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Reviews
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
confused, confusing
A movie without a purpose. While after we've accepted the implausibility of a superhero, this movie is full of further, outre' implausibilities, along with huge plot holes, poor editing, and no real character development at all. The most interesting part of the film is the first 10 minutes-- it would have made a better film to show WW growth from a child to an adult. Instead, we get unlikely romances, a rather silly villain, and a "magic crystal" to justify all the, erm, magic goings on and hokey special effects. WW rides lightening bolts? Really? The crystal grants wishes, but then it also seems to give its holder hypnotic powers over everyone around-- how is that a wish? And in the climactic scene, the villain is standing in a beam of light-- for what? What light? did the set designer just say "Hey, let's put him in a beam of light! Looks cool!" That's the mindset of the film-- whatever they thought looked cool at that moment, with no story to connect it all. Marvel and DC are both in danger of selling their cultural value to the dumbest Hollywood money men. In doing so, they'll continue to make (as Scorsese has it) "carnival rides", not real movies.
Tenet (2020)
out of control
Ken Russell, anyone?
(i.e., reminds me to Russell's later films, in which he allowed style to overwhelm story and character and plot)
IMDb on the Scene - Interviews: Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Banal Betrayal
Over the last 20 years or so, Marvel's "Silver era" comic books have been recreated as films. With each iteration, the movies have gotten farther and farther away from the spirit of Marvel-- and have gotten worse. What made Marvel the comic book for "cool people" in the 1960s was that they broke all the rules-- adult situations, cross-panel action, full-page scenes, surrealistic art work. Those innovations were pioneered by artists and writers such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (not, in large part, by Stan Lee, whom everyone now thinks is synonymous with Marvel). Yet, the films are anything but innovative. They are mostly standard Hollywood action adventure films, glorified by excessive CGI and trivial one-liner jokes (e.g., Dr. Strange's jokey cape). Where's the surrealistic innovation, the challenge to dominant social beliefs, the challengingly adult content? Missing. The latest film, _Avengers Endgame_, is by far the worst. The very idea that Death itself ("Thanos" translates as "death") would look like an over-muscled professional wrestler is laughable. But then, that provides an opportunity for Our Heroes to fight him, to engage in an apocalyptic battle scene to "defeat" Death. Death, rather, when it comes, steals quietly in the night, invades by stealth, steals away life. Death is sad and depressing and unavoidable. I suppose, to teenagers (perhaps the principal intended audience) it might be reassuring to believe that Death can be defeated merely by knowing the right fighting technique, but it ain't so. The spirit of Marvel-- shockingly disruptive and disturbing-- is what's dead.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Disappointing.
This film is disappointing, at best. Its plot is a series of battle set-pieces, in which a cast overstuffed with hero figures engage in pointless fights with an unbeatable enemy. The dialogue is throwaway, the scenes of human interaction brief and trivial, and the moral seems to be "you can't win". The ending is particularly offensive, because it violates the prime rule of narrative-- providing the viewer with a sense of closure. At the end (almost) everybody dies and then. . .The End. Tiresome, overwrought, and banal
Night Gallery: The Phantom Farmhouse/Silent Snow, Secret Snow (1971)
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
Truly haunting, hypnotic small film in the series. Great narration by Welles. This was based on a story of the same title by Conrad Aiken.
I was that boy.
Mon oncle (1958)
Existential MindF***
For those expecting the sweet bumbling comedy of Tati in this last Hulot film, you won't be disappointed. However, if that's all you look for, you will miss out. This brilliant conflation of Hulot humor and social satire has deservedly won many awards. Tati is noting the passing of a sweeter kind of life, one in which Chaplin and others devoted to a kind of sadly benign view of humanity has become replaced by the facile, superficial world of latter-day technology. The scenes in which visitors must maneuver an absurd path of stepstones...the ridiculous devices the inhabitants not only make use of for every day activities but accept quite readily as normal, the thwarting by the blithe nonsense of his relatives of every attempt at real human contact by Hulot, the utter pointlessness of their lives in contrast to the emotional connections a loved one offers, and of which they are oblivious-- all this combines to indict our technology driven culture in a way only satire can. Tati would have a field day with our even-more-technology-enslaved culture, now so constantly in communication via cell phones but with nothing much to say on them. Come for the hi-jinks of Hulot, stay for Tati's critique, all the more effective because it's concealed in the attractive garb or a favorite comic character. I laughed uncontrollably, butalso I cried.
