17 October 2015
One from the Heart
Francis Ford Coppola's romantic comedy/musical/drama picture is usually hanging around on Netflix Instant, although they take it off now and then just to put it back on (who can study the vagaries of why something is on Netflix Instant?). Anyway, I finally watched it recently, and...
It's one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, made weirder by the fact that Coppola directed it. I don't have anything against the film's star Frederic Forrest, but although he was a jobbing actor in a couple of important movies throughout the seventies and eighties he never really became a star, so his presence in this curiosity feels odd. Teri Garr and Raul Julia, on the other hand, are super sexy in the movie, but One from the Heart is self-consciously theatrical and also depressing. There's a lot of yelling, a lot of fighting, and the entire thing – and this is probably its weirdest attribute – is shot on a sound stage. The whole thing is so odd. The main song, by Tom Waits (and sung by Waits and Crystal Gale) is actually really great, but it is strange too, especially because I find it gets stuck in my head now whenever I see the title of this movie. In any case, this is weird. I don't recommend it, per se, but it was an interesting early '80s filmic experiment.
14 October 2015
Viva la Libertà
12 October 2015
Spring
I was sort of into Spring for most of its runtime. I started off just really excited to see my friend Shane Brady in one of the roles, and so I honestly spent the first 45 minutes of the movie being like But where's Shane??
Shane only shows up for a little bit, so then I had to let that go and really deal with what was in front of me. So, here's the deal with Spring:
First off, this is not a horror movie. I honestly do not understand why anyone is calling it that. Spring has its moments of grotesquerie, to be sure, but this film is, at its soft, sentimental heart, a romantic comedy, and it knows it. This is not a bad thing, and the grotesque elements in the movie make the romantically comic aspects of the movie interesting, and, at the very least, put a nice twist on the traditional boy-meets-girl plot.
Lou Taylor Pucci, the film's star, and his co-star, Nadia Hilker, are both extremely likable. I've loved Pucci since he was in the fabulous Thumbsucker back in 2005, and he has stayed energetic and interesting to watch. Hilker plays a character who we must believe is able to cause Pucci's character fall in love in a mere five days. And... I have to say that I believed it. The woman is completely, utterly lovable, and her manner and attitude are attractive in the extreme. This is due, partially, to the witty first two acts of the script, which contain loads of delightful banter and charming mystery.
But once we hit act three of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's movie, Spring loses steam. Plot points are repeated twice and three times ("But what exactly is going to happen at sunrise on the vernal equinox?? Tell me again, just so that we are clear."), and the scary, mysterious elements of the picture are all jettisoned. The filmmakers move from making a creepy movie into telling a conventional love story.
Even worse, the creepy, even disturbing images from earlier in Spring are transformed into punchlines. The film plays all of its mystery over again, but this time for laughs. First as tragedy, then as farce. This means, too, that all of the suspense is let out of the film, as well. The stakes, which were fairly high even at the film's beginning, before Pucci has met his dream-girl-monster, completely disappear. She's a monster, but although she tells her boyfriend and us that she doesn't know what could happen and that he should run as fast as he can when she starts to change, the film is having too much fun for that now, lingering on her monstrous appendages and prehensile tails like so many hilarious sight gags.
Which means that the big will she or won't she toward which we are headed is no longer a question of what is going to happen with her grotesque transformations, or whether or not she is going to kill Pucci (or someone else), or whether or not the strain of the whole thing might be too much and kill her. Instead, by the end of Spring the only thing the film is interested in having us wonder is whether or not the woman "really loves" the man. Is it true love or isn't it?
And to be honest, this question just isn't that interesting
This is particularly so because the film's investments in true love, in heterosexual love pairing, and in reproduction are so palpable. Both of these characters had parents who stayed together for their whole lives (no divorce here!), and each had one child for whom they sacrificed everything. Even Pucci's mentor at the Italian farm where he works still pines for his dead wife, and stands outside of churches with her picture in his hand crying. Zzzz.
What may strike one as even more odd is that although this is a film made by friends and filmmaking partners Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, Spring thinks friends are not necessary at all. Once you've found the one you love, there's no need to get close to anyone else. Friends are not really worth much. Pucci's mom and dad have no family or friends – they only needed each other and their child because, like, they had true love – and Pucci's one friend, as much as he loves him, turns out to be not helpful at all. Ditto the friends he meets in Rome, who are both total assholes. As for the main female character, she appears to have accumulated exactly zero friends in her two thousand years of existence.
Spring, in fact, makes clear how heteronormative futurity actually works. The film's main thrust is not just true love, but true love and baby makes three. Even more, the movie says not just that the family is the most important thing in the world, but that it is the only important thing in the world. Anything else just gets in the way.
Shane only shows up for a little bit, so then I had to let that go and really deal with what was in front of me. So, here's the deal with Spring:
Lou Taylor Pucci, the film's star, and his co-star, Nadia Hilker, are both extremely likable. I've loved Pucci since he was in the fabulous Thumbsucker back in 2005, and he has stayed energetic and interesting to watch. Hilker plays a character who we must believe is able to cause Pucci's character fall in love in a mere five days. And... I have to say that I believed it. The woman is completely, utterly lovable, and her manner and attitude are attractive in the extreme. This is due, partially, to the witty first two acts of the script, which contain loads of delightful banter and charming mystery.
(**Spoilers Below**)
But once we hit act three of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's movie, Spring loses steam. Plot points are repeated twice and three times ("But what exactly is going to happen at sunrise on the vernal equinox?? Tell me again, just so that we are clear."), and the scary, mysterious elements of the picture are all jettisoned. The filmmakers move from making a creepy movie into telling a conventional love story.
 |
| Shane Brady |
Which means that the big will she or won't she toward which we are headed is no longer a question of what is going to happen with her grotesque transformations, or whether or not she is going to kill Pucci (or someone else), or whether or not the strain of the whole thing might be too much and kill her. Instead, by the end of Spring the only thing the film is interested in having us wonder is whether or not the woman "really loves" the man. Is it true love or isn't it?
And to be honest, this question just isn't that interesting
This is particularly so because the film's investments in true love, in heterosexual love pairing, and in reproduction are so palpable. Both of these characters had parents who stayed together for their whole lives (no divorce here!), and each had one child for whom they sacrificed everything. Even Pucci's mentor at the Italian farm where he works still pines for his dead wife, and stands outside of churches with her picture in his hand crying. Zzzz.
What may strike one as even more odd is that although this is a film made by friends and filmmaking partners Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, Spring thinks friends are not necessary at all. Once you've found the one you love, there's no need to get close to anyone else. Friends are not really worth much. Pucci's mom and dad have no family or friends – they only needed each other and their child because, like, they had true love – and Pucci's one friend, as much as he loves him, turns out to be not helpful at all. Ditto the friends he meets in Rome, who are both total assholes. As for the main female character, she appears to have accumulated exactly zero friends in her two thousand years of existence.
Spring, in fact, makes clear how heteronormative futurity actually works. The film's main thrust is not just true love, but true love and baby makes three. Even more, the movie says not just that the family is the most important thing in the world, but that it is the only important thing in the world. Anything else just gets in the way.
06 October 2015
Lost River
I got the DVD of Ryan Gosling's debut feature Lost River in June. (I still get the DVDs because I am old and they have a better selection). I was excited about Lost River. I like Ryan Gosling: I think he makes good choices, and although I haven't always enjoyed the movies that the directors whose muse he is (Derek Cianfrance and Nicolas Winding Refn) have made with him, I always think Gosling is interesting to watch in these films, even when the films don't work for me.
In any case, I was predisposed to like Lost River. And so I started watching it in early June.
I got about ten minutes in – a ten minutes that played like a riff on a David Gordon Green movie – and then the movie changed tone starkly. The film's star Christina Hendricks was now in a bank office populated by absolutely no one until Ben Mendelsohn enters doing a kind of bizarrely menacing David Lynch kind of thing. This section of the movie is a kind of absurd exposition sequence, in which the main character is introduced to us as in a complete financial bind because of her own ignorance, and (it is immediately obvious) will now be forced to do a series of things that she doesn't want to do but that the film will enjoy watching her do.
I took the DVD out and went to sleep instead. This was already too contrived for my taste.
And then I didn't put the DVD back into my player until last night, when I convinced myself – finally – simply to finish this movie so that I could move on with my movie-watching existence.
Well, I was right when I took it out the first time in June. Lost River is derivative of lots of other filmmakers, which is, I suppose, fine as far as it goes, but Lost River also can't decide which of these guys it likes best. David Lynch is an obvious influence, with his grotesquely vicious worlds and characters who behave without motivation of any kind, but the movie also insists on numerous shots lit by a single source of brightly saturated neon light (pink, red, sometimes green) just like Refn's (awful) Ryan Gosling movie Only God Forgives.
Let me just stop right here: Avoid this thing at all costs. It is slow and ponderous and absurdly self important. And it is insanely, almost sadistically boring. Eva Mendes is a charming bright spot in this dour universe, but there isn't much else of interest and there's no one to root for in Lost River. Stay away.
I got about ten minutes in – a ten minutes that played like a riff on a David Gordon Green movie – and then the movie changed tone starkly. The film's star Christina Hendricks was now in a bank office populated by absolutely no one until Ben Mendelsohn enters doing a kind of bizarrely menacing David Lynch kind of thing. This section of the movie is a kind of absurd exposition sequence, in which the main character is introduced to us as in a complete financial bind because of her own ignorance, and (it is immediately obvious) will now be forced to do a series of things that she doesn't want to do but that the film will enjoy watching her do.
I took the DVD out and went to sleep instead. This was already too contrived for my taste.
And then I didn't put the DVD back into my player until last night, when I convinced myself – finally – simply to finish this movie so that I could move on with my movie-watching existence.
Well, I was right when I took it out the first time in June. Lost River is derivative of lots of other filmmakers, which is, I suppose, fine as far as it goes, but Lost River also can't decide which of these guys it likes best. David Lynch is an obvious influence, with his grotesquely vicious worlds and characters who behave without motivation of any kind, but the movie also insists on numerous shots lit by a single source of brightly saturated neon light (pink, red, sometimes green) just like Refn's (awful) Ryan Gosling movie Only God Forgives.
