I didn't necessarily plan this as a double feature, but the previous week's jury duty kind of clobbered me, or the commute did, and I wasn't even making much attempt to get out of the recliner until late Saturday. But, it's not like either of these movies are going to be around long - The Killer is from Netflix, and there's an eyebrow raised when one of those gets a second week Bad Blood is from Vietnam, and I was mildly surprised to see it playing Boston Common as well as South Bay, where the Vietnamese movies usually show up. Maybe they thought it would draw some more of us kung fu fans? At any rate, it looked like it was just me when the movie was close to starting.
Still, it's a natural-enough, with two people who are very good at violence tracking down the people who hurt their families, although the vibes are very different, with The Killer saying right off that you've got to be patient and then demonstrating, while Bad Blood has immediate machete violence. These movies are two sides of the same coin in many ways, and together a bit of a Rorschach Test in terms of what you may consider important in your crime flicks: The Killer is fancyish, kind of arch, maybe not quite as clever as it thinks it is (though probably smarter than I initially thought it was); Bad Blood is direct and pretty much maxes out "action" at the expense of everything else. I had more fun with Bad Blood that afternoon; though I'll probably talk about The Killer more over the next however many years.
Surprisingly, considering I saw them a week ago, both are still kicking around theaters: The Killer got held over at both Boston Common and the Coolidge, which may well keep it around for 9:30pm shows in the Screening Room until their Fincher midnights finish; Bad Blood is at South Bay, which I suspect has a decent Vietnamese immigrant population nearby.
The Killer '23
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 October 2023 in Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run, DCP)
The Killer is absolutely a "David Fincher film that Netflix also puts in a few theaters" situation: The film is impressively shot, meticulous in its construction, and all that good stuff, but there is also seldom much going on that's really essential; you can fold your laundry or screw around on your phone until some bit of character acting breaks through to grab your notice, and you pay full attention for the next five or ten minutes until Michael Fassbender murders that character. Then repeat; it's divided into chapters if you can't do a full (almost) two-hour movie at once.
It starts with Fassbender's multi-named Killer on a job in Paris, staking out an apartment that he knows his target will eventually return to, narrating how patience is paramount, talking about the lengths he goes to be invisible, and how not everybody is cut out for this sort of thing. But when the moment comes, his shot misses the target, and he must quickly abandon the job. Arriving at his isolated home in the Dominican Republic, he discovers that his employers have already made arrangements to eliminate him, but struck too fast, when only his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) was home. So, what to do, but work his way up the ladder, paying visits to the law professor who recruited him as an assassin back in college (Charles Parnell), the team sent to dispatch him (Sala Baker & Tilda Swinton), and the client (Arliss Howard).
That it seems built for how people consume Netflix rather than theaters isn't exactly me saying it's bad, so much as it's Fincher working in his chosen medium and trying to get the most out of it. Those bits of character acting, more or less building up to Tilda Swinton's piece are quite enjoyable, and even if half the point of the opening is to try the audience's patience so that they understand that, yes, this work does require enduring boredom and not cracking through lack of patience, the use of Rear Window framing is at least a little fun. Even when this guy is at his most detached, he is good enough at his job to be interesting to watch (and, yeah, I kind of think that applies to Fincher, Fassbender, and the Killer, which is why they all connect to this project and wind up on the same wavelength).
Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (working from the bande dessiné by Alexis Nolent & Luc Jacamon) gives Fincher and Fassbender plenty of fun material to chew on; it is certainly entertaining to hear his misanthropic monologues in voice-over, and you can certainly see how this brace of enjoyable actors - Charles Parnell, Kerry O'Malley, Arliss Howard, and Tilda Swinton, most notably - signed on; it's a script they can chew on for however many days they're on set. Fincher can stage the heck out of an action sequence, too, though one in near-darkness is probably going to be brutalized by compression algorithms once it hits its forever home on the streaming service.
If you want to be generous, I suppose you could posit that the whole thing is a satire: Right from the start, Fassbender is presenting the image of the cool, methodical assassin who lives outside the rules, but the whole thing is built around how he basically screws up at the crucial moment - Fincher and director of photography Erik Messerschmidt are careful to show how, after working hard to make sure he has a clear shot and how he knows he will only have one, he instead kills a bystander. As he flies from location to location, he uses a series of fake identities taken from famous sitcom characters, which is not exactly him being memorable. It's just in-your-face enough to arguably be about undermining the mystique of these characters - if you've ever watched the John Wick movies and wondered if there are really enough murders of this sort for it to be a whole underground economy, Fincher and Waller may be on your wavelength - but if so, it's the sort of satire that perhaps doesn't do enough separate itself from the thing it's sending up. Fassbender and Swinton, for instance, fit the template too well. In other moments, it seems like he's reaching for something but can't quite get there, like there should be some commentary on how the title character can hang out in this WeWork space that's under construction for a couple weeks without being noticed, but it doesn't resolve into anything.
Still, I'm not sure this movie actually draws a reaction until the epilogue. A flinch and narration where the title character thinks he understands something - but probably doesn't, but in the way a non-psychopath does - is actually interesting, for a moment, but then the movie is done. It's fine, better than this sort of hitman movie made by less talented people, but maybe a bit too muted.
Ke an Danh (Bad Blood)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 October 2023 in AMC Boston Common #5 (first-run, DCP)
This is some pretty classic old-school martial arts action here - more or less every beat goes as expected based on the Taken template, but the action is darn solid in terms of being quick and brutal but easy to follow while also doing things like putting its hero against various modern art installations. It delivers what it promises and with style.
It opens with Lam (Kieu Minh Tuan) as a young man, having just seen his family killed and quite capable on avenging them as he storms the home of crime boss "Scarface" along with a whole mess of minions, but he takes the dying gangster's words that he'll continue to lose those he loves if he continues to be a killer to heart, and twenty years later, he's living a quiet life, poor, but mostly happy with wife Hanh (Van Trang) and stepdaughter Tien (Thua Tuan Anh), even if doing day labor occasionally gets him involved in jobs like helping Lu (Mac Van Khoa) and his company of "movers" who have not exactly been hired by an apartment's residents. One night Tien does not come home from a job interview in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, so he starts nosing around.
From there, you kind of know the deal - the young punks of the area do not have any idea what kind of guy is living in their midst, there's an ongoing investigation that doesn't need some lone wolf getting involved, and maybe he still has some friends from the old days. If it diverges from the path laid down by a few dozen movies with the same basic story, it's maybe because one can forget just what a mean streak this genre can have when stringing together action sequences is more the aim than, say, validating the father's pride and worth, as well as a the need for the police to not look entirely like they need vigilantes to do their work. Writer/director Dan Trong Tran knows the movie he's making, and if it means not messing around that much between fights or having a villain merry-go-round that keeps Lam from actually having an opposite number (the film kind of settles on Quoc Truong's art enthusiast), well, that's not really important.
What's important, obviously, is the action, and that's solid as heck; there's been good action coming out of Vietnam for 15 years or so, and while it's Dan Trong Tran's first film as writer/director (he has mostly produced for director Le-Van Kiet), he's got a decent eye and a solid action director in Kefi Abrikh; between the hard hits and the inventiveness of some of the settings, they manage to evoke the sort of Hong Kong pre-handover vibe intended. The movie is probably also a notch or two better than most at genuinely convincing the audience that this guy, underworld legend that he may have been at one point, is in fact 20 years past his prime and out of practice. He recovers soon enough, sure, but he also spends a lot of time getting the crap beat out of him. There's much less ego than usual here.
I must admit, though, that I'm mildly disappointed they didn't come back around to reference constipated civet-poop coffee that one character serves another early on, perhaps as a reassurance that the daughter will be stronger for having gone through this. That would be the sort of dorkily-earnest but kind of messed-up bit that would really cement Bad Blood as that sort of classic "great fights, weird elsewhere" movie.
Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netflix. Show all posts
Monday, November 06, 2023
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Irish Movies in Ireland: My Father's Dragon
I'm on a not-particularly-scheduled vacation in Dublin right now - I basically saw I had to use some time up before the end of the year, knew I couldn't use Thanksgiving to extend it a little more if I wanted to go extra-far, and figured I didn't want to screw around too much with having to navigate in a land where English isn't the de facto first language - Gaelic may be listed first on some signs, but there's a lot of English in the air.
