Danny Collins (2014)

  This is a cute, middling film.  It's not terrible, it's not great.  It's very middle-of-the-road, especially for actors of this caliber, but work is work, right?

Danny Collins (Al Pacino) achieved rock star status after starting as a humble folk musician.  As a birthday present, his manager (Christopher Plummer) gives him a letter written to Danny from John Lennon in 1971 but never delivered.  The letter was sold to a memorabilia collector instead.  Forty years later, Danny finally reads what was written to him and vows to make changes.  He cancels his "greatest hits" tour, gives up booze and drugs, and camps out in a New Jersey Hilton to write original songs for the first time in forever, much to the consternation of the hotel manager (Annette Benning).  New Jersey is not just as far away from L.A. as he can manage, it's also the home of his estranged son (Bobby Cannavale), daughter-in-law (Jennifer Gardner), and granddaughter (Giselle Eisenberg).  

There is nothing really new in this variant of an aging-rocker-mid-life-crisis tale except the John Lennon letter, which was based on a real story.  Steve Tiltson, a Welsh folk rocker, actually got a letter from Lennon 34 years too late, because someone at the magazine it was sent to sold it instead of delivering it.  Tiltson never reached the Barry Manilow-esque levels depicted in the film, but he has had a 40-year career in the music, so he's doing all right.

This feels like a small, indie film that inexplicably has a cast full of Oscar and Emmy nominees and winners.  Like Barack Obama delivering a middle school book report.  Nice, but a little overkill.

It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

  Content warning:  suicide, war violence, domestic violence, animal death (deer), homophobic slurs, Russian roulette, compound fracture

Three small town friends, Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steve (John Savage) are excited and happy to serve their country in Vietnam.  One comes back with a chest full of medals, one comes back with one working limb, and one comes back in a metal box.  

So here's what we're not going to do:  we're not going to do a think piece about the horrors of war, the particular willful blindness of patriotic jingoism, or PTSD.  This movie has been out for over 40 years and smarter, better people than I have written those pieces.

What we are going to talk about is Christopher Walken.  He won an Oscar for this and it was probably the most well-deserved Oscar for a film role in history.  He out-acted Meryl fucking Streep.  Do you know how hard that is?  Now, if you're like me and you've mostly ever seen him as the villain or as a dancer or comedian in silly, supporting roles, this movie may well come as a shock to you.  (I mean, most of the movie is designed to shock and appall you.  Look at those content tags.)  Walken is the beating heart of this film.  

We can also talk about Michael Cimino's direction here.  The symmetry, the foreshadowing, the nature-as-religion overtones of Heaven and Hell.  Beautiful.  He also won an Oscar.  

Is this, as the original film poster says, "one of the most important and powerful films of all time"?  Mmmm.  Powerful, certainly.  Important?  Ehhhhh.  I think the documentaries of the time, the news footage, and the historical background and global context are probably more important.  But this is an incredibly well-made, harrowing film that I personally will never watch again.  Images from this film are seared into my brain now.  I can't fix that.  

But you can join me in viewing those images!  The Deer Hunter is currently streaming on Peacock, but only at their Premium level.

Red Hill (2010)

  Have you ever wanted to watch a movie from the POV of the evil townspeople from Hang 'Em High?  Good news!

It's Constable Shane Cooper's (Ryan Kwanten) first day on the job in the town of Red Hill, Australia (I don't know what state and I'm too lazy to look it up).  It's not going well.  He's misplaced his gun in one of the moving boxes, his new boss (Steve Bisley) is kind of a hardass, he doesn't know where anything is, there's no extra car so he has to ride Old Beth, and oh yeah, an escaped convict named Jimmy Conway (Tommy Lewis) has come back to wreak vengeance on the town that sent him to prison.