Let me just stop right here: Avoid this thing at all costs. It is slow and ponderous and absurdly self important. And it is insanely, almost sadistically boring. Eva Mendes is a charming bright spot in this dour universe, but there isn't much else of interest and there's no one to root for in Lost River. Stay away.
04 October 2015
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, the Zellner Brothers. movie, is based on a true story of a young Japanese woman who convinced herself that the Coen Brothers movie Fargo was a true story and that the treasure that Steve Buscemi buries next to a fence in a snow-covered field is a real treasure that she can go dig up.
The movie stars Rinko Kikuchi and is quirky and sad and more indebted to the Coen Brothers than I can even really begin to say. It has the same types of very funny salt-of-the-earth characters for which the Coens are known, and it shifts tone from incredibly bleak to totally absurd in the blink of an eye. It is, in fact, a kind of absurdist, existential film that works very, very well. The Coens, after all, are not bad masters to have, and if the movie owes much to them, the Zellners are certainly up front about their love for their predecessors and their debts to them. In any case, Kumiko is beautifully acted and thoroughly enjoyable, with a hopeful, whimsical strain to its tragic story.
The movie stars Rinko Kikuchi and is quirky and sad and more indebted to the Coen Brothers than I can even really begin to say. It has the same types of very funny salt-of-the-earth characters for which the Coens are known, and it shifts tone from incredibly bleak to totally absurd in the blink of an eye. It is, in fact, a kind of absurdist, existential film that works very, very well. The Coens, after all, are not bad masters to have, and if the movie owes much to them, the Zellners are certainly up front about their love for their predecessors and their debts to them. In any case, Kumiko is beautifully acted and thoroughly enjoyable, with a hopeful, whimsical strain to its tragic story.
Sicario
A sicario is an assassin, a title card tells us at the beginning of Denis Villeneuve's new movie starring Emily Blunt.
Sicario begins with a raid on a house in Arizona that ostensibly is holding hostages – actually, we don't know anything about what's going on. We know that Emily Blunt and her partner Daniel Kaluuya are the people we are supposed to like, and we know that people are shooting at them. We also know that Blunt's character Kate is a badass: she wastes an assassin without any trouble at all, dodging his shotgun blast and blowing him away with a machine gun. In the house that they and their team raid we find upwards of 40 corpses, hidden in the walls. There is also a huge explosion that manages to kill a couple of local cops.
From here we stay in the dark.
In other words, from the movie's opening sequence we don't really know what's going on. Kate is brought along on a mission to El Paso led by a winking, glib Josh Brolin and accompanied by a taciturn Benicio Del Toro. But what we are doing and why we are doing it is never clear. The movie traffics in this kind of mystery. The movie is, in fact, almost totally made up of setpieces in the sense that nothing that's happening is ever linked to a larger storyline. We are in a single action sequence and we follow that action sequence, but Sicario's game is keeping us uninvested in characters, in why the action is happening, and in what this action is supposed to accomplish.
It's an odd way to go about making a movie that is "serious" about drugs in America or crime in America or the real-world problems that attend dealing with crime that is both "Mexican" crime and "U.S. crime". There is no analysis of the problem, no expository information given to us so that we can try to puzzle it out or think through different possibilities for dealing with the problem: we simply follow Brolin and Del Toro along as they do "what needs to be done".
I found this frustrating in the extreme – not least because this means that Emily Blunt is given almost nothing to do except look confused as she tries to do what she knows how to do even though she has no idea what the rules are. The rules, you will remember, have been deliberately hidden from both her and us.
The other reason this is frustrating is that the film is fundamentally invested in violence as the solution to all problems that it presents us. Sicario enjoys violence, enjoys, in fact, staging torture for the audience's enjoyment. Further, Sicario doesn't object in any way to this torture. This is "what needs to be done". Of course, the audience has no way to know if this is true or not because the audience is never being given the full story about anything: We're not going to tell you what's going on, but hey here's a scene where we are going to torture a guy that we're telling you is a bad guy. Enjoy yourself!
And we do! The torture scenes are the most enjoyable part. And when the sicario of the film's title appears and begins to assassinate everyone in his path, we're there to enjoy these scenes and feel the thrill of having killed a bunch of people. Why? Who cares. Is it just for revenge? Sounds good.
All of this is fine, to be sure... if we're in a James Bond movie or Quentin Tarantino movie (QT's violence is always much more complex and nuanced, in fact) or if we're in a revenge movie starring Liam Neeson or Jason Statham. Revenge for the sake of itself. Bloodshed for pleasure. Fine. But Sicario pretends to be something else. It purports to be some kind of serious movie about border crime and the realities of life in Ciudad Juárez. That, however, is simply the thin veneer laid over what is essentially a shoot-em-up assassin movie. Sicario is about illegal substances being transported into the U.S. and daily terrorism in Juárez the way that Bad Boys II is about the connections between Russian gangsters and megalomaniac Cuban drug lords.
With the exception of Brolin's phoned-in performance the acting is solid. It's always good to see jobbing actors like Jon Bernthal and Maximiliano Hernández (both particularly good) getting work. And Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Bernardo P. Saracino, and Lora Martinez-Cunningham are all solid in good roles.
Roger Deakins shot Sicario – he was nominated for an Oscar for Villeneuve's Prisoners – and Sicario is very big on being beautiful to look at. There is even an extended sequence shot as black-and-white night-vision. I was bored with all of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this pleased other audience members. For me, this first-person-shooter video-game look only makes the film's pleasure at sending bullets into the nameless, worthless bodies of Mexican "criminals" all the more apparent. This film is not about educating us about border crime. It is not even about presenting us with the problem. It is about killing people without consequence and enjoying it.
From here we stay in the dark.
In other words, from the movie's opening sequence we don't really know what's going on. Kate is brought along on a mission to El Paso led by a winking, glib Josh Brolin and accompanied by a taciturn Benicio Del Toro. But what we are doing and why we are doing it is never clear. The movie traffics in this kind of mystery. The movie is, in fact, almost totally made up of setpieces in the sense that nothing that's happening is ever linked to a larger storyline. We are in a single action sequence and we follow that action sequence, but Sicario's game is keeping us uninvested in characters, in why the action is happening, and in what this action is supposed to accomplish.
It's an odd way to go about making a movie that is "serious" about drugs in America or crime in America or the real-world problems that attend dealing with crime that is both "Mexican" crime and "U.S. crime". There is no analysis of the problem, no expository information given to us so that we can try to puzzle it out or think through different possibilities for dealing with the problem: we simply follow Brolin and Del Toro along as they do "what needs to be done".
 |
| From the opening. |
The other reason this is frustrating is that the film is fundamentally invested in violence as the solution to all problems that it presents us. Sicario enjoys violence, enjoys, in fact, staging torture for the audience's enjoyment. Further, Sicario doesn't object in any way to this torture. This is "what needs to be done". Of course, the audience has no way to know if this is true or not because the audience is never being given the full story about anything: We're not going to tell you what's going on, but hey here's a scene where we are going to torture a guy that we're telling you is a bad guy. Enjoy yourself!
And we do! The torture scenes are the most enjoyable part. And when the sicario of the film's title appears and begins to assassinate everyone in his path, we're there to enjoy these scenes and feel the thrill of having killed a bunch of people. Why? Who cares. Is it just for revenge? Sounds good.
 |
| Jeffrey Donovan in Sicario |
With the exception of Brolin's phoned-in performance the acting is solid. It's always good to see jobbing actors like Jon Bernthal and Maximiliano Hernández (both particularly good) getting work. And Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Bernardo P. Saracino, and Lora Martinez-Cunningham are all solid in good roles.
Roger Deakins shot Sicario – he was nominated for an Oscar for Villeneuve's Prisoners – and Sicario is very big on being beautiful to look at. There is even an extended sequence shot as black-and-white night-vision. I was bored with all of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this pleased other audience members. For me, this first-person-shooter video-game look only makes the film's pleasure at sending bullets into the nameless, worthless bodies of Mexican "criminals" all the more apparent. This film is not about educating us about border crime. It is not even about presenting us with the problem. It is about killing people without consequence and enjoying it.
20 August 2015
Quest for Fire
The movie is cool, too. One of Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1980s wordless films. La Guerre du Feu (Quest for Fire) isn't exactly wordless, but it is pretty well close. The characters, all humanoids, speak various grunting, mostly inarticulate languages. The film is very intriguing, and though it is occasionally predictable, it is enjoyable throughout. The acting from the main three actors, Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi, and Rae Dawn Chong, is excellent.
25 July 2015
Julie and I Watch J.Lo's Boy Next Door
Aaron: I am here!
Julie: Wooo!
Aaron: What are you drinking? Corona?
Julie: Corona Light. But please note that I've already had tequila and rosé. You?
Aaron: Rosé. The vinho verde is on sale. It is good, too.
Julie: Lovely.
Aaron: Oh my god this movie. I am so excited.
Julie: Can I tell you two things:
1) I love J.Lo. I'm not gonna lie. She's great.
2) I'm already sad that this is only 91 minutes long.
Aaron: I think that bodes well for the movie.
Julie: She is already acting.
Aaron: She is so sexy. For real.
Julie: KRISTIN CHENOWETH!
Aaron: I cannot believe KChenoweth is in this!
Julie: Now we know why Justin watched this: dramaturgical research for working with her on On the Twentieth, amirite?
Aaron: Haha. Look at this shot of the butcher knife.
Julie: Ominous. I want this to be actually scary.
Aaron: All of the camera angles are slightly lower too. Like Mommie Dearest. By which I mean a horror movie.
Julie: Well, yes, it is a horror movie, no?
Aaron: This thing is moving right along. I mean, my goodness.
Julie: That garage door is going to come down on her just like in Scream. And the abs have entered the scene!
Aaron: This is a nice homoerotic moment. But, like, the 19-year-old boy clearly has no relationship with this old man. Oh my god exposition.
Julie: We ♥ exposition.
Aaron: Isn't it interesting how these two pretty people are clearly adults but are supposed to be highschoolers, but this little teenager is also supposed to be a highschooler?
Julie: Is it interesting, though?
Aaron: Just typical, I guess.
Julie: That score. Who wrote this? Nathan Barr and Randy Edelman.
Aaron: Together?
Julie: Those are the fools in charge of the sound we are hearing.
Aaron: J.Lo is adorable, though.
Julie: If I was a 19 year old boy, I'd stalk J.Lo too. Let's make a note.
Aaron: Totally.
