Mermaids (1990)

  Finally, a coming-of-age story I semi-relate to!  Mostly because I, too, went through a phase in my teens where I wanted to be Catholic (specifically stigmata).  Then I got a little older and realized what I actually wanted was Attention.  And divine favor, which is really just Attention+.  Anyway...  Content warning:  child endangerment (drowning)

Charlotte (Winona Ryder) is a nice Jewish girl desperately wishing she could be a Catholic nun and tired of moving across the country every time her free-spirited mother (Cher) gets dumped.  When they land in a small town near Boston, her problems are intensified by a hard crush on the caretaker (Michael Schoeffling) of the local convent.  Her mom hits it off with a shoe salesman (Bob Hoskins) but her pathological fear of commitment stands to ruin both her's and her daughter's relationship.  

I remember watching this as a (very literal autistic) kid and being bitterly disappointed that there are no actual mermaids.  It is not a fantasy film at all.  So just in case you too were misled by the title.  I still have no idea why it's called this.  It's based on a book so I'm assuming it gets explained there.

The performances are mostly great.  Cher and Hoskins are magnetic together and this is the debut of tiny Christina Ricci, who is also good considering she's like 8-years-old.  I love Winona Ryder but Charlotte's voiceover/internal monologue was irritating as fuck.  I don't think I'd ever watch it again, now that I've completed it (I left it unfinished when I was a kid and it has always bothered me because autism) but it's not terrible if you like period pieces --the 1960s, New England in the fall, Cher, Bob Hoskins, or problematic age gaps.  (The caretaker is 27 or 29 and Charlotte is 15.)  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max.

Jackie Brown (1997)

  I don't get why this is considered a classic.  It's fine? I guess, but I wouldn't call it something to write home about. 

Stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is stuck between a rock --her gun runner boyfriend Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), for whom she ferries money back and forth to his partner in Mexico-- and a hard place --the ATF agent (Michael Keaton) who will bust her for possession if she doesn't cooperate in their sting to take Ordell down.  But Jackie is nobody's fool and with a little help from a lovestruck bail bondsman (Robert Forster), she might just turn the tables.

This feels like a period piece of the mid-90s.  Tarantino is a lot of things but you can't say the man isn't consistent with the things he likes.  Including feet.  It's basically one of his auteur trademarks at this point.  This one just didn't gel for me.   It feels like a debut that's a little unsure, a little off-step, but a solid start for growth.  Finding out this was actually his 3rd feature was a little bit of a shock.  IMDb says that he drastically toned down the violence after receiving criticism and maybe that's what makes this feel like a weaker entry.  

If you want to see it, it's leaving Tubi on April 30 so you might want to hurry.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Happy Earth Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  The Movie Club pick for this week was Eyes Without a Face but I just watched that a couple of years ago and I already re-posted They Live this week, so I thought I'd swap out one highly regarded black-and-white 60s horror for another.  

A handful of survivors hole up in a farmhouse as they are beset from without by the undead, risen as a result of cosmic radiation from Venus, and from within by paranoia and selfishness.  Ben (Duane Jones) is trying to keep them all together and uneaten but is hampered by Barbra (Judith O'Dea) being completely useless as anything but a doorstop and Harry Cooper's (Karl Hardman) sweaty cowardice.

This is the OG of zombie movies, the innovator that spawned an entire sub-genre, the undead Coke Classic, if you will.  It remains a gold standard despite being made for approximately $42, adjusted for inflation, because it doesn't try and get cute or over-explain.  We know precisely as much about the characters as we need to for this moment and any information we get otherwise is the same as what they get.  That keeps us the audience rooted in the moment, which keeps the whole film feeling fresh as a deodorant commercial.  

The 2016 restored version is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.  Plus, you might get lucky and catch it the way God intended, streaming at 2 a.m. on their new Criterion 24/7 feature.  Give it a shot.

The Garden of Words (2014)

  This was so beautifully animated but the story was so gross it completely took me out of the experience.  

An emotionally vulnerable teenaged boy (Miyu Irino) skips class when it rains to sketch in a gazebo in the botanical garden.  An emotionally fragile woman (Kana Hanazawa) shares the gazebo while she works through a major depressive episode.  The boy develops a crush.  The woman encourages it.  

I've never been to Japan and I don't know how their culture works with regard to age gaps in relationships but a 15-year-old is a fucking child and no 29-year-old should be interested in pursuing them.  And before anyone jumps in with "oh, but they're just friends and kindred souls and she didn't do anything," please note that she fucking lies to her boss and says she's been meeting with an old lady.  If she didn't think there was something wrong with the relationship, she wouldn't have lied about it.

That being said, holy Cheezit Christ is there a bullying problem in Japanese schools.  There are waaaaay too many movies and shows about kids being bullied to suicide in East Asian countries.  (In America, you just get shot so it's not like we have room to throw shade.)   

This is the kind of shit that makes me grateful to just have cats.  I mean, they're still bullies but they weigh 8 lbs and don't have opposable thumbs, so they're manageable.  

This is on Criterion Channel but I say skip it and watch something else.

They Live (1988)

Finally, Movie Club picks a good movie!  Just kidding, they're all good movies, Brent.  The dialogue is super dumb and relentlessly quotable while drowning you in a firehose of late-stage capitalist dystopia.  Much like Idiocracy, the only thing separating horror-comedy from documentary is time.  A lot of people do get killed by cops, specifically, so that might need a trigger warning.  Originally posted 23 May 2010.    John Carpenter really is the master of the B-grade horror movie. I feel like I shouldn't love his movies as much as I do, because they really are crap. But they're the best kind of crap! Come on, where else are you going to get Roddy Piper as the headlining star of a movie about alien yuppies destroying the world through consumerism?

Yeah, that guy is the star. Are you intrigued yet? You should be.

Rowdy Roddy is a drifter who stumbles upon the Truth: that aliens are among us...and they want us to buy stuff. He finds a pair of sunglasses that show through the aliens' subliminal messages. Somehow, they also allow him to hear the subtle announcements to "Obey, Consume" and "Don't Question Authority". Don't fight it, they're scientific glasses. Named after a doctor and everything. Sure, it was the doctor that invented LSD but that shouldn't bias you.

John Carpenter wrote (under the pseudonym "Frank Armitage"), directed, and composed the score for this movie. Fun fact: Frank Armitage was chosen as a nom de plume as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft. It's also the character name of Roddy's sidekick.

Because when you have an inside joke, the only thing to do is beat it to death. Otherwise people might mistake it for subtle and not see how clever you are.

This move is certainly not The Thing. Hell, it's not even Big Trouble in Little China but it's not bad. The effects of the aliens are very old-school Twilight Zone. I thought they were pretty groovy. It definitely belongs in "Cult Classic" territory, right next to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

A Night at the Opera (1935)

  One of the Movie Club picks for this week.  I thought I had seen it before but I was just confusing it with the three other Marx Brothers movies I've seen.

Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) convinces Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) to invest in the New York Opera Company by bringing over famed tenor Rudolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King).  Lassparri is an entitled asshole and insists on bringing his soprano, Rosa (Kitty Carlisle), to New York with him, mostly so he can pressure her into dating him.  Rosa is in love with Riccardo (Allan Jones), another tenor, who is friends with Tomasso (Chico Marx) and Fiorello (Harpo Marx).  The three men stowaway on the ocean liner taking everyone to New York and convince Driftwood to their cause.  Through the sheer power of chaos, all is made right.

If you've seen a Marx Brothers movie, you know whether or not this is your jam.  There's nothing new or revelatory.   I don't think it's as good as Monkey Business but as always, your mileage may vary.  The two original songs aren't great and there is actual opera being done so that might be a factor.  

It is currently streaming on Tubi with ads.

Voyage of the Damned (1976)

  Based on the title, I thought this was a horror movie so I started watching it in October only to discover it was Real Life Horror, not Fun Fictional Horror.  Content warning:  suicide, anti-Semitism, Nazi imagery

In May 1939, a cruise ship is allowed to leave Hamburg, Germany with 937 Jewish passengers bound for Havana, Cuba.  En route, Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow) is informed that the passengers will not be allowed to disembark once they reach their destination.  Nazi propagandists organized the stunt to demonstrate that Jews were unwanted anywhere and therefore the world could raise no moral objection to Germany's treatment of them, making every nation that refused them as refugees complicit in the Holocaust.  With very few options available and running out of time before they will have to return to Germany, Schroeder and Morris Troper (Ben Gazzara), a Jewish activist, work to keep the increasingly desperate passengers from panicking while exhausting every diplomatic channel to find them a sympathetic port.

This is based on a true story.  The MS St. Louis was turned away from multiple ports, including the United States, because of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fears of provoking Hitler.  Sixty years later, people apologized so I guess that's okay.  

Really wish this didn't feel quite so prescient.  

Anyway, the movie stars a whole lot of famous people including Malcom McDowell, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Jose Ferrer, James Mason, Katherine Ross, and was the debut of Jonathan Pryce.  It's relentlessly depressing but serves as a timely reminder that it's always moral to punch Nazis in the face.  It's streaming on Amazon or the Roku Channel with ads.  Don't watch it with ads.  It is extremely jarring to go from passengers grappling with the terror of an uncertain future to an ad about dog chews.

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

  This is my favorite of the trilogy but I was having trouble articulating why until I realized that this puts the focus back on Doc.  Christopher Lloyd is THE reason to watch this and he gets way more screen time in this, as opposed to Part II, and even more than Part I.  

After receiving a letter telling him that Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) was accidentally transported to 1885, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is seemingly stuck.  He finds the Doc Brown of 1955 and convinces him to help repair the DeLorean that 1885 Doc helpfully buried in an abandoned mine.  The pair stumble across 1885 Doc's grave, with a death date only a few days after the letter was written.  Instead of returning to his original time of 1985, Marty decides to go back a century and save his friend.    

Not only does this rectify the previous film's mistake of Not Enough Doc Brown, it also provides him a love interest!  The (frankly, not terribly well-written but a step in the right direction, kind of a Manic Steampunk Dream Girl, if you will) schoolteacher Clara Clayton, played by Mary Steenburgen.  Their romance was way more compelling than Marty's terrifying constant brushes with incest or abandonment of the conveniently unconscious girlfriend.  

It wrapped up all the threads of Part II and provided a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.  And so far, nobody has tried to remake, reboot, or reimagine it, thank God.  

Before Sunrise (1995)

  I thought this was set in Paris but maybe that's the second one?

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are strangers who meet on a train leaving Budapest.  Jesse is an American trying to cure a broken heart with a Eurorail pass and Celine is returning to college after visiting family.  They have an instant connection and Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him in Vienna and spend the night walking around the city before he has to get on a plane back to America in the morning.

Ha ha.  I've done this.  Except it was a plane in Venice.  What?   I was a hot 20-something once.

I had seen Before Midnight, the final entry in the trilogy because of the Oscars which removed a lot of the will-they-won't-they from the end.  That and it's 30 years old.  This is 100% not my kind of movie but a lot of people really love it.  It's got that pseudo-profound coffeeshop dialogue that all young people think they invented spoken by attractive actors in a beautiful location.  I mean, that's half the work right there.  As a travelogue of Vienna, it's not great.  I would have liked the city to feel more like a character but it looks like budget was an issue in that regard.  

It's currently streaming on Criterion Channel as part of their One Night feature.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

  Were you watching Jesus Christ Superstar and thought "God, I wish there were more movies about Judas Iscariot.  Also, I really love Westerns."  Believe it or not, there's a movie for you!

Pat Garrett (James Coburn) used to be part of Billy the Kid's (Kris Kristofferson) outlaw gang but when he takes a job as Sheriff, it puts him on the opposite side of the law.  He tries to balance the betrayal by half-heartedly pursuing but when his corporate sponsors put a minder on him in the form of Poe (John Beck), Garrett has to show results.  

This is a very good Western but it's a Sam Peckinpah Western, which means it's deeply misanthropic and nostalgic for a hyper-violent past that romanticizes anarchy and calls it freedom.  Which is not to say I don't agree with him.  Garrett's "law" is basically a forerunner of today's ultra-capitalist cops that protect and serve monetary interests over human ones.

Garrett and Judas are both selling out a friend, but Judas did it to protect the status quo because he feared violent reprisal and Garrett did it to secure a future of comfort in a land rapidly being forced into conformity.  Both had a heaping spoonful of jealousy and love mixed in to make it all spiky and conflicted.  

Pat Garrett works better than JCS because Peckinpah was absolutely not interested in criticism and made his Jesus stand-in a multiple murderer with no compunction while Norman Jewison panicked and tried to censor Rock Star Jesus to appease people and ended up just neutering his art.

You can find a full copy on YouTube but I couldn't hear any of the dialogue and the subtitles/closed captions were only in Spanish so I broke down and rented it from Amazon.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

  Continuing our noir theme with a 70s classic.  Content warning: domestic abuse (off-screen), a woman gets glassed with a Coke bottle

Private detective Phillip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is incensed over being arrested as an accessory in the death of his friend Terry's (Jim Bouton) wife's murder.  He is released when Terry turns up dead in Mexico from an apparent suicide.  Marlowe doesn't believe it and begins investigating.  Sort of.  He takes an unrelated case in the same gated neighborhood when a housewife (Nina van Pallandt) needs help finding her missing husband (Sterling Hayden).  He solves that almost immediately and then uses it as an excuse to keep poking around.  A local mobster (Mark Rydell) helpfully points him in the right direction by showing up demanding the money Terry supposedly owed him.

There are many Phillip Marlowe stories.  This might be the worst one.  But a bad Marlowe is like a bad martini.  It's still drinkable; you just switch to something else after.  

This is the youngest I've ever seen Elliott Gould and the quality of the cinematography is so bad, I'm still not really sure I saw him.  Everything seemed very slightly fuzzy in the way of the time.  He is certainly in this movie though.  Also, the recently deceased Henry Gibson in a small inexplicable role but still welcome.  And keep your eyes peeled (though you don't really need to, he sticks out like a sore thumb) for a young Arnold Schwarzenegger near the end.

