Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! is a filmed evening at the theatre (it's TheatroVision), watching James Whitmore in his celebrated role as Harry S. Truman in Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! and there’s nothing cinematic about it. It’s clearly filmed for television, in fact, with blackouts timed helpfully for commercial breaks. Whitmore is great, of course, and the play is filled with the kind of generic liberal political ideas that most people agree with across the board. The whole idea is a kind of no-nonsense politics that at least feels reasonable. The audience in the theatre loves the show and applauds throughout at various clever stories in Samuel Gallu’s play. It’s a one-man show, though, and that can make for tiring viewing. Once I realized the gist of the thing about 20 minutes in, I got rather bored. It’s a clever note, but there’s only one note.
TEA TO POUR
08 September 2024
Give 'Em Hell, Harry! (1975)
Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! is a filmed evening at the theatre (it's TheatroVision), watching James Whitmore in his celebrated role as Harry S. Truman in Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! and there’s nothing cinematic about it. It’s clearly filmed for television, in fact, with blackouts timed helpfully for commercial breaks. Whitmore is great, of course, and the play is filled with the kind of generic liberal political ideas that most people agree with across the board. The whole idea is a kind of no-nonsense politics that at least feels reasonable. The audience in the theatre loves the show and applauds throughout at various clever stories in Samuel Gallu’s play. It’s a one-man show, though, and that can make for tiring viewing. Once I realized the gist of the thing about 20 minutes in, I got rather bored. It’s a clever note, but there’s only one note.
18 August 2024
Twisters (2024)
Twisters is a fun time. The script is absurd, but I had a good time. Glen Powell is a star. And Maura Tierney is really great. (This film does suffer from a severe and bewildering lack of Helen Hunt.)
My lord the script is stupid though. For some reason we are supposed to believe that these YouTubers aren’t really YouTubers but are actually like humanitarians in disguise? They don’t even chase the last tornado; they drive into the town it’s about to hit and try to save people’s lives? And people listen to them? Makes no sense. But I dunno. It’s hard to be mad at this. It’s loud and suspenseful and has a good soundtrack.
Kneecap (2024)
Kneecap is hilarious, wild, and supremely satisfying. I had a great time. And I fully feckin’ cried more than once.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023)
Nu Aștepta Prea Mult de la Sfârșitul Lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World) is the bleakest of dark comedies. This is a funny satire from Radu Jude, delivered in his insouciant, constantly innovative and unexpected style. This is a very challenging film, and it offers its laughs and its critiques in an uncompromising and bold way. This is hardcore, even brave.
The Settlers (2023)
Felipe Gálvez's Los Colonos (The Settlers) is very intense. We begin with these gorgeous views of Tierra del Fuego. A Scottish mercenary working for a Spanish settler–colonizer maps a path to the sea and kills native people. The film analyzes colonialism in no uncertain terms – it is about extracting land and people, destroying life in order to transform both land and people into property. "Nation" appears in this film as a nonsensical concept in the first part of the movie (the same colonizer owns the land on either side of the national border between Chile and Argentina) and then in the movie’s third act, nation has become something insisted on by the colonizers, forming a new nation with “justice” and “truth” and “equality” for everyone. The concept is just as absurd in the third act as it is in the first.
30 June 2024
Boys on Bikes
21 June 2024
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Miss Joy did not learn her lesson in the first film. So we need another movie to teach us all the same things.
And if this makes you think that I'm calling Riley, the teenager in Inside Out 2, a proto-lesbian that is because of course I am. But, unlike the parents who made this movie, I see no reason to be so anxious about it.Frozen and its sequels, in this sense, take part in a larger (adult) discourse within contemporary animated films – about children whose choices cannot be explained, who "act out," whose behavior is antisocial or mysterious or queer. Films such as Song of the Sea (2014), When Marnie Was There (2014), Inside Out (2015), My Life as a Courgette (2016), Your Name (2016), The Boss Baby (2017), Bao (2018), Over the Moon (2020), Soul (2020), Wolfwalkers (2020), Belle (2021), Poupelle of Chimney Town (2021), Luca (2021), Encanto (2021), and The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) represent the child as frustratingly obtuse and distant, its desires inscrutable, its thought processes impossible (for the adult) to access. These are, in other words, all films about the queer child, the child who resists growing up according to the approved path laid out by adults or, as [Kathryn Bond] Stockton puts it, the child who grows sideways. Unlike many of these films, Frozen appears to celebrate the idea of Elsa leaning into this sideways growth, even if the film’s narrative still insists that she illuminate – "show herself" – so that her darkness no longer remains a mystery.
