This Those Weeks in Tickets: 15 April 2019 - 5 May 2019

Just posted the pages for BUFF, so obviously the ones which include IFFBoston 2019 are next.







This three-week period actually started off with heading out to another series, the Belmont World Film Festival, for Asako I & II on Monday, 25 April. It's a neat little movie in a neat little series (at a venue I kind of dig), although in some ways the thing I remember most is the guest talking about how it was weird, leading me to think that my idea of Japanese films being weird must be awful skewed, because this was barely odd. Or, alternately, she needed to see the anniversary screenings of Audition at the Brattle that weekend.

I didn't; instead, my next bit of Japanese film was finally making it through Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind on Saturday, as the Harvard Film Archive had a subtitled 35mm print for one of their family matinees. Good, obviously, and I just hadn't seen it at the right time before. A much better choice than the thoroughly ill-considered new version of Hellboy than I saw later that evening.

The next evening, I would head to the Kendall for a split double feature of Little Woods and Wild Nights with Emily, liking them both, although the latter is the one that probably sticks in my head more, just because it is so unrelentingly odd and peculiar even as it is kind of ruthless in getting what it was going for across.

That was a good warm-up for IFFBoston, where did a (mostly) full schedule:

• 24 April 2019: Luce
• 25 April 2019: Them That Follow and The Death of Dick Long
• 26 April 2019: Pizza: A Love Story and Not for Resale
• 27 April 2019: We Are Not Princesses, Ms. Purple, When Lambs Become Lions, and In Fabric
• 28 April 2019: One Child Nation, The Pollinators, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, and For the Birds
• 29 April 2019: Shorts Exeter and The Rusalka
• 1 May 2019: The Farewell

Posts for those were all over the place as I tried to finish writing BUFF up first but bumped things to the front of the line as they got released. And, yes, I did kind of wind up taking a day off, mostly because I got held up on the MBTA and sometime around Charles, I knew that I would not make it to the Coolidge in time for The Sound of Silence and decided to get off, watch Avengers: Endgame in 3D, and figure that the stuff that plays the Tuesday night shows at the Coolidge usually wind up getting regular releases anyway. Sadly, this turned out not to be the case for either movie playing there that night, but I'd at least get to see The Art of Self-Defense at Fantasia.

It's enough to make you want to do something else for a few days, but there's new stuff every week, and I hit Always Miss You and Savage on the weekend, even if they weren't exactly the two Chinese films I'd been hoping would open in Boston that weekend. Neither were particularly great, but there's at least something interesting in Savage that could have been really good but for the inevitable censorship.

I wasn't going to see them on back-to-back days, but getting out to Danvers to see Bolden is a tricky four-legged process if you use public transportation, so I had to divert on Saturday before finally making it on Sunday. On the one hand, not exactly a good enough movie to be worth that sort of day-eating effort; on the other, I'd been waiting almost nine years to see the dang thing after having it teased at the Apollo Theater in 2010, so I wasn't going to miss it on the one chance I had to see it on the big screen.

As you can see, it's especially important to follow my Letterboxd page during festivals, because they will just take forever to write up.

Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 April 2019 in the Harvard Film Archive (Weekend Matinee, subtitled 35mm)

Does it count as a rewatch if I've put the disc in the player two or three times and then nodded off before it was done? I swear, I've chosen the worst times to try and watch this movie before jumping all over the HFA's subtitled 35mm matinee.

Obviously, I should have seen this sooner; it's a downright terrific movie which establishes its science-fiction bona fides from the opening frames and is grounded in Miyazaki's particular environmental take on the genre throughout. Miyazaki draws no line between world-building and adventure, and sketches out a larger world casually, without ever losing his focus on the title character and her village.

It's obviously an early work - the animation is a little rough at points, the villains are sometimes a little too casually sketched, and there were more than a few comments from the audience about how much of Nausicaä's bottom we were seeing. It's almost never less than intriguing, though, and I likely would have been astounded if it had played Portland, ME/been a thing my parents would have brought me to when I was 11. It still seems like an insane practically out-of-nowhere achievement, and I'm mildly curious to know whether a shot early in the movie of Nausicaä walking to the forest from her glider inspired an iconic image from Akira, vice versa, or if they were pulling from the same source.

Avengers: Endgame

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 April 2019 in AMC Boston Common #8 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP)

Funny how the better part of a year gives me an odd perspective on this particular movie - maybe no longer so keenly caught up in the hype to praise it as effusively as I did back in May, but also keenly aware of how Disney's Star Wars guys didn't quite stick the landing to their grand saga the way the Marvel team did. It is, as I figured after a second screening, one of the most satisfying movies of the year even if it's not the best.

I think it obviously being a piece of corporate IP hides a bit of what it does well: It's a smart story about wrestling with failure, on a super-hero-sized grand scale, and a fitting final evolution for what Robert Downey Jr. has been doing as Tony Stark for a decade. The plotting is shaggy when it can afford to be and clever when it needs to be, and for all that the grand finale is a bunch of CGI craziness, it's built and scaled to a sort of perfection, getting the audience caught up in the fight for it to actually feel desperate enough before reinforcements show up that you forget that's a possibility, even though it's been the point of much of the movie, and almost getting there again so that the audience can go "oh, right, Carol" when she shows up. The audience whooped and applauded for that, and it's tough to blame them.

I'm sure that Disney and the other studios are all trying to plan something as big and loyalty-generating as Marvel's Infinity Cycle (or whatever we wind up calling this stretch of Marvel movies when they're knee-deep into something else five years from now), but it may be a one-time thing. At least it ended as well as it could.

What I wrote back in May 2019

This Those Weeks in Tickets: 25 February 2019 - 10 March 2019

It's January 2020 and I just realized I left some big holes in this part of the blog, including this one. Not a lot of movies seen while I was on vacation, but a lot of tickets purchased!





As you may remember, I spent much of February doing marathons and catch-up for the Oscars, and by the time it was done, I had a couple of things I wanted to see on the big/3D screens ahead of vacation. Alita: Battle Angel was kind of what it was inevitably going to be with James Cameron trying to make the movie for years, never getting it to work, and finally hiring Robert Rodriguez to just get it done: A knockout visually, full of pretty capable action, but the story is just barely good enough. Crying shame more people didn't see it like this, because it's made for the giant screen. A couple days later, I hit How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 3D because DreamWorks movies are absolutely built for that, and this is a pretty good one regardless.

After that, it was onto a plane and to the other side of the world, seeing Hong Kong in person less than a week after taking in so many movies from the place. It's a long flight, but it was snowing when I left and beautiful when I arrived, and the street where my hotel was located was just Hong Kong as heck, looking lived-in with dried fish merchants and a tramway. I did get more frustrated by public transit than usual that first evening, and kind of dropped right away.



