When the James Bond series sunk into the self parodic lethal brew of bad puns and worse hair, the franchise was revived by Casino Royale. It was no accident that the first scene in the film was a sweaty, driven Daniel Craig relentlessly chasing a bomber through streets, windows, buildings, a construction site, up a crane, and further, all physicality and adrenaline, no gadgets, brutally visceral.
A necessary antidote to the disease that preceded it-
I thought about this scene while watching Godzilla Minus One, the Japanese production that has, as of this writing, reached $60 million worldwide and $30 million domestic.
The picture is roundly and rightly lauded. But a mere $60 million, you say? Not exactly world shattering.
Except for the following facts
a) the film is foreign language;
b) there are no stars;
c) there are no Avengers or Wookies;
d) the picture’s budget was $15 million, not $150 million.
Quite an achievement and hopefully a harbinger.
At the end of World War II, a young Japanese kamikaze pilot chickens out. While preparing for another sortie on a Pacific island, he sees Godzilla, who wipes out his entire contingent, and again, he hesitates. Wracked with shame, he returns to postwar Tokyo, cobbles together a makeshift family and suffers in ignominy, until Godzilla appears to threaten once again.
There is a real story here. The picture tugs on the heartstrings (admittedly, sometimes a bit too much), makes one stir with emotion, and actually draws characters rather than caricatures. Even better, no one is clad in a stupid superhero uniform, and CGI is not crammed down the viewers’ eye sockets to the point of blinding.
There is CGI, of course, but it is done with great care, and melded seamlessly into the production. It felt real, not silly, shiny, and stupid. It was exciting to see it, not numbing.
Director Takashi Yamazake also doles out Godzilla sparingly, making his appearances even more impactful. The feel is like an old-fashioned serial, updated for modern times. Thrilling, fun, moving, heroic and devoid of cheap cynicism and snark. Loved it through and through.
Who knows? Maybe this will convince Hollywood that it doesn’t need to spend $250 million for another shit box from spent IP, one almost certain to tank at the box office.
The other day, my son bemoaned people who couldn’t just enjoy the silly movies from their childhood, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, because they had to find a reason to justify the continuation of their early filmic love into adulthood. So, they create a form of criticism that makes their adoration of juvenilia acceptable, even erudite, elevating simple, fun movies to high art or of great social import (which then naturally leads to a concomitant acceptability of their living at home in the basement amongst their toys well into their 30s).
To be fair, I added the parenthetical.
I thought about what he said when I was watching Barbie. Of course, it will be the subject of Gender Studies papers for the next 20 years, and has already spawned reviews of great seriousness (“a searing social critique”; “An earnest feminist manifesto inside a barbed social satire”; an “existential exegesis on what it means to be a woman, and a human”).
There are indeed very smart things in Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script, including some clever, contemporary touches and social observations. Some land and some elicit a groan.
However, the movie works best as a series of jokes and physical humor encased in a startlingly resonant set design and an energetic commitment to unbridled fun.
That it lightly lampoons patriarchy, consumerism, wokeness, feminism, bro’ culture, capitalism, and much more is undeniable. But that is icing. The cake is the yuks, and Gerwig offers an endless parade of laugh-out-loud lines and sight gags and rousing musical dance numbers, almost all of which land and charm.
A few nits.
I am sick of Will Ferrell. He’s the same schtick, every single time, and he is lazy and boring.
Also, there’s an inspiring speech that screeches the flow to a halt. A rousing feminist speech. To dolls. It’s a bit like watching a character in Star Wars give a soliloquy about colonialism. To Wookies.
The picture is also a bit repetitive and long in its syrupy, maudlin end (though it lands on a great crack to close out).
But these are annoyances. The film opens wondrously, as we are introduced to Barbieland, where everything is perfect; what is not perfect is plainly identified as such (aka, “Weird Barbie” and “Pregnant Barbie”); girls rule; and the Kens serve and bicker amongst themselves, vying for the attention of their masters. But the perfect world of one Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to crack (her arches fall, she thinks of death), the real world beckons, and she answers the call with a besotted Ken (Ryan Gosling) as a stowaway. There, she finds sadness, men in power, and her own obsolescence. When she is gone, an empowered Gosling returns to Barbieland, and the Kens rise, in hilarious fashion.