Julie: She is 46 and hot as fuck. Sexy librarian glasses!
Aaron: If I was that old man I would stalk J.Lo.
Julie: HAHA.
Aaron: I am loving how homoerotic this is. This little boy loves his new hot friend. The camera also loves him.
Julie: I love how the camera fetishizes him but not her.
Aaron: So far.
Julie: Well, right. We'll see.
Aaron: The history of cinema teaches us it's bound to happen.
Julie: You don't know! Rob Cohen might be different!
Aaron: We are talking about the plot of the Iliad right now?
Julie: Why are we talking about the Iliad? This movie is not going to pretend to be smart. For the love, just embrace your stupidity!
Aaron: Oh my god I love KChenoweth right now. That line "oh, poets" was gold.
Julie: He is going to give her a first edition of the Iliad! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Aaron: The first edition! Hahaha. It's so good.
Julie: OK, Let's be honest, we were waiting for this moment. So good.
Aaron: I have to look up this actual edition.
Julie: There's the booty. You're right. (I can't believe I just typed “booty”.)
Aaron: (Neither can I.) Oh but now we are seeing his ass! Amazing. The forbidden fruit!
Julie: Mmmmm. So good. I can't believe KC just said “give him head”. I hope she was paid well for this.
Aaron: Oh my god. What a terrible date.
Julie: If my options were this old douchebag or the hot boy next door… I mean. Y'know the answer.
Aaron: Imagine insulting a girl on the first date! Firecracker!?? This is some racist bullshit.
Julie: This is like every date I've ever been on. A living nightmare.
Aaron: Oh my god. I would die. Is dating really like this?
Julie: Harry Potter reference!
Aaron: "J.K. Rowling. Billionaire. Classics major."
Julie: BOOM.
Aaron: J.Lo's glass of wine is as big as mine.
Julie: Drink that wine, girl. I need another beer.
Aaron: Don't leave while they are having sex!
Julie: Haha, I'm back just in time.
Aaron: Why is she saying "this is wrong"? Like, why is it wrong?
Julie: Because he is basically a child. Her son's friend.
Aaron: Whatever.
Julie: This is terrible. It is totally saying that women really mean yes when they say no. J.Lo, I am disappointed in you.
Aaron: It totally is.
Julie: What is this mess rated?
Aaron: This is definitely saying that. She keeps saying no and she most certainly does not mean no.
Julie: Yeah, it's really disturbing. Shit, this is R.
Aaron: I don't know, but you were not kidding about fetishizing his body. This film is obsessed with this dude's body.
Julie: I better see some side penis.
Aaron: Ok, but like, why is this weird music happening? Is she enjoying the sex? I don't get it.
Julie: Yes, apparently. But they want us to know she is going to be punished for enjoying it. This movie hates women.
Aaron: The music makes it seem like a really traumatizing event instead of a pleasurable one. No she did not fall asleep naked on the sofa!!
Julie: She is now shamed. See. So hateful of women having sex and enjoying it.
Aaron: Oh shit. He's already lost his mind!
Julie: Good. I'm tired of this movie hating her. It's time to dislike him.
Aaron: We are 25 minutes into this movie and he is already losing his shit?
Julie: This is how these types of movies work, A-ron. They beat you over the head with the crazy. It's played for the lowest common denominator.
Aaron: This is bad. This movie makes her into a complete idiot. How can any person be this dumb?
Julie: Why is she being all panicky and crazy? This sucks. "It got pretty wet here." Eww.
Aaron: Hahaha.
Julie: "I love your mother's cookies." Seriously?
Aaron: It's something a teenager would say at least.
Julie: Yes, please blame your cheating on her. Please.
Aaron: "Don't be a bitch about me cheating on you."
Julie: THIS MOVIE IS WRITTEN BY A WOMAN. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.
Aaron: NO fucking WAY. This woman hates women.
Julie: I can't. I fucking can't.
Aaron: You can. This is the world in which we live.
Julie: This is her only writing credit. Obviously. Hateful hack.
Aaron: Thankfully there are great women filmmakers in the world.
Aaron: He is quoting the Iliad! Hahaha. This movie pretends that the Iliad was written in English.
Julie: Haha. It pretends a lot of things, Aaron. That is the least of our problems.
Aaron: Like he can just quote the "book".
Julie: Her home office is beautiful. I would like the set designer to do that for my apartment, thank you.
Aaron: Me too! Maybe I will do that in Orlando. This movie is actually so boring.
Julie: Yes! Hire Lisa Son! A woman involved in this crap that actually does good work!
Aaron: I want it to be more exciting, Julie.
Julie: It is boring. I can't drink fast enough to enjoy it.
Aaron: There are books all over this house! I like it. They're really pretty.
Julie: I'd like to live there. Without the creepy kid next door.
Julie: You know what this boxing means: the son is totally going to save the day with the boxing moves he's learning. I guarantee it.
Aaron: I hope so. This little boy looks like Andy Richardson, the boy who played Crutchie in Newsies. Oh yeah this child is like allergic to shit. I forgot.
Julie: He is!
Aaron: I forgot about that.
Julie: What the fuck is he allergic to in this scene?
Aaron: Plot point! The teenager will be welcomed back into J.Lo's good graces.
Julie: Also, are we supposed to like creep-o because he saved this kid?
Aaron: He saved the life of the son. No. We aren't supposed to like him; she is.
Julie: Well, if I'm confused, you know the director doesn't actually have a p.o.v.
Aaron: I like KChenoweth in this. She is funny.
Julie: She is, for sure. Are you drunk? I feel like there's no alcohol in these beers.
Aaron: I am not drunk enough for this movie. No one went to this, right?
Julie: No one is drunk enough for this movie.
Julie: Why is the camera looking down on him and up to her? Awkward.
Aaron: I have no idea. How weird. Wait, is this girl like scared of the psycho boy? Is that what's happening? Did he threaten her into going on that date?
Julie: No, I didn't get that feeling. By the way, is that a purple car?
Aaron: No, that is the bad cinematography. This film hates sex. And women. Sex = violence and death.
Julie: It only hates women having sex. Aaron, that is a classic horror movie trope. You didn't think The Boy Next Door would re-invent the wheel, did you?
Aaron: I don't watch this stuff. That's your thing.
Julie: Horror movies punish anyone who has sex. Especially women.
Aaron: Wait, the film is in his head now? This is a huge switch.
Julie: This movie doesn't know whose movie it wants it to be.
Aaron: Does a horror film normally do that?
Julie: He just called her a whore. And she didn't even flinch. WTF.
Aaron: I have no idea.
Julie: Before she was panicky, and now she's all, “no big deal”.
Aaron: I need more rosé.
Julie: These skateboarders are not going to end well. There we go. Oh SHIT. Motherfucker pushed KC.
Aaron: This boy needs to go to jail right now.
Julie: This movie is also OK with domestic violence. Yay.
Aaron: No it isn't. It at least stops there.
Julie: You sure?
Aaron: What the fuck! How can this movie actually do what it is doing? Like, the only thing anyone had to say about this movie was the Iliad? Who left this movie thinking about the Iliad?
Julie: Yep.
Aaron: I mean, if you are J.Lo and you teach at a school, people are going to pretend that they had sex with you and want to have sex with you, right?
Julie: Yes. Absolutely.
Aaron: But this movie enjoys watching this man commit sexual violence on her. And thinks it is fun to punish her for having sex with an adult.
Julie: Yeah. It's really uncomfortable.
Aaron: It's fucking offensive.
Julie: Well, she was having sex with a kid who goes to the school she teaches at. Which is super-inapro. So we can see this girl's tits? Awesome.
Aaron: But like, she didn't know that. He's nineteen. And now he is expelled, so it's not an issue.
Julie: He's a pretty industrious little fucker, isn't he? Is she seriously going to be caught in this shit right now?
Aaron: With lots of time on his hands. He has time to have sex with that woman and break into the classroom?
Julie: An early riser apparently.
Julie: Haha. I love the slo-mo key shot.
Aaron: It's very phallic. Did we ever figure out what his allergic reaction was in the gymnasium? Oh my god that car really is purple.
Julie: No, because it makes no sense. Is it??? Oh, it is.
Aaron: This boy is like acting.
Julie: Why is everyone in this movie becoming a crazy person? Ahaha, I love the voice break. Nice touch, young man. That is a middle-age crisis car, for real.
Aaron: His acting is kinda good. I am proud of this actor.
Julie: Mid-life, rather. Maybe I'm drunker than I thought.
Aaron: Hahaha.
Julie: I love the random slo-mo. It's making my life right now.
Aaron: This woman needs to put a restraining order on this man next door. Not that I trust the police to handle shit.
Julie: Right? This kid is gonna grow up to be a cop. Pee break.
Aaron: You are missing the physical and sexual harassment that is happening here. And how can she be the only one who thinks this boy is cray?
Julie: KC thinks he's crazy. But she's a woman, so no one cares/believes her.
Aaron: True. But this film thinks female friendship is annoying, right? J.Lo told KC to mind her own business.
Julie: Yes. When they're together, women only talk about men.
Aaron: So instead of them having a supportive helpful relationship that actually keeps other women safe they just cut each other down and compete with one another.
Julie: Yeah, it's playing on the stereotype. Charming. Wait, there's a video?
Aaron: Why would she lose her son? I don't understand this.
Julie: How did I miss that?
Aaron: Oh yes. You were peeing.
Julie: Haha. I miss all the vital info due to tiny bladder syndrome.
Aaron: There's video. We haven't seen it though. It might be a lie.
Julie: Oh, it's a lie. Obvs.
Aaron: Notice that the uncle with whom he is living has totally disappeared.
Julie: That's because he killed him.
Aaron: HA.
Julie: C'mon, Aaron. Horror movie. Haha.
Aaron: Also, someone this crazy gets caught by other people for sure. He can't terrorize only J.Lo. Like, he would get arrested and shit.
Julie: You know this is oddly similar to J.Lo's other horrible film, Enough. But she got really badass at the end of that one, so I'm hoping she (wo)mans up.
Aaron: She is looking for a video behind a clock? Oh the camera. Haha. Find the video, girl. Fuck the camera.
Julie: She is going to find the uncle's body. For reals.
Aaron: She totally is!
Julie: Or a giant poster of herself.
Aaron: Remember when this film was about Homer?
Julie: It was so much classier then.