First order of business on Saturday was taking a tram up to the Peak, which is kind of surreal, in that it feels like the city has included roller coasters into its public transit (or at least, the creaky ascent part), and then you can actually look down on skyscrapers. After that, I spent the afternoon in Hong Kong Park - including their amazing aviary, which includes some birds I could swear were built by Jim Henson - before visiting the Man Mo Temple and the News Museum.



Sunday's activities started at the relatively nearby Sun Yat-Sen Museum and Museum of Medical Science, which were interesting if not quite so extensive an education on their very Chinese subjects as I might have benefitted from. After that, I went down to Central Pier, which included the very cool Maritime Museum and a nice little observation wheel, which I went on because that apparently is a thing I do when traveling now. The Museum included an exhibit on trade between China and the Northeastern United States, which was pretty cool to see as a New Englander.



Monday took me back to the pier so that I could get on a ferry and cross the harbor and see the exhibits and the Museum of History and Museum of Science, located right across the street from each other. The latter had a pretty terrific display of antique timepieces on loan. At the end of the day, I climbed aboard the Dukling above and watched the nightly laser-light show, which illuminates the skyscrapers in impressive fashion.



Tuesday, I took the cable car to Ngong Ping, and I've got to admit that I was a little surprised that the "cable car" that Google Maps included in my directions was a skyway rather than what they call a cable car in San Francisco. It was neat, but, boy, was the guy in line directly in front of me also surprised and not happy. Heck of a way to start a long day of walking around, being in awe at the Big Buddha and the ornate temples, with a detour out to the Tai O fishing village before coming back to see the Wisdom Path.



Wednesday wasn't exactly a bust - no day which allows me to walk around on restored vessels like the Alexander Grantham fire boat can really be called a bad day - but it was pretty rainy, the Hong Kong Film Archive didn't have a whole lot on offer that day/week, and another museum was closed for renovations. I bailed to see a movie, and practically the only thing playing was Captain Marvel, which I absolutely could have seen at home, although they're much more enthusiastic about 3D there than they are here. I did wind up going to the wrong place after buying a ticket online, but they were cool about refunding it.



Thursday started out nice, with a walk around Golden Bauhinia Square, although the Noonday Gun didn't fire when I showed up. After that, I went to the restaurant in the Blue House for lunch and made my way to the Police Museum, which is at the top of a hill (like several other stations converted to museums), and Hong Kong isn't kidding with its hills. If Google tells you that the walking directions and the bus directions take roughly the same amount of time, take the bus. I got off to look at the King Yin Lei mansion, although this was not one of the rare days when it was open to the public.



I spent a lot of the next day on the Ping Shan Heritage Trail, and I maybe should have joined an official tour; I got turned around and probably wound up a few places I shouldn't have been, as it winds through a residential neighborhood and the line between traditional halls (like Tak Tak Hall above) that tourists can look over and neighborhood shrines can be kind of hard to catch if you don't read Chinese. Nevertheless very interesting, and I had fun making my way to the Railway Museum and Tai Po Market later that day.



Saturday, I actually did spring for a tour, because that's kind of the only way you're seeing the GeoPark. We left from Sai Kung, a fishing town with a ton of massive seafood restaurants where you can either buy fish straight off boats and have the chefs work their magic or just point to the actual fish you want to eat. I must admit, I was kind of intimidated by these places, which really aren't set up for single tourists who don't speak Cantonese. The trip around the Geopark was pretty nifty, too - saw lots of great rock formations.



Sunday was my last full day and, man, I was all over the place in Kowloon, seeing the Avenue of Stars, the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden, the Tin Hau Temple, the Temple Street Night Market - where, yeah, I found a video store and loaded up with ten Blu-rays that I wouldn't have to pay shipping on to get home - and where I finally see an actual Hong Kong movie in Hong Kong, when I stumbled upon the Broadway Cinematheque and saw they were playing Three Husbands, the latest (at the time) from Fruit Chan, and probably more representative of his work than the action movie that opened later in the year. It was Hong Kong as heck, and a fine way for me to wrap my time there up.

As a result, write-ups for a couple of these movies have been confined to my Letterboxd page since March, which shouldn't happen again, but just in case...

Alita: Battle Angel

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 February 2019 in AMC Boston Common #2 (first-run, digital Imax 3D)

It only takes a few pages of the Battle Angel Alita manga to understand both why James Cameron was set on making it his next movie for some twenty years and why it took him forever to pound it into something close enough to filmable that he could give it to Robert Rodriguez, who can at least get a movie made without torturing himself over it not being perfect. This manga was probably unfilmable in technical terms when he started and building the tech exposed what a mess the story was.

And, boy, is this thing not perfect; it's half a story that keeps half of what's going on out of reach, but worries enough about backstory that it can't quite zero in on how Alita is a teenager with no experience but ironclad certainty of her indestructibility, and how she's got to learn her vulnerability. There's meat on that bone, but the film can't quite grab it. To be fair, there's a bunch in there about building your own identity and body that I didn't catch until I heard the film was popular in the trans community.

Still, it's a lot of fun. There's a spiffy cast, and between Cameron and Rodriguez, you've got two people who live this big 3D stuff and don't feel the need to compromise on the crazy cyberpunk visuals. The action is fast and fun and violent as heck, built in ways that defy normal human movement but still look real. For better or worse, it's Battle Angel Alita, or as close as American filmmakers can get.

Captain Marvel

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 March 2019 in UA MegaBox BEA Imax (first-run, digital Imax 3D)

It's a bit of a shame that Carol Danvers didn't get her movie until superhero films in general and the Marvel house style in particular got common enough that we can look at this and just see another smart-aleck hero in an outfit made a little more practical for the movie than it was in the comics, fighting an enemy who threatens the entire world but who can be despatched in one big, 3D-friendly fight at the end followed by some Avengers business. It's an good example of that, but I begrudge nobody saying "another?"

But it's got Brie Larson, who puts just enough chip on Carol's shoulder and builds the sort of foundation where she can go from "pushy alien" to rediscovering her humanity without a hitch or a lot of talk. She's also got a nifty crew, from an authoritative but playful Annette Bening to Samuel L. Jackson revealing the sidekick hidden inside his Nick Fury, along with an especially delightful Been Mendelsohn and Lashana Lynch selling the reunion with her best friend perfectly.

It's really cool to see Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck get to play with the big budget, never letting the movie bloat (perhaps to a fault at times) and making some fun choices. And I suspect it will unpack well with future viewings, as viewers have a chance to note how everyone (except maybe the Rambeaus) is both adversary and ally as Carol rediscovers herself and how to trust, or how perfect her finally cutting loose is at the end.

Yes, it's Another Marvel Movie feeding into Endgame, but it does that thing really well and stands on its own for those just coming to the party.

This Week in Tickets: 23 December 2019 - 29 December 2019

Did we all have a great holiday? Here's hoping so, whether it involved movies or not!