It's definitely not my favorite noir.  Nothing really grabbed me and it felt very paint-by-numbers.  And this is just a personal irritation, but the overuse of the title song got super old, super quickly.  Was Johnny Mercer getting paid by the minute?  Anyway, I had intended to watch this on Criterion but missed it by a couple of days as it left their library at the end of March.  You can still see it on Tubi, however.

The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

  Continuing our noir theme, we have a Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis entry.  

Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a press agent for small acts in and around Broadway.  He is beholden to columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) to publish Falco's promotional materials.  Hunsecker, a vengeful megalomaniac, has frozen Falco out until Falco breaks up the relationship between Hunsecker's younger sister, Susan (Susan Harrison), and jazz musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner).  

This is definitely noir and Lancaster has never made a bad movie, but it just didn't stick the landing for me.  The climax peters out instead of detonating.  I wanted this movie to have shrapnel.  Still, it's very highly regarded in film circles and does showcase a sweaty, sleazy Curtis as well as a solid supporting cast.  If you're a Lancaster completionist or interested in All Things Noir, give it a shot.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy with a library subscription or Tubi with ads.

Brick (2005)

  This got picked for Movie Club and I was so glad to have the opportunity to watch it again.  I love it so much.

Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets a note from his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) that she's in trouble and needs help.  She's been running with the wrong crowd, got too deep, and can't get out.  But before Brendan can find her, she winds up dead.  Justice isn't on the table, but vengeance might be if he can only put together the pieces linking Emily to The Pin (Lukas Haas) and a missing brick of heroin.

This is one of the most perfect neo-noirs I've ever seen.  It's set in high school, the only place people can be this dramatic outside of the 40s, and features some of the greatest dialogue ever rejected by Dashiell Hammett.  Moody and atmospheric while still drenched in SoCal sunshine.  It's The Long Goodbye by way of The Breakfast Club.  The cast is so very serious but the production design, costumes, and sound design are all in on the joke.  Cannot praise it highly enough.  Rian Johnson catapulted off this into A-list status and it has never felt more deserved.

It's only available for rental but I would urge you to buy.  It loses none of its power on subsequent watches and only gets more beloved for me.

Vanity Fair (2004)

  I remember seeing this when it first came out.  I was working night shift so I was up at very odd hours and it was like the 9:30 showing on a Tuesday.  I remember very vividly because the guy at the ticket booth told me to enjoy my private screening because I was the only one who had bought a ticket for that showing.  I had the entire theater to myself and it was utterly marvelous.  As an autistic person, the sense of relief to not have to be constantly on guard or aware of the presence of others was so heady.  I vowed that if I ever got Real Money, I would only ever buy out theaters for private shows.  (Someone else came in just after the previews started, but I will never forget that first rush.)

And then the pandemic happened and I could stream everything to my living room, which is very nearly as good and much more affordable.

Becky Sharp (Reece Witherspoon) grew up poor but beautiful and clever, three faults for which society has very little forgiveness for in women.  She trained as a governess, learning to be accomplished and useful, and took her first assignment with a country gentleman named Lord Crawley (Bob Hoskins).  Soon, she had caught the eye of Crawley's wealthy sister (Eileen Atkins) as a kind of pet, which introduced her to Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), the golden son.  Becky and Rawdon eloped, but still managed to gain begrudging entrance to society based on his name and her insistence.  Her ambitions only grew with each snub and she leveraged everything to finally catch the eye of true nobility in the Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne).  

The movie is fine.  It's a big, sweeping costume drama based on a classic piece of literature that stars some of the prettiest men to ever be born on the shores of the British Isles.  It is also a frothing love letter to colonialism that scratches the surface of the racism inherent in that. 

As a side note, I wonder now if the Crawley's of Downton Abbey were intended to be descendants of the Crawley's of Queen's Crawley, since Julian Fellowes was a screenwriter for this movie and creator of Downton Abbey.  I kind of like that as a head canon if it's not true.  And I'm too lazy to look up if it is.

It's streaming on Peacock.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Easter is next week so Movie Club decided to make it a theme.  I am officially messiah-ed out.  Next white dude I hear claiming to be the son of God is getting crucified.  

I stand by what I said about this film.  It feels very personal for Scorsese, very Catholic, very meaningful.  Dafoe is tremendous in this.  This is probably the most fresh-faced and innocent he has ever looked.  Keitel brings a mob-style bruiser quality to Judas that shifts the dynamic of the character.  There's a fascinating comparison to be made between his interpretation and Carl Anderson's, but I don't have the bandwidth to dive into it right now.  Movie good.  See movie.  Eat chocolate rabbit.    Originally posted 24 Sep 2016.  Don't ask me where I found time to watch this.  Honestly, my brain has been so overstuffed with information the last week I don't even remember when I watched this.  But I watched it and we're going to talk about it.

Jesus of Nazareth (Willem Dafoe) is a carpenter fighting against the voices in his head telling him that he is the son of God.  After a long fast in the desert, he decides to go with it and see where it takes him with his best friend, Judas (Harvey Keitel), in tow.

Most, if not all, of you know how that story ends.  For those that don't, don't spoil it.  Just let them watch it.  It'll be educational.

I don't know how most of you feel about Jesus, personally.  And that's okay.  This isn't a religious blog.  The movie takes pains to say at the beginning that this is not based off of the Jesus of the Gospels but the Jesus of the book, The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis.  This blog post is not about the Jesus of the Gospels, or the novel, but the movie based on the novel.  Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk.

First off, Willem Dafoe is an excellent Jesus.  The man is an incredible actor anyway but he does a great job as Jesus.  In fact, this entire cast is bananas.  Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, and David freaking Bowie all on the same screen.  You should own it just for that.  Top it all off with being directed by Martin Scorsese and that's enough star power to get this thing to outer Andromeda.

Now it's time for the criticism.  I really do think you need a working knowledge of the gospel account of the the life of Jesus to fully appreciate everything in the movie.  I'm not saying you have to be Christian but at least a solid familiarity with the Cliff Notes.  There isn't a lot of explaining happening in the film which might leave some watchers confused.  There's also a lot of early Christian symbolism as well as an assumption of historical knowledge about the timeframe.

At its heart, this is not so much a religious film as it is a philosophical one.  The good of the many versus the good of the one.  It seeks to balance Jesus the Messiah with Jesus the man, offering an insight into his doubts and fears.  Personally, I found it to be a complex experience, one that will no doubt require multiple views to fully digest.

Dune Part 2 (2024)

  We had to wait a couple of weeks to see this because we wanted to see it with friends and scheduling things with adults is hard.  

Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) survived the massacre of his House and has been living with the Fremen in the desert of Arrakis.  His mother (Rebecca Ferguson) knows that Paul will need some help uniting the disparate tribes and begins campaigning that Paul is their prophesied messiah.  Paul is desperate to escape this destiny, as his spice-induced dreams tell him that it will lead to mass death and war.  Meanwhile, House Harkonnen assigns a new governor, Fayed-Rautha (Austin Butler) to oversee Arrakis and bring the planet to heel.

