Film Journal 2020

I don't like Jamie Foxx but time and again I am reminded that he is a hell of an actor who should be in more stuff. Dude's got range.

I liked the cat stuff. The message was a bit tepid and the delivery matched it, save for the very effective montage at the end.

What an incredible delight!

For every relatable scene and shot of a person reacting to another's alcohol use (seriously, this is a film you can't watch without seeing something from your life in the Nordics) there's a certain murkiness to the way Vinterberg goes about depicting his themes. I wish this took a stronger stance here and there, and think it could've been achieved without sacrificing the complexity of emotions and social situations presented herein.

It's a rather enjoyable movie regardless, though, despite walking a rather predictable route throughout.

Oh man, do I love this movie!

... until the last half or so. Up until when the Gremlins are unleashed after a dip in a pool, this is great. I love Dante's wholly un-sappy view of Christmas. I feel like he manages to nail a lot of what people love about it (the busywork and preparation) while never being actually sentimental about it. The comedy works great, but I'll admit I have a soft spot for huckster inventors and their creations in cinema. That background gag with the time machine...!

Then the Gremlins come out and this becomes a creature feature. It's an alright one, sure, but it struggles by not being quite gory or gruesome enough to be as fun as it sometimes manages to be, while also not managing to land some of the more outrageous visual gags. I love these puppets and the effects hold up even on a 4K disc, but the inventiveness of the jokes themselves is not so hot, especially if you've seen Gremlins 2.

Now that doesn't mean this is a bad movie by any stretch, but it feels like the final 30 minutes just cruises on forward with no particular drive to it, which is a shame since generally when the action picks up is when you'd like to have some of that drive.

Well, either way you go about it, the score for this movie is a masterwork.

I love the fact that there's a movie like this that's willing to be this critical about fairy tale logic and the negative implications they put out to the world but since it's a Disney film it sort of feels like a big company being woke because that'll make them money at this point?

Doesn't make me cry any less during a climactic speech about the concept of love being a social construct

Never have I ever seen a contemporary movie with as an adorable cast as this movie.

So, the heavy hitters, of course you know, there's Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis being two of the most talented young actors on the damn planet right now, then they go one-on-one with Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza who for all I care could be the only working actors in Hollywood and I would die a happy man, and I even knew that Mary Steenburgen graces this thing with her hilarious presence.

OK but apparently I totally missed in the opening credits that my man Victor Garber is all up in here looking slimmer than ever (hope it's a good type of slim!) and suave as hell and I was in a state of god damn euphoria with this fucking movie

THEN the guy who sang "Don't Be a Lawyer" in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (and was on that show for the entire run) shows up and I am looking around my entire apartment! IS THIS A GOOF ON ME? Did someone hire the best Hollywood has to offer to make fun of me?

AND THEN Kristen Stewart is arrested for shoplifting and who play the mall cops but friggin' LAUREN LAPKUS AND fucking Jizzy Gillespie Jonah from Veep

So look I am in fact not writing this from the land of the living because clearly I have died and gone to heaven because where else would they make a movie just for me....

packaged in a surprisingly good holiday movie that deals with some real hurt of being an outsider pretty well and relatably even for a very average white guy like myself(?)

OK maybe this isn't heaven but I fucking love this

I think there might be some problems in an action movie when I literally have zero idea what anyone is trying to achieve with their second-to-second movements in an action scene half the time.

I'm all for Blumhouse's model of getting big-name actors to shoot movies in a short schedule, but it can sometimes result in some pretty lackluster or milquetoast performances. That is absolutely not the case in Freaky because Vince Vaughn is arguably the most game for a part he's been in years.

Also love seeing a shot that clearly exists because the people making the film have been thinking about that shot for years: The dude lifting up broken glass and standing up a million times does nothing for anything except to milk the very fun idea of teasing the audience and I fucking loved it.

