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Flirtation Walk (1934)
DOA
Another internet reviewer summed up the experience of watching this very well. They also have an interest in watching all of the movies that have been nominated for Best Picture Oscars over the years and have found some hidden gems in doing so. But they've also had to sit through a whole bunch of movies like "Flirtation Walk" that feel like a total waste of time.
I'm not sure I thought it was a waste of time, because I don't think any movie is a total waste of time. At the very least, I think it's fascinating to see what studios thought people wanted to see, and how the culture as reflected in movies has changed over the decades. But I can see what they mean. It seems inconceivable to me that anyone could find something to like in this thuddingly boring movie, and it boggles the mind that anyone at the time thought this was worthy of a Best Picture nomination, even in a year with twelve nominees. But I guess times have changed along with our standards for entertainment.
I like Dick Powell better as a film noir anti-hero than a song and dance man (though he doesn't do any dancing in this), and I've never liked Ruby Keeler (who oddly doesn't dance either, though that's ok because I've seen the result). This movie is part tribute to our military heroes/part show-within-a-show musical. It's all terrible, or at least would be terrible if it wasn't so inert. It would have to be somewhat bold to be outright terrible, whereas this movie is lifeless and dull beyond comprehension.
Also nominated for a Best Sound Recording Oscar, but that's meaningless because back then studios could put forward movies for automatic nominations in that category. And anyway, it's not like great sound recording would have made this movie any better.
Grade: D-
Thelma (2024)
Fun Vehicle for June Squibb
"Thelma" gives June Squibb and the late Richard Roundtree the chance to deliver a couple of fun performances in the rare movie that prominently features elderly characters without patronizing them.
The central relationship in the movie is between a young man and his grandmother, but I saw a lot of my mom in the character of Thelma. She's 81 and in pretty good shape, the usual wear and tear issues of aging aside. She has mobility issues and has said that it would be tempting to sit on the couch all day and watch T. V., but she forces herself to stay active and independent. As a result, she's doing pretty well, and I know that if she had the choice between getting out and about and running the risk of getting injured or overdoing it vs. Wasting slowly away from a sedentary lifestyle, she'd say bring on the risk. I don't blame her, as I think I'll feel the same way.
"Thelma" nails what it's like to be children trying to care for an elderly parent. You want to let them be independent, but you also know that anything that happens to them as a result is going to fall on you to handle, so you do things for them instead and caution them against trying to do too much themselves. But then you're taking away the very thing that is helping them stay sharp and healthy, even though you mean well. It's a crappy position to be in, and it's no wonder that studies show people in their 40s have the least life contentment of any other decade.
On the other hand, I could not relate at all to the helicopter parenting of the characters played by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg in this movie, as that isn't how I parent at all.
Grade: A-
Ghostlight (2024)
Openly Wept
I used to be embarrassed to cry in movies and would try as hard as I could to keep it in. But that would always leave me feeling afterwards like I had a head cold, plus now I'm older and I don't give a hoot what people think. So now I let my freak flag fly and just openly weep in a movie theater if the mood strikes me. I've also found since I had children of my own that more things make me emotional than previously.
So I was an absolutely snotty, dripping mess at multiple times throughout this movie. I'm a sucker anyway for stories about people who see other people at their worst moments and respond with kindness and understanding rather than harsh judgement, and this is that kind of story. It's also about the power of art to help us work through our emotions, make sense of the world, find common ground with others, broaden our perspectives, all the things the world feels really in need of right now but yet seems determined not to do.
Is "Ghostlight" manipulative? Probably. Does it hold up to scrutiny afterwards? I'm not sure, possibly not. But I don't care because I didn't scrutinize this movie afterwards. I just let myself feel it, and that's what I want to take away with me.
Grade: A.
Hit Man (2023)
Is It Possible to Be Too Good Looking?
Is it possible to be too good looking?
