movies

I've watched a few since I last commented in one of these threads. A couple of noir thrillers in Mulholland Falls and Shanghai, both competently made, good looking films that ultimately lack a bit in the story department and feel quite predictable as a result.

I also saw Men, which I really disliked. I had this on my watchlist for a long time and finally decided to give it a go, not knowing much about it. I really dislike films like this where the director seems to be going in a very obvious direction with their social commentary but doesn't fully commit to it. I read some interviews with Garland afterwards and he was like "oh it's up to the audience how they interpret it, I wasn't really trying to say anything in particular" - such a cop out.

In contrast, I loved Past Lives which is a very personal film based on the writer/director's own experiences. It reminded me a little of Columbus, another debut film from a writer/director which was similarly ambitious. Past Lives has a more interesting story, however, and some of the dialogue is so well written and relatable than I"m sure it's heavily influenced by real conversations. There were also some interesting techniques used in the production of this film that contribute to its realism, like throttling a real Skype call between the actors so that their reactions to the cal dropping out are genuine, or hiding casting choices so that actors meet each other at the same time as their characters.

Finally, over the past weekend, I watched Hoppers, a pretty bizarre Pixar creation that gets quite unhinged in the second half. I thought the choice of a young college student activist as the protagonist was pretty interesting - most animated films featuring humans go for children/teenagers or adults. It was fun enough but ultimately a bit shallow and vapid, considering the potential of themes. I also watched Personal Shopper, starring Kristen Stewart, who at this point I'd have to say is one of my favourite actors. She is always excellent in slower paced, more realistic roles like this where there is room for her more subtle acting style to flourish. The film itself is sort of a reverse of Men, in the sense that there are some pretty interesting and varied ways to interpret it but the writer/director has been very clear in interviews about his intentions and they happen to be the least interesting and most obvious of those available.

Cleaner

It was a 2007 Renny Harlan thriller. Harlan has had such an odd Yo Yo career. His has made some really great movies that just didn’t get noticed and some really bad movies that did.

This movie stars Samuel L Jackson, Ed Harris and Eva Mendes. Jackson plays an ex-cop whose new business is cleaning up crime scenes. He gets a job to clean up a crime scene and that is when the fun begins. The movie has a really cool set up but sadly it gets very predictable as it goes along and just fizzles out by the end.

Rebel Ridge

I am not really sure what to say about this movie. It is pretty much remake of Rambo First Blood, but Rambo only uses karate/movie-fu and doesn’t kill anyone also the cops corruption is more fleshed out. The story is a bit messy and the corruption of the shithole town in takes place in is just too contrived. With that said, the action scenes and fight choreography were expertly done. I really do have to tip my hat to that.

It stars Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Rob and a guy name I have never seen before called Aaron Pierre. Johnson is a veteran actor who is a master of his craft and he plays the corrupt sheriff expertly. Rob’s character was what glued the over all town corruption to the actions of the lead character. She did the best anyone could but she had a tough hill to climb. The real stand out was the lead.

Holy shit Pierre is amazing and if this guy doesn’t become the next It thing in hollywood that would be our loss. Thy guy has it all, looks, build and is smooth AF!!!

I also took a trip down memory lane:

Escape to Witch Mountain.

God this movie was a hell of lot stranger than I remember. It is a Disney film and the set up is two orphaned alien kids who have “supernatural” powers. It is such a strange film. The kids are the main characters and it is basically a road movie that focuses on them trying to get back to their collective. It is very low budget and is loaded with the stock Disney offerings of the day, family friendly music, tamed animals such as bears, horses and a house cat with powers of its own, also plenty of shitty green screen effect … but the supporting cast is top notch and is composed of Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence and Eddie Albert. To illustrate the strangeness, at one point in the movie, Pleasence gets a corrupt sheriff to organize a massive hunting party to go kill the kids.

I really loved the movie as a kid and I still love it.

Return from Witch Mountain

It is the sequel to escape and it is just as out there. This time the supporting cast is just as mind blowing, Christopher Lee and Bette Davis!! Yes, that Bette Davis, the first person to ever get 10 Academy Award Nominations. It is also a road film and all about the kids trying to get home except this time they are separated from each other, don’t have their cat and are aided by a gang of kids that is on par with the Goonies. Along the way they almost steal millions of dollars of gold, almost make a nuclear power plant explode and make friends with a goat.

Next up I will have to track down Beyond Witch Mountain that was a TV pilot for a show that never happened.

I saw The Mandalorian and Grogu a week after opening. It was... fine. Filoni loves wolves and bringing characters in from his animation. Favreau likes to smash the action figures together. We got pretty much all of that, and I smiled more than I cringed, though to be clear I did both. Also, as much as I disagree with his "spectacle movies are without artistic merit" take, there was something kinda sad about hearing Scorsese voice a CGI alien in a franchise that -- although it lodged itself in my soul at the exact right moment to stay there forever -- is obviously past its prime.

Mickey 17 - This movie surpassed my high expectations, really poignant and with a lot of heart. The social commentary was also on point but I expected that

Finally watched X, one of the trilogy that starts with Pearl. It was great, a fun watch, not entirely predictable and I didn't hate the characters, which is normally the case in horror. Worth a watch.

This has been a good movie week for me!

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Premise: A woman (Kathleen Turner) in the midst of divorcing her high school sweetheart (Nicolas Cage), reluctantly attends her 25-year reunion. During this event, she loses consciousness, and wakes up back in 1960, her adult consciousness inhabiting her teenaged self.