Anyway, as I tend to do, I spent most of Thursday walking about, in this case near Dublin Castle - not exactly the stone edifice that word conjures up, but impressive and noteworthy all the same. It being November and surprisingly far north - climate-wise, it always blows my mind that Dublin and London are not just north of Boston, but Montreal! - it was soon dark, so I popped "movie theaters" into my phone, saw that the Irish Film Institute was nearby, and had my eyebrows go up at this:
I don't know if My Father's Dragon got any theatrical release in the U.S. at all, or if they just couldn't find a screen in the Boston area, but, hey, I like Cartoon Saloon a lot and I had already been mentally composing at least one "Irish movies in Ireland" post for the blog. So, nifty!
The IFI itself is kind of tucked away on the street; the lobby is down a passageway, past a little shop nook that sells discs and (maybe) film books. The concession stand is smaller than the box office, labeled as a café stand with seats around the circular lobby to the point that I wondered if this was a "no snacks in the theater" type of place, especially considering that there was a fairly bustling restaurant/bar area off the lobby. Maybe that was just the way boutique houses work in this city.
(I could, in fact, bring my chocolate chip cookie and Coca-Cola upstairs to the theater)
I wish there were more places with this sort of vibe around Boston; the closest thing is probably the ice cream parlor at the Arlington Capitol or when the Studio in Belmont was sort of tied in with the burrito place next door (or, I guess, the bar areas that have infested the local multiplexes). I don't think it's really a planned part of the Coolidge's expansion, although they'd maybe be the best fit. I could imagine the Brattle taking over one of the other spaces in the building for something like that, but it would also involve imagining the rents in Harvard Square being less crazy than they are (this also goes for imagining something like that being done with the old Harvard Square Cinema space, still vacant with rumors of a development including a two-screener in the basement seven years after it closed). It feels like we could have something like this, where film-lovers would have a sort of dedicated space to browse and hang out before and after a screening, but the right opening is hard to find.
My Father's Dragon
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2022 in Irish Film Archive #2 (first-run, DCP)
Between their Irish folklore series and The Breadwinner, Kilkanney's Cartoon Saloon has staked out an enviable place in the animation landscape - their films are instantly recognizable, and while often built with younger audiences in mind, they have generally been mature enough to appeal to adults without having to plant "aren't we clever for going over kids' heads" bits. They've been so good that My Father's Dragon being a tick below that is noticeable, if not truly disappointing: The movie is fine; and kids should enjoy it, but it may not click in quite the same way for their parents.
It initially introduces the audience to Elmer (voice of Jacob Tremblay), a bright and energetic kid who knows where to find anything in the small-town market run by his mother Dela (voice of Golshifteh Farahani), although that place can't quite last, and the pair are soon moving to "Nevergreen City", where Dela is having a hard time finding work and landlady Mrs. McClaren (voice of Rita Moreno) isn't exactly pleased to find she brought a kid with her. Other things go wrong - a cat follows Elmer home despite Mrs. McClaren's no-pets rule, he rubs the other kids who are down-and-out the wrong way, and Dela has to spend the money they were saving to re-open the store. That's how he ends up alone by the docks, told that if he can rescue a dragon, surely he could make some money selling pictures and rides and such. But when a bubbly whale named Soda (voice of Judy Greer) gets him to the island, things turn complicated: Boris (voice of Gaten Matarazzo) is just a kid dragon himself, tied to the island by orangutan Saiwa (voice of Ian McShane) to keep it from sinking by flying up.
The script by Meg LaFauve (based on Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book) is not especially complicated, and neither she nor director Nora Twomey burdens it with more than needs to be there. They could have set up parallels between the island and the mainland, perhaps re-using voice actors or otherwise doing more to hint that the island is an imaginary place where Elmer can work through what's really eating him, beyond there being tangerines in both places. This happens and that happens, with Elmer and Boris not exactly moving in a straight line but close enough that kids can follow them. The film winds up introducing a lot of characters that viewers may figure would be more important, and there's not a lot of reason for this to be "My Father's Dragon" rather than "Elmer's Dragon", there's no flashing back or forward. The filmmakers aren't putting in complicated structure for kids who won't consciously notice it but will hopefully just be involved in the moment. That's fine, as is the moment or two when the film stops so Elmer can state exactly what he's learning; it does the job for the main audience.
So does the voice acting, with Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo apparently recording together and capturing the right vibe where Matarazzo's Boris is almost perfectly sweet, though scared, with Tremblay's Elmer often just selfish enough to frustrate the viewers without losing them. There are a lot of enjoyable character actors around them, from Golshifteh Farahani being note-perfect with Dela's faltering optimism to how Ian McShane and Chris O'Dowd are sort of frightening in their pragmatism, with folks like Alan Cumming, Dianne Wiest, Jackie Earle Haley, and Rita Moreno in between. Special props go to Whoopi Goldberg and Judy Greer, whose sly cat and happy whale are opposites woh work quite well together.
And, almost needless to say, the film is gorgeous, animated in classic style, with character designs that seem coloring-book-ready and which allow a lot of expression without distortion. There's a house style that makes Cartoon Saloon productions recognizable but seldom repetitive, especially the backgrounds that feel busy without quite being dizzying, the distinct color schemes for the village, city, and island. There are big, clear shapes, and rather than overwhelm the audience at crucial moments, Twomey will throw away perspective or reduce action to silhouettes to make sure what's actually important gets the most full, impactful emphasis.
That simplification, both in story and style, makes me wonder if the studio was animating with knowledge that this was heading for Netflix with very little time on the big screen. My Father's Dragon feels streaming-scale rather than grandly cinematic - fine enough for kids, but not as thrilling as this group's best work.
Anyway, as I tend to do, I spent most of Thursday walking about, in this case near Dublin Castle - not exactly the stone edifice that word conjures up, but impressive and noteworthy all the same. It being November and surprisingly far north - climate-wise, it always blows my mind that Dublin and London are not just north of Boston, but Montreal! - it was soon dark, so I popped "movie theaters" into my phone, saw that the Irish Film Institute was nearby, and had my eyebrows go up at this:
(I could, in fact, bring my chocolate chip cookie and Coca-Cola upstairs to the theater)
I wish there were more places with this sort of vibe around Boston; the closest thing is probably the ice cream parlor at the Arlington Capitol or when the Studio in Belmont was sort of tied in with the burrito place next door (or, I guess, the bar areas that have infested the local multiplexes). I don't think it's really a planned part of the Coolidge's expansion, although they'd maybe be the best fit. I could imagine the Brattle taking over one of the other spaces in the building for something like that, but it would also involve imagining the rents in Harvard Square being less crazy than they are (this also goes for imagining something like that being done with the old Harvard Square Cinema space, still vacant with rumors of a development including a two-screener in the basement seven years after it closed). It feels like we could have something like this, where film-lovers would have a sort of dedicated space to browse and hang out before and after a screening, but the right opening is hard to find.
My Father's Dragon
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2022 in Irish Film Archive #2 (first-run, DCP)
Between their Irish folklore series and The Breadwinner, Kilkanney's Cartoon Saloon has staked out an enviable place in the animation landscape - their films are instantly recognizable, and while often built with younger audiences in mind, they have generally been mature enough to appeal to adults without having to plant "aren't we clever for going over kids' heads" bits. They've been so good that My Father's Dragon being a tick below that is noticeable, if not truly disappointing: The movie is fine; and kids should enjoy it, but it may not click in quite the same way for their parents.
It initially introduces the audience to Elmer (voice of Jacob Tremblay), a bright and energetic kid who knows where to find anything in the small-town market run by his mother Dela (voice of Golshifteh Farahani), although that place can't quite last, and the pair are soon moving to "Nevergreen City", where Dela is having a hard time finding work and landlady Mrs. McClaren (voice of Rita Moreno) isn't exactly pleased to find she brought a kid with her. Other things go wrong - a cat follows Elmer home despite Mrs. McClaren's no-pets rule, he rubs the other kids who are down-and-out the wrong way, and Dela has to spend the money they were saving to re-open the store. That's how he ends up alone by the docks, told that if he can rescue a dragon, surely he could make some money selling pictures and rides and such. But when a bubbly whale named Soda (voice of Judy Greer) gets him to the island, things turn complicated: Boris (voice of Gaten Matarazzo) is just a kid dragon himself, tied to the island by orangutan Saiwa (voice of Ian McShane) to keep it from sinking by flying up.
