The Beguiled (1971)

The original version of The Beguiled, directed by Don Siegel, is deeply, delightfully perverse and much, much queerer than the Sofia Coppola remake, which I liked a lot. But it’s unfortunate that she tamed the rough edges of this strange story. This film insists upon the weirdness. (Coppola apparently thought that this Don Siegel movie was too invested in sensational topics like incest and lesbianism? Sign me up! That’s what made this so fun.)

Also, y'all, Clint Eastwood in the 1970s was a fox.

Priscilla (2023)

Sofia Coppola's Priscilla is insanely, almost disturbingly boring. It’s told in these tiny, tiny vignettes. Each scene is almost a minute or less, and one gets almost zero idea about the inner life of any of this film’s characters. I'm calling this disturbing because I found Coppola's approach to be troublingly shallow, as if every single thing that happens to this woman happens only in short bursts, with no analysis attached to it, as if the real people didn't live their lives in sequences longer than a minute. We get almost no moments with the two characters happy; one wonders why she loves this man at all. And I suppose this is supposed to pass off as critique in some way? If so, what is the film critiquing? This is a portrait of a couple falling in love and then falling out of it again. It's a portrait of a young woman who catches the eye of a very, very famous man and then falls in love with him and marries him. But we have no access to what's going on with these two at all. Only stolen minutes in their long lives. It’s baffling. 

The Beguiled and Baby Driver

I was into Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled. It's a mood piece, like all of Coppola's films, and, well, it is about the same mood as all of Coppola's films. Still, it's a fun, mostly sexy piece, and I was into it. I found it troubling and interesting. 

But I find that Coppola's movies make assumptions about audience identification or comprehension that aren't always quite there yet and so The Beguiled makes unjustified moves, assuming we are following, and we eventually end up playing catch up.

The other sort of odd thing about The Beguiled is that it isn't really sure whose side it's on. This is strange. Are we supposed to identify with this soldier against the women (the film seems to think so during a long sequence in the third act in which he is allowed to articulate his grievances), or are supposed to be on their side, to take pleasure in their actions? This just isn't clear, and if Coppola knows what side she wants us to be on, she hasn't made a film that helps us do that. Again, I think Coppola's filmmaking makes assumptions about audience identification that haven't actually been achieved.

This didn't bother me too much, though. I just love me some Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell and Kirsten Dunst. And this film uses all of them very well. (I continue to be baffled by the popularity of Elle Fanning, I must say, but to each her own.)

The best thing about The Beguiled is the costumes. They're absolutely genius. I really hope that  Stacey Battat gets her first Oscar nomination for this.

* * *

Edgar Wright's Baby Driver is better than what I am about to say, but once it occurred to me that Baby Driver is La La Land for people who hated La La Land, I couldn't forget the association. To be sure, Baby Driver has guns and explosions and the best car chases I've ever seen in my life, but it is just a little more gimmicky than I could handle.

This is a fun twenty-first-century musical, and it is definitely Wright's most accomplished, finely directed film to date. But... well so much of it just seemed so overly phony. This is not helped by Kevin Spacey's absurdly over-the-top performance and the film's ridiculous romantic plot, which even has an entire La La Land fantasy sequence near its end.

Do not mistake me, though. This is a good movie. And I enjoyed it a lot. That the film does not have enough Jon Bernthal in it is, I think, indicative of why I didn't completely love this picture. Baby Driver is more interested in sentiment and fantasy than it is in crime, violence, or really scaring its audience. Instead, everything in the film takes place in a kind of Disneyland version of criminal activity, in which it is inevitable that love will save the day.

The Nominees: Part VII of VIII (Aren't We Done Yet?)

THE ILLUSIONIST

1 Nomination:

Best Cinematography: Dick Pope

Director: Neil Burger (Interview with the Assassin)
Cast: Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Paul Giamatti, Rufus Sewell

Zzzzz. This is a bad movie, and don't see it for the cinematography either. I mean, yay, Dick Pope's first nomination and all, but from what I recall of this movie (and I spent a lot of it wishing I would fall asleep), I remember that there aren't very many wide shots because it's kind of a low budget affair with very few sets. This is mostly an interior picture. And I could tell that as I was watching it. I am skeptical of this nomination. There are much more deserving pictures that might've appeared here. Including Best Picture nominee The Departed, which is brilliantly shot.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #65 out of 71

MARIE ANTOINETTE

1 Nomination:

Best Costume Design: Milena Canonero (The Affair of the Necklace, Titus, Dick Tracy, Tucker: the Man and His Dream, Out of Africa, and two trophies: Chariots of Fire and Barry Lyndon)

Director: Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides)
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Coogan, Shirley Henderson, Rip Torn, Molly Shannon, Asia Argento

Very good movie. Awful reviews. But the costumes in this film are really a vision. And Canonero hasn't won since 1982. I want her to win again. This category seems sort of tough to predict, but I think I will predict it for the win... mostly because Canonero is who I'm rooting for.
Will Win: Best Costume Design
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #23 out of 71