This was a damn good revenge Western.  If you've only ever seen Kwanten in True Blood, he's much more than just a pretty face, but this movie belongs to Tommy Lewis.  He says precisely seven words in the entire runtime.  Everything else is conveyed through his facial expressions, no easy feat when half of it is burn scar prosthetics.  It's streaming for free on Tubi but it's absolutely worth buying if you're into Westerns at all.

Footnote (2011)

  Thanksgiving is this week.  Maybe your family loves each other and you'd like to know what it's like to be dysfunctional.  Here's the movie for you!

Professor Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) is thrilled to have finally won the prestigious Israel Prize for Talmudic Studies after having dedicated 30 years of his life to reconciling minutiae.  The only problem is that the actual winner was his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), also a Professor Shkolnik, also a researcher in Talmudic Studies, and also with the same first initial (in Hebrew).  Uriel learns of the administrative error and is paralyzed with indecision.  He knows exactly how much it would mean to his father, but he also desperately craves the recognition from his peers.

This film is set up as a comedy but I failed to find any humor in it.  Both Professors Shkolnik are fragile narcissists and bad fathers and I could not feel any sympathy for either of them.  Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine having my head so far up my own ass that I would be professionally jealous of my child.

It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and for free on Tubi.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

  While suffering a little from sequel-itis, the follow-up to Black Panther is a worthy entry to the canon.

After the sudden death of T'Challa, the kingdom of Wakanda is feeling the pressure.  Outside interests have seen the monarch's passing as an opportunity to strike against the nation for its vibranium, but Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is a stalwart defender, even as she struggles with her grief.  Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) has thrown herself into her work, trying to synthesize a replacement for the heart-shaped herb that gives the Black Panther its power, but is intrigued when the king of an underwater empire, Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), offers an alliance and a threat.  His kingdom, Talokan, also has vibranium and an American scientist, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), developed a machine that detects it, putting Namor's people at risk for discovery.  He wants Wakanda to join Talokan and wage war against all the surface nations, starting with Williams' death.  Shuri and Okoye (Danai Gurira) go after the young woman to get to her first.

The filmmakers and cast made a point of treating late star Chadwick Boseman's role as T'Challa with absolute respect.  There are no cheap tricks, no deep-fakes, or re-used footage to make it look like he's still there.  He is gone and the film acknowledges that.

But all is not doom and gloom.  The story is good, Namor is just sympathetic enough to be a really good villain, and there's a sense of tragic inevitability that adds to the mythological feeling.

Honestly, Namor is so much better than Aquaman it's not even funny.  I almost feel bad comparing them but the costumes, the underwater sequences, the CGI, and the makeup are So Much Better in Wakanda Forever.  Ruth Carter should probably get another Oscar for costumes.  We'll see if she does.  And hey, maybe Aquaman 2 will fix all the things that were cheap and tacky about the first film.  I'm not holding my breath, but maybe.  

Tim's Vermeer (2013)

  As far as Rich Guy Vanity Projects go, recreating a Vermeer from first principles is harmless, verging on useful.  Unlike, say, tanking a microblogging platform because people made fun of you...

Tim Jenison is a millionaire inventor of 3D computer imagery software.  He becomes interested in/obsessed with determining how Johannes Vermeer, 17th century Dutch painter, created photographic quality oil paintings.  Conventional scholarship dictates that Vermeer was a savant, but Jenison believes that Vermeer was an innovator and inventor.  Tim goes on a multi-year journey to meet with experts, build his own replica of Vermeer's studio, and learn a half dozen disciplines from carpentry to glazing to grinding his own paints and lenses, in order to paint a copy of Vermeer's The Music Lesson with no artistic training.

It's almost more impressive to see the single-minded devotion (and accompanying funding) to proving a theory than seeing a non-artist paint Vermeer.  Is it world changing?  No.  Is it interesting?  If you like the intersection between art and science.  Produced and directed by professional skeptics Penn & Teller, Tim's Vermeer is light, engaging, and funny.  It's currently streaming on Starz.

