Tár | Causeway | Aftersun | Marcel the Shell with Shoes On | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Close | Empire of Light | Babylon | The Fabelmans | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish | Triangle of Sadness | The Sea Beast | Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
Tár, 04 February 2023, streamed via Peacock
What did I know about this film before I watched it? Uh, Cate Blanchett plays an unpleasant genius musician. That's it! That's all I knew! (I legit wasn't even sure if this was supposed to be a biographical film or not; if you're not sure, let me enlighten you: it is not.) Helpfully, after a tonal opening of the titular character sleeping on a plane while somebody texts about her, we get somebody introducing her to an audience before they interview her about her work. Is it kind of, I don't know, didactic? Well, I mean, does this movie need to be almost three hours long?
There's a lovely ongoing weaving of online elements--screenshots of Wikipedia entries, email threads, online articles. It is combined with a filmic technique I find infuriating: text messages as conveyors of meaning. I can't read those, people! The type is too small and the scene goes by too fast!
Anyway.
Reviews of the film are all about cancel culture and #MeToo and such--Lydia (I'mma use the character's first name because diacritics are a pain) has struggled all her life to break the glass ceiling, but also, like many people of genius, she has gifted herself guilt-free cruelty because other stuff in her life has been hard and it is irritating that other people aren't as good as she is. (There's a memorable scene early on, when she starts off with a fair puncturing of a Juilliard student for being kind of thoughtless about their music selection, but then she just keeps on and on and eviscerates them. Was I still on her side when they called her a bitch? Yes, but, she was still awful about it.) She also trades a bit on her identity as "a U-haul lesbian"--she's got a partner in Berlin, Sharon, and they have a daughter together.
In bits and pieces from her conversations with her extremely competent assistant Francesca, we slowly find out Lydia had an affair with a former Accordion fellow, Krista. (The Accordion Foundation sponsors aspiring female conductors.) Things ended badly and lingered on. Meanwhile, a hot new cellist has been brought on and Lydia is trying to replace a stodgy dude in the orchestra and folks are cottoning on that those two things aren't exactly separate events. Also, Krista commits suicide.
So what are we supposed to think of Lydia? She's awful, but she also is an amazing conductor. She's gatekeepery, but she also ensured her orchestra's performances were free to the public online during the pandemic. She doesn't regret destroying people's lives, but she doesn't entirely deserve the way her own life was smashed to bits.
This film is gorgeous. (The production design is striking and many scenes are these long, long shots of people dwarfed by their surroundings.) Blanchett is, of course, great. There's a lot of stuff about orchestral politics and the business of producing an album. The music is wonderful.
Also, uh, Lydia ends up directing an orchestra in the Philippines to a pretty cool video game score, so if we're supposed to think--as the film heavily leans--Lydia's "slumming" now, well, fuck y'all, from my people to yours, y'know? (Do I have multiple family members who play professionally in orchestras, including those in East and Southeast Asia? Why yes! Yes, I do.)
I've seen some folks argue that it's not SUPPOSED to be negging Asian folks and it's SUPPOSED to show us what a snob Lydia Tar is, but @KnitAndListen tweeted, "It would’ve done the same thing story wise if she’d ended up conducting Paw Patrol Live in Ohio." And it's disingenuous to act as if the context of the film's ending wouldn't be taken exactly at face value by a lot of the audience. So yeah.
Causeway, 11 February 2023, streamed via Apple TV+
I am somewhat gobsmacked that novelist Ottessa Moshfegh is one of the credited writers for this film. I mean, her books are generally very much like this film--both disconnected and closely detailed--but somehow I don't associate her with movies. In any case, here we have Jennifer Lawrence playing Lynsey, a soldier who experienced a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan and is trying to recover. The first chunk of the movie is all rehab for Lynsey, accompanied by her caregiver Sharon (Jayne Houdyshell), who I thought did some excellent, quiet work.
