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Another October spent doing Halloween stuff instead of watching Halloween movies. You should've come by our house.
Anyway, I changed my favorite four to get into the season. Click on the previous favorite four to see the new four:
So many good movies in theaters now (or out already) and so little ability to get into a theater! Why does life have so many good things? And why are humans always asking the stupidest rhetorical questions?
Anyway. I'm fine. How are you?
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| ELSEWHERE something shady |
My stupid school system is broken. Nothing involving an hdmi cord will play and so my bluray player couldn't share it's delights and so a student found a nice little piracy solution to our problem. A brandnew bluray purchased for the class and we can't use it! Very frustrating.
Anyway, because of all the hassle, the movie played a couple past the day-ending bell. Very few students left. Almost everyone stayed. Because how can you leave before Rope ends? Such a good movie.
I hope they remember everything they wanted to say when we reconvene tomorrow.
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| HOME library dvd |
I mean, there are a lot of movies out there. It would be fine if I'd never gotten around to them. But you know what? They're a pretty great example of what broad blockbuster entertainment can be.
Plus. Awkwafina playing Danny DeVito? The world needed that.
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| HOME Peacock |
I knew so little about this coming in. For instance, that it ends in 2027. Maybe I should have waited one more year!
Anyway, it's campy and dumb and fun and went better places than I predicted.
Gotta take care of those bodies, folks.
[just redid the math---ends in 2029]
(Vibeswise, reminded me at times of Joe Versus the Volcano and Beetlejuice—both in good ways.)
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| ELSEWHERE our bluray |
They were lukewarm on Keaton's "One Week" (what?!?) and unimpressed by Lloyd's "I Do" (fair) but Modern Times was a hit. I honestly think if you're over the age of thirteen and coming to silents for the first time, one of the great comic features is the way to go.
Of course Modern Times isn't technically silent. The boss speaks in those opening scenes. It has a score. Chaplin sings a terrific nonsense number near the end. But it largely behaves like a silent.
In the Criteron Collection's notes is this great quotation from Chaplin:
Chaplin once told fellow filmmaker Jean Cocteau that a film was like a tree: when shaken, it shed everything loose and unnecessary, leaving onnly it's essential form. For the man who had created the most beloved film character of all time, spoken dialogyue was merel a decorative leaf distracting attention from the strdy oak of performance.... Chaplin's Tramp had needed no words to communicate.
--- Saul Austerlitz
This is so wise. Austerlitz goes on to remind us that characters yapping "slows action because action must wait on words." Now, I love hyperverbal film (Marx Brothers! My Girl Friday! that final scene of Clue!), but I think we've plenty of room to let some movies shake that all off and reveal what's left. Bring it on.
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| HOME library dvd |
I think I wasn't excited about this movie because the trailer gave me Big Hero 6 vibes, a movie I did not like. Then I heard some online chatter. And while some was positive it was mostly negative.
But now I've seen the movie. And . . . I think some people don't read film very well.
Apparently a lot of people saw cute animals and guy who wants to build a freeway and felt like the movie was a simple eco-fable. Or a simple marxist screed. Or something simple and allegorical.
But this movie is not that simple. It can be read simply, but any simple reading is going to be slightly off. Every simple reading has at least one moment in the film that straigh-up disagrees.
I just started reading a book called Re-Reading Job and in the early pages one of its main arguments is you need to read a text as it asks you to read it. Don't complain that the Inferno doesn't correctly model the Earth's mantle and core, for instance.
A common problem with movies is that trailers teach us to watch one movie when the movie itself demands to be read a different way. Maybe by having characters say
— Whoa, guys, this is just like Avatar.
— This is nothing like Avatar!
might be intended to tell us the movie's nothing like Avatar but when it's the trailer's clearest message it hand, in fact, the opposite effect.
Anyway, my point is this is nothing like Avatar. (As far as I understand Avatar, not having seen it.) It's also not right to complain about the details of this film's science (physics, biology, tech). While the film has some secondary messages about the environment and the biosphere, what the film is actually about is people. And it rejects the rejection of compromise. This is a film that believes in listening, even to the enemy. Believing in others, even though who have failed you. These are difficult messages. And that's why the film contradicts every single one of them.
Also? Hoppers is hilarious. The back of the dvd had a critical blurb claiming it's the funniest Pixar movie ever, an astonishingly bold claim. Reckless, even. But I tell you what. It's a very funny movie. I'm not the one to argue funniest, but reasonable people may.
Point is, if you judged this film by its trailer or from Bluesky comments about how its liberal credentials were sullied by it's insufficient alignment with the revolution, maybe leave all that to the side and read it for yourself. I think you'll be glad you did.
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| HOME Peacock |
Lady Steed and I saw Caroline when it first came out. Although there's not tons of competition, it remains easily the best 3d experience I've ever had.
Every Laika film has been brilliant (yes, some better than others, but all marvelous) and I'm excited for Wildwood next month. And I intend to prioritize it. No more making the mistake of watching a subpar Disney film instead of Boxtrolls or even a good Marvel movie instead of Missing Link. It may open the same day as temptations like Clayface, Klara and the Sun, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and Wicker, but Wildwood it is! Hold me to this.
