Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Another Round (2020) - 7.5/10 - Four middle aged high school teachers are kind of in a rut - they've lost the energy and vitality they had in their youth and are kind of dull and boring now. They decided to experiment with day drinking, attempting to keep their blood alcohol level around .05 throughout the day. It does seem to reenergize them and their teaching, but there are problems that arise as well. Mads Mikkelsen is pretty good here and I did enjoy the movie, especially the first half of it, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I had expected.

Glorious Betsy (1928) - 7/10 - Dolores Costello and Conrad Nagel did a nice job in this story of the romance between Elizabeth "Betsy" Patterson of Baltimore and Jerome Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon). They took a few liberties with the story, but the movie was decent, especially the first half of it. Too bad the sound portion of the story was lost, but you can pretty much tell what is going on during that part and the rest of the film has the title cards in place.

Pinocchio (2019) - 8/10 - I think that this new version is fairly faithful to the original novel. Fans of the Disney cartoon may be a little put off by it, but I thought it was pretty good. The acting, costumes, makeup, and settings were all good. I imagine that the planned Disney live action version will look a lot different, but not necessarily better.

The Half of It (Alice Wu) -- 7/10
Alice Wu's first film since Saving Grace in 2005 (which I haven't seen). It's at once a pretty obvious Cyrano de Bergerac update but also an above-average, literate Netflix YA romance. It's cute and occasionally pretty moving.

Promising Young Woman (2020) - 8.5/10 - Cassie is about to turn 30 and hasn't been the same since what happened to her friend Nina back in med school. Every week she goes out cruising for a it of revenge. Now the opportunity to get some real revenge comes up just as things may be looking up for her on a personal level. I thought that Carey Mulligan did an excellent job and this movie is very entertaining.

My Octopus Teacher (2020) - 7/10 - This documentary has about 80 minutes of nice underwater footage, much of it focused on an octopus that exhibits curiosity and strategy while trying to survive in its environment. We get pyjama sharks, a crab, lobsters, lots of fish, and other sea creatures, but mostly the octopus. We also get about 80 minutes of running commentary from Craig Foster as he seeks meaning in the activity of the octopus and how it relates to his own life. That can get a bit tedious, but I still enjoyed the film quite a bit for the nice underwater scenes.

The One and Only Ivan (2020) - 6/10 - Ivan is a silverback gorilla living in a shopping mall as the main attraction of a small circus. The show isn't doing well so new animals are brought in, including a baby elephant named Ruby. Ivan and the others start dreaming more of being free. It's definitely aimed at kids (and is on Disney+) and is kind of predictable, but I thought it was a decent film and enjoyed it.

Time (2020) - 3/10 - Rob Rich and his wife committed armed robbery back in the 1990s. She took a plea bargain and got out of prison after a few years. Rob got sentenced to 60 years. The film shows some of the waiting that she had to do in trying to get him out of prison. I found the movie to be pretty tedious and the background music annoying. I agree that there is a need for prison reform, but there were many stretched out scenes. It felt like there might be a decent 20 minute documentary in here, but this was 80 minutes. It has received a lot of critical praise, but I just don't see it.

One Night in Miami (2020) - 7.5/10 - One night in February 1964, Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. Jim Brown is doing commentary ringside while Sam Cooke and Malcolm X are in the crowd. Afterward, they all head back to Malcolm X's hotel room to hang out and celebrate. I thought that all four actors did a great job and it was a pretty entertaining movie.