Run
Run 2020
★★ Watched 28 Nov, 2020

I would love to give this like four stars but this film fails it's star Kiera Allen just about every step of the way which is a crying shame because she deserves every bit of positive attention she gets out of this star-making performance. The two major problems:
1) The writers of this film have a bit of an issue writing the antagonist, played by Sarah Paulson. Look, it's Sarah Paulson, I think she does the best she possibly could with this material, but it's basically a very by-the-numbers sociopath role that's played as one. People who inflict Munchausen by proxy... aren't that? Like, forego the moral ambiguities and whether they have sociopathic tendencies, the choice to make the character verbalize those tendencies so vigorously destroys any threat the character poses. This is masked by Allen acting the holy shit out of every moment the camera focuses on her, but when it doesn't... it's really tepid.
2) Which kind of leads to the second issue which I guess you could see in the prior films these folks made, Searching, which is sort of the Michael Bay of modern shot-through-the-internet -movies, but the journey there has an immediacy that suits that sort of style. This is sort of an occasionally slower-burn horror movie so when you apply that style over it it feels either like a Platinum Dunes movie from the mid 2000s or a slightly-less frenetic American Horror Story. Neither of these is good for a film trying to do medical and mental terror on this level.

Rarely have I simultaneously felt this much anger and joy within a single film.

I find a lot of the hurt and pain in this film to be very real and I am somewhat bummed out that they go to the extents they do to turn that pain into traditional horror film spook 'ems, especially when the overall film is of such potency that it is utterly evident that it would work wonderfully even without those trappings.

It's a lot of fun! Jim Cummings does the whole mixing of comedy and thriller better than I had any right to expect, and as a fan of films with leads who are terrible people with the film acknowledging their flaws to the fullest extent, especially in a comedy, I really enjoyed just about every moment of this.

A film I adore the concept and ending of but can't help but feel that the execution, if the intent is to take the viewer through this process, should be a bit more intense, especially during the parts that are intended to be exciting. You don't really get the emotional impact I think you should in those scenes. Doesn't make the ending any less lovely, though.

An absolute blast about aliens coming to earth to dissect the residents of a small town. Gnarly effects are a dime a dozen to some extent in movies like this, but actually funny comedy? Not so much! This thing has so many slapstick-y gags that are legit hilarious you can't help but love it. Also helps that a fair bit of those involve a lady alien murdering asshole men by squeezing their dicks until they break or punching dogs into outer space (the dog lives though as seen immediately in the next shot where they limp away scared). The whole thing is further elevated by Tyler Bates being the composer and going 110% Angelo Badalamenti with a jazzy, rockin' Twin Peaks score. This movie kicks ass!

Beautiful imagery occasionally marred by the era when it was made having CGI that's now just a default thing you can Blender up in minutes. I've always had a thing with some of Dali's imagery where it freaks me the hell out since I occasionally get panic attacks and whatnot where the primary cognitive function I perform is free association of visuals or words and some of his work perfectly encapsulates the former with it's free-flowing nature and that is well on display in this short.

A good trip to-to-bottom that'll make you feel real bad about not calling your mom for a while.

You can sure see why this is the pattern all the 90s Disney films started taking after. It's very, very good and has a creative passion unlike the ones that followed (save for like Treasure Planet).

I watched the Legion-cut that's on the Arrow blu-ray (and the Shout Factory one in the US I suppose). Despite the terrible VHS source for some of the footage (some of the best footage in the film at that!) I loved it more than I do the theatrical version. The tone is more consistent here, as the film never goes full nonsense with the exorcism ending and maintains one physical form for the killer's body, and it keeps the Quentin Tarantino -esque dialogue bouncing out of the film after George C. Scott faces his first personal tragedy. The second thing that makes me love this one more is the ending in general, because it has to be the least fulfilling ending I have ever seen in what was intended to be a studio film. You could write a full essay on why it's the worst possible ending and for all those reasons I absolutely love it. Holy shit what a way to go!

I really wish Sergio Martino knew how to make his gorgeous psychosexual thrillers without being an incredibly misogynistic asshole at the same time.