Aaron: Hahaha. No it wasn't. "She smells like chocolate chip cookies."
Julie: Haha. oh yeah. I'm drunk. He's alive!!!!! With some impressive eyebrows, I might add. All those knives on the wall! Did you see that? Who has that many kitchen knives?!
Aaron: So. Many. Knives. Also, call the police. Don't just "run". Call the cops.
Julie: That was so cheap. And bad.
Aaron: So Steven Spielberg.
Julie: Ouch. That's a low blow, A-ron!
Aaron: Nevertheless.
Julie: Stevie is great. Be nice. Wait, who was in his car? I don't get it.
Aaron: Minivans do not explode. His parents.
Julie: He has parents?
Aaron: He killed them apparently.
Julie: How much did I miss when I was in the bathroom?! Haha.
Aaron: They died. The uncle told us that when we first met the child.
Julie: This movie has 20 min left. So the question is: Do I need another beer?
Aaron: Why would a cop be telling a high school teacher all of this info? You do, girl. We all do.
Julie: How many wines have you had? Don't pressure me unless you're doing it too.
Aaron: Most of a bottle.
Julie: Ugh, I'm so full though. I think I'm going to muscle through.
Aaron: No more beer. Save yourself.
Julie: Is he talking to a body?!
Aaron: This film is terribly directed. Now we are watching him and this is a comic moment.
Julie: Yes. KC.
Aaron: The film thinks this is fun.
Julie: Oh! She's still alive!
Aaron: She is alive.
Julie: This film is trying to be a horror movie but doesn't know how. It is terrible. It is more terrible than terrible horror movies.
Aaron: This lighting. I cannot deal with it. This is trying to be a thriller. Not a horror movie. A thriller. And I am not thrilled.
Julie: No, that "who's he talking to in this scene?" was a total horror-movie move. But so badly done.
Aaron: She goes into the house. Even though there is no power. You're right. This is a wannabe horror movie. KC's house is identical to J.Lo's? They look exactly the same.
Julie: OH MAN. I TOLD YOU. Horror movie!
Aaron: Definitely.
Julie: HE'S IN THE CAR. HE'S IN THE CAR.
Aaron: But, like: Call. The. Police.
Julie: GET OUT OF THE CAR.
Aaron: Obviously.
Julie: Oh. He was outside the car. Haha. Mommy issues. Oh my god, he calls every woman in this movie a whore.
Aaron: Not his mom. He loves his mom.
Julie: Gross.
Aaron: Oh wait. Madonna/whore. Oldest trope in the book. This is awful.
Julie: This is turning into torture porn. This is like Hostel, J.Lo style. Also, I'm feeling a little Witness-like. Are we in a barn?
Aaron: Torture porn? I think that is excessive. WITNESS?!?! HAHAHA. We are in a barn indeed.
Julie: Well, yes, of course it is. But that is what this scene is alluding to.
Aaron: OMG J.Lo. Good call. She got smart.
Julie: Where did this barn come from, though? Aren't they in LA?
Aaron: They totally are. I have no idea. Maybe they're out in San Bernardino?
Julie: Ok, let's say that. I am embarrassed for everyone in this film.
Aaron: I like the costume designer. Did the barn burn down in Witness? Oh my god, now that you brought that up I can't let it go.
Julie: Hmm… maybe? I need to re-visit it. Witness is so good.You shouldn't let it go.
Aaron: It is! I hope there is boxing now.
Julie: I am not sure what his striped sweater is saying about him right now. OH SHIT. So that just happened.
Aaron: Oh my god. She stabbed him in the eye!
Julie: This is the best part of the film. It is finally horror!
Aaron: That shot with the eye! This is totally torture porn now.
Julie: It's getting closer, at least. I want more eye-stabbing.
Aaron: She stuck her thumb in his eye! After she stabbed him.
Julie: So good! I would too!
Aaron: And there was a close-up.
Julie: You're so funny. We need to watch actual horror movies together. You will die.
Aaron: I don't think we should.
Julie: But they're so delightful!
Aaron: I will treat all of them like this one.
Julie: That's it?? WTF.
Aaron: This ended terribly.
Julie: Barbara Curry, you are the worst screenwriter in the history of screenwriters.
Aaron: She really is! I like this song over the end credits, though.
Julie: I have to say, though, that would've been intolerable without chatting with you. A pleasure, as always.
Aaron: So everyone who made this movie was a woman. All of the producers.
Julie: No. Director was a man.
Aaron: Oh true. A gay man?
Julie: Surely, yes? Because he didn't care about any of the female bodies.
Aaron: He's straight, apparently.
Julie: Do we have any closing remarks for this gem?
Aaron: I have nothing to say about this. I wish we had gotten distracted and talked about something important. Like, well anything.
Julie: We did! We talked about feminism! And how this movie was the opposite of feminist.
Aaron: We did. That's true. Who is J.Lo married to now?
Julie: Isn't she still married to what's-his-face? The singer?
Aaron: Is she? What is his name?
Julie: OH MY GOD IT IS HER BIRTHDAY
Aaron: Oh my god.
Julie: WE WATCHED THIS ON HER BIRTHDAY
Aaron: NO way.
Julie: HAPPY BIRTHDAAAAAAY, J.LO!
Aaron: Hahahaha. Happy birthday, girl. You look fabulous. And you tried. You really did. It isn't your fault this movie was bad. You did your best.
Julie: She tried so hard!
Ojani Noa (m. 1997–98)
Cris Judd (m. 2001–03)
Marc Anthony (m. 2004–14)
No longer married.
Aaron: Marc Anthony. Yeah. Oh, I am sorry they divorced. But she was so much more talented than him.
Julie: That is not a good track record. She needs a good man.
Aaron: That is what this film thinks too, Julie.
Julie: That is the truth. They were married a decade though! That is a long time in my world.
Aaron: In mine too. I can't keep a man longer than like 2 months.
Julie: THERE ARE DELETED SCENES.
Aaron: Let's watch them. I have more wine. Oh the barn. I remember. KChen lives on a farm, apparently. That was in the first act.
Julie: Haha, ok, you drink the wine and watch them. You just made that up. Ain't no way KC lives on a farm.
Aaron: She does. It's in act one. Remember?
Julie: I clearly do not, A-ron. I don't know why you ask.
Aaron: This deleted scene was important. It should not have been deleted.
Julie: What happened?
Aaron: There are 3 deleted scenes. The first one is girl bonding with KChen and J.Lo. And she buys her those shoes.
Julie: Ah. Thrilling.
Aaron: The other deleted scene is terrible. Like the rest of the movie. Who is this Ryan Guzman man? Is he on the television?
Julie: First of all, he is only 28. Child.
Aaron: Playing 19.
Julie: Secondly, he is in one of the Step Up movies, and that's basically the highlight of his career.
Aaron: Ah. Does he... dance?
Julie:
Julie: AHAHAHA. I thought the Step Up movies were supposed to be fun. This looks boring.
Aaron: Hahahaha. Everyone likes a love story, Julie. Especially the psychopath in this movie. There are actually 5 deleted scenes. I am only watching the first 3. The others will have to stay deleted.
Julie: Ugh, I'm missing all the good stuff.
Aaron: There is also a commentary with director Rob Cohen.
Julie: I miss Anonymous.
Aaron: What if the director said "I only hate women as much as Homer did."
Julie: HAHA. He's never read Homer. You give him way too much credit. Ain't no one on that set who has read Homer. Maybe KC.
Aaron: Women in ancient Greece always said no when they meant yes. Which is why their husbands kept them locked up in their houses. I am drunk.
Julie: But then there was Lysistrata. Why the fuck are we talking about the Greeks?
Julie: What is our takeaway here? Mine is that J.Lo is awesome and needs to choose better movies that don't hate her for being a woman.
Aaron: Honestly, I don't know.
Julie: Also: If I want to watch a horror movie, I'll watch a real fucking horror movie. Lesson learned.
Aaron: Ok. Mine is: Only have sex with a 19-year-old if you're sure he's not gonna be in your class next term. But also, don't have sex with a 19-year-old, unless he is actually 28.
Julie: And you're certain he isn't a misogynistic stalker. Even 28-year-olds are pushing it. Let's be real.
Aaron: Oof. True. You took us out on a sad note, Julie.
Julie: Sorry. But I've gotta speak my truth.
Aaron: Ok. This was fun/terrible.
Julie: It was all the things.
Aaron: I am gonna finish this bottle of wine now.
Julie: Enjoy the rosé.
Aaron: Obviously. XO.
Julie: XOXOXJLO
Aaron: LOL.
Julie: Byeeeeeee.
Julie: Wooo!
Aaron: What are you drinking? Corona?
Julie: Corona Light. But please note that I've already had tequila and rosé. You?
Aaron: Rosé. The vinho verde is on sale. It is good, too.
Julie: Lovely.Aaron: Oh my god this movie. I am so excited.
Julie: Can I tell you two things:
1) I love J.Lo. I'm not gonna lie. She's great.
2) I'm already sad that this is only 91 minutes long.
Aaron: I think that bodes well for the movie.
Julie: She is already acting.
Aaron: She is so sexy. For real.
Julie: KRISTIN CHENOWETH!
Aaron: I cannot believe KChenoweth is in this!
Julie: Now we know why Justin watched this: dramaturgical research for working with her on On the Twentieth, amirite?
Aaron: Haha. Look at this shot of the butcher knife.
Julie: Ominous. I want this to be actually scary.
Aaron: All of the camera angles are slightly lower too. Like Mommie Dearest. By which I mean a horror movie.
Julie: Well, yes, it is a horror movie, no?
Aaron: This thing is moving right along. I mean, my goodness.
Julie: That garage door is going to come down on her just like in Scream. And the abs have entered the scene!
Aaron: This is a nice homoerotic moment. But, like, the 19-year-old boy clearly has no relationship with this old man. Oh my god exposition.
Julie: We ♥ exposition.
Aaron: Isn't it interesting how these two pretty people are clearly adults but are supposed to be highschoolers, but this little teenager is also supposed to be a highschooler?
Julie: Is it interesting, though?
 |
| Specs! |
Julie: That score. Who wrote this? Nathan Barr and Randy Edelman.
Aaron: Together?
Julie: Those are the fools in charge of the sound we are hearing.
Aaron: J.Lo is adorable, though.