It was a bit of an odd schedule for me, as I took the day off work Monday and then spent a lot of time lying around rather than actually finishing my Christmas shopping, until ultimately I was in Cardullo's buying a hundred bucks worth of chocolate and cookies because everybody likes fancy chocolate and you can buy it again when you run out of ideas again next year. After that, I was up way too late wrapping presents, in part because I waited for a pizza to be delivered and then I had to finish this episode of The Expanse. The movie to watch while wrapping presents, obviously, was Anna and the Apocalypse, which is frustratingly not available on Blu-ray in the USA but did get a release on that format in Canada and a super-spiffy all-region special edition in the UK, which is the one I watched. It's kind of great. I apologize to my upstairs neighbors for having the soundtrack on a loop while I was working from home at the start of the month, but it's a delight.

After that, it was up on four hours of sleep to head to North Station and take the train to Portland on Christmas Eve. As I've been saying for the past decade or so, the family members with the awesome little girls dictate where and how the holidays are celebrated, and that goes double for when there are two brothers whose schedules with those girls don't always overlap, which meant we got together to open gifts on Tuesday (the ViewMaster reels from Dan's wedding went over well!), and then dropped that night.

So, not much Christmas for me on the day itself; although I did sit in a packed house for Ip Man 4: The Finale. There's a joke to be made about Chinese food and movies for Christmas somewhere, but it's not quite landing.

Thursday night, the Anna disc was still in the player, so I watched "Zombie Musical", the inspiration for the feature, and it's kind of rough but still just inspired enough that it's a shame that the original filmmaker didn't get to see or be involved in the feature he planted the seed for.

The new bus schedule had me too late for what I wanted to see Friday, so I watched the last episodes of The Mandalorian and The Expanse. One thing that struck me about these two big sci-fi shows from competing empires was that The Mandalorian stays fairly glued to the perspective of its title character, not much bothering with what's going on with supporting characters or villains until it's time for them to meet up with him once again, whereas there is a lot of wheel-spinning at times as The Expanse keeps checking in on Mars and Earth for stuff that will eventually connect but which, for right now, are kind of a distraction from the nifty stuff happening on Ilus. It's an example of how, while the Star Wars show is impeccably produced and canny in realizing that it can benefit from doing a fair amount practically, it's kind of comfortable, to the point where it can do some self-parodying bits, while The Expanse overcomes occasional bits where the effects work is obvious or the HD models don't quite scale to 4K by going big and dealing with sci-fi details that most TV/movies have grown so used to hand-waving away that people seldom think of them any more. I'm looking forward to the next season of The Mandalorian; I want the next season of The Expanse right now.

After a morning of errands on Saturday, I headed out to see Spies in Disguise, mostly because I'm a mark for 3D, but I wound up having a good time with it. Then I got home and decided to watch one of the discs that has been accumulating on the shelf for a while, because the "recent acquisitions, Hong Kong" and "recent acquisitions, other" sections that are on the same shelf but built from opposite directions were in danger of touching. So I watched The Detective, purchased during the recent Twilight Time sale. I was going to do it as a double feature with Die Hard, but opted against.

Didn't get to the theater on time on Sunday, so I headed back home and kept clearing off the shelf with an odd double feature: The Bar is a recent film by Alex de la Iglesia that doesn't seem to have a legit release in the United States, which seems weird - it's not like de la Iglesia is some obscure guy, but at some point he just dropped off the radar here. The nightcap was The Maze, a nifty-looking 3D "old dark house" movie that gets absolutely nuts when it reveals what's actually spooky there.

After that, back to work. my Letterboxd page is here, although I can't guarantee that I'll always update it before the blog. It's fluid.

Anna and the Apocalypse

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, UK Blu-ray)

This was the extended version from the UK Special Edition Blu-ray, which as near as I can tell adds one song to the version(s) I saw at Fantasia and in theaters. At least, I don't think it was in either version I saw (and it's not on the soundtrack album), though maybe it was in the one I saw at the festival. The film is okay with the song in, and it's okay with the song out. It adds a bit more background to what happened at the school, but the longer cut doesn't add enough to make that a major part of the movie. Editing is tough.

The film itself remains funny and a delightfully warped holiday treat, although difficult to use as background for wrapping gifts because of a fair number of fun background gags. One thing I've found as I listened to the soundtrack over and over again is that it becomes more charming the more Scottish it is. The singing that becomes a sort of neutral accent is nice, but having it be more specific enhances the school-play charm that the movie has and which carries it through the moments when the filmmakers don't have all the resources that they maybe might want.

Full review from last year's Fantasia Festival

"Zombie Musical"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, UK Blu-ray)

Some time, I'm going to have to go through the Anna and the Apocalypse special features to figure out just what kind of "what might have been" this represents. Writer/director Ryan McHenry died very young, unable to do the feature version of this short seven years later, and most of what he's made is viral videos. This, then, is what someone in his early twenties made, probably with friends, and it's exactly that DIY and underground but also something that shows ambition and sheer love of movies of every type.

You can see the rough outline of Anna in it - the first of the three musical numbers it fits into 15 minutes is awfully close to the best number in the feature - but you might also wonder whether some of the tone changes come from other people being brought in or McHenry maturing and refining the idea for a feature.

Darn shame we didn't get to see more of what this guy could do.

The Detective '68

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, Blu-ray)

I had intended to watch the The Detective a week earlier, as a double feature with Die Hard, doubling down on the gag of watching that at Christmas by following a connection that has been deliberately obscured (the original novel by Roderick Thorp spawned a sequel named "Nothing Lasts Forever" that would be modernized and adapted twenty years later, with Fox still contractually obligated to offer it to Frank Sinatra before going with Bruce Willis). It's a surprisingly interesting film even without that connection.

Sinatra stars as Detective Sergeant Joe Leland, called in to investigate the grisly murder of the gay son of a prominent businessman, and he may just be the best person for the job, in that he's probably much less homophobic than the rest of the force, though he doesn't quite move easily in the academic circles of his wife Karen (Lee Remick). He methodically follow the trail until he arrives at the man's lover Felix (Tony Musante), and is awarded with a promotion to lieutenant. Soon a widow (Jacqueline Bisset) tells him there is something suspicious about her husband's suicide, and tugging at that string leads him to a great deal more than he bargained for.

The actual crime stories aren't that big a deal here. Indeed, neither is large enough to span the entire film, to the extent that even when the stories tie together, they still feel more like a relay than a single unit. The film could split into two episodes of a television crime drama without much effort, and it would be an interesting show, equally focused on the legwork of solving crimes and the attempts to change police culture. A number of scenes built around cops closing ranks around an officer who shot a civilian remain remarkably relevant fifty years later, except that audiences might have a harder time believing that someone who grew up in the system like Leland would be so squarely on the side of the civil-rights attorneys. Director Gordon Douglas and screenwriter Abby Mann do a fair job of explaining the real-estate corruption Leland finds as well.