Angels Over Broadway (1940) - 5/10 - A man decides that he is going to commit suicide after getting caught for embezzling $3000 for his wife who likes to live it up. Before he can do it, though, he gets mixed up with a con man, a playwright, and a showgirl who discover his plight and decide to help him get the money back by swindling some crooks in a card game. The premise doesn't really hold up and neither does much of the dialogue. It really isn't a very good movie and yet I still kind of liked it. Perhaps it was the presence of Rita Hayworth and Thomas Mitchell.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2020) - 7/10 - A UFO lands near a small British town and the residents call in their version of the X-Files group to investigate. Meanwhile, the alien from the UFO finds itself at Mossy Bottom Farm and Shaun the Sheep tries to help it get back to its ship so that it can go home. I watched the Wallace & Gromit shorts earlier in the year and loved them. I also liked the Wallace & Gromit movie and The PIrates! movie. I still need to watch the first Shaun the Sheep movie, though. The best parts of this film were the opening and ending sequences. The parts in the middle had a number of fun things, but I didn't find them as consistently entertaining. I did laugh at the cameo from a couple of characters from a popular long running British show. This was a good movie, but not quite at the Wallace & Gromit level.

Sound of Metal (2020) - 7.5/10 - Ruben is a drummer whose hearing is rapidly deteriorating. His girlfriend checks him into a place that houses a deaf community so that he can learn to use ASL and exist without hearing, but he still has hopes of getting his hearing fixed and returning to his former life. Riz Ahmed did a great job in the lead role and his interactions at the deaf community were very good, especially those with the kids and with Joe, the guy in charge. I enjoyed the movie and think it is very good, though not quite as good as some of the other Best Picture nominees.

Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) - 6/10 - I hated the first Borat film, but found myself laughing a lot during the first half of this one. I got a bit bored with it after that, though there were still some amusing bits thrown in. Overall, I enjoyed it and thought that Maria Bakalova was very good, but I certainly wouldn't classify this as more than a decent movie.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) - 7.5/10 - The film takes place in 1969 at the trial of the eight people charged with conspiracy and other crimes relating to protests and riots at the Democratic National Convention the previous year. There were also plenty of flashbacks to the events in 1968. I thought that the film started out very well, but didn't like some of the changes that were made for dramatic effect. I still enjoyed the film, but think that the changes detract from the overall story. The final scene didn't work for me since it seemed too unrealistic (and was indeed fabricated). Dellinger's actions in one scene were also inconsistent with who he was and there was a real event they could have used in its place. I liked the performances of Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Frank Langella was funny as the judge. I think it is a good movie, but had the potential to be much better.

Mank (2020) - 7/10 - Gary Oldman stars as Herman Mankiewicz, a screenwriter in Hollywood who was a well known script doctor, but also wrote a number of scripts of his own in the 1920s and 1930s. He was also an alcoholic and gambler. He worked on The Wizard of Oz script, but didn't receive credit. He also wrote Citizen Kane and shared the screen credit for that with Orson Welles. This movie tells the story of his writing the script while recovering from an accident. It also delves into his past relationships in Hollywood through numerous flashbacks from the 1930s. Oldman does a pretty nice job in his role and I think many of the other actors did as well, including Tuppence Middleton as his wife Sara, Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, and others. The film has a number of good points in addition to the acting, including doing a pretty decent job making it feel like the era. However, I thought that the story itself was kind of dull and not as engaging as it could have been. Also, while the individual performances were good, Sara was actually slightly older than her husband (each turning 43 in 1940), but Oldman at 62 was 29 years older than Middleton (and about 28 years older than Amanda Seyfried whose Marion Davies was actually older than either Mankiewicz). That age differential did detract from the verisimilitude. I did like the film (more than Citizen Kane even), but it could have been better.

The Mole Agent (2020) - 7/10 - In Chile, a woman is concerned that her mother is being mistreated in a nursing home and having some of her possessions stolen. She hires a private investigator to investigate and he places an ad looking for an 80-90 year old man who can use technology and ends up hiring Sergio. Sergio is 83 and will move into the nursing home for a few months undercover to look into the allegations and document the conditions there. This is part of a documentary and the film crew is already at the nursing home under the pretext of making a documentary about nursing home life which is what the real documentary ends up actually becoming more than the undercover work. I thought that this was a good film and Sergio is a pretty compassionate spy who befriends quite a few residents, many of whom are lonely.