Julie: If I was a 19 year old boy, I'd stalk J.Lo too. Let's make a note.
Aaron: Totally.
Julie: She is 46 and hot as fuck. Sexy librarian glasses!
Aaron: If I was that old man I would stalk J.Lo.
Julie: HAHA.
Aaron: I am loving how homoerotic this is. This little boy loves his new hot friend. The camera also loves him.
Julie: I love how the camera fetishizes him but not her.
Aaron: So far.
Julie: Well, right. We'll see.
Aaron: The history of cinema teaches us it's bound to happen.
Julie: You don't know! Rob Cohen might be different!Aaron: We are talking about the plot of the Iliad right now?
Julie: Why are we talking about the Iliad? This movie is not going to pretend to be smart. For the love, just embrace your stupidity!
Aaron: Oh my god I love KChenoweth right now. That line "oh, poets" was gold.
Julie: He is going to give her a first edition of the Iliad! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Aaron: The first edition! Hahaha. It's so good.
Julie: OK, Let's be honest, we were waiting for this moment. So good.
Aaron: I have to look up this actual edition.
Julie: There's the booty. You're right. (I can't believe I just typed “booty”.)
Aaron: (Neither can I.) Oh but now we are seeing his ass! Amazing. The forbidden fruit!
Julie: Mmmmm. So good. I can't believe KC just said “give him head”. I hope she was paid well for this.
Aaron: Oh my god. What a terrible date.
Julie: If my options were this old douchebag or the hot boy next door… I mean. Y'know the answer.
Aaron: Imagine insulting a girl on the first date! Firecracker!?? This is some racist bullshit.
Julie: This is like every date I've ever been on. A living nightmare.
Aaron: Oh my god. I would die. Is dating really like this?
Julie: Harry Potter reference!
Aaron: "J.K. Rowling. Billionaire. Classics major."
Julie: BOOM.
Aaron: J.Lo's glass of wine is as big as mine.
Julie: Drink that wine, girl. I need another beer.
Aaron: Don't leave while they are having sex!
Julie: Haha, I'm back just in time.
Aaron: Why is she saying "this is wrong"? Like, why is it wrong?
Julie: Because he is basically a child. Her son's friend.
Aaron: Whatever.
Julie: This is terrible. It is totally saying that women really mean yes when they say no. J.Lo, I am disappointed in you.
Aaron: It totally is.
Julie: What is this mess rated?
Aaron: This is definitely saying that. She keeps saying no and she most certainly does not mean no.
Julie: Yeah, it's really disturbing. Shit, this is R.
Aaron: I don't know, but you were not kidding about fetishizing his body. This film is obsessed with this dude's body.
Julie: I better see some side penis.
Aaron: Ok, but like, why is this weird music happening? Is she enjoying the sex? I don't get it.
Aaron: The music makes it seem like a really traumatizing event instead of a pleasurable one. No she did not fall asleep naked on the sofa!!
Julie: She is now shamed. See. So hateful of women having sex and enjoying it.
Aaron: Oh shit. He's already lost his mind!
Julie: Good. I'm tired of this movie hating her. It's time to dislike him.
Aaron: We are 25 minutes into this movie and he is already losing his shit?
Julie: This is how these types of movies work, A-ron. They beat you over the head with the crazy. It's played for the lowest common denominator.
Aaron: This is bad. This movie makes her into a complete idiot. How can any person be this dumb?
Julie: Why is she being all panicky and crazy? This sucks. "It got pretty wet here." Eww.
Aaron: Hahaha.
Julie: "I love your mother's cookies." Seriously?
Aaron: It's something a teenager would say at least.
Julie: Yes, please blame your cheating on her. Please.
Aaron: "Don't be a bitch about me cheating on you."
Julie: THIS MOVIE IS WRITTEN BY A WOMAN. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.
Aaron: NO fucking WAY. This woman hates women.
Julie: I can't. I fucking can't.
Aaron: You can. This is the world in which we live.
Julie: This is her only writing credit. Obviously. Hateful hack.
Aaron: Thankfully there are great women filmmakers in the world.
Aaron: He is quoting the Iliad! Hahaha. This movie pretends that the Iliad was written in English.
Julie: Haha. It pretends a lot of things, Aaron. That is the least of our problems.
Aaron: Like he can just quote the "book".
Julie: Her home office is beautiful. I would like the set designer to do that for my apartment, thank you.
Aaron: Me too! Maybe I will do that in Orlando. This movie is actually so boring.
Julie: Yes! Hire Lisa Son! A woman involved in this crap that actually does good work!
Aaron: I want it to be more exciting, Julie.
Julie: It is boring. I can't drink fast enough to enjoy it.
Aaron: There are books all over this house! I like it. They're really pretty.
Julie: I'd like to live there. Without the creepy kid next door.
Julie: You know what this boxing means: the son is totally going to save the day with the boxing moves he's learning. I guarantee it.
 |
| Mr. Richardson |
Julie: He is!
Aaron: I forgot about that.
Julie: What the fuck is he allergic to in this scene?
Aaron: Plot point! The teenager will be welcomed back into J.Lo's good graces.
Julie: Also, are we supposed to like creep-o because he saved this kid?
Aaron: He saved the life of the son. No. We aren't supposed to like him; she is.
Julie: Well, if I'm confused, you know the director doesn't actually have a p.o.v.
Aaron: I like KChenoweth in this. She is funny.
Julie: She is, for sure. Are you drunk? I feel like there's no alcohol in these beers.
Aaron: I am not drunk enough for this movie. No one went to this, right?
Julie: No one is drunk enough for this movie.
Julie: Why is the camera looking down on him and up to her? Awkward.
Aaron: I have no idea. How weird. Wait, is this girl like scared of the psycho boy? Is that what's happening? Did he threaten her into going on that date?
Julie: No, I didn't get that feeling. By the way, is that a purple car?
Aaron: No, that is the bad cinematography. This film hates sex. And women. Sex = violence and death.
Julie: It only hates women having sex. Aaron, that is a classic horror movie trope. You didn't think The Boy Next Door would re-invent the wheel, did you?
Aaron: I don't watch this stuff. That's your thing.
Julie: Horror movies punish anyone who has sex. Especially women.
Aaron: Wait, the film is in his head now? This is a huge switch.
Julie: This movie doesn't know whose movie it wants it to be.
Aaron: Does a horror film normally do that?
Julie: He just called her a whore. And she didn't even flinch. WTF.
Aaron: I have no idea.
Julie: Before she was panicky, and now she's all, “no big deal”.
Aaron: I need more rosé.
Julie: These skateboarders are not going to end well. There we go. Oh SHIT. Motherfucker pushed KC.
Aaron: This boy needs to go to jail right now.
Julie: This movie is also OK with domestic violence. Yay.
Aaron: No it isn't. It at least stops there.
Julie: You sure?
Aaron: What the fuck! How can this movie actually do what it is doing? Like, the only thing anyone had to say about this movie was the Iliad? Who left this movie thinking about the Iliad?
Julie: Yep.
Aaron: I mean, if you are J.Lo and you teach at a school, people are going to pretend that they had sex with you and want to have sex with you, right?
Julie: Yes. Absolutely.
Aaron: But this movie enjoys watching this man commit sexual violence on her. And thinks it is fun to punish her for having sex with an adult.
Julie: Yeah. It's really uncomfortable.
Aaron: It's fucking offensive.
Julie: Well, she was having sex with a kid who goes to the school she teaches at. Which is super-inapro. So we can see this girl's tits? Awesome.
Aaron: But like, she didn't know that. He's nineteen. And now he is expelled, so it's not an issue.
Julie: He's a pretty industrious little fucker, isn't he? Is she seriously going to be caught in this shit right now?
Aaron: With lots of time on his hands. He has time to have sex with that woman and break into the classroom?
Julie: An early riser apparently.
 |
| Ian Nelson is not terrible in this. |
Julie: Haha. I love the slo-mo key shot.
Aaron: It's very phallic. Did we ever figure out what his allergic reaction was in the gymnasium? Oh my god that car really is purple.
Julie: No, because it makes no sense. Is it??? Oh, it is.
Aaron: This boy is like acting.
Julie: Why is everyone in this movie becoming a crazy person? Ahaha, I love the voice break. Nice touch, young man. That is a middle-age crisis car, for real.
Aaron: His acting is kinda good. I am proud of this actor.
Julie: Mid-life, rather. Maybe I'm drunker than I thought.
Aaron: Hahaha.
Julie: I love the random slo-mo. It's making my life right now.
Aaron: This woman needs to put a restraining order on this man next door. Not that I trust the police to handle shit.
Julie: Right? This kid is gonna grow up to be a cop. Pee break.
Aaron: You are missing the physical and sexual harassment that is happening here. And how can she be the only one who thinks this boy is cray?
Julie: KC thinks he's crazy. But she's a woman, so no one cares/believes her.
Aaron: True. But this film thinks female friendship is annoying, right? J.Lo told KC to mind her own business.
Julie: Yes. When they're together, women only talk about men.
Aaron: So instead of them having a supportive helpful relationship that actually keeps other women safe they just cut each other down and compete with one another.
Julie: Yeah, it's playing on the stereotype. Charming. Wait, there's a video?
Aaron: Why would she lose her son? I don't understand this.
Julie: How did I miss that?
Aaron: Oh yes. You were peeing.
Julie: Haha. I miss all the vital info due to tiny bladder syndrome.
Aaron: There's video. We haven't seen it though. It might be a lie.
Julie: Oh, it's a lie. Obvs.
Aaron: Notice that the uncle with whom he is living has totally disappeared.
Julie: That's because he killed him.
Aaron: HA.
Julie: C'mon, Aaron. Horror movie. Haha.
Aaron: Also, someone this crazy gets caught by other people for sure. He can't terrorize only J.Lo. Like, he would get arrested and shit.
Julie: You know this is oddly similar to J.Lo's other horrible film, Enough. But she got really badass at the end of that one, so I'm hoping she (wo)mans up.
Aaron: She is looking for a video behind a clock? Oh the camera. Haha. Find the video, girl. Fuck the camera.
Julie: She is going to find the uncle's body. For reals.
Aaron: She totally is!
Julie: Or a giant poster of herself.
Aaron: Remember when this film was about Homer?
Julie: It was so much classier then.
Aaron: Hahaha. No it wasn't. "She smells like chocolate chip cookies."
