The Official Review Thread of 2019

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Sabin
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by Sabin »

A little quicker now...

Riley Stearns demonstrates enough vision and talent in The Art of Self-Defense to suggest that he’s either going to end up making something special in the years to come or he’s going to be an intolerably quirky presence. I don’t need to be told that his favorite movie is The Lobster to know that his favorite movie is The Lobster. It’s the story of a guy who gets mugged (Jesse Eisenberg) and undergoes martial arts training to reclaim his life. The most interesting idea in the film for me is the idea of a sensei being a role that only has importance in the dojo. While there, it is absolute, but outside of the dojo is largely determined willingly by the pupil. The film doesn’t really explore this idea. Instead, it just cycles through deadpan scenarios that recall Hal Hartley and beg the question what is the agreed upon reality in this universe? The biggest problem is that Jesse Eisenberg just isn’t funny in this role and although there’s something interesting in just how far Stearns pushes the premise, I can’t really pretend like it worked for me. It’s for the SXSW crowd.


Harmony Korine is just never going to make a movie that I like. His backwater geek shows demonstrate vision and talent but they’re never, y’know, stories that (for me) satisfy at feature length. I always end up finding his episodic improv sessions nihilistic and I hate how he crosscuts between scenes giving no sense of now-ness to anything. I’d imagine that senescence films like a Harmony Korine film. I had hopes for The Beach Bum based on the first five minutes if only because Moondog (Matthew McConaughey grabbing that third rail) is a potentially interesting character study, because his location seems ripe for opportunity for story, and because — once again — the dude has real style, but after five minutes when the “story” settled in, I just braced myself. The Beach Bum is ultimately too much of a curio to despise and there’s a pretty funny punchline to Moondog’s journey to finish his novel (as it were) but I had little use for it.


I will damn Brittany Runs a Marathon with faint praise by saying that it improved quite a bit for me as it went along. I actively disliked the first act. It’s almost incompetently directed and plays like a sitcom. But I found myself impressed by how much more story writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo finds in Brittany, an overweight screwup, making the decision to change their life by electing to run a marathon. I especially liked the financial implications of needing another part-time job to afford a gym membership, which leads to a Meet Cute where Brittany dog-sits at a wealthy apartment and ends up playing house with a young man who is also taking care of the place. Also, it was a nice change of pace to see a movie about young woman that seeks to find a balance between deserving more from those around her and needing to make positive changes. But that shouldn’t overlook the fact that it’s much too long and baggy a film to recommend with much if not any enthusiasm. Jillian Bell is quite good in the lead role though.


Paddleton is an affecting little film based on an NPR story. It's about two middle-aged men (Mark Duplass and Ray Romano) who through being neighbors sort of sidled into being best friends. The film opens with Duplass getting a terminal cancer diagnosis and soon after he elects to die before his suffering becomes too great and wants Romano at his side while it happens. The journey to that moment is a fine enough. It stretches credibility that their lives are so completely empty that Duplass only has Romano, but it helps to achieve a focus on these two that's both pleasant, humorous, and truthful, like a mini-Sideways. The destination of their journey, however, is very powerful. Despite never quite getting out of second gear (it's a Duplass affair after all), there's a generosity of spirit to this film that I found moving as a window into a unusual but ultimately beautiful friendship as well as an opportunity to ponder realities of life we try to push out. There isn't much meat on the bone and some of it isn't choice (it's a Duplass affair after all), but I'm glad it exists.

The title refers to a game the two of them made up together, which is clearly a metaphor for their friendship as well as friendship in general.


Finally, I watched Transit twice in two days in the hopes that its virtues might open up a bit more for me as they had for some. Maybe had I seen it on the big screen it might have happened; as it is, I found it easier to appreciate rather than to love. I think it’s because I was occasionally taken out of the story. Transit is always working on a handful of levels at a time far too often I was just thinking about what it was doing conceptually rather than what was happening, and the spell broke too often, especially scene to scene. This might sound silly but I think it would’ve benefited from taking place more at night. What works entirely is Franz Rogowski. I don’t know if it’s more a feat or acting or casting but he has the perfect haunted face for a story full of ghosts.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by Sabin »

I haven’t really done a top ten list since 2012. I’m going to attempt one for 2019 and these are my efforts to catch up on my blind spots. I've chosen 2019 because it's close enough to present day and because it's the last year where I unabashedly loved three films that will in all likelihood be settled near the top of my list. Below are takes on Dragged Across Concrete, Luce, Midsommar, The Nightingale, and Diane (which I forgot I saw until I started writing). I doubt any of them will show up on my top ten list but Luce and The Nightingale might.


