Showing Up | Bottoms | The In-Laws | A Haunting in Venice | The Creator | Dumb Money | Killers of the Flower Moon
Showing Up, 08 September 2023, streamed via Amazon Video
I actually think this was at the indie theatre in town, but I missed the window there. I decided to rent it, though, since the folks from The Big Picture, my favorite movie podcast, talked it up. Plus, Michelle Williams!
Lizzy (Williams) is a sculptor who also does admin work at an art school. She's got a show coming up and wants to concentrate on her pieces, but she's also one of those people who is constantly being asked to do stuff for other people because she's so great and omg what would we do without you? Her entire aura is a put-upon sigh. That said, she doesn't ever really say anything to set boundaries for herself? So there's that.
Lizzy's family are also artists, which actually seems to make things worse? Her mother works at the art school and is emotionally unsupportive, and her father is narcissistic and committed to being perceived as Bohemian-ish. Her brother Sean (John Magaro) is mentally unwell, and seems to be in a manic episode when we first meet him--digging a series of holes in his backyard for some reason. Her friend Eric (Andre Benjamin) is sympathetic, but doesn't seem to get her distress when a kiln issue leads to discoloration of one of her pieces. And Jo (Hong Chau), her landlord and colleague admires her work, but also is a flashier artist and is dragging her feet on getting the water heater fixed.
Also, when Jo rescues an injured pigeon, somehow Lizzy ends up being the one taking it to the vet and caring for it.
The LA Times has a nice piece that details the artists who provided for the film, particularly Lizzy's sculptural pieces and Jo's fiber work. It's pretty neat to consider the interplay of that, textually--the artists inspiring the film, and the film drawing from the ethos of the artists.
This is a really quiet movie, with emotions wrapped up tight, but evident to the audience. It alternates between seething and pulsing with artistic purpose. A lovely watch overall.
Bottoms, 09 September 2023, Century Olympia
#BottomsMovie is a satirically quirky, adorably queer, extremely violent film and I dig it. PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are high school lesbians who also happen to be extremely unpopular. For some ungodly reason, they decide their best chance at hooking up with their crushes is to form a "women's self-defense club" instead of, I don't know, talking to them? MAN, I do not miss being a teenager.
For some reason, they do not bone up on actual self-defense methods, but instead institute a kind of fight club situation that is just, dang. Ladies. Dang. But a bunch of ladies sign up anyway! Maybe because Our, Uh, Heroes (?) spread the rumor they were in juvie and possibly have killed people.
Thing is, getting a bunch of ladies together and giving them space to talk about being vulnerable actually IS empowering! Josie makes a genuine connection with her crush and they end up hooking up! PJ does NOT, however, because her crush is straight and uninterested. PJ does not take this well and tries to shut the whole thing down. PJ is kind of the worst, tbh.
The MVP of this film is Hazel (Ruby Cruz, who plays Kit in the recent Willow revival), who is frickin' aggro the entire time and it's great. I love her.
SPOILER ALERT, they end up murdering the rival school's football team in full view of the town. It's WILD.
The In-Laws (1979), 10 September 2023, DVD borrowed from the TRL public library
Like Spy Kids from the previous month, this was another "classic" movie that I watched because of The Big Picture podcast. Starring Alan Arkin as a neurotic dentist Sheldon and Peter Falk as maybe-maybe-not CIA agent Vince. Their kids are engaged to get married and, one day, when Vince gets into a spot of trouble, Sheldon's office just so happens to be conveniently placed for a safe haven.
Shenanigans ensue.
I don't watch older movies very often, but this was a fun romp to behold.
A Haunting in Venice, 24 September 2023, Century Olympia
Murder mystery ahoy! In advance of the film, I read the novel that inspired it, Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party. Imagine my surprise when I started reading and it turned out the whole thing was set in the bucolic English countryside, rather than mysterious Venice!
Like, seriously, the whole thing is changed! In the novel, the inciting incident is at a Halloween party where a young girl brags that she saw someone murdered once, then later in the party, she's found drowned in the bobbing-for-apples tub. MEANWHILE, in this film, we're in Venice and SPOILER ALERT, a supposed medium is killed after she seems to channel the spirit of a dead young woman.
Poirot (Branagh) is retired in Venice, doggedly ignoring all requests for his services, when his old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who happens to be a celebrated mystery author, persuades him to accompany her to a shindig at a rich woman's palazzo. The palazzo, dun dun DUNNNNNNN, used to be a children's plague hospital. The Halloween party is for an orphange, and then afterwards, the host has arranged for a seance to contact her dead daughter.