Lord Love a Duck (George Axelrod, 1966) 8/10

Axelrod's satirical black comedy strikes at 1960s teen culture, beach movies and progressive education. The story is narrated by a brilliant but deranged high-school senior (Roddy McDowell at 38) from a psych-ward, who comes into the life of a vain and vacuous teen (Tuesday Weld) and makes all her dreams come true even if it means resorting to murder. Strange but amusing cult film takes its premise and runs with it helped in great part by a group of superb character actors around Weld with all playing at full throttle - Lola Albright (who won the best actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival) as her happy-go-lucky floozie mother who works as a cocktail waitress, Max Showalter as her leering dad, Harvey Korman as the school's horny principal, Martin Best as the hunk who falls for her, Ruth Gordon as his eccentric widowed mother who disapproves of the cocktail waitress and Martin Gabel as a shlock movie producer who recruits her for his next mindless beach film. The film's irreverent kookie humour uses the fast-paced style of Richard Lester. A scene where dad takes daughter on a frenzied shopping spree is straight out of a Ken Russell film - "shopping as the ultimate orgasm", with facial contortions and orgasmic moaning which was preceded by an even more outrageous moment where father and daughter both get worked up into a near state of ecstacy while eating hot dogs. I'm amazed both these scenes weren't censored back in 1966 because they would never make the cut today. The film is from a period when Hollywood was beginning to tackle racier subjects after the staid 1950s.

Volcano (Mick Jackson, 1997) 4/10

A volcano erupts from under Wilshire Blvd in downtown Los Angeles. The disaster genre kicked in once again strictly on formula as the Head of the City's Disaster Management (Tommy Lee Jones) and a seismologist (Anne Heche) try to find ways to avert total anihilation and consumption of the entire city by flowing lava. Gaby Hoffman is the young daughter, in her father's care for the weekend, who gets separated and finds herself and another child in an area where the lava is flowing towards them from one direction and a tall building is being detonated to come down from the other direction. Guess who saves them? Cheesy effects, rapid editing and hand held cameras inducing nausea create more problems for the audience than the disaster itself. The year saw two movies about erupting volcanos and this one was crappier than the other one with Pierce Brosnan.

Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977) 8/10

Low budget revenge thriller, written by Paul Schrader, was an attempt to make William Devane into a movie star. The film was a huge hit, Devane later became a star on tv while Tommy Lee Jones, in a supporting role, got noticed for the first time. A Vietnam POW (William Devane) returns to a hero's welcome in San Antonio only to find his wife has hooked up with someone else and his son hardly knows him. During a robbery at his home by a group of Mexican outlaws his wife and son are killed and he is shot, maimed and left for dead. The plot suddenly takes a left turn - it appeared to be about a soldier settling back into life after the horrors of Vietnam but moves into vigilante territory as he goes on a killing spree with quiet vengeance picking out the murderers one by one. He is helped along the way by a waitress (Linda Haynes) and, at the violent showdown, by his old Army buddy and fellow POW (Tommy Lee Jones). Flynn superbly directs the action sequences while keeping a measured pace throughout. All three actors are very good with the film showing glimpses of "Bonnie and Clyde", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Taxi Driver", the latter which was also written by Schrader. A cult classic.

Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) - 6/10 - James Cagney stars in this biopic of silent film star Lon Chaney. Cagney was too old for the role, but did a nice job, especially the parts in makeup/costume and performing. I think that they spent too much time on his relationship with his first wife, Cleva (whom he married when she was 15 years old), and not enough time on his acting career. I liked the second half of the film more than the first half. Overall it was a decent film, though it could have been much better.

The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe - 1933-1945 (1980) - 7/10 - A look at what happened to Jews in Germany and Nazi controlled Europe with lots of footage that I hadn't seen before. There wasn't really much in here that I was unaware of, but it puts it all together in a linear fashion.

