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Monthly Archives: April 2023

Where The Crawdads Sing – 0 stars

April 27, 2023
0 stars, 2022, Drama
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Treacle and cornpone to its very core, an exercise in nostalgic tedium. Reese Witherspoon loved the book, a story of murder and mystery and coming of age in the swamps of a North Carolina small town. So the movie got made, in exactly the vein and manner of this vacuous and generic interview with the producer. 

Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Under the Banner of Heaven) is Kaya, one of a kabillion kids living in the marsh with her abusive father and helpless mother. Soon, the mother ups and leaves (Kaya yells “Mommy, Mommy” but as is the style in this type of Southern gothic turdpile, Mom sleepwalks down the misty driveway, never looking back). Kaya’s siblings soon follow (one of whom basically tells 9 year old Kaya “stay low” to survive just before he abandons her). Then her father splits, and Kaya is consigned to a life alone as the spooky swamp girl. Mind you, for the rest of her life (and when we leave her, she is in her mid-twenties), not one of her siblings circles back to see if, maybe, their little sister is ok. Her serviceman brother does a perfunctory drop-in later, when she is on trial for murder, meaning he was an adult for 12 or so years and couldn’t be bothered.  

The film’s version of 1960s rural poverty is to the real McCoy what the Disney ride is to actual pirates in the Caribbean. You soon suspect the swamp girl is derided by the locals not for her foreign and mysterious ways, or any class condescension, but rather, for her stunning cheekbones, luminous skin, and pearly white teeth.

The entire feel is inauthentic, as if brought to you by Loew’s or Home Depot. The swamp feels more like a fern bar, the town like Smallville, the characters every single archetype you’ve seen before.

We even get Kaya’s ponderous voiceover telling us things we can plainly see, half Marlin Perkins, half Judy Blume.

Kaya grows up and is caught in a tepid love triangle between two disinteresting homogenous actors with the mien of reality tv star brothers who macrame.

Could this be a double murder? Oh to dream!

Sadly, no. Kaya goes on trial for the murder of only Siegfried, not Roy, and perhaps the most boring legal drama in filmic history ensues. The case is so weak, you expect the actor playing the prosecutor to turn to the camera and shrug in apology. Kaya’s defense attorney (David Strathairn) shreds all witnesses with easy politeness, stopping just short of patting them on the head at the conclusion of his cross examination.

With the verdict a foregone conclusion, the reveal (she did/did not do it!) is anticlimactic in the extreme, made worse by the filmmakers’ decision to withhold “how” she did or did not do it.  

It’s all clearly too much for director Olivia Newman, who had some TV episodes on her resume’, to handle. She can’t settle in on any one aspect of the story (the disconnect between town and swamp, the thriller, the abandonment and solitude, the love stories) with any depth so we get a steamed, soggy pu pu platter of platitudinous porridge. The fact that the dull screenplay was written by Beasts of the Southern Wild co-writer Lucy Alibar is both confounding and depressing.

In the end, Kaya becomes a big star. Music swells. Crawdads sing. Cursing of Reese Witherspoon’s reading habits follows.  

On Netflix.

Vengeance – 4.5 stars

April 10, 2023
2022, 4 stars, Comedy, Drama
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BJ Novak‘s black comedy nicely straddles the line between laugh-out loud funny and acerbically insightful. Ultimately, a culture class vehicle, the film also hits every one of its marks in blue and red America.

Ben Manalowitz (Novak) is a NYC writer who longs to host a hot transformative podcast, a vessel for his views of America. When we meet him, he is so hiply ironic and up his own butt, there’s not a lot to root for. But we do, because he seems adrift and in struggle for meaning. Once you get past all his posturing, he also seems decent, if weak.

Novak’s Ben reminds me of Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath in Girls, a clearly unsympathetic protagonist shown in an unflattering light who still manages to elicit empathy. Novak skewers himself mercilessly (shout out to John Mayer, whose one scene with Novak is a hilarious, ostentatious riff between two “bro’s” that introduces Ben and what he is about with economical precision), but stops short of the cartoonish, offering a balanced portrayal of a narcissistic guy with bite-sized intellectual pretensions who also wants to be a good dude.