The script by Meg LaFauve (based on Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book) is not especially complicated, and neither she nor director Nora Twomey burdens it with more than needs to be there. They could have set up parallels between the island and the mainland, perhaps re-using voice actors or otherwise doing more to hint that the island is an imaginary place where Elmer can work through what's really eating him, beyond there being tangerines in both places. This happens and that happens, with Elmer and Boris not exactly moving in a straight line but close enough that kids can follow them. The film winds up introducing a lot of characters that viewers may figure would be more important, and there's not a lot of reason for this to be "My Father's Dragon" rather than "Elmer's Dragon", there's no flashing back or forward. The filmmakers aren't putting in complicated structure for kids who won't consciously notice it but will hopefully just be involved in the moment. That's fine, as is the moment or two when the film stops so Elmer can state exactly what he's learning; it does the job for the main audience.
So does the voice acting, with Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo apparently recording together and capturing the right vibe where Matarazzo's Boris is almost perfectly sweet, though scared, with Tremblay's Elmer often just selfish enough to frustrate the viewers without losing them. There are a lot of enjoyable character actors around them, from Golshifteh Farahani being note-perfect with Dela's faltering optimism to how Ian McShane and Chris O'Dowd are sort of frightening in their pragmatism, with folks like Alan Cumming, Dianne Wiest, Jackie Earle Haley, and Rita Moreno in between. Special props go to Whoopi Goldberg and Judy Greer, whose sly cat and happy whale are opposites woh work quite well together.
And, almost needless to say, the film is gorgeous, animated in classic style, with character designs that seem coloring-book-ready and which allow a lot of expression without distortion. There's a house style that makes Cartoon Saloon productions recognizable but seldom repetitive, especially the backgrounds that feel busy without quite being dizzying, the distinct color schemes for the village, city, and island. There are big, clear shapes, and rather than overwhelm the audience at crucial moments, Twomey will throw away perspective or reduce action to silhouettes to make sure what's actually important gets the most full, impactful emphasis.
That simplification, both in story and style, makes me wonder if the studio was animating with knowledge that this was heading for Netflix with very little time on the big screen. My Father's Dragon feels streaming-scale rather than grandly cinematic - fine enough for kids, but not as thrilling as this group's best work.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
This Week in Tickets: 12 November 2018 - 18 November 2018
Some good stuff this week, but the one that made my phone blow up was the one I reviewed at Fantasia. Aidan Turner has some fans who will retweet the heck out of people who tweet that review you wrote.
I started the week off with Intimate Strangers, which had me mildly curious and wasn't scheduled to play any more evening shows after that, because the Korean dark comedy is the thing that goes when a theater needs extra screens for previews and special presentations and the like. It's pretty good, although I am absolutely considering the "remake review" when the Mexican version comes out in January.
The next day was my first Bollywood movie a while, Thugs of Hindostan, which is not great, but it's got the basic swashbuckling stuff down. Barely got there in time, though, because the show started at 6:30pm rather than the 6:45pm I expected. Good news when settling in for a three-hour movie. I am starting to wonder why the Fresh Pond plaza guys don't put a real set of steps on the landscaping that even Google maps tells you to cut across, though - someone will eventually get hurt.
Worked a bit late on Wednesday so I could cut out early on Thursday and catch the last screening of The Old Man and the Gun at the Capitol, with just one late show left at the Kendall that night. Really waited until the last minute on that one, which is a shame. It did make for a pretty perfect double feature with The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, which I was presented by Imagine Magazine, and they had some seats roped off, enough to send me to the balcony. Still a better view than I had in Montreal, though.
The most convenient thing on Friday evening was A Cool Fish, which has a few really nifty pieces that could fit together much better. Saturday's movie would be Burning, which is terrific, although I was taken a bit aback that MoviePass didn't work at Kendall Square that day. If it's no longer working at Landmark, I'm not sure I see the point of it anymore. It being a long movie, it didn't sync up with much else, so I made another dent in my last shipment of discs from Hong Kong with City on Fire. Grindhouse as heck.
I probably should have done laundry on Sunday morning, but instead headed out for Widows and then, for the second Sunday in a row, to Waltham for a Netflix movie, because that's good enough to say you're playing the Boston market. Sad, really, just a half-dozen or so of us in the theater, laughing like crazy at The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It's too good for Netflix to make it hard to see with an audience, honestly.
What'll be on my Letterboxd page this week? Who knows, considering there's family to visit for Thanksgiving and Park Chan-wook directing a three-night miniseries.
The Old Man & the Gun
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2018 in Capitol Theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)
Robert Redford has backtracked a bit on this being his last film, and it's natural to be of two minds on that: No film is going to put a better cap on his career even as it says to live your life doing what you know and love.
Redford is a delight, of course, the head of a cast of folks from Casey Affleck to Sissy Spacek all slotted into parts where they can do what they do best. There's a sort of joy to Redford's lifelong bank robber Forrest Tucker, who's got one toe over the line where devil-may-care maybe becomes a little dangerous that blends well with Spacek's basic good cheer and offsets Affleck's hangdog uncertainty just enough to bring them all into sharp focus. They get to stretch a bit as the film nears its end, just enough to stay true to their characters' selves while still showing what this pursuit has given them.
Filmmaker David Lowery tells the story in simple, relaxed fashion; it's never rushed but a lot happens in 93 minutes, while also leaving plenty of room for when little is happening and you can just watch these people. It's beautiful to look at, expertly recalling the films of Redford's prime without feeling like a pastiche and getting maximum mileage out of the cast's often craggy faces. Lowery also captures a lot of important details that ring true, like the way folks look askance at the white detective's black wife and kids (and how that family obviously adores each other), or how, even as people are charmed by this elderly stickup artist and put the best face on it afterward, they're clearly scared in the moment. Those moments tip the film just far enough from nostalgia when it counts that Lowery can indulge a bit later.
Above all else, this is a movie that puts a smile on one's face. It's small, it maybe won't receive awards because it doesn't necessarily challenge its cast, it maybe false-ends once or twice too often. But it's a delight, and if it's the last we see of Robert Redford, he left the stage reminding us why we like Robert Redford.
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Imagine Presents, DCP)
On a second viewing, I find myself a little more impressed by the sheer audacious oddness of this movie's makers in taking a pulpy premise and spending a lot of time pulling back and not necessarily using the crazy bits to stint on how people react to them. The film maybe doesn't have quite so much of the high adventure as I remember - the first time through, I got caught up in them, with the second time finding me examining details a bit more - but it holds up.
Mostly, though, I love Sam Elliott playing this thing straight as an arrow, even when in the moment when the movie gets a big laugh from him not believing that the government wants him to kill Bigfoot and the Canadian envoy isn't quite processing his WWII adventures. It's a wink that feels genuine even without the audience watching.
Full review at EFilmCritic (from Fantasia)
Lung foo fung wan (City on Fire)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
It's been a while since I last watched City on Fire, if indeed it's one of the movies I watched when Hong Kong cinema was in vogue and repertory series were appearing on a regular basis, and it's easy to forget sometimes just what a shoestring these movies were made on back in the eighties, cranked out quickly and not really expected to last. It is one of many undercover cop films that came out around that time, and looks a bit rough when you consider what John Woo, Andrew Lau, and Johnnie To would do later, after having had what Ringo Lam does here as a model.
Even if he's building a prototype, though, Lam's still building something remarkably efficient and comfortable, showing what a difficult job the police have in getting cooperation from the public to make a dent in crime and making it feel like an ongoing issue without the detectives explaining it to some rookie and otherwise trusting the audience to know this song's rhythm and recognize when it's done well. Chow Yun-fat is maybe not best served when his character being kind of a lousy boyfriend/fiance is used for comic relief, but he's quietly terrific as he makes his guilt over that part of the character, highlighting how much his loyalty can serve as an anchor in the job he is unfortunately good at.
Of course, what arguably really sets this apart is that Ringo Lam is really good at violence: As much as the opening murder of an undercover detective is effectively nasty, it's a heist that goes from professional to excessive that really opens one's eyes. It's big and bloody and stops being entertaining just long enough to highlight its cruelty. Lam never really lets his audience purely enjoy the action as a welcome release - it's thrilling but has ugly consequences, right down to the orgiastic hail of bullets that finishes things off reminding the audience that excessive force in the hands of people who aren't professional has consequences just as destructive as the criminals. The bit after that is insanely 1980s and goofy, from the saxophone solo with the unambiguous lyrics to the contrast between goofy cheer and grim death, but it works, and makes it clear that Lam does, in fact, have a bit of a point to make behind the cops-and-robbers stuff.
