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The end of summer and the start of a new school year. Blow in, blow out, blow on.
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| HOME our dvd |
Motivated to finally watch this because of Disclosure Day and I'm happy to say I liked this waaaaaay more. Close Encounters is a pretty great movie. I really loved the sound design and I loved how mundanely it approaches the material. This is just a bunch of normal people stumbling around not really sure of what they're doing but moving forward anyway.
This film has a lot of elements from other Spielberg movies. The family here is similar to that in E.T. (though I like this family better; I believe in them more as people and I believe in their pain).
Ends up Close Encounters was an even bigger gap in my film education than I realized—I saw references to so many other movies...that came out in years later and that I never knew were referring to this movie. Not just alien movies (though No One Will Save You and Nope were the highest on my mind, but comparing it to something like Nope which took Close Encounters's clouds and did knew things with them. But you know what? Nope's clouds aren't any better. Close Encounters still looks great.
And...I just really liked it.
ps: I like Bob Balaban's interpretation of Richard Dreyfuss ala Jaws.
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| THEATER Century Cinemark Hilltop 16 |
The Odyssey (2020)
Not as loud this time, which I really missed, but huge upside: I understood all the dialogue.
Samantha Morton and Anne Hathaway deserve acting nominations, but Matt Damon carries the movie. As Conor said, "i’ve been a matt damon-odysseus skeptic since the casting was first announced, but man, he is used to great effect here! his like ‘everyman’ vibes and general, you-wanna-root-for-him energy really helps bring the audience along emotionally with his whole grief/mourning/regret/i’m lost arc" (he also recommends reading this which I expect I will).
I get why people cringe at Nolan's dialogue (looking at you, "dad," "age of bronze") but it really doesn't bother me for some reason. And let's not forget that Nolan occasionally delivers iconic lines. It'll be intersting to see how The Odyssey's words settle into the broader culture.
In fun facts, Damon as the same problem with his lower teeth that I do. So maybe I should stop daydreaming about invisalign.
Something that has struck me in both viewings is how excellent a film this is about a long marriage. I wouldn't have thought it as, you know, they're apart almost the entire time, but the scenes Odysseus and Penlope get together make it work as a work about the whole.
ADDENDUM ADDED ABOUT THIRTY HOURS LATER
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| HOME library dvd |
Watched it with Lady Steed and Son3 and they're both complaining how confusing it was. I didn't find it confusing. The repeat of the one fight scene was projected far ahead of time and the plot is a basic macguffin deal not much different from the final Mission:Impossible. The structure ofthe movie itself is straightforward. It seems more complicated thanks to its speed, alternate time directions, etc; butit's loaded with expository dialogue that explains things just as well for the audience as the characters.
So it's a fun excercise but a pretty basic action thriller. I imagine Nolan wrote this one just to create interesting problems for him to them solve in-camera and boy oh boy but did he succeed. The movie looks great. The library dvd came with a whole disc of special features. I don't think I'll have time to get to them, but I'l love to learn how he pulled off the time-altered aspects of the storyline.
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| THEATER Century Cinemark Hilltop 16 |
This was a long (but consistently entertaining!) movie. I have a few negative comments (look: it was cool in Thor: Ragnarok but enough with the slomo diagonals!) but honestly on first watch, they didn't matter. The redundancies might grate on a second watch but who knows if there'll ever be one? Not me!
Leaving, Son2 noted that the great strength of the first two movies was the banter between friends. Movie three (in a lazy solution to the interesting problem they ended two with only to basically ignore in three) left Peter Parker unknown to the universe and so he has no friends. But there are a couple moments where that dynamic is almost returned and it's great. The credits promised that SPIDER-MAN WILL RETURN so maybe that will return. Or maybe not. Who knows.
Anyway, spoiler warning.
I saw a comment online about "Frank" getting dropped into the movie. I didn't think much about it until he showed up onscreen (oh.Frank.) but that didn't bother me at all. It gave someone for Spidey to banter with and that was a plus. I didn't watch his Disney+ show so I only know about this version of the Punisher from the three hours I just spent with him but I liked him. More than I usually like the Punisher. And as Jon Bernthal is also Menelaus this month, he's making a rel push to get on this list. Did you hear last weekend was the biggest in box-office history?
I'm particularly glad I didn't know Jean Grey was in the movie. I haven't seen most of the X-Men movies on none of them that are JEAN GREY stories, but it seems like they (as the comics before, during, and after them) have a real Jean Grey problem, where she becomes so enormous that everything is necessarily about her. Sort of a Superman problem only, somehow, bigger. That said, I thought she was an intriguing character in this movie and I hope it all works out (as opposed to, for instance, her being a deus ex machina to solve Doomsday).
The movie has allowed the cast to age which is great.