If there's one thing I wish I could delete from Dragged Across Concrete it's the fact that Mel Gibson's family leaves in a "bad neighborhood" and that his daughter was almost just raped. I hate it because it makes it so much harder to defend the film from charges of fascism and right-wing ideology, but also even if both situations are imagined by Gibson and his wife, it doesn't serve any positive function. It's a shame because I think I could make the case for the rest of the film being largely misunderstood based on who lives and who dies and why. Putting that aside, it's a pretty entertaining crime film, slickly directed, with enough personality to help it stand apart from the pack. It's the story of two suspended cops (for unnecessary roughness) who set out to intercept a robbery to get what's theirs. The plot itself is pretty simple once it emerges, but it's done with a unique style. He's clearly some version of indebted to QT in his penchant for "the bit in between" (a bit where Gibson silently watches Vaughan consume an entire sandwich is killer), and while he doesn't quite have Tarantino's knack for set-pieces, his dialogue and character work is compelling as they navigate around the edge of their own precipices. S. Craig Zahler's work is not dear enough to me to be considered a "problematic fave." But I think can make the case for his films without such verbal hedging. He's an entertaining storyteller.


My year is not complete but I feel pretty comfortable with Kelvin Harrison, Jr.'s performance as the titular character in Luce as my favorite piece of acting. His character is an African refugee adopted by liberal white parents who becomes valedictorian in his graduating year and becomes caught up controversy when he turns in a paper that shakes everyone to their core for its potential advocation for violence as a cleansing force. This sets off a chain of events that asks a fair amount of thorny questions about whether Luce has recovered from his trauma, does Luce believe what he's written, how does it feel to be a symbol, what is the benefit of the doubt, who gets who doesn't and why... I could go on. The whole cast is good but what makes Harrison's performance so exceptional is how he code-switches between between everybody and how the film drops effortlessly both in and outside his point of view in a way that never feels exploitative. The film creates a mystery in never knowing what to make of Luce but Harrison always keeps him human. The direction the film goes in never quite lives up to how compelling those questions are. But it's a good film.


I saw Midsommar on the big screen at the Alamo Drafthouse for Easter, which they programmed as a blasphemous lark. I'm generally positive on it but it's a bit of a disappointment coming off of Hereditary, a film that truly shook me to my core. I'll steal from Owen Gleiberman for this: what made Hereditary such a startling film was that most films about possession are generally about the battle between good and evil; Hereditary ultimately reveals itself about the possessed preparing for a new role that goes beyond those terms and dared to find something beautiful in something so horrible. I think it succeeded. Midsommar plays a bit like a greatest hits on a second feature. "You don't like it when I do stuff to heads and faces? Get ready!" For me, it bungles the most compelling idea in the film, that Dani (Florence Pugh, what a year!) went through unimaginable tragedy, truly needs somebody to join her in the process besides her boyfriend who is biding time to break up with her, and ultimately finds it in the climax of the film with the cult. There's a remarkable scene where she breaks down after finding her boyfriend in a compromising position (I'll address that in the next paragraph), she breaks down, and is joined by the other members of the cult in mimicking, horrifically, her pain to her face. It's a startling moment because this is what she is looking for. The problem is that the film stays on the outside of it. Unlike the ending of Hereditary, it never quite makes that pivot to present the cult as a potentially healing force for Dani, which is notionally the point of the film. So, it's a less disturbing and powerful film, although there is a moment at the end that I found horrific where one of the cult leaders provides a young man with a tree sap to purge them of fear for what awaits them and it ultimately proves ineffective, revealing in a moment of horror that the whole thing is bullshit. Anyway, the film is a bit too much of a straight line for me from arrival to the ending, but there's undeniable craft involved as well as memorably unsettling moments. Looking forward to what Ari Aster does when he abandons horror later this year.

