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.