Tag: Skip

One and Two is a Story Missing a Story

One and Two

The review:

While Andrew Droz Palermo’s work as a cinematographer for A Ghost Story should be celebrated, the same cannot be said of the directing skills on display in One and Two which is a movie so boring that I couldn’t even find anything to hate about it.* This is a film that shouldn’t be bothered with as the unexplained stuff is never explained, or even hinted at,** the time period is unclear for much of the film, and the ending doesn’t give any clues about the future. The only possible reason to watch this film is to see what Kiernan Shipka and Timothée Chalamet make of their roles.***

The verdict: Skip

Cost: $3.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so bored by a movie.
**We know the kids have powers, we know their father fears these powers, we don’t know where the powers come from, what causes the father to fear, how or if the mother’s illness is connected to the powers, or how that massive wall got built.
***Chalamet gets to emote a lot, which I think he enjoys. Shipka brings her ability to puzzle through and push against things. I quite like this vibe, which was present when she played Sally Draper in Mad Men and I’m curious if this is her thing, or if she does other things in other roles. Perhaps I will check out the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Questions:

  • Is it worth it to you to watch the movie just for the performances? Why or why not?
  • How do you think that wall got built?
  • How useful do you think the siblings’ powers would be?

Other reviews:

One and Two

Men, Women & Children is Worth Missing

Men, Women & Children

The review:

Men, Women & Children continues to prove that I love Jason Reitman when paired with Diablo Cody’s writing, and not so much any other time.* Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy watching this film; I spent my time trying to figure out why this was such a bad movie.** This movie is populated with actors I adore*** yet it was a terrible, terrible film.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: free via Hoopla, the library’s lesser streaming service. 13 Going on 30 is on there now. Watch that instead.
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

  • The Meyerowitz Stories (Serious Adam Sandler!)
  • Laggies (More Kaitlyn Dever!)
  • The Ice Storm (really brutal Ang Lee!)
  • Boogie Nights (Porn stars! But through Paul Thomas Anderson’s lens)

Further sentences:

*Juno I love. Young Adult I love. Tully I adore (and why haven’t you watched it yet?) Up in the Air left me cold. Granted, I still need to see Thank You for Smoking, Labor Day, and The Front Runner to have a clear picture, but so far non-Cody-written films aren’t winning.
**My verdict: it might be a book-to-movie problem. It’s certainly a too-many-characters problem. With about ten character arcs, people get flattened to one personality point. Because the movie is about sex and the internet, every single character interaction save one couple has to do with sex. Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever were my two favorite characters because their interactions had nuance. (And they had nothing to do with sex.) As someone who is interested in depictions of sex in film and books, this was fascinating. Update! I read the first section of the book on which the film was based to see if the characters were more well rounded. They were not and the dialogue was wooden. This was not a book-to-movie-problem, the story wins in no formats. (Though maybe interpretive dance?)
***Rosemarie DeWitt! Judy Greer! Emma Thompson! Jennifer Garner! Kaitlyn Dever! Serious Adam Sandler!

Questions:

  • Have you seen this? Did you find anything redeeming?
  • What do you think the key to a good ensemble cast movie is?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Writer, producer, and director Jason Reitman felt so much of the acting in this movie was based on reactions to texts, chats, and photos that using dummy screens with no text would not suffice. The production team had to create very realistic-looking versions of popular websites, all on their own tightly controlled software, with which the actors and actresses could interact in real time. According to Reitman, they spent “the same amount of budget on creating the digital world as we did creating the physical one. People know what Facebook looks like better than they do a hotel lobby, you stare at it all day, so it had to be convincing.”

I did think this was one aspect that the movie did well.

Men, Women & Children

Lady Macbeth: Great Acting; Good Scenery

Lady Macbeth

The review:

William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth is a great opportunity for Florence Pugh to dazzle you with her acting, and for Ari Wegner to dazzle you with his cinematography. It was one of those movies where early on I didn’t go for a plot turn,* and thus didn’t believe the rest of the movie was possible. It was also fairly unpleasant subject matter** which made for a tedious viewing experience punctuated with great sweeping views of the English landscape.

The verdict: Skip

Unless watching for Florence Pugh’s acting.

Cost: Free via Kanopy, the library streaming service
Where watched: at home.

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*And worse, the turn in plot had me asking, “Did a man direct this film?” He did, as it turned out, but a woman wrote it.
**To be fair, they gave me fair warning with the title. It’s not like Mr. Macbeth was a cheery cruise ship director-type. And I read a synopsis of the 1865 novella the movie is based on,*** and this seems to be a much briefer portrait.
***Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Questions:

  • Did I miss a switch from revulsion to attraction? Did you see it?
  • What do you think happened after the film ended?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

iFeatures is a joint collaboration between the BBC and the BFI. Every year, they produce three feature films for £350,000 as a springboard for first-time directors. Lady Macbeth (2016) was chosen out of over 300 applicants.

It looks like Oldroyd hasn’t directed anything since, which is too bad. I would be willing to watch something else he directed.

