This Week in Tickets: 6 January 2020 - 12 January 2020

You know what seems like it would be a pretty good idea, sometime? Choosing a day, not setting an alarm, and just getting to work when I get there, working until 7pm if that's what what gets me on a good schedule. Might get me back to Davis at a time when I'm not hanging around waiting for a showtime in the cold.



Kind of a busy week, even down to taking a little more off the shelf than I put up. It got started with Adoring which is exactly the cute comedy about the intersecting lives of people with adorable pets in a pretty nice Beijing neighborhood. Or at least, I think it's Beijing; I'm not yet at the point where I can tell Beijing from Shanghai from the other large mainland cities. It's pretty disposable, like those Garry Marshall holiday movies, but I was kind of in the mood for cute doggies and kitties and piggies.

I was in the mood for some people getting punched in the face the next night, which my copy of Undercover Punch and Gun technically delivered, but it's a lackluster-enough movie that you can see why it's apparently been sitting on a server for a couple years. Good fighters in Philip Ng, Van Ness Wu, and Andy On, a cameo-filled cast, and an occasionally weird sensibility, but somehow it never becomes fun in the way it should.

A few days of weird work schedules later and I was at the Brattle on Friday for the first night of "(Some of the) Best of 2019", which began with the really quite good Atlantics. Not only did I see the Netflix movie without paying for Netflix, I didn't even have to shell out cash for a ticket because of my theater membership. Hardly a genuine bit of rebellion, but I enjoy it.

The next day had some errands including doing laundry at a different, closer, less-fancy-but-about-the-same-price place than usual, and man, no-one was there, there was a soft couch, and no TVs were blaring Spanish Lifetime or the like. Just blissful quiet. After that, I found a way to avoid the Red Line Shuttle to get to Boston Common to check out a couple of war movies: 1917 on the fancy new Dolby Cinema screen and Liberation on the screen physically closest to Chinatown. The first was better for not being flagrant propaganda, but the generally have complementary issues.

Sunday was a long one, but it was an absurdly nice day to walk around. Things started off at the Kendall, where the 3D screenings of Cunningham were down to one matinee a day, and I'm kind of curious about the kid toward the back and what his story was. Was a parent or a sister really into dance and it was decided that there was no need for a sitter what with the movie (probably) rated PG? He wasn't really disruptive, but you could absolutely tell that a 3D portrait of a titan of modern dance was not really his thing.

After that, there was plenty of time to get back to Harvard Square, use a coupon on the wrong sort of USB cable to replace the frayed on on my phone before something went badly awry, and visit Charlie's Kitchen for the first time, despite the fact that one would think that I would have eaten at a place billing itself as "The Double Cheeseburger King" at some point in the last twenty years. I had not, and it was a good, o mussing-around bacon cheeseburger. After that, on to a double feature at the Brattle, where I was happy to finally see Fast Color after it didn't have a regular theatrical run in Boston and its other special screenings didn't work with my schedule. It's good, I continue to love Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Strathairn, and I'm looking forward to the series.

And then I hung around for Captain Marvel, and didn't realize that I'd never posted my review of it on the blog - but did on my Letterboxd page - because I was kind of busy elsewhere during that time.

Captain Marvel

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 January 2020 in the Brattle Theatre([Some of] The Best of 2019, DCP)

I think the Brattle had some issues with projection, because the picture looked kind of dim compared to when I saw it in Imax over in Hong Kong. Kind of a shame.

Second time around, it gives off the same feel - absolutely Yet Another Marvel Origin Story, but an example of it being done very well indeed, and, seen eight months after Avengers: Endgame, it doesn't play as if it's just setup.

Atlantics

I've mentioned before that I feel weirdly victorious when I see a movie or TV show produced by a streaming service without being subscribed. It's silly - I absolutely know that I've spent more on certain things than just watching it the expected way - but maybe it sends a bit of a message to both them and the theaters to work together a little more.

Interestingly, this feature doesn't particularly look like an expansion of the director's short film of the same name from ten years ago. That one's a documentary about four young men who try to cross the sea to find better work, something which plays into this film but which also happens off-screen without any sort of flashback when what happened becomes less of a mystery. I'm curious as to whether it was a conscious decision to focus on the people left behind, if that story just didn't fit once the film started developing, or if it seemed strange to put something real into something so fictional.

Anyway, welcome to the blog, "Senegal" tag! I wasn't tagging countries when I saw Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love at SXSW ten or eleven years ago, but this seems less of an outsider view of the country than that.


Atlantique (Atlantics)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 January 2020 in the Brattle Theatre ([Some of] The Best of 2019, DCP)

It's a truism that small films like Atlantics focus on characters and performances more than their larger brethren, but that's almost literally the case in the early going, as every establishing shot of the town is a foggy gray while close-ups of the actors are suddenly bright and sharp. It's a level of focus that the cast earns, making things work even when it sometimes seems like filmmaker Mati Diop could do more with her ghost stories.

It starts at a construction site outside Dakar; Muejiza Tower is slated to be luxurious and full of amenities, but the workers haven't been paid in months, and leader Cheikh (Abdou Balde) is starting to make demands. Dejected, worker Souleiman Fall (Ibrahima Traoré) makes his way home, although his spirit lifts when he sees girlfriend Ada Niang (Mama Sane). They spend the afternoon together, but somewhat furtively, as she is meant to be married to well-to-do Omar Liang (Babacar Sylla) in ten days, and all of her friends from religious Mariama (Ndeye Fama Dia) to fun-loving Fanta (Amina Kane) tell her she shouldn't ruin a good thing - though, surprisingly, practical Dior (Nicole Sougou) isn't quite so sure. It may be moot, though, as Cheikh, Souleiman, and the rest of the guys take a boat to Spain to seek their fortune. The boat disappears, but on the night of Ada's wedding, Mariama claims to see Souleiman before a strange fire destroys the wedding bed, leading to an arson investigation led by Inspector Issa Diop (Amadou Mbow) - and the developer of the tower, Mr. N'Diaye (Diankou Sembene) finds himself with unusual visitors.

Ghosts make great metaphors, but Diop and her co-writer Olivier Demangel know that life is not a perfect series of one-to-one matches, so there's something enjoyably messy about the way they set this ghost story up. There's something oddly traditional about the spirits possessing the bodies of the town's young women to haunt N'Diaye; it can read as both the men atoning for their failure to provide for their wives and daughters (a specific complaint Cheikh makes to the site manager at the start) or them taking matters into their own hands when the men are wiped out. Diop stages these scenes with simple but spooky methods, the white contacts to indicate possession communicating the situation quickly while other things are more subtle: Silent women cutting across streets with purpose or occupying N'Diye's house with the sort of stillness that indicates quivering rage, like they're past human niceties but haven't forgotten their old lives.

Full review on eFilmCritic