When Lynsey is mostly recovered and also, she notes, out of money for the treatment, she heads back home to New Orleans to live with her mother. She gets a job as a pool cleaner and, when her truck breaks down, she meets James, a mechanic, as played by Brian Tyree Henry (Henry got an Oscar nomination for this role.).
Lynsey wants to get back to "normal" so she can get redeployed. (The film, as this Autostraddle review notes, never really grapples with the war aspect of things.) James, meanwhile, is recovering from a traumatic car accident--he lost part of his leg, his nephew died, his fiancee subsequently left him. The two of them become friends--there's a weird thing where, even though Lynsey is gay, there's supposed to be romantic tension? I don't know. It's weird.
This is a quiet, fairly unsurprising movie with gorgeous, quiet performances from Lawrence and Henry both. Its best parts are just the two of them, sitting and talking about things they don't like talking about.
Aftersun, 14 February 2023, streamed via United Airlines
What a time to be alive, when the Oscars has two, count 'em, TWO Sad Irish Guy films in its nominations! And both of them are period pieces--though, to be fair, Banshees of Inisherin being set during The Troubles is a bit different from Aftersun, which is just the 90s.
Paul Mescal is up for Best Actor in his performance of Calum, and he deserves the nom. Calum is on the cusp of thirty-one years and he's taken his eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie (Francesca Corio), on a vacation to a Turkish resort.
Both actors are fantastic. Mescal's Calum is both laddish and melancholy, while Sophie is clever, sweet, and, as many reviews have noted, just starting to recognize her father is a human being with depths hidden from her. She's on the cusp of adolescence (and all the bodily and romantic stuff that begins to plague one at that stage), while he's mourning his own youth in ways that slowly become revealed.
They have a few prickly interactions--Sophie is quite aware her father's not got the money they really need for such a nice holiday, and one sequence where he poutingly refuses to do karaoke with her is AGONIZING--but their affection for each other is palpable and cheerily intimate? They're kind and honest with each other much of the time, talking frankly (but appropriately) about relationships and regrets and ambitions.
Thing is, though, many segments of the film are seen through the lens of a camcorder. What most of the movie is, it turns out, is adult Sophie thinking back on this vacation with her father. We don't know what happened after it--I could hazard a guess or two, but there are no clues except for, like, some disconcerting disco dream flashes--but it seems clear something very sad occurs. Adult Sophie, with a partner and a child, is watching these home movies and thinking about her father and just, like, trying to figure out something about her father, decades later. We're given to understand that, perhaps, there isn't an answer to be found.
Gorgeous movie. Watch it if you can.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, 19 February 2023, streamed via Delta Airlines
So I knew about Marcel prior to this film coming out, and had maybe watched one video to see what it was about, but I hadn't become a devoted follower or anything. THE MORE FOOL ME.
Marcel is an adorable shell who lives in an Airbnb with his Nanna. They used to, in fact, be a community of seashells--in the beginning, Marcel informs us that at least twenty shells are generally needed to keep a neighborhood thriving--but when the couple who lived in the house broke up, the rest of the family just…disappeared.
In what is a BOGGLING pretension of normalcy, apparently nobody noticed the seashell-adapted housing until Dean, an amateur filmmaker, moved in for a while. How? HOW? Marcel climbs walls by soaking his shoes in honey! How did nobody ever wonder? Notice? Freak the heck out?
While it would be easy enough for this movie to be ninety minutes of cute absurdity, Marcel is actually much more complex than that. There's the aforementioned community loss, which threads through the entire thing. Then there's Nanna, who is getting up there in years, and much of Marcel's adorableness is tempered by his sweet and undeniable anxiety with caring for his elder. And then there's our documentarian, Dean, who Marcel frequently needles for using the camera lens to draw attention away from his own loneliness.