That being said, I have never laughed as much during a giallo (... though this probably doesn't quite fit the genre) as I did at the end of this movie, as a complex set of characters have been planning to kill each other off for various reasons the entire film, then we end on a one-eyed zombie cat growling at the screen... and we cut to a text about how all the events in the movie are entirely fictitious and any similarity to actual events is coincidental. Thanks! I really needed to know!

The line between reality and staged events is blurrier than ever in Cohen's work, and him dressing up as a 300lbs version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton to bother someone at a fax machine joint doesn't help too much. I feel like there's a lot lost when moving from an all-out beating of American culture to a more specific, centralized target. It kind of begs for a film angrier than what this is. It's too sweet to be as upsetting as it probably should be to make this thing work. I guess you could call it hopeful.

Who the hell is hopeful anymore

A terrifying fever dream about living in a state of psychosis and ending up in the worst possible circumstances for ever finding treatment or resolving it. The ending to this film is A LOT.

I hate that a movie made me say to myself "I wish Colin Trevorrow‎ made this".

An audiovisually and performatively exciting film that I really wish took all this trauma and did something with it beyond showcasing it with pinpoint accuracy.

I'm not crying you're crying

shut up

I sort of love a lot of the things La Llorona tries doing but it doesn't feel like it fully commits to any of them aside from the one where it sets out to re-interpret the weeping woman for the modern age. I can't deny that it would fail at that. That being said, how it goes about it is... interesting. So, the film centers on a general who was integral in the mayan genocide in Guatemala. He's on trial for, well, being a bit of a genocidal ponce, and gets a guilty verdict which is immediately pardoned because of course it is. Anyhow, the movie takes place almost entirely in his villa where he has armed guards and his wife, daughter and grandchild, as well as a maid who calls for help from her village when every other maid quits on account of their boss being, well, a bit of a genocidal ponce. A new long-haired mysterious girl appears who sure likes dipping her face in some water for extended periods of time. No idea who that could be. Hey what's this La Llorona thing? Probably not wet.

Oh, right, so then the movie sort of takes a three-fold narrative: You have the general "dealing" with his... well, not guilt, he seems like a stone-cold genocidal ponce if you've ever seen one, but generally trying to stay alive as slightly spooky occurrences make him seem like an insane genocidal ponce. His daughter tries to deal with the fact that whatever father she once had she can no longer think of, and does damage control for the rest of the group, while also trying to take care of her own daughter, who, in the third plotline, befriends the new long-haired maid and has a lot of red herring scenes of running off with her. All these things are set against the backdrop of constant, unending demonstrators outside the house chanting slogans against the general. Though the narratives themselves don't do much of interest (though some of the red herring subversions in the young maid's story are very funny such as the blow dryer scene), the mood is very strong because those people never stop. Eventually when the sound dies down, you know some shit is up. And it's good when you know shit is up in a horror movie because that's usually what you came there for. Alas, here the payoff is super quick and abrupt, and doesn't really feel like much, though the linking of the climax to the genocide does work out alright.

All in all, though this has it's strengths, it's like 60% curio and 40% good movie.

Yo

Uhhh

See this movie.

I really enjoy Charlie Kaufman and have enjoyed joining him on this journey where he has consistently turned more and more inward with each successive film, be it a script or a directorial effort. Here that trend sure keeps going, occasionally dipping to slightly too self-indulgent territory (the Pauline Kael -inspired conversation and the dance scene in particular), but the vitriolic nature of his self-hatred and self-shame keeps this going admirably. It's literally ugly, as well as in content, with very little hope to it, outside of the concept that it's clearly making sure the viewer knows that was this person capable of actual hope, there would be hope for them. That's a silly sentence, but it made sense at some point in my head.

