something more, something dangerous.  As the AIDS pandemic grows and spreads, Ned grows increasingly desperate to get someone, anyone to listen and to care.

Yeah, so this was a hard watch.  For a lot of reasons.  It makes a great corollary to How to Survive a Plague but I don't know that I could recommend watching both in the same day.  Be kind to yourself.

In addition to the "life in a pandemic" narrative, I also really identified with Ned's personality struggles.  Too abrasive, too loud, too confrontational, too smart (but not in a good way), and too angry.  Too close to home.

It is a very good movie.  Taylor Kitsch in particular gives probably the performance of his career.  Roberts goes against type and plays a brittle, borderline unlikeable woman.  Bomer and Ruffalo are great together.  Really just excellent casting all around.  It's based on a stage play by Larry Kramer, who also adapted the screenplay if I remember correctly.  The Normal Heart is currently streaming on HBO Max.

Certified Copy (2010)

  It took me like a week and a half to get through this movie, which is a shame because it deserved better.  It is exactly the type of pretentious film school snobbery that I love but I could not pay attention to because this week has been such a shitshow.

An author (William Shimell) travels to Italy to talk about his book, Certified Copy, and meets an antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche) who takes him to see a very famous copy of an artwork from Herculaneum.  Along the way, they are mistaken for a married but estranged couple and decide to role-play as that couple.  What's real and what's pretend quickly become blurred.

I basically watched this movie at 2x speed so I also read the Wikipedia article to make sure I hadn't missed anything.  That's where I learned that William Shimell is not an actor, he is an opera singer.  The director saw him in a performance and thought "that's my guy" and hired him.  Which is kind of neat. 

It's very much a walking-and-talking kind of movie where they discuss the nature of art, authenticity, and whether art has intrinsic value or if copies diminish its worth.  If that's not your thing, maybe give this a pass.  It's currently streaming on Criterion.  Like I said, I'd probably have enjoyed this if I watched it at literally any other point in my life.