Widows
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)
I'm not sure how much of what makes Widows great (and, admittedly, is the source of the odd weakness) comes from it having been adapted from a TV show, but that DNA seems important. The movie is full of interesting tangents while never feeling like it's got a wasted moment, as if writer/director Steve McQueen wouldn't allow himself to actually dispense with any subplot in the name of simplifying the story but instead boiled them down to just what the movie needed to not have anything left out.
So maybe you could have a little more of Viola Davis actually acting as a mastermind, but the audience instead gets to get a sense of her from how she treats people and how she professes unawareness of her late husband's business; it's the kind of great performance that doesn't have an obvious clip to pull out for an awards show. She's matched and complemented by Elizabeth Debicki, who never quite loses her willowy uncertainty but gains an impressive confidence anyway. And maybe you can excise Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell as the last couple generations of a political dynasty, but why would you do without Duvall in any situation, even if Farrell's smarmy, Mitt Romney-looking son was not most likely the best thing he's ever done with an American accent. Or Daniel Kaluuya as a stone-cold monster that makes Brian Tyree Henry look almost likable as his corrupt, opportunistic brother?
Everyone involved is good enough and has enough going on that it's impressive just how much this movie sings even with relatively little actual heist action, although the finale is, in fact, pretty terrific. McQueen has given the audience just enough prep to follow along but also keeps it from being particularly mechanical, both because he wants it to be about the ladies running the job and because by that point we don't really love the idea of success meaning that they successfully followed a plan that a man drew up. The movie pivots, smartly and fairly, from its ensemble to give Davis the climax, and it earns the heck out of the applause that the audience gives it.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2018 in Landmark Embassy#3 (first-run, DCP)
It ticks me off that I'm not going to be able to add this to my Coen Brothers collection, and that it may not be easy to book for repertory theaters in the future, but Netflix did pay for this, and that does count for something.
The movie starts with one of the funniest things I've seen in a while - Tim Blake Nelson as a singing cowboy gunslinger who hates his violent reputation but doesn't exactly shrink away from finding situations where he can draw down on someone, and it is fantastic black comedy with a moment which rivals the not-an-inhaler bit from Intolerable Cruelty in terms of violent, hilariously terrible slapstick. The next segment is a similar sort of black comedy, but soon the film moves to darker, subtler sorts of humor. Even in the most serious, dark segments of this anthology picture, there's a sense of absurdity that this beautiful country is filled with such violence.
The Coens take to the omnibus format well, telling nifty little stories which have some depth but also great punchlines. Half of the six are excellent, but the other half are very good indeed, and that's a heck of a track record.
I started the week off with Intimate Strangers, which had me mildly curious and wasn't scheduled to play any more evening shows after that, because the Korean dark comedy is the thing that goes when a theater needs extra screens for previews and special presentations and the like. It's pretty good, although I am absolutely considering the "remake review" when the Mexican version comes out in January.
The next day was my first Bollywood movie a while, Thugs of Hindostan, which is not great, but it's got the basic swashbuckling stuff down. Barely got there in time, though, because the show started at 6:30pm rather than the 6:45pm I expected. Good news when settling in for a three-hour movie. I am starting to wonder why the Fresh Pond plaza guys don't put a real set of steps on the landscaping that even Google maps tells you to cut across, though - someone will eventually get hurt.
Worked a bit late on Wednesday so I could cut out early on Thursday and catch the last screening of The Old Man and the Gun at the Capitol, with just one late show left at the Kendall that night. Really waited until the last minute on that one, which is a shame. It did make for a pretty perfect double feature with The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, which I was presented by Imagine Magazine, and they had some seats roped off, enough to send me to the balcony. Still a better view than I had in Montreal, though.
The most convenient thing on Friday evening was A Cool Fish, which has a few really nifty pieces that could fit together much better. Saturday's movie would be Burning, which is terrific, although I was taken a bit aback that MoviePass didn't work at Kendall Square that day. If it's no longer working at Landmark, I'm not sure I see the point of it anymore. It being a long movie, it didn't sync up with much else, so I made another dent in my last shipment of discs from Hong Kong with City on Fire. Grindhouse as heck.
I probably should have done laundry on Sunday morning, but instead headed out for Widows and then, for the second Sunday in a row, to Waltham for a Netflix movie, because that's good enough to say you're playing the Boston market. Sad, really, just a half-dozen or so of us in the theater, laughing like crazy at The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It's too good for Netflix to make it hard to see with an audience, honestly.
What'll be on my Letterboxd page this week? Who knows, considering there's family to visit for Thanksgiving and Park Chan-wook directing a three-night miniseries.
The Old Man & the Gun
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2018 in Capitol Theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)
Robert Redford has backtracked a bit on this being his last film, and it's natural to be of two minds on that: No film is going to put a better cap on his career even as it says to live your life doing what you know and love.
Redford is a delight, of course, the head of a cast of folks from Casey Affleck to Sissy Spacek all slotted into parts where they can do what they do best. There's a sort of joy to Redford's lifelong bank robber Forrest Tucker, who's got one toe over the line where devil-may-care maybe becomes a little dangerous that blends well with Spacek's basic good cheer and offsets Affleck's hangdog uncertainty just enough to bring them all into sharp focus. They get to stretch a bit as the film nears its end, just enough to stay true to their characters' selves while still showing what this pursuit has given them.
Filmmaker David Lowery tells the story in simple, relaxed fashion; it's never rushed but a lot happens in 93 minutes, while also leaving plenty of room for when little is happening and you can just watch these people. It's beautiful to look at, expertly recalling the films of Redford's prime without feeling like a pastiche and getting maximum mileage out of the cast's often craggy faces. Lowery also captures a lot of important details that ring true, like the way folks look askance at the white detective's black wife and kids (and how that family obviously adores each other), or how, even as people are charmed by this elderly stickup artist and put the best face on it afterward, they're clearly scared in the moment. Those moments tip the film just far enough from nostalgia when it counts that Lowery can indulge a bit later.
Above all else, this is a movie that puts a smile on one's face. It's small, it maybe won't receive awards because it doesn't necessarily challenge its cast, it maybe false-ends once or twice too often. But it's a delight, and if it's the last we see of Robert Redford, he left the stage reminding us why we like Robert Redford.
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 November 2018 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Imagine Presents, DCP)
On a second viewing, I find myself a little more impressed by the sheer audacious oddness of this movie's makers in taking a pulpy premise and spending a lot of time pulling back and not necessarily using the crazy bits to stint on how people react to them. The film maybe doesn't have quite so much of the high adventure as I remember - the first time through, I got caught up in them, with the second time finding me examining details a bit more - but it holds up.
Mostly, though, I love Sam Elliott playing this thing straight as an arrow, even when in the moment when the movie gets a big laugh from him not believing that the government wants him to kill Bigfoot and the Canadian envoy isn't quite processing his WWII adventures. It's a wink that feels genuine even without the audience watching.
Full review at EFilmCritic (from Fantasia)
Lung foo fung wan (City on Fire)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
It's been a while since I last watched City on Fire, if indeed it's one of the movies I watched when Hong Kong cinema was in vogue and repertory series were appearing on a regular basis, and it's easy to forget sometimes just what a shoestring these movies were made on back in the eighties, cranked out quickly and not really expected to last. It is one of many undercover cop films that came out around that time, and looks a bit rough when you consider what John Woo, Andrew Lau, and Johnnie To would do later, after having had what Ringo Lam does here as a model.
Even if he's building a prototype, though, Lam's still building something remarkably efficient and comfortable, showing what a difficult job the police have in getting cooperation from the public to make a dent in crime and making it feel like an ongoing issue without the detectives explaining it to some rookie and otherwise trusting the audience to know this song's rhythm and recognize when it's done well. Chow Yun-fat is maybe not best served when his character being kind of a lousy boyfriend/fiance is used for comic relief, but he's quietly terrific as he makes his guilt over that part of the character, highlighting how much his loyalty can serve as an anchor in the job he is unfortunately good at.