Well, if it isn't the best movie all year it's certainly the loudest.  I never read any of the Dune books so I can't speak to its adaptation pros and cons but it felt appropriately grand in scope.  The visual effects are stunning, the sound design is incredible, and all actors involved brought their all to the performance.  I would like to give a special shout-out to Butler, who hired a professional to help him shed his Elvis accent.  Good job!  I couldn't have faced a thick Southern drawl coming out of a face with no eyebrows.  

The pacing in this could have been tighter for me.  I was aware going in that it was going to be three hours long, but I was really hoping it would feel like less and it didn't.  Granted, there was a lot to cover, but I felt every single one of those 166 minutes.

It's currently only in theaters.

And people, if you are going to go to the theater, please be aware that you could be sitting next to strangers who are unfamiliar with you and your quirks, and may be less likely to forgive.  For instance, if you are going to wear Crocs or other shoes with holes in them, please wash your feet or wear clean socks with them so that the autistic person next to you with sensory issues doesn't plan your murder over and over again in her mind for the entirety of a three-hour movie.  Just as an example.  kthxbye.

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

  Ah yes, the story of a young man called messiah by some who leads a small band of religious fundamentalists through the desert against an overwhelming empire.  BUT ENOUGH ABOUT DUNE PART 2.

Judas Iscariot (Carl Anderson) has been a loyal follower of Jesus of Nazareth (Tom Neeley) but is growing concerned with the stratospheric rise in popularity of the charismatic leader and how it could bring unwanted attention from the conquering Romans who rule via a proxy king (Joshua Mostel).  He convinces himself that the only way to quell the coming retaliation is to betray Jesus to the authorities.  

This is technically an opera as nearly all the dialogue is sung instead of spoken and it is extremely 70s.  There are some insane anachronisms like tanks and Uzis that add to the surreal nature and it looks like the budget was $700 +/- fifty bucks for sunscreen.  

That being said, it's totally watchable.  There are some standout numbers with "Damned for All Time" being a personal favorite.  Your mileage with Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals will vary, of course.  

The thing that struck me the most was how utterly normal everybody looked.  Jesus wasn't 6'4" with laser-cut abs.  Mary Magdalene wasn't salon-fresh and Vogue-ready.  Everybody was a little scruffy, a little scrawny, with no perfect teeth or tans.  It was kind of nice.  

I don't know how well the story holds up if you don't already know it.  It felt like they were skimming the highlights and if you don't have the added context of having grown up with the Christian lore, I don't know that it makes a lot of sense.  But I did grow up hearing this story every Easter so I can't tell.

It's currently streaming on Peacock.

Back to the Future Part 2 (1989)

  I know a lot of people really, really love this whole trilogy so it is with deepest sorrow that I say the second entry kind of sucks.

After saving his future in 1955, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) just wants to go back to his normal 80s life.  But only moments later, from his perspective, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) shows back up and tells him that his future is in jeopardy.  Arriving in the far-flung year of 2015, Marty must keep his teenaged son (Michael J. Fox) from participating in a robbery organized by Griff Tannen (Tom Wilson) and thereby ruining his life.  That's foiled pretty easily because Griff is very stupid, but Marty spies an almanac for sale in a vintage shop and decides to ensure a good future for himself and descendants the old-fashioned way:  cheating at gambling.  Doc reads him the riot act and tosses the almanac.  Chastened, Marty returns to 1985, only to find that it's become a total hellhole dominated by an enormous casino owned by Biff Tannen (Tom Wilson).  Turns out Biff had been eavesdropping and was somehow smart enough to take the almanac from the trash, figure out how to correctly program and operate a DeLorean time machine to give the book to his younger self, and then return it to its exact spot so Marty and Doc could get back home.  But not smart enough to look for the broken top of his cane in the car which is how Marty and Doc discover his involvement.  Now, to save his present, Marty must return to 1955 and steal the almanac from Biff without running into his past self and causing a paradox.

It's hard to watch Michael J. Fox when he was young without feeling really sad.  He had such an easy athleticism and natural physicality.  So that's depressing.  

Seeing what 1989 thought 2015 was going to look like was enlightening, even if it was completely wrong, and only gets funnier in this the year of our Lady Beyoncé 2024.  The stuff it does get right (the nostalgia for things that never existed, unnecessary sequels) remains timeless.

Also, I don't know that I ever paid attention to how much of an homage? rip-off? in-joke? this is for Indiana Jones.  Marty's disguise in 1955(2) is a fedora and leather jacket; at one point, he snatches the fallen hat before a curtain can fall on it, he hangs on to the side of a car in a tunnel like Indy on the tank.  The whole scene in Skinner's office is Indy trying to get the idol.  I get it, Spielberg was an executive producer, but they already had the joke about Jaws 19 and the shark still looking fake.  

I think that's the biggest difference between watching this movie 20 years ago and now.  Now, the hint that a third movie would be set in the Wild West would be the museum clip where they named and showed Biff's antecedent (side note:  how does this man even have a lineage?  What woman per generation agrees to breed with him?  Is it like a Rumplestiltskin/Faustian bargain type thing?) and that would be it.  That's a fun easter egg.  But in 1989, there's not only the museum scene, there's the entire Western Union ending and a sizzle reel functioning as a full trailer.  The movie doesn't trust the audience to get the joke or put 2 and 2 together.  So then it feels pandering.  And kind of ruins the immersion, at least for me.  

If you want to stream it, get ready to pay actual dollars because it is only available to rent or buy.  If you can get a bundle deal, that might be worth it but I cannot in good conscience recommend paying money to watch just the sequel.

La Femme et le TGV (2017)

  See, eventually I watch the shorts.  It just takes me a while.  Roughly seven years in this case.

Elise (Jane Birkin) is trying to hold on to her way of life, biking to town, running her small bakery in the face of a conglomerate with lower prices, and waving at the high-speed rail that passes her house twice a day.  She doesn't expect anything, but one day finds a letter in her garden, thrown from the train.  She begins a correspondence with Bruno (Gilles Tschudi), forging a connection that gives her a new lease on life.  But when the train schedule changes, will she ever be able to see him?

Jane Birkin passed away pretty recently and this is the only film I've seen of hers.  It's only 30 minutes long and she manages to pack two hours of character development into them.  It doesn't bring any real surprises, you pretty much know how it's going to go as soon as you see each character introduced, but it's a sweet little film about how life doesn't stop and you can find joy at any age.

It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

  I'm not really big on coming-of-age movies, as long-time readers will know.  This was very highly regarded, however, so I gave it a shot.

Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) has always resented her twin brother, Darian (Bruce Jenner), for being the golden child, especially after their dad (Eric Keenleyside) dies, leaving them with just their neurotic mother (Kyra Sedgwick).  So when she catches her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) and her brother together, Nadine loses it.  She careens from emotional meltdown to emotional meltdown, chasing a crush, pushing her luck, and generally being as self-destructive as a teen girl who's not actually interested in destruction can be.  

