Twenty movies for this month! Plus the Oscar-nominated Live Action and Animated Short Films, which I’ve treated as two movie-length things. This was...a lot. More than the number of movies I watched in 2016, in fact. I’m really glad I did it, but it was pretty time-consuming. Depending on how things are going next year, I might once again try watching all the Oscar nominees--while there were a couple of clunkers (to my taste), I mostly enjoyed all the movies I saw, even though most of them were outside my viewing wheelhouse.
Hail Caesar! 03 February 2017, DVD via RedBox
I'm fairly certain this movie was written at an after-hours party, post-SAG Awards, when someone passed a hat around and asked everyone to toss in who they’d be in a silent murder mystery set on the Titanic. Also, why doesn't every movie have a dance interlude with Channing Tatum? Also, as a former theatre tech, every little glimpse of crafting was a shot of pure magic into my heart. Also, “would that it were so simple” is a masterpiece.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, 04 February 2017, DVD via RedBox
I will just always enjoy a Tom Cruise action movie. I rented this without even knowing Cobie Smulders and Aldis Hodge were co-stars! Had I paid more attention, I totally would have seen this in the theatre. Also, one sequence shows five other actors trying to keep pace with Tom Cruise as he runs, which was both hilarious and delightful. ALSO, they went back, like, four times, so that title was clearly some false advertising.
Kubo and the Two Strings, 05 February 2017, streamed via Amazon
I was wide-eyed with wonder at the first twenty minutes of
Kubo, and I cried through the last twenty minutes. It's a gorgeous movie, and a lovely meditation about the power of memory and storytelling. Also, I would watch an entire series about the adventures of Monkey and Beetle.
Suicide Squad, 05 February 2017, Blu-ray via RedBox
“Stay evil, dollface.”
So as far as I can tell, 50% of the budget was music licensing, and the other half was actors' salaries. No money left for script doctoring, I guess? Because, just as I thought with
Dawn of Justice, they’ve got a killer cast (Will Smith and Margot Robbie and Viola Davis, y’all, come on), the heft of DC’s story-making history, and a spectacular tech crew. Between those three things, this movie should have been a complete cakewalk with extra cake--good actors and good tech crew mostly can't stop themselves from digging in--but instead we got...this. What the hell is this? Also, they’re sort of ridic to combat metahuman aggression: only Diablo and (arguably) Croc have actual powers, and the rest of them just have a lot of experience in mayhem. Come on, Waller. You can do better.
The Lobster, 06 February 2017, Blu-ray via RedBox
This feels very much like a Wes Anderson version of
Animal Farm crossed with a BBC production of
Children of Men. It’s quirky, but (intentionally) incredibly disturbing. By the time the third act rolled around, I was ready to declare I was being held hostage by the friggin’ DVD. I ended up cleaning the kitchen and paying my bills during the last forty minutes, and I still want to take a sledgehammer to the cello that WOULD NOT STOP ARGH.
Florence Foster Jenkins, 07 February 2017, Blu-ray via RedBox
So, on one hand, I’m like, hey! A mostly whimsical movie starring three way-beyond-competent actors that can make a meal out of the slightest hint of inner conflict! And in a script that juggles about the tensions of patronage and sycophantry, and the tug between honest critique and not being a dick to folks who are trying their best. On the other hand, seriously, we don’t need to nominate Meryl Streep EVERY year; she could have done this role in her sleep, and for all I can tell, she did.
Sully, 09 February 2017, DVD via RedBox
I mean, it's difficult to dislike a Tom Hanks movie, so this was fine. And the movie does well to harness the heft of the unshakeable goodwill Hanks has garnered over the years. I also really dig the way the movie slingshots around to different viewpoints and times and what-ifs. It's about 23% too showy and 96% too predictable, but I enjoyed the narrative web.
Captain Fantastic, 11 February 2017, DVD via RedBox
NGL,
Captain Fantastic is pretty much how I imagine Viggo Mortensen parenting IRL. Early-ish in the movie, one of the teenagers muses on how she feels reading
Lolita: sympathetic, appalled, confused. That's sort of how I feel about this really frickin’ weird movie.
The Jungle Book (2016), 12 February 2017, Blu-ray
- I know nothing about the ecology of South Asia.
- Opposable thumbs are AWESOME.
- I was going to say the kid in this is just an okay actor, and then I remembered he’s acting entirely with CGI characters, so I’m upgrading him to very good.
- They folded in bits from The Lion King, which I think worked out relatively well.
- “Do you have a language?” And that's possibly the most provocative part of the movie, if we want to be real about things.