Better Days (2019) - 8/10 - This Chinese film follows a quiet high school senior named Chen Nian who is preparing for the national college entrance exam which is 60 days away. She witnesses a classmate commit suicide due to bullying and soon becomes the next target of the bullies. She befriends a tough young man from the street and he decides to protect her, though the bullies can be persistent. The two develop feelings for each other along the way. I thought that this was a pretty good film. The lead actors and the director each did a nice job. The story itself isn't necessarily anything special, but the film elements come together nicely.

Skyscraper (1928) - 6/10 - Two construction workers (Alan Hale and William Boyd) who are helping build a new skyscraper are friends, but spend a lot of time pranking each other. When one of them gets a girl, but is injured in an accident, the other one tries to help him overcome his injury, though using a method in line with their friendship. The comedy is exaggerated here, but the film is still fun and I enjoyed it, even if it isn't really a very good movie by today's standards. It did really look like they were up in a skyscraper, though.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) - 8/10 - Che Guevara and Alberto Grenada set out on a long quest in 1952 to travel by motorcycle from Buenos Aires to Caracas, visiting Lima, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, and many other places along the way. They crash a lot, spend lots of time with people in the areas they visit, and spend time working at a leper colony. It is a big travelogue of a movie with great sights along the way and the trip helped form some of Guevara's revolutionary ideas in his mind. The revolutionary ideas seemed kind of secondary to the buddy picture and travel aspects of the film. Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna had pretty good chemistry as the two friends making the trip and I enjoyed the film quite a bit.

The Father (2020) - 9/10 - Anthony Hopkins gives an outstanding performance as an elderly man with dementia whose daughter tries to take care of him while still living her own life. The techniques that they used to portray the confusion that dementia can leave one with were very effective. Olivia Colman was great as his daughter and the rest of the cast was very good as well. This is an excellent film, but I just hope that I never have to live through it as either a caretaker or the person experiencing it.

Topsy-Turvy (1999) - 8/10 - In the mid-1880s, Gilbert and Sullivan were having a few problems. Their latest work wasn't doing well due to the stifling heat wave London was experiencing. The pair did not have a replacement comic opera ready and were at an impasse - Sullivan did not like Gilbert's proposed opera and refused to set it to music. Inspiration eventually struck and the result was The Mikado. The film delves into the relationship between the pair and their partner who ran the theater as well as the various cast members. It also has plenty of singing from rehearsals to performances. I'm not a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan, but I enjoyed the film quite a bit.

Operation Petticoat (1959) - 7/10 - Cary Grant stars as an admiral who reminisces about the adventure the submarine he commanded had shortly after the U.S. entered WWII. His sub was sunk at the base in the Philippines and while they were able to raise it, they weren't able to fully repair it before having to leave the base to evade the enemy. They embarked on a trip with an undersized crew, a group of nurses, and a first officer with a flair for 'acquiring' needed materials. The movie is silly, but I thought it was fun.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) - 5/10 - Sean Connery and Michael Caine star as two former British soldiers in India who decide to travel across the mountains in search of a remote country known as Kafiristan where they plan to help a local to power in order to gain wealth for themselves. They enlist the aid of journalist Rudyard Kipling and sign a contract stating that they'll give up alcohol and women for the duration of their adventure. The proceed to have an adventure with bandits, blizzards, an avalanche, and so on. I didn't really find the adventure aspects that interesting much of the time, though there were some decent sights. Most of the humor didn't really seem that funny to me either. It wasn't all bad, but I found it highly overrated from other reviews that I've seen.