Maybe so, if "Hit Man" is any indication. Glen Powell is never once believable as Gary, a nerdy and introverted professor. The costumers fit him up with some glasses and looser fitting shirts to hide his buffed action movie hero physique (where did this guy get that physique, by the way?) but they might also have tried to do something about his blinding white and straight teeth and his chiseled and perfectly stubbled jawline. So when Gary takes on the persona of Ron and goes undercover as a fake hitman, he never feels like someone who is working at playing a part. Rather, it feels like Ron is just a version of Glen Powell the actor, and Gary is the character Glen Powell is trying not very successfully to play. Being too gorgeous may be a good problem for Glen Powell to have, but it's not so great for the audience.
This movie doesn't want you to think too hard about it, and I tried to relax into its laid back, romcom vibe. And it is pretty entertaining if you force yourself to overlook all of its implausibilities. But I could never suspend the amount of disbelief I would have been required to in order to fully enjoy this movie, let alone find it as great as a bevy of critics reviews would have you believe. Talk about an over-hyped movie.
And I get that Richard Linklater was going for an unpredictable, tongue-in-cheek ending that we wouldn't see coming, but the problem is that the darkness of the ending doesn't match tonally the rest of the movie, so it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
And maybe that's my overall problem with the film. I'm not sure it ever lands on a consistent tone. It wants to be a light-hearted romcom when it's not being a twisty thriller, and Linklater never successfully marries those two very different movies into something that feels cohesive.
Watchable, but I expected more from someone whose movies I usually very much like.
Grade: B.
Topper (1937)
Expectations Not Met
Had high hopes for "Topper," a film I'd heard a lot about and that has earned the title of a notable screwball comedy from the 1930s, the decade that did them best.
But sadly, "Topper" is......just not that funny. Roland Young earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (in only the second year of that category's existence) for playing the dithery, mumbling title character, and I suppose he is the best thing about the movie, and that's saying something considering that the two ghosts who haunt him are played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. But he's never really allowed to let loose with the screwball antics this movie is begging for. It also doesn't help that Grant and Bennett don't play especially likable people. Their harassment of Topper feels more annoying than funny. I think the whole thing would have worked better if they'd been given a character arc of their own.
So overall a bit of a dud. I had recorded the two sequels off of TCM at the same time I recorded this, but now I'm not that excited to watch them.
The film also scored a nomination for Best Sound Recording. Its two sequels earned nominations for Best Special Effects, a nomination this film would probably have received as well had that category existed in 1937.
Grade: B.
State Fair (1933)
Meandering Film with Almost No Dramatic Conflict
Before there was the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which is maybe the most well known version of this property, there was this early sound film that starred Janet Gaynor and Will Rogers.
This film meanders amiably along and has almost no dramatic conflict, aside from whether or not a family's pickles or pig is going to win big at the state fair. But nevertheless there's a kind of ethereal, melancholy spell created by this movie that appealed to me. The idea of a state fair becomes a metaphor for life itself: it's full of expectations and excitement, the pursuit of things we want, some of which we get and some we don't, and it's all over more quickly than we want it to be, leaving us with only the memory.
I haven't seen any other versions of this, but am positive none of them treat the sexual awakening of the daughter and son characters, and especially the son's, as frankly as this version does, given its pre-Code status.
Gaynor was a big deal at the time, having won the very first Best Actress Oscar. And Will Rogers was a huge star and American icon, largely because of his performance in this. It's kind of hard to see now what people went nuts for at the time, since it's all so low-key and humble. Chalk it up to changing times I guess.
Neither actor was nominated for this film -- no actors were nominated. But "State Fair" did manage to get itself a Best Picture nomination and a second in the Best Writing (Adaptation) category.
Grade: A-
Rasputin and the Empress (1932)
Three Barrymores for the Price of One
A historical drama whose primary selling point, both then and now, is the fact that all three Barrymores are in it together.
Ethel plays Alexandra, of Nicholas and Alexandra fame; John plays an upstanding man of conscience within the Russian court; and Lionel steals the show as Rasputin, the shady character who uses his influence over the Russian monarchy to his devious ends.
The film is stilted in that way that many films from this time period were, and especially historical costume dramas. But it's well acted and worth sitting through for Lionel's performance alone. As it happens, I had just watched "Svengali," a film that came out a year before this one, and which features John Barrymore costumed to look almost exactly the way Lionel looks in this movie, and their performances are very similar too. Wonder if Lionel was inspired by his brother.