20th Century Women, 13 February 2017, Fleur Cinema
This is yet another movie about somewhat affluent white Californians learning how to cope with dissatisfaction, but it actually feels like they’re saying something different, and interesting. The titular triad played by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning are prickly, luminous, frustrating, and complex. The two male characters (played by Billy Crudup and...a talented young man whose name I don’t remember) are more perplexed than complex at times, but their relationships with the three women beautifully illustrate how gender roles are often constructed in reaction. I struggled with the movie for the first twenty minutes, and then realized halfway through that I loved it. Plus, one conversation around a crowded dining room table is possibly the most transcendent bit of comedy I’ve watched so far this year.
Life, Animated, 14 February 2017, streamed via Amazon Prime
I'm not much of a documentary watcher, really, so I can't comment on this in relation to the genre. That said, the Disney bit is a nice hook--some feel-good marketing made the liberal sprinkling of clips and music possible, despite one guy sheepishly considering “Disney porn” as a way to broach The Talk. And there are a couple of beautiful sequences that illustrate the subject’s own inner world where he’s joined by and protects a number of sidekicks from Disney movies. The examination of a family with a member on the autism spectrum is as touching and verklempting as I imagine it's designed to be.
13th, 15 February 2017, streamed via Netflix
I read
The New Jim Crow three years ago, and heard the author, Michelle Alexander, speak a few months after that. So I wasn't shocked by the subject of this documentary, but my anger level was about the same. I hope, this being easily accessible and relatively easy to work through, that more folks will talk about this. Slavery didn't end.
A Man Called Ove, 16 February 2017, streamed via Amazon
For the first bit of this, I thought we were in for a dark comedy of an angry old man learning to let joy into his life again through the insistence of a spikily optimistic young neighbor, and it is, yeah, that (and how wonderful is Parvaneh?), but also about a dude so beholden to lawful good that he can't manage to die. Also, I kind of want to just stare at Ida Engvoll's face forever.
I Am Not Your Negro, 18 February 2017, Fleur Cinema
I Am Not Your Negro is amazingly and painfully good. And heartbreakingly necessary. I’ve read only a small bit of James Baldwin’s work, but I need to make it a priority. The authorial voice is taken from an unfinished book Baldwin began on the assassinations of three of his friends, civil rights icons Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., but the director folds in some of Baldwin’s speeches and media appearances, and cleverly laces in clips from movies and news media that either demonstrate or highlight the absurdities and incivilities that Baldwin faced, and with which we continue to grapple.
Deepwater Horizon, 19 February 2017, DVD via Netflix
I am embarrassed to admit I didn’t remember how, exactly, this event unfolded. I realized this about twenty minutes in, when the protagonist’s daughter MacGyvered a demonstration of how the ship worked using a shaken can of soda, a metal straw, and globs of honey to hold back what she adorably labeled “the angry dinosaurs. I quickly looked up “
Deepwater Horizon blowout” on Wikipedia page, but as I found with
Sully, knowing what happened didn’t in any way alleviate the tension of watching the movie. I flinched every time we got an SFX shot of the rumbling beneath the ocean, and winced at every metal clang and ping. For a short time, I felt that having a clear villain in the BP execs was a bit too narratively convenient, but then realized that, yes, there would have been at least one guy who made that final call to proceed without appropriate safety checks. (Two of them, in fact, were indicted for manslaughter, but it seems like that case sort of went away.) This is a solid movie, and well-sold by the slew of solid character actors (and Mark Wahlberg and Gina Rodriguez) who made up the cast.
Moonlight, 20 February 2017, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
Holy crap, this movie is beautiful.
Moonlight is just as good as everyone says it is. I constantly marveled at its use of silence and light, and the actors are thrilling with silence, too. I can also see why it's treated like the antithesis of
La La Land. Both movies are crafted perfectly, but
La La Land highlights its artifice, while
Moonlight emphasizes verisimilitude. (Or, if I can be a theatre geek:
La La Land is for the proscenium, and
Moonlight is in the round.) But I’d give the edge to “Moonlight.”
Manchester by the Sea, 25 February 2017, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
Yet another movie where I cried through the last twenty minutes. I thought this was extraordinary. (And surprisingly funny.) What happens to us after tragedy hits? How are we changed? Because, as one character puts it, our heart will always remain broken. And yeah, maybe sometimes we learn to take moments of small joy, but the pain will still live beside us.
Also, if anyone's interested in seeing pretty humane deconstructions of modern American masculinity, I highly recommend watching
Moonlight and
Manchester by the Sea back to back.