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER

1 Nomination:

Best Costume Design: Yee Chung Man

Director: Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers, Hero, Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, To Live, Shanghai Triad)
Cast: Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Ye Liu, Man Li, Jin Chen

This movie is fun stuff. Of course, almost nobody saw it. It's not a big martial arts/swordfighting bonanza like Flying Daggers and Hero were. And is it just me or was it not marketed as much as those two flicks were? It has all of the eye candy of those films and more if you ask me. Anyway, congrats to the designer on this nomination. And let's hope for more stuff of substance from Yimou. He is a master filmmaker with a lot more good stuff in him. And any excuse to see Gong Li is a good one in my opinion.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #33 out of 71

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

1 Nomination:

Best Art Direction: Jeannine Oppewall (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville, L.A. Confidential), Gretchen Rau (The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha—she died last year) & Leslie E. Rollins

Director: Robert De Niro
Cast: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, William Hurt, Gabriel Macht, Timothy Hutton, Lee Pace, Joe Pesci, Billy Crudup, John Turturro, Michael Gambon

Just look at that cast! And then look at my rating down below. I have no explanation for this film or this film's appearance among the nominees for an Academy Award. The only thing I can think of is that everyone who saw this movie just stared at the sets because the plot was so sleep-inducing. Actually, in all fairness, the film does cover a huge span of time and involves lots of beautiful set work. It starts at the beginning of the cold war, so the look of the film really is exquisite, particularly when the film moves across the pond to England and the USSR. In addition, there is a whole plotline that involves the contents of a single specific room. The plot is, in a way about the set. But goddamn, this film is awful.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #71 out of 71

THE GOOD GERMAN

1 Nomination:

Best Original Score: Thomas Newman (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Finding Nemo, Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Unstrung Heroes, Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption)

Director: Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Eleven and Twelve, Erin Brockovich, Full Frontal, Traffic, Out of Sight, The Limey)
Cast: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire

Does anyone have an explanation for how this film missed out on a cinematography nomination? I mean, look at that picture! It's gorgeous. But let's talk about Thomas Newman. My favorite of his scores is the underappreciated Nemo, but this guy has obviously been doing a lot of good work in a very short time. Shawshank was 1995 and it's 2007. That's thirteen years and Newman now has eight nominations. But no wins yet. I don't think he's going to win with this one either, but he needs to get one soon. I also want to talk a little about the score that's actually nominated here. Newman's music has a distinctive sound. We all know the way it works from the "Six Feet Under" soundtrack. Kind of minimalist. High on precussions and low on big orchestrations. But not the score for The Good German. Newman has composed a huge, 1940's movie score. It's grand and opulent and very beautiful. So this is a well-deserved nomination. Hand this man an Oscar soon!
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked: This film has not appeared in Tallahassee just yet.

One more to go...

Review Catch-up

So I've been catching up on films as best I can. Tonight I saw Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette at our free Student Life Cinema theatre. I enjoyed it very much. It's gorgeous, of course, and also very interesting. The cast is almost uniformly made up of comedians (American and otherwise), which made for a very strange film about the French aristocracy. But the film is clearly an homage to La Dolce Vita, while at the same time rooted firmly in Coppola's explorations of teenage girl restlessness, confusion and ennui. The film isn't a complete success as a portrait of privilege, but as I said, it is beautiful to look at (Milena Canonero's costumes are phenomenal) and very, very funny.

Christopher Nolan's The Prestige is excellent. It stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, and featuring appearances by all sort of folks (Bowie! Andy Serkis! Ricky Jay!). This is the magician movie that everyone should have seen this summer instead of The Illusionist (which is total crap). This is another film that has a stunning look. There are sequences in the mountains of Colorado Springs that took my breath away they're shot so beautifully. This is a movie with tricks up its sleeve, but has enough sense to let you in on all of its secrets. The title is terrible, but don't let that keep you away from this picture. It's a winner. Bale gives another great performance, and Jackman is great (I'm loving him lately--tell me everyone's gone out and seen The Fountain!) Michael Caine is also very good in the picture, and it was very nice to see Piper Perabo again. Keep giving that girl work, people! This movie is a thriller and a mystery, as well as a bit of a sci-fi flick. I liked it very much.

Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is tough to get through. No. I lie. It isn't that hard to get through, and it's never really boring, but it also never really goes anywhere either. I guess it's supposed to be funny and horrifying at the same time, but it really never is either of these things. It's frustrating to be sure, but I'm not sure I really like that in my fiction. This was one of the best-reviewed films of the year, but it wasn't my cup of tea and it probably won't be yours either, unless you really like Tsai Ming-Liang or Zhangke Jia. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu reminded me of those guys. I respected the film, but I either didn't get it or got it but didn't care.