Jem and the Holograms (2015)

  I was an 80s girl who loved the cartoon Jem so please believe me when I say this movie is a soulless piece of nostalgia bait that vanishes like sea foam.

Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peebles) is painfully shy, so she uploads a video of her singing to YouTube while wearing a disguise.  The video is an overnight sensation as people try and figure out the "mystery" of Jem, Jerrica's alter ego.  A record executive (Juliette Lewis) finds her and convinces her to sign to Starlight Records, but Jerrica won't go without her band consisting of her three sisters.  The four arrive in Los Angeles and discover that Jerrica's dad (Barnaby Carpenter) had left her a scavenger hunt to find pieces of his unfinished robot, Synergy, that coincidentally take her on a journey of self-discovery.

This is a movie based on a toy property so it was already going to be a shameless cash grab but that didn't have to be a negative.  Jem commits the cardinal sin of pandering.  It desperately wants to be cool and effortless but misunderstands its target audience.  Probably because it was written, produced, and directed by middle-aged dudes.  Not a single woman was involved in this.  All the characters are shallow caricatures, a lot of the creative content is ripped straight from YouTube (which feels icky and exploitative), and the original music is saccharine generic pablum that sounds like pop but isn't.  Like someone said "how hard can it be to write a pop song?" and then proved exactly how hard.  Pop music is pop because it forges a universal (hence, popular) connection between artist and listener.  These songs didn't do that for me.  As always, your mileage may vary.  But based on the Rotten Tomatoes score  (22% for critics, 40% for audience), I'd say I'm in the majority.

I have no idea if the original cartoon still holds up.  I remember watching the VHS over and over when I was like 7, but I don't actually remember anything about it other than colors and music.  The series is apparently streaming on Tubi if you want to check it out. 

The movie is available on Netflix but is not worth it.

Henry and June (1990)

  I don't know anything about Anaïs Nin, except what I just read on Wikipedia.  I've never read any of her books/diaries so I have no idea if any of this movie is based on fact.  Content warning:  sexual assault

Anaïs Nin (Maria de Madeiros) is living in Paris with her husband, Hugo (Richard E. Grant), when she is introduced to American writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward).  She and Miller have a torrid affair, exacerbated by Nin's attraction/obsession with Miller's wife, June (Uma Thurman).  

That's it.  That's the plot.  I was trying to think of anything else the movie is about and I'm coming up completely blank.

There is a lot of sex in this movie, but none of it is really explicit.  I don't know why it got an NC-17 rating as opposed to just a hard R unless it's because of the LGBTQ angle.  Or maybe the naked contortionists.  Whatever.

In between all the sex scenes, there are musings on what it means to be an artist, a writer, accepting criticism, translating feelings into words, and the sheer impossibility of truly capturing someone else's personality or spark.  Medeiros plays Nin with a wide-eyed doe-like quality, an enduring naïveté contrasting sharply with Ward's growly bluster.  Thurman vamps it up like a 40s noir, alternating hot and cold with both main characters.  She is easily a scene-stealer but her accent kept throwing me.

This is not available on any streaming service (probably because of the rating) and I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend tracking it down on disc unless you have a burning interest in Nin, Miller, or Weimar-era period flicks.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

  I love Weird Al and I cannot think of a better way to portray a parody musician than with a parody biopic.  

Alfred Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) had a dream: to become famous for changing the lyrics to popular songs.  Success was overnight, thanks to his genius and the help of his mentor, Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), but the fame and money could never fill the yawning void of Al's need for his father's (Toby Huss) approval.  Then Al met the Princess of Pop, Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), and their torrid affair was the stuff of legends.  Over the objections of his band and his mentor, Al devoted himself to Madonna, becoming a raging alcoholic and international assassin.  But was the Material Girl just using him to boost her own record sales?  

This movie is completely bonkers.  Just know that going in.  There are a lot of very famous comedians sprinkled throughout, some in blink-and-you-miss-it cameos.  Radcliffe understood his assignment here and looks like he was having a great time while Wood brings a calculating sinisterness to her crimped hair and acid-washed denim.  