Full review at eFilmCritic

El Bar (The Bar)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, Blu-ray)

Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia never really became popular in the United States, the way some European filmmakers do, but there was a decade or so when you could reasonably expect his films to show up somewhere, if not necessarily in the big multiplexes: They'd be on the genre film festival circuit, sometimes making it into the more mainstream fests, get picked up by an indie distributor with the reach to get them into boutique and repertory theaters (if only for late shows) and then onto store shelves once they were on disc. Between the business and his output changing to different degrees, that's no longer the case, to the point where I had to import a copy of his 2017 film from overseas. It's a perfectly fine movie, if not as crazy as some of his earlier work, and it seems like it should be easier to see it.

It starts with snatches of phone conversations on the streets of Madrid that leads a few people to wind up in a somewhat rundown bar/cafe run by Amparo (Terele Pávez): Elena (Blanca Suárez) is trying to meet a first date, got lost, and has ducked in hoping to charge her phone; Sergio (Alejandro Awada) is a traveling salesman; Trini (Carmen Machi) is a regular who mostly plays the slot machines. Already there are bartender Sátur (Secun de la Rosa), retired policeman Andrés (Joaquín Climent), and Nacho (Mario Casas), headphones on and kind of oblivious to the world. Two people who don't look to be in great shape soon follow, one heading straight to the restroom and Israel (Jaime Ordóñez), homeless and possibly mentally ill, accepting a little charity from Amparo. There are a couple of others, but they're not really worth mentioning, as a sniper takes them out as soon as they leave. The street clears, the already-shoddy cellular service gets worse, and while everyone is panicking and diving for cover, the bodies disappear, leading everyone in the bar to wonder just what is going on and if any of the other people in this small room is so dangerous that it's worth shooting anyone who may have come in contact with them.

The answer to that is pretty clear from the opening credits, even if they don't specify the exact form of contagion that the group may have been exposed to. The script by de la Iglesia and regular collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarría is, by and large, what it looks like on the surface - clues doled out early on tend to support the most obvious reading and attempts to hint at something else are usually not just red herrings, but often ones that come across as people acting suspicious more because the filmmakers need to draw things out a bit than anything else, and any satire or other commentary about the draconian methods of the authorities is hindered by the decision to stay inside the bar. There are hints of it, as well as of class issues, but de la Iglesia either rushes past them or lingers on the obvious.

Full review at eFilmCritic

The Maze (1953)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, Blu-ray)

Old dark house movies can be fun, but they can be thin, and when the filmmakers don't really seem to care if it all adds up, kind of frustrating. The Maze has the novelty of being in 3D to keep those watching it that way but still stretches to hit eighty minutes, and it makes me wonder just how much of a hatchet was taken to Maurice Sandoz's novel to get it down to that size, and what the explanations for some of the weirdness was that went out. As screwy as the big revelation is, I don't know that the sheer stress of living with it would have aged generations of men so badly.

It's kind of fun regardless, in large part thanks to leading lady Veronica Hurst as a finacée who just won't take no for an answer and just keeps plugging away at figuring out why her baronet would give up all this hotness to live in a drafty unmodernized castle, alone but for creepy servants. The movie keeps going due to Kitty's persistence and Hurst's light touch with it. Richard Carlson hits a nice note between tragic hero and potentially possessed/threatening lord of the manner as said fiancé, with Michael Pate a creepy servant.

William Cameron Menzies was the production designer as well as director, which is a nice combination to have for a 3D movie, creating some nice depth and eerie settings . The film ends by revealing a "monster" that is equal parts silly and weirdly effective, both visually and just in terms of what it is. It's kind of jaw-droppingly insane, but also kind of grand enough that one almost wishes it wasn't trapped in this sort of B-movie but something more ambitious. Which, in a way, makes the film itself more interestingly ambitious than it looks, if only for a few moments at the end.

This Week in Tickets: 16 December 2019 - 22 December 2019

All that blank space? Totally going out to get presents for others, not just making my way through the new season of The Expanse at all.



Still, The Expanse is pretty great, isn't it? I"ve been trying to make it last by just watching one every night or two, and I smile in genuine joy every time they remember some physics thing or some group of Martian punks forgets that Bobbi learned to fight in Earth gravity. My only small complaint is that we're now far enough from when it was on SyFy and they couldn't swear that they're comfortable just having Shoreh Aghdashloo let loose; it was maybe a bit more fun when she saved the f-bombs for special occasions.

I paired it with Too Old to Die Young most nights, finally getting through the end of that, and… Yikes. It's like they pitched it to Amazon with the part of the story starring Miles Teller, came up with almost nothing at all there, decided it would be more interesting to use that as an entry point for the stories of Jesus and Yaritza, and only came up with a bit more there, but still decided to make 9 episodes running about 75 minutes each and a half-hour epilogue that kind of goes nowhere. Much as I've loved Ed Brubaker's comics and a lot of Nicolas Winding Refn's movies, this really became a self-indulgent mess.

It was long enough to leave me looking for something with a relatively short running time Tuesday night, which is how I pulled Ghosts of the Abyss out of the pile of recent disc purchases just as something an hour long that isn't part of something bigger. As I was in the middle of playing with 3D stuff, it was pretty nifty to see all of that used well.

By the end of the week, I was the only person going into the office and probably could have ducked out early to see Star Wars or something, but instead wound up staying a bit late on Friday because I had some time to get to Only Cloud Knows, the new film from director Feng Xiaogang, which is kind of an odd one: Very pretty to look at, some nice bits, but really no story, because everything is happening to the characters as opposed to them doing anything. On the other hand, it's based on the writer's actual life, and sometimes it happens that way.

Saturday was the date for which I'd bought my ticket to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker a couple of months ago, betting that the theater would have finished their upgrade to Imax Laser by then, but apparently not. I'm probably going to have to see it again to give it a full and proper review, but from a technical standpoint, it's really a shame Disney has more or less completely given up on releasing discs in 3D format and audiences have turned away from 3D in theaters, because the conversion jobs for the sequel trilogy have looked amazing, and if I didn't know better, I'd guess that the trailer for Black Widow that played before it was shot that way rather than converted.

The next day was spent going from one craft fair to another, because that's the most certain way to get unique and interesting gifts for people you don't see every day. Almost worn down enough at the end to skip my plan of going back to Boston Common for Sheep Without a Shepherd, which I'd kind of feared was having its showtimes sacrificed for bigger movies in the same was as Integrity earlier this year, but, no, it's actually really good.