After checking its social responsibility box with indelible ink, the picture ramps up as the Barbies use their superior intellects and, interestingly, their feminine wiles, to overthrow the dum dum Kens during their short-lived reign.
This allows for Gosling’s musical numbers, which are worth the entire movie. There is no way around it. He steals this picture. It crackles in every frame in which he appears, and his resume’ as a strong comedic actor (The Nice Guys, Crazy Stupid Love) has expanded.
And “I’m Just Ken” is undeniably the best musical number EVER!
David Fincher could grippingly film a Frosted Flakes commercial.
Fortunately, he has more to work with here, with Michael Fassbender as a lonely, meditative, assassin embarking on his own city-to-city retribution against his employers and their henchpeople.
We learn about the business, a grim primer without the dark humor of Grosse Pointe Blank, the panache of the John Wickfranchise, or the earnestness of The Accountant. The work is drudgery and rote, until it isn’t, and things go tits up. Even then, though, there is no glamour. Just the racking up of air miles that cannot be utilized, the eating of fast food on stakeouts of dumps, and boring trips to any number of storage units.
Fincher’s picture is very easy and assured, occasionally inventive, never stalling, and yet, the endeavor feels beneath his gifts. The comedy is often too dark to resonate. Though the ending is refreshingly, thought-provokingly anticlimactic.
I took my 93 year old mother to see this flick, thinking it was up her alley. As it stands, the picture is beautiful, the presentation slick, and the intrigue, such as it is, acceptable. But the acting is very weak. In the end, for an Agatha Christie, you know the “reveal” is in the offing and it may or may not be ingenious. It is the dramatization getting to the reveal that is most of the fun.
As Poirot, Kenneth Branagh is overly reliant of the gravitas of the character as played by others. As played (and directed) by him, he’s bored, even diffident. If Poirot doesn’t seem roused or energized, why should I be?
As an Agatha Christie mystery writer on the downslope, Tina Fey is her normal self – blasé’, genderless, and snarky. Liz Lemon and “Weekend Update” were her pinnacles.
As for the rest of the cast, they all seem to be straining for airtime, each more bombastic than the next when given the baton. Jamie Dornan and Kyle Allen take the cake in histrionics.
At its worst, the acting is community theatre-esque. At best, it is tolerable.
I asked Mom if she liked it after a week (we are unscientifically testing her memory). She said she had no real recollection of the picture, so the results are inconclusive.
As a social experiment, I would like to run this movie at Oberlin or Brown during Pride Week. In preparation, it would probably be best to stock up on smelling salts, fainting couches, and emergency room personnel.
The set-up is standard Sandler. Two best friends and Brooklyn firefighters (Adam Sandler and Kevin James) pretend to be gay so they can establish a domestic partnership which will ensure benefits for James’ children. James is a widower. Sandler is a cocksman, bedding Hooters gals 5 at a time.
But then the city gets wind of the potential fraud, they must retain a beautiful lawyer (Jessica Biel) for whom Sandler falls, they become a cause celebre’, and hijinks ensue.
On the one hand, there’s scads of ass, tits, fart, balls, dick, poop, and pee jokes, overweight people are mercilessly skewered, and racial and ethnic stereotypes abound. No matter the subject or target, the Sandler brand is respected.
Indeed, this is the kind of landmine film that would normally result in serious reputational damage, like blackface. A few nuggets:
Rob Schneider plays gay and Asian. And by Asian, I mean, Bucktooth, Charlie Chan, as stereotypically offensive as it gets Asian.
Dave Matthews plays in a wordless cameo where he mincingly makes eyes at Sandler. One can assume that his desire to make it to the big screen obliterated all judgment.