When Ben gets a call from a distraught man in Texas telling him that his sister and Ben’s girlfriend Abilene is dead, it takes Ben a minute to realize that she was just one of his many occasional hookups, one who must have told her family that he was her steady boyfriend back in the city.  Ben takes an extra beat to see a trip to Texas for Abilene’s funeral as an opportunity to immerse himself in some of the America he waxes so philosophically about. Upon arrival, a hot podcast is born.

Ben is the quintessential fish-out-of-water, and in lesser hands, the film would have had little to say about the cultural divide while maximizing the pratfalls and faux pas of a NYC Jew in shitkicker county. Or, the picture would have jettisoned the funny for deep intonement about the state of our current national fracture, such as it is. 

Novak smartly balances both elements while crafting a genuine connection he makes with Abilene’s family.  A scene where Ben attends a rodeo is gut-busting, another where he interviews Abilene’s record producer (an impressively soulful Ashton Kutcher) is thought-provoking and intelligent, and the deeper his dive into fly-over country, the funnier and more meaningful the picture becomes. Novak takes hard, amusing, and accurate shots at everyone’s station with a humility that elevates the movie.   

The picture suffers just a bit at the end from repetition (a little Ashton Kutcher goes a long way) and a discordant, implausible cherry on the top, but no matter.  Very sharp, very tight, highly recommended.                   

On Amazon Prime.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World – 5 stars

April 5, 2023
00s, 5 stars, Historical, War
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I’ve seen this film, conservatively, a dozen times. I cannot turn it off. It is flawless, and I never tire of watching. It is not just an exemplary historical drama and period piece, which would appeal to me more than others, but it is one of the finest films ever made. 

Based on a Patrick O’Brian novel, it is 1805, the time of the Napoleonic wars, and we travel with Captain “Lucky Jack“ Aubrey (Russell Crowe), a protégé of Lord Admiral Nelson. Aubrey’s ship, The HMS Surprise, is hunted by, and then pursues, a French privateer with twice her guns and speed. As Aubrey drives his crew and spars with his more humanistic friend and subordinate, ship surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), we are immersed in the customs, allegiances and frailties of the crew.  Director Peter Weir (Witness) provides the feel of an early 19th-century war vessel, a routinized machine held together by the lash, grog, duty, honor, deep-seated universal superstition, and a shared sense of oneness with the sea.

The action sequences are jaw-dropping. The final sea battle is the most effective and stunning rendition of combat on film, save for the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.  Weir is expert at close quarter action and translating the ebb and flow of a battle that has been explained in its strategy at the outset. What follows is a stunning, intelligible melee’, and the only respite is a brief, awesome aerial tracking shot to provide scope and a quick catch of breath. And then, Weir dives right back in.  The scene is even more impressive given the film’s commitment to authenticity.  As with Spielberg’s triumph, Weir has made, in the opinion of one reviewer, “one of the most historically accurate movies of this century”. 

Yet for all its visual delights and precision, the film is also memorable in its depiction of numerous secondary characters. Yes, the philosophical interplay between Aubrey and Maturin is well-honed, and both actors more than occupy the roles – their engagement is both familial and genuine, with a constant pull between friendship and chain-of-command. But the midshipmen, some as young as 12, and the salty crew, are the true stars. To see the former in such distress, under such pressure, and in the midst of terror and violence is heart rending. When one (Max Pirkis) must have his arm amputated, it is hard to choke back tears, such is his strength and vulnerability (if you have a son, it is doubly difficult). The mental breakdown of another young sailor is equally poignant. These boys, thrown into carnage, still do their duty, and Weir goes to great lengths to portray their bravery in tandem with their innocence. 

The film is also unreservedly old fashioned in its championing not only of manly camaraderie, but valor, pluck, and devotion to country. Most war films follow a certain post-Vietnam philosophy, often clumsily injected into period pieces of prior times. The combatants’ first devotion is to each other and then to the goal, and they are guided by training and solidarity. When the training fails and/or the goal is revealed as corrupt, or bleakness eclipses all, things break down, and atrocity normally follows. Which is all very modern and ignores any sense of longing for the sting of battle or patriotic instinct, both generally derided or characterized as the province of dimwits and cannon-fodder. It is always the smart guy anti-hero who says, “This is hell, we need to get out alive and with our souls intact, and [for the less cynical] the only thing that matters is the man next to you”’ or some such trope. 