Also worth noting: The two Chinese movies had trailers for Mokoto Shinkai's Weathering with You, which I just realized was the first time I'd actually seen a preview before seeing one of his movies, and it makes me a little sad, because there's a shot or two in there I'd have liked to be gobsmacked with without warning. Between them, there were also previews for that Portrait of a Lady on Fire movie that everybody's been talking up - and, yes, it looks pretty darn great - as well as Wendy, which I just heard of now but which looks amazing.

Next few days will be quiet on my Letterboxd page, since I'm writing this on a train to see my family for Christmas, but there's plenty I want to see after.

Ghosts of the Abyss

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, 3D Blu-ray)

Plucked from the pile of recent before-they're-gone 3D disc purchases because it's short, this nevertheless proved an excellent way to wind down for the evening, with cool science and nifty visuals and just the right amount of reverence to give potentially bland material a little oomph and just enough going wrong for a minor climax at the end. The late Bill Paxton makes excellent company as a regular guy who, by dint of being James Cameron's friend and frequent collaborator, is fortunate enough to have the chance to see something amazing; he sometimes struggles to find the words to really convey his awe in the same way most of us would, and doesn't take what he gets to be a part of for granted.

That awe is earned, though, as the footage they came back with is amazing, and James Cameron knows how to stitch an expedition that is not designed to have a plot into a movie. He's aware of the irony of bringing all of this cutting-edge technology (which remains cool 15 years later) to bear to explore something that became a cautionary tale, but isn't deterred. He's good with using visual effects and unusual editing to expand on what his submersibles can see of the sunken Titanic without diminishing it as the main show, which applies to showing off and explaining the tech itself.

Sometimes I wish he'd make more movies, especially as the second half of his career looks to be consumed by the Avatar series which, let's face it, has an uncertain pop-cultural footprint. On the other hand, this adventure is part of the reason why I'm very anxious to see what he comes up with there - that way that he will build a way to follow his passions in film and science is a level of commitment that few others in the industry can match, and always results in something that will make the viewer gasp at some point.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 December 2019 in AMC Boston Common #2 (first-run, Imax-branded 3D)

It's probably going to take me a second viewing to decide whether this movie is genuinely bad, with most of what I enjoyed being a Pavlovian reaction to John Williams's score, or just a decent movie that is nevertheless a massive letdown because it follows (and in some ways undermines) the series's best entry in 40 years, but I guess it says something that I'm willing to consider that second viewing It's Star Wars, and even the messiest and most flawed movies in the franchise have had something to impress.

This one's tough, though, because in a lot of ways, The Last Jedi felt like it was ending Star Wars as we knew it and starting something new, with a less dynastic center and some challenges to how things had always been done, whereas Abrams was charged with wrapping up a series that was built around the dynasty, and he has some interesting ideas for that. It's still often a big mess in the execution, though, covered up by the absolutely fantastic production values that Disney/Lucasfilm can throw at something with "Star Wars" in the title.

Like I said, it's gonna need a second viewing. Fortunately, I kind of want to check out the big screen at Causeway Street anyway.

This Week in Tickets: 9 December 2019 - 15 December 2019

Enjoy my week of seeing movies and losing things!



Like, start with the stub to Little Joe. Just not in my pocket when I got home, and I don't know that I was pulling things in and out of that pocket enough on the way home that it could have slipped out. Ah, well, I'll buy it on Blu-ray when it becomes available and have a more permanent souvenir because it's a really nifty little independent science fiction film with a bunch of people I like and an often-creepy feel despite also making its setting feel like a place where real people work as scientists.

On Tuesday, I did some playing with pictures from my 3D camera and also received a couple shipments of discs from various end-of-year sales, although the one I put on was from an earlier Amazon order where I bought 3D things before they went out of print and, well, that "The Secret Life of Cars" disc is kind of a rip-off. Not the low point of the week, though, which came when I somehow lost my Fargo toque at the comic shop the next night. It is too cold and snowy in Boston right now to go without a hat.

On Thursday, I extended my feature-films-directed-by-women streak to five with Black Christmas, which feels like it could have had a better build-up/mayhem balance, but I'm seeing a lot of posts online from women saying "yes, this!", so maybe I'm just missing something. The streak came to an end the next evening with a 3D screening of Jumanji: The Next Level, which isn't great, but I liked it better that the last one, which is something. Though it looks like I lost my state ID card between getting it out to show the ticket-taker and trying to get everything put away while handling my snacks. Honestly, AMC, why are you doing this? Do you really care if two people are sharing an A-List membership so long as they don't try to both use it at once and buy popcorn with each visit?

Avoiding the Red Line for the weekend took me to the new Arclight on Causeway street for Pain and Glory, which I really should have seen by now, but somehow hadn't. I probably won't do a full review of the place until I've seen something on its "Wide Screen", but they make a decent pretzel and the projection is decent. I didn't realize until going into the theater that there wasn't assigned seating for this show, which is unusual for a new, fancy theater.

That evening, I decided to make a bit more of an effort to watch my unwatched discs, and put on Manhunt. Not John Woo's best, but, like I say in the review, there's no gunfight like a John Woo gunfight. Sunday night, after an afternoon non finding as much as I'd like for Christmas gifts in the craft fairs, I went back to the shelf for The Invincible Dragon, and geez, someone get Max Zhang (or John Zhang, when he likes to be closer to his name of Zhang Jin) a good movie of his own. He's been a great opponent for the likes of Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa, but his best leading role was a spin-off of the Ip Man movies.

Maybe not so much on my Letterboxd page, as the new season of The Expanse has dropped and I'm trying to stretch it to Christmas with an episode per day and maybe trying to finish off Too Old to Die Young while my Roku is "tuned" to Prime.

"The Secret Life of Cars"

* * (out of four)
Seen 10 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (watching discs, 3D Blu-ray)

I paid $25 for this not quite realizing that the short itself is two minutes long. Sure, you could pay $20 for the 2D version, although with maybe 10 minutes of content on the disc, including an ad for the word processing software that the people involved make that runs before the menu, I'm not sure why they had to make two separate releases with this one a two disc set. Even for those of us who like 3D and are trying to pick up as many discs as possible before they go out of print, that's not great value.

The short film itself? The animation is neat, I suppose, and I kind of dig the idea of making models out of graph paper so that it looks like a physical version of the wire-frame renders used for CGI pictures' first drafts (so to speak), but even accounting for how this is two minutes of stop-motion, nothing actually happens and none of the cars show any personality. It's a reasonably clever way to show off what you can do with your 3D camera but not much else.

Black Christmas '19

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 12 December 2019 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)

As great as it is to see Sophia Takal making a movie that gets a big wide mainstream release, and one which has its politics and heart in the right places, I got kind of fidgety at points during this version of Black Christmas. It it somewhat methodical in getting started, doing all it can to establish where its characters are coming from but giving exposition a fair berth, which means there's a lot of "what happened to you" and taking time to establish things that would be easier to just say. That would leave it a little more time to really dig into the swerve it goes for later on in really convincing fashion, because I think one of the most clever things that the script sort of buries is that, while it's clearly and obviously about the dangers women face, its big twist is about how men are indoctrinated and radicalized by the system. The ideas are good but the details don't quite fit.