When James goes to his child’s bring your father to school day, the following exchange occurs-
I mean, if Gone with the Wind requires a warning, this thing should come with a signed waiver.
So, how did anyone who had anything to do with this film remain unscathed? I have thoughts.
First, the consistency of the folks with the torches and pitchforks has never been their strong suit. Some people get eviscerated, others get a pass. Here, everybody seems to have gotten a pass, which is to the good. I suspect the body count would have simply been too high.
Second, for all of its excess, the picture is “up-with-people, we-are-the-world” inclusive. While the film luxuriates in its offensive stereotypes, it offers redemptions (unlike, say, Animal House, which is similarly politically incorrect yet doggedly cynical). At the end, Ackroyd provides the necessary immunity:
The fist of stereotype encased in the velvet glove of love.
Third, it is also not terrible. Like with Get Hard, I laughed more than I expected to and was impressed by the sheer gusto of James and Sandler. A solid A for effort if not execution.
Fourth, the anti-gay bigots get a comeuppance (which is a word that, were it to be in the script, would soon be followed by “ass” or “butt”). Sandler even gets to play Harrison Ford amongst the Amish in Witness, because, as everyone knows, gay people don’t punch their tormentors, they only sass them.
Finally, the picture was fortunate to precede the most recent spate of witch trials (see Bradley Cooper’s insensitive Jewish nose in the new Leonard Bernstein endeavor). This is 2007, which seems modern, but it is almost a quarter of a century ago.
Watch it. It’s worth the time for historiographic purposes. And the ass, tits, fart, balls, dick, poop, and pee jokes.
Howard Hawks’ western is competent, light, entertaining, and currently on MAX. The film also sports a few surprises, the most enjoyable of which is the performance of Dean Martin as the shaky alcoholic deputy trying to go cold turkey. It’s a hell of a dark and moving turn from a guy who you normally think is all easy-breezy, no heavy lifting.
Other notes.
1) If you have Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in a movie, they’re going to sing, and while it’s a little bit clunky when they do, the tunes are still a lot of fun. It would’ve been better if they just had Nelson playing guitar and Martin and Nelson singing together in the live shoot, but I presume the sound obstacles were too great, so they used a studio track and lip-synched instead. The dissonance between the music and the normal soundtrack is dramatic, but I imagine audiences in 1959 didn’t give two hoots.
2) I laud Martin’s performance, but Nelson is pretty damn good too as a youthful medium cool gun hand. He’s not asked to do much, but what tasks are given, he fulfills well.
3) Wayne made the picture in part as a rebuttal to the more cynical High Noon. Per Wayne, “A whole city of people that have come across the plains and suffered all kinds of hardships are suddenly afraid to help out a sheriff because three men are coming into the town that are tough. I don’t think that ever happens in the United States.”
4) Other than The Quiet Man, this is the only film I can remember where John Wayne is a romantic lead. It half works. Wayne smartly plays flummoxed, and Angie Dickinson’s magnetic performance nearly carries the day (when she kisses Wayne the first time, and he is stunned, they kiss again, and she says to him, “it’s even better when two people do it”). Romance works a little better in The Quiet Man, because Wayne was not asked to woo Maureen O’Hara so much tame her, an endeavor that seemed a lot like breaking a colt.
5) If my recollection is correct, Kevin Spacey modeled his performance in L.A. Confidential on Martin’s here. You can see it.
6) Trigger warning. Back to Angie Dickinson – va va voom!
Obviously, I am overwhelmingly pleased to see a three hour film about a historical figure (and to think, Ridley Scott’s next picture is … Napoleon!) Just the other night, I was having drinks with younger colleagues (I am the last year of the baby boom, I estimate that these folks are late 20s), who were excited to see the movie. I took a pull from my pipe and asked them, “what do you know about Oppenheimer?“ One answered, “the atomic bomb.“ Then I thumbed my tweed jacket and said, “what else do you know about Oppenheimer?“ Neither knew anything further, which makes sense. Yet due to the cachet of Christopher Nolan and the buzz about the film, they couldn’t wait to go see it. One was teaming it up with Barbie for a Barbenheimer, which sounds both intriguing and daunting. But to each their own.