The Red Turtle, 25 February 2017, Fleur Cinema
This is such a weird and beautiful movie. I have no idea what to say about it. There was no spoken dialogue at all--a couple of times, a character shouted, “Hey,” but most of the vocalizations weren’t verbal. It’s magic realism.
Oscar Short Film Nominees: Live Action, 25 February 2016, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
- Sing: This one is slight and adorable, until it gets really terrifying in an existential way. It’s a beautiful demonstration of young friendship and solidarity.
- Silent Nights: This felt like a full-length movie smushed into 30-odd minutes. I like the way it addresses issues of immigration and racism on multiple levels, all while charming us with a complex love (?) story.
- Timecode: If this isn’t what parking garage attendants don’t do during their quiet time, I will be vastly disappointed.
- Enemies Within: I’m torn on this one. It’s super-topical (a Muslim man of Algerian descent being grilled as he applies for French citizenship), and certainly tense, but it also felt the most like a student project. I can’t decide if it’s the static location, or the simplicity of its message. It’s certain worth watching, though.
- The Woman and the TGV: SO WHIMSICAL. Almost too whimsical, but the focal character was lovely, and I have a soft spot for small Swiss towns, I suppose.
After the live-action films were done (most were about 30 minutes, though
Timecode was only about fifteen), a screen for intermission popped up, which is when, I kid you not, every person in the theatre asked aloud, “How long is this supposed to be?”
Oscar Short Film Nominees: Animation, 25 February 2017, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
To bulk up this half of the showing--most of these films were less than ten minutes--they included a handful of not-nominees-but-almost, which was kind of fun.
- Borrowed Time: This was simple, and only seven minutes--an older man, revisiting the spot where his father (?) died, during a breakneck chase. I sort of quibble with the details (would that object still be lying there, unburied by dirt, after decades), but it packed a wallop.
- Pearl: An adorable movie, and fairly short, but the style of animation made me feel like we were just watching an overlong commercial for the latest Apple product.
- Piper: Pixar gonna Pixar.
- Blind Vaysha: I loved the style of this, as it took its cue from the originating folktale and looked like a bunch of woodcuts brought to Van Gogh-style life.
- Asteria: A super-silly showdown between humans and aliens trying to claim a planet for their own. It felt like CGI-enhanced scene from Futurama, honestly.
- The Head Vanishes: I’m kind of surprised this one didn’t earn an Oscar nom--it’s imaginatively framed, and it feels really nonsense, until the last fifteen seconds whiplash you into the role of the "villain": this is what it’s like to have a parent experiencing dementia.
- Once Upon a Line: I dig the Harold-and-the-Purple-Crayoness of this, though I do sort of side-eye the choice to introduce a romantic subplot with the color pink. Basically, the gendered stereotypes used to depict the formation and dissolution of the relationship were kind of annoying, but the film overall was cute and clever.
- Pear Cider and Cigarettes: This was the final film, thirty minutes long, and preceded by TWO warnings that content wasn’t appropriate for children. And nope, it was not at all. Telling the story of a man’s friendship with a reckless buddy whose addictions got the better of him, the film played like noir and leaned into the aesthetic, as well. It was morbidly funny and gloomy, and yeah, women were not people so much as objects, because noir.
Fences, 26 February 2017, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
Fences is the least showy of the Oscar nominees this year, but the audience gasped more during this showing than all the rest combined. Theatre geek that I am, I’ll always have a soft spot for stage written into screen, and I was absolutely impressed with how well it translated. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis won Tonys for their performances in these roles, and they were just as mesmerizing on the screen. (Stage acting requires a very, very different skillset than acting for the camera. Not everybody is able to do both.) I loved the complexity of the ending, where nobody could really articulate the feelings they were experiencing. And oof, that last shot, after the trumpet blared. Killer.
Lion, 26 February 2017, Century 20 at Jordan Creek
I can’t imagine being a parent and watching this movie. I’d go into full-on panic, I think. It starts out so adorably, with Saroo and Guddu--certainly they’re poor and scrambling, but there’s so much joy in their interactions, too. Saroo showing his brother that he can TOTALLY lift stuff? Ugh, my heart. So then, of course, we descend into the first half of the movie in which Saroo escapes multiple horrifying situations because he is surprisingly canny for his age. UGH, MY HEART. The second half, with Dev Patel and Rooney Mara, was less compelling, mostly because “dude uses Google” is not really a riveting tale. Overall, though, this was lovely.