Bye Bye Braverman (Sidney Lumet, 1968) 8/10

Very jewish. Very New York. And very funny. Lumet's film is an adaptation of the novel "To an Early Grave" by Wallace Markfield, with its acerbic screenplay written by Herbert Sargent who won numerous Emmys over the years including three as a writer on "Saturday Night Live". Four liberal intellectuals and close friends - a PR man (George Segal) who periodically goes into a daydream involving death, a mother-fixated aging playboy (Jack Warden), an acid-tongued socialist (Joseph Wiseman), a compulsively tidy writer (Sorrell Booke) - get together on a Sunday afternoon and go to the funeral of their deceased friend Braverman. The trip, in a red Volkswagen beetle ("a legacy from Hitler"), is not only a travelogue from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn (one gets to see fascinating shots of New York as it was during the 1960s) but also allows the four friends to bicker and contemplate death. They have trouble finding the synagogue but along the way run into a couple of bizzare characters - a black-jewish taxi driver (Godfrey Cambridge) and a rabbi (Alan King) whose sermon they get to hear while at the wrong funeral. The characters are written with broad jewish strokes (Alan King's rabbi is particularly offensive) but most come off very funny, bittersweet and real. All four friends have abandoned their jewish traditions and returning to their roots (Brooklyn) make them look inward. The actors give very funny performances and are also very moving. Very quirky film also has memorable cameos by Jessica Walter as the bitchy widow who early on in the film forcefully comes on to George Segal, Phyllis Newman as Warden's nubile girlfriend and Zohra Lampert as Segal's irritated wife who refuses to squeeze orange juice for him. Offbeat film has a few slow bits but has one of George Segal's best performances. Ironic that in a film in which death figures as the main plot point both Segal and Jessica Walter eventually died within a day of each other.

In the Electric Mist (Bertrand Tavernier, 2009) 8/10

French director Bertrand Tavernier directs an American cast of actors in this adaptation of a novel by James Lee Burke best known for his Dave Robicheaux series of crime thrillers. New Orleans detective and former alcoholic, Dave Robicheaux (Tommy Lee Jones), is investigating a series of murders involving young runaways and prostitutes. An added mystery is the discovery of a long-dead body of a black man in the swamp by an alcoholic actor (Peter Sarsgaard) in town with his girlfriend (Kelly Macdonald) for the shooting of a film on the Civil War. The detective realises he was a witness to the murder many years before when he was a teenager and the present day murders could be connected to the discovered corpse. Chief amongst his suspects are a former friend and local bigwig (John Goodman having a hoot with his part) with mob connections and a rich local businessman (Ned Beatty). After having a drink laced with LSD the detective starts hallucinating and sees a group of Confederate soldiers in the swamp and forms a bond with a general (Levon Helm) much to the consternation of his worried wife (Mary Steenburgen). The over burdened plot is directed by Tavernier with a keen European sensibility and a deliberately measured pace soaking in the post-Katrina atmosphere of the Louisiana locations. The superb Jones moves through the story with quiet intensity ready to explode at the smallest provocation. The violence when it comes is at full throttle in keeping with the dark crimes on hand. Tavernier keeps the film from falling into the usual trap of a wrapped-up Hollywood ending and settles instead for something more ambiguous and unsettling.

Tomorrow We Live (George King, 1943) 6/10

Wartime propaganda and an ode to the French people who resisted the Nazis during the Occupation. The screenplay starts off in an almost lighthearted mode with the Germans portrayed as bumbling buffoons but then it suddenly becomes serious and brutal when the SS arrives and takes charge of the small french town. A young french idealist (John Clements) arrives in a small town near a major port and base of operations for the German Navy and gets involved with the local French Resistance. Aiding and abetting the cause are the colorful inhabitants of the town - the respected Mayor (Godfrey Tearle), his daughter (Greta Gynt) who is suspected of collaboration, the sexy barmaid (Judy Kelly) who is an informer, a kindly landlady (Yvonne Arnaud) and the blustery Commandant (Hugh Sinclair). Notwithstanding the over simplification of events this is a fairly exciting drama with an excellent cast of British character actors.