Of course, what arguably really sets this apart is that Ringo Lam is really good at violence: As much as the opening murder of an undercover detective is effectively nasty, it's a heist that goes from professional to excessive that really opens one's eyes. It's big and bloody and stops being entertaining just long enough to highlight its cruelty. Lam never really lets his audience purely enjoy the action as a welcome release - it's thrilling but has ugly consequences, right down to the orgiastic hail of bullets that finishes things off reminding the audience that excessive force in the hands of people who aren't professional has consequences just as destructive as the criminals. The bit after that is insanely 1980s and goofy, from the saxophone solo with the unambiguous lyrics to the contrast between goofy cheer and grim death, but it works, and makes it clear that Lam does, in fact, have a bit of a point to make behind the cops-and-robbers stuff.
Widows
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)
I'm not sure how much of what makes Widows great (and, admittedly, is the source of the odd weakness) comes from it having been adapted from a TV show, but that DNA seems important. The movie is full of interesting tangents while never feeling like it's got a wasted moment, as if writer/director Steve McQueen wouldn't allow himself to actually dispense with any subplot in the name of simplifying the story but instead boiled them down to just what the movie needed to not have anything left out.
So maybe you could have a little more of Viola Davis actually acting as a mastermind, but the audience instead gets to get a sense of her from how she treats people and how she professes unawareness of her late husband's business; it's the kind of great performance that doesn't have an obvious clip to pull out for an awards show. She's matched and complemented by Elizabeth Debicki, who never quite loses her willowy uncertainty but gains an impressive confidence anyway. And maybe you can excise Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell as the last couple generations of a political dynasty, but why would you do without Duvall in any situation, even if Farrell's smarmy, Mitt Romney-looking son was not most likely the best thing he's ever done with an American accent. Or Daniel Kaluuya as a stone-cold monster that makes Brian Tyree Henry look almost likable as his corrupt, opportunistic brother?
Everyone involved is good enough and has enough going on that it's impressive just how much this movie sings even with relatively little actual heist action, although the finale is, in fact, pretty terrific. McQueen has given the audience just enough prep to follow along but also keeps it from being particularly mechanical, both because he wants it to be about the ladies running the job and because by that point we don't really love the idea of success meaning that they successfully followed a plan that a man drew up. The movie pivots, smartly and fairly, from its ensemble to give Davis the climax, and it earns the heck out of the applause that the audience gives it.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2018 in Landmark Embassy#3 (first-run, DCP)
It ticks me off that I'm not going to be able to add this to my Coen Brothers collection, and that it may not be easy to book for repertory theaters in the future, but Netflix did pay for this, and that does count for something.
The movie starts with one of the funniest things I've seen in a while - Tim Blake Nelson as a singing cowboy gunslinger who hates his violent reputation but doesn't exactly shrink away from finding situations where he can draw down on someone, and it is fantastic black comedy with a moment which rivals the not-an-inhaler bit from Intolerable Cruelty in terms of violent, hilariously terrible slapstick. The next segment is a similar sort of black comedy, but soon the film moves to darker, subtler sorts of humor. Even in the most serious, dark segments of this anthology picture, there's a sense of absurdity that this beautiful country is filled with such violence.
The Coens take to the omnibus format well, telling nifty little stories which have some depth but also great punchlines. Half of the six are excellent, but the other half are very good indeed, and that's a heck of a track record.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
This Week in Tickets: 5 November 2018 - 11 November 2018
Hey, I made some progress on recent Blu-ray orders, in part because scheduling got weird with other stuff.
First up: I suppose there were more pressing gaps than The Great Buster: A Celebration on Tuesday, especially since I know it's going to be part of the Brattle's "Keaton-esque" series Christmas week, but I was kind of looking for complete escapism on Election Night after a bit of hubris a couple years ago, when I went to Mad Max: Fury Road (Black and Chrome) with some comments about celebrating strong women destroying bloated would-be dictators and crowed about it on social media. No chicken-counting this year, though things went better on that count.
Thursday's Plan A got pushed off because the MBTA was just uncooperative enough to make getting to Fenway in time for Suspiria to start, so I detoured at Park Street for a night-before show of Overlord, which turned out to be a pretty good time - not exactly elevated horror, but quality pulp that knows what it's going for. Regular opening night was given to Shunji Iwai's Last Letter, a pretty spiffy little movie that marks his first work in China and apparently serves as a sort of "premake" to a Japanese version coming next year, though this one felt more like a Japanese movie than a Chinese one.
Saturday, I made good on Thursday's plans to check out Suspiria, and that didn't go great at all - the Red Line was running shuttle buses so I got to the theater just in time for the start with no time for getting snacks or soda, and it just wasn't happening for me. Not sure why, because a 1pm movie doesn't knock you out on its own, but this one had me out of it a lot. On top of that, the AMC Stubs app apparently thought I was trying to buy overlapping tickets when I got out and wanted one for a movie starting at 4pm (it was a tight fit), and by the time I figured it wasn't going to happen, the movie had already started. So I headed home and decided to put on one of the discs I'd recently ordered from Hong Kong, but it was in 3D and my glasses weren't charged. So plan B again, An Inspector Calls. That Chinese New Year's movie from a few years back was fun to look at and kind of goofy but sputtered badly toward the end.
The next day, it was off to Waltham because that would likely be the only chance to see Outlaw King (or, as it's shown onscreen, "Outlaw/King") in a theater, because when Netflix says their movies are playing in "Select Theaters", they mean the ones that might let them buy out a screen for a week even if it might be empty and not selling popcorn because you can see the movie at home. As it turned out, the movie itself was okay, but maybe not worth the trip out there. The kicker is that there was a preview for another Netflix movie opening there the next weekend, so I'll probably be there again.
Getting to the Embassy and back meant nothing was more convenient to see than what I had at home (and it's starting to get too cold to just kill time), but by now my 3D glasses were charged and I could watch The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet that way, which was good, because the 3D effects were kind of the best part of it.
And that's another week. Here's the obligatory link to my Letterboxd page, for those that like first drafts and not running at the mouth about how I saw a movie.
Suspiria (2018)
* * (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2018 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)
I had high hopes for this when the confirmation number for my ticket ended in "666" - I have to think that's a good horror movie omen - and finding what i figured would be a room with a few people mostly full, but it really did nothing for me. Had me dozing off during a 1pm show, actually.
I could see bits of a good movie in there, with great design, an eagerness to connect to something more concrete than the original, and some genuinely and literally twisted bits. But 2.5 hours is a lot to spend with characters who are more or less blanks in the service of an ending that doesn't mean much and is just stylish enough in most spots that some weak CGI gore can bring snickers. It also doesn't help much at all that so much of the finale wound up focusing on the wrong Tilda Swinton character, using the Holocaust to sell a kind of silly stunt
If this thing was an hour shorter, I'd be open to giving it another chance - it's a rare movie that's actually dull enough to make you drowsy ten minutes in, and this one's got the ambition to not really be boring - but at this length? Not likely.
Fau wa yin (An Inspector Calls)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
I was attracted to this one by a fun cast and kind of had a good time for the first little while as a bunch of colorful settings and equally colorful characters came in, only to be really confused at the abrupt, nonsensical finale. Apparently this is par for the course for Hong Kong Chinese New Year movies; that the thing was adapted from a play not originally written as a comedy makes it goofier and more bizarre.
Kind of a shame that the filmmakers never really figure out where they want to go; the film starts with what seems like a really nifty combination of garish color and dark comedy and some delightfully crazed performances by Louis Koo and Eric Tsang, though it's tremendously frustrating how determined they are to waste Chrissie Chau. I guess you can see the original work underneath it and where a comic adaptation could have been great if they'd gone for sharper satire underneath the farce, though it's entirely possible (even likely) that a Hong Kong native sees what is being skewered and pronounces it vicious. The impulse seems to be there all the way through the film, but winds up feeling undirected in a potentially paranoid last sequence that instead becomes an orgy of cameos.
Not that I can truly hate a movie where one (or four) of those cameos is a doo-wop band featuring a digitally-multiplied Donnie Yen, no matter how dumb and pointless a joke that may be. The over-the-top nonsense is kind of the point for these things.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
* * (out of four)
Seen 11 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong 3D Blu-ray)
If this turns out to be the only chance Jean-Pierre Jeunet has to work with 3D cameras in his career - he hasn't directed a feature film since and it wasn't used quite so much when he made Micmacs six years earlier - that will be a bit of a shame. When he's pointing a camera at the landscape, creating pop-up books to set the scene, or otherwise placing the cameras just far enough off the normal spot to both get down to his young hero's level and highlight the depth of field, he makes a beautiful film.