Julie: Haha. oh yeah. I'm drunk. He's alive!!!!! With some impressive eyebrows, I might add. All those knives on the wall! Did you see that? Who has that many kitchen knives?!
Aaron: So. Many. Knives. Also, call the police. Don't just "run". Call the cops.
Julie: That was so cheap. And bad.
Aaron: So Steven Spielberg.
Julie: Ouch. That's a low blow, A-ron!
Aaron: Nevertheless.
Julie: Stevie is great. Be nice. Wait, who was in his car? I don't get it.
Aaron: Minivans do not explode. His parents.
Julie: He has parents?
Aaron: He killed them apparently.
Julie: How much did I miss when I was in the bathroom?! Haha.
Aaron: They died. The uncle told us that when we first met the child.
Julie: This movie has 20 min left. So the question is: Do I need another beer?
Aaron: Why would a cop be telling a high school teacher all of this info? You do, girl. We all do.
Julie: How many wines have you had? Don't pressure me unless you're doing it too.
Aaron: Most of a bottle.
Julie: Ugh, I'm so full though. I think I'm going to muscle through.
Aaron: No more beer. Save yourself.
 |
| KC and J.Lo |
Aaron: This film is terribly directed. Now we are watching him and this is a comic moment.
Julie: Yes. KC.
Aaron: The film thinks this is fun.
Aaron: She is alive.
Julie: This film is trying to be a horror movie but doesn't know how. It is terrible. It is more terrible than terrible horror movies.
Aaron: This lighting. I cannot deal with it. This is trying to be a thriller. Not a horror movie. A thriller. And I am not thrilled.
Julie: No, that "who's he talking to in this scene?" was a total horror-movie move. But so badly done.
Aaron: She goes into the house. Even though there is no power. You're right. This is a wannabe horror movie. KC's house is identical to J.Lo's? They look exactly the same.
Julie: OH MAN. I TOLD YOU. Horror movie!
Aaron: Definitely.
Julie: HE'S IN THE CAR. HE'S IN THE CAR.
Aaron: But, like: Call. The. Police.
Julie: GET OUT OF THE CAR.
Aaron: Obviously.
Julie: Oh. He was outside the car. Haha. Mommy issues. Oh my god, he calls every woman in this movie a whore.
Aaron: Not his mom. He loves his mom.
Julie: Gross.
Aaron: Oh wait. Madonna/whore. Oldest trope in the book. This is awful.
Julie: This is turning into torture porn. This is like Hostel, J.Lo style. Also, I'm feeling a little Witness-like. Are we in a barn?
Aaron: Torture porn? I think that is excessive. WITNESS?!?! HAHAHA. We are in a barn indeed.
Julie: Well, yes, of course it is. But that is what this scene is alluding to.
Aaron: OMG J.Lo. Good call. She got smart.
Julie: Where did this barn come from, though? Aren't they in LA?
Aaron: They totally are. I have no idea. Maybe they're out in San Bernardino?
Julie: Ok, let's say that. I am embarrassed for everyone in this film.
Aaron: I like the costume designer. Did the barn burn down in Witness? Oh my god, now that you brought that up I can't let it go.Julie: Hmm… maybe? I need to re-visit it. Witness is so good.You shouldn't let it go.
Aaron: It is! I hope there is boxing now.
Julie: I am not sure what his striped sweater is saying about him right now. OH SHIT. So that just happened.
Aaron: Oh my god. She stabbed him in the eye!
Julie: This is the best part of the film. It is finally horror!
Aaron: That shot with the eye! This is totally torture porn now.
Julie: It's getting closer, at least. I want more eye-stabbing.
Aaron: She stuck her thumb in his eye! After she stabbed him.
Julie: So good! I would too!
Aaron: And there was a close-up.
Julie: You're so funny. We need to watch actual horror movies together. You will die.
Aaron: I don't think we should.
Julie: But they're so delightful!
Aaron: I will treat all of them like this one.
Julie: That's it?? WTF.
Aaron: This ended terribly.
Julie: Barbara Curry, you are the worst screenwriter in the history of screenwriters.
Aaron: She really is! I like this song over the end credits, though.
Julie: I have to say, though, that would've been intolerable without chatting with you. A pleasure, as always.
Aaron: So everyone who made this movie was a woman. All of the producers.
Julie: No. Director was a man.
Aaron: Oh true. A gay man?
Julie: Surely, yes? Because he didn't care about any of the female bodies.
Aaron: He's straight, apparently.
Aaron: I have nothing to say about this. I wish we had gotten distracted and talked about something important. Like, well anything.
Julie: We did! We talked about feminism! And how this movie was the opposite of feminist.
Aaron: We did. That's true. Who is J.Lo married to now?
Julie: Isn't she still married to what's-his-face? The singer?
Aaron: Is she? What is his name?
Julie: OH MY GOD IT IS HER BIRTHDAY
Aaron: Oh my god.
Julie: WE WATCHED THIS ON HER BIRTHDAY
Aaron: NO way.
Julie: HAPPY BIRTHDAAAAAAY, J.LO!
Aaron: Hahahaha. Happy birthday, girl. You look fabulous. And you tried. You really did. It isn't your fault this movie was bad. You did your best.
Julie: She tried so hard!
Ojani Noa (m. 1997–98)
Cris Judd (m. 2001–03)
Marc Anthony (m. 2004–14)
No longer married.
Aaron: Marc Anthony. Yeah. Oh, I am sorry they divorced. But she was so much more talented than him.
Julie: That is not a good track record. She needs a good man.
Aaron: That is what this film thinks too, Julie.
Julie: That is the truth. They were married a decade though! That is a long time in my world.
Aaron: In mine too. I can't keep a man longer than like 2 months.
Julie: THERE ARE DELETED SCENES.
Aaron: Let's watch them. I have more wine. Oh the barn. I remember. KChen lives on a farm, apparently. That was in the first act.
Julie: Haha, ok, you drink the wine and watch them. You just made that up. Ain't no way KC lives on a farm.
Aaron: She does. It's in act one. Remember?
Julie: I clearly do not, A-ron. I don't know why you ask.
Aaron: This deleted scene was important. It should not have been deleted.
Julie: What happened?
Aaron: There are 3 deleted scenes. The first one is girl bonding with KChen and J.Lo. And she buys her those shoes.
Julie: Ah. Thrilling.
Aaron: The other deleted scene is terrible. Like the rest of the movie. Who is this Ryan Guzman man? Is he on the television?
Julie: First of all, he is only 28. Child.
Aaron: Playing 19.
Julie: Secondly, he is in one of the Step Up movies, and that's basically the highlight of his career.
Aaron: Ah. Does he... dance?
Julie:
Julie: AHAHAHA. I thought the Step Up movies were supposed to be fun. This looks boring.
Aaron: Hahahaha. Everyone likes a love story, Julie. Especially the psychopath in this movie. There are actually 5 deleted scenes. I am only watching the first 3. The others will have to stay deleted.
Julie: Ugh, I'm missing all the good stuff.
Aaron: There is also a commentary with director Rob Cohen.
Julie: I miss Anonymous.
Aaron: What if the director said "I only hate women as much as Homer did."
Julie: HAHA. He's never read Homer. You give him way too much credit. Ain't no one on that set who has read Homer. Maybe KC.
Aaron: Women in ancient Greece always said no when they meant yes. Which is why their husbands kept them locked up in their houses. I am drunk.
Julie: But then there was Lysistrata. Why the fuck are we talking about the Greeks?
Julie: What is our takeaway here? Mine is that J.Lo is awesome and needs to choose better movies that don't hate her for being a woman.
Aaron: Honestly, I don't know.
Julie: Also: If I want to watch a horror movie, I'll watch a real fucking horror movie. Lesson learned.
Aaron: Ok. Mine is: Only have sex with a 19-year-old if you're sure he's not gonna be in your class next term. But also, don't have sex with a 19-year-old, unless he is actually 28.
Julie: And you're certain he isn't a misogynistic stalker. Even 28-year-olds are pushing it. Let's be real.
Aaron: Oof. True. You took us out on a sad note, Julie.
Julie: Sorry. But I've gotta speak my truth.
Aaron: Ok. This was fun/terrible.
Julie: It was all the things.
Aaron: I am gonna finish this bottle of wine now.
Julie: Enjoy the rosé.
Aaron: Obviously. XO.
Julie: XOXOXJLO
Aaron: LOL.
Julie: Byeeeeeee.
19 July 2015
Чёрное Mо́рe
Kevin Macdonald's Black Sea is a submarine movie, which is a definite plus to my mind. I love me a good submarine flick.
But... Black Sea is not a good submarine flick. Instead, screenwriter Dennis Kelly shows his hand about a million times. The whole thing feels like a stage play, one in which we are always getting information far later than we ought to get it, one in which the screenwriter can do or say basically anything he wants, and we are asked simply to be ok with that.
Macdonald tries his best with the weak material, and so does the photographer Christopher Ross. Jude Law is great, of course. He's a superb actor, and he gives his all to this role, even though the role itself is not very exciting.
Black Sea, however, fills itself with twists and turns, as well as absurd emotional "payoffs" that don't actually work at all. This is not a character study like Dom Hemingway, this is an action-suspense movie. Except that the suspense is basically non-existent and the action is consistently predictable.
I was bored.
Macdonald tries his best with the weak material, and so does the photographer Christopher Ross. Jude Law is great, of course. He's a superb actor, and he gives his all to this role, even though the role itself is not very exciting.
Black Sea, however, fills itself with twists and turns, as well as absurd emotional "payoffs" that don't actually work at all. This is not a character study like Dom Hemingway, this is an action-suspense movie. Except that the suspense is basically non-existent and the action is consistently predictable.
I was bored.
10 July 2015
Things I Liked about Jurassic World
So Jurassic World is apparently making money hand over fist and people are flocking to the theatre. I am not really sure I can pinpoint why. My friend Walter and I have gone around and around about this, and I keep coming back to But man, there's dinosaurs! Walter (accurately) reminds me that The Lost World and Jurassic Park III did not do nearly this well and they, too, were about dinosaurs. It is truly a puzzle because this is an awful movie for many, many reasons. Its misogyny, which is its most marked characteristic, is chief among these, of course. (The men in Jurassic World, while not in the least nuanced, are at least different from one another – even in terms of nationality and color! But every woman in the movie is basically identical to every other woman in the movie – white, teary-eyed, vaguely shrill.)
