Grey Gardens (1976)

  The Cinema Club pick of the week was Grey Gardens.  I had already reviewed the 2009 movie, and thought it would prepare me for the documentary.  I was wrong.

In the early 70s, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, made the papers when their East Hamptons mansion, Grey Gardens, was revealed to be a crumbling wreck filled with garbage, stray cats, and wildlife.  The press shamed their famous relative, Jackie Kennedy, into organizing a clean-up, getting the house into at least a livable state and paying for a caretaker.  Documentarians Albert and David Maysles followed the news clippings and planned a video follow-up, discovering that there was more under the surface of neglect amongst the upper class.

A movie is one thing.  You expect a little artistic license, some embellishment for the sake of drama.  A documentary is uncompromising, actual, observable truth.  And it's so much worse than the movie.  Big Edie and Little Edie each have their version of events, which they pronounce at full volume over each other, neither having much relation with reality.  The casual cruelty is astonishing, but the willful dismissal of their surroundings is horrifying.  The house is filled with trash, feral cats, and local wildlife, and remember this is AFTER the major clean-up, which can be seen mostly by its absences.  Gone are the antiques, the furniture, the glassware, the carpets, the wall hangings, presumably sold to pay debts or "rescued" from their imminent destruction.   But the Edies don't seem to notice or care, gamely continuing to play hostess to the documentary crew and whatever local handymen come around.

This is a camp classic.  Little Edie's DIY fashion and need for dramatic expression speak to a lot of people.  There's something unutterably sad and yet somehow admirable in the Beales' ability to soldier on, despite their (self-inflicted) circumstances.  They are clearly co-dependent and most likely mentally ill, which makes the movie feel a little exploitative, but the Maysels aren't filming for shock value (well, at least not for that shock) or to be cruel.  If anything, they are neutral leaning towards sympathetic.

Also, and this just occurred to me, if I was a grieving widow of an assassinated president and my asshole relatives got me dragged in the press and publicly shamed, I would never fucking speak to them again, much less pay for their upkeep.  Holy shit.

Grey Gardens is streaming on Criterion Channel and (sigh) Max.

Oscar (1991)

  Tyler's birthday was yesterday and he wanted a 90s theme.  So we watched Oscar, one of my favorite 90s movies.  I think it's an underrated comedy.

Angelo "Snaps" Provolone (Sylvester Stallone) is giving up the gangster business to become a banker.  He has a meeting scheduled for noon but everything goes awry first thing in the morning when his accountant, Little Anthony (Vincent Spano) confesses to siphoning $50,000 in order to propose to Snaps's daughter.  Snaps is uncomfortable with the thought but confronts Lisa (Marisa Tomei) who would agree to anything if it meant escaping her father's household to be a modern 1930s woman.  Lisa tells Snaps she's pregnant to force the marriage to go through, except then Theresa (Elizabeth Barondes) shows up and tells Snaps that she had met Anthony at a club, panicked because she wanted to look like she came from a good family, and told Anthony she was Snaps's daughter.  Snaps concocts a scheme to get Anthony to give up the stolen money and marry Lisa to provide her unborn child with a father.  Meanwhile, the maid (Jocelyn O'Brien) is quitting, the butler (Peter Riegert) keeps pushing to go back to crime, a dogged police officer (Kurtwood Smith) is staking out the house, and a rival gang is looking to take Snaps down.  All before 10 a.m.

It is a screwball comedy with multiple bags changing hands, a stellar supporting cast, and happily ever afters all around.  Unfortunately, it's only available on Hoopla - a streaming service like Kanopy you can get with a library card - even for rent.  I had it on DVD ages ago and burned it to my server.  If you can find it, it's worth it.

Galaxy Quest (1999)

  I can't believe I've never written about this movie.  This is one of the greatest parodies ever made, a legitimate stone-cold classic.

