bulgerpaul Reviews

Best Friends Recycled (2016)

A movie about how Donald James Parker can briskly jog without getting winded

[1/10 · 27 February 2024]

The opening to this movie is four entire minutes of two boomers, Tony and Jackson, playing chess, and talking about their chess moves, and chess has absolutely nothing to do with anything for the entire rest of the movie, and you're not even treated to the lavish production values of Queen's Gambit, nor do you get to look at Anya Taylor-Joy. It's four literal minutes of two boomers playing chess and snarkily explaining their moves to each other. But then, in the middle of this chess game, their banter takes a truly wild turn with the following line:

"That reminds me, remember that favor you owed me? You know, a while back, you agreed I'd get to pick out your next wife."

.....wait, what? Where did that come from? Is this something old friends typically do for each other? And what the heck in the middle of this chess game reminded you of that incredibly bizarre, highly specific favor your friend owes you that you're cashing in to pick out their next wife for them? Is it because you just moved your queen and it reminded you your friend hasn't yet found their queen? The segue isn't specified as obvious as it seems.

But I digress, Jackson goes out to find Tony the perfect trad-con wife, and in the very next scene Jackson eavesdrops on a conversation in a restaurant overhearing a couple of younger church ladies talking about their love lives with some older church ladies, with the younger women dropping some truly amazing lines like, "I could handle a bit of ugly, if he could dress my in diamonds and furs, but there's nothin' but slim pickins at our church." It's kind of fascinating to me that in the imagination of Donald James Parker, a girl gold digging this openly would be fishing for her sugar daddy at church. But one of the older ladies piques Jackson's interest when, in response, she begins to speak profusely fondly about how much she loved being a submissive housewife before her husband died. No joke there's an entire thirty second monologue where one character brags about how submissive she was, and then one of the younger girls counters, which leads to another truly fascinating bout of dialogue:

"I just couldn't operate like that?" "Well why not?" "I want to be in control of my life." "That's your problem." "That's MY problem. Are you serious?" "Hey Stacie listen, as a Christian, you should have submitted your life to God, and then, in obeying God, you would then, submit to your husband. If you don't follow the principal of submission, you can expect to have more difficulty in your marriage than normal."

You know, as I've been binging through Donald James Parker's filmography, I was actually looking forward to this one, because the previous entry into this trilogy, Best Friends Eternally, was pleasant by the standards of this wretched film studio. But yeah that was an anomaly, Parker is back to romanticizing theocratic fascism and framing it as the only route to true happiness, this time imagining all women as if they can be contented exclusively when they are in submission to a man. One of the younger girls pushes back against this, stating that it's not her fault if her marriage fails because she refused to be a doormat wife, to which one of the older ladies responded, "Stacie, there is a big difference between being submissive and being a doormat wife," But then she doesn't even go on to explain what the difference is, like seriously, she just leaves it there as if it's self-explanatory. What? I need to know? What's the difference between a submissive wife and a doormat wife?

This exchange impresses Jackson and he moves in as soon as the younger girls leave to talk to the older ladies and set one of them up with Tony. They agree to all meet up and what ensues is yet another basic, badly written, boring geriatric biblical romance. But then that romance is abruptly halted by another truly amazing twist that is just too bizarre and out of left field that I really wouldn't feel right spoiling it.

Also, David James Parker, yet again, gratuitously subjects you to hysterically contrived extended sequences that exist for absolutely no narrative purpose other than to show you that he is a physically active old man who is in relatively decent shape. But I'm still just so flabbergasted by what this man feels as though he needs to prove to the world with his physique? He is a very average looking 67 year old who can probably run a mile without getting winded. Sure, that's better than the average old person, but he is so proud of the accomplishment that he's near his 70s and can still briskly jog that he has made three entire movies dedicated to showcasing this slightly above average physical feat and writing dozens of characters complementing his slender build. Is it rooted in insecurity or is he legitimately that proud of himself? I don't understand.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

The anxieties of raising a child under theocratic fascism

[10/10 · 26 February 2024]

When I first reviewed this film, I only talked about the similarity of its themes to Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, in that Wolfwalkers is another movie about a child stuck between two worlds that only they can see from both ends, one full of magic hidden amongst us, unseen, Harry Potter style, that is only visible after one has "crossed the threshold," while in the human world there is mounting conflict that threatens to destroy all life in both the human and magic worlds, all the while a child must singlehandedly navigate between both worlds for a solution, while their single father attempts to prevent them from doing so in their inability to understand, while also being wrapped up in their only perceived solution, a solution that is inevitably doomed to fail and will lead to their destruction. This is more or less Cartoon Saloon's formula. However, on my first viewing, I didn't see how this movie is also similar to Cartoon Saloon's other major feature, The Breadwinner, and how Wolfwalkers naturally bridges the gap between the two.

On top of centering around a child coming of age between two worlds that can neither see nor understand one another in the same way that Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea do, Wolfwalkers is also very much about what it's like to both be and raise a child under theocratic fascism, same as The Breadwinner. Where the father figure in The Secret of Kells simply does not listen to its main character, Brendan, because he's too wrapped up within what he thinks is the correct path forward and for no other reason, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers add an extra layer of depth to their father figures by placing the characters at the mercy of an oppressive, militaristic theocratic authoritarian regime. Abbot Celach's pigheaded stubbornness is the true villain in the Secret of Kells, as he is unable to imagine other solutions to the encroaching threat outside of his wall. Robyn's father, Bill Goodfellowe, won't listen to his child because he has been acquainted with the society they live in a lot longer than Robyn has. His fear has paralyzed him. He has no real solution. His only means to keep Robyn safe is by keeping his head down and following the orders given to him as dutifully as possible. And that moment when he finally reveals to Robyn why he won't listen to her brought me to tears,

"Because I'm afraid Robyn. I'm afraid."

This made abundantly clear to me the anxiety any father raising a daughter under fascism must experience. How do you raise a daughter in a place like this? This is no life for a child, especially a young woman. So his solution is little more than to carry out his orders day in and day out, while ensuring she does the same.

"Work is prayer."

Bill repeats this mantra to his daughter. Hoping she'll put on her uniform, and quietly scrub the halls and wash dishes the way women are expected, the way he unquestioningly follows his own orders. But Robyn rejects this life,

"I've prayed the whole Bible."

She refuses to be constrained to this life. She knows there's no future here, and she knows full well how quickly this world will turn on its most faithful members who are no longer useful to it, as she's heard the stories about the callous cruelty of their Lord Protector. And I was brought to tears once again when Robyn finally makes her father realize how foolish he was to think he could keep her safe in a place like this,

"I'm one of them. I'm a wolfwalker."

I cannot describe how powerful it was to realize what Robyn was actually saying in this moment. "You can't keep me safe here. You can't even keep yourself safe here. Nothing can keep us safe here." There is nothing to guarantee your safety under theocratic fascism. And watching Bill finally come to grips with that reality broke me, as I begun thinking about myself, wondering how I would keep my own daughters safe should we fall to the very real, encroaching threat of fascism. I can't. I myself would probably become Bill under similar circumstances. I too would put my head down and quietly follow orders. Hoping dutiful submission would be enough to keep my daughters safe.

