Shortbus (2006)

  Here we are, back on my bullshit.  Content warning:  explicit sexual content with full penetration and ejaculation, suicide attempt

The lives of a group of 20-something New Yorkers intersect when Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson) introduce their couples counselor, Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), to a sex club called Shortbus after they find out she's never had an orgasm.  

This is one of those meandering ensemble films that were a dime a dozen in the early 00s.  The only thing that sets this one apart is that it is unabashedly unrated.  Probably gave the MPAA reviewers the vapors.  It's not terrible, as these things go.  The performances feel very natural, if solipsistic.  It's an encapsulation of being in your 20s, figuring out what exactly your personal traumas are and trying to find a path through them in a sex-positive way.  Your mileage on that kind of existentialism will vary, of course.  

I don't know that I'd call it a landmark piece of LGBT film, but it is by the same director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch so it's probably in the canon.  Shortbus is currently streaming on Kanopy, but I am serious about the explicit nature.  Be prepared.

The Witches (1990)

  This was my pick for Movie Club.  It was going to be Neruda, but we had just watched a sad poet biopic in Benediction, so I opted for something a little different: childhood nightmare fuel.

Luke (Jasen Fisher) is taking a holiday with his grandmother (Mai Zetterling) in England when he discovers a plot by evil witches to turn all children into mice.

This is based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name, recently centered in a controversy as Dahl's racist, sexist past was altered in re-prints of his most famous works.  That's an on-going debate about censorship and what we owe to preserve the past, warts and all, that I'm not going to get into here.  But it reminded me this movie exists and that Anjelica Huston is fabulous in it.

It should surprise no one that I loved the villain way more than the hero.  Brunette with a bitchy attitude, tons of money, cheekbones for days, and great style?  Yes, please.  Right up there with Maleficent and Catra in my childhood rankings.  The Nazi parallels were less apparent to me at 8.  Watching it now, as an adult, that's all I see.  The German accent, the fawning sycophants/co-conspirators hiding in plain sight, the "magic potion" that transformed people via green gas into vermin, even the Norwegian resistance.  

Huston is still incredible (and so is her costuming) but it is a lot harder to watch now.  The prosthetics hold up pretty well, but the blue-screen effects look very dated.  I was surprised how good the mouse puppets were but it's Jim Henson Studios so I shouldn't have been.  I did feel kind of bad for the number of live mice that get chased, thrown, suspended over boiling water, and have things tied to their tails.  The RSPCA was clearly not involved here.

I haven't seen the 2020 remake but if you're looking for a soft intro to horror for the elementary school kid in your life, this isn't bad.  It's currently streaming on HBO Max.

A Place in the Sun (1951)

  This week I got to pick for Cinema Club so I picked A Place in the Sun because it was the highest on my queue.  I didn't know a thing about it, which I thought put us all on equal footing.  Now I'm worried I'll get dragged for this choice.

George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) is a poor cousin to a very rich family, having grown up in a religious mission.  He runs into his uncle (Keefe Brasselle) by chance and is offered a job mostly out of pity.  Arriving at his uncle's swimsuit factory, he is assigned to a menial job stacking boxes.  There he meets Alice (Shelley Winters), but company policy prohibits dating between employees so they must keep their relationship secret.  George thinks he's part of the working masses, but with a connection to the company owners, Alice knows it's only a matter of time before he is pulled into upper management.  Sure enough, an invite to the Eastman house results in George meeting society darling Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), a rich and beautiful heiress.  An unplanned pregnancy ties him to Alice but he can't let go of Angela and all she represents.  So he begins to plan Alice's murder.

I really thought this was going to be more like From Here to Eternity, all melodramatic sighs and relationship drama, not a two hour Perry Mason episode (complete with Raymond Burr!) but the second Alice tearfully explains that they're in "trouble" I was like Oh No.  A 2004 study determined that 20% of pregnancy-related deaths are homicides.  That is 1 in 5.  It is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, and Black women are 4.5x more likely to be murdered than white women.  In that sense, it's interesting that this movie made in 1951 would focus on it, although of course sympathy is supposed to go to George, not Alice.  The "tragedy" of the original novel, An American Tragedy, is that George is forced to bear consequences of his murderous thoughts.  