At times, the whole movie can feel like the silly accent Cary Elwes goes with as Professor Gelson, which has a point - he's playing the exact sort of conservative bully who makes a show of erudition but drops the facade once he figures he's got women in his power - but it feels silly and affected in a way that the film as a whole hasn't quite tipped its hand to yet, so that buying into can be more effort than a viewer is going to put into watching a slasher movie.

There's a fun slasher underneath, though. Imogen Poots feels like a bit of a ringer in the cast (on top of the deal where it's weird to see her playing college age when I recognize her from "grown up and starting a family" roles), but she's got a great team of girls too cool to just be potential victims to lead, with Aleyse Shannon putting more life into Kris than "the group's activist" usually gets. Takal and co-writer April Wolfe know this material and make each horror scene play out as a bit better than rote. They're good enough that my biggest complaint may be that they show us potentially fun things that don't get enough space, like when a group of young women show up with improvised weapons and one's got a sled. As much as I appreciate the rest of what they're doing, I could go with more of that nameless character taking someone out with its runners and all the other lunacy that shot implies.

Dolor y gloria (Pain and Glory)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 December 2019 in ArcLight Boston #1 (first-run, DCP)

Pedro Almodóvar may have reached a point where he's been immersed in filmmaking and art for so long as to have trouble relating to much else, but he at least seems to sense that here There's a general melancholy and a sort of understanding of the absurdity of it, as he makes a semi-autobiographical film about a filmmaker (played by his most famous collaborator) making a semi-autobiographical work starring his most famous collaborator, before finally having the snake swallow its own tail. He doesn't quite wink until then, but he doesn't do much to hide what he's up to, either. Fortunately, it's a pretty gentle work.

That may also be the best way to describe Antonio Banderes's performance here, just a really beautiful demonstration of pain and insecurity filtered through the knowledge of his good fortune. He's seldom on the brink of tears - a lifetime of physical ailments has taught his character how to keep those in check, although a lot of little things that go from putting a pillow under his knee every time he needs to kneel to slightly stiff body language reinforce that there's believable chronic pain there beyond the early exposition. Banderas gets a chance or two to let an ego out, but he mostly comes off as kind and uncertain, extremely enjoyable to spend a couple hours with.

The film's also visually beautiful in small ways. The solid colors and memorable spaces that aren't quite as brash as those seen in the comedies of Almodovar's early career, but of a piece with them, like the frantic characters of those movies have aged and mellowed but still kind of have the same taste. The "cave" where the young Salvador lives seems like it inhabits the same place in Almodóvar's psyche as the silent-movie section of Talk to Her, while the machines in the hospital are frightening but reassuring. It's a movie that looks aging squarely in the eye and accepts it but doesn't allow it to overwhelm the people involved.

This Week in Tickets: 2 December 2019 - 8 December 2019

Two different bits of "catching up" this week!



To start with, I finally saw Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite, which I feel like I should have caught earlier, but it's one of those that is just long enough to get scheduled at weird times. It is, perhaps, not the masterpiece many people have treated it as being, but Bong is sure good at building something that pulls you in and makes you want to see more. I think that as much as anything else is why he has become the Korean director who crosses over internationally when it looked for the longest time like it would be Park Chan-Wook, who can dazzle visually but is just a bit more removed.

The next night, I decided to complete the back end of a silly pairing with that 3-D Blu-ray of 1982's Parasite. The movie is, well, not as good, but the restoration is nice after a shaky start (I wonder if there were issues with the first reel).

Working a bit late and the bus running a bit slow as winter approaches meant I missed what I was planning Friday night, but I was able to build a nice double feature Saturday out of The Aeronauts and The Whistleblower. The first is easily the better movie and one which I hope the Somerville Theatre eventually plays as part of its 70mm festival; it's a nice sort of throwback to that sort of eye-popper. The second is a capable enough thriller from China and Australia, and serves two masters as well as this sort of movie can.

I was originally going to try for a quad that day, but was kind of worn by then, settling for another double Sunday that went much better than it usually does when you choose movies by starting time: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is really surprisingly good considering how my brain just wasn't going for Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers in the trailer, and it gave me just enough time to get down the Red Line to Knives and Skin at the Brattle. I really liked that one at Fantasia and thought I'd reviewed it in time for the Boston Women's Film Festival, but apparently not, and after five months, I needed a bit of a refresher to get it written up while it's still playing there.

If you're following me on my Letterboxd page, you can see that I've managed to stretch my unplanned run of seeing films directed by women to four. Hurrah for 50/50 weeks!

Gisaengchung (Parasite '19)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 December 2019 in Somerville Theatre #4 (first-run, DCP)

The film has had a pretty decent run, so I feel like it's okay to talk a little about some of the reasons why people have been saying to go in cold, at least in a somewhat abstract way. There is a twist, and like a lot of movie twists, the thing that happens in the middle of Parasite is thrilling and exciting when director Bong Joon-Ho springs it upon us but also dilutes things a bit. It leads to Bong orchestrating the second-most brilliantly chaotic climax of the year (the exorcism at the end of It Comes is tough to beat), and the choreography is good enough that it's okay that he's introduced a wild card to a situation seemingly built to collapse in on itself.

It's still a wild, well-executed ride, with no individual member of the fine cast quite given as much to do as they deserve but none feeling underused, either. Three distinct settings become terrific, fitting playgrounds, each the scene of its own kind of chaos when things start to spin out of control. There's something intriguing about how father and son are the ones planning the family's scheme but mother and daughter seize on it with a true ruthlessness, although there's not quite enough room to handle all of it by the end.

This may not be Bong's masterpiece, but it leaves plenty to chew on and talk about afterward, and I suspect I'll like it more as I see it again and can connect details rather than just look at the big picture.

Parasite '82

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 December 2019 in Jay's Living Room (Parasites, 3D Blu-ray)

This is not as good as the other film named "Parasite" that I watched this week, to put it mildly. I suspect Kino and the 3-D Film Archive planned their video release to sync up with that film out of sheer cheek, and I kind of respect that.

But for all that it's a bad movie with some good people doing creature effects - the script is dumb and the cast is rough (though Demi Moore would get a decent career out of being this kind of very pretty) - it gives us as good a dystopia of the type imagined in the 1980s as well as any movie that is not actually Mad Max, building patiently and feeling more hollow and lonely as the film goes on, rather than not just being able to afford extras. There's just enough memory of how things were combined with the powerful having nice things to feel like things are going to hell but the world as it was isn't forgotten.