Um. I keep getting interruped and can't really remember what I wanted to say.
But that last word of the movie had better not negate everything they spent the entire movie insisting must be true. There's another interpretation that totally works but right now the movie left us with a schrödinger's twist and that makes me nervous. but we'll see! After all, SPIDER-MAN WILL RETURN.
(Oh! The funniest line was when MJ said that, before switching to aerospace, she'd been in biomechanics. Comic-book worlds are hilarious.)
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| HOME Prime Video |
Young awkward goofy Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man.
Also interesting that the Vulture has the wisest things to say in this movie, and in only the first full year of the Trump era.
A couple contradictory points of plot but while enjoying the ride they're easy to forgive.
Anyway. One of the best Spider-Man films.
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| HOME our dvd (the bluray player won't talk with the speaker so for the original dvd worked best) |
Mother.
Father.
Always you wrestle inside me.
Always you will.
Sons two and three bought me the Criterion bluray for my birthday and son two had been wanting to watching it for a few months so tonight we did. (Incredibly, the 9yrold also watched it with us; color me impressed even if she "is gonna stick with regular movies from now on.")
Over the course of the movie I felt every possible and experienced every possible thought from will we be our own psychopomps to is it me, Lord? to are we all our psychosexuality poorly wrapped in skin.
Can't wait to watch the extended version.
Incidentally, it seems in none of my previous reviews did I link to Eric Samuelsen's praise of the film which is first what made me really want to see it.
I read the Book of Job in The Message in June and just started Robert Alter's comment-heavy translation this week, and so I thought Job would be the largest influence on my thinking this watch. But in fact, the book that passed through my mind most often was Wild at Heart (followed by the two Criterion essays), a book I read almost twenty years about (in part) the damage fathers due to sons and the need for Jesus.
I've been trying to give up the logic of original sin, of a fallen world, but my reading of Tree of Life this time seems to lean into them. Until you realize, no, we have been misunderstanding all along. Which brings up back to the Book of Job and to the Gospels and to the greatness of Mother.
Final comment: it's amazing that the three brothers (played by Michael Shannon, Brad Pitt, and Barry Keoghan) all look entirely like they could in fact me the genetic progeny of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. And they're all so good, too. What casting.
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| THEATER Century Cinemark Hilltop 16 |
This was great. I haven't seen his calling-card film, but otherwise, David Robert Mitchell has made one of the alltimegreat horror films, a Lynch-worthy L.A. noir, and the best dinosaur movie since Jurassic Park. That is an incredible run.
I don't want to spoil anything at this early date (I WANT YOU TO GO SEE THE MOVIE) so let me just say that this is one of the greatest movies for giving you your cake and letting you eat it too. And without any cheating.
1982 looked great but I would offer the slight criticism that, as good as it might be for lighting, cars then didn't turn on their headlights just because you turned the ignition to access the tapedeck.
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| ELSEWHERE YouTube |
I didn't remember this film was long enough to qualify for this list when I decided to show it to my Film & Philosophy class. We had already watched another (even according to this list's requirements) short and discussed it then I pulled up this 36-minuter with 37 seconds to go. D'oh!
Not a crime or anything but holy moly did they want to talk and yet—class was over. Weekend had arrived.
That's the way things go sometime. Even so, about a dozen kids hung out for at least a couple minutes because they couldn't just ignore it entirely.
Lesson? This is a good one. Keep it.
(Incidentally, I'm keeping track of everything I show F&P and you're welcome to follow along if you like.)
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| ELSEWHERE our dvd |
Now, granted, kids who sign up for a class called Film & Philosophy should like something like Cinema Paradiso but while I'm watching it (enjoying it thoroughly) I can't help but think, gee, what kind of a movie is this? What sorta plot's this?
But of course they loved it.
Everyone loves it.
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| HOME Prime Video |
So....
After Nolan's movie I read several lists of other Odysseys and this seemed like the most interesting one.
It's probably not.
It's a, um, psychosexual riff on early Bunuel that thinks it's Eraserhead but is not. It's kinda dull and repetitive and occasionally deeply unfunny. It thinks it has a clever twist at the end, but let's just say I've rarely been less surprised. The only reason I didn't predict it is because when Ulysses finally found his wife it didn't matter so I assumed they'd run out of ideas—even cliches—to fall back on.
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| HOME library dvd |
I understand the reviews from the time.
The film is beautifully shot. The actors are famous and beautiful and interesting and talented and well used. And yet.
And yet the film kind of rambles. It's not quite willing to show its cards early enough to raise the stakes and then, when it does reveal them, it just keeps revealing and revealing them.
It's kind of a mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess.
I think it could have been saved in the edit. It needed to be maybe half an hour shorter. Would've helped a lot, done right.
Ah well. So it goes.
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