Also, side note:  isn't it insane that the novel took 752 pages to tell the same story as a 48-minute episode of Dateline?  Wild.

Anyway, it was pretty impossible for me to take this film seriously even though Clift is very good in it.  Winters is her usual weepy self, and Taylor is pretty and vivacious.  Both leading actress roles are barely fleshed out as the characters exist only to provide motivation for Clift's character.  There's never any reason given why either of them would want to be with him, only why he would want or not want them.  It does still feel very prescient but that's honestly more depressing than anything else.  It's not streaming anywhere legally but you can rent it on Amazon Prime.

Jailhouse Rock (1957)

  Yeah, it's the accompanying record cover, not the movie poster but come on.  That face is hilarious.  It looks like he just stepped on a live eel.

Vince Everett (Elvis Presley) served a year in jail for manslaughter.  His cellmate (Mickey Shaughnessy) was once a star in country music and teaches Vince the guitar.  Once out, Vince wastes no time trying to break into the recording business but his violent temper and relative naivety work against him.  Still, his natural talent sees him to success, landing a television special, multiple records, and eventually a Hollywood contract.  All the money and fame in the world, however, won't buy Vince love, especially when he's determined not to be ruled by it lest it break his heart.

Ironically, this has almost the exact same plot beats as Elvis.  It almost feels prophetic if the Baz Luhrmann film is to be believed.  Vince is kept ignorant of his appeal by a washed up star, talked into a worthless contract, beset by flunkies he overpays out of sense of misplaced loyalty, and rejects the brunette with his best interests at heart.   There are also too many musical numbers that feel shoehorned in and it too feels like it's a day and a half long, even though it actually clocks in at 96 minutes.  

As a movie, it's not great.  It feels very cheap.  The sets are basic, the dialogue is bare minimum, and even the main draw (Elvis) seems wooden and misplaced.  There's no energy to the role.  And this was one of the successful movies. 

It's streaming as part of HBO Max's Elvis collection until the end of the month so if you're interested, you might want to hurry.

Benediction (2021)

  This was the Movie Club pick for the week.  I barely got it watched in time.  This whole weekend has fled from me like it owed me money.

Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) joined the war effort in 1916 like any other young man of his generation only to be profoundly shaped by the horrors of trench warfare.  A gifted poet, he found himself exiled to a convalescent hospital in Scotland because of his vocal opposition to the war.  There, under the care of a sympathetic doctor (Ben Daniels), Siegfried also comes to terms with his own sexuality.  In the inter-war period, Siegfried works his way through the fashionable upper class gay set including actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and model Stephen Tennant (Calum Lynch) before marrying Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips).  

This is half a biopic and half a really annoying reality show on Bravo.  Bitchy, catty, disaffected queens interspersed with archival WWI footage and random full songs.  It is a hot mess.  Skip it and watch Wilde instead.  

Benediction is currently streaming on Hulu.

Living (2022)

Nominated for Best Actor   Almost forgot about this one!  I was at a friend's son's birthday party (Hi, Luke!) and completely lost track of time.  

A civil servant (Bill Nighy) receives a terminal diagnosis and decides to devote his last few months to really live only to discover he has no idea how.

This is a remake of an Akira Kurosawa film which I have not seen.  It is very low-key, very melancholic and thoughtful.  Nighy is extremely restrained.  Even his voice sounds like it's being pressed from him with every word.  That may or may not sound super boring to you.  Especially since this isn't exactly a new idea (paper pusher discovers life outside the office).  Nonetheless, it's pretty good in an elegiac, understated, British-y sort of way.

It is not on streaming yet but you can rent it from Amazon.  

Argentina, 1985 (2022)

Nominated for Best International Feature    This was a very compelling court drama that I probably would not have seen otherwise.  Content warning:  war crimes, discussion of rape and torture

In 1985, Argentina's highest court decided to prosecute high-ranking military officials for their part in the violent dictatorship from 1976-1983 after a military tribunal declined.  The prosecutor, Julio Strassera (Ricardo Darín), must put together a case that the generals and higher-ups knew and actively encouraged the policies of kidnapping, torture, false imprisonment, murder, and rape on a country-wide scale.  Assisting him is a young, untried lawyer named Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani) and a team of interns.  