That doesn't make the movie good, but makes it more than just an artifact of the 80s 3D revival that has been nicely restored.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 8 December 2019 in Somerville Theatre #4 (first-run, DCP)

There's something really beautiful about how thoroughly the filmmakers commit to the idea of placing the whole thing inside an episode of Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood, shooting the film like pre-HD television, on 16mm film with tight close-ups and flat lighting, not quite over-stylizing things but putting the audience back in that time and mindset. It makes the moments that they do something a filmmaker could have done in that time and medium but probably wouldn't have stand out more, without really breaking things.

There's an impressive simplicity to the whole film which is fitting; it's not afraid to be earnest or look directly at situations people will often complicate out of fright and just let its main cast of Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, and Chris Cooper play it straight. And while there's no way Tom Hanks can quite completely disappear into the role of Fred Rogers, there's something fearless about how he's deployed - for all his great work with children, he doesn't always seem to know how to transfer that to someone like Rhys' Lloyd Vogel, and he can be uncertain. Little things like how he occasionally clutches his back remind one of his age in 1998, and a project of a different time, so you can understand that his advice may not be completely current (today we might be less inclined to tell people to let toxic family back into our lives).

I'm also kind of fascinated by how the last scene emphasizes that this hasn't been his story - Hanks is a supporting actor, not a lead - and we haven't gotten into his head, as he bangs on the piano in one of the ways that he has previously mentioned as being a way he deals with anger. There's a great documentary from last year to cover that, so people who came to this looking for the Fred Rogers story at least have somewhere to go.

Knives and Skin

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2019 in Auditorium des Diplomes de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
Seen 8 December 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run, DCP)

There are brief moments when Knives and Skin seems to be pushing itself to become a little more mysterious and fantastical than it is, lest it seem too simple, but writer/director Jennifer Reeder has a good handle on how to use that surrealism to perk up audience interest and make the quirk go down a little easier without having it be the movie's whole thing. It's a tricky bit of alchemy, but one she manages.

It opens with a hook-up gone wrong, as Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) leads Andy Kitzmiller (Ty Olwin) to a secluded spot only to have a change of heart, angering Andy. That's the last time anyone sees her alive, although her body doesn't exactly stay in one place. Carolyn's mother Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), also the school's chorus teacher, immediately becomes a wreck, although her band-mates think it's kind of par for the course, while several students assumed to be Carolyn's friends say they haven't been close in a while. Meanwhile, preparations start for homecoming, a substitute teacher catches the fancy of Andy's sister Joanna (Grace Smith), and the kids' parents are generally not in great shape themselves.

Carolyn's disappearance is where the audience first starts watching these people, but it's not exactly the focus of the movie; though the various families have connections to it, this is mainly a way for Reeder to tie a number of small, but compelling storylines together without having too many of them become overwrought and off-putting. One never forgets Carolyn, but there's a moment early on where the cute substitute teacher mentions that a girl disappeared in high school, but can't remember her name when pressed. The Kitzmillers and Darlingtons have their own drama going on, her bandmate Colleen (Emma Ladji) is more concerned with the football player who likes her even though she's very much, in her mind, not someone who dates jocks and so on. That secrets come out now is somewhat incidental.

Full review on EFilmCritic

This Week in Tickets: 25 November 2019 - 1 December 2019

Working from home is no fun and I'm glad I'm done with it for a while, barring snow.



It does lead to some interesting scheduling like we saw at the start of the last few weeks, where I headed to the Brattle for the very nifty The Last of Sheila and was then able to convince myself that heading out to Boston Common for Harriet wouldn't keep me out too late because it wasn't like I had to catch the bus the next morning. Similarly, even though I wound up plugging away at stuff until late on Tuesday, it was easy enough to do the 9:45pm night-before screening of Knives Out just in case people were eager to spoil the murder mystery (which it is hard not to do without just writing "it's good, go see it!" in more words).

After that it was Thanksgiving, which meant a trip up to Maine, turkey and pie at various houses, and both enjoying seeing family and being kind of glad to get back to quiet the next day. I started playing around with a non-movie-related project after that, but made it to Last Christmas that evening, since the Icon at the Seaport seemed to be having unusually low member prices all weekend. Not great, but due a bit of grudging respect.

Saturday afternoon was spent at Boston Common for the one show a day that Charlie's Angels has been quickly reduced to, before hanging around a bit for Two Tigers. Not the greatest import from China, but not the worst.

Sunday was spent writing before heading into the teeth of the first snow of the year for three at the Brattle - giving thanks for Bogie in Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon in the afternoon - and idly wondering if Thanksgiving-weekend shows of the first indicate that Warner is going to yank it around Valentine's Day next year - before catching Greener Grass for the nightcap.

That gets us pretty current on my Letterboxd page, and here's hoping that the snow being predicted doesn't keep me from adding more in the next few days.

The Last of Sheila

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Hollywood Whodunits, 35mm)

Come for a delightfully nasty James Coburn, stay for "little child molester" being considered a merely embarrassing secret. Hollywood in the 1970s was apparently something else, both in terms of producing this movie and the showbiz-adjacent characters within it!

That mean-spirited nature does make this murder mystery filled with a bit of inside baseball a lot of fun. It's got the meticulous but rickety structure of a flick that's as much puzzle as story, broadly comic bits with a nasty sting, and one mystery story built on top of another. It sets something fun up then abandons it to get everyone in a room, then almost goes on too long before resolving things in enjoyably abrupt fashion, because as much as the audience will have their thoughts on this group twisted up nicely by the time they're through, simple justice would not do. It's a nifty little movie that gets to be more than nifty by the time it's done.

Harriet

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2019 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, 3D DCP)

Harriet often feels a bit like the trailers for faith-based movies, so built around the power of prayer and/or visions that they don't actually show their characters doing anything of consequence and making them feel less proactive when they do. Harriet Tubman did astonishing things, but this telling of her story focuses enough on her "spells" and visions that it's like her own biography doesn't give her enough credit.

As it starts, "Minty" (Cynthia Erivo) is owned by the Brodess family, though married to free man John Tubman (Zackary Momoh) and looking to start a family as a free woman. Even taking when and where she lives into account, she's got an argument - provisions had been made in the will of Gideon Brodess's grandfather to free Minty's mother and her family, but slaveowners tend to ignore such agreements. Punished for talking back and threatened with sale to a faraway plantation, Minty escapes, with surprising help from Reverend Green (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who normally pleases the masters by emphasizing the parts of the Bible that stress obedience and good behavior. She evades capture and makes her way to Philadelphia, where William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monáe) welcome her and encourage her to reject her slave name, but initially try to dissuade her from attempting to rescue her husband and family.