To be honest, though, I didn't hate the movie. I found it sort of fun: a kind of pleasure for which I felt extremely guilty. And so on that note, I will bypass all of the bad things about the movie and try to be positive about this terrible film that I didn't hate. Some things I enjoyed about Jurassic World:
1. Irrfan Khan. I love seeing him onscreen whenever he's in anything, and although he is terribly underused in this movie, and although the director completely undercuts his coolest scene (in the helicopter) by spoiling the reveal, he is still cool in the movie. And his character is the mouthpiece for whatever dumb philosophy the movie contains (about the smallness of mankind, the ethics of genetic testing, a critique of Bryce Dallas Howard's tendency to work too much and refuse to have any fun). And in a world where the costume designers basically have no idea what they're doing, his costume (an obviously expensive suit) was nearly the only one that made any sense.
2. Nick Robinson! I love this young actor. He was amazing in The Kings of Summer, which I've talked about at length on here. So I am glad he is getting bigtime work. He is solid in this too. It would have been easy, for example, for him to overplay the negative side of his character at the beginning of the movie, but he opts instead for a nuanced characterization that sees the role as making a minor shift rather than a big clunky emotional shift from terrible brother to great brother. Instead he's slightly disaffected and shifts into caretaker mode without getting too sappy.
3. The new dino. I felt like I didn't see nearly enough of the new Misogynist Rex or whatever it was called, but it was so cool! It can regulate its body temperature? It can camouflage itself? It can run super fast and it kills for sport? I love this thing! It was very sad to me that (like the latest Godzilla flick), director Colin Trevorrow never really let the camera linger on the giant evil dinosaur, but she was still really, really neat. This is a PG-13 thing, too, I expect. I mean, I guess we're not really allowed to watch a giant lizard rip through the flesh of another giant lizard, but it would have been cool.
4. The Mososaurus. Apparently the movie-version actually looks nothing like what the historical Mososaurus probably looked like, but this animal is the coolest thing in the whole picture. Also – and I am not sure if this is intentional – but Jurassic World borrows one of its sequences wholesale from Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. The quality is terrible because this video is obviously illegal, but skip ahead to 3:15 and then consider the following:
This is copied directly in the sequence where the Pteranodons pick up the boys' nanny and play with her only to have both predator and prey get eaten by the Mososaurus. This was a particularly egregious sequence of misogyny, by the way, but I did get some pleasure out of watching the Fantasia tribute/cribbing.
5. Hmm. I think that's it actually. Everything else is standard fare, except that it's really stupid on top of being really standard. Queer villains. Corrupt military figure. Vague environmentalism. Half-baked love plot. Anti-intellectualism. Terrible direction. Terrible editing. Really bad acting. Abysmally bad script. It's a good thing there were dinosaurs.
[Edit: 6. Ashley reminded me that Bryce Dallas Howard ran around the entirety of that island in heels. She didn't do hardly anything that was badass, but all of that running in heels definitely qualifies.]
1. Irrfan Khan. I love seeing him onscreen whenever he's in anything, and although he is terribly underused in this movie, and although the director completely undercuts his coolest scene (in the helicopter) by spoiling the reveal, he is still cool in the movie. And his character is the mouthpiece for whatever dumb philosophy the movie contains (about the smallness of mankind, the ethics of genetic testing, a critique of Bryce Dallas Howard's tendency to work too much and refuse to have any fun). And in a world where the costume designers basically have no idea what they're doing, his costume (an obviously expensive suit) was nearly the only one that made any sense.
2. Nick Robinson! I love this young actor. He was amazing in The Kings of Summer, which I've talked about at length on here. So I am glad he is getting bigtime work. He is solid in this too. It would have been easy, for example, for him to overplay the negative side of his character at the beginning of the movie, but he opts instead for a nuanced characterization that sees the role as making a minor shift rather than a big clunky emotional shift from terrible brother to great brother. Instead he's slightly disaffected and shifts into caretaker mode without getting too sappy.
3. The new dino. I felt like I didn't see nearly enough of the new Misogynist Rex or whatever it was called, but it was so cool! It can regulate its body temperature? It can camouflage itself? It can run super fast and it kills for sport? I love this thing! It was very sad to me that (like the latest Godzilla flick), director Colin Trevorrow never really let the camera linger on the giant evil dinosaur, but she was still really, really neat. This is a PG-13 thing, too, I expect. I mean, I guess we're not really allowed to watch a giant lizard rip through the flesh of another giant lizard, but it would have been cool.
4. The Mososaurus. Apparently the movie-version actually looks nothing like what the historical Mososaurus probably looked like, but this animal is the coolest thing in the whole picture. Also – and I am not sure if this is intentional – but Jurassic World borrows one of its sequences wholesale from Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. The quality is terrible because this video is obviously illegal, but skip ahead to 3:15 and then consider the following:
This is copied directly in the sequence where the Pteranodons pick up the boys' nanny and play with her only to have both predator and prey get eaten by the Mososaurus. This was a particularly egregious sequence of misogyny, by the way, but I did get some pleasure out of watching the Fantasia tribute/cribbing.
5. Hmm. I think that's it actually. Everything else is standard fare, except that it's really stupid on top of being really standard. Queer villains. Corrupt military figure. Vague environmentalism. Half-baked love plot. Anti-intellectualism. Terrible direction. Terrible editing. Really bad acting. Abysmally bad script. It's a good thing there were dinosaurs.
[Edit: 6. Ashley reminded me that Bryce Dallas Howard ran around the entirety of that island in heels. She didn't do hardly anything that was badass, but all of that running in heels definitely qualifies.]
26 June 2015
Dope
If you want to see a clever, exciting, funny film that also happens to be smart about race, get thee to a cinema and check out Dope. As its title hints, Dope is a film about drugs. But the title also refers to being an idiot, a dope, if you will, as well as to the 1990s slang term for something that is cool. As Wiktionary offers: That party was dope!
Dope is about three highschoolers in Inglewood who are '90s geeks. They are, in other words, obsessed with '90s-style clothes, music, movies, etc. But these kids are geeks. They get good grades and get beat up in school. So, of course, they find their way into a ridiculous party at some point and then the eponymous dope gets stuck in a backpack. What is a group of nerds supposed to do with a couple of pounds of molly? This is the plot of the film, and Dope charts the changes that happen to this group of friends and the hilarious happenings of the people around them as they try to get out of the situation with their lives.
I don't have much to say about Dope, in all honesty, because the whole thing just works so well. There are plenty of parts where I thought director Rick Famuyiwa could've tightened things up or taken a different emotional approach, and a couple of performances that I thought were terrible (Roger Guenveur Smith wears some bizarre facial hair and giving the weirdest performance in the film), but all must be forgiven, because if Famuyiwa's directing is not great, his screenplay sure is. This screenplay is excellent. Just. Excellent.
And the acting, for the most part, is also excellent. The cast is headed by Shameik Moore, and he is supported by Tony Revolori and Kiersey Clemons. This trio has great chemistry and impeccable timing, and they are hilarious from the very beginning of the film. But there are some other really superb performances in Dope, too. Rapper A$AP Rocky gives a beautiful performance as the drug kingpin, and Quincy Brown (Sean Combs' son) is really funny as a wealthy drug-dealer's kid. In any case, the whole thing is filled with hilarious and poignant moments.
Comparisons to last year's Dear White People are inevitable with Dope, mostly because both films are interested in thinking about what blackness is, how blackness is perceived and how black people experience the constant and difficult racialization that the world throws at them. But while DWP is interested in lecturing us about how lots of black people don't fall in with black-people stereotypes (really??), Dope is much more interested in dealing with the way stereotypes materially affect black lives. Dope is much much smarter than DWP, and it is also much much funnier. DWP was filled with righteous indignation; this is, of course, merited, but I did not exactly find it enjoyable to watch in its stridency. Dope alternates deftly between being quite serious and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Famuyiwa calibrates this tone very well (if not always perfectly)m and the audience can transition from laugh to gasp quickly.
Both DWP and Dope are also heavily indebted to Spike Lee's filmmaking, and Dope's penultimate sequence (the protagonist's application letter to Harvard) is a Spike Lee flourish that is hard hitting, excellent, and tough as nails.
Just go. You will laugh and you will love it. It is smart and funny and intense and sexy and it just plain works.
Dope is about three highschoolers in Inglewood who are '90s geeks. They are, in other words, obsessed with '90s-style clothes, music, movies, etc. But these kids are geeks. They get good grades and get beat up in school. So, of course, they find their way into a ridiculous party at some point and then the eponymous dope gets stuck in a backpack. What is a group of nerds supposed to do with a couple of pounds of molly? This is the plot of the film, and Dope charts the changes that happen to this group of friends and the hilarious happenings of the people around them as they try to get out of the situation with their lives.I don't have much to say about Dope, in all honesty, because the whole thing just works so well. There are plenty of parts where I thought director Rick Famuyiwa could've tightened things up or taken a different emotional approach, and a couple of performances that I thought were terrible (Roger Guenveur Smith wears some bizarre facial hair and giving the weirdest performance in the film), but all must be forgiven, because if Famuyiwa's directing is not great, his screenplay sure is. This screenplay is excellent. Just. Excellent.
And the acting, for the most part, is also excellent. The cast is headed by Shameik Moore, and he is supported by Tony Revolori and Kiersey Clemons. This trio has great chemistry and impeccable timing, and they are hilarious from the very beginning of the film. But there are some other really superb performances in Dope, too. Rapper A$AP Rocky gives a beautiful performance as the drug kingpin, and Quincy Brown (Sean Combs' son) is really funny as a wealthy drug-dealer's kid. In any case, the whole thing is filled with hilarious and poignant moments.
Both DWP and Dope are also heavily indebted to Spike Lee's filmmaking, and Dope's penultimate sequence (the protagonist's application letter to Harvard) is a Spike Lee flourish that is hard hitting, excellent, and tough as nails.
Just go. You will laugh and you will love it. It is smart and funny and intense and sexy and it just plain works.
24 June 2015
On Happy-Sad Feelings and Memory in General
At the risk of having everyone jump down my throat, but with, perhaps, the goal in mind of some sort of identity with others who felt the same way I did, here are a couple of thoughts on Inside Out.