Night Boat to Dublin (Lawrence Huntington, 1946) 6/10

Thriller is an offshoot to all those WWII Nazi themed films which the studios on both sides of the Atlantic were quick to churn out before during and after the war. This one involves a race against time to locate a Swedish scientist who has been kidnapped so that unbeknownst to him his workings on the atomic bomb are being despatched to the Nazis by their agents. An intelligence officer (Robert Newton) agrees to infiltrate the gang in order to find out where the scientist is being kept. He also finds himself married to an Austrian refugee (Muriel Pavlow) who may or may not be part of the gang. The mystery concludes on a large country estate in Devon where all the characters converge. Fast paced film is strictly a boy's own adventure story with a wonderfully droll performance by Robert Newton and a typically stiff-upper-lipped pompous one by Guy Middleton as another military agent who also gets in on the heroic acts at the end.

Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953) 10/10

During a rebellion in 12th century Japan a samurai (Kazuo Hasegawa) falls in love with a lady-in-waiting (Machiko Kyō) who turns out to be married. A story about desire, obsession and unrequited love as the samurai relentlessly pursues the woman and in his anger is willing to kill her, himself and her husband in order to win her hand which she rightfully thinks is utter madness. Exquisitely crafted production was the first Japanese film to be shot in Eastman Colour and the result is specatcular with each frame resembling a painting. The deliberate pace enhances each scene as the camera moves in and out of palaces and characters, dressed in resplendent costumes, act with strict formality as per ancient Japanese custom. Never before has tension and anguish been performed with such subtlety. The film was awarded the grand prize at the Cannes film festival and won Oscars in the categories of costume design and foreign film. A must-see.

The Flying Missile (Henry Levin, 1950) 5/10

One of numerous films sanctioned in Hollywood with ample support by the United States Armed Forces to depict modern warfare technolgy here applying cruise missiles to submarines in order to gain better advantage over the enemy. The screenplay is built around the fictionalized account of a decorated submarine Commander (Glenn Ford) who first comes up with the idea. Interesting film from a historical perspective unfortunately goes into comic mode with the man and his officers resorting to theft of machinery and parts from the Navy in order to go against bureaucratic delays in order to prove to the higher brass thst their proposed experiment works. Romance along the way is provided by the base Commander's secretary (Viveca Lindfors) which is followed by an experiment gone wrong resulting in death and injury with a lot of moping. Comic elements of the comic buffoonery in television's "McHale's Navy" are part and parcel of the film which detracts from what is basically a serious pro-military docudrama.

Disputed Passage (Frank Borzage, 1939) 6/10

Borzage's melodrama, based on the Lloyd C. Douglas novel, is about the conflict between a detached, cold pragmatic view of the medical profession versus a more humanistic attitude which also includes a doctor's private life. A brilliant young doctor (John Howard), just out of medical school, is chosen to work as a research assistant to a cold and clinical old doctor (Akim Tamiroff) whose past hides vicious wounds that make him into a machine-like human. The doctor is also befriended by a kindly more humane elderly doctor who encourages his growing relationship with a Chinese woman (Dorothy Lamour). When she suddenly disappears due to the interference of his pragmatic boss he goes in search of her in war-torn China. The film's first half crackles with tension between the two men - Tamiroff is superb throughout. The second half devolves into a soap opera involving the war, an injury and a death-defying medical operation under extreme danger. Dorothy Lamour's casting as the Chinese woman is not really a problem despite its absurdity. More worrying is the fact that Hollywood then, and even today, has never been able to get the nuances of foreign cultures and its people right on screen. And this is despite America being a multi-cultural country with many of those cultures residing side-by-side with white people. So much effort and research goes into the technical side of a film yet Hollywood invariably fails to portray foreigners with the same careful detail which instead often comes out as a perception of the white man's view of them. Whether its intentional or just pure laziness it remains a major distraction for us as foreigners viewing a Hollywood production.