11 June 2024
Furiosa (2024)
George Miller made the very intelligent decision to give Anya Taylor-Joy around 20 total lines of dialogue in this film. Instead, the script allows the brilliant Chris Hemsworth to do the screenplay’s heavy lifting. This means that the film’s emotional center is almost non-existent and that the most interesting character is Furiosa’s nihilistic villain. In other words, there are both drawbacks and benefits to this. Taylor-Joy can’t actually carry a movie, and Miller needed Hemsworth to do this, but it makes for a very jaded, emotionless film.
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
I liked Evil Does Not Exist (悪は存在しない) so much better than Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy! This is a mysterious, slow-building eco-thriller that had me thinking about it hours and hours after I watched it. The film is still bogged down by Hamaguchi’s penchant for long sequences of boring conversations in cars and other static locations, but weirdly those worked for me better in Evil Does Not Exist. And because the movie begins much more slowly and contemplatively, I forgave the long conversations in the car and at the community center. The ending is great!!
07 May 2024
Alex Garland's Civil War
Civil War is a movie about journalism—it is not a movie about politics or humanity. And, in fact, it follows most of the tropes of those movies, just without any serious emotional depth. I hated this movie, and mostly I hated it because this movie loves war and plays to the audience’s enjoyment of violence.
There is a case to be made that Garland’s film tries to make a movie about journalism in a war-torn country while also avoiding the usual Orientalist or paternalist gaze that those movies turn toward the places where the stories are set. I think that’s probably true. The movie does avoid that.
But the movie still gets off on showing the audience a war zone and asking us to enjoy the thrill of destruction, murder, death, and wholesale slaughter.
I did like the scene with Jesse Plemons. It’s taut and interesting, and it’s also politically sound, by which I mean that that sequence makes a smart anti-war case. The rest of the movie thinks guns are fun.
Also, have you all heard of Joe Dante's film The Second Civil War? It's much better than this business.
Challengers (2024)
Challengers is the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross show.
Actually, look, everyone in this is a star. And they’re all sexy as hell. And this is shot gorgeously. And the editing is fucking brilliant. And the script is just a silly sports melodrama, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so perfectly made and exquisitely directed.
The fucking shot when everyone is turning their heads back and forth to watch the ball and Zendaya just is staring straight ahead??! Perfection.
I know not everyone will love the ending of this movie, but what I love about the ending is the way that Challengers moves into the realm of the metaphorical more and more steadily as the match goes on until it just exists purely as metaphor and refuses to go back to the real. It's so great.
The Fall Guy
This is a great time from start to finish. The jokes are funny and they’re delivered very well by an excellent cast. The fights are so much fun. Really the whole thing is just a blast. The thing is, Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling are fucking stars, and they just run the whole thing perfectly.
This is very much like David Leitch's last movie, Bullet Train, which I also thought was a very good time.
Mars Express
01 May 2024
Housekeeping for Beginners (2024)
Housekeeping for Beginners (Домаќинство за Почетници) is good. Goran Stolevski is an interesting filmmaker who really has a way with writing characters. I wish this film surprised me a bit more, but although it started off with some twists that were very interesting it moved into more familiar territory in act two. Still, I liked this despite its rather conventional ending.
Monkey Man (2024)
I love Dev Patel. I think he’s beautiful and I think he has good ideas. I’m glad he got funding to make this very very expensive movie, and I’m glad he made this movie. I’m glad lots of people went to see this movie. But I did not like this movie.