As for the question for whether or not Christian was raped in this film, yes, certainly. Even if one could make the case that he was interested in that young woman beforehand, he certainly is incapable of consent and the goal of his sexual encounter which was explained to him soberly beforehand was for procreation which if he himself did not decline the film implies it. There's no reason to believe that he shook hands with the matriarch and said "Procreation? Sold!" I don't have a problem with the scene being in the film or that it sets off Dani on her final journey. What I have a problem with is the fact that the film is so indifferent to it. The film itself outside of Christian for the remainder of the film. There's no sense that he is trying to explain himself, despite his incapacitation. The film is just done with him, indifferent, and I found that indifference bothersome.


I was a big fan of The Babadook so I was looking forward to her followup quite a bit. The Nightingale is a very ambitious film for a followup, very large in scale. It's the story of Claire, a young Irish female convict, (Aisling Franciosi) who goes on a vengeance quest after the British officers who raped her and killed her child, and enlists the help of Billy, a native "Black", (Baykali Ganambarr, excellent) to traverse the Australian outback to find them. The first act is brutal but excellently done and should be defended against charges of exploitation. Yes, there is rape and violence but it's in the service of a larger depiction of what the British did to this land. It's a good story and it's largely well-told with three exceptions. The first is that it struggles against the limitations of its budget in moments, the second is that occasionally it leaps out as a bit too contemporary in performance. And the third -- most importantly -- is that the film ultimately takes the narrative tact that when Claire gets her first taste of vengeance (which is memorably brutal) she ultimately doesn't find it to her liking and moves in another direction in the finale. The film does this narrative dance in part because it pivots its focus to the plight of Billy and his native people and does a hand-off to him in the climax, which conceptually makes sense. However, I just didn't buy that she wouldn't still thirst for vengeance after everything she went through. Making this issue even worse, the film cannot really take time to focus on Claire processing how she feels about violence (aside for dreams, which didn't work for me) because the film has to take the time to play out Billy learning the whole truth about her mission, so we never get to experience arguably the second most essential plot development of the film and while Aisling Franciosi is clearly talented she never conveys this thread underneath the action. This is for me a big problem that keeps the film from greatness, but it's still very much a worthwhile piece of storytelling that signals Kent as a major talent.


Finally, I thought about throwing a review for Diane retroactively alphabetically near the top because I had forgotten that I saw it, but I think the fact that I forgot it despite having seen it a day or two ago warrants its placement. It's a good story and one we rarely see. There's an honesty to it and a clarity in Kent Jones' organizing principle, although Daniel is right that a few of its filmmaking choices don't mesh. I liked its haunting depiction of being old meaning that the folks around you are just going to drop here and there, occasionally without much warning. I liked how we learn about the sin that Diane (Mary Kay Place, very good) has been atoning for for at this point half of her life (full disclosure: my mother right now is going through a similar version of that so it hit home). But my favorite aspect of the film is a bit too unexplored, this idea that this woman who tries to help everyone out of obligation suddenly finds one of the objects of her attention, her junkie son (Jake Lacy), focused on helping her through salvation. Clearly, salvation is something she needs in part but there's such a lack of seriousness to his attempts. The film doesn't really allow for much time to be spent on this idea but it's a fun one. Anyway, it's a moving film with serious rarely explored ideas on its mind, but I can't quite join in the raves. Maybe it's because Jake Lacy is so poorly cast as a junkie son. He's such a good-hearted lunk that his scenes with Place felt a bit like an acting exercise. Cast someone who screams lost cause and I might be able to join in the raves a bit more.