It's currently streaming on the Roku channel.  Don't bother trying to figure out what's true and what isn't, just let the insanity wash over you.  

The Gray Man (2022)

  This wasn't even on my radar but Tyler wanted to watch it.  I thought it came out like two years ago, but apparently it released in July??

Six (Ryan Gosling) is one of those shadowy operatives that has no background, no personnel file, no presence so he can do the morally gray work required by the U.S. government.  When he finds out that his division is being systematically eliminated by the new CIA chief, Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), he goes off-grid.  Annoyed, Carmichael dispatches psychopathic independent contractor Lloyd Hanson (Chris Evans) to find Six.  Lloyd immediately kidnaps the niece (Julia Butters) of Six's previous handler (Billy Bob Thornton) and unleashes every mercenary he can find to run Six to the ground.

Is this a cliched action movie with every trope from John Wick to Jason Bourne?  Yes.  Is it still watchable?  Absolutely.  Gosling is funny and charming while still trying to be stoic, Evans and his terrible facial hair gleefully chew scenery, Ana de Armas and Jessica Henwick sigh in exasperation, then get the job done.  It's fun and explode-y and stabby.  There is also an underlying subtext about generational wealth and the corruption of legacy institutions but we don't have to go into that.  It's a summer popcorn flick (from this summer, who knew?) and it's streaming on Netflix.

Sing (2016 short)

  This is not the animated animal singing competition movie.  This is an Oscar-nominated short from Hungary about a school choir.

Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi) is a new student very excited about joining the school's prestigious choir, until the teacher (Zsófia Szomsi) pulls her aside and tells her that her singing isn't good enough and she should just mouth the words.  Zsófi's best friend, Liza (Dorottya Hais), notices the change and confronts the teacher, finding out that fully half the choir has been instructed not to sing.  On the day of the national competition, the children make their voices heard.

I'm conflicted here.  On the one hand, fuck that teacher for being a condescending, gatekeeping bitch and yay to those kids for understanding collective action, but on the other hand, choir is a competition.  A lot of them have actual auditions before you can get a slot, even in school.  Is it more or less cruel to tell a kid they're not good enough and can't join, or let them in so they can pretend?  I don't know.  I guess it depends on the kid.  

But seriously, fuck that teacher.  Also, as a kid who was in school choir, we were told that judges could hear if people weren't singing, but also that if we forgot the words we should sing the word watermelon instead.

It's streaming on Kanopy and it's less than half an hour long.

Black Adam (2022)

  Okay, so I actually saw this a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't want it to get lost in the 31 days of horror.

Adriana (Sarah Shahi) attempts to recover a priceless relic of a demonic-infused crown before the criminal consortium occupying her country of Khandaq and also releases Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson), a near-mythic hero imbued with the powers of Shazam.  This triggers Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to send a response team led by Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) to subdue Teth-Adam as he is a disruption to global security.  But when actual, literal demons get involved, everyone has to pull together to fight for the greater good.

This movie actually makes a really good point about how Western influences don't give a shit about predominantly brown countries being raped for resources until something occurs to disrupt those influences.  Like, the Justice Society (clearly an American-led force if it's being directed by Waller, using American resources) didn't care that Khandaq was illegally occupied for multiple decades.  They only got involved when Black Adam started killing occupiers.  The movie doesn't spend a lot of time belaboring that point, but it is there and I haven't seen a lot of reviews mention it.

Mostly because they are too busy dissecting the cameo in the post-credit sequence.  Which I don't care about at all.  I did notice Agent Harcourt from Peacemaker, though.  That was nice.

It is pretty paint-by-numbers as a superhero movie.  Two things it does have going for it:  good lighting and a moderately lighter tone.  I found it to be an enjoyable experience and it renewed my interest in Shazam 2, coming out next March.