That dog is too darn cute. For the first hour Penrod and Sam (... I have to admit I still don't remember who Sam was) is a charming slice of Americana that a number of directors have been trying to copy in any film depicting children playing. It's hardly terrific filmmaking in a traditional sense, but the kinetic energy of children seemingly actually playing silly games in tattered clothes is infectious. The comedy hasn't aged well but at least they sometimes go for something other than pratfalls, such as extended setpieces of tight escapes or a scene where the punchline is delivered at the end when you didn't even know this whole thing was going to be a joke at all. It takes a slightly morbid turn for the last third, and though I can't say it isn't effective, it slows the film to an unfortunate crawl that isn't satisfying.

There is undeniably a bevvy of options within Deathdream for the viewer to project things onto the film, and I am willing to bet that
A) Growing up in the US or Canada
B) Living in the era of the war in Vietnam
would help a lot in doing that. The film also sort of deals with PTSD and grief, but being acquainted with both on personal level, I didn't find either of those to be very accurate or gripping portrayals.

As such, I projected very little, being mostly bothered by the extremely predictable nature of the ongoing events. I can't fault the execution of the film for the most part (the Savini-effects and the sound design, as well as some of the actors, are very good), but aside from the father's story line of coming to terms with his own lack of traditional masculine traits in the face of crisis, this really pushed very few of my buttons throughout. I really wish it had some twist to the traditional formula at some point because I might just love it at that point.

You know, it's very hard to wish for specificity in a film made in 1920, and that is the earliest surviving film directed by an African American. I would love to see more detail on what makes some of these characters tick – particularly what drives the good rich white lady disagree with the racist rich white lady – and without that level of specificity existing, it's occasionally hard to see Within Our Gates as anything other than a naively hopeful fable on how the world will fix itself and stop viewing people who aren't white as inherently inferior. That being said, that is probably exactly the sort of message that black people in America needed in the 1920s, and further specificity on the hows and whys would take away from the relatively uplifting feel of the film (even if the actual ending, with the patriotic speech about how our leading lady loves America and has just misunderstood everything, is terrible). As it is, it has strong performances and definitely doesn't shy away from saying most things exactly as they are, including that terrifying flashback scene.

A wet fart of a major Disney adaptation that only excels in occasionally striking visual moments, falling back on tired tropes in just about everything else. I can't say this does a disservice to the material since it honestly feels like it barely does anything with it.

A perfectly pleasant film I can barely remember a week later.

An audiovisual tour-de-force with killer performances with characters whose despicable natures are on par with those of Emily Brontë's creations and I would love it even more if it didn't give me some major "this majorly male-lead crew sure loves making nude ladies fondle each other in front of a camera" -vibes that make a significant portion of the sensual content falter.

Someone give Ang Lee this budget and let him spend it making a HFR action nightmare that he actually wants to make, script and all, because holy shit does this thing show that he only cares about the visual scenes, be it loading a bullet into a gun or an intricate shootout, and the sparse pieces of dialogue he has clearly ham-fistedly inserted into the screenplay to make something remotely interesting out of a 90s JCVD-vehicle. This is especially highlighted by him shooting every other piece of dialogue like a Walter Hill -film, deadpan with close-ups from the front, character in center-frame. It makes for an exceptionally dull 90 minutes for a film that actually sort of excites you with how bizarre it can look during the other 20+ and as such sort of validates that this HFR gimmick might actually be fun to explore in something actually explicitly born to do so.

The action in this is pretty much incredible after the initial shootout but a lot of the comedy pales in comparison to what came before and after in HK comedies and as such doesn't strike a chord with me.

I am quite keen to the fantastical world and art that this movie showcases. Less so on the not-entirely-compelling melodrama it centers on. I wish it maybe kept a bit more of an eye on the search for a moral justification for what happens towards the end of the film rather than writing it off with the first possible solution. You know it'll ring hollow eventually to some of these characters. Either that or they're just... quite... indifferent? about the lives affected or lost by all this.