Then, of course, when videos of Marcel go viral, THINGS GET INTENSE. As you can imagine, folks don't tend to treat People From the Internet with dignity or respect. Poor Marcel, man. But when Sixty Minutes picks up on Marcel's story? Well.
This film is wonderful.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, 20 February 2023, Century Olympia
My favorite thing about #Quantumania is how, at the end of it, Scott Lang is all of us. "What happened? Was it...net positive? Should we worry about-- Ah, well!"
I've kind of over-saturated myself with the MCU discourse, so I don't know if I have much to say about it? Except I like Scott Lang, I like the prickly family dynamics, and so this was a ton of fun.
And the quantum realm! Gorgeous! So very Star Wars! Psychic!Chidi (okay, FINE, Quaz) was great, as were the dude obsessed with holes and Lamp Face Guy. And Jentorra! Jentorra, song of my heart, who Cassie definitely, absolutely developed a huge crush on. Never leave us, Jentorra.
I did very much enjoy the whole Janet/Kang thing (don't even @ me on this, those two had an outcast-scientists-in-love thing going). Jonathan Majors did a distinctly different Kang than He Who Remains from Loki, as well, which was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to Loki season 2 SO MUCH now. I mean, I was anyway, but still.
MODOK was in this movie but I don't want to talk about it.
Close, 28 February 2023, online screening via A24
I opted to get a ticket to A24's special online screening, which provided a six-hour window for viewing. Totally fine! More stressful: I could rewind or skip forward on the film, once it was available, but I couldn't pause! Anyway, this is a beautiful film, but also CONTENT AND ALSO SPOILER WARNING: it grapples with suicide. Which is a spoiler, but I think we can all acknowledge that my movie reviews are more recap than spoiler-free reviews. But still? In any case, by the time you get to the fifteen-minute mark of the film, you can kind of see it coming? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So here's the deal: Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav de Waele) are adorable Belgian youngsters who live next to each other. Leo's family has a flower farm, so we have a lot of gorgeous scenes of the two boys frolicking outside. They're open and affectionate and it's wonderful.
And then they go to school, and a classmate asks--in friendly curiosity--if the two of them are boyfriends. And everything goes to shit, because toxic masculinity is a thing. (The initial questioner was nice about it, but other classmates, not so much.) Leo begins to push Remi away, but can barely articulate why.
You see where this is going, right? Most of the film then deals with the aftermath of what happens. The cast all around is great as it deals with this heartbreak. Most of the accolades have gone to Émilie Dequenne, who plays Remi's grieving mother, but I was most taken by Igor van Dessel, who plays Leo's brother, Charlie. There are a couple of middle-of-the-night scenes where Leo slips into his brother's room, whispering questions he can't ask in daylight. It's heartbreaking.
Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a fascinating review of the film with which I don't quiiiiite agree, but it's worth a read: "Close," about two small-town Belgian boys who are as tight as brothers, is a devastating movie. But to what end?
Empire of Light, 02 March 2023, streamed via HBO Max
Well, of COURSE this was Oscar-nominated for cinematography if Roger freakin' Deakins was the cinematographer, my god. This film is beautiful.
Empire of Light is about a little movie theatre on the English seaside in the 80s--Thatcherism-flavored racism abounds--and the folks who work there. Olivia Colman plays Hilary, a woman whose onscreen introduction includes a doctor very pointedly asking her about how she's feeling about her new lithium regimen, so we know something's up there.
Watching Hilary go through a full-on manic episode made me want to peel my skin off, which is how I usually feel whenever something on film accurately depicts manic episodes. (We are also, uh, "treated" to some awful, cringey scenes of Colin Firth begging her for sexual favors, so there's...that. That happened.)
Michael Ward plays Stephen, a young Black man who starts working at the cinema and quickly grows very close to Hilary, perhaps surprisingly? He certainly feels uncomfortable about it, and given the racism he experiences through the film, it's hard to discount his ever-present anxiety.
I don't think the story is very surprising at all? It's just an intimate little portrait of two people having some period-specific yet universal troubles. Who also happen to really love movies.