Poor Things (2023)

Barbie for psychopaths

[9/10 · 25 February 2024]

"Why do you wish to keep me here if I do not wish to stay?"

I thought I was being clever when I turned to my wife as the credits rolled and stated, "it's exactly like Barbie for psychopaths," only to open up the reviews I'd been avoiding a few minutes later and find that that was the top review. And as funny as that comparison is, it's only a half joke. Both are movies with fairy tale production design, with deeply feminist themes that have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face, about a perfect born-yesterday protagonist learning about what it means to be a human, a woman, a woman with ambition, a love interest, a Marxist, what it means to love, to be desired, and to navigate the threat of men who wish to possess you, only Poor Things spares very little time diving straight into the sexual politics of being a woman with sexual desires, one who experiences orgasms, likes experiencing orgasms, and attempts to orgasm every chance she gets. It's Barbie's deranged, perverse, estranged cousin, the second half of Barbie that its PG-13 rating could never allow.

But with its wide casting smattering of philosophical discussions, what resonated with me the most (which was also the obvious neon-flashing light message pasted across the entire film) was the way it questions the thrill in legally binding a person to your side, the way one would contractually own a piece of property. And while framing marriage and childbearing as a sort of entrapment isn't a particularly groundbreaking way to deal with the issues of desire and consent (we already had that in Polite Society earlier this year), what makes its questions all the more fascinating in Poor Things, is the vessel through which they're delivered: a woman attempting to understand the answers to that question empirically. And she asks effectively the same question in half a dozen differently worded ways:

"Why do you wish to keep me here if I do not wish to stay?"

Bella seeks answers to why the men around her don't understand that happiness with a partner can't exist without enthusiastic consent. Where neither party is dependent on the other economically, socially, or contractually, but because it is a conscientious decision both parties are continuously making with no other forces driving them together, free from the delusion that being with somebody else can't be any better no matter how miserable they make you. Where is the thrill in any other kind of relationship? And it's something she plans to discover using the scientific method her mad scientist father figure imparted on to her (by the way, how is this the first time we've seen Willem Dafoe play a mad scientist? Why has nobody else thought to cast him as one before?)

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Fantastic presentation in search of a narrative

[6/10 · 25 February 2024]

This is a legitimately interesting angle to look at the Holocaust through, and I genuinely appreciate what it's going for, it has an incredibly frank visual attitude, every frame containing interesting bits of visual storytelling...it just fails to deliver much of a broader story with its incredible eye for visual and audible storytelling. The banality of evil is the only theme that comes across, over, and over, and over, and over again, which works extremely well for the first two thirds of the movie, but then I just became numb to it. Maybe the fact that I became numb to it is the point? Maybe the atrocity fading into the background for me, and its potent chilling factor wearing off is supposed to tell me something about myself? But that kind audience chastisement only works if the movie gave me a story in the foreground that actually succeeded in distracting me from the evil in the background, which it didn't, and I think had the movie actually given me a comparatively banal story to focus on, something in the vein of a good, simple, Yasujiro Ozu movie but set outside a concentration camp, would have been a fascinating means to really explore the banality of evil. But the movie is content in not delivering much of a conflict, and simply showing us characters distracting themselves from the screams of Jews going into the furnaces for just over 90 minutes, and not much more.

I won't fault its visual storytelling and sound design though. Both are just as good as they've been hyped up to be. I just wish they were done in service of a movie that had more to say.

Monster (2023)

Beautiful multi layered story

[10/10 · 31 January 2024]

One of my favorite types of movies are the ones that attempt to depict how children and adults fundamentally speak different languages, where the ultimate conflict of the movie comes from the ways in which children and adults struggle to understand one another. Now it's probably going to be a spoiler if you haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm talking about movies like Where is the Friend's House, where a boy takes an off handed comment from a teacher so seriously he legitimately believes his friend will get kicked out of school if he doesn't manage to deliver his friend's homework assignment that very night, and all of the adults around him failing to understand the urgency of what to him will alter the rest of his friend's life.

Now as for why that simple comparison constitutes a spoiler, it's because Monster does the same thing as The Handmaiden in which we're given three different movies that flip the movie you thought you were watching on its head twice over, making you feel like a total moron over all of the epiphanies you had in part two as soon as the "real" real story is revealed by part three with a first part that makes you think you're watching something akin to Changeling, in which a worried mother tries to get to the bottom of what is happening to her son as she fights against gaslighting from state officials, then a second part that lures you into thinking that you're actually watching The Hunt, and a third part akin to Where is the Friend's House that shows you you're just watching a boy fundamentally incapable of communicating to the adults around him the situation that he's in with a friend of his whom he deeply cares about in a way that would make any sense to them, a clever inversion of one of my favorite sub-genres, in which children grow and learn by overcoming simple predicaments that the adults around them place them in.

Peter Pan (2003)

So much better than I remembered

[10/10 · 31 January 2024]

There's nothing I love more than returning to a classic I enjoyed from my childhood when showing it to my kids, only to discover it's so much better than I remember it being.

The 2003 version of Peter Pan is one of the truest "they don't make movies like that anymore" examples one could ever point to when comparing the tone and atmosphere of family movies from the 90s and early 00s to the family movies of today, and I think this could arguably be considered one of the best, if not THE best of them. But what really gets me about this film is not merely the relentless levels of joyful camp or the fantastic storybook visuals every bit as inspired as what you'll find in Speed Racer, but just how wonderfully emotional it allows itself to be without a single self-deprecating remark or self-aware elbow jab in sight, no matter how ridiculous and absurd it gets, it fully commits to every single feeling, whether it be Peter and Wendy arguing about love and the joys of growing up, or Peter's tear soaked face screaming "I do believe in fairies" into the sky to revive Tinker Bell, or Peter emitting a happiness blast with all the power of the stars in the entire nebula into the faces of the Jolly Roger's entire crew after Wendy gives him a "thimble," not a single ounce of self-consciousness, just fully, head first diving into every single feeling without a second guess. And the sheer amount of silent, laughless smiles this first time rewatch in 20 years managed to pull out of me (as well as actual laughs) are innumerable.

I'm not a generally nostalgic person. I don't think movies were generally better in the past than they are today, they're just different, and Peter Pan is easily amongst the best of the kind of whimsical fantasy family films that just don't get made anymore, which I wasn't expecting to discover upon this first time rewatch, and I hope my kids ask for this again, because I don't want to wait another 20 years for my next trip to Neverland.

May December (2023)

Masterfully layered melodrama

[10/10 · 5 December 2023]

May December is 2023's Tar, the movie from last year that started out by giving Hollywood legend Cate Blanchett great material to work with but still asked her to do an insane amount of heavy lifting, wherein she churned out career best work with a script that demands you watch much harder than you listen. Only May December has two all time greats of their respective generations churning out career best work that both demand you watch them much harder than you listen to them, as well as a new actor I'd never heard of before now who's asked to center the entire film with the only real human performance, stuck between two infuriatingly self-involved aliens who've buried every last human thing about themselves underneath layers of selfishness and hubris.