"Rasputin and the Empress" received an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Writing (Original Story) at the 1932-33 Academy Awards.
Grade: B.
Svengali (1931)
Much Better Than I Expected
I didn't really expect much from this early sound film, so I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is. John Barrymore gives an amazing performance, one that's probably way better than this kind of movie needed. He takes something that might have been a minor diversion and turns it into something that's eerily fascinating. And it's got all sorts of those pre-code moments that will make you sit up and say, "wait, did they just say that?"
I love the way this film looks too. Clearly inspired by the German Expressionism of the just-ended silent period, this movie is all canted angles and chiaroscuro lighting. There's an absolutely amazing reverse tracking shot that goes from a closeup of Barrymore through a window across the rooftops of the city, and then turns into a zoom that goes back through another window into a closeup of Marian Marsh. The transition to Marsh is done through an obvious cut, but the tracking shot from Barrymore out the window is so seamless that it left me wondering how they did it. No wonder that the film nabbed Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography at the 1930-31 Academy Awards.
Grade: A-
Bottoms (2023)
Winning Comedy
"Bottoms" is a sweet and winning raunchy comedy about two nerdy high school girls trying to get laid.
I first became aware of Rachel Sennott in the film "Bodies, Bodies, Bodies," where her small comedic gem of a performance stole the show. She co-leads here, and proves that her performance in that first film wasn't a fluke. But she's joined here by Ayo Edebiri, probably most known to people from her role on "The Bear," and Edebiri's more low-key performance is a large part of why this movie works so well.
There's been a big push lately for diversity in entertainment, both in the stories being told and the people telling them, and I'm all in. The problem is that the people making movies often don't know how to champion diversity and make entertaining movies at the same time. It's like they come up with a diversity agenda first, and then try to build something around it. More folks should take note of films like "Bottoms." The main characters in this happen to be two lesbians, one white and one black, but their struggles and strifes are relatable to anyone who's slogged their way through adolescence, which means everyone. It's first and foremost fun and entertaining, and if the people we see on screen happen to look different than the people we're used to seeing on screen, all the better.
Grade: A-
The Beekeeper (2024)
Not Sure How to Rate This
I watched "The Beekeeper" on an airplane, which is the only conceivable place to watch it unironically.
I'm not sure how to rate this movie, so I'm going to go with a score right in the middle. It's a terrible movie, and in many ways is appallingly offensive, but I've got to admit I enjoyed it. And it would be a great one to watch again with a larger group and make fun of.
Jason Statham is a total psychopath, and it's disturbing that we're asked to think of him as a hero in this story. But we do, only because the people he's casually torturing and killing are grotesque goons who are so vile that we can't wait to see them die. I'm an intelligent adult who knows when a movie is stupid and manipulative. But it bothers me that there are lots of people out there watching movies like this and taking them straight up, letting them fuel their own private fantasies of vengeance for perceived grievances doled out to them by an unfair world.
Jason Statham, you can't act for anything, but I like you anyway.
Grade: C.
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
Amiable Romance
"Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" is an amiable romance about a WWII G. I. and a nun who end up stranded on an island and must survive its invasion by the Japanese.
Robert Mitchum is sexy and Deborah Kerr is lovely as ever in a performance that brought her her fourth of six career Best Actress Oscar nominations. They have a lot of chemistry together, these two, and though we are mostly confident that Kerr isn't going to toss her vows in order to get it on with Mitchum, still, there's that inkling of hope.
John Huston directed and received the film's other Oscar nomination for the screenplay he wrote with John Lee Mahin.
The film's portrayal of the Japanese is bound to offend those who are utterly incapable of processing anything in context of the time in which it was made and hold everything up to current-day standards of social propriety.