Lady Macbeth

Following is a Brief Film

Following

The review:

Christopher Nolan’s Following is embryonic Nolan,* and is a good showcase of what we put up with in the 90s when it came to independent films.** I always enjoy a shifting timeline, so that was a win, but I found that the distance of all of the characters made it difficult to care about what was happening on screen.*** It’s nice to know that better Nolan films were on deck.

The verdict: Skip

(Unless Nolan Completest, or watching to keep up with Filmspotting’s Oeuvre-view.)

Cost: $2.99 via Google Play****
Where watched: at home

Consider watching these other Christopher Nolan films instead:

Further sentences:

*Including its paltry 69-minute (that’s one hour and nine minutes!) run time.
**A lot, including so-so acting. This wasn’t quite the showcase of 90s indie annoyances as Next Stop Wonderland was, but it did have a lot of them.
***The black and white felt like a bit much.
****The median length of a film between 1994 and 2015 is 107 minutes which means this should have cost $1.70 proportionally. (And yes! I just used algebra to solve that problem!)

Questions:

  • What did you think of Lucy Russell’s acting? Decent for the role that was written? Or not good?
  • Did you figure out the ending before the ending?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Principal photography of this film took more than one year. Because all cast and crew members had other full-time jobs they were only able to film about 15 minutes of footage on Saturdays until photography had been completed.

Following
(I do!)

The Lobster Wasn’t a Good Dinner For Me

The Lobster

The review:

Yorgos Lanthimos created an interesting world in The Lobster,* but it’s a world I didn’t want to spend much time in, which made this movie a long slog. That said, there are a great many amusing scenes in this film** and it’s quite funny. I especially liked the deadpan nature of all the characters, especially Olivia Colman as the Hotel Manager and Ariane Labed as the Maid.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: Free from Kanopy, the library’s streaming service
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Fun fact: when I googled “movies like the Lobster” one of the recommendations was Definitely, Maybe #algorithmfail

Further sentences:

*It’s kind of like a dark Wes Anderson world.
**And a more than a few disturbing ones.

Questions:

  • What do you think happened after the final scene?
  • How do you think this particular society evolved?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The production worked almost entirely with natural light and without makeup. Lighting was only used for some night scenes.

Other reviews:

The Lobster

All the Bright Places: Stick With the Book

All the Bright Places

The Review:

Brett Haley’s All the Bright Places is a romance with a bit of bipolar and hints of suicide.* Elle Fanning is great: she captures the emotions her character Violet travels through, from depressed despair to love and back again. The film does a disservice by not confronting the darkness; it’s content to bask in the love story.**

The verdict: Skip

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*This is one of those reviews where I’ve read the book and liked the book and even though it’s been a few years since reading, the plot is still very clear in my mind and does a much better job of getting across the point which is: mental illness is tough and even when you love someone it’s not the thing that’s going to fix their illness.
**It is good at capturing that early love stage, though perhaps too much dependent on montage.

Questions:

  • Do you think a film can accurately capture the complexities of bipolar disorder and falling in love? It seems a tall order.
  • Justice Smith. What did you think of his performance?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Elle Fanning’s first credit as producer on a feature film.

Other reviews:

All the Bright Places

Purple Rain: Excellent Musical Performances

(not great everything else)

Purple Rain

The review:

I’m thankful that Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain exists, not because of the acting (not good) or the plot (mostly terrible), but because I never got to be a young person watching an ascendant Prince play at a small club in Minneapolis and if it weren’t for this movie, I wouldn’t ever have that opportunity. This is a movie where women are easily discarded objects* and with a main character who, even though we see what demons are driving him, isn’t likable,** and the plot had me drifting off to sleep more than once. But when Prince gets on stage, every synapse snapped to attention.***

The verdict: Skip

(Or watch only for the performances)

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*Example: a woman asks a man where he was last night and the man has another man throw her into a dumpster.
**As noted, he is not a good actor. He is particularly bad at kissing while acting, which just looked gross.
***Good lord, could that man perform. Morris Day and the Time were great too.

Questions:

  • Is it worth watching a terrible movie for the performances when only 25% of the movie is performances?
  • Have you seen Prince in anything good?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

An early, simpler version of the unpronounceable symbol that Prince changed his name to during his dispute with Warner Bros. Records is painted on the side of his motorcycle’s gas tank. It also appears on a wall of the overpass he rides under during “When Doves Cry.”

Purple Rain

Ford v Ferrari Zooms and Drags

(The cars make that zooming sound repeatedly. The plot drags.)

Ford v Ferrari

The review:

James Mangold gives us a male gaze turned inward* with Ford v Ferrari and also spends a lot time filmsplaining.** If you can get past the very long plot*** it might be worth watching for Matt Damon’s controlled Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale’s puckish Ken Miles, plus Noah Jupe’s second very good performance in 2019.**** I found this to be overly tedious and exactly the film I was not at all interested in, but because it got a best picture nomination, I did my due diligence.