This is fine, if it's your thing.  I didn't find the character particularly relatable, but I almost never do.  Steinfeld is charismatic, Jenner I watched on Glee so I was predisposed to like, but Sedgwick proves why she's a legend.  Her nervous tension is palpable and if there was a Begrudging Sympathy award, her character is running for gold. 

Oh and Woody Harrelson is there.

It's currently streaming on Tubi.

96th Academy Awards

They moved the start time of the Oscar telecast up and I was not prepared.  I typically like to do a predictions post because it helps me cement my thoughts about the nominees and then update it with the winners but that did not happen on Sunday.  

Best Supporting Actress went to Da'Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers.  I didn't love that movie and she was not my pick to win but she gave a beautiful heartfelt speech and it clearly meant a great deal to her so I'm happy for her.

Best Animated Feature went to The Boy and the Heron, one the two films I didn't get to see.  It's a Miyazaki, so I'm sure it's excellent but it's always disappointing when I can't get to the frontrunners.

Best Animated Short went to the Beatles-inspired War is Over! Side note:  I had no idea Yoko Ono was 91.  That's insane to me.

When American Fiction got announced as the winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, I knew it wasn't going to win anything else.  They did the same thing with Straight Outta Compton.

Best Original Screenplay went to Anatomy of a Fall and they played that goddamn song.  But they did have the dog there and that made it worth it.  At one point, I thought I hallucinated that they had fake paws clapping in a reaction shot but I found a picture online and it was real.  

Best Makeup, Production Design, and Costume Design all went to Poor Things.  Can't be mad about that.

Best International Feature went to The Zone of Interest which was justly deserved but also immediately removed it from consideration for Best Picture.  No fucking way was it getting both.

Robert Downey, Jr. won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, but it kind of felt like a "hey, you got clean and turned your life around, good job" kind of prize instead.  He was fine in Oppenheimer but there were better performances.  (#JusticeForSterlingKBrown)

Best Visual Effects went to Godzilla Minus One and if they could give an award for Best Group Acceptance, it would also go to them.  They had matching shoes and each of them brought their own Godzilla action figure.  A++.

Best Film Editing went to Oppenheimer.

Jimmy Kimmel did a sponsored bit with Don Julio tequila where his long-time night show sidekick declared he was married to Charlize Theron, which came as a surprise to the actress.  Clearly, because she knows that she's actually married to me.

Best Documentary Feature went to 20 Days in Mariupol, which also represented the first national win for Ukraine.  That should give it even more gravitas when it gets shown at the Hague.

Best Documentary Short went to The Last Repair Shop and they brought up one of the kids from the movie (presumably.  I didn't get to any of the shorts this year) who looked completely entranced and that was very sweet and lovely.

Best Cinematography went to Oppenheimer.  Acceptable.

Best Live Action Short went to The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.

Best Sound went to The Zone of Interest in one of those deeply satisfying wins.

Best Original Song went to "What Was I Made For" from Barbie, it's only win of the night.  Best live performance of the nominees however, was Ryan Gosling doing a take on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes singing "I'm Just Ken" with all the Kens and actual fucking Slash on guitar.  Would have loved it if Slash had worn pink, but I understand the aesthetic.  

Best Original Score went to Oppenheimer.  The safe choice.

Best Actor went to Cillian Murphy.  Again, safe.

Best Director went to Christopher Nolan.

Best Actress went to Emma Stone.  I know that was a hard win for some people, myself included, who would have loved to see Lily Gladstone take it, but Emma Stone acted her tits off in Poor Things.  I can't fault that.  Also, her panic over her zipper breaking was so real.  I cannot imagine trying to stand in front of a huge room of people trying to give a speech while also worrying that my strapless dress is going to fall off.

In a related note, Emily Blunt's rigid strap dress has been polarizing the online community but I thought it was very Metropolis-inspired so I was willing to go with it.  For me, the worst dressed of the night was a tie between upcoming Wicked co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.  Grande looked mildly concussed (but she always kind of does) in a failed Wonka bubblegum monstrosity and Erivo's green leather/pleather sheath was unflattering and did not look like it fit her.  She is a beautiful woman and they made her look like an overripe avocado.  A crime.  Honorable mentions go to Dwayne Johnson for head-to-toe no-no satin and whatever the scabby fuck was going on with Matthew McConaughey's facial hair.

And Best Picture went to Oppenheimer, announced by a clearly over-it Al Pacino.  

The best presenter of the night was John Cena walking out naked save for a pair of Birkenstocks to deliver the award for Best Costume and then being draped in a curtain a la The Carol Burnett Show's Gone with the Wind episode.  Excellent homage.  Utter commitment to the bit.  You love to see it.

And that's it for this year's award season.  I managed to see 29 of the 53 nominees, a little over half, in just under a month and now I would like to watch something fluffy and inconsequential for the next month.

20 Days in Mariupol (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  war violence, graphic injury, dead bodies, dead children (including infants), and dead animals (cat)

An Associated Press journalism team embeds with local military group inside a hospital for 20 days to witness the siege of Mariupol, Ukraine, by Russian forces.  

If you've been following the on-going war in Ukraine, you likely saw some of the footage uploaded to news sites.  It is a graphic witness to war crimes committed, including the bombing of indiscriminate civilian targets, that will likely go unpunished for years, if not forever.  But the record remains.  

Since this is going up on Monday, you already know this won in its category.  I'm not mad at it.  It's an extremely professional documentary and important evidence.  I am a little annoyed that this exact playbook happened already in Syria and nobody gave a damn about it.  Vladimir Putin used the Middle East as a test run for re-colonization and nobody in the wider international community put a stop to it.

20 Days in Mariupol is streaming for free on YouTube on the PBS page as part of their Frontline series.

The Eternal Memory (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Did you like No but wish it had a sub-plot like Amour?  You are a crazy person but here's a movie for you anyway.

Augusto Góngora was the reporter of record during the tumultuous regime change from dictator Pinochet to democratic elections.  He covered the disappearances, the murders, the daily terror of the citizens, shining a spotlight on the atrocities and refusing to let them be continued in darkness and ignorance.  He and his wife, Paulina, have had a twenty-year love affair, building their lives out of the chaos and uncertainty that surrounded them.  In one of God's little ironies, the man responsible for crafting the national memory of Chile has Alzheimer's and his beloved wife and partner has to watch chunks of his personality be eaten away until he doesn't even know her face.

This movie is just designed to make you feel bad.  That's all I got out of it.  Augusto and Pauli are the kind of cute old couple that give you hope that love is real and then show you the consequences of that love.  

Man, I can't even be funny about this.  This is the third depressing-ass documentary I've watched in like two days.  At this point, I don't know who is going to win because they're all absolutely tragic.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+ if you enjoy crying.