Grade: A-
The Time Machine (1960)
Dopey
Though time travel stories are a dime a dozen now, it's clear that the concept of time travel was still somewhat novel to 1960 audiences, because "The Time Machine" spends what feels like about 30 minutes at the beginning explaining the idea to us. It takes forever for chiseled-jaw Rod Taylor to get in his thingamajiggy and find out that the future of mankind promises a lot of war and possible nuclear destruction. Fun stuff. It's not until after he zooms past all that bad news that he finds a world inhabited by Yvette Mimieux in an art teacher smock (but still with a 1960s hairdo, which apparently will be back in fashion millenia from now), and helps her fend off a bunch of albino cave dwellers who want to....eat them, I think?
Taylor is a hunkadoodle, but he's kind of an ass in this. He shows up in some time and place he knows nothing about, and then starts mansplaining to anyone who will listen everything they're doing wrong. Just stop talking, Rod, and take your shirt off. You'll get a lot farther.
The biggest disappointment of "The Time Machine" is Mimieux's costume. Come on, I was expecting some kind of metal futuristic bikini or something like that, and what I get instead looks like a maternity gown.
The special effects won this film an Oscar back in 1960, and they have a certain nostalgic charm about them.
Grade: B-
Roadblock (1951)
Charles McGraw Is the Draw
I've seen a string of noirs lately that have left me disappointed by dangling a juicy femme fatale in front of me only to have her be abandoned by the movie, and "Roadblock" is another.
Joan Dixon gets faux fatale honors here, entering the movie as a shyster but turning disappointingly straight and narrow as the movie goes on. It's gravelly Charles McGraw who's the draw in this one, playing an insurance detective who thinks he has to go in on a heist in order to pay for his girlfriend's expensive tastes, long after she no longer cares about such petty material things. Watching the noose tighten on McGraw is the fun part of this film, and while I'm not sure this is one that's going to stick with me, I had fun enough in the moment.
Grade: B+
Mr. Soft Touch (1949)
Minor Noir
"Mr. Soft Touch" takes forever to really get going, and even when it does it's only nominally entertaining.
Glenn Ford spends the first half of the movie wandering around a community shelter, where he's hunkered down to hide from thugs who are after him. He flirts a lot with Evelyn Keyes, who looks adorable in this but doesn't get much to do. Ford has a charming, winning screen presence, so it's easy enough to hang out with him for a bit, but if you came here looking for a noir, you might be disappointed.
The noir part kicks in in the last half hour or so, and there are some shootouts and a burning building to escape from. The ending leaves us hanging -- Ford has been shot and lies in the arms of his love, but whether he dies or lives to see another day we'll never know.
Grade: B.
Mrs. Parkington (1944)
Greer Garson Makes This Very Watchable
A meandering family saga that remains supremely watchable on the strength of Greer Garson's performance.
I'm not even that much of a Garson fan. I don't actively dislike her, but she's not a go-to for me. But she's great here, playing her character in part of the movie as an elderly matriarch navigating the squabbling of her selfish children and grandchildren, and the other part as a young woman who goes from living in a small mining town to marrying a wealthy baron and experiencing the many ups and downs of a tempestuous marriage along the way. Walter Pidgeon and she have a ton of chemistry together. It's easy to see why they were so often paired. And MVP honors also go to Agnes Moorehead, playing Pidgeon's former lover who weirdly becomes best friend to Garson after she and Pidgeon get married. Moorehead's French accent is very convincing.
Garson and Moorehead were Oscar nominated as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, for their performances in this.
Grade: A-
Red Rocket (2021)
Why isn't anyone talking about Simon Rex's performance in this movie?
Why isn't anyone talking about Simon Rex's performance in this movie?
I'm writing this comment two days after the SAG nominations for 2021 were announced, and oh my god did they pick the most most boring, bland group of biopic performances imaginable. And meanwhile there's Simon Rex in this movie giving what's easily one of the best performances by anyone this year.
It wasn't until after this movie was over and I thought back on it that I realized what a truly despicable person Rex plays. Aside from charm and charisma, he has no redeeming qualities. But hoo boy, that charm and charisma is everything. As a former porn star on the skids who returns to his estranged wife and her mother so that he can take advantage of the sad, defeated people that populate their rural Texas town, Rex brings such an abundance of energy and humor to these people's lives that it's easy to think at first that he's good for them. But as the movie progresses and his true selfishness, at times monstrous, emerges, we realize how terrible he is for pretty much everyone he comes in contact with.