Not here, as Weir flatly rejects anachronism save for a few moments with the good ship doctor, but even Maturin’s more liberal stances are suited to his position.  To put a finer point on it, there is a wonderful scene where one of the young midshipman, Calamy, implores Aubrey to share a tale of his service under the great Nelson. At first, Aubrey parries the request with a joke (Nelson once asked him to pass the salt, he laughs). The boy’s disappointment is palpable, and then Aubrey obliges:

Capt. Jack Aubrey : The second time… The second time he told me a story… about how someone offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he said no, he didn’t need it. That he was quite warm. His zeal for his king and country kept him warm.

[Maturin sighs] 

Capt. Jack Aubrey : I know it sounds absurb, and were it from another man, you’d cry out “Oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Nelson… you felt your heart glow.

[him and Calamy share a smile] 

Capt. Jack Aubrey : Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Pullings?

1st Lt. Tom Pullings : [sincerely]  You did indeed, sir.

As fewer people know or cherish history, it will become a less desirable vehicle for entertainment. And that just ain’t going to change.  But there will be this film and a few others that stand the test of time. Huzzah!

On HBO Max. 

Where Eagles Dare – 3.75 stars

April 2, 2023
3 stars, 60s, Crime/Mystery, War
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A WWII thriller and a staple on the Channel 7 four o’clock movie growing up, Steven Spielberg once named it as his all-time favorite war movie. I don’t know about that, but as a kid, I was pretty jazzed.

Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood lead a group of commandos dropped behind enemy lines in Bavaria – where the barmaids are buxom and the enemy plentiful – to kill an American general who has been captured by the Nazis. They must get to the general before the Germans extract critical information from him.

The picture is more than competent (though overlong at nearly 2.5 hours; in the 70s, on TV, it was cut to 90 minutes, and did not suffer for it). The movie is also smart, as much a whodunit as war thriller, and uber-violent to boot. 

One major problem, however, is the setup. The American general is held in a castle fortress accessible only by cable car. Putting aside the suspension of belief necessary to accept ingress and egress, which is right and proper, the castle also houses hundreds of soldiers, heavy equipment, a barracks, a helicopter pad, a radio room, and enough ammo and explosives to blow itself up. All, of which, apparently, was ferried up in two cable cars that hold 8 people a piece. 

Another problem is just a terrible cheat. In The Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, dressed as German officers, must mingle with the Nazis in the chateau they plan to blow up. The fact that only Bronson knows how to speak German amps up the dread, leaving Marvin to play it stern and taciturn whenever a real Nazi speaks to him at a pre-all-hell-breaks-loose soiree’. Quentin Tarantino does the same thing with Brad Pitt at the film premiere in Inglorious Basterds , though he plays a bit more comic. But Tarantino also utilizes the speaking of German, or, rather, the sign language of a German, to brilliant, suspenseful effect, when Michael Fassbender makes a critical error and is thus found out, which was presaged in The Great Escape:

But I digress. 

Here, as Burton and Eastwood approach a checkpoint, where their papers are to be reviewed, you wonder which one is going to speak German.  I assumed Burton.  Then again, I never assumed Eastwood would sing in a musical, but Lord Almighty, that’s him singing Gold Fever in Paint Your Wagon:

So, who knows, right?  Well, it turns out, neither of them speak German.  Instead, they speak English LOUDLY, and the guards figure they don’t want to interrupt two German officers speaking loudly. Translated? Neither actor wanted to learn a little German, so we are left to believe that the guards heard German, even though we did not. Very lame.

On the plus side, Eastwood is Eastwood cool and he conservatively, single-handedly, kills at least 100 Nazis. At 10 years of age, I was sold. There’s also a fair amount on double-crosses (the picture is written by Alistair MacLean), and while I can’t prove it, I suspect Tarantino saw the picture and it informed his unparalleled French cellar bar shootout in Basterds.

On HBO Max.  

P.S. After writing my suspicions about Tarantino, I Googled a bit and now claim semi-vindication. Tarantino has lauded the picture on numerous occasions, particularly during his promotion of Basterds.