First, it strikes me as rather odd that internet list-makers and such evaluate Pixar movies vis-à-vis other Pixar movies. I do realize that there is a clear studio brand here, and that one can begin to chart a kind of shift when Pixar and Disney joined up together, but wouldn't it make a little more sense to evaluate, say, a Brad Bird movie against or alongside another Brad Bird movie, and then a Pete Docter movie alongside another Pete Docter movie? Why is the Pixar brand itself so often the overriding conceptual frame with which we evaluate these films? For the record (since I brought it up), Docter directed Inside Out, and Docter's previous films for Pixar as director have been Up and Monsters, Inc.
Inside Out is kinda smart about feelings. It powerfully charts the way that society demands that we all be happy all of the time, and how we also (at least a lot of us, a lot of the time) want to be happy all of the time. And the film teaches its audience that it is totally ok not to be happy all of the time, that sometimes you feel sad and that feeling sad is the best way to get through a real problem. Throwing happiness at a real issue or trying to push through and see the bright side of every thing is not always the best way to process that thing. Where Inside Out heads, to take it even further, is not just to a place that says that it's ok to be sad, but also to teach its audience that some of the best memories are both happy and sad, or are complex mixtures of a whole range of feelings. Experiences are not made up of simply one emotion.
If you're reading this and thinking Yeah I know, then you're reacting the way I reacted to the film. What Inside Out does well is make these things really clear for a teenage or adolescent audience, and I'm glad it did that. But I sort of understood the message way earlier than the film wanted me to understand the message.
I also just didn't understand the spatial elements inside the brain of the little girl. The film set up a whole set of rules for how the girl's brain worked, but I felt like it didn't really play by these rules. Where are we? How does an emotion get sent into a different area of the memory, anyway? If something is forgotten forever how, exactly, does one get out of that space of forgotten-forever? I was frustrated by all of this: this purse of core memories, all of the spatiality in which the movie was so invested. I just didn't get it.
The movie does some really great things, though. Inside Out tells us that as one gets older, memories that were once very happy become sad memories. And Inside Out illustrates beautifully what it is like to lose a personality when one is a teenager and has trouble making sense of one's own self.
Still, I couldn't help but feel like this abstracting of this emotional world (which was actually a concretizing of the emotional world), seemed unspecific and often generic. Happiness, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, Anger. That's all this movie thinks there is?
Inside Out is kinda smart about feelings. It powerfully charts the way that society demands that we all be happy all of the time, and how we also (at least a lot of us, a lot of the time) want to be happy all of the time. And the film teaches its audience that it is totally ok not to be happy all of the time, that sometimes you feel sad and that feeling sad is the best way to get through a real problem. Throwing happiness at a real issue or trying to push through and see the bright side of every thing is not always the best way to process that thing. Where Inside Out heads, to take it even further, is not just to a place that says that it's ok to be sad, but also to teach its audience that some of the best memories are both happy and sad, or are complex mixtures of a whole range of feelings. Experiences are not made up of simply one emotion.
If you're reading this and thinking Yeah I know, then you're reacting the way I reacted to the film. What Inside Out does well is make these things really clear for a teenage or adolescent audience, and I'm glad it did that. But I sort of understood the message way earlier than the film wanted me to understand the message.
I also just didn't understand the spatial elements inside the brain of the little girl. The film set up a whole set of rules for how the girl's brain worked, but I felt like it didn't really play by these rules. Where are we? How does an emotion get sent into a different area of the memory, anyway? If something is forgotten forever how, exactly, does one get out of that space of forgotten-forever? I was frustrated by all of this: this purse of core memories, all of the spatiality in which the movie was so invested. I just didn't get it.The movie does some really great things, though. Inside Out tells us that as one gets older, memories that were once very happy become sad memories. And Inside Out illustrates beautifully what it is like to lose a personality when one is a teenager and has trouble making sense of one's own self.
Still, I couldn't help but feel like this abstracting of this emotional world (which was actually a concretizing of the emotional world), seemed unspecific and often generic. Happiness, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, Anger. That's all this movie thinks there is?
08 June 2015
Paris Blues
I was super into Paris Blues. I've been thinking about the Method recently a little more than usual because I am reading Jane Fonda's autobiography My Life So Far (actually, since I'm audiobooking it, she's reading it to me). Fonda was a student of the method and she mentioned offhand some of Lee Strasberg's other students – Ben Gazarra and Newman and Joanne Woodward – and I thought oh yeah Woodward and Newman.Paris Blues is a jazz movie from 1961. In many ways it is very slight. Woodward romances Newman, who is taciturn and difficult, but also fun-loving and smiley by turns. And Sidney Poitier walks around Paris with the luminous Diahann Carroll. The couples fall in love. The boys are jazz musicians and trying to make a go of their careers. Newman is trying to be a composer. Louis Armstrong appears a couple of times, most notably for an extended musical sequence that is absolutely delightful. But, as I say, the whole thing is pretty slight. The couples are in love, they fight, they're not in love anymore, they reunite. Carroll and Poitier fight about what we used to call "the race question" – Poitier likes living in Paris because Parisians are not even close to as racist as Americans are, his own country. Carroll argues that roots are important, and that the only way the nation is going to improve is if people stay and make waves and fight about it; running off to Paris isn't the answer.
Paris Blues fits in perfectly, then, with Martin Ritt's commitment to racial equality and issues of racism in his films, and the movie also ends with a beautiful, hard finish. I was really into it. I forget how much I love Martin Ritt's work.
02 June 2015
My Favorite Moment in Ex Machina
Freak out over, Caleb is able to sleep. He presumably has confirmed that he is, finally, human, and not simply one of Nathan's creations. But, again, Nathan and Ex Machina know better. In a strange conversation about how desire might work, Nathan explicates a queer theory describing sexual desire itself as culturally contingent, explaining that Caleb "himself" – at one of the levels he considers most personal, human – has been programmed by media, by his parents, by his culture. It is a pretty great conversation, and one that makes it clear that Caleb is, no matter how "real" he thinks he is, actually a cyborg. It is too late for us not to be cyborgs. Who we (think we) are is so completely informed, molded, even dictated by the media we consume, even the media that we are consuming alone at our computer consoles. This is even more true for someone like Caleb, who spends his days at a computer, speaking in the computer's own language.
The internet, this ability to have information at our fingertips, this stream of every type of pornography imaginable, has permeated our very desires. My second favorite sequence from the movie is Sonoya Mizuno and Oscar Isaac's incredible dance sequence. It's a surprising, odd section of the movie, mostly because it departs so fully from the visual world that Alex Garland has so-far created in the movie. The sequence is also totally chilling, because it becomes so clear in this sequence that Kyoko is a machine. Her dance moves copy Nathan's exactly. Or... well, doesn't this beg us to think about who Nathan is copying with his dance moves? I mean, it is clear that Kyoko can only copy the moves Nathan teaches her – they dance in unison – but Nathan's moves aren't original either, are they?
Ex Machina sort of devolves at its end – Garland has trouble dealing with the fallout of the situation and theoretical proposition he has set up for us – Sunshine (a much more successful movie, to my mind, at least on an emotional level) went similarly off the rails. It is as though the only possible response to the questions that Garland wishes to pose is violent action. For Garland, violence is what we find at the limits of subjectivity. Still, as with Sunshine, this violence is awesome to watch. The stabbings at the end of Ex Machina are one of the coolest things in the movie. That knife just goes in so easily, with an even beautiful simplicity. Violence, here, works to illustrate another limit of human subjectivity. The human body is subject to injury, to woundings, to violence, and human consciousness cannot (yet) live without the body that houses that consciousness. As Bussy asks in George Chapman's 1604 play Bussy D'Ambois:
Is my body thenBussy's question is rhetorical. The answer is an unequivocal yes, one that Chapman stages by having Bussy die onstage in front of our eyes. But in Ex Machina, we follow a different person out of the compound and back to the city. Her mind, perhaps, does not need to follow her blood.
But penetrable flesh? And must my mind
Follow my blood? Can my divine part add
No aid to th'earthly in extremity?
I don't know. For me the film becomes confused here. I kept wondering about the body, particularly at the film's end. How is the body powered? Is Ava's body subject to the same time limit that human bodies are? How does she experience her stolen skin? How long will this body and its parts last? Isn't Ava just as human in this way, too? She cannot continue indefinitely, can she? And won't she – just as humanity itself, as Nathan reminds us – need to be replaced by a newer model who can experience things in even more varied ways?
01 June 2015
The Assault
It's a real shame that so many non-English-language films from the 1980s are out of print these days. As I try to watch these older movies that I have heard of or simply seen their names on lists, it can be really difficult to get ahold of some of these movies. (The Dartmouth Library) is helping me as best as it can at the moment.
Last night I saw Fons Rademakers' De Aanslag (The Assault) – it actually ought to have a better title, but it is based on the novel of the same name by Harry Mulisch. I haven't read this book, but I am going to wager that it is much more deeply moving than Rademakers' film.
Still, the film is sturdily made in a kind of 1980s Romantic vein, and it boasts some excellent performances, particularly by Derek de Lint. And it certainly doesn't deserve to be out of print like it is. As far as I can tell, The Assault is only available for purchase in the U.S. in a dubbed-into-English VHS edition that is only available used (current price $45). This is a real shame!
The Assault is about an event in little Anton's life when he is twelve at the end of the second World War. A Nazi policeman is murdered in front of his neighbors' house. They run out quickly in the dark and move the body in front of Anton's house. The Nazis then arrest everyone in the house and burn it down. Anton and the audience understand very little of what is happening, but as Anton gets older he randomly meets people from back then who tell him bits and pieces of what happened so that he can finally piece back together the actions the assassins, his neighbors, and his family took that night.
The style of The Assault is out of fashion right now – it would be remade quite nicely, I expect – but it is a great story. It's a good mystery and an emotionally rich situation.
Still, the film is sturdily made in a kind of 1980s Romantic vein, and it boasts some excellent performances, particularly by Derek de Lint. And it certainly doesn't deserve to be out of print like it is. As far as I can tell, The Assault is only available for purchase in the U.S. in a dubbed-into-English VHS edition that is only available used (current price $45). This is a real shame!
The style of The Assault is out of fashion right now – it would be remade quite nicely, I expect – but it is a great story. It's a good mystery and an emotionally rich situation.
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