It is to Rex's extreme credit, then, that he manages to make this character so freaking likable. I was even rooting for him in a way, because he at least shows gumption and an acknowledgement that the white trash life his wife has chosen isn't good enough for him.
"Red Rocket" is another gem from a director who has cornered the market on movies that make us care about people most of us would prefer to believe don't exist.
Grade: A.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Pale Follow Up to Fury Road
I wasn't all in on an origin story for the character of Furiosa from "Mad Max: Fury Road." I thought that movie was absolutely brilliant, a self-contained gem of epic action storytelling, and I wanted to just remember it as it was. And I don't particularly like Anya Taylor Joy, and especially not filling the shoes of Charlize Theron.
But I went to see "Furiosa" anyway, because George Miller. It's not a bad movie, but it never rises to the level of "Fury Road" and doesn't do much to justify its existence. Taylor Joy's performance didn't convert me into a fan, and it's not until you're watching her in the role that you realize how much of the first film's success rested on Theron's performance. It would be easy to overlook the acting in "Fury Road" amid Miller's stunning action scenes and world building, but it's Theron who made Furiosa such a compelling character, not anything inherent about the character herself.
And where "Fury Road" soared, "Furiosa" trudges along. "Fury Road" was exhilarating and weirdly beautiful despite its grungy, gritty setting. "Furiosa" mostly feels ponderous and heavy. I felt euphoric after watching "Fury Road." I felt mostly weary after "Furiosa."
If Miller continues this same story with a third installment, I think I'll pass.
Grade: B.
The Fall Guy (2024)
Just Awful
I'm a fun loving person. Yes, I like to read William Faulkner, but I also like to read P. G. Wodehouse. Yes, I like David Lynch, but I also like "The Naked Gun." I too crave fun, escapist entertainment that I don't have to think too hard about.
So then I go out to see a movie that promises to be just that, and I get a movie like "The Fall Guy." A movie so slapped together and terrible it's like its makers assumed the audience for it would be so stupid and undiscriminating that it would be entertained by any old crap thrown up on the screen.
If I taught a film class, I would actually use "The Fall Guy" as an example of the importance of a good screenplay. It's not like there isn't talent assembled for this film. It has appealing actors. It has cool action sequences. But it has an absolutely dreadful screenplay. It's just random stuff happening to the point that you don't care about any of it. Sometimes it can seem like certain kinds of comedies and action movies don't need strong screenplays in the way that more serious movies do, until you see one that has really bad writing, and then you realize how much good writing was going into those other movies that are so much better.
Ugh, what an utter waste of time.
Grade: D.
Cry Terror! (1958)
Rod Steiger Is So Creepy
"Cry Terror" belongs to the "family taken hostage by criminals" sub-genre of film noir. Rod Steiger is the leader of the pack, and man is this dude creepy. Steiger was mostly incapable of playing a character other than as an off-putting boor, which was a problem when we were supposed to like him, but serves him well in a movie like this. James Mason is the husband/father of the family that gets taken hostage, and Inger Stevens is his wife. They both have some cool set pieces to manage, Mason's involving a shinny through an elevator shaft and Stevens's a high-speed car drive through city traffic. Angie Dickinson is the female member of the gang, and she's even sexier (if that's possible) playing a cold hearted moll (and man, is she ruthless) than she was playing good guys.
Eddie Muller talked this one up quite a bit in his TCM intro. I don't think I liked it as much as he does, but it is a pretty good, suspenseful little noir.
Grade: A-
Ice Station Zebra (1968)
What a Fiasco
Good grief, what an utter fiasco!
"Ice Station Zebra" gets so bad before it's over that by the end I was howling at how terrible and ridiculous it was, so I guess there's some entertainment value to be had.
The plot is convoluted, having something to do with Americans and Russians wanting to race each other to the North Pole (or was it Antarctica?)...see, I don't even know.....someplace cold....to recover film dropped from a spy satellite (I think). Wherever they are, everything looks like it's made out of styrofoam when they get there.