And what Charles Melton is being asked to do with Joe can't be understated. A man who was never afforded an opportunity to explore himself, discover what he desires, desperately reaching out for connection, but too afraid to act out of his own self-interest because of how utterly dependent everybody in his tiny little bubble are upon him, growing up as an adolescent without a support system of adults he could confide within, as all of the adults in his life always needed him to take care of them. First taking care of his sick sister to compensate for an overworking father, and then becoming the emotional rock for the unstable Gracie (Julianna Moore), a relationship he was groomed into, and then trapped within for the entirety of his youth after they were exploited by tabloids, isolated by infamy. And his performance truly is the one you must watch more than you listen to, as he repeats Gracie's version of their story to whomever asks about it, insisting it's true, they were in love, refusing to confront the fact that he was a child, at least until the very end in which is attempt to confront that fact is shot down immediately by Gracie, who in spite of her volatility, prone to emotional breakdowns after wasting a single cake, or at the sight of not enough hot dogs for her guests, has an uncanny ability to bury and never confront trauma she's experienced or inflicted upon others. And as Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) investigates Gracie's history, you begin to realize how inextricably linked Joe is to her, living in a community that's constantly, distrustfully watching both he and his wife, repeatedly putting in orders for her baking business simply to keep her busy, keeping them involved but at an arm's distance, making it impossible for Joe to explore himself, being stuck in a community that will forever define him by the act he was groomed into as a child.

So yes, I agree with the general consensus right now, given the incredible amount of layers Melton is asked to take on, he absolutely deserves that supporting actor Oscar, though even though he's being asked to be the grounded center between two selfish sociopaths who ruthlessly exploit him, that certainly doesn't manage to steal any spotlight away from what Natalie Portman is doing here, an actress playing an actress who goes to the farthest most vile extremes any method actor could go for a trashy exploitative made-for-TV role, as she not only seeks to emulate Gracie's mannerisms and her lispy accent, but she goes digging into all of Gracie's past connections, interviewing her family members as she's an investigative journalist, and even finding excuses to sneak around with her husband Joe just so she can become the "real" Gracie, constantly digging for something "real" without an ounce of self-awareness, discussing with others Gracie's sociopathy and inability to self-reflect without a hint of irony. And it's not until she lectures a class full of high school drama students that she fully gives the game away, questioning when she's performing intimate scenes whether she's pretending to experience pleasure, or pretending not to, as she revels in imagining herself in Gracie's shoes, revels in fantasizing about seducing a teenager, and revels in seducing that same teenager herself (though at this point he's technically her age even though he's never gotten to grow from beyond where he was as a teenager). And the exploitative cruelty of Elizabeth's involvement with this family that discards any notion that she's striving for anything "real," that she's trying to create a piece of empathetic art, becomes abundantly clear in that sudden joyous outburst after she watches herself in the mirror performing Gracie's letter to Joe. It's a game for her. She can no longer pretend she's not experiencing pleasure from this.

And with all this talk from Elizabeth about searching for something "real" making her performance "real," it's genuinely difficult to watch Joe in his attempt to actually find a real emotional connection, in the end attempting to confide within the woman who claims to love him the most, only to discover that she is every bit as incapable of processing any real human emotion as Elizabeth, and he'll forever be trapped by the act he was groomed into as a child, unable to connect with anybody, unable to emotionally process any of the trauma that was inflicted upon it, and forced to internalize all of it as he's forever being used by the tabloids, the "artists," his parents, and his wife.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Heartbreaking

[9/10 · 5 December 2023]

Scorsese has dedicated a huge portion of his career capturing some of the most vile dregs of human scum to have ever really existed on film, all of whom were men who were driven by greed, but none of his movies were actually solely about raw, unfettered, irrational, pathological greed quite in the same way Killers of the Flower Moon is. Where Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street are more about living the high life and becoming addicted to the status that ill-gotten wealth brings, and Casino and The Irishman was about the alienation living in the fish bowl of a life in organized crime forces one into, and money is the ultimate motivating factor in driving each of these film's main characters into the situations that those respective movies aim to explore, Killers of the Flower Moon forces the object of money itself into every single crevice of its 200 minute running time. It's at the center of every single conversation, every conflict, every motivation, it bonds and then eventually breaks every relationship depicted in the movie, explains every action, overrides every emotion, no love in this universe is stronger than the desire for money. And that desire for accumulating money goes beyond satiating any material need, it's pathological, unending, with no reasonable end point in sight. There's never a point where there's enough. Entire cities are build, purchased, and owned, there is nothing left to spend that money on, but the greed is boundless, even as hundreds upon hundreds of bodies pile up and all of those exorbitant inheritances continue to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands, one man will not stop until he owns literally all of it, not resting until every native is struck dead and all of their wealth stolen, a point made painstakingly clear as Mollie mourns the death of her last remaining relative, and looks out into the crowd of funeral attendees only to find every single face looking back at her is white. White buzzards picking at the corpse of her culture and people, all of them massacred in the name of money.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)

Funny but incomplete

[5/10 · 5 December 2023]

I genuinely wanted to love this movie given how much I loved Edge of Seventeen, and Are You There God does contain a great deal of what I loved in Edge of Seventeen. It's very funny, and I adore Rachel McAdams's performance in this. She's very much the perfect kind of mom that you would want to hide things from, not because you're afraid of what her reaction might be, but because she would be so wholeheartedly sincerely wonderfully helpful and supportive of you that it might actually be a bit annoying, and I can't think of any other actress better suited to that kind of role than Rachel McAdams. However, even though Margaret has the same manic, all-over-the-place energy of Edge of Seventeen, and as much as I loved that energy in Seventeen, Margaret doesn't put it to use to anywhere near the same extent. Seventeen is all over the place because that's where Nadine is in her life, bumbling around burning bridges all over the place and making poor decisions because she has absolutely no idea what she wants. And while some of that applies to Margaret, Margaret isn't experiencing much of a real, tangible quarter life crisis in the same way Nadine is in Seventeen. And while that in and of itself is enough to make this a considerable step down from Kelly Freemon Craig's freshman effort, what truly put a sour taste in my mouth is how little time the little conflicts throughout the movie are given to resolve around the end. Margaret's hyper-Christian maternal grandparents who disowned Rachel McAdams' Barbara for marrying a Jew are introduced within the final fifteen minutes of the movie. There's two kids Margaret's clique of friends bully for one being tall with boobs and the other for being odd and fat, and Margaret is given about two minutes to reconcile with one of those kids extremely briefly and inadequately, while the other gets no reconciliation at all. There's an entire subplot involving Margaret's secret crush on a neighborhood boy which she keeps secret because he's friends with the brother of her new friend who acts as the stand in for this movie's Regina George (another McAdams performance), and this subplot recurs to develop further multiple times but gets absolutely no resolution. But worst of all, there is absolutely no resolution that comes out of Margaret's friendship with the middle school Regina George outside of a single line that comes in the last ten minutes of the movie, "I don't think I want to be friends with Nancy anymore," And after that line Nancy doesn't show up ever again in the movie. There's neither reconciliation nor closure at all with Margaret's little clique. The entire pivotal circle of friends whose antics define the entire first 3/4ths of the movie is just dropped out of thin air. I honestly can't even imagine how stilted Mean Girls would have been without the reconciliation between Cady and the plastics, and simply dropped the entire conflict that defined the majority of the movie with a single line, "I don't think I want to be friends with Regina anymore."

Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake (2023– )

A Joyous exploration of infinity

[10/10 · 5 December 2023]

I adore Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. I've rewatched it more times than any other series. It is my comfort zone. My happy place. No other series more perfectly exemplifies the dwarfing, isolating feeling one gets when coming to grips with the vast expanse of the universe they inhabit, how insignificant it makes you feel to know just how insignificant you are in everything that is, has been, and will be within all of time and space. But throughout Adventure Time's grappling with the endless expanse, it beautifully depicts the struggle to fight against the idea that infinity creates meaninglessness, finding joy and things to fight for in every episode. And in that endeavor it acts as the perfect foil to Rick and Morty, treating infinity as a cause for celebration, a place where art and creativity is limitless, as matter is constantly changing form, always shifting into new temporal variations of itself, where there's always love to find and give, and never has that overarching theme within Adventure Time been made more abundantly clear than it has in its new mini-installment, Fionna & Cake, the funniest, most imaginative, most joyous exploration of the multi-verse to rival Everything Everywhere All At Once, both of which are stories that see infinity as an opportunity to make meaning out of the immediate, to love the people around you as abundantly as you can.

Past Lives (2023)

Emotional exploration of imagined futures

[10/10 · 10 October 2023]

Whenever I say watching a movie felt like a lifetime, I almost never mean it as a complement.

Watching Past Lives felt like a lifetime, and not because it felt too long, but precisely because it didn't feel long enough, even in all of its lingering. There's so much lingering, but I never wanted it to stop lingering. I wanted to sit there and bask in every memory where I myself lingered, attempting to hold onto a mutual emotion as I said goodbye to a friend, or a lover, knowing this would be the last time I would ever get to see them. There's just never enough time in a lifetime to linger. But the lingering must end. At some point you have to return to your life. And fewer things I've seen ever captured in film are more relatable than Nora becoming overwhelmed with emotion as soon as she finally says goodbye permanently to an old life as she re-enters her current life. Is she crying from the pain of letting go of some of her fondest memories, or because she's so in love with the life she's currently living? As I started crying with her, I knew the answer was a little bit of both.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Beautiful story of finding vitality in art

[10/10 · 6 April 2023]

I completely misread this film the first time I watched it almost ten years ago (good god has it really been that long), thinking it was just a mildly interesting story of two hipsters that are too good for everything nostalgically waxing about how all of the great art is already made and there's nothing left, nothing new to be made anymore, an attitude towards any art that I despise, a conclusion that one can only arrive at by looking at the past through rose tinted glasses and living in total ignorance (or undue scorn ) towards art being made in the present. So while I found this movie interesting, and frequently funny (I die laughing at the line where Eve theorizes Adam's suicidal ideations as a product of all the time he spent with historic authors "like Shelley and Byron and all of those French assholes"), I missed several critical points in its overall message.

Namely, I entirely missed the point of the ending. Adam and Eve are convinced that they are in their final moments, their lives are coming to a natural conclusion, being alive for literal millennia they have read everything worth reading, listened to all the music worth listening to, and created everything they are capable of creating. Art is dead, there is no point in them attempting to continue fighting for their existence in a world where all of the blood is "contaminated," they are constantly hungry, and the world is too interconnected for them to truly exist and actively participate within it, as they can only reclusively observe it from the outside from now on.

However, my first time viewing this its final scene didn't hit me the first time the same way it did this time. Just as Adam is on his final strung, he happens across a performance from the ravishing Yasmine Hamdan, a wonderful Lebanese performer and musician, give a brilliant, emotionally vibrant musical performance, one that leaves Adam dumbstruck, and the meaning of including this performance didn't resonate with me the first time I'd viewed it, as when this performance concludes, Eve remarks "I'm sure she'll be very famous one day," to which Adam, being the snobbish hipster that he is, responds, "God I hope not, she is way too good for that." And me, being the idiot that I was 10 years ago, took that line at face value and rolled my eyes. However, after this performance, I didn't notice the abrupt change in the tone of Adam and Eve's conversation. As the last ten minutes of this film were them resolutely deciding that they are finished and there's no point in continuing to fight for their lives, and they're better off letting themselves starve out, suddenly, they see opportunity again, they discuss with one another how they can prolong their existence, and ultimately find it in the very end, and this is all because Adam, after being so emotionally moved by Hamdan's musical performance, realizes the utter stupidity of his nostalgic snobbishness.

And that's when I realized Only Lovers Left Alive's ultimate purpose is the literal opposite of that I'd mistaken it for 10 years ago. There is always creativity. There is always new, worthwhile art out there to create and consume. All of the best things aren't simply in the past, there are always new and exciting things to look forward to, and reasons to keep searching for it, you simply must shed the arrogance and look for it.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Under developed

[5/10 · 6 April 2023]

A 90 minute game of "spot the reference" wherein all of the references pertain exclusively to a single 30 year running video game series that will appeal to absolutely nobody outside of young children with no attention spans and adults who've played literally every single entry in the series...so it's a good thing I've played literally every Mario game, multiple times.

But aside from spotting some of the hilariously subtle Easter eggs peppered throughout the movie, and identifying which games they came from, yeah, it's bad. I know defenders of this thing will only respond to criticisms of thin characterization pointing out the characters in the games are thin too, however, the games are content to leave their characters entirely undeveloped, and instead just giving them broad personality traits conveyed through facial expressions and body language, and I can envision a Mario movie in which non-characters with heavily animated personalities can be successful, however, instead of opting not to develop the characters at all, illumination instead under-develops them, which to me is significantly worse. At one point we're given a random emotional beat from Donkey Kong where he wants to be seen as somebody who does more than smash things, a beat that is given no buildup and no legwork is put in in order to place that beat into a broader character arc. We're teased with an origin story for Princess Peach that never pays off. Mario and Luigi are given inadequacy complexes brought on by fears their father is disappointed in them that gets dropped throughout the entire second act before resurfacing very suddenly in the third act. And the list goes on.

Had illumination merely wanted to replicate the excitement of the games by throwing us directly into an abstract action comedy romp using the mushroom kingdom as their toy box, I'd have been perfectly satisfied with that, however, instead we're given a litany of half baked characters sporting either set-ups with no pay-offs, or pay-offs with no setup.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Funny collection of individual scenes that don't connect

[5/10 · 22 March 2023]

The central idea is funny enough, as are the ensuing first and second act antics, however, you can really tell this idea wasn't workshopped well enough before they decided it was worth shooting because all it comes out as is a collection of humorous scenes with a coked out bear going on a rampage and all of its various half-baked plot threads occurring around the coked out bear rampage just abruptly end without any sense of climax, or any resolution at all as far as the bear itself and its crack babies go. There are numerous immensely enjoyable individual scenes, like the first responders attempting to escape cocaine bear's hot pursuit, or two twelve year old's attempting to eat an entire tablespoon of cocaine, or cocaine bear snorting an entire kilo right before attempting to hump a drug dealer as its coke-induced libido shoots through the roof, and then there's two cocaine cubs introduced right at the third act which serve to be a part of a few humorous punchlines, but then they don't ever actually get to affect the plot in any way right before the movie just ends.