Anyway, how does Coraline hold up? It's been almost twenty years, after all.
Well, that's one of the magic of making real things. It still looks amazing. It's still beautiful and strange and warm and cold and surprising and terrifying and delightul.
Planning to cram Paranorman into this Halloween season too. I think either it or Boxtrolls is my favorite and it's been a while. Let's do this. Let's watch Laika movies.
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| HOME library dvd |
This film is beautifully shot. The incredible cast does good work. The dialogue was well written. It's edited into a complex but coherent form. It's morally complex with high stakes. The characters are interesting and compelling. Everything is subtle and respectful of the audience's attention. The puzzlings are puzzling and ultimately satisfying. Makeup, costuming: both excellent. Thematically rich. Solid motifs galore. All the pieces, in other words, are pretty darned great.
And yet—and maybe this is just because it is two hours and forty-eight minutes long and we watched it over the last three hours of the day?—it didn't really build up to much. I think I'll remember all the good stuff, but the movie itself left me a tad hollow and uncertain. Not in a good way, Just in a hollow and uncertain way.
If it weren't so danged long, I'd definitely have to watch it again to see if I appreciate the whole more once it's already in my head.
This is a real downside to making movies that are two hours and forty-eight minutes long.
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| HOME library dvd |
Lady Steed's first time. She had been very afraid and found it very stressful and never wants to see it again but it doesn't seem to be nightmare fuel.
Me, knowing the major beats (although many details were left to resurpsise me), was able to enjoy it the way I enjoy Psycho, probably my favorite movie of the genre. But honestly, this isn't a lick behind, neither in suspense nor filmmaking.
But Demme's not the only star of the show. Hopkins and Foster and both topnotch, absolutely deserving of their Oscars. But the camera heightens their performances. That back-and-forth in Memphis! It's a real team effort and no wonder they all went home with prizes.
We have the Criterion from the library and there's lots of cool stuff on there. Not sure I'll get a chance to watch any of it, but here's to hoping!
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| ELSEWHERE our dvd |
Between a day off, a guest speaker, excerpting 2001, a couple experimental films from the '50s, and screening two student films, we did very little of the much much reading I had planned for this week. We crammed in ten minutes of writing before going home (on Barbie as a Garden-of-Eden story via gnosticism and bodies) and had to call it good.
Watching it broken into three days (not ideal) and I did feel the kind of NO feelings lots of old men have complained about over the first two thirds of the movie. It is, yes, over the top and kind of a lot. But even coming into the finale not fully in the right place, I wept and was completely onboard with the uttre beauty of the conclusion.
This movie's something special.
Incidentally, the trailer's out for Greta Gerwig's next movie and were it not for my utter faith in her, I would be tapping out. But I believe in you, Greta. Please prove me right.
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| HOME library dvd |
Some obvious nods to Wings of Desire but Keanu's much more fun and personable. Overall, this quasi–body-swap comedy works well. It's an entertaining movie and doesn't make obvious choices until the end. Seth Rogan's final speech is a bitpandering to a contemporary audience, but I'll bet it works for most people.
Overall, a fine movie. Time well spent.
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| THEATER The Roxie |
Well, I mean.
Of course, we went in expecting it to be strange and uncomfortable and confusing. And it was all those things.
But talking about it later, we worked some things out. Still have plenty of questions (not all, I think, can be answered). And our conversation, if anything, made Lady Steed like it less, but having the pieces come together gave me more appreciations.
In short, it's a time-travel–paradox movie with vampires. It's clearly in conversation with Double Indemnity and Vertigo (and the whole Hitchcock project), but the supernatural stuff is probably impossible to disentangle. And maybe rightly so. If we suddenly fell into a world with such different rules, would we figure it out?
It's very much a movie about sex and violence (particularly, sex as the fuel of violence), and Lynch seems to be working some things out he'll come back to in Mulholland Dr..
Lady Steed complains that the movie largely seemed an excuse to put boobs on the screen and that's fair (although the way he shoots Patricia Arquette's lips is arguably sexier). But we both agree that the tailgating scene (also violent) is one of his best comic scenes. I think if I were listing my top-five Lynch scenes, it'd probably make the cut.
[RELATED ANECDOTE: Lady Steed brought the Lost Highway soundtrack into our marriage. It's pretty good, and loaded with music I otherwise never would have heard. The only stuff I didn't like was the two Marilyn Manson songs. But I think I'm right about disliking them BECAUSE we found that this was an excellent cd to play while driving around because it would put Baby O to sleep. It was one of the most surefire ways to help him sleep in the car. However. It was necessary to skip those Marilyn Manson songs as quickly as possible because they would wake him right up and set him to screaming.]