Babylon, 03 March 2023, streamed via Paramount+
On a lot of levels, I think it's pretty funny that critics' reactions to both this film and Elvis is, OMG I am SO TIRED NOW. Because yeah, we've got Chazelle and Luhrman, doing their best to maximize their reputations for mostness, and hoo boy, do they most the heck out of these movies. So glittery! So loud! Also, Babylon THREE HOURS, and yet they are not defeating ANY giant purple space aliens AT ALL, what is HAPPENING.
Throughout the film, they usually didn't translate/subtitle the Spanish dialogue, which I found wholly charming. Less charming? Having the centerpiece of the first scene be a bunch of handsome dudes being coated in explosive elephant poop, then having the second sequence begin with a woman peeing on a dude as entre into an orgy wiht bonus cocaine chickens. Y'know, "Gatsby, but with bodily fluids." Sigh. Also, let's objectify Margot Robbie as much as possible, because that's Hollywood, right?
The sequence where Ruth Adler, a second unit director, realizes Nellie is a friggin' genius at crying scenes is amazing, though. That, contrasted with the German auteur director just being a prat because he didn't have the right camera for a single shot of whatever with, oh, I don't even care, give me a movie that's all Ruth, Nellie, and Fay is what I want. Like, WAY more Nellie/Fay, definitely.
I'm pretty uninterested in the whole "fame ruins humans" narrative, not because it isn't true, but because I don't see anybody saying anything new or interesting at this point. You know what was interesting? The sound reset scene that went on endlessly and got ridiculous, but also provided some really chewy stuff in terms of the problems that the introduction of sound into films would have created.
I mean, we can all agree the "Would that it were so simple?" scene from Hail Caesar! is the best part of that movie, right?
Diego Cava plays Manny Torres, and I suppose he might also be the central narrative character, in that we follow him from obscurity as a PA to fame as a director. And Jovan Adepo plays a musician whose star rises as sound becomes more of a thing. They're both quite good, but I cared very little--that is, watching how racism and elitism manifest in Hollywood is awful, and maybe I didn't really need to watch it happening?
I don't know, maybe half of this movie was interesting--illuminating the on-the-ground folks involved in the movie business at the time--but it felt like the creative team was more interested in the excessive nonsense. (Yeah, I know I haven't talked about Brad Pitt. He did well--his scene with Jean Smart is excellent. Whatever.) Then there's an excessively long montage at the end about the MAGIC of FILM and it legit looks like a montage they would ACTUALLY play at the Oscars, so I guess that's, like, the point?
The Fabelmans, 04 March 2023, DVD via Redbox
Oh good, I thought to myself, another movie about how great the movies are. Three in a row! Great! Sigh. (I am not saying I DON'T think the movies aren't great, but thematically, this feels excessive.) Anyway, Judd Hirsch got a nom for his, like, one monologue about art and it is hella intense.
Michelle Williams does fine work as usual, which earned her another Oscar nomination, and I don't want to neg, but there's something to be said for the fact that we have a lot of dramatic depictions of women with mood disorders and Olivia Colman didn't get a nom for her manic episode in Empire of Light, and I have some questions, is all. (Also: Michelle Williams of Dawson's Creek, wherein a young Spielberg aspirant discovers his mother's infidelity, plays the adulterous mother of young Spielberg, is a wonderful bit of meta rabbit-holery.) But she was great! As is Paul Dano as the father, as are the three girls who play the sisters. Bravo all around! They could have easily been cookie-cutter parts--certainly the younger kids lean toward that, as you must with younger kids--but Julia Butters did a GREAT job as Reggie, particularly in the way she interacts with her mother. (The scene when Mitzi dances around a campfire and Reggie leaps up and tries to block the guys from seeing her mother spotlit in a nightgown? Really good, detailed work.)