It gets right to the point, laying out its premise and jumping straight into Nuremberg comparisons.  It doesn't fetishize the ordeals or exploit the material, but it doesn't shy away from the horror either.  The only detrimental aspect for me was the focus on Strassera's kids, especially in the beginning.  It took away from the plot.  But that's a personal beef and your mileage may vary.  I will say again, overall it's a very good movie about holding monsters accountable.

It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

95th Annual Academy Awards (2023)

 Oscars were last night.  Here's your recap.  

Jimmy Kimmel hosted for a third time but couldn't seem to get out of his own way, telling repetitive jokes about the Slap, the length of the telecast, and movies versus TV.  

Best Animated Feature went to Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio.

Best Supporting Actor went to Ke Huy Quan in one of the most emotional wins of the night.

Best Supporting Actress went to Jamie Lee Curtis.  I was really rooting for Stephanie Hsu or Hong Chau but if you consider this Oscar a lifetime achievement award for the number of times Curtis has been passed over in genre films, it stings a little less.  

Sofia Carson and Diane Warren performed "Applause", one of the nominated songs and frankly the second best musical number of the night, which isn't saying much.  All the performances except "Naatu Naatu" were low-energy.  Gaga looked like she was on MTV Unplugged, Rihanna seemed sleep-deprived, and David Byrne warbled off-key all over Stephanie Hsu.

Best Documentary Feature went to Navalny, which is the only one I saw in that category so that was lucky.

Best Live Action Short went to An Irish Goodbye, which I think was the only Irish thing that won all night.

Best Cinematography went to All Quiet on the Western Front.

Best Hair and Makeup went to The Whale because of course it did.

Best Costume Design went to Ruth Carter for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever making her the only African American with two Oscars.

Academy President Janet Yang came out in bedazzled choir robes looking like she was going to sentence people to the Phantom Zone.

Best International Feature went to All Quiet on the Western Front.

Best Documentary Short went to The Elephant Whisperers.

Best Animated Short went to The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

Best Production Design went to All Quiet on the Western Front and so did Best Original Score.  At that point in the ceremony I started to get very nervous about Best Picture because All Quiet was winning too many things.

Best Visual Effects went to Avatar: The Way of Water because it used The Most Visual Effects Without Being Classified as Animated.

Best Original Screenplay went to Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Adapted Screenplay went to Women Talking, as is right and proper.

Best Sound went to Top Gun: Maverick.

Best Original Song went to "Naatu Naatu" from RRR.  Also the correct choice.

John Travolta came out looking like Wooly Willy to present the In Memorium, which left out Kevin Conroy and Charlbi Dean while also looking like a high schooler's attempt to be fancy with PowerPoint.

Best Film Editing went to Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Best Director went to The Daniels for EEAAO.

Best Actor went to Brendan Fraser, as expected.

Best Actress went to Michelle Yeoh just before they dropped the bombshell that this woman has no formal training in martial arts and in fact, trained as a ballerina.  So she's just a world-class athlete, then.  Even more badass.  

And Best Picture went to Everything Everywhere, the populist choice for once.

So there you have it.  I agreed with the majority of the choices for winner and I was pleased as punch that Banshees went home empty-handed.

Causeway (2022)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor    You know how some movies are fun and made for entertainment and some just seem to be made to spark Discourse?  Guess which kind this is.

Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) is an Army veteran sent home to New Orleans to recover from a Traumatic Brain Injury.  She befriends James (Brian Tyree Henry), a mechanic, as she slowly begins to pull her life back together.  Her plan is to get well enough to re-enlist and re-deploy despite her trauma, because continuing to live her pre-Army life is worse than the possibility of death and dismemberment.