Unfortunately, he also makes what is likely the most insufferable film of his career, which is an impressive feat, because he is Jean-Pierre Jeunet and made Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. Its protagonist is a ten-year-old boy genius who lies constantly and may be completely insane, no decision anybody makes ever makes any sense, and the finale plays like it's supposed to be some sort of play on exploitation and media feeding frenzies, but it's so accelerated and cartoonish as to be ridiculous; I honestly couldn't figure what Judy Davis's character was trying to do in the movie's homestretch. It's trying to be satirical but seems to have no understanding of its targets at all.
And it's boring. Young T.S. Spivet somehow manages to cross three quarters of the country without ever having anything that feels like an adventure. For much of the movie, nobody is doing anything or even having anything happen to them, meaning Spivet has to go off on asides seemingly to fill time. It's a waste of a good cast - there's got to be an interesting movie about how Helena Bonham Carter's distracted entomologist and Callum Keith Rennie met and fell in love for instance, and I'm a bit surprised that Niamh Wilson, the actress playing T.S.'s older sister, hasn't done more than Canadian TV since; her character is a broadly-written teenage drama queen, but one I believed in.
Apparently this barely got a U.S. release two years after it first hit the festival circuit, with the Weinstein Company cutting a few f-bombs out and probably not releasing it in 3D theatrically, much less on video, meaning it lost its strongest element. The import Hong Kong Blu-ray was the original cut and included 3D, at least looking nice, but that's the best you can say about it. That Jeunet hasn't done a feature since isn't completely surprising - his projects always take a few years to come together, the price of doing elaborate films outside Hollywood - but I wonder if this may have basically ended his career, making producers too skittish to pay for the type of movie he's best at.
First up: I suppose there were more pressing gaps than The Great Buster: A Celebration on Tuesday, especially since I know it's going to be part of the Brattle's "Keaton-esque" series Christmas week, but I was kind of looking for complete escapism on Election Night after a bit of hubris a couple years ago, when I went to Mad Max: Fury Road (Black and Chrome) with some comments about celebrating strong women destroying bloated would-be dictators and crowed about it on social media. No chicken-counting this year, though things went better on that count.
Thursday's Plan A got pushed off because the MBTA was just uncooperative enough to make getting to Fenway in time for Suspiria to start, so I detoured at Park Street for a night-before show of Overlord, which turned out to be a pretty good time - not exactly elevated horror, but quality pulp that knows what it's going for. Regular opening night was given to Shunji Iwai's Last Letter, a pretty spiffy little movie that marks his first work in China and apparently serves as a sort of "premake" to a Japanese version coming next year, though this one felt more like a Japanese movie than a Chinese one.
Saturday, I made good on Thursday's plans to check out Suspiria, and that didn't go great at all - the Red Line was running shuttle buses so I got to the theater just in time for the start with no time for getting snacks or soda, and it just wasn't happening for me. Not sure why, because a 1pm movie doesn't knock you out on its own, but this one had me out of it a lot. On top of that, the AMC Stubs app apparently thought I was trying to buy overlapping tickets when I got out and wanted one for a movie starting at 4pm (it was a tight fit), and by the time I figured it wasn't going to happen, the movie had already started. So I headed home and decided to put on one of the discs I'd recently ordered from Hong Kong, but it was in 3D and my glasses weren't charged. So plan B again, An Inspector Calls. That Chinese New Year's movie from a few years back was fun to look at and kind of goofy but sputtered badly toward the end.
The next day, it was off to Waltham because that would likely be the only chance to see Outlaw King (or, as it's shown onscreen, "Outlaw/King") in a theater, because when Netflix says their movies are playing in "Select Theaters", they mean the ones that might let them buy out a screen for a week even if it might be empty and not selling popcorn because you can see the movie at home. As it turned out, the movie itself was okay, but maybe not worth the trip out there. The kicker is that there was a preview for another Netflix movie opening there the next weekend, so I'll probably be there again.
Getting to the Embassy and back meant nothing was more convenient to see than what I had at home (and it's starting to get too cold to just kill time), but by now my 3D glasses were charged and I could watch The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet that way, which was good, because the 3D effects were kind of the best part of it.
And that's another week. Here's the obligatory link to my Letterboxd page, for those that like first drafts and not running at the mouth about how I saw a movie.
Suspiria (2018)
* * (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2018 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)
I had high hopes for this when the confirmation number for my ticket ended in "666" - I have to think that's a good horror movie omen - and finding what i figured would be a room with a few people mostly full, but it really did nothing for me. Had me dozing off during a 1pm show, actually.
I could see bits of a good movie in there, with great design, an eagerness to connect to something more concrete than the original, and some genuinely and literally twisted bits. But 2.5 hours is a lot to spend with characters who are more or less blanks in the service of an ending that doesn't mean much and is just stylish enough in most spots that some weak CGI gore can bring snickers. It also doesn't help much at all that so much of the finale wound up focusing on the wrong Tilda Swinton character, using the Holocaust to sell a kind of silly stunt
If this thing was an hour shorter, I'd be open to giving it another chance - it's a rare movie that's actually dull enough to make you drowsy ten minutes in, and this one's got the ambition to not really be boring - but at this length? Not likely.
Fau wa yin (An Inspector Calls)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong Blu-ray)
I was attracted to this one by a fun cast and kind of had a good time for the first little while as a bunch of colorful settings and equally colorful characters came in, only to be really confused at the abrupt, nonsensical finale. Apparently this is par for the course for Hong Kong Chinese New Year movies; that the thing was adapted from a play not originally written as a comedy makes it goofier and more bizarre.
Kind of a shame that the filmmakers never really figure out where they want to go; the film starts with what seems like a really nifty combination of garish color and dark comedy and some delightfully crazed performances by Louis Koo and Eric Tsang, though it's tremendously frustrating how determined they are to waste Chrissie Chau. I guess you can see the original work underneath it and where a comic adaptation could have been great if they'd gone for sharper satire underneath the farce, though it's entirely possible (even likely) that a Hong Kong native sees what is being skewered and pronounces it vicious. The impulse seems to be there all the way through the film, but winds up feeling undirected in a potentially paranoid last sequence that instead becomes an orgy of cameos.
Not that I can truly hate a movie where one (or four) of those cameos is a doo-wop band featuring a digitally-multiplied Donnie Yen, no matter how dumb and pointless a joke that may be. The over-the-top nonsense is kind of the point for these things.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
* * (out of four)
Seen 11 November 2018 in Jay's Living Room (recent acquisitions, Hong Kong 3D Blu-ray)
If this turns out to be the only chance Jean-Pierre Jeunet has to work with 3D cameras in his career - he hasn't directed a feature film since and it wasn't used quite so much when he made Micmacs six years earlier - that will be a bit of a shame. When he's pointing a camera at the landscape, creating pop-up books to set the scene, or otherwise placing the cameras just far enough off the normal spot to both get down to his young hero's level and highlight the depth of field, he makes a beautiful film.
Unfortunately, he also makes what is likely the most insufferable film of his career, which is an impressive feat, because he is Jean-Pierre Jeunet and made Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. Its protagonist is a ten-year-old boy genius who lies constantly and may be completely insane, no decision anybody makes ever makes any sense, and the finale plays like it's supposed to be some sort of play on exploitation and media feeding frenzies, but it's so accelerated and cartoonish as to be ridiculous; I honestly couldn't figure what Judy Davis's character was trying to do in the movie's homestretch. It's trying to be satirical but seems to have no understanding of its targets at all.
And it's boring. Young T.S. Spivet somehow manages to cross three quarters of the country without ever having anything that feels like an adventure. For much of the movie, nobody is doing anything or even having anything happen to them, meaning Spivet has to go off on asides seemingly to fill time. It's a waste of a good cast - there's got to be an interesting movie about how Helena Bonham Carter's distracted entomologist and Callum Keith Rennie met and fell in love for instance, and I'm a bit surprised that Niamh Wilson, the actress playing T.S.'s older sister, hasn't done more than Canadian TV since; her character is a broadly-written teenage drama queen, but one I believed in.