It's fine if the movie doesn't have any interest in establishing any real character work and simply wants to have itself a bunch of cardboard cutouts to pump up cocaine bear's body count, however, the movie puts quite a bit of work into establishing its characters, their personalities, and their motivations. We've got two school kids playing hookey to go on a hike and paint a waterfall, an incompetent park ranger attempting to track down a gang of teenagers mugging people on state property, an entire plotline revolving around some drug dealers attempting to repossess their cocaine supply from cocaine bear, a police detective investigating a drug cartel, an entire subplot that revolves around a junior detective betraying her superior as it's revealed she's working with the cartel, and half a dozen other contrivances meant to bring people into this park, and none of it comes together, resolves, or serves any purpose other than to get bodies into the state park. So if all they wanted was a body count, they could have much more easily kept the beginning scene with the coked out cartel pilot dropping his payloads into the park right before crashing his plane to set up the central gimmick, then just had a park tour bus full of internationals come in to give the bear a crowd of 40+ people for cocaine bear to go ham on, and then we'd get to watch the state park staff and locals deal with the ensuing carnage in various humorous ways, all while saving a lot of screen time on setup for all the other subplots that go nowhere, and we still get a massive body count without feeling like we've been robbed of any kind of payoff after getting invested in the various different plotlines coming together in any meaningful way.

So if all you want is a moderately funny movie about a bear on a cocaine induced rampage, you'll get exactly that and most likely be satisfied so long as you're capable of ignoring every other ultimately pointless plot thread.

Mask (1985)

Bizarre ending

[6/10 · 20 March 2023]

Approximately fifteen minutes in, I was actually enjoying myself a lot more than I thought I would. Given my vocation as a case manager for disabled people, I watch a lot of movies about disability and compare that against my real life experience working with people across a broad spectrum of disabilities, and I've found a lot of really great movies, but most of the movies I watch that cover these topics tend to annoy me. What I really appreciated about Mask the most was how well it threaded a line between tragic movies about disabled people that over-fixates on bullying and suffering due to disability, and uplifting, stupidly paternalistic, condescending, "inspirational" movies about disabled people (like Radio), as Mask very naturalistically implements its elements of teasing and joy, bringing us a character that is fully aware of his deformity and how people respond to it, and is eager to make jokes about himself to put other's at ease, and who makes friends and connects to people fairly easily due to his general good nature and sense of humor, though they're all initially off-put by his physical appearance. It's nice seeing a movie about a disabled person that's willing to implement elements of bullying without allowing human suffering to become its ultimate fixation, while also not succumbing to inspiration treacle, one who has a mixture of biological and surrogate family figures in their life that are simultaneously troubled yet supportive, and it was quite compelling simply getting to watch Rocky make his way through life as a regular high schooler dealing with basic social challenges brought on by his appearance.

However, by the end I couldn't help but wonder if Bogdanovich actually knew what kind of story he wanted to tell going into this, because by the end it doesn't culminate to much outside of a collection of scenes (a humorous and compelling collection of scenes) with potential for compelling arcs that just abruptly end. Throughout this movie, we watch Rocky deal with your typical checklist of coming-of-age challenges including entry into a new school, making friends, losing friends, finding love, losing love, overcoming discrimination, facing a troubled (yet always supportive) family dynamic, etc, and all of it always turns out in a Walton-esque positivity because that's how things in supportive households always turn out, however, by the end, we get to that breaking point that all high school coming-of-age films always reach, where the main character loses their closest friends over some expected conflicts, however, before those conflicts can be resolved in any way (whether positively or tragically), Rocky just dies. And that's it.

With my line of work, of course I know that death can come very suddenly for a person afflicted with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, so yeah, realistically, that's the only ending to be expected, however, that doesn't make for particularly compelling storytelling if the film had done nothing up to this point to acquaint its audience with the very real possibility that death can come unexpectedly and out of nowhere, and afterwards, giving the character's friends and loved ones no screen time to grapple with their grief in the wake of sudden tragedy. The movie simply gives us about three more minutes before ending without much by way of explanation, and it's more confusing than anything else.

I'm very disappointed it chooses to break of any sense of closure so immediately too, because I genuinely loved every minute of this film right up until it suddenly ended. It's well acted, it's often funny, it deals with disability in a way I personally love seeing in movies and wish I saw more often, its got some very effective emotional beats, it looks like it's building up to some wonderful character arcs and I had no idea whether the tested relationships would wrap themselves up positively or negatively, and I was genuinely excited to see what direction it would take...but then it just ended.

M3GAN (2022)

More fun than I'd expected

[7/10 · 20 March 2023]

It's curious to me that this was marketed so heavily as a horror movie as opposed to being marketed as a comedy, partly because the horror elements of this movie that you can chop up into a trailer looked dreadfully stupid out of context, but mostly because it's clear all of the thought went into the comedic material, whereas when we get into the third act horror fest what we see is rather perfunctory, as the movie only contains two somewhat imaginative kills. That being said, it is nice to see a low brow technophobic horror movie actually manage to identify and seemingly understand a real problem with emergent tech and learning algorithms that pull information off of the internet leading certain programs to utilize that information in ways unaccounted for by their developers, even if it ultimately has nothing to say about that issue, merely exploiting it for an unexpectedly witty high concept romp. I just wish that in the third act we'd gotten the Director's Cut of Little Shop of Horrors where the plant ends up in every home in America before its enablers/creators could realize what they'd done to stop it in time, because getting to watch thousands of these little 12 year old terminators go ham just feels like the natural evolution of this gimmick, but I get it that neither the budget nor the resources were there to pull off an ending of that scale, and what is there is honestly fun enough.

The Quiet Girl (2022)

The Sleeper Hit of 2022

[10/10 · 24 February 2023]

The Quiet Girl is 2022's sleeper hit, the film every internet and IRL circle I'm in has been dead quiet (lol) on. Seriously, I haven't heard a word of this film breathed, and only walked into it blind because I'm working my way through the remaining Oscar nominated films I haven't seen yet, and by the end it shot up to my 7th favorite film of the year. Don't let its calm, stoically reserved nature fool you, this film is abounding with so much love. Love is everywhere. Love is found in every cookie suspiciously set out in plain view without a single exchanged word. Love is found when one takes up a push broom to clean the floors without drawing attention to themselves. Love is in every meticulously counted hairbrush stroke. Love is found in every tender quiet moment in which people commit any length of time in their day-to-day lives toward simple acts of service dedicated to those around them with no regard for whether their small simple actions receive recognition, and love is in simply taking note and finding joy in those small simple actions, as they quietly and unexpectedly worm into each other's hearts, acting that love out in the mundane.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Brings back the magic of the original

[10/10 · 18 December 2022]

It's nice to see that 25 years after Titanic, there is still no director more capable of capturing and framing the sheer scale and weight of a colossal structure sinking into water in heart pumping, exhilarating mini-sequences than James Cameron, as this film recreates that final 40 minutes of Titanic once again on a much grander scale, except the the added bonus of being set on an alien planet in an ocean filled with sea-monsters.