It's nice! Super sentimental, but it possesses more self-awareness than most nostalgia bait, which helps keep things from getting too saccharine. Turner's performance as Peggy is a big reason the film is as successful as it is at managing the tone. She quickly comes to term with her apparent time-travel (rationalizing it as a dream, or maybe a hallucination she is experiencing in the moment before death) and largely seems game to enjoy herself. Unlike Back to the Future, which this is obviously of a piece with, there is no apparent ticking clock or "disappearing from the timeline"-type stakes. Given this, Peggy amiably dons her cheerleading gear and reintegrates into her senior year barely missing a beat. However, Turner never lets the audience forget that, despite everything, she is playing an adult Peggy, who is playing her teenage self. Occasionally, this is expressed in a big way, such as when she crumples in on herself upon hearing her long-dead grandmother's voice on the phone. However, I was most impressed in the little ways that the mask slips, such as when the corners of her lips quirk up in wry bemusement (or exasperation) at the earnestly expressed grandiose plans of her peers. It was like watching footage of someone re-reading their diary, fond nostalgia jockeying for position with acerbic hindsight and embarrassment. A phenomenal, deeply affecting performance, and I'm not surprised she got an Oscar nod for it.

The cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth, also nominated, further enhances the elegiac tone. The reunion is shot through a thick haze, blanketing everything in frame with a gauzy softness that belies the coming magical turn, while also evoking the kind of liminal social space which events like school reunions occupy. Admittedly, I could have just been primed to look for parallels by recognizing his name in the credits, but I thought there were striking similarities between how Cronenweth shot Peggy’s reunion with how he photographed the “retirement” of Zhora in Blade Runner. A little less slow-motion and squibs, to be sure, but the same dreamy quality, the same periodic washes of technicolor peppered with glittering motes of refracted light. Of course, in Peggy’s case, this kaleidoscope comes from rather more mundane sources than Blade Runner’s cyberpunk cityscape, generated by the same rental smoke machines, gel lights, and silver streamers which get trotted out for school events to this day.

Specious though this connection may be (even to me), I find there’s a little bit of thematic resonance between the two scenes. Zhora is a woman pursued by a man with ill intent, whose “crime” was wanting more life. She is shot in the back as she runs down a long hallway, boxed in on all sides, ultimately collapsing with her dreams unrealized. Peggy entering the reunion, then, is Zhora entering that hallway. Despite her best efforts she can’t shake the man chasing her, at first metaphorically (in conversation and gossip), and then literally when Charlie unexpectedly turns up. Finally, she is overwhelmed by the onslaught of emotional and physical stimuli during her coronation as Reunion Queen. She collapses to the floor with a psychedelic kaleidoscope of color playing across her face, mirroring Zhora’s death. Thankfully for Peggy, this ain’t that kind of movie, and she’s afforded the opportunity to address her desire for “more” life. Not “more” in the Blade Runner sense (a quantifiable period), rather, “more” as a qualitative measure: getting more from the life she’s already lived.

That’s more than enough galaxy-brain-film-nerd talk though. Even without the Turner performance and solid craft on display, the movie’s cast is enough to recommend it as a curio if nothing else, with early turns from Sofia Coppola (in a nothing part, admittedly), Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, and Kevin J O'Connor.

REWATCHES

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), dir. Peter Weir. Premise: Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany have adventures in the British Navy, chasing down one of Napoleon's privateers along the coast of South America.

Fantastic. I can't imagine there being a better adaptation of Napolonic-era naval life. Stuffed to the gills with nautical details, but it never becomes pedantic (the way I imagine reading the novels might, happy landlubber that I am). Its perhaps a touch episodic, but I think that's of a piece with the movie's emphasis on authentically depicting naval life. There's not a single character or filmmaking choice which feels at odds with that goal. Crowe is magnificent, Bettany as well. If you haven't seen it, you absolutely should, even if historical epics aren't typically your thing. Ideally on a Sunday afternoon with your dad.

Universal Soldier (1992), dir. Roland Emmerich. Premise: JCVD and Dolph Lundgren are reanimated soldiers programmed to be perfect killing machines. Unfortunately, when a journalist (Ally Walker) uncovers their existence, some wires get crossed and JCVD decides he must protect her for long enough to earn the right to return home, while Lundgren leads the team of Franken-soldiers to put them both down.

JCVD's alleged status as a crook bloke notwithstanding, this is a solid little early-90s action programmer. Feels very of its time, and I mean that in a good way. Has just enough 80s in its DNA to feel dangerous and exciting, while allowing for the fact that the 90s had arrived, and things were different now. For instance, there is gratuitous nudity in the movie, but it's hero who strips down for the camera, not the damsel (and, whatever your personal persuasion, JCVD's butt in 1992 is worth seeing).

It's not high art (the movie, that is; I could and might argue dat ass is in fact art), but things move along at a decent clip, Lundgren seems to be having a ball chewing up the scenery, and JCVD surprised me with how good his comedic instincts were, even this early in his career. Like, I don't think people acknowledged how self-aware he clearly was until the JCVD movie came out in 2008 and he spelled it out for everybody. Even just no-selling "What accent?" when Walker is trying to find out who he is and where he's from got a chuckle out of me, and I couldn't help but laugh at his facial expressions while he's housing plate after plate of diner food, ignorant of the mounting bill.