They should not be disappointed. Nolan’s first two acts are so fully realized and lovingly shot, they are nothing less than stunning. And his narrative-hopping from time period to time period is not just for show. Nolan captures the important vignettes that underscore what you will see later. His rendition of the first atomic test is gripping and fraught. I was on the edge of my seat knowing full well that for the denizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was not a good day.
Alas, the third act is a bit clunky. In the end, a bureaucratic and personal feud between Oppenheimer and Robert Downey, Jr. eclipses some of the larger themes of the picture. It just struck me as a little bit beneath what preceded it, as if Oppenheimer’s undoing stemmed from a mere misunderstanding or snit.
I read the book upon which the film was premised, American Prometheus, years ago (and had the honor of being taught a course entitled “Nuclear War Crises” by the book’s co-author, Martin Sherwin). The real Oppenheimer was a bit of a mess. His views on the efficacy, wisdom and impact of the bomb matured, but also wavered, and he could speak with confident enthusiasm and also wary trepidation. He could be thoughtful and also, cooly lethal (he once rejected a poisoning scheme with, “I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men, since there is no doubt that the actual number affected will, because of non-uniform distribution, be much smaller than this”).
Cillian Murphy does a beautiful job of working it out in front of us with an internal, searching performance. We see him struggle, not by soliloquy, but by discussion and quiet deduction. Murphy is, rightfully, a lock for best actor (if the Oscars are still a thing next year).
Murphy is ably complemented by Emily Blunt (wife), Florence Pugh (lover), Matt Damon (the glue guy, still Hollywood’s best and least heralded actor, as General Groves), and a slew of others, all solid (Josh Hartnett? Yes, Josh Hartnett has grown up) and of whom you invariably remark, “Damn. Where have I seen him?”
As Oppenheimer’s bureaucratic nemesis, Downey Jr. crackles, though, as mentioned, he is seminal to the weakest aspect of the movie.
Talky, meticulous, massive, yet chock full of the little things, Nolan has made a grand, intelligent epic. I hope it spawns more to come.
When Todd Field’s picture was lauded and criticized by conservatives and liberals alike, I knew it had to be different in a fruitful way. For some, the film is a clear and direct rebuke of privilege and abuse of power (“The film does tell its story in an elliptical, at times confounding way, but that stylistic choice shouldn’t be mistaken for moral indecision”). For others, the director is an apologist (“Field views identity politics as a zero-sum game that seeks to destroy true art”). It’s a shame it took me so long to see it, because no matter where you land, the film is a masterpiece, the best picture of last year.
Strangely, I was reminded of Apple TV’s foray into prestige television, The Morning Show, the first season of which delved deeply into the #MeToo movement and tackled it with nuance and intelligence – until the end, when the show naturally had to bow to more conventional norms, transforming a multi-layered, canny drama into a chest thumping lecture that naturally relegated women to perpetual victims in order to “celebrate“ them. But 90% of that show is grand entertainment that eschews the easy answers and bumper sticker mentality so explicit in drama “ripped from the headlines.”
Field is under no such pressure or expectation here, and the world he portrays could not be further from the vacuous wasteland of network television. His protagonist, Lydia Tár, is a celebrated orchestra conductor and scholar in the mold of Leonard Bernstein. She is kinetic, committed, urbane and refreshingly unburdened by the fetishization of status and injury so prevalent in modern times. When Tár guest lectures at Juilliard and a student explains to her that he is uncomfortable with the music of Bach given the composer’s status (“Nowadays, white, male, cis composers—just not my thing”), she responds, “Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.” The exchange is tense, edifying and epitomizes the generational clash of substance versus fad.
Soon enough, the incident is released to social media, edited to make Tár look as bad as possible, and she must confront the fallout.