Apparently this barely got a U.S. release two years after it first hit the festival circuit, with the Weinstein Company cutting a few f-bombs out and probably not releasing it in 3D theatrically, much less on video, meaning it lost its strongest element. The import Hong Kong Blu-ray was the original cut and included 3D, at least looking nice, but that's the best you can say about it. That Jeunet hasn't done a feature since isn't completely surprising - his projects always take a few years to come together, the price of doing elaborate films outside Hollywood - but I wonder if this may have basically ended his career, making producers too skittish to pay for the type of movie he's best at.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
I had no idea that this was a Netflix production before their logo popped up before the film and thus had me a little surprised it was playing theaters at all. I suspect it's gone from Kendall Square on Friday, either because it doesn't draw when a lot of people can see it as part of their subscription package or because the release was a heavily-subsidized stab at awards consideration. Whatever the case, I've heard (and participated in) a lot less outcry over this only having a small theatrical footprint than Okja just a few months ago, and I wonder if it's a matter of my being in the wrong circles and the art-house crowd is just as annoyed as the genre crowd was, or if we just get tired about yelling about the same things again and again.
I do kind of suspect this loses a bit playing at home versus the theater. In the review I talk about how the wide overhead shots go from making the exodus from Phnom Penh look big to making the individual people look small, and I suspect that's something the cinematographer and visual effects guys have to be pretty precise with - the average person in those shots being a few pixels wider jumps him or her from being an anonymous entity to an individual human for the audience, but I suspect that threshold is different on the big screen than on the smaller one. Maybe not, and maybe they're primarily composing for video anyway, what with Netflix putting up the money and the monitors both on-set and at the FX house not being twenty feet wide.
Speaking of theaters, it looks like Kendall Square is pretty much done its renovation, and so far, it doesn't feel a whole lot different - the lobby has basically replaced the spot with the baked goods with a bar space, and video screens have replaced the manual signage. So far, mostly harmless, so long as they don't go in for animating them too much. The hallway has gotten a little too low-key, perhaps - no posters next to the doors or signs above, just a fairly low-key numeral. I initially walked past the auditorium, and I've been in those rooms a lot. Inside, I noticed that the seats had been upgraded, though the rows were much closer together than the surprisingly sparse arrangement in theater #9, enough so that though they reclined, the foot-rest didn't extend. Still fairly comfortable, at least.
The marquee outside is still kind of a mess, but maybe they won't be cleaning that up until the rest of the work around the area is done. It'd be nice if the thing most visible from the street made a nicer impression, but it's certainly the part of the theater that has the least impact on it beating the heck out of my living room.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 August 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #2 (first-run, DCP)
It's a bit surprising to me that First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers didn't have its name cut in half during the transition from page to screen, and not just because it may look unwieldy on a VOD menu (let alone a marquee in the small number of theaters that are booking a Netflix original). That title implies adult reflection, while the film is almost entirely devoted to the child's point of view. That's often a source of its power, although it sometimes denies the film some of the clarity director Angelina Jolie looks to find elsewhere.
It opens in April 1975, when Loung Ung (Sareum Srey Moch) was six or seven, the second-youngest of six siblings whose father (Phoeung Kompheak) works for the government - or at least, until the Khmer Rouge takes over and they, like everyone else, are forced to flee Phnom Penh. The father is canny enough to hide his identity as the family eventually winds up in one of the camps where the KR is trying to rebuild the country on communist ideals, but there's no end to the danger and cruelty to be found in post-revolution Kampuchea.
Jolie and the real-life Loung Ung collaborated on the screenplay (from Ung's book), and mostly keeping this a kid's-eye-view account has its pluses and minuses. It's important to note, for instance, that Jolie bookends the film with more documentary-style bits that highlight America's contributions to the rise of this regime, and while that's an important subject, it's not what the rest of the film is about. There's a majesty to the final shot that emphasizes that the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror was, though destructive, an aberration, and that point of view seems like a bit of an afterthought within the film itself.
Full review on EFC.
I do kind of suspect this loses a bit playing at home versus the theater. In the review I talk about how the wide overhead shots go from making the exodus from Phnom Penh look big to making the individual people look small, and I suspect that's something the cinematographer and visual effects guys have to be pretty precise with - the average person in those shots being a few pixels wider jumps him or her from being an anonymous entity to an individual human for the audience, but I suspect that threshold is different on the big screen than on the smaller one. Maybe not, and maybe they're primarily composing for video anyway, what with Netflix putting up the money and the monitors both on-set and at the FX house not being twenty feet wide.
Speaking of theaters, it looks like Kendall Square is pretty much done its renovation, and so far, it doesn't feel a whole lot different - the lobby has basically replaced the spot with the baked goods with a bar space, and video screens have replaced the manual signage. So far, mostly harmless, so long as they don't go in for animating them too much. The hallway has gotten a little too low-key, perhaps - no posters next to the doors or signs above, just a fairly low-key numeral. I initially walked past the auditorium, and I've been in those rooms a lot. Inside, I noticed that the seats had been upgraded, though the rows were much closer together than the surprisingly sparse arrangement in theater #9, enough so that though they reclined, the foot-rest didn't extend. Still fairly comfortable, at least.
The marquee outside is still kind of a mess, but maybe they won't be cleaning that up until the rest of the work around the area is done. It'd be nice if the thing most visible from the street made a nicer impression, but it's certainly the part of the theater that has the least impact on it beating the heck out of my living room.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 August 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #2 (first-run, DCP)
It's a bit surprising to me that First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers didn't have its name cut in half during the transition from page to screen, and not just because it may look unwieldy on a VOD menu (let alone a marquee in the small number of theaters that are booking a Netflix original). That title implies adult reflection, while the film is almost entirely devoted to the child's point of view. That's often a source of its power, although it sometimes denies the film some of the clarity director Angelina Jolie looks to find elsewhere.
It opens in April 1975, when Loung Ung (Sareum Srey Moch) was six or seven, the second-youngest of six siblings whose father (Phoeung Kompheak) works for the government - or at least, until the Khmer Rouge takes over and they, like everyone else, are forced to flee Phnom Penh. The father is canny enough to hide his identity as the family eventually winds up in one of the camps where the KR is trying to rebuild the country on communist ideals, but there's no end to the danger and cruelty to be found in post-revolution Kampuchea.
Jolie and the real-life Loung Ung collaborated on the screenplay (from Ung's book), and mostly keeping this a kid's-eye-view account has its pluses and minuses. It's important to note, for instance, that Jolie bookends the film with more documentary-style bits that highlight America's contributions to the rise of this regime, and while that's an important subject, it's not what the rest of the film is about. There's a majesty to the final shot that emphasizes that the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror was, though destructive, an aberration, and that point of view seems like a bit of an afterthought within the film itself.
Full review on EFC.
Monday, March 27, 2017
The Discovery
The sensible thing to do on Tuesday was probably not seeing this movie - indeed, the sensible thing to do on Tuesday probably involved an earlier flight on Monday, rather than leaving San Diego at 10:05pm Pacific Daylight Time, only fitfully sleeping on the plane to Boston (though there was an empty seat next to me, there was one of three babies on the red-eye directly behind me), arriving at 6:30am Eastern, and then going to work before heading to the Coolidge for this. Remarkably, I did not nap during the film at all, but I think I am still jittery as a result of the two energy drinks and two 16-plus-ounce colas I sucked down to get through work that day on Friday.
But, what can you do? This thing is a Netflix exclusive and Netflix, unlike Amazon and Hulu, seems unwilling to play nice with theaters so that people have the opportunity to see their movies on the big screen. Plus, something being Netflix-exclusive means I don’t get to see it at all, as I didn’t see the point of signing up when they were a movie-rental service and I had a wall full of unwatched DVDs and Blu-rays (which has only grown in the past few years). Now that it’s basically a premium cable channel, I’m more tempted, although the DVR pegged at >80% makes that kind of hard to justify.
Still, I wanted to see this one; the high concept is neat, I’ve spent the last six months selling people on Pete’s Dragon with “Robert Redford is aware that he doesn’t have enough time left to waste any on things that don’t deserve him”, and though I somehow didn’t realize it until just a couple days before the screening, it’s the new film from the guy who made The One I Love, and that grabs my interest.
And, hey, guests on top of that!