The Verdict: Skip

(Unless racing floats your boat in which case you’ve probably already seen this.)

Cost: $9.25 (but free due to gift card)
Where watched: Regal Cascade (a new theater for me!)

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*While the male gaze tends to objectify women, the male gaze turned inward seems to think that everything men does is incredibly fascinating. Which is not the case.
**Flimsplaining. When a movie does this:
—-Character 1: I’m going to run the Quarter 30 in August
—-Character 2: But 500 men tried to run the Quarter 30 in August last year and all of them have failed! For you to do so would set a world record, bring you fame and fortune, and it would mean you can finally marry Lucille! You’re amazing, man, but I don’t know if it can be done.
—-Next scene: Character 1 runs the Quarter 30 in August.
***The cast of characters has to be assembled, the car has to be built, men in suits must be argued with, the qualifying race has to be won, the actual race has to be raced, and then instead of being over, the film keeps going.
****The first was in Honey Boy. This movie required him to pretend to watch a lot of things and he wasn’t the greatest at that acting task. But when interacting with people, he was great.

Questions:

  • Would you ever take a ride in a race car, as Henry Ford II did?
  • Can you think of a female-focused car racing movie?
  • What worked well for you in this film?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Matt Damon and Christian Bale agreed that the brawl between their respective characters was the most fun scene to film. Both have experience with extensively choreographed fight scenes that take weeks to learn so it was a positive change that they only had to rehearse the brawl for twenty minutes and weren’t required to look lethal while doing it.

Other reviews:

Ford v Ferrari

Joker Left Me Shrugging

Joker

The review:

Todd Phillips attempts to bring gravitas to the comic book movie genre with Joker. While the brouhaha was strong for this movie* the film exists so that Joaquin Phoenix can remind us that he is the best actor of his generation. The movie is not nearly as bloody as I had assumed from the chatter, but the story didn’t hold** and ultimately I was left shrugging.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: $1.80 via Redbox
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*Joker is horrible, the worst of modern movies, Todd Phillips is a hack/Joker is a masterpiece, the pinnacle of achievement, Todd Phillips is a genius.
**I’m on bored with Arthur Fleck’s descent into madness, it’s just he’s so incredibly fragile it seems there is no way he can recover enough to actually plot crimes to try and defeat Batman. I see there is a Joker 2 in the works, so presumably we will get a follow up.

Questions:

  • If you thought this film was a masterpiece, what qualities elevated it for you?
  • If you thought this film was horrible, what qualities left you with that impression?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Joaquin Phoenix said about the 52 lb weight loss: “Once you reach the target weight, everything changes. Like so much of what’s difficult is waking up every day and being obsessed over like 0.3 pounds. Right? And you really develop like a disorder. I mean, it’s wild. But I think the interesting thing for me is what I had expected and anticipated with the weight loss was these feelings of dissatisfaction, hunger, a certain kind of vulnerability and a weakness. But what I didn’t anticipate was this feeling of kind of fluidity that I felt physically. I felt like I could move my body in ways that I hadn’t been able to before. And I think that really lent itself to some of the physical movement that started to emerge as an important part of the character.”

Other reviews:

Joker

Rocketman is Mostly a Disappointment

Rocketman

The review:

I had high hopes that Rocketman, Dexter Fletcher’s biopic of Elton John was going to bypass a lot of the biopic dreck and do something unusual* and these hopes were smashed on the shores of the very crowded Biopic Beach. So it is that we get much too many scenes of rock star excess** plus the movie’s jukebox musical format made everything confusing.*** I did enjoy the costumes (which are the usual perk of the biopic) and Taron Egerton’s performance, including watching his hair thin and recede.

The verdict: skip

(or watch it for the clothing)

Cost: $1.25 via Redbox
Where watched: at home (first movie of 2020!)

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*This was primarily because of the interesting levitation shown during the preview. I thought there would be more magical realism in the movie. While I think the levitation did nicely get across the feeling of “that was the night that everything started and everyone there knew it” there wasn’t much magical realism in this movie.
**Props for showing some bulimia to augment the standard drug/alcohol tropes. Eating disorders often go along with addiction and it is very rare to see a portrayal of a man with an eating disorder.
***The jukebox musical format worked better in Blinded by the Light where the songs of a singer were sung and danced to by people who are not the artist who produced the music. When Taron Egerton breaks into Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” while playing at the bar as a teenager and all the patrons start dancing I am perplexed. Is the movie saying that song was written then? Before he met Bernie Taupin? Also, the framing device of Elton John’s story being told while in rehab is not used constantly enough. It was distracting.

Questions:

  • What’s your favorite biopic and why?
  • What films best use the jukebox musical format?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Bryce Dallas Howard is eight years older than Taron Egerton, who plays the adult version of her son. The age difference is of course explicable because the movie starts by depicting Elton John as a much younger child; the age difference between Howard and the children who play John at younger ages is a much more normal one for a mother and son.
(One again, I did not recognize Bryce Dallas Howard. She is so good at disappearing into her characters)

Other reviews:

Rocketman