Now, with this long anticipated sequel finally here, I'm once again seeing the same exact criticisms of the first film resurfacing to describe this film, chiefly, "nice visuals bad story," and I've already addressed that tired criticism in my recent revisiting and reappraisal of the first Avatar movie. It's become very popular to criticize the first film for neglecting the fundamentals of character and story structure in service of its aesthetic, a criticism I've come to find unfounded 13 years later, mostly because it seems that people have been conflating "simple" and "bad." Avatar's characterization is intentionally simple, it is not bad. Obviously Cameron is relying on extremely broad, instantly recognizable archetypes so that its audience can immediately understand the gist of who's who within minutes of screen-time, because Cameron's primary goal is to jump straight into discovery and world building, the very thing that made the first film such a magical and unique experience, which is why he got away with a 20 minute first act and a 100 minute long second act. And people were so quick to jump to the conclusion that the simplicity of the characterization in the first film was a product of ineptitude or neglect, rather than the entire intention, that they missed out on the frequently genuinely funny character interplay and the lovely bits of characters' personalities spritz throughout (seriously did nobody pay any attention at all to the jubilation in Jake's face after getting to walk for the first time in years?) This all goes without even mentioning how solid the original screenplay was, with loads of setup and payoff, as people also like to criticize the first film for its "weak writing," as they are mistaking weak writing for cheesy dialogue, two distinct things that are not synonymous with one another.

With all of that out of the way, how does this film measure up to its predecessor? That's a stupid rhetorical question, as you can see from my rating, they're almost on equal footing. I adored every minute of my re-entry into this world. I'm overjoyed I've gotten to re-experience it once again anew at an age where I can finally fully appreciate it. I'm grateful Cameron has managed to (mostly) successfully recreate that same joy in discovery, and that his primary focus of efficiently expediting characterization and setup in favor of jumping straight into exploration and world building has remained (mostly) unchanged after 13 years.

Before seeing this movie, I saw an unverified rumor being circulated that James Cameron originally handed in a 9 hour cut of the film to the studios and wanted the VFX team to visualize all of it before he was willing to begin cutting it down. At first glance I immediately brushed this unverified rumor off as a joke (though secretly hoping it to be true, if only for the memes), but at this point, I 100% believe that rumor as the gospel truth and nobody can convince me otherwise. Just so you can understand what I mean, in the first act of this film (which is about 50 minutes now, instead of the condensed 20 minutes of its predecessor), we get three separate retconned storylines added in as events that happened concurrently with the first movie in order to acclimate us to returning characters and explain the existence of two new characters, and a total of eight new main characters are added to the cast, introduced, given screen time and introductions and setup with their own distinct personalities to setup what functional roles they're going to be given throughout the rest of the story, all of whom are going to be tracked as they (along with the returning characters) begin splintering off into sub-groups during the conflicts that arise in the second and third acts. So the fact that all of this plot and all of this characterization is crammed in, as well as an almost comprable amount of world building with even more action beats than the first movie, all manages to fit inside only a three hour runtime is an astonishing feat, and I eagerly await that 9 hour cut (or whatever extended version we eventually get out of this film in the future, as that extra 20 minutes of content in the first's extended edition proved to be extremely valuable) to further flesh out these characters and this world.

That being said, as much as people love to criticize the first movie for being light on plot, I hope those people come to realize that they should be careful what they wish for, because this movie absolutely does provide more plot (waaaaaaay more plot). Now I'm going to do some spoilers so if you don't want to know anything about this film before going in (why are you even reading reviews this far in?), then stop reading now because I feel the need to add just how much they manage to fit into this movie:

• Grace's avatar body was apparently impregnated before her death and her daughter has a mystical connection to plants with many questions remaining to answer.

-The villain from the first film returns to life in an Avatar body and is seeking revenge. Oh and also he had a son who was left behind in Pandora who's basically been raised by some scientists and by Jake's Na'vi family and the two of them are given an entire contentious dynamic between familial bonds, mutual resentment for being on opposite sides of the conflict, as well as a mutual desire to connect with one another in spite of their opposition. Oh and also again, this kid has an unspoken interspecial romance with one of Jake's kids and Neytiri also habors some resentments against him which fester in a viscious third act turn. (yeah, all of the plot surrounding this one kid alone is downright LOADED) -Jake and Neytiri had four kids since we last saw them, and yes, every single one of them are named, given personalities, plot functions, and are individually tracked throughout the action heavy third act -The entire family is uprooted and sent to live with island tribes, and yes, multiple members of the island tribes are given names, personalities, functions in the plot, and are tracked throughout the action heavy third acts.

-there's an entire new plot thread introduced regarding plans to colonize Pandora to be suitable for human civilization -an entirely new resource is discovered on Pandora in order to bring venture capitalism into the oceans with a sub-plot focused around whaling (which adds themes of animal cruelty to the pre-existing anti-colonial, anti-capitalist themes holding over from the first film).

And this is all just what I can immediately recall from a single viewing, which I hope has done something to impress upon you exactly how much is going on in this movie in between the real reasons we are all here, for discovery and action, which it pulls off astonishingly well, and if I have even just one complaint this time around, it's that I wish it had gone just as light on plot this time as the first time around, because the segments of this film dedicated to discovery and exploration (which 100 minutes of the first film are dedicated toward) are nothing short of breathtaking. This underwater motion capture tech is on full display in all of its glory and every single underwater scene is bloody magical. I visibly smiled and audibly gasped multiple times, so much so that I wish that they had tacked at least another 30 minutes of non-plot non-action related runtime just to soak (pun intended) this new piece of the world in. As much time as we're given to swim with the creatures in this vast, vibrant ocean, I just desperately wanted more of it before we got into the action heavy final act, which of course, is an absolutely spectacular sequence in which James Cameron flexes for us, for the third time in a row, that not a single working director possesses his ability to setup the kind of heavy, weighted, mind boggling scale that he's done twice now since Titanic.

I don't know what the reception of this movie is going to look like several years down the road, whether it will become subject to the same backlash in spite of its achievements, whether it will be doomed to suffer the same cliched, overly tired criticisms that it neglects proper storytelling and characterization, just as the first, but I really hope it's able to rise above that general perception. Either way, I've adored my return trip to Pandora, and I really hope to not wait another 13 years before before I get to go back again.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

Joyous ode to the virtues of questioning authority

[9/10 · 16 December 2022]

This is a wonderful, joyous, often funny adventure through a world filled with monsters, though no monster proves to be more insidious than fascists and those who exploit children. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is an adaptation that subversively reworks the original story's intention to teach children the importance of obedience, and instead aims to teach children the utility and moral value in rebellion and self-advocacy, framing Pinocchio's unruliness not as vices to be ironed out, but as acts of anti-fascist heroism. Every interaction any character has with Pinocchio is one in which he bristles against them, opening up wounds, forcing them to relive and confront past traumas that they've opted to bury in their own ways, whether it be through substance abuse, blind submission to authority, or blind nationalism. Every character before meeting Pinocchio is an open nerve for Pinocchio to torment, though through his chipper prodding at social expectations he finds silly and pointless, those around him are able to find healing, and courage. In that way del Toro's version of the story is a direct rebuke to the moralizing of its source, celebrating the unexpected virtues in disobedience, dishonesty, and poop jokes.