Gabriel LaBelle rocks the whole film as Sammy, though. He's wry, frustrated, and the perfect amount of anxious. The two scenes I've included below are top-notch work.
And the very last shot, man, that camera bump? It's a funny joke, it' pulls us completely out of the movie and reminds us who the hell we've been watching, if ever we forgot it. The essence of a chef's kiss, ngl.
Also, there is a monkey.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, 05 March 2023, DVD via Redbox
So, like, I never watched the first Puss in Boots film? I'm just gonna assume I've got what I need from the Shrek films. Basically, Puss has lived eight whole lives, and someone points out he's on his ninth.
And just like that, we've got a movie about Puss in Boots getting the yips.
While I could not care less about the film's primary antagonist, I enjoyed the Big Bad Wolf personifying Puss's ~*~whole deal ~*~, as well as Goldilocks and the Three Bears acting as competition for the movie's MacGuffin. Also, the animation is GREAT--it's very painterly in a lot of ways, while still mostly being the CGI-style animation of the overall franchise.
Also, I'm just going to spoil it for you, y'all, but for real: The real treasure? Was the friends we made along the way.
Triangle of Sadness, 10 March 2023, streamed via Amazon Video
What an extremely weird movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. I'm not even gonna play, y'all--sometime in the second act, I wandered away from my TV and almost forgot to go back to the third act. The first act is about Carl and Yaya, a vapid but sweet but shallow model couple who are trying to work out their humanity or something. (Yaya is played by Charlbi Dean, who passed away before the film was released.) In an effort to see if their relationship can last, the pair go on a cruise. BIG MISTAKE.
Most of the second act is just rich people being the worst. In a horrifying scene, one of the extremely rich people INSISTS all the crew and staff go swimming because she wants to demonstrate how EQUAL everybody is, and so she bullies them all to stop working--doing some actually time-sensitive work--to show how cool she is. It's awful and uncomfortable and yeah, when it leads to all the guests suffering from vomiting and explosive poop and such, it's hard to feel sorry for them.
Also, the gross bodily functions sequence is all that everybody talks about with this movie and ugh. Why. Why must we. Anyway, the yacht is hit by a storm and then by pirates, so we transition to the third act, where a small group of survivors are stuck on an island. It's fine.
I was both pleased to hear and see so many Filipino folks (Dolly de Leon just STEALING the third act of the film), but also, did you know Filipinos make up a third of the cruise workforce?
I was glad de Leon's Abigail took power in the third act by dint of being the only competent person in the castaway group, but also, perhaps it would have been nice if she didn't go mad with power and coerce sexual favors from Carl in exchange for pretzels? Then again, it's kind of wonderful when everybody tries to pull rank on Abigail and she's like, Maybe you all shouldn't be so lazy, then? Or, as she declares, "In the yacht, cleaning lady. Here, captain. Okay?"
Anyway, rich people suck. In case you weren't aware.
The Sea Beast, 10 March 2023, streamed via Netflix
This is delightful! The feel of it is very swashbuckling, with a fun Lone Wolf and Cub pairing happening here. Our young protag is Maisie, an orphaned girl we meet as she reads sea monster stories to the kids in their home--her parents were hunters on a ship called the Monarch, which everyone recognizes as having been lost in battle at sea.
After being reminded by one of their caregivers to not run away, Maisie promptly hops out a window and slides down the rain gutter. There's a quick bit where, as Maisie escapes the children's home and everybody is calling out farewells, one adorable, fluting voice calls out, "See you tomorrow!" and doesn't that tell us everything about Maisie we need to know?
Our second protag is Jacob Holland, a seafaring monster hunter. He's under the eye of legendary Captain Crow of the Inevitable, though he's not the first mate. That honor goes to Sarah Sharpe, who is a badass. (There is also Merino, a lovely redhead bellower to the crew, and this unnamed lookout in a spiky helmet whose name I could not discern from the credits or the internet.)