Bobi Wine: The People's President (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    It's this year's Navalny.  Content warning:  gun violence, attempted assassination

Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu rose to fame under his pop star alias, Bobi Wine, releasing songs criticizing the corruption of President Yoweri Museveni.  In 2018, Bobi Wine successfully ran for a seat in Uganda's congress, where he fought against a bill that would remove the age limit for presidential terms, accurately stating that Museveni was trying to become dictator-for-life.  The bill passed but Bobi was not deterred.  He campaigned and became head of the opposition party.  During the pandemic, Museveni announced a general election.  This film chronicles the strong-arm tactics used to cow and discourage Bobi Wine's entire party, including fake charges, theft, political arrests, and torture.

This is an important film but God is it depressing when you see how much effort it takes to stand up to fascism.  Especially when it's had 30 years to consolidate power.  If you remember God Loves Uganda, a documentary from a decade ago, you'll recall that Museveni is being backed by Christian fundamentalist money for pushing hate against the LGBT community.  Which adds another horrible layer to this film and brings it all back full-circle.

Bobi Wine:  The People's President is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+, because they are about to become the same service.

Four Daughters (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  discussion of spousal abuse, child abuse, CSA

Olfa grew up in Tunisia in a house of only daughters.  She learned to dress as a boy to defend herself and her mother from men looking to hurt them, only to be sold in marriage to a man she didn't love.  She had four daughters, Ghofrane, Rahma, Eya, and Tayssir.  Terrified of them coming to harm at the hands of violent men, she encouraged the older two when they became interested in wearing the hijab, but was unable to stop their descent into radical fundamentalism.

This is a strange documentary because it involves hiring actors to recreate certain scenes.  On the one hand, I think that's great because it gives the real people a break from having to go through their particular traumas over and over, but on the other, it's kind of stretching what the definition of a documentary is.  I think it works here because Olfa, Eya, and Tayssir are so heavily involved but it does blur some lines.  I wouldn't like to see it become the standard format.

I will say, I felt like there had been kind of a bait and switch throughout the majority of the movie **SPOILER ALERT** because they make it seem like Ghofrane and Rahma are dead and they are very much not, just in prison **END SPOILER**.  It's not a deal-breaker but it does feel a little anticlimactic.  

It's an emotional movie, very raw in parts, with extremely charismatic subjects.  If that is your bag, it is currently streaming for free (with a library card) on Kanopy.

Perfect Days (2023)

Nominated for Best International Feature    Do you like ASMR videos?  Do you know what a cassette tape is?  Good news!  Here's a movie for you.

Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) lives a life of quiet solitude.  His job, cleaning public toilets in Tokyo, is unglamorous but gives him time to listen to his favorite music, enjoy the beauty of nature, and have time for his chores and hobbies.  Small interruptions to his routine occur, but it doesn't wreck his peace; it just gives him an opportunity to reflect and make new connections.

We should all be as lucky as Hirayama to find work-life balance.  I really liked that he's never portrayed as lonely or sad living by himself.  If he wants to be around people, he finds people but he's never shown to be lacking.  He's also not hiding some deep, dark secret or punishing himself.  

This film depicts the inherent dignity of work, no matter what kind of work.  There's no real conflict, no tilting at windmills, and in the wrong hands, that would be boring as hell.  But Wim Wenders is no rank amateur.  It's also beautifully shot.  

It will not be a film for everyone.  In fact, it might not have been a film for me if I hadn't been in the right mood to watch it.  It's leisurely paced and has a lot of repetition thanks to Hirayama's routine but if you let it reach you, it's very soothing.  It was streaming on Apple+, I thought, but I just checked and it's not there.  I watched it on LookMovie.to.  If you go that route, be aware that it has non-English subtitles hard-coded so you'll have to pick your language to go over them.

The Creator (2023)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects    And here we have our second film about AI, but where Dead Reckoning was like "What if the technology your grandkids talk about is trying to kill you?", The Creator asks "What if only robots have empathy?"

Joshua (John David Washington) was an undercover operative in New Asia, trying to identify the creator, Nirmata, of the modern artificial intelligence.  The U.S. has been at war with AI after a nuclear explosion took out Los Angeles and New Asia has been a safe harbor.  But it all goes wrong when a raid on Joshua's house exposes his involvement and leads to the death of his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), and unborn child.  Five years later, Joshua is sent on One Last Mission as U.S. intelligence has confirmed the existence of a weapon that could change the tide of the war.  Joshua finds that it's a Simulant child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) with incredible abilities that may know the whereabouts of his not-dead wife.

You've seen a version of this story probably a few times.  It's never particularly good.  This was nominated for visual effects, which are pretty seamless but it's a longshot to win.  

I was hoping it would be a closer parallel to Dead Reckoning so I could do a compare/contrast type thing but it's really not.  It's much more of a condemnation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.  It's a little on the nose for me, but like I said, the visuals are good.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound    Tom Cruise is back at it.  Zero plans for retirement.  Just going to keep doing more and more stunts until he dies.  

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with the impossible mission of finding his former partner Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who has one half of a key.  He doesn't know what the key unlocks, only that one of his very first nemeses, Gabriel (Esai Morales), wants it on behalf of a rogue AI called The Entity.  He tries to lure the owner of the second half out but is stymied at the airport by the arrival of master thief Grace (Hayley Atwell).  Ethan needs both keys but is hounded at every turn by an invisible enemy that can infect and repurpose anything digital.

This is very much a "Let's scare the old people with technology!" kind of movie.  It is Ethan vs Hal-9000, or a much more violent version of the conclusion of WALL-E.  I don't think it was as good as Fallout for a bunch of reasons but chiefly because **SPOILER** they fucking fridge Ilsa, the best character and most likely successor. **END SPOILER**  

It's starting to feel like this franchise is moving closer to being the American James Bond (derogatory).  

Still, it's fine enough for a popcorn flick.  The stunts are wild, the pace is quick, and if nothing precisely makes any sense when you think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's okay because something new is blowing up.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+.

Poor Things (2023)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costumes, and Best Hair and Makeup    This is my last Best Picture nominee.  Content warning:  medical gore, body horror, animal death (frog), suicide

Pre-eminent surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) hires one of his med students, Archie (Ramy Youssef), to help him document an on-going experiment:  Bella (Emma Stone), an adult woman with the brain of a child.  Literally.  He found a freshly dead body and swapped the brain with an infant's.  Bella is learning and growing without all that silly unnecessary stuff like puberty.  In fact, one of her biggest revelations is that she can pleasure herself, an activity she immensely enjoys.  Godwin worries that she will become overwhelmed or not accepted by the world so he pressures Archie to sign a marriage contract stating that Bella can never leave, only to have the disreputable lawyer, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), abscond with her for a fuckfest across Europe.  

There is a LOT going on here.  First, we have to address the Born Sexy Yesterday trope.  For those that don't know, BSY is a deeply regressive male fantasy where the protagonist of a story is a sexually mature woman with the mind of a child.  I'm paraphrasing but generally, the Woman-Child is some kind of highly specific badass (usually combat) but completely unaware of the ways of the world and deeply reliant on the first man she sees.  He can be aggressively average but to the Woman-Child he is extraordinary because she has no frame of reference.  You can see how this would appeal to a certain sub-set of rejection-phobic insecure dudes.  