Left to right, star Jason Segel, writer/director McDowell, and IFFBoston’s Brian Tamm. As Q&As go, it was okay. As with Segel’s previous visit supporting The End of the Tour, I get the idea that he may not be ashamed of his more comedic work (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets), but he’d really like to compartmentalize it, because he wants what he’s doing now to be taken more seriously. He talked about that a little - when you come up in comedy, and then get cast in a movie against Robert Redford and Rooney Mara, you feel a little inadequate, but you also have to go for it. That was a lot of his part of the Q&A, which you kind of have to expect given how The Discovery is a movie whose hook is far more its concept than its performances.
So that meant McDowell had the bulk of it, and I kind of wish I (a) came up with good questions immediately after a movie and (b) had the nerve to ask less complimentary ones. I didn’t really dislike this movie much until I thought about it a little more, and I kind of would have liked to push at this two-film pattern of sketching out just barely enough of a high-concept to get something started but valuing open-endedness too much. Also, it’s worth noting that nobody in these situations really wants to ask the questions about going straight to a streaming service, whether it feels like you’ve made something less than a real movie or if effectively shooting for TV changes how something is shot. Maybe that’s just because Netflix has been normalized for most everyone else.
Disappointing as the film wound up being, I’m glad IFFBoston and Netflix gave me a chance to see it on a big screen, even if it was that one chance and I probably would have missed it if it had been at 7pm rather than 7:30pm, just based on the ability to get to the Coolidge from work. I’ll be really disappointed if I can’t find something like that for Mute and Okja later this year.
The Discovery
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2017 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (IFFBoston preview series, DCP)
Charlie McDowell's The One I Love was a nifty little indie fantasy, albeit one that hand-waved viewers past the details of its high concept with such force that the breeze could knock a person over. His follow-up occupies the same sort of space but never quite manages the same thrill of mystery as his previous film; it winds up specifying too much and too little of what’s going on, not quite marooning a hard-working cast between these poles but only seldom letting them and the ideas that their characters are wrestling with display their full potential.
Like many movies of this sort, it winds up tying its big idea to a small human-scale story: Two years ago, Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) demonstrated, scientifically, that there was some sort of afterlife, an announcement that seems primarily to have been met by a sharp rise in the suicide rate as people try to “get there”. Two years and four million suicides later, Harbor’s son Will (Jason Segel) returns to the New England island where his family summered when he was young, where he meets up with brother Toby (Jesse Plemons) and finds that his father, a recluse for the past year and a half, has gathered a number of people left adrift by the discovery and continued his experiments, aiming to see just what this next phase of existence is, specifically. Isla (Rooney Mara), the only other passenger on the ferry when Will came over, winds up being a good fit for this group, obviously damaged and quickly working her way into the family’s inner circle.
I like the edge of cult-leader arrogance Robert Redford brings to the man who made the discovery; Thomas fits the part of the mad scientist consumed by his work for the past forty years and could easily become the clear villain of the piece, even if the movie is at heart a story about reconciliation and atonement. Redford is a natural fit for the intelligence and the guilt being grappled with, but it’s the moments when his ego takes charge and the viewer sees that this is a guy capable of recklessly upending the world that make the man interesting. It’s a property that doesn’t really have a complement in Jason Segel’s more principled, obviously angry son even though as a fellow scientist in the same field, Will is positioned to be Thomas’s foil; Segel aches well but does not project the charisma necessary to stand in opposition of Redford. It allows Jesse Plemons to give a more interesting performance as Toby - not brilliant but not stupid, his peacemaker has just the right sort of natural resentment as Thomas and Will talk over his head but need his feet-on-the-ground loyalty. Rooney Mara handles Isla nicely, though, making her feel a bit more well-rounded than the assistants/residents played by Riley Keough and Ron Canada when the character could easily be just a mixture of bitter and eccentric.
Full review on EFC.
But, what can you do? This thing is a Netflix exclusive and Netflix, unlike Amazon and Hulu, seems unwilling to play nice with theaters so that people have the opportunity to see their movies on the big screen. Plus, something being Netflix-exclusive means I don’t get to see it at all, as I didn’t see the point of signing up when they were a movie-rental service and I had a wall full of unwatched DVDs and Blu-rays (which has only grown in the past few years). Now that it’s basically a premium cable channel, I’m more tempted, although the DVR pegged at >80% makes that kind of hard to justify.
Still, I wanted to see this one; the high concept is neat, I’ve spent the last six months selling people on Pete’s Dragon with “Robert Redford is aware that he doesn’t have enough time left to waste any on things that don’t deserve him”, and though I somehow didn’t realize it until just a couple days before the screening, it’s the new film from the guy who made The One I Love, and that grabs my interest.
And, hey, guests on top of that!
Left to right, star Jason Segel, writer/director McDowell, and IFFBoston’s Brian Tamm. As Q&As go, it was okay. As with Segel’s previous visit supporting The End of the Tour, I get the idea that he may not be ashamed of his more comedic work (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets), but he’d really like to compartmentalize it, because he wants what he’s doing now to be taken more seriously. He talked about that a little - when you come up in comedy, and then get cast in a movie against Robert Redford and Rooney Mara, you feel a little inadequate, but you also have to go for it. That was a lot of his part of the Q&A, which you kind of have to expect given how The Discovery is a movie whose hook is far more its concept than its performances.
So that meant McDowell had the bulk of it, and I kind of wish I (a) came up with good questions immediately after a movie and (b) had the nerve to ask less complimentary ones. I didn’t really dislike this movie much until I thought about it a little more, and I kind of would have liked to push at this two-film pattern of sketching out just barely enough of a high-concept to get something started but valuing open-endedness too much. Also, it’s worth noting that nobody in these situations really wants to ask the questions about going straight to a streaming service, whether it feels like you’ve made something less than a real movie or if effectively shooting for TV changes how something is shot. Maybe that’s just because Netflix has been normalized for most everyone else.
Disappointing as the film wound up being, I’m glad IFFBoston and Netflix gave me a chance to see it on a big screen, even if it was that one chance and I probably would have missed it if it had been at 7pm rather than 7:30pm, just based on the ability to get to the Coolidge from work. I’ll be really disappointed if I can’t find something like that for Mute and Okja later this year.
The Discovery
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2017 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (IFFBoston preview series, DCP)
Charlie McDowell's The One I Love was a nifty little indie fantasy, albeit one that hand-waved viewers past the details of its high concept with such force that the breeze could knock a person over. His follow-up occupies the same sort of space but never quite manages the same thrill of mystery as his previous film; it winds up specifying too much and too little of what’s going on, not quite marooning a hard-working cast between these poles but only seldom letting them and the ideas that their characters are wrestling with display their full potential.
Like many movies of this sort, it winds up tying its big idea to a small human-scale story: Two years ago, Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) demonstrated, scientifically, that there was some sort of afterlife, an announcement that seems primarily to have been met by a sharp rise in the suicide rate as people try to “get there”. Two years and four million suicides later, Harbor’s son Will (Jason Segel) returns to the New England island where his family summered when he was young, where he meets up with brother Toby (Jesse Plemons) and finds that his father, a recluse for the past year and a half, has gathered a number of people left adrift by the discovery and continued his experiments, aiming to see just what this next phase of existence is, specifically. Isla (Rooney Mara), the only other passenger on the ferry when Will came over, winds up being a good fit for this group, obviously damaged and quickly working her way into the family’s inner circle.
I like the edge of cult-leader arrogance Robert Redford brings to the man who made the discovery; Thomas fits the part of the mad scientist consumed by his work for the past forty years and could easily become the clear villain of the piece, even if the movie is at heart a story about reconciliation and atonement. Redford is a natural fit for the intelligence and the guilt being grappled with, but it’s the moments when his ego takes charge and the viewer sees that this is a guy capable of recklessly upending the world that make the man interesting. It’s a property that doesn’t really have a complement in Jason Segel’s more principled, obviously angry son even though as a fellow scientist in the same field, Will is positioned to be Thomas’s foil; Segel aches well but does not project the charisma necessary to stand in opposition of Redford. It allows Jesse Plemons to give a more interesting performance as Toby - not brilliant but not stupid, his peacemaker has just the right sort of natural resentment as Thomas and Will talk over his head but need his feet-on-the-ground loyalty. Rooney Mara handles Isla nicely, though, making her feel a bit more well-rounded than the assistants/residents played by Riley Keough and Ron Canada when the character could easily be just a mixture of bitter and eccentric.
Full review on EFC.
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