The Fabelmans (2022)

Excellent autobiographical family drama

[8/10 · 16 December 2022]

I find it curious how heavily the marketing leaned into the budding young filmmaker learning through experience various innovative techniques in his craft angle of the story, even utilizing a poster to suggest that this is going to be Spielberg's late in life movie about how much he personally loves movies, or what movies means to him, reminiscent of Cinema Paradiso or Hugo or The Artist, and to a certain extent it is, however, what took me by surprise is the extent to which that angle of the story is relegated to the B-plot, one that delivers a nice spingboard into what is a much smaller family drama, which of course is one that's meant to be a direct parallel to the divorce of Spielberg's own parents. And while you'd think that the premise of this film would mean that the meat of the film is one in which Spielberg depicts himself in coping with the trauma of his parents's marriage falling apart by submersing himself in filmmaking, that aspect of the story is merely the tool by which Sam discovers it. The rest of the movie then puts its focus toward Sam's struggle to see his parents as three dimensional, deeply flawed humans, coming to forgive his mother and understand her mistakes, to understand his father as an emotional being (as opposed to the intellectual robot he'd grown up with), and also in Sam's experience being the only Jewish kid in an American high school in the 60s, with the filmmaking angle being less a focal point of the plot, and simply how Sam attempts to understand his place in all of these events.

A lot of the material here works tremendously well, it's very funny, and the family drama contains emotionally satisfying arcs, however, there's also an arc in which Sam reconciles with his high school bully, a plotline that doesn't begin until there's only 40 minutes left in the movie, which isn't given enough time to breathe before resolving, and the resolution comes so late in the film that there isn't enough time to dedicate towards making it as emotionally compelling as the rest of the drama. Also, none of it really comes together with much to say outside of Spielberg's apparent desire to help audiences understand the angle to which he's approached almost all of his films, and to that effect, yeah, it does make many of his other films make more sense to me, I just wish that the film itself had more it say outside of how it impacts the way you might read Spielberg's other films.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

High-brow repurposing of low-brow comedy

[10/10 · 16 December 2022]

Below-the-belt comedy has occupied a rather unsavory space in American filmmaking for many decades as the domain of the "lesser-comedies," wherein you'll find the Benchwarmers, 90 minutes of guys getting hit in the nuts on loop to get a few cheap laughs (not to impugn anybody who enjoys movies like that, more power to you), whereas the comedies that go off to win big at independent film festivals and rake in glory from the major awards circuits are the movies that eschew comedy of the "common folk" in favor of the comedy stylings of Alexander Payne or Jason Reitman (I'm not saying that in a mocking tone, I love Election and Up in the Air), at least until Swiss Army Man re-popularized the idea of repurposing low-brow comedy into high-brow art, a film that weaved the queasy discomfort of involuntary bodily functions like pooping, farting, and barfing into a legitimately moving tale of friendship centered around those inherently awkward, icky functions, a long overdue re-popularization, as the comedy of buttholes and erections had been a part of the Shakespearean high arts long before Hollywood decided to segregate the "higher" and "lower" comedies.

Since Swiss Army Man we've gotten dozens of indie-arthouse high-brow repurposing of low-brow comedy, including another film from this year by the Daniels, Everything Everywhere All At Once, another emotional powerhouse of a film wherein a couple of cops get beaten to death with some oversized dildos, however, I don't think any film has put the reclamation of low-brow comedy to better use than Triangle of Sadness, a movie with its sites aimed at tackling power dynamics between upper-class people, shoving a diverse array of wealthy people, very wealthy people, ultra-mega-hyper wealthy people, orbiters of the various wealthy classes (models and upper-management workers), as well as the "higher" and "lower" members of the working class whether they be the extremely attractive service workers whom the upper classes exploit for their immediate gratification, or the less visually appealing workers whom are also exploited, though exploited out of sight, relegated to the dredges where they are thanklessly unseen to clean-up after the recreational activities of their employees, all into a confined space where the social barriers are constantly being crossed and redefined, a Rules of the Game brand of socially conscious comedy only enjoyed by critics and hardcore cinephiles, however, Triangle of Sadness also contains within it an epic 35 minute long sequence of setup and epic payoff in the form of one of the longest, most deliciously (pun intended) drawn out extended pooping barfing joke that pulls such ridiculous amount of mileage out of its one joke, finding dozens of innovative ways to keep making the joke funnier and funnier and funnier that the Daniels themselves would explode with jealously. I'm talking a 35 minute extended gag in that does for the poop joke what Inception did with its action sequences, providing a setting that serves purely as an excuse to place a cast of characters in tightly confined corridors where the hallways are constantly moving and shifting to throw characters off balance and send them flying across bedrooms and hallways and stairwells, only instead of using that as an action set piece, it's utilized as a mechanism to send desperately seasick and food poisoned ship passengers hurling (in both meanings of the world) across hallways, slipping and sliding across decadent hardwood floors lubricated by gallons of their own bodily fluids in ways that become increasingly absurd as the minutes drag on. It is without a doubt the most side splitting, screamingly funny single scene in any movie this year.

But the wonderful thing about Triangle of Sadness, is not just in its patient, meticulous, ingeniously laid out extended poop joke, but in the aforementioned, complex array of social-power dynamics laid throughout, as the tilting, shifting ship sending its passengers through a slip n' slide of their own sick, sending passengers of every social caste slamming into each other as a total breakdown of their divides, placing them on the same level with equalized mortality as susception to the whims of mother nature, all the while the drunken folksy Marxist captain of this $250 million dollar yacht intellectually spars with a drunken Russian mega-capitalist about their preferred economic systems (using random pull-quotes they're pulling off of their phones) while over the ship's intercom, blaring out for all of the passengers to hear, which adds yet several more layers to an already multi-layered gag sequence. And once all social barriers have been broken down, we enter into the third act in which the surviving passengers of a pirate raid are marooned onto a deserted island and the power dynamics shift once again, creating a delicious feast of ironies as payoffs to former setups (such as the Russian mega-capitalist quoting Marx to make the case for his own needs being satiated, as soon as he's in a situation where his wealth is worthless, and he brings with him no valuable survival skills). But I haven't even scratched the surface of the litany of nuanced class-based conflicts ripe for analysis laden throughout this fantastic film, and I won't get around to scratching the surface in this review, because I'll have to watch it again with a notepad and pen handy in order to begin writing that review, and I may actually do that as soon as the Holidays are up, but for now I leave on the note of adulation for how a movie this keenly observant of class-power-dynamics, with such a brilliant premise for breaking down and exploring those dynamics in their individual components, does so with the single longest, greatest poop joke in the history of cinema, a stunning achievement on its own.

Tár (2022)

Best performance of the year

[10/10 · 13 December 2022]

Cate Blanchett takes on the most demanding role of her entire career and delivers what is absolutely one of the greatest performances, if not THE greatest performance, ever put on screen, bar none.