Something that also leaps to mind is how culturally removed these characters seemed on-screen. This is notionally a film about camaraderie between Boomers at the end of their life and a conflict between Boomer and Millennial. Maybe that's just me as a Boomer vs. Millennial connoisseur, but you'd think these conflicts would lend to more cultural specificity than Diane drunkenly rocking out to Bob Dylan at a bar. By the way, was that an outtake track?
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by Sabin »

The only real interesting quality to The Souvenir is how it mixes airless formalism, a very stripped-down narrative, and Honor Swinton Byrne’s lost child’s thousand yard stare to skip through time to explore a personal moment from the past. Julie’s teachers are ultimately right that the personal is the most effective, although I’m not sure that was ultimately the intent of the scene. I felt like I was watching a personal thing from the past and both are always nice. Unfortunately, while depiction is not endorsement, it’s also not exploration. I could bend over backwards to praise… well, the elements I already did, but I can’t help but feel like a bit of cult of personality is carrying this one afloat. I don’t even have much of a problem with the lead characters’ privilege, although it certainly reduces the stakes (and It is curious to me that it seems like the crowd that happily eviscerated The Savages has no problem with this one). But I just didn’t find it that compelling. By the end of the first act and we see Anthony’s track marks, there’s nothing really else going on in the film beyond Julie enduring towards Anthony’s transgressions, or worse turning blind eyes that defy belief. “I had to steal your belongings because of my job.” I’m also not entirely sold on Joanna Hogg as a storyteller. The first bit of story is a bit muddled. It’s never entirely clear what Anthony is doing at that party and their first date almost seems like she is asking a stranger to invest in her film.

I want more artists to tell their stories. I just want them to be more interesting than The Souvenir.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

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Playing a small bit of catch up from this pretty remarkable year...

Give Me Liberty is a remarkable feature from writer/director Kirill Mikhanovsky. For the first hour, I was convinced I was watching some kind of dark comic masterpiece, as we travel Milwaukee as seen through the eyes of Vic (Chris Galust), a Russian-American/medical transport driver who tries and fails to help everyone around him over the course of one wild day, involving a possible scam artist, a Jewish funeral, and a disabled black woman about to move in with her boyfriend. It's a movie that I'm predisposed towards considering it's about people we rarely see in films, people on the poverty line performing jobs we rarely see, and the protagonist is a genuinely good person trying to balance survival with doing the right thing. The second half of the film is a bit messy and indulgent. It's too long and the limitations of the budget really show. I really love the intersection between Vic's job and the BLM protesters in theory but the execution of it doesn't entirely work. I also don’t quite think they stick the character landing for Vic. I could see it wearing some people down into submission, but I had a blast for a good stretch, long enough to urge people to check it out to see if it works for them bc this director might have something great in him. Give Me Liberty comes close — possible rewatch might make a difference. Lauren "Lolol" Spencer would have been a fine nominee for Best Supporting Actress.

Moving from messy to baggy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is about a young black man, Jimmy Fails who tries to claim an old Victorian home in SF that he claims was built by his grandfather and is his family legacy, with the help of his best friend, Mort (Jonathan Majors, quite good), with whom he often lives with. The character Jimmy Fails happens to be the film's co-writer and the person whom these events actually happened to in real life. It's an Antwone Fisher scenario as if starring Antwone Fisher. So... you're going to feel like a jerk kicking a puppy if you don't like it. I'm mixed. It seeks to capture a portrait of its city through the unusual, misfit, outsider, homosocial friendship between two working class black men, and while I don't ultimately think its very successful in that regard (it just feels too slight and insular) it's still a pretty impressive debut with a very unique style. I think it might've been improved had it opened itself up a bit more to create more of a portrait of the people in the city, much as Spike Lee does, for two reasons: 1) a little of these guys goes a long way, and 2) it ultimately pivots towards events outside of them anyway, events which I found myself unmoved by at all because I hadn't known the person. I'll say that the bugs in hindsight are a bit of a feature with this one, but I was certainly ready for it to be over. A very memorable score though, one that reminded me oddly enough of The Piano.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by criddic3 »

Big Magilla wrote:
Clemency is a fine film featuring a great performance from Alfre Woodard as a prison warden whose most difficult job is overseeing lethal injection executions, and an even better one by Aldis Hodge as the death row prisoner whose execution breaks her heart and ours. Woodard replaces Charlize Theron in my Oscar Shouldabeens. Hodge unfortunately doesn't replace anyone because the supporting actor category for 2019 was a lot stronger than the best actress category.
Woodard was on the bubble for me in terms of nominations. She's better than the movie itself really, so it is nice that she managed to get a BAFTA nod a whole year after her ISA nod.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by Big Magilla »

Thanks to a recommendation from Rolotomasi in another thread, I found Clemency on Hulu, and then to my surprise I found another 2019 film I had given up hope of ever seeing in the same place.