There is absolutely a story to be told here about how low-income and minority families are specifically targeted to serve in the military as a "way out" of their situations.  I'm not sure this is it, though.  There's just not a lot here.  Don't get me wrong, a 90-minute Oscar nominee is great.  But I feel like this could have been a short instead of a feature.  It meanders, adds in a wholly unnecessary scene that points to romance when platonic would have been more interesting, and lingers on Lawrence's dead expression an unjustifiable number of times.  Henry is good here but I've seen him better.  

If you hate yourself, it's a decent double feature with The Hurt Locker.

Causeway is currently streaming on Apple+.

The Whale (2022)

Nominated for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Hair and Makeup    I love Brendan Fraser and I love Darren Aronofsky but I hated The Whale.  It is Aronofsky's worst film thus far.  Content warning:  fatphobia, homophobia

Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is dying of congestive heart failure.  In his last days, he attempts to reconnect with his teenaged daughter (Sadie Sink) who is bitter and angry that Charlie left her and her mother (Samantha Morton) to live with a man.  

I just expected so much more than I got.  Aronofsky has made such an oeuvre of questioning and probing religious beliefs and mythology and with a movie named The Whale, I thought surely some take on Jonah, leviathan, fuck, even Pinocchio!  Nope.  You get a little eschatology, a little left-leaning despair, and a whole lot of depression.  I'm actually really sad about it.

Fraser has been burning down all the awards so he's the odds-on favorite in Best Actor.  And he's fine here (although a case could be made that he's getting a nom for "uglying up" like they levy at actresses that try and play characters).  If Hong Chau won over Stephanie Hsu in an upset, I wouldn't be pissed about it.  She's been excellent in everything she did last year.  Best Hair and Makeup would be a sham, though.  Gary Oldman's fat suit won a few years ago.  We don't need another one.  Not when there are actual interesting nominees.

It's not streaming (legally) anywhere yet but you should skip it, regardless.

The Lost City (2022)

  Surprisingly, this is a Tyler pick.  Don't get me wrong, I was planning on watching it eventually (despite Channing Tatum) but probably not for 5-7 business years.

Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) turned to writing romance novels to fund her and her husband's archeology digs.  Now widowed, Loretta finds continuing too painful so she announces that "The Lost City of D" is her final novel, to the dismay of her cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum), who had portrayed her fictional hero "Dash" to great renown.  He wants Loretta to reconsider but never finds the right things to say to her. And then she gets kidnapped by an insane billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) because the archeological trappings of "The Lost City of D" actually point to a real lost city on a remote Atlantic island with a real lost treasure.  Alan calls in a favor from a shady dude he met in a meditation retreat to track Loretta's location so he can rescue her.

There are a lot of pretenders to the crown of Romancing the Stone and this is probably the closest in tone without being a total carbon copy.  Bullock is always good, Radcliffe is hilarious, and Tatum is begrudgingly decent as a human golden retriever.  (He has grown on me but I still can only tolerate small doses.)

As you all know, I'm not a big rom-com person but this was very funny, very fast-paced, and all-around entertaining.  If you were on the fence, give it a shot.  It's worth it.  

The Lost City is currently streaming on Paramount+.

Empire of Light (2022)

Nominated for Best Cinematography    This is one of those movies where the description just lies to you because otherwise you'd never choose it.

Hilary (Olivia Coleman) is a paranoid schizophrenic who works as a manager for a movie theater on the south coast of England in the early 1980s.  She is very much just trudging through life until the arrival of Stephen (Michael Ward), a young man trying to get into college.  As Stephen and Hilary grow closer, she stops taking her medication, leading to predictable consequences.  Meanwhile, Thatcher's recession and austerity promote a white supremacy backlash that targets Stephen.

This doesn't have anything to do with "the power of movies" and pretty much every movie is about "human connection" but White Woman Discovers Racism or Mentally Ill Woman Goes Off Meds don't sell tickets, so I get it.

Still hated it though.

Empire of Light is currently streaming on HBO Max. 