Jacob fills the role of "You're like a son to me" to Captain Crow--he has no other family to speak of, as he was fished out of a shipwreck. He's great at his job and, Captain Crow tells him, he's next up to own the ship. (How does Sarah feel about that? There doesn't seem to be any animus from her about the favoritism. Maybe she plans to retire when Crow does?)
There are no pirates in this world, only sea monster hunters, and I have some QUESTIONS about this. Generally, though, that's the deal: Instead of pirates, we've got these sea monster hunters, who function by a "code" about helping each other. How does trade work? Are there so many monsters they need multiple ships out there? (The opening battle scene commences when they save a fellow hunting vessel from a kraken thing.) Why is it only as the film commences that something like a royal navy pops up as a functional alternative to monster hunting? WHAT ARE THE ECONOMICS OF THIS WORLD?
As soon as we meet the royals, however, and hear that the monarchy started funding the monster hunting in the first place? That's when I was like, ohhhhh, we're taking the How to Train Your Dragon route, then? Sweet. (There's a sweet little thread about government propaganda to stoke the fires of the monster-hunting-industrial-complex.)
So yeah, there's a whole thing where Captain Crow's "white whale" is the Red Bluster--he lost an eye in a previous hunt. So we've got multiple tensions going: Crow's vengeance, his desire to retire and pass things on to Jacob, and the royals trying to replace ALL hunting vessels with their own navy. When the Red Bluster saves Jacob and stowaway Maisie and takes them to a Monster Island, though, it becomes clear that there's definitely more nuance to what seems to have been a centuries-old war between land lubbers and sea beasts.
There's a great moment when Jacob asks Maisie how she can switch her opinion on sea monsters, knowing her parents were hunters and, even, were killed while hunting. And Maisie's response? Maybe you can be heroes and still be wrong.
Seriously, the design of royal palace feels very much like the Monument to the Discoveries in Lisbon, which was literally paved with a map of all the places Portugal colonized and it filled me with an intense rage when I visited this past summer.
Yeah, I sided with the kaijus on this one. Burn it all down.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, 11 March 2023, streamed via Prime Video
What a dreamy film this is! And, y'know, sponsored by the House of Dior. (No wonder they got a costume design nomination, right?)
Ada Harris (Lesley Manville), Best Cleaning Lady in London, decides--after her husband Eddie is officially declared KIA in WWII several years later--she's going to change her life by getting herself a brand new dress. While her best buddy Violet (Ellen Thomas) and number one crush Archie (Jason Isaacs) watch in fond askance, she scrimps and saves and hustles, loses a humongous bet at the dog track, then comes into a triple-bit of luck.
There's an amazing little runner about how rich people don't pay their bills, also. Like, the woman who first inspires with a 500 quid dress also keeps not paying her, and then reduces her hours when Ada finally asks for wages she's rightfully earned.
And the lady who snipes Ada's first choice of dress at the Dior show? Is actually the wife of the man responsible for the causing sanitation strike in Paris, like, WOW. The folks at Dior also do some chatter about how their rich clients aren't paying any bills--and most of the staff is THRILLED when Ada shows up with all her savings rolled up in her handbag, determined to buy herself one of them magical dresses.
Because Ada has to wait a week for the dress to be fitted and all, the staff--and a kindly Marquis--conspire together to house, feed, and entertain Ada while she hangs out in Paris. In return, she matchmakes, inspires, and oh, saves the House of Dior from financial insolvency.
There's a hilarious adorable subplot where the nerdy accountant and the unhappy model fall in love by talking Sartre, like, oh my god, what is this movie, I love it.
Anyway, in the end, when Mrs Harris goes back to her life in London, she's started a revolution in the haute couture world and will probably be making out with Jason Isaacs in the near future. GET IT, GIRL.
And I'm gonna go ahead and post now, since the Oscars are tomorrow. Who knows what the rest of March has in store?
No comments:
Post a Comment