She does, of course, despite her small stature and having just recently learned how to read, and it lays the importance of Tubman's story beyond the basic good of freeing slaves out clearly: You may first do something out of desperation to save yourself, but the true test is being willing to do it again to save others, getting smarter and more ambitious about it, even as your personal connection to those you would help decreases. That Tubman has visions which seem to occasionally steer her right doesn't invalidate her story, but director Kasi Lemmons and her co-writer Gregory Allen Howard could maybe interrogate it a little more. After all, part of her escape is possible because Reverend Green says God's word is one thing but secretly acts contrary to his preaching, and her making the choice to act despite not obviously being suited for it, and building herself into the woman she became, could perhaps get a little more time and the things that worked out a little less.

Full review at EFilmCritic

Knives Out

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 November 2019 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, DCP)

There are a lot of delightful things about Knives Out starting from the very beginning, but the first moment when Rian Johnson and company reveal what they are really up to here is when audiences should smile big, because sometimes there's genuine delight in being baited and switched on a grander scale than you were expecting. Murder mysteries are fun but they can often stall or require excessive amounts of twists to stretch past the length of a short story; revealing his hand early lets him have a lot of fun for the rest of the movie.

And there is a lot of fun to be had here, as Johnson and Daniel Craig make private detective Benoit Blanc a clever but not invincible sleuth, something he half-confesses to in saying that his method is to figure out where something is going and then wait for the guilty party to arrive. That gives the cast room to play on the one hand and sets up a great game of cat and mouse on the other. Parts of the script are downright joyously silly, from how one character can't lie while another is misheard in a fashion that would be groan-worthy as the only solution to the case but is worth a chuckle with everything else Johnson's got going on.

Knives Out may not be the best movie of the year - the route to its terrific last shot is ultimately kind of a side path that can't quite be as important as Johnson wants with all the crime in the foreground - but it will certainly be among my favorites, and I'm already looking forward to a second go.

Last Christmas

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 November 2019 in ShowPlace Icon the Seaport #10 (first-run, DCP)

At the end of this movie, I was pretty sure Emma Thompson wrote it on a dare to extrapolate an entire screenplay from one line of one song, or maybe just did so to keep in practice, and somehow it was just good enough to make its way through the development and attract some talent after she accidentally forwarded it to her agent. Eventually, you get this decent-enough movie whose resolution has been staring you in the face since the start. And, honestly, I kind of respect the professionalism and craft of that. Both the idea of making a jukebox musical from George Michael's songs and the plot of the movie are silly, but she and director Paul Feig get a watchable movie out of it.

It goes down a lot easier when you've got this cast. Emilia Clarke honestly makes Kate a little too cute from the word go, keeping her from really seeming like the walking disaster she is supposed to be as opposed to just comedically unlucky. She bounces nicely off Henry Golding, who is not quite too charming to sell off being adorably dorky, and then you've got Thompson and Michelle Yeoh in parts that they can do at something like one-quarter effort, and since they're dialed up to 50%, they can steal scenes. It makes for a movie that is really almost impossibly nice to the point where you can almost feel the filmmakers giving an embarrassed grin as they stick another George Michael song in. This was the pitch, we've gotta do it, but are you going to complain about a little more of this talented, upbeat singer or cast?

It will be on video next year, ready for an exhausted family to watch after trimming the tree or doing as much baking as they'd done in the previous four months, and probably just the right thing to watch at that point. It's not made for intensity, but doesn't seem like it would be bad in a relaxed setting at all.

Charlie's Angels '19

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2019 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)

I try not to think of the calculations that go on in studio executives' heads too much, because it's frightening and tends to put one at a distance from the actual merits of the films themselves, but it gets kind of interest in a movie like this. I suspect that most studios would like to have an action/adventure series along the general lines of this movie, and if you own the name "Charlie's Angels", why not make it part of that franchise? Maybe nobody is really looking for a new Charlie's Angels - fans of the first iteration are around retirement age, the second was sold on its cast, and the third bombed - but does the association help or hurt a relatively unremarkable action/adventure film at the box office?

The "Angels" work for The Townsend Agency, which was once a relatively small Los Angeles concern but has in recent years expanded to a worldwide troubleshooting network of female operatives, thanks to retiring co-founder John Bosley (Patrick Stewart), whose name has become synonymous with the agents' handlers. Their latest case comes from Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott), an engineer in Hamburg alarmed that a clean-energy system which can be weaponized to create lethal electromagnetic pulses is being rushed into production. Sabina Wilson (Kristen Stewart) and Jane Kano (Ella Balinska) are assigned to the case, which soon becomes more complicated than just aiding and protecting a whistleblower, even with a new Bosley (Elizabeth Banks) who is the first former Angel in the job.

Along the way, there are supervisors who try to take credit for their employees' work, especially that of the women like Helena, turncoats, a tattooed assassin who is a notch more intense than the other thugs, a fabulous party to infiltrate, and the seemingly inevitable trip to Istanbul, which must have a fabulous tax-incentive-for-spy-movies program. It's fun stuff, especially since the Angels are more likely to be outfitted their whimsical James Bond tech than 007 is these days, but the film can't help but feel like a remix of familiar elements that never gets beyond the surface cool and is sometimes a bit too self-referential for its own good.

Full review at EFilmCritic

Casablanca

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 1 December 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Giving Thanks for Bogie, 35mm)

Casablanca is an odd sort of classic, in that for a certain type of viewer, myself included, it can be easier to remember the silly bits that feel like they should sink it than the ways in which it is genuinely brilliant. It hits its emotional targets so perfectly that those of us who are analytically inclined can't quite describe what's so terrific about it when the letters of transit make no sense and other bits are just as silly.

But it is great, and I think it's the central flashback that does it. In a movie which spends a lot of time explaining its characters' feelings and how they make things happen, this is when you get to see Rick and Ilsa as different from what they are now and make your own connections about how they evolved. It's just a notch better than the rest of a movie that's already witty and big-hearted despite the cynicism everyone is trying to sell, and it makes one more willing to trust the rest.

Full review at EFilmCritic

The Maltese Falcon

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 December 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (Giving Thanks for Bogie, 35mm)

The Maltese Falcon gets a little more bottom-heavy for me with each viewing, as all the running around in the first half and easily dismissable material with Gladys George's Iva Archer has a bit less weight each time, weird screwball energy that doesn't quite fit with the rest, and I'm a little bit less convinced that there's any actual chemistry between Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Mary Astor's Brigid O'Shaughnessy each time. Spade is so apparently amoral that pairing him with anyone requires a little more time than the movie's got to give, especially when there are so many characters that are colorful on their own.

Still, the style is still there and the end is among the best even if you choose to read what Sam is telling Brigid as telling her that he's effectively done with her rather than actual affection. It's maybe not the scene that Bogie will best be known for because Casablanca exists, but it's a bracing moment where a hint of idealism breaks through even though it's at times hard to separate from the cynicism around it.

Full review at EFilmCritic