Clemency is a fine film featuring a great performance from Alfre Woodard as a prison warden whose most difficult job is overseeing lethal injection executions, .and an even better one by Aldis Hodge as the death row prisoner whose execution breaks her heart and ours. Woodard replaces Charlize Theron in my Oscar Shouldabeens. Hodge unfortunately doesn't replace anyone because the supporting actor category for 2019 was a lot stronger than the best actress category.

An even better find was Diane featuring Mary Kay Place's L.A. Film Critics and National Board of Review winning performance. She commands the screen in a way she hasn't since she all but stole The Big Chill from her fellow cast members way back in 1983 when Glenn Close got the Oscar nomination for the film many, including Streep, felt she should have gotten. Alfre Woodard was luckier that year, having gotten a nomination for Cross Creek.

Place plays an elderly womanwho takes care of everyone around her including her last aunt and various cousins as well as her drug addict son (Jake Lacy). In the end, though, there's no one left to take care of her. The film features fine supporting performances from Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Joyce Van Paten and Phyllis Somerville, all of whom vanish too quickly.

Place takes the place of Saoirse Ronan in my Oscar Shouldabeens and comes damn close to winning over Renée Zellweger in retrospect.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

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dws1982 wrote
For what it's worth, it's dealt with pretty awkwardly and unnaturally, especially in the latter two films. They don't at all give the impression that sexuality is something he's comfortable with, or at least that it's something that he's comfortable dealing with in his films.
That's the sense I get.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by dws1982 »

For what it's worth, it's dealt with pretty awkwardly and unnaturally, especially in the latter two films. They don't at all give the impression that sexuality is something he's comfortable with, or at least that it's something that he's comfortable dealing with in his films.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

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dws1982 wrote
His three narrative features between The Tree of Life and this actually all carry R ratings for sexuality and nudity. I don't know if it's a coincidence that they're pretty widely considered his weakest films (they're also his only films that aren't period in any way, although Badlands was only set 10-15 years in the past), although I really really like To the Wonder. Knight of Cups and Song to Song are by far his weakest films, in my opinion.
Well... never mind.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by dws1982 »

Sabin wrote:(does anyone in a Malick film ever had sex; does Malick, for that matter?)
His three narrative features between The Tree of Life and this actually all carry R ratings for sexuality and nudity. I don't know if it's a coincidence that they're pretty widely considered his weakest films (they're also his only films that aren't period in any way, although Badlands was only set 10-15 years in the past), although I really really like To the Wonder. Knight of Cups and Song to Song are by far his weakest films, in my opinion.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

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A very damning double feature and a very damning set of opinions, but at least I'm honest. Now where's the door...


A Hidden Life

I've done a lot of thinking about this movie and I don't know if I'm the right person to judge it. Let me first say that for almost an hour, I was convinced I had seen Malick's best film since The Thin Red Line and an unappreciated masterpiece. Very powerfully, we begin the eden of Franz' married life in this German mountain-town and slowly the hints of nativism creeps in, disrupting his spiritual life. Although it's not an uncommon depiction of bliss in a Terrence Malick to show a couple happily falling into grass, embracing (does anyone in a Malick film ever had sex; does Malick, for that matter?), it's a good fit for this story. We see hints of war, and then Franz, somewhere off-screen, makes the decision to become a conscientious objector. I've only seen the film once but it seems as though his reason is something along the lines of swearing oaths to Hitler flies in the face of his faith, both due to its false god connotation but also how Nazism is corrupting and transforming those around him. If it occurs because of his military service, we don't know why because we only see brief windows into said service so it could be taken as what he sees on the battlefield or simply the act of war. To be honest, I don't know exactly why and that's sort of my problem with the film. For a film about a conscientious objector, I feel very removed from the objection. A Hidden Life becomes a long, montage-y series of moments where characters try to convince Franz to stop his conscientious objection for his own life, moments of quiet anguish and torture, and literal torture by the prison-keepers around him, leading up to his demise. A Hidden Life likely operates from a spiritualism that I feel removed from and would like to understand. As a dramatic work, Malick's intention would be to beatify the man, rather than to dramatize him. I could've used a little more of the former.