It isn't controversial to list Cate Blanchet amongst the top of the greatest actors in her generation. It's a universal constant at this point. It doesn't matter how elementary the material is, she commits to it, dominates it, makes it 100% her own to the point where it feels like she'll go slumming for "lesser" material just to give herself the opportunity to show-off. You'd expect her to be above children movies directed by Eli Roth (The House with the Clock in Its Walls), or Richard Linklater's latest excuse to goof off between his slice-of-life coming-of-age comedies and multi-generation spanning epics (Where'd You Go Bernadette), but much like Nicholas Cage she's a well established prestige actor who will fully commit to any material she's given like it's the last movie she'll ever get to be in (yeah I didn't expect to make a positive comparison of Cate Blanchet to Nicholas Cage when I started writing either). However, it feels like Blanchet has been waiting her entire career to take on material this demanding, as movies this demanding of its actors (in the vein of There Will Be Blood or Larence of Arabia or Carol, another lesbian Cate Blanchet movie) don't come nearly as often as you'd think.

To explain what I mean, take another one of Cate Blanchet's greatest performances for example, Blue Jasmine. Obviously Cate Blanchet carries that movie single-handedly on her shoulders, given no help at all from its weak script and weaker director, simply told to let loose as a spoiled, manic woman on the verge of a mental breakdown after losing all of her wealth (another riches to rags movie starring Cate Blanchett), material that couldn't be more obvious in its lack of ambition, an unguided canvas Woody Allen presented to an all-time great actor knowing she'd make it her own, to share in the rewards of her labor. It's a stunning performance that could only be given by Cate Blanchet, but I wouldn't call it challenging in the same way as Tar (or any of the other aforementioned movies), demanding such utter precision, forcing its audience to pay attention to every gesture, to read her body language and make inferences from its subtleties, to pick up on its subtle tensions and exertions of social power, working in tandem with a cinematographer who must make every scene look dynamic while carefully capturing and excluding exactly as much visual information as required, and the first two hours of this movie is absolutely LOADED with subtle social power dynamics, the most obvious being Lydia's total evisceration of one of her students in that epic fifteen minute single take Julliard classroom shot, one in which Blanchet's understated charisma exudes the animation of an enthusiastic professor eager to pour out her lifetime's wealth of expertise onto her pupil's, drawing her student's into it, but slowly escalating her condescension almost unnoticeably until her student bared before the classroom stunned and humiliated without even a word left to say for himself, which left me staggered through second-hand embarrassment, achieving cataclysmic third degree emotional burns Terrence Fletcher (Whiplash) could only dream himself to be capable of.

And on the note of JK Simmons' a**hole performance as Terrence Fletcher, there is no bigger excessively talented a**hole ever written for the screen that can match Cate Blanchet's Lydia Tar. This point is inarguable. The woman is an utter sociopath and it really took me aback when I finally came to grips with how insanely evil she is. It snuck up on me like nothing else I've seen in any recent movie. Unlike other excessively talented a**holes written for movies, Lydia Tar's snobbishness comes across entirely through inference. Other movie a**holes are written in ways that make the fact that they're a**holes screamingly obvious at their introductions. Jesse Eisenberg's version of Mark Zuck starts the movie snobbishly obsessing over final clubs, in which every other line we find him landing rapid fire sick burns on everybody around him ("you go to JMU," "let me check your math on that"), Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread is immediately introduced as a demanding, hyper-particular, fussy autist whose preferences envelope the lives over everybody around him, JK Simmons in Whiplash throws a chair at a kid's head, as in every example I listed the scripts are tripping over themselves to demonstrate for you that this is an awful person who's only capable of existing in any social space because of their universally recognized talents.

Lydia Tar is far more patient in exercising her social power, kicking down her colleagues, her students, and her orchestra members with seemingly no consequence to herself in breathtakingly long sequences that are all so distinct from one another and memorable, whether it be the opening interview in which Lydia gleefully irritates an interview through a routine of faux-humility, or through that terrific sequence with a student at Julliard, or that other sequence in which she threatens a seven year old, every single scene shows Lydia gradually and repeatedly overplaying her hand, underestimating the fragility of her position and how easily all of her accomplishments can evaporate from under her, overestimating the number of bridges she's capable of burning before there is nothing left to burn, assuming that her position in the upper-echelons of her craft is already cemented, seemingly unaware that even talent as colossal as Mozart can still lead one to end their life in a slum.

And by the end it finally dawned on me the nature of the movie I was watching. Tar is a comedy. Before that delicious punch-line of an ending, I'd found this movie very frequently funny, but I would never have pinned it as a dark tragi-comedy until its bitterly funny, anti-climactic ending. This is probably going to be the best film of the year (though I still have a lot left on my radar to see), I just can't decide yet if right now it's my number one or my number two.

The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM (2022)

Thoroughly incompetent and dishonest

[1/10 · 13 December 2022]

She never once contends with any of the ideas of the BLM movement, barely covers anything about the BLM organization, what she does cover about the BLM organization could have been covered with far more detail in a single news article, the overwhelming majority of that coverage is actually just thinly veiled transphobia, and absolutely none of the points she tried to make about George Floyd are capable of standing without straight up lying about what the opposition believes. However, I severely overestimated her ability to stay on topic and incorrectly predicted she would spend the majority of the duration talking about BLM org corruption as opposed to the movement. She actually only spent 4 minutes on that and instead spent 53 minutes informing us Floyd on was a criminal and pretending the left thinks he's Jesus. So shame on me for putting too much faith in her ability to tell actual substantive lies, instead of just repeating dumb and inconsequential lies.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Park Chan Wook's In the Mood for Love

[9/10 · 17 September 2022]

By the description alone, you may walk into Decision to Leave expecting Park Chan-Wook's Basic Instinct, but what you'll get is Park Chan-Wook's In the Mood for Love, an every-frame-a-painting anti-erotic romance between two lovers held together by a messed up situation, while also being a true-to-form noir film with less setup and payoff but more poetic justice than Chinatown, in Park's least horny film to date. The film centers around an unhappily married police detective put to work on a crime he finds himself not wanting to solve, as he investigates the movie's femme fatale for the murder of her husband, while attempting to work out his uncontrollable attraction to her, forcing both of them to ask themselves how romance can survive when hope for a future together depends upon them leaving the past unresolved. It's a mystery that Park unpacks with uncharacteristic restraint, if only because its ultimate payoff is more of a sinking realization than the kind of sudden bombshell often detonated at the end of his earlier films, requires these characters to remain firmly in the real world, where their adult longings will face adult consequences, though toning down the heightened, wildly over-the-top situations and conclusions from a typical Park fare does not change the fact that the storytelling here, both in its writing and visuals, is done with more precision than anything else he's made so far. Beginning at the sensuous first interrogation scene, which is hardly the first time in a film where an interrogation is framed as an act of seduction, it isn't the potential for sex that gets things moving (like Basic Instinct) as their very obvious affair remains unconsummated, but instead, we're given two unhappy people worming themselves into each other's minds, like faint whispers that may help them finally sleep.

Broker (2022)

Community on the Margins

[9/10 · 17 September 2022]

This is going to have some real "guy who has only seen two movies draws parallels between them" energy, but watching Broker in close proximity to Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is actually a killer double feature, both being mildly funny, comfort movies meditating on community, mainly through spending time with oddballs who've bonded under strange circumstances (something they both have in common with one of the few other Koreada film I've seen, Shoplifters). It takes a village in order to survive, afterall, and the means by which communities can be formed and remain functional is something capitalism seeks to uproot, making it feel as though one must live on societal margins in order to form a community capable of remaining together and thriving.