Play It As It Lays (1972)
brilliant existential anatomy
Thank you, threepines, for a lovely homage to this amazing film. I, too, saw it when young and was altered by it. It got some oddly bad reviews when released, but then reviewers are often wrong-headed about brilliance (Citizen Kane also got bad reviews). I had seen Tuesday Weld as a girl in teenage sillies, so I was so impressed by her bravery to cast off that old baggage. Like Natalie Wood in another underrated film (though not as good as this one), Inside Daisy Clover (where Robert Redford plays a gay actor when no other Hollywood actor would have).
Passengers (2016)
rather underrated
Visually stylish, quite beautiful space scenery, good acting by the leads. The critics are generally wrong in their negative reviews. Well worth seeing. Its only flaw is the somewhat abrupt and pat ending (heavens, Andy Garcia is only on screen for 3 seconds). Expanding the implications of that ending would have provided a better sense of closure. The central moral dilemma is intriguing. One character is confronted with a choice-- his own psychological survival at the cost of someone else's life. That dilemma is made moot by later plot developments, softening the darkest implications of his crime. As a literature prof, I'm a good judge of good stories, and this is one.
Chandler (1971)
flawed but of period interest
This film has attracted ratings of both 1s and 10s-- let's avoid the hyperbole and aim for the middle. No doubt, some scenes are poorly staged, and there are narrative holes galore. However, Warren Oates and Leslie Caron (currently appearing on TV in _Durrells in Corfu_, about the famous novelist Lawrence Durrell and his naturalist brother in childhood) give nice performances. This film evokes that early '70s washed out, depressing era-- exactly what the film's eponymous author Raymond (referenced in the film) accomplished for the 1930s. Robert Altman more successfully evoked this era in _The Long Goodbye_, the best modern era film noir. _Chandler_ has value for its evocation of its era if not for its success as a film per se. I betcha this is one of Q. Tarantino's favs (it's similar to another of his '70s film favs, the TV show _Then Came Bronson_).
The Help (2011)
Sorority Girls on Being Black
Generally enjoyable movie, with spot-on cultural details (calling a soap opera a "story").
However, it strikes me as ironic that the story of oppressed, under-paid black domestic workers in the racist South is told here by an Ole Miss sorority girl. Such sororal and fraternal organizations at such universities are the last bastions of racism in the South (note recent disfigurement of James Meredith statue at Ole Miss by Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers.) Don't these women deserve a chance to speak for themselves? How might this story have been different had Aibileen told it?
Kaze tachinu (2013)
Melodrama
(Late review: we get films late here in this cultural backwater) I've seen 2 other Miyazaki films-- Mononoke and Howl's Castle-- and thought them wonderfully zany and imaginative in an almost hallucinatory way. _Wind Rises_ is an exception to that. It is beautifully realized graphically, but those lovely animations are ruined by a frankly dull, clichéd, and melodramatic story. (see similar films which are well-done visually but poor in story qualities-- Avatar and Titanic). The story is one Hollywood has made over and over again-- poor boy rises from the ranks (Alger plot line) to overcome hidebound superiors and opponents (Rocky) while struggling with a dying girlfriend (Camille, any Joan Crawford weepy). Not only is that story tired, but it relies much too heavily on easy emotion-- just show a young person dying and we're all supposed to break down crying. Bleh. (I define "melodrama" as middle-quality drama, in which too much emotional content is loaded onto ill-supported dramatic circumstances.) I can't recommend this to anyone heretofore impressed by Miyazaki's wildly inventive imagination.