Comparatively, it is the least of her concerns. Because in the midst of what should be a minor kerfuffle, a former student kills herself, one with whom Tár had a romantic relationship and then subsequently blackballed. Then, Tár withholds a coveted elevation from her primary assistant, another woman with whom it appears Tar (and maybe the deceased) had been intimate. Soon, all sorts of compromising texts and emails are released. Litigation naturally follows. Dangerously, Tár becomes infatuated with a third young woman, a brilliant young Russian cellist, who she favors with opportunity, losing her the support of her musicians and her wife, Sharon, who is also her concertmaster. Anybody mildly acquainted with the times can see what’s going to happen, except for Tár, who while intensely controlling, is also unsurprisingly unsophisticated (she asks the assistant to delete all of the emails to and from the deceased student, thinking, “well, that’s that!”) What follows is near horror film, as Tár is tormented by omens and assaults both real and possibly imagined.
Her fall is inevitable and painful. In the telling, we are confronted with a person of brilliance who is now being held to account for the excessive exercise of her own power. And while the viewer recognizes the inappropriate nature of what Tár has done, this is not a comeuppance or morality play. Nor is it an expose’ on the indiscriminate butchery of cancel culture.
Rather, the film is a case study of a destroyed career from forces within and without in the context of our modern, rather fevered times, and nobody gets off easy. The student at Juilliard is, of course, silly to be under the compulsion of such a limited worldview, but that is what young people do. Field smartly makes him attractive, a sort of wounded fawn (he clearly has some kind of physical tic as he repeatedly taps his leg in nervousness). Is Tár abusing a weakling? Or is she exactly the kind of person you want your child to learn from? Yes, she pushed back, but in the doing so, there is more caring – for the art and for the student – than derision or triumph. She is trying to get through to him, lest he imperil his own education and love of music in service of a dunce’s worldview. It is not mere coincidence that when he is rebutted by Tár, he casts a misogynistic slur. Old school in the young belly.
Similarly, the student who commits suicide was mentally shaky, as reflected in her increasingly hysterical email and text missives, while the current assistant is also star-struck and needy, always spookily, jealously hovering. Certainly, with intent or not, Tár takes advantage. Not that it would be hard. Dazzled, would-be acolytes would naturally be drawn to greatness. Hell, old Baby Boomers like Filmvetter are equally susceptible.
But in current discourse, the power imbalance is such that Tár has impermissibly utilized her privilege in a manner that is blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah. We’ve all undergone the training and endured the mantras. Like Miranda warnings, they need not be recited here.
Field is clearly interested in more. For example, are individuals who are soft naturally drawn to Tar for less emotional reasons? In the film, these individuals have absolutely no problem in the exchange as long as they are receiving favor. When it is withdrawn, they crumple. And strike. And let there be no doubt, Field certifies the fact of the bargains. In a break-up scene with Sharon (who is also portrayed as more fragile than Tár: when we meet her, she thinks she’s having a heart attack), the latter states that she always explicitly understood the quid pro quo, and only takes offense when Tár violates the negotiated terms of their relationship regarding other women.
Or, does brilliance excuse excess? I mean, fame often does, and Tár is famous, if only in the rarified circles of the classical music community. But she is also demonstrably and uniquely talented, what one might call an international treasure. The powerful and gifted don’t get a pass, for sure, but the loss of her gift is nothing to be sneezed at. And will Tár’s contributions be tarnished in history, like those of Bach, because of her personal failings? Whither the output of so many artists who turned out to lechers, perverts and worse? Must one separate the work from the creator? Isn’t the alternative an obliterative Manichean mindset that fuels the dip-shittery of fundamentalists, right and left? Or must we do everything in our power to exorcise Chinatown from our artistic memory because of the criminality of its creator so as to warn other miscreants of the consequences? And oh, how times have changed!
It’s not just the driven control of her career and others that damns Tár. Field also shows her desire for intimacy, her insistence that the beauty of wanting and being wanted can be replicated and perpetual, and the fear that soon it may not be so, as seminal to her fall. When Tár, who clearly lusts after the new ingenue both physically and artistically, is left in the hotel hallway to dine alone as the cellist goes to meet a young man, your heart almost breaks.