Women Talking (2022)

Nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay    This was a hard watch.  It's very good, but woof, that subject matter.  Content warning:  domestic violence (off-screen), sexual assault (off-screen but discussed), sexual assault of minors (off-screen but discussed)

A religious community is rocked to its core when a group of men are discovered to be drugging and raping the women and children of the group.  While the men are in the city arranging bail for the accused, the women must decide what they will do:  Nothing, Stay and Fight, or Leave.  The heads of the oldest families gather to discuss their options.  

This is based on a true story that happened in 2010.  

Sarah Polley is an excellent filmmaker and this is a very sensitively shot film that nonetheless doesn't shy away from the violence perpetuated against these women.  The assault is never shown, only the aftermath in flashbacks but it is incredibly effective.  It's not an easy watch but it is very good.  It's one of those Important films that is likely to get dismissed because people won't look past the title.

Stylistically, it did remind me of 12 Angry Men.  It's confined to mostly one location and is moved almost exclusively by dialogue.  Instead of the fate of one man being decided, however, it's the future of an entire community.  If anything was going to upset EEAAO's chances at Best Picture, it would probably be this one.  I don't think it will, there's too much momentum now after the SAG awards, but it should definitely win Adapted Screenplay.  The only other challenger there is Glass Onion, which I loved, but Women Talking is a better film.

It is currently only available in theaters but it should be hitting Hulu in the next week I think.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

  Movie club pick for this week is another Billy Wilder.  One of his lesser, I'm sorry to say, but still with some cracking dialogue.

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) is presented with what looks to be a straightforward missing persons case.  Madame Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page) has come to London from Brussels in search of her missing husband, a mining engineer who stopped writing to her three weeks ago.  She discovered that the address she was using was an empty storefront and was then attacked and thrown into the Thames to drown.  Waterlogged and with a mild case of amnesia, she is dumped onto the doorstep of 221B Baker St for Holmes and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) to figure out.  Holmes is warned off the case by his brother, Mycroft (Christopher Lee), but is undeterred.  He tracks Mr. Valladon to Inverness, Scotland, home of Loch Ness and its monster.  Holmes must solve the mystery of the lake, the missing man, dead canaries, little people acrobats, Trappists monks, and national security, all while guarding his heart from the beautiful Madame.

Stephens' Holmes is very arch, very British, very dry.  Blakely's Watson is annoyingly hyperactive, though, which made Stephens seem much more reasonable.  Page is absolutely the star of the show here and Lee steals every scene.  I would have loved a Diogenes Club series starring him instead.  

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is streaming on Tubi, the Roku Channel, and PlutoTV.

Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    Man, I am such a sucker for stop-motion.  I hope this wins.

After losing a son in a bomb raid, a depressed and angry Gepetto (David Bradley) carves a wooden puppet and begs it to come to life.  Little does he know, a forest spirit (Tilda Swinton) heard Gepetto's wish and is moved to grant it, angering the cricket (Ewan McGregor) that had made its home in the wooden body.  The cricket is charged with acting as Pinocchio's (Gregory Mann) conscience and is promised a wish if he makes sure the boy grows up to be good.  Gepetto is astonished and slightly appalled by the animation of his creation.  The congregants of the local church are just appalled, believing the walking, talking puppet was sent by Satan.  The local podesta (Ron Perlman) is very interested in a boy that can't die and seeks to conscript Pinocchio for Mussolini's army.  Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) is very interested in a puppet with no strings for his carnival.  Pinocchio wants to be loved but can't escape the shadow of the son who died.

This has all the Del Toro hallmarks:  fascist regime, something with too many eyes, dead kids, and religious overtones.  It is bleakly funny for adults but still has fart jokes for kids.  It might be a little dark for very young viewers with some of the war imagery, but if they've seen Coraline or Corpse Bride they're probably fine.

My absolute favorite part of this movie is Cate Blanchett, two-time Oscar winner and 7-time nominee, as Spazzatura the monkey.  I read somewhere (I'm too lazy to look it up) that she heard Del Toro was doing a movie and begged to be part of it, but he had already cast everything except the monkey and didn't want to offer her a role so small.  She said she'd do it anyway.  And she makes an excellent monkey!  Honestly, it's a better performance than Tár.

Pinocchio is currently streaming on Netflix.