Poor Things manages to subvert the BSY trope eventually by having Bella continue to grow mentally and be exposed to new ideas and experiences but it is a near thing.

Obviously, Frankenstein was a major influence but I would put forward that this should be compared to Bride of Frankenstein instead.  Godwin Baxter is the product of his father's experimentation and he, in turn, seeks to create something in his own likeness that will love him, misshapen as he is.  Bella is a better creation, beautiful but still monstrous in the sense that she is outside of societal norms.  Like the book Frankenstein's monster, she ventures into the world but not hidden.  She can outwardly pass.  

Here's where we venture into more spoiler-y bits in the name of I Need to Word Vomit These Thoughts So They Will Stop Bouncing Around My Skull.  Bella isn't a woman.  She is a construct.  This is an important distinction because at no point is she treated the way a Victorian woman would be treated until the very end when she returns to her pre-suicide life.  She is basically immune to exploitation until then.  Even when she becomes a prostitute, at no point does a man offer her violence or violation.  Frankly, that's more unrealistic than the goose-dog.  

So you can see that this film is designed to launch a thousand think pieces.  Latimos is not my favorite director.  I can't get past his personal signatures of extreme forced isolation and animal cruelty, though both of those are much tamer here so maybe he's working through it.  

Visually, this is a stunning movie.  The black-and-white pieces are lovely and rich in their starkness while the color segments are fantastical whimsy.  And the sleeves!  If this doesn't win Best Costumes, I will be absolutely gobsmacked.  I'd like to see Gladstone win for representational reasons but I would not be mad if Stone won.  She gave a ferocious performance.  Ruffalo's accent bothered the shit out of me and I am still Team Sterling K. Brown or We Burn It All Down.  

Honestly, I would be a little vexed if this won Best Picture over Barbie, since it's very nearly the same concept except Artsy and choosing it implies that Barbie is less serious because it's pink, not black.  Barbie isn't going to win because it's already being minimized with only six nominations and a snub for Gerwig but to see Latimos win by basically doing her story but louder would be an absolute kick in the face.

It's currently only available to rent digitally but it'll probably hit (sigh) Max in a month or so.

Self Reliance (2024)

  Hey, do you like Andy Samberg, Jake Johnson, or shows they've been a part of, like Brooklyn-99 and New Girl?  Good news!  There's a movie on Hulu for you.  Not for me, though.  I hated this.

Tom (Jake Johnson) has a boring but stable life when he's approached by the actor Andy Samberg (himself) to be part of a gameshow on the dark web.  Tom agrees to be filmed for the amusement of faceless Internet people as he is hunted for sport.  The only loophole is that he can only be attacked while alone.  His family thinks he is delusional and making the whole thing up because he can't get over his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Morales), so he puts out an ad on Craigslist and meets Maddy (Anna Kendrick), a fellow contestant.  But as the 30-day watching period draws to an end, can Tom avoid solitude?

This was not for me.  At no point did I find it funny, there's no actual violence, and I found Johnson's character annoyingly repetitive.  Apparently, a lot of the "jokes" are just random celebrities showing up as "themselves" and I don't understand why that's funny.  It's like "ha ha, these people are actors and they get paid to show up places and say things" and yeah?  That's what acting is?  So I didn't get it.  But maybe you will!  

This is Johnson's directorial debut and it was written over the beginning of the pandemic, which checks out in terms of the unfocused narrative.  Still, he is a rich white guy who's already successful so the sky's the limit to failing upward!  He no doubt has a long career ahead of him and I un-ironically wish him joy in it.  It's hard to create things.  I respect that he put forth effort and labor to bring this movie to the rest of the world, even if I didn't personally enjoy it.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature, and Best Sound    Content warning:  Holocaust imagery

Over three years, Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) have built an idyllic oasis of a home for themselves and their five children.  But when Rudolf is promoted, it means a transfer and leaving it all behind.  Hedwig is adamant about not giving up their home and urges Rudolf to talk to his leadership so he can remain Commandant of Auschwitz.

This movie is a lot.  It has been getting so much buzz and critical acclaim and it's easy to see why but Jesus Hopscotching Christ is it a hard watch.

When I first started hearing about it, people said "oh the sound design is integral.  You gotta pay attention to the sound" and I thought well, that's fucking ableist but don't worry, Deaf community, there's plenty of visual horrors as well.  The other thing I heard a lot was "this is about the banality of evil" and yes.  It definitely is.  Which you would think that would mean boring, but again, saved by the horrors.  Of which there are many.  Almost every scene has something to rot your soul.  Accomplishment??  I guess??

Look, I'm trying to be funny here because it's the internet and this is primarily an entertainment blog.  I am so deadly serious right now when I say don't watch this if you are feeling down or depressed in any way.  Save it for maybe when you get a promotion or your kid wins that soccer tournament and you're feeling like celebrating.  Then watch this and it will even you out.  It took me three installments to finish it. The good news is that it's the only Oscar nominee so far under two hours.

The weight of this movie crushed me into paste and smeared me across the pavement.  At least Schindler's List gave you some kind of catharsis.  If you're going to watch them back-to-back (for God's sake, don't do this), watch Schindler's List second.  It's currently only available to rent VOD but it may still be in some theaters.  I will never watch this again.

Madame Web (2024)

  This is currently sitting at a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes but honestly, it's not that bad.  It's not great, but it doesn't deserve the keelhauling it's been getting.

EMT Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) begins having precognitive visions after a near-death experience.  Most seem centered on three teenaged girls, Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O'Connor), that she had only barely met but who are being hunted by a strange man in a black and red bodysuit that can climb walls and poison with a touch.  Ezekiel Simms (Tahar Rahim) knows that he will be murdered by three women with spider-powers and will stop at nothing to secure his future.  Simms and Webb are connected through a mysterious tribe in the Amazon and if Cassie wants to save the future, she must understand her past.

That's all bog-standard comic book stuff, so I'm not sure why people are objecting to it.  Is Cassandra Webb a lazy shorthand for a prophetic spider-person?  Sure.  But it's no dumber than Steven Strange for a wizard.

I've seen some people complaining that the only person with spider-powers is the villain and the glimpses we get of the spider-women are only a few seconds in a flash-forward.  Okay.  That's more about managing expectations, I think.  If you went in thinking it was going to be an origin story for Sweeney, Merced, and O'Connor, you'd be profoundly disappointed.  But it's an origin story for Johnson's character -- like it says on the poster.  The teenage girls are incidental.

Some criticisms are valid.  Tonally, the movie feels off.  Like it's been muted somehow.  I also think it tries way too hard to establish that it's taking place in 2003.  There are a ton of pop culture references, especially the music choices, and less would have been more in that case.   Zosia Mamet's "hacker" character is also mishandled.  I get the post-Patriot Act surveillance being weaponized angle, but it is overly convenient for plot reasons.  