Twenty years ago, a sci-fi show called GalaxyQuest aired and was embraced by generations of nerds, spawning a yearly convention.  But it was just a job for the core cast of actors who have felt constrained by their roles ever since, with the glaring exception of Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), the fictional ship's commander, who achieved a true stardom outside of the ensemble.  When Jason is approached by the Thermians, a cuddly yet awkward group of aliens, he thinks it's just another moonlighting gig, unaware that they have modeled their entire culture on the stray transmissions of the show beamed into space.  Jason and the crew of actors must lead the Thermians through a very real confrontation with a hostile despot (Robin Sachs), leaning way outside of their comfort zone.

As a send-up of Star Trek, it is pitch-perfect.  If you had never heard of Star Trek and just watched it straight, it's still perfect.  It works as a love letter, a critique, and a standalone.  There are very, very few movies I consider faultless but this is one of them.  Perfect cast (yes, even Tim Allen), perfect story, perfect amounts of humor and emotion.  Everyone involved Got It but especially Tony Shaloub and Sam Rockwell.  They are amazing.  Infinite re-watchability.  

It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max, but you should buy a copy because God only knows what's going to happen to that site in the near future.

Weekend (2011)

  Happy Pride Month, everybody!  

Two men must decide whether or not to turn their one-night stand into a full relationship, despite their various hangups, over the course of one weekend.  

Man, this reminded me of my 20s so hard.  In like a fun, nostalgic way, not a cringey way.  It's a very sweet movie that deftly handles the masks we wear and the unseen forces that shape us as we inflict them upon others.  Made by the same guy who wrote and directed the show Looking on HBO, if that's something you watched or enjoyed.  It's streaming on the Criterion Channel or on Tubi and Kanopy for free.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Happy Juneteenth!  Here's a (sort of?) related movie.  It took a couple of weeks but I finally managed to see the newest installment of the best animated adaptation ever made.  I'm going to tell you upfront:  it ends on a cliffhanger in preparation for the 3rd in the series, which should be coming out next year.  I don't consider that a spoiler, but more in the nature of a content warning.  

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has been coping as well as he can with his double life as a high school student and superhero but he misses his multi-verse friends, especially Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfield).  He is elated when she returns to his Earth bearing a nifty new gadget that allows her to avoid the side effects of multi-dimensional travel as part of her new role in an elite task force of Spider-People.  But she's not here just for catching up.  Gwen is tracking an anomaly called the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a Spider-Man nemesis obsessed with garnering more power to avenge his bruised ego and destroyed life.  Desperate to prove himself worthy, Miles tags along uninvited to a crash course in unintended consequences and the tragedies that define heroes.

Also, there's a Spider-Cat and he is the best.  The. Best.

It's hard for a middle segment to hold its own and I think it was actually really smart to slap a "To Be Continued..." sticker on it.  It reinforces the episodic comic book nature, leads to a genuine sense of anticipation, and allows for the majority of the runtime to build without feeling like there are too many characters, too many villains, too many Easter eggs or cameos (there are two that are perfect), or too flimsy a plot.  The only thing that could sink it is if Beyond the Spider-Verse gets canned, a la Batgirl. 

Across the Spider-Verse is still only in theaters but should be coming to streaming around late July or early August. 

Neruda (2016)

 Happy Father's Day!  Here's an unrelated movie!    The poster makes it look like Gael Garcia Bernal is playing Neruda and he is not.  This also threw me.

Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) is a renowned poet, a Communist, and a senator, in that order.  After publishing a scathing poem criticizing the fascist turn of the President (Alfredo Castro), an arrest order is put out and a young, ambitious policeman (Gael Garcia Bernal) is assigned to pursue the poet.  It's more difficult than he imagines, however, as his quarry proves to be wily and also playful, leaving autographed books at all the places he was almost caught.  

This is the most literary chase movie you will probably ever see.  There is a near-constant voiceover from the policeman's POV that is desperate, smug, jealous, and admiring by turns.  Neruda is almost mythic in his mind, even as the audience is shown his very human foibles.  