Last Will (Brent Huff, 2011) 3/10

A tried and tested plot gets a weak makeover in this story of deception, corruption and deceit. Why did they even bother to churn out this stale plot? The answer is pretty obvious. It allowed a group of once famous actors, now pretty much down and out in Hollywood, to get a paycheck. From the nostalgic angle the film is pretty watchable but only to check out these old stars all of whom unfortunately seem to have lost their ability to act. A woman (Tatum O'Neal) is framed for the murder of her rich husband (Tom Berenger) which is followed by a courtcase. All the clichés appear like clockwork - the evil brother-in-law (Patrick Muldoon) done out of the will, a sleazy D.A. (who else but Peter Coyote), a twinkle-eyed old cop (James Brolin) who, like Columbo, has an annoying habit of turning up at the wrong time, important witnesses who keep getting shot or stabbed and a predictable mole who is part of the twist at the end. Bad script, bad direction and lousy acting all around.

/Greenberg/ (Noah Baumbach): 7.5/10

Convinced I underrated this because: 1) the impromptu/instantly-aborted leap to Australia feels so forced, and 2) it feels so wrong to have Greenberg volunteer the voice message rather than have her check her messages, him remember, but ultimately allow her to listen to it rather than freak out, which would have represented actual growth. A bizarrely unsatisfying choice. No matter. It's the leap into the filmmaker Noah Baumbach is today. Especially following Margot at the Wedding, its confidence in who these people are, what they represent, how we're supposed to feel about, and what we want to see is so welcome. I could go on about its pleasures. Now five movies into Noah Baumbach's oeuvre, it's clear that he views each story as a home for his turns of phrases and Greenberg might be his best home for these phrases as both protagonist and film.

But I have a question about Greenberg: is it the story of a socially-inept misanthrope or a socially-inept misanthrope and a chronic doormat? Because these are not equally-weighted personality flaws. This is where I had difficulty the first time. Florence has flaws but she's a good person. He's allowed an arc and inches of growth and she isn't, only allowed a proclamation that she doesn't know what she's doing with her life (before being wheeled in for an abortion) and informs him that he likes her more than he thinks. It would be easier to have more empathy for Florence if he gave her a little more agency and growth. Even just one, and I'll choose the scene: the scene where they have sex, he asks her to wait, and he doesn't. I think we can all agree that while Noah Baumbach couldn't have seen the MeToo moment coming, that he wasn't interested in making a movie about a guy who ignores consent.

I'm conflicted but it's a beautifully shot, edited, scored, and acted leap into the filmmaker we know today.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2020) - 9/10 - The story of Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers, and Bill O'Neal in 1969 Chicago is a pretty powerful film. Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield each gave excellent performances. The movie is well worth seeing.

Houseboat (1958) - 7/10 - Cary Grant stars as a man with an important job in Washington, D.C. who is away from home a lot. He has to return home when his wife dies, though, and finds that his three young children are practically strangers and that he doesn't know how to handle them. Sophia Loren is an Italian socialite who is in town with her father. She befriends the younger son at a carnival and eventually takes a job as a maid without letting on her real social status. It was a decent romantic comedy. The kids were a bit whiny and Cary Grant's character was rather clueless at times, but I enjoyed the film.

The Quiet One (1948) - 6/10 - This supposed documentary mixed documentary footage from the Wiltwyck School for Boys with fictional footage about a troubled 10 year old boy who doesn't talk and has issues because of the neglect from his family. The movie was nominated (in separate years) for Best Documentary and for Best Writing (screenplay) by the Academy. I think that the fictional footage far outweighed the documentary footage and labeling it as a documentary is misleading. It was okay and the kid portraying the troubled youth was good, but I think the story itself was too simplistic.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 8.5/10 - In 1650, a hunter and his daughter Robyn move to Ireland to help the Lord Protector rid the area of wolves. However, the leader of the wolves is a girl named Mebh who can change into a wolf and she befriends Robyn. I thought it was a beautiful and entertaining film.