Under the Silver Lake

Now, I AM in the right position to judge this film because I quite well know every location in this film as well as most of the people (their types). This is a movie about a fuck up Millennial, with no job (a fun running joke), who becomes embroiled in a mystery seeking out a girl he barely knows and drawing together loose, barely-related conspiracies in his efforts to find her all while acting like a total piece of shit. I enjoyed the film's commitment

Let's get a one thing out of the way right now: this film is not misogynistic. Depiction is not endorsement but this movie goes out of its way to make clear its opinion about Sam. He succks. His puppy dog enthusiasm masks a litany of reprehensible qualities. The only way this movie can be considered misogynist is that it purposefully takes place through the cis male gaze, but more specifically its a depiction of a fucked-up, self-absorbed generation's (at least in Los Angeles) regressive lack of purpose so we see deaths that mimic content he's absorbed, which possibly is all happening in his head anyway. It's gross, for sure, which is the point. Now, whether or not one wants to stay in the film's company is another story...

David Robert Mitchell makes it entirely clear that nothing in this movie might be as we're seeing it, as he also suggests that with a lifetime of absorbed entertainment experiences amidst a nostalgia zeitgeist, ANYTHING could be a murder-mystery with clues to untangle. Oh, also, he might be a pet murderer. What's slightly problematic about the film is how Sam meets actual people outside his sphere who give him information (like the songwriter, a conversation which feels like a cheat and/or thuddingly heavy-handed). What's less so is how it dunks on the protagonist the entire time. I can't stress this enough: I know this guy. The scruff, puppy dog attitude, unserious thoughts, zero body fat, teenager clothing. This film is a comedy about a guy with so little going on he is constructing nonsense to live out what he's allowed himself to be programmed to think. Andrew Garfield is hilarious in what is the best performance I've seen him give. I enjoyed this as a supremely confident lark as well as how absurdly loose the conspiracy connections were and how it just kept going to new, weird places. Full disclosure: over the past five years, I've lost four friends to cults and one to QAnon. A lack of purpose in society can be a terrible thing. This film knows it and wants to explore it and I was here for it. Not great but I was here for it.

Sorry, I responded more to the film about the Millennial slackerpath more than the spiritual conscientious objector.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by dws1982 »

Blinded by the Light
A handful of scenes make you think the filmmakers may have really figured out how to do a jukebox musical here, but it never really buys into the concept. It's a two-hour movie and at least an hour-forty of it is pedestrian culture clash and intergenerational conflict. It's still better than Yesterday, partially because Viveik Kalra makes for a much better, more appealing lead than Himesh Patel did, but on the whole it still feels way too much like a missed opportunity.

Diane
Mary Kay Place's performance is indeed very, very good in this film, which seems like it could take place in the Manchester By the Sea universe. Whereas Manchester was about people dealing with past and present traumas, this is more about observing everyday life in small-town New England. The characters deal with traumas here--drug addiction and illness--but the plot doesn't hinge on them in the same way as they did in Manchester. It's a good movie. It has a very strong ensemble of mostly middle-aged and older actors (many of whom are longtime Broadway performers), especially Deirdre O'Connell and Andrea Martin, as well as Estelle Parsons in a small role. Unfortunately it's kind of hurt by some of Jones' visual tricks; it's a well-done and well-shot movie for the most part, but at times he seems to trying way too hard for an effect that the film doesn't really warrant. Jones has written film criticism for decades, and has written extensively on Truffaut and Assayas, and he uses some techniques that might feel natural in Truffaut's and Assayas' films, but don't at all feel natural or in sync with the tone of the piece. Very much worth a watch, thought.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by dws1982 »