That being said, banging OST that's synced with the events on screen I am a sucker for.

tiniest_dick_energy.jpg

I dunno, it's nice to see one of these things with some semblance of a soul even if it's all under a veneer of... well, Disney. Wish this leaned a bit more to the wuxia. Also wish whoever edited this hadn't taken their inspiration from Taken 3.

I think I appreciate Host not necessarily for it's quality but for showing that a movie like this can be done in under an hour and leave you totally satisfied with it. Take note, every other friggin' dumb spook-em-up out there.

Auli'i Cravalho is so good at this it's a shame she's in a movie of this quality. But then...

All Together Now isn't a bad movie. It aspires to be great. There are moments when it nails that. Then there's the big letdown, for me at least. Well, along with the part where it sort of showcases homeless life in modern America as somewhat... non-threatening, I guess, is the word. You can just chill in a bus with your dog! You can fall asleep on the park bench and at worst your backpack is stolen! I really needed Larry Fessenden from Wendy & Lucy to show up in one of these scenes.

Anyhow, that big dip, for me, was that even though I appreciate and understand that your character arc being an independent person learning how to accept gifts, you really need to do a better, more functionally focused job of portraying that journey, because as it is, this movie feels like the following sentence: "You need to learn to accept gifts from those who love you" where they absolutely just skip the learning part. It's 80 minutes of tear-jerking misery followed by one emotional break and triumph. There is no learning, or if there is, it is so internalized within Cravalho's character that none of it leaks to the outside. As such, this is a movie about watching someone be miserable and suffer for 80 minutes, then some happy bullshit happens. It's really, really unfulfilling, and makes for a very frustrating watch when the movie has this good a cast and crew putting it together. I really wonder if the book was like this, where she just suddenly makes a turn towards this acceptance and that's it. Something tells me it super isn't.

I suppose I was wishing this to be a bit more interested in exploration of the memetic nature of the central idea rather than a very well composed story about harmony under duress. Sure, some people go off the rails, but acceptance brings people together eventually. I wish it had a bit more of... well, anything, be it a sense of dread, a stronger start or a slightly more intriguing method of presenting the transfer of an idea.

You know, a movie doesn't just... become this odd on it's own. I don't think the flavor of quirk An American Pickle has going for it is the result of someone involved in the process saying "Hey let's make this a bit more kooky!". It feels like a passion project because that's how you get this exact tone to a movie. It isn't aggressively funny, it isn't aggressively sentimental, and it isn't aggressively preachy. It just sort of creates this little bubble that it exists in in which it gets to be it's own, somewhat warm, sort of humid thing. And you know what? I was somewhat amused living in that bubble. It has a peculiar sort of passion to it.

There sure is a fucking mood to watching a movie about the government being woefully insufficient at responding to a national, fatal crisis in the year of our god damn lord 2020

Anno's choice to make Gojira itself a tabula rasa despite some of the stuff around him pointing strongly at Japan's tsunami response as a point of criticism is a powerful one that gives this otherwise topical film a sense of timelessness as you can project just about any fear to it. You know, like the pandemic. And then cry about it when no one can do anything and it just kills by existing.

Fuuuuck

An infinitely deeper film than anything said about the story within it can encompass and as such I will just say you should probably watch this movie.

Though it barely does anything, Voices of Kidnapping does just about everything. Archaic footage of Colombian rain forests are coupled with audio of transmissions sent to those very jungles on a weekly basis that enable the relatives of kidnapped people hopefully communicate them, in one direction. It is a heartbreaking, completely un-melodramatic portrayal of people in terror, defiance and every damn thing in between. The imagery helps you seep in to your own thoughts on the random nature of life and the wavering nature of existence.

A dog gets into some wacky hijinks while trying to become a fireman. It's very cute and energetic. Has some of that good Looney Tunes energy.