Rock Hudson looks like he wants to be anywhere else but in this movie, and Ernest Borgnine proves once again that he was utterly incapable of delivering a line or facial expression the way a normal human being would.
It's hilarious to me that the movie makes a big mystery out of which person is the Russian spy, and then has it be the person who was literally introduced to the movie as a suspected Russian spy.
This movie comes with an overture, entr'acte, and exit music, because it thinks it's a Broadway show. It won't be long before we have "Ice Station Zebra: The Musical!"
This clunker was nominated for two Oscars: Best Cinematography and Best Special Visual Effects, in the year that Stanley Kubrick won that award for "2001: A Space Odyssey." Let that sink in for a moment. "Ice Station Zebra" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out in the same year. They seem like movies from completely different decades.
Grade: D.
Storm Fear (1955)
Pretty Bangin' Noir
Eddie Muller hated on "Storm Fear" so much during his TCM intro that it left me wondering why the station even decided to air it. So maybe chalk it up to really low expectations, but I thought this was a pretty bangin' noir.
It's in the "family taken hostage by gangsters" sub-genre, and it's all set in the snowy wilderness. Normally this would turn me off, because I prefer my noirs to be urban, but it all works here, and the quiet whiteness of all the outdoor scenes actually adds an eerie effect to the story. Jean Wallace gives an excellent performance as the wife and mother of the captive brood, a better performance than movies like this needs. And Lee Grant is a standout as well as a gangster moll who meets a tragic end. Dan Duryea struggles a bit with his role as the emasculated husband and father -- it's clear watching his performance in this why he was so much more often cast as the bad guy. And Cornel Wilde rounds out the cast as the crime gang's ringleader who's really got a good heart beating under that macho chest.
Don't let Eddie Muller keep you away from this one. It's a lot of fun.
Grade: A.
Naked Alibi (1954)
OK Film Noir
Meh, "Naked Alibi" is alright, but I prefer my noirs to take place in truly noir cities like New York or San Francisco, not Mexican border towns.
And good grief does this movie waste Gloria Grahame. She enters the film promisingly enough, shot first from the back in a nightclub singing a torch song, and then whipping around to entertain us all with some va-va-voom. So what if the singing voice doesn't match the actress. But she pretty quickly gets shunted aside into a boring love interest role and waits around for the men in the film to decide they need her for a plot point.
On the plus side, the film does have Sterling Hayden in one of his borderline psycho cop roles. When the movie opens, he's hounding a guy because he's convinced he's a murderer even though he doesn't have any proof, and then stalks him down to said border town to bring him to justice. But at some point the movie loses all ambiguity, and we know exactly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, which is never as much fun.
Grade: B.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Alternate Reality
Have you ever been so in love with a fictional world that you actually feel a version of homesickness that you can't live there? For me it's "Star Wars," and to a lesser extent "Harry Potter."
"I Saw the TV Glow" captures that feeling, as well as the comfort and the antidote to loneliness that comes from knowing a whole bunch of other people out there share your love of that same world.
The film is a study in how pop culture can bring people together, but also how it can highlight the shortcomings in our own lives.
I've been seeing a lot of comments from people who are reading the movie as one man's agonized effort to embrace his trans identity. Maybe that is what the filmmaker intended this movie to be about, but I didn't read it as so specific. To me it's not necessarily about being trans, but rather about finding yourself trapped in a life that feels like it's not of your choosing.
One thing I liked most about this movie is that it makes the point that we frequently imprison ourselves, and that our failure to be the person we want to be isn't due to someone actively preventing us, but because of our own fear.
This is one of those films that needles itself into your head and makes you think about it for days after you've seen it.
Grade: A.
Aku wa sonzai shinai (2023)
I Just Don't Jive with Ryusuke Hamaguchi
I guess I just don't jive with Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
This is the second film of his I've seen (the other was "Drive My Car") and neither of them made me feel much of anything. No, that's not completely accurate. "Evil Does Not Exist" did make me feel something, namely grumpy and frustrated.