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) - 7/10 - Poppy is a primary school teacher who goes through life acting excessively perky much of the time. This seemed fine mostly, though she was a jerk to the driving instructor (who was kind of tightly wound, but that's no excuse) and could be annoying when talking to strangers. The film shows slices of her life involving a student at school having problems, Poppy learning to drive, interacting with her sisters, taking dancing lessons, partying, etc. It kind of wanders around without getting to a point, but was okay for what it is.

Breaker Morant (1980) - 7.5/10 - During the Boer War, several Australian officers were court martialed on charges of murdering Boer prisoners as well as a missionary. An Australian major was assigned to defend them, though was not given a lot of time to prepare. The movie made for a pretty good courtroom drama.

The Official Story (1985) - 7.5/10 - In 1983, a high school history teacher whose husband works for the government starts to question where their five year old adopted daughter came from and whether her mother was one of the disappeared. The military dictatorship is on its last legs and protests are in the streets. The teacher investigates, but answers are hard to come by. I thought that this was a decent drama. Nothing really gets resolved, but there probably weren't very many answers or favorable resolutions for the families of the disappeared either.

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020) - 8/10 - A Syrian refugee named Sam Ali is separated from the woman he loves. She is in Belgium and he is stuck in Lebanon. In order to gain the ability to travel to her, Sam allows his back to be tattooed by a famous artist turning Sam into a living work of art. I thought that the acting was very good and it is shot extremely well also. A lot of story gets compressed into the last 20-30 minutes, but I think it worked and I enjoyed the film.

/Margot at the Wedding/ (Noah Baumbach): 6/10
His big Do-Over.

I think what Noah Baumbach wanted to do was to frame adulthood as a monstrous, impenetrable thing as framed from a young teen. The Squid and the Whale is about children viewing a divorce and this is about children viewing a marriage. Because so little occurs within Claude's POV this is only sporadically successful but it creates a family-world that is distant, chaotic, and intriguing. I wish Baumbach provided clearer entry into his story. He does a really messy job of setting up who Margot is, what her relationship with her son is like, and what we need to know about the family before we arrive, which makes it substantially more difficult to connect with these characters than should be the case. What we're left with is a collection of funny, cringe-y off-hand exchanges lampooning middle-aged Gen X East Coast progressives. We're always learning new information about these people but it never creates a portrait. Early on, the sisters joke about another sister being raped by a horse trainer and laugh. It's a shocking moment not because what they're saying is shocking, because we don't know what to make of it at all. We never really have any bedrock of context. Margot at the Wedding feels chaotic. It's a film where it feels like anything could happen at any time but none of it feels surprising, because we don't have any sense of what is real in this world.

A Do-Over but a compelling one. From a top level, this film's lasting legacy is that it represents a bridge between two of Noah Baumbach's major swings: dysfunctional families (Squid and the Whale) and horrible protagonists (Greenberg). Both films were served better by keeping their story drivers separate.

It takes a very long time for Margot to come into focus which is a odd whiff. We barely know Margot is a writer for the longest stretch. The strongest insight into who she is occurs a little more than halfway through the film when Margot is at a Q&A. I wish we had something like that earlier. At the time, this felt like a revelation for Nicole Kidman but today it feels like a warm-up for later ventures. The same is true for Jennifer Jason Leigh. We are told who they are rather than experiencing it in behavior. Jack Black is obnoxious but one gets the impression Noah Baumbach has the best idea of who he is. Watching Margot at the Wedding today, it becomes very clear that Noah Baumbach is more comfortable writing men, and also that he was never more comfortable writing women than when collaborating with Greta Gerwig.

But as a directed work, it's beautiful. Baumbach only collaborated with Harris Savides twice (Margot, Greenberg) but they were both striking leaps into the filmmaker he would become. Such a shame that we lost Savides so young. The look of Margot is one of its most stunning achievements: it's so underlit.