Doing some 2019 catch-up with my free time:
American Woman:
Has a better feel for small-town working class life than you would expect from Ridley Scott's son, and Sienna Miller's performance is very good: definitely better than a few of the actual Best Actress nominees this year. But it's poorly paced (the two hours felt like four) and it's also a miserable sit, far too close to what Mister Tee calls a film about "losers losing". It piles way too many traumatic events on Miller's character: one of the plot turns near the end truly turned me against the film because it seemed to have no purpose than to throw more shit at Miller. It's too bad because with a few changes I could see myself liking this.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
I feel like I was in a better position on this than some: I never read the book, and a lot of people who did felt like the movie betrayed the book in pretty major ways. It's a mess but I liked this more than I expected, especially as a longtime Linklater-skeptic. And this is acknowledging that I'm not really sure who it's for: It's very much about depression through lens of a quirky comedy, even played as a farce at times. Blanchett's actorly tics are given a useful outlet here. Bernadette may be a giant mess of a character (a lot of it by design, but some of it because the film is a mess), but Blanchett understands her and is actually quite moving. Billy Crudup is actually really good too, doing a lot more with his character than you would expect because the movie does not serve his character well at all.

Synonyms
Nadav Lapid is clearly doing something very specific and is very focused on his themes of identity, but the movie as a whole is as abrasive as its lead character, much of it doesn't make sense, and it was pretty miserable to sit through. Well-shot, and I guess Mercier deserves some credit for committing to what Lapid asked of him but it ultimately felt much more like an intellectual exercise than anything else. Stunned it won the Golden Bear at Berlin...

By the Grace of God
...Especially over Ozon's best-ever film, in my opinion. I gave up on Ozon 10+ years ago when it seemed like every other movie was an erotic thriller; this very subdued visually and narratively, much closer in tone to something like Spotlight than anything Ozon has ever made. It's a fictionalized account of the true story of a predatory priest whose now-grown victim discovers he's still actively working in the church and with children. He eventually organizes with other victims to bring attention to the story, and it becomes clear that the higher-ups in the church knew all along about the abuse and covered it up. Much of the film is procedural, but its decision to center victims lifts it above Spotlight, in my opinion. It's made with a real understanding of the way adults function and deal with trauma from the past, the way it can still inform what you do and the decision you make, and I think the ending in particular is very strong in the way the core group ends up in very different places mentally and emotionally, but no one is right or wrong, no one is vilified, but they're all still acting in reacting in the shadow of old wounds.
anonymous1980
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by anonymous1980 »

BOMBSHELL
Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Malcolm McDowell, Connie Britton, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon.
Dir: Jay Roach.

My catching up on Oscar contenders continues with this film which dramatizes the plight of Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson and their "bombshell" of sexual harassment complaints against Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. The film is pretty much a standard "true story" docudrama that HBO does a lot (which is understandable since Jay Roach has directed a number of them). But the cast is what makes this film though. Charlize Theron does a great job of making me care about someone whose politics I find mostly abhorrent (still didn't deserve to get sexually harassed). I have to say I know Theron and Margot Robbie got all the accolades for this film but I'm surprised John Lithgow didn't get the same. He makes Roger Aisles so believably human when it could have easily devolved into caricature. The Makeup Oscar win was deserved.

Grade: B.
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Re: The Official Review Thread of 2019

Post by anonymous1980 »

LITTLE WOMEN
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlan, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet, Chris Cooper, Louis Garrell, James Norton, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Jayne Houdyshell.
Dir: Greta Gerwig.

This is the nth adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott novel about the plight of four sisters during the 1860's Civil Era America. I haven't read the book but I have seen the oft-celebrated 1994 version so I'm familiar with the story. While I liked the story and that film quite a bit, I have to admit I didn't quite get why some people are so like all-capitals passionate about it (maybe because I'm too much of a dude, eh, I don't know) But after watching Greta Gerwig's adaptation: I GET IT NOW. I completely get it now. It makes me wanna actually sit down and read the book. Gerwig infuses the film with such warmth and such humanity. It's all practically radiating from the screen. It feels so fresh, so vibrant, so alive. It's brought to life by an outstanding ensemble cast. Gerwig's 2-for-2 for me. I love it.

Grade: A.
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