I'm going to whine for a minute. Right now most of the movies in theaters that are made ostensibly to entertain large groups of people are crap. They're either Marvel movies, which I hate, or they're the fourth installment of some series that was never that good to begin with. So then I turn to critics to see what they are giving high scores to, and they are giving high scores to movies like "Evil Does Not Exist." I am a cinephile and have seen a lot of different movies in my time. I like to be challenged, and I can like having to do most of the work myself when appreciating a movie. But I also know that I need variety, and not a steady stream of any one thing. I feel like every movie lately that experts are telling me is good is like this one. It seems almost designed to be as un-entertaining as possible. Like moving the camera too much, or having anything resembling narrative momentum, or moving the film forward at anything other than a glacial pace is capitulating to the dumb ass masses. And then don't even get me started on these endings. The nice word I suppose is "enigmatic," but really they're just baffling and often feel arbitrary, like the filmmaker picked a random place to just end the movie because they didn't have a better idea. Where are the films that intelligent adults can enjoy but that also feel like entertaining movies? The other night I came across "Tootsie" on TCM and I felt like a parched desert wanderer stumbling across an oasis of refreshing, crystal clear water.
Ok, done whining. I'm going to give Hamaguchi the benefit of the doubt and say the problem is me. Maybe I wasn't in the mood. He's clearly a smart guy. I don't have to "get it" in the conventional sense of the word. I can just let it wash over me and see how it makes me feel. But again, it made me feel nothing except restlessness. Like are you trying my patience on purpose just to be a jerk? Would it kill you to frame actors sometimes so that we can actually see their faces while they're having a five-minute long conversation? Do we need such long, static shots of tree branches, and people chopping wood, and filling water jugs? I really do get it. We're exploring the relationship here between man and nature, and the fact that we all, just like the animals in the forest, are driven primarily by the instinct for survival. We will do what we must for what we think are our best interests and justify those actions in whatever way we can. So I'm really not incapable of enjoying or understanding a slow burn movie. I just ask that it gives me a reason to keep watching it.
I don't know what the ending means, and I don't care enough about this movie to try to figure it out. It really needed Dustin Hoffman tearing off a wig and shocking a room full of soap opera actors by revealing himself to be a man. That would have made as much sense to me in the context of this movie as the ending I actually did get.
Grade: C.
Gasoline Rainbow (2023)
You're Going to Have to Do All the Work
20 minutes into "Gasoline Rainbow" and I was pretty bored. This movie is why I don't want to hang out with 18 year olds. The kids in this can barely form a coherent, intelligent thought. Their vocabulary is limited to variations of the "f" word. They all seemed interchangeable. I barely knew their names. If they had interests, hobbies, aspects of their personalities that set them apart from each other, you don't learn about them.
But, while I'm not sure I ever completely got over my restlessness while watching this movie, this movie does work a kind of modest spell. By the time it was over, I realized that I had gotten to know these kids and had started to feel a little protective of them, and my wife and I had quite a bit to ruminate about after the movie was over. It made me appreciate living in a place like Chicago, with access to so much, and where I can expose my kids to the world. A lot of Americans who've never known anything other than big cities and the suburban areas immediately around them have no concept of the vast spaces out there, and how deadening and hopeless it can feel to grow up in them.
"Gasoline Rainbow" feels like a bunch of young people without any resources to actually make a movie decided to just go ahead and make one anyway. For that reason, it feels often like you have to do a lot of the work yourself. That can be wonderful, and many times is actually what I prefer in my movies. But it can sometimes also come across as lazy and half-baked. It's like paying for a meal in a restaurant and having to make half of it yourself. It feels like the directors gathered some friends together and just started winging it, hoping something substantial would emerge. It sort of does, but not enough to be really satisfying. If you're not going to have a strong screenplay and give your actors structure and direction, then you need to make sure they're really good at improvisation. Stoned, drunk people are actually really boring to hang out with.
So while I overall am glad I saw this, I can see why others would be bored to sobs by it. I don't blame them, and I'm not sure I could unequivocally recommend it to anyone else.
Grade: B.