It became very apparent to me as the movie went on that I knew absolutely Fuck All about South American politics, history, or culture.  It's just a huge blind spot for me (probably because if we taught it in schools, we'd have to acknowledge the absolutely damning role the U.S. played in a lot of it and we hate that).  The movie does a very good job of contextualizing, however, and I never felt lost even as I knew there were depths to the material.  I like Pablo Lorrain as a director very much.  He's becoming one of my favorites.

Neruda is available for streaming on Kanopy for free, if you have a library card.  It's worth it.

Night on the Galactic Railway (1985)

  Have you ever watched The Polar Express and thought "man, I wish this was about death"?  Good news!

Giovanni (Mayumi Tanaka) is a small kitten with big problems.  He's bullied at school because his dad is away, his mom is sick, and he has to take an after-school job to help pay for necessities.  His only friend is Campanella (Chika Satamoto) mostly by default as Campanella is the one kid who doesn't bully him.  On the night of the Star Festival, Giovanni wanders into a field of flowers while on an errand to get milk and dreams of a train that travels through space and time.  Campanella joins him and the two boys traverse the galaxy on a mystical pilgrimage.

There's a lot of weirdness here.  I don't think anything constitutes a spoiler, but just in case, here's the part where you stop reading and go watch it (available for rent on Amazon --don't watch the Freevee version because the ads will be hella disruptive-- for $2) if you like going into things knowing as little as possible.

 

Still here?  Okay.  This reminded me a lot of The Halloween Tree, an animated TV film that played every year when I was a kid and then disappeared and made me think I had hallucinated it for years.  There's a surreality to it that keeps it from being super depressing but it does still deal very much with death.  The original 1927 novel was written by a man named Kenji Miyazawa as a way to deal with the accidental death of his sister and the film very much feels like it is processing a trauma.  There's no violence or on-screen death but it directly addresses life and sacrifice in a poignant but not melodramatic way.  It's a good film for children, I think.  It opens up an area of conversation that adults tend to shy away from or feel difficulty in discussing.  There's a version on YouTube that is dubbed, I believe, if that is your bag but the original Japanese version is on Amazon.

Kalashnikov (2020)

  This is a very rare Tyler pick.  

Mikhail Kalashnikov (Yuriy Borisov), a tank commander with a 7th grade education, enters a series of contests to design a new, modern weapon for a new, modern Soviet Union.

There's not a lot of movie in this movie.  Kalashnikov seems to have had a fairly charmed life.  He survives a battle that killed all his compatriots, he immediately runs into the guy he needs to approve his work on gun design, he is sponsored for these design and fabrication contests again and again, and even when it fails, all his peers offer encouragement and support.  It's kind of nice?  I kept waiting for the inevitable conflict, a clash of ideals or ideology that he has to overcome, but it never manifested.  Even when he gears himself up to confront a highly-decorated inventor, the guy is perfectly reasonable and even deferential, and you can witness Kalashnikov's deflation as he (and the audience) realizes that he doesn't need to fight.

It is absolutely propaganda of a meritocratic Soviet Union that probably never existed, but it's not horrible.  It would make for a fascinating double feature with Lord of War, showing how much global damage Kalasknikov's little invention facilitated.  A dubbed version is available on Tubi, not sure about one in the original Russian.

What's Up Doc (1972)

  I do not understand why anybody felt the need to add a carrot to Barbra's hand in this poster.  It's exceedingly dumb.  Also, I hated this movie.

Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) is a musicologist up for a prestigious grant and has traveled to San Francisco with his fiancée, Eunice (Madeline Kahn), to attend a reception and plead his case.  In the hotel drugstore, he is targeted by a young woman (Barbra Streisand) who inserts herself forcibly into his life in an effort to break up his relationship in her favor.  This is supposedly romantic.  Also, there's a completely unnecessary sub-plot involving four identical pieces of luggage.