I haven't seen the short this is based on, but you don't get that feeling of this being based on one on account of this also being quite short. It's a swift 77 minutes or so which definitely doesn't leave much space for filler. Instead it's an occasionally fun, but especially earnest depiction of living in a bubble and briefly realizing and maybe partially exiting one. It does a great job of leading you into it, and even if it's a bit of a shame to see great talent like Donna Lynne Champlin sort of go to waste in an absolute bit part, the alternative of making the film longer probably wouldn't have been all that. As I said, the earnest nature of the film makes it for me. Depictions of Christianity often feel inherently fake or performative for an outsider of that religion like myself, and you don't get that feeling with this film, save for the parts where the film is expressly saying these parts are fake or performative. And that's a rare thing to see!

This is quite a lot.

So, I don't think any joke in particular in this movie works all that well. They rarely land, and there's a fair bit of them that get way too much screen time for how significant the misses can be. That being said, when it isn't trying to be outright funny, it often is way more funny. Teens wreaking havoc across a Japanese school, people doing some very extreme measures just to achieve simple goals, or just the all around out-of-bounds nature of every single costume choice give this movie charm and energy, which are occasionally (primarily during the second half) matched by the editing and overall film making. By the time it turns into a full post apocalyptic no-killing action movie at the end you're in it. Unfortunately along the way you have to sit through some very unfunny, attempting-to-be-funny rape scenes and genital mutilation that goes a step too far for a movie where the general tone is this dumb.

And oh yes, this movie is dumb. Setting aside the actually harmful rape aspects or the excusing of bad behavior as lack of sports, it is gloriously stupid to the point of hilarity. When people reveal their licenses to kill, whether they be laminated giant slabs that say LICENCE TO KILLER on them or permissions to carry arms from the ministry of education, or the prominent nazi iconography all over the place, or... well, I could go on, but the point is, this is one stupid movie, and when you take it as such and let the sheer pure energy of it drive you ahead, it's good. Until it gets dumb about stuff it probably shouldn't, which can be very jarring.

Hey, remember that article by Gay Talese on The New Yorker about that dude who had bought a motel and renovated it so he could peep on his guests from the air vents while they have sex? What a great article! It's completely insane that all the stuff in it happened! Such thrilling writing.

Hey, remember how Toby Huss transformed from a middle manager business dude into an incredibly well thought out fountain of wisdom through four seasons of Halt and Catch Fire? What an amazing show! It really had it all, even Scoot McNairy. I wonder what he's up to these days?

Hey, remember how Alison Brie is absolutely adorable on GLOW, a show filled with absolutely adorable performances of which she still somehow manages to climb above all the rest? She's so funny and cool! I wish I had even five percent of her coolness.

Hey, remember how Sheila Vand starred in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and performed a transgressive shift in how musli...

What? This movie? Oh, I guess it happened in the background. It sure did remind me of great stuff though!

So, getting back to all of that, remember Joe Swanberg? Oh what a guy! I will forever remember that time when h

Honestly who needs patients when your asylum has a dozen people working around the clock! The ratio between employees and patients is like 4:1 and it is an outrageous waste of resources but whatever, I guess they got paid. Anyhow, this movie, it's pretty good if you can get past the occasionally horrible depictions of various mental illnesses (particularly the already too often maligned schizophrenia).

It's shot at some absurdly opulent mansion so it looks like a million bucks, and every single character outside the audience surrogate nurse is basically a giant red herring screaming "I am the killer!", whether it be by randomly showcasing various pointy objects (who doesn't carry an 8 inch knife in their pocket to cut bread with at a dinner table) or basically just saying "trust me this is OK" when a body is found and nothing happens. It says a lot that the least suspicious character in this whole movie from this set of folk is a lady whose skin was burnt off in a lye accident and now wonders the upper corridors of this clinic at night in a black robe – a robe seemingly every character in this movie owns since it's also the robe of the killer.

The film occupies an interesting space between being a straight up giallo and a krimi, as the screenplay is clearly more from the latter, being a cohesive thriller with little concern over having elaborate murder set pieces, whereas some of the visual effects and the overall look of the film are setting a precedent to what would follow in the former genre.