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| ELSEWHERE Kanopy |
A prototype of future slashers where randy innocents show up at some out-of-the-way place and get themselves killed, everyone survives here and it's even a proper comedy with an accepted proposal to end things out, but the film was excellent and genuinely unsettling. I'll need to think about it, but I think this might be the most James-Whalian horror film, even more than his Frankensteins or Invisible Man. It's so elegant and weird and queer-coded (especially at the end). Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein's Pretorius makes a terrific appearance here.
Honestly, it's such a great movie. Just after the introduction of the code or I think a couple moments might have been even more awful. But in short, I really liked it. And only 71 minutes!
ADDENDUM:
Other things I meant to say but I was in a rush.
1) The movie looks great. Some cool depth-of-field stuff. In one scene the faces were distorted as if in an attempt to make Bunuel jealous.
2) Made between Whale's two Frankensteins, he makes strong use of Karloff in a similar role. It's the differences that are striking.
3) The handsome young male leads are good (props to Charles Laughton doing a stellar British John Candy) but the handsome young female leads are dizzying. Lilian Bond gets topbilling and she is vivacious and charming, but Gloria Stuart is a nonpareil beauty.
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| ELSEWHERE Hoopla |
I feel like this and Manhattan (and maybe Hannah and Her Sisters) are the films most often noted as Woody Allen's highest achievements. This is the first of the three I've seen. (Somehow, our checklisting of Woody Allen fell off over the lsat decade. I wonder why.) And it's excellent.
You'll be glad to know that today's teenagers are down on infidelity and murder. And very happy to debate morality and existentialism. (This really was a good film for talking about Sartre.)
The structure of the film is so interesting. It's almost like the two plots—like the one is a foil to the primary one, like the one exists primarily to give us a secondary angle (or further depth?) on the primary.
It's amazing that a solitary scene of magical realism can work in a movie.
The cast is great. I love the way Allen uses actors. He casts so well then provides the right things for those actors to do. And although many of the extended-family characters don't get much to do, they feel like real people in a real world.
Anyway, choose love. Choose happiness. Choose beauty. And don't leap out any windows.
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| HOME Tubi |
I can't believe I watched it either.
I was looking for something halloweeny and short and this came up and I laughed and I clicked on it.
I doubt I would have made it through had I not been watching it at 1.8x. I mean—it's a zero-budget pandemic film. One should not expect that much.
It's a two-hander: scantily clad girl and giant blurry finger (who also cowrote and, you know, did everything else as well). The size of the giant blurry finger and exactly how he moves through space is never entirely clear.
It starts off as a horror movie (I'm about to tell you everything without feeling the least bit bad) then turns to softcore then becomes a romcom as she teached him about movies and the earth and literature and banana pancakes then back to softcore before turning into a videogamey domestic-violence drama then cycles through a number of violent touchstones including a macguyvery scene where she makes body armor and a weapon, then back to softcore just long enough to kill him a second time (papercuts) then they totally love each other and then he flies away and destroys the earth. Phew.
Look, I'll bet this was a lot of fun for them to make. But like a lot of things that are a lot of fun to make (I'm looking at you, James Joyce), no one else needs to see this. But hey. Good for them.
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| ELSEWHERE our dvd |
Lady Steed and I watched this when we were first married as we decided to culture ourselves. We rented an old, worn VHS tape and watched it on our tiny lo-res tv and could barely tell what the images were and could hardly read the subtitles. Amazed we pressed through the entire 138 minutes.
I knew some students would like the movie (and luckily I was right) but I worried I would not, given my distaste for La Strada. And I did not. I was bored as all get out. There might be a seventy-minute good movie in here, but c'mon. Buñuel knew not to sit us down this long. But! As I said! Some people like it. Even modern teenagers. And I like plenty movies that could be described as this (or another Fellini movie) is, so why my distaste?
I think the movie's morality is part of it. Buñuel means his nonsense. Fellini's is an excuse. Malick believes people and the world matter. Fellini thinks he matters. 8½ has some great shots but they feel incidental, accidental, superfluous, indulgent. In other words, 8½ feels less like a discrete and coherent work of art and more like a bunch of stuff.
Anyway, this is the movie I'm least likely to bring back to class next year.
(But it's still better than Beau Travail.)
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| ELSEWHERE library dvd |
This library dvd is blue, like a dvd-r. I've never seen a legit movie dvd be blue before (and by all other measures, it seems legit)—was it a clever thing because of the title? Anyway, it wouldn't work in the player I usually use, a little thing that connects to a computer. Had to use a dedicated player to make it work. Curious.
Anyway, I get the praise heaped on the film. But as good as Hawke and Kennedy and Qualley and they all are, what makes the movie truly work is Andrew Scott. His love for the Ethan Hawke character and his disappointment in him and his discomfort with him and his sadness for both him and what they once had is tangible, haptic. It's not big. But it's there. And that complicated mix of emotions is what clarifies every other scene and relationship in the movie. Not that the movie is a muddle or anything otherwise, but that ray of absolute pain and love woven together puts every other thing into its proper place.
(I was a little annoyed by the invented just-so where Hart give EB White the idea for Stuart Little. A little Forrest Gumpy, I thought. But I did like the choice of Andy as foil.)
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