Let's talk about Men Writing Women.  I have a pet theory (because I'm too lazy to put in the research time) that some men write what they think are "smart, feminist" women characters by giving them masculine traits and then can't understand why women don't respond to them.  Judy (Barbra Streisand's character) is self-absorbed, sexually forward, and can't take no for an answer, while also gaslighting and negging.  The movie's three male screenwriters want you to believe that makes her a go-getter instead of an asshole.  Ask any woman who's had to duck an overly attentive would-be Romeo in a bar and you'd realize that those are not desirable traits.  Making Howard a himbo (and he is a major himbo) doesn't make it better; it actually makes it worse.

This is in addition to the sad, tropey, Maiden-Mother-Crone archetypes in the 3 female characters.  Judy the Maiden is the only one put up by the film as sexually desirable.  Eunice is a micromanaging Mother shrew and Mrs. Van Hoskins is a septuagenarian who dresses like a 20-year-old.  Both are the targets of separate male characters' throwaway lines about how they are unfuckable hags.  Peter Bogdanovich can rot in hell for this.

I can see where the movie was attempting to be funny.  It's clearly aping older, better screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby, while also parodying elements of popular films of the time like Bullitt.  It was not for me.  Or for my mom, who remembered when people raved about it because Ryan O'Neal was apparently the Brad Pitt of the 70s (her words).  So maybe it's genetic.  If you want to give it a shot, it is streaming on Criterion Channel.

Johnny Dangerously (1984)

  One of the only good things about HBO rebranding itself is that sometimes things get shuffled to the top, like this little gem from the '80s.  Content warning:  ethnic slurs, homophobic slurs

Johnny Kelly (Michael Keaton) is just a regular joe trying to keep up with his mom's (Maureen Stapleton) medical treatments and put his little brother (Griffin Dunne) through law school by becoming the notorious gangster Johnny Dangerously.  But when his brother becomes the District Attorney and vows to crack down on organized crime, can Johnny quit his criminal ways and go straight?

Everybody (rightfully) talks about the dialogue but I had forgotten how many visual gags there are in every scene.  If you're one of those people who are on your phone half the time during a movie, you are going to miss out on a lot.  Also, it's great to show people who primarily associate Keaton with Batman that he can also be goofy and light-hearted.  He's always been a great actor and I don't think he's ever truly been recognized for it.

Johnny Dangerously is currently streaming on (*sigh*) Max.  It would be a fun double-feature with Oscar, based on exactly one gag, or with Manhattan Melodrama if you want comedy/drama.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

  This movie felt like a hit piece funded by the descendants of Catherine of Aragon.  Content warning:  miscarriage, marital rape

Queen Katherine (Ana Torrent) has once again failed to produce a male heir and the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey) sees a way to turn this misfortune for England into personal wealth by supplying King Henry (Eric Bana) with a distraction in the form of his ambitious niece, Anne (Natalie Portman).  But the meet-cute goes horribly and Henry ends up enchanted by Anne's younger --and married-- sister, Mary (Scarlett Johansson).  He brings the entire Boleyn family to court, raising their social esteem and sliding some lucrative appointments their way.  Anne, banished to France for her schemes to steal another heiress's man (Oliver Coleman), returns when Mary is knocked up and the king's attention is waning.  She wastes no time engaging his affections for herself, overseeing Mary pushed aside, the queen deposed, and the creation of the Church of England all to get herself on the throne.

I'm not going to go into the historical inaccuracies because we don't have all day.  Suffice to say, this is very much the CW version of events.

Mostly I was struck by how every single woman in this movie was betrayed by the men in their lives.  Over and over again.  It's just a constant refrain.  The characterizations are pretty flimsy, so it's hard to feel any sympathy.  Anne is a wretched harridan and Mary is a sad doll.  Portman and Johansson are both capable of much more and it is a shame they were wasted here.  You could really say that about the entire cast, though.  Mark Rylance, Kristen Scott Thomas, Eddie Redmayne, Jim Sturgiss, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Juno Temple are all underutilized playing cardboard cutouts draped in velvet and brocade.