Blanchett is a wonder, confidently grounded yet hunted and haunted, not only by encroaching mores, but her desire for unfettered autonomy. Field portrays her as beset at all sides, and Blanchett gives the performance of a generation (in three different languages, I might add).
A meticulous, thought-provoking modern tragedy, which Paul Thomas Anderson summed up beautifully: “Every detail matters in this film. Nothing is not deliberate or full of intention. It’s directed with such perfectly controlled mayhem and glee by Todd, it’s really hard not to drool as another director. He made a film which for some years was considered a very dirty word, he made an art film. But it’s art that’s not fussy or pretentious. Just razor-sharp, pitch black, and hilarious. A very focused mirror held up to some of the worst of our human behaviors. It’s also a blast.”
In a year when Andrew Dominik thudded with a Hollywood fable, Blonde, Damian Chazelle, who was on a three picture heater for the ages (Whiplash, La La Land, First Man – yes, people, that’s three 5 star pictures), also crashed and burned, bigly and badly. But where you can see that Dominik’s failure was easier to hide in the making, Chazelle’s epic expanse of shit seems so obviously terrible in its awful construction that you hold everyone involved responsible, for any of them could and should have struck Chazelle hard across his face and said, “What the fuck are you thinking!”
The film, set in Hollywood in the silent to sound era, mistakes bloat as grandeur, Looney Tunes-level excess as glory, and crassness as knowing cynicism. Chazelle’s monstrosity has nothing to say or offer though what the picture does provide is a lot, and loudly. Then, unforgivably, it closes with paeans to the magic of the movies, gaudy testaments as they live in the hearts and hearths of the little people. Chazelle has the audacity to attempt to transform two sybaritic simps (up and coming ingenue from the wrong side of the tracks Margot Robbie and drunken leading wreck Brad Pitt, who fared poorly from the silent to the talkie) into the nostalgic wreckage of TinselTown. And if that wasn’t enough, a racial parable is tacked on in the story of a jazz trumpeter who crosses over to the screen (Jovan Adepo). He is given just enough of a story to feel both insufficient and patronizing.
The movie is not a takedown of old Hollywood or an homage or even a madcap celebration of the hedonistic heyday. It’s just a boring, overlong freight train that supplants story and motivation for one spectacle after another, mainly in distractingly dizzying and ostentatious tracking shots. Then, after treating the characters as little more than CGI, they are destroyed amidst an ill-considered lecture about the perils of fame, the fakeness of it all, and the fact that Hollywood, as a Hedda Hopper type (Jean Smart) relays to Pitt, “is bigger than you.” But, she promises, you will … live on … forevah, on celluloid, “with angels and ghosts.”
Retch.
The performances are necessarily cartoons. Robbie, in particular, is obscenely over-the-top and nearly abused. As I said, you don’t care about her, you don’t care about anyone. Unless you care about Wile E. Coyote.
So bad you feel a little sick at the end, following a grotesque foray into the truly seamy underbelly of the town (think Freaks-meets-Carnival of Souls).
This was all done better by the Coens inBarton Fink and a heckuva lot better in Hail, Caesar!
Franklin Schaffner’s (Patton) big-budget adventure/escape flick is competent, professional, well-acted (even if Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman have no interest in playing French people) and occasionally imaginative, particularly McQueen’s dream sequences as he fights solitary confinement and near-starvation. McQueen is the title character, sent to French Guiana for killing a pimp, where he meets the bespectacled Hoffman, a forger whose only protection is the ability to bribe officials. Their relationship deepens as McQueen, the Cooler King of The Great Escape, naturally attempts escape again and again here.
You may like the flick or not, but it is noteworthy for one scene, below. That crocodile has its snout wired shut and sure, it is drugged to the gills, but those are two massively bankable stars messing with a real crocodile. Nuts!
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