As with all films of this nature, there is a KILLER (heheh) cast who all have possible motivations for committing the murder(s). There are hidden pasts and mistaken identities, lost loves and misapplied affections. And Poirot just can't help himself, can he?
I will never get over chuckling that they took the role of a pre-teen, annoying British girl and decided to cast Michelle freaking Yeoh. LOL.
The Creator, 30 September 2023, Century Olympia
#TheCreator is beautifully crafted and crunchily provocative science fiction. It is also, somewhat to my surprise, a commentary on the Vietnam War, but I guess at this point anything about Us vs. AI is going to be some angle on American imperialism.
At the start of the narrative, Joshua (John David Washington) is undercover, trying to find the genius--the titular creator--at the center of the advanced AI movement. See, the Western nations have banned AI for being, I don't know, too threatening in their human-ness, while Asian nations are welcoming of the diversity. While undercover, though, Joshua falls in love with Maya (Gemma Chan). In an attack where they alllllmost think they have a lock on the Creator, Maya disappears and is assumed KIA.
We pick up years later, and Joshua gets called in because they might, once again, have a lock on the Creator--or at least whatever weapon that's been designed to give the AI nations an advantage.
Thing is, though, it turns out the "weapon" is actually Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), a child simulant. (Simulants are human-seeming, though other sentient robots exist, as well.) Much of the middle of the film is Joshua internally struggling with his loyalties.
But yeah, this is definitely a critique of American imperialism. I say it's specific to Vietnam due to locating most of the action in Asia (they keep it non-specific), but there's also this GIGANTIC floating station that they use to drop bombs on possible strategic centers for AI enclaves, with pretty terrifying impunity.
Because Joshua was undercover before, he eventually returns to the safety of Maya's former allies, particularly Harun (Ken Watanabe). In one great scene, Harun points out that if the West won the war, all the AI beings would be destroyed. But what would happen if AI won the war? "Nothing," Harun opines. They just want to live their lives.
This movie is gorgeous and it hurts my heart.
Dumb Money, 14 October 2023, Century Olympia
Uhhh, the WINKLEVOSS brothers were exec producers on #DumbMoney? (The folks in my theatre legit froze walking out when those names popped up in the credits.)
So yeah, do you remember the whole Game Stop vs. Wall Street situation? Basically, in 2021, a bunch of normal people decided to invest in Game Stop's stock and they pushed the price up WAY high and all of Wall Street freaked out.
This movie is based on a nonfiction book about the whole situation. Keith Gill (Paul Dano) is the YouTuber who sort of led the whole movement.
In addition to Gill's whole situation, the movie puts face to his antagonist mainly through Seth Rogen's Gabe Plotkin, though there are others, as well. We also get a bunch of "normal people," including America Ferrera, who's just a random nurse that believes in what Gill is doing.
When we finally get to Gill's testimony to Congress--in a fun move, splicing in the footage of actual congresspeople at said hearing--it's pretty inspirational.
Did the world change after this? Not really. But it's nice that, for a very short while, frickin' Wall Street assholes weren't in charge of it all.
Killers of the Flower Moon, 28 October 2023, Century Olympia
Funnily enough, this is ALSO based on a true story, an adaptation of a book of the same name by David Grann. I read it ages ago, so I kind of knew what happened, but watching a dramatization of it was still ROUGH.
Basically, back in 1920s Oklahoma, the Osage Nation happened to strike oil on their land and were making a TON of money. (I'm struggling with language on how to talk about this: I want to say "land they'd been granted," but let's be clear: the country now known as the United States did not and still does not actually own nor deserve any of the land it occupies.) William Hale (Robert DeNiro), a white man who was supposedly friend to the Osage, decided they didn't deserve that money, and so he organized a campaign to systematically infiltrate the Osage community through marriage and then murder the actual Osage, ensuring the oil money went back into the pockets of white people.
It's incredibly difficult to watch, and some Native folks have pointed out how tortuous this actually is. On the other hand, Scorsese did actually seem to do a lot of work in consulting with Osage folks. The original version of the script focused much more on the proto-FBI side of things; DiCaprio was supposed to play the role that Jesse Plemons ended up doing--he switched to Ernest Burkhart when the narrative was transformed.
Ernest Burkhart, nephew to Hale, meets Mollie (Lily Gladstone, fantastic in the role) and they get married and have kids.
All the while, he's helping orchestrate the murder of others, through poison or gunshot or whatever else handy, it seems. Does it make it better or worse that Ernest seems to legitimately love Molly and she him?
This is an incredibly good movie, masterfully crafted, and I think a very important one. It's again, difficult to talk about, because this is exposing issues that we should already know? That we do already know, but we don't want to think about because it's horrifying.
You are on Native land.
And that's it for September and October! Next up, the weirdness of November!
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