I know a lot of people liked this movie, including my cousin, Christy, but I just don't get it.  It's streaming on Netflix.

The Return (2003)

 The Cinema Club pick for this week is some Russian weirdness, paired with Movie Club pick The Haunting.  Not sure that they complement each other, but I am notoriously bad at Vibes.

Two boys are shocked when their father (Konstantin Lavronenko) returns after a 12-year absence.  The elder, Andrei (Vladimir Garin), is cautiously willing, but the younger brother, Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov), is immediately suspicious that the father is actually going to harm them.  He takes the boys on a fishing trip to a remote island, won't answer questions about his past or what they're really doing, makes demands, intimidates, neglects, and punishes with both psychological and physical abuse.  But is there something sinister happening or is he just a shitty dad?

So this was A Lot to take in roughly 1 hr 45 min.  The film is not interested in answers or resolutions as much as it is ramping up the tension about what might happen.  It's like a weird Russian Stand by Me or maybe the Anti-Goonies.  The director went on to make the Oscar-nominated Leviathan and Loveless so this is clearly working out for him.  I'm not a big fan of Russian films based on what I've seen, but if you are, you are shit out of luck.  It's only available for streaming via rental from Amazon or Vudu, but it's only $2.  

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Bad news, everyone!  This actually gets worse on re-watch.  I kept fast-forwarding just to make it end faster.  The only parts that still hold up are the bits with Wonder Woman, Alfred, and Lois and Martha Kent.  Everything else is bad, scenery-chewing, I'm-creating-a-multiverse nonsense.  I think watching it with my cousin was the only thing that made it palatable because watching it by myself?  The worst.  "Your mom's name is Martha?  But MY mom's name was Martha!" just can't be saved.  There's no shining that turd.  It's a joke for good reason.  Consign this to the dumpster fire of Zach Snyder's ego.  Originally posted 12 Sep 2016.    I know this is hella late in the evening for a post but I had to finish my homework.  Guys, the month of September is kicking my ass so far.  I feel like I'm barely staying afloat at work and school and it's only been two weeks.  But that has nothing to do with movies so we're going to move along and pretend like I'm not Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff.

This is the other movie I watched while I was visiting Christy.  We had gotten four but this one ended up being so heavy it kind of killed the mood.  I will say it wasn't as awful as I had heard though it definitely could have benefitted from more editing.

After the events of Man of Steel, the world now has to come to grips with having Superman (Henry Cavill) in their midst.  For some like Senator Finch (Holly Hunter), that means finding a way to hold essentially a demigod culpable for the repercussions of his actions.  For others like Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), that means designing a weapon capable of killing a demigod.  Batman (Ben Affleck) has his own reasons for disapproving of Superman's methods and has no problem being the instrument of justice.  Superman, for his part, loathes the idea of Gotham's brand of vigilante heroism leaving the two title characters distinctly at odds until they are forced to fight on the same side.

The only thing that saved this movie from being a total exercise in chest pounding was the involvement of the women.  If Man of Steel was Superman-as-Jesus, Dawn of Justice is the tripartite feminine mystique. Think about it. You have Lois Lane (Amy Adams) as the idealistic damsel in distress, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) as the no-nonsense warrior, and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) as the encompassing mother figure.  These three women provide advice, support, and a common framework that keeps the two hyper masculine men from killing each other on principle because they're too caught up in their egos to have a conversation.

Aside from my going way deep on Zach Snyder's reinforcing of traditional gender roles, I think that this movie suffered from being way too dependent on having read the comics.  There were a lot of references and Easter eggs that would have only made sense to someone familiar with the storylines or who had read about them online.  There were several points where Christy was confused over the significance of certain scenes or phrases which detracted from her overall enjoyment.  There are also a number of dream sequences which add a lot of surreality.

I didn't flat-out hate it and I actually think it might improve on subsequent viewings.