For me, the two biggest complaints I had were 1) Cassie's journey to Peru.  She is a person of interest in a kidnapping.  Post-9/11 you're telling me that she could just hop on a plane without the FBI putting her on a no-fly list?  No.  She also manages to find the exact same spot where her mom took a picture because none of the trees have changed in the jungle in 30 years.  And she masters the ability to use her psychic powers in five days.  It feels like the writers were struggling with getting to the third act.  2) Every line of dialogue Rahim says sounded like it had been re-recorded.  There were a lot of moments where the spoken words didn't match his mouth movements, where he was talking without being on screen, or behind the mask and I cannot figure out why.  Did they change the script a bunch of times?  Was there a problem with his original voice?  Is that even his voice?  Big "Marni Nixon subbing for Audrey Hepburn" vibes.

All that aside, it's fine as popcorn entertainment.  Tyler liked it and he's a way bigger Spider-Man fan than I am.  It's currently only in theaters.  Go on a Tuesday matinee and see it for 25% off.  

Elemental (2023)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    Here's the nominee from Pixar, which is basically a shoe-in.  I personally liked Nimona more but Elemental is a perfectly good movie.

Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) is a first-generation resident of Element City.  Her parents moved from their native Fire country and opened a small shop just before she was born, eventually becoming the heart of the diaspora.  Ember has always known that her duty is to take over for her dad (Ronnie Del Carmen) when he retires, but finds her temper prevents her from connecting with customers.  One of her meltdowns causes a pipe in the basement to burst, accidentally freeing a city inspector, Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), who files 30 citations before Ember can stop him.  Terrified that she will be the cause of her dad losing his life's work, Ember and Wade, who is burdened with an overabundance of empathy, try to find the source of the errant water before Wade's boss, Gale (Wendi McLendon-Covey), shuts the shop down for good.

This is primarily a story about the generational guilt that comes from being a child of immigrants and the pressure to conform to their expectations as much as it is about interracial dating.  It's beautifully animated (duh, Pixar) and everything about it is great.  The world feels fully realized, it's creative, the story is universal and yet highly specific, and the characters are engaging and cute.  There's nothing wrong with it.  So why did Disney drop it unceremoniously onto their streamer instead of opting for a theatrical release, undercutting consumer confidence in it before it even had a chance?  Smacks of corporate fuckery, no?  They doubled back, pushing for a theatrical run after the Oscar nomination but I think a lot of people dismissed it out of hand and they shouldn't.  So this is your strong recommendation to watch Elemental.  It's available on Disney+ and in select theaters.

Nimona (2023)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    I would love for this to win.  I don't think it will, but I would still love it.

Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is the first commoner to make it into the prestigious Knight Institute but is framed for regicide before he can receive his official knighthood.  Now a fugitive, Ballister wants nothing more than to clear his name until a shapeshifter named Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz) shows up at his lair demanding to be his new sidekick.  

The animation is fine.  It's very stylized, the world is a neat mix of traditional sword-and-sorcery and hyper-futurism, and everything is cleanly done.  The story is fun and heartwarming and sad in equal measures.  It's not a new message but it's delivered very well.  The real highlight here is the voice acting.  That is what elevates this whole movie from just a Netflix acquisition to a modern classic.  Moretz and Ahmed breathe real life into their characters and it is absolutely joyful to watch them do it.  I would put this up there with Wolfwalkers.

It's currently streaming on Netflix and I highly encourage you to watch it.  Tell them with your views that original animation is the way to go.

Nyad (2023)

Nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress    Okay, I take back what I said.  Jodie Foster definitely deserved the nomination.  I stand by Margot Robbie instead of Annette Bening, however.  Content warning:  discussion of sexual assault against a child, jellyfish sting

Marathon swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) has always dreamed of making the 103-mile journey from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida in an unassisted swim.  She tried in her 20s but rough seas forced her to stop.  Now in her 60s, she is determined to try again.  With her best friend, Bonnie (Jodie Foster), as her coach, a new navigator (Rhys Ifans), and the most up-to-date technological advances, Nyad attempts to do the impossible, swimming for over 48 hours straight in shark- and jellyfish-infested waters battling with the Gulf Stream itself.

This is a formulaic biopic but there's a formula because it works.  Nyad is borderline unlikeable as a protagonist, which allows her to have a Moment of Redemption when she puts aside her pride, giving her a psychological and emotional breakthrough, as well as physical.  Bening performs this admirably.  She obviously put a lot of work and time in with the actual Diana Nyad, as the credit photos indicate, including swim training.  But Jodie Foster steals this whole show without even breathing hard.  She has owned this industry since she was 12 and this film will show you how she does it.

It's currently streaming on Netflix and is probably a great film to watch with your parents.

Napoleon (2023)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design    Yikes on bikes, guys.  This is the worst Ridley Scott film I've ever seen.  Content warning:  war violence, animal death (horses), decapitation, suicide attempt, some gore

After the Revolution, a young(ish) military officer named Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) rises quickly through the ranks based on his extraordinary ability to commit large-scale violence.  He meets Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) at a party and eventually marries her.  His victories abroad continue even as France is buckling under its change in government and steps in as Emperor after a small coup d'etat.  He is deposed and exiled but comes back like a bad rash until his final defeat at Waterloo by Arthur "The Beef" Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (Rupert Everett).

I vaguely remember seeing the marketing hyping this as a love story between Napoleon and Josephine, and I have to say it definitely isn't.  Kirby and Phoenix have zero chemistry together or separately, with Kirby looking like an ice sculpture and Phoenix whining like a buzzsaw made of mosquitoes.  The writing is spectacularly awful and the editing was done by a Magic Bullet.  It is very pretty though.

Ridley Scott made this.  Ridley Blade Runner Gladiator motherfucking ALIEN Scott made this.  I am gobsmacked.  And I've seen House of Gucci.  I'm not even angry; I'm just disappointed.

It's streaming on Apple+.  Don't do it.  Love yourself.

Society of the Snow (2023)

Nominated for Best International Feature and Best Hair and Makeup    Content warning:  cannibalism, frostbite, plane crash violence

In 1972, a plane carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew, including an Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes.  Twenty-seven people survived the initial crash but faced slow death by exposure and starvation as they waited for rescue.  They chose to live by eating the dead.

This is based on a true event and had already been made into a movie once before in 1993:  Alive, starring Ethan Hawke.  I've never seen it so I can't say if it's better or worse than this one.  

If I had to pick one word to describe this film, it would be morose.  There is palpable despair in every frame for two and a half hours.  Your mileage on that may vary but I found it overlong.  Like, it just kept going.  (This part gets a little spoiler-y so I'm putting it in white text.)  **SPOILERS**  The narrator died and there was still 40 minutes left.  The rescue helicopter showed up and there was somehow still 23 minutes left.  **END SPOILERS** I still got through the whole thing in one sitting, minus a lunch break because I am not without a sense of irony.  The only thing that threw me momentarily was forgetting that seasons are reversed in the Southern hemisphere so a thaw in November is normal, not weird.  

Anyway, the only thing most people focus on is the cannibalism but this is a survival story first and foremost.  These boys were athletes and they were trapped in one of the most inhospitable to life places on the planet.  There was zero expectation they would survive and yet, human resilience is an incredibly force.

It's currently streaming on Netflix.