Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

The novel was better.

Just finished Doctor Strange.

Edge of Tomorrow is starting.

 

Eighth Grade (2018) – Bo Burnham

With Eighth Grade, writer-director Bo Burnham has done more than establish himself as a talent to watch. He’s established himself as something of a master right now. He’s crafted a pitch perfect evocation of the awkwardness of that transition to high school, but also a kind of awkwardness that never quite leaves a person alone. First of all, praise has to go to Elsie Fisher who is absolutely star-making in this performance as Kayla. This is a movie that would have fallen apart completely with a weak lead performance, but Fisher just knocks it out of the park. Every emotion rings completely true and she’s able to make you cringe, laugh and empathize with every struggle her character faces. Josh Hamilton is wonderful in support as her bumbling, but good-hearted dad. The script is smart and funny in all the right ways, but it also knows how to tug at the heartstrings. This certainly has a lot of cringe comedy in it, but, in contrast to a lot of cringe comedy, this movie also has a deep well of affection and love for its characters. The awkward cringing is really evocative; after one particularly awkward social encounter, someone said, “That’s exactly how I felt in eighth grade,” to which I responded, “That’s exactly how I felt last week.” Capturing that extra layer isn’t easy, but Burnham and Fisher have done it. The comedy lands perfectly. There’s a scene involving a banana that is one of the most perfectly written & performed comedic scenes of the year, to the degree that I still laugh even just thinking about it. But the film isn’t afraid to tackle serious topics. There’s a sequence that’s genuinely painful to watch at one point where an older boy tries to manipulate Kayla into doing things she doesn’t want to do and it almost makes you sick and it does make you angry. And the film also pulls off moments of really sweet, tender emotions as in a really wonderful fireside scene between Kayla and her dad near the end of the film. I’ll admit I was getting a little nervous as the end approached; I really didn’t want to see the film blow the ending after working at such a high level for most of its running time, but I also couldn’t really figure out how the movie should end. Well, trust Burnham, I guess, because he really nailed the ending and watch Fisher in those closing moments too; she’s an incredibly subtle actor and she communicates a lot in very simple physical ways. This is really a wonderful movie that succeeds at basically everything it tries to do. And it tries for some intense things in terms of tonal shifts and character building. It’s really a masterpiece honestly, the kind of movie they don’t make nearly often enough. 4 stars.

tl;dr – wonderful movie captures cringy awkwardness, hilarious comedy and heart-tugging drama to perfection; a true star-turn from Elsie Fisher and a whip-smart script make this a classic. 4 stars.

 

Boy Erased is a character drama that feels like a horror movie. Writer/director/actor Joel Edgerton creates a distinct sense of foreboding menace that rides through the film, making the subject matter feel appropriately disturbing. Basically the main character is trapped in a aggressively psychologically damaging hellhole of “gay conversion therapy” and unable to leave. If there is a fault, the movie seems to end about 20 minutes before it actually ends when it reaches a climax and then sort of slows down before the credits roll. Still, this is an intense experience that shows how cult like psychological manipulation can try to tear a person apart.

Jared (Lucas Hedges) is young man who is sent to “gay conversion therapy” camp by his conservative parents, the loving but worrying Nancy (Nicole Kidman) and his reverend and car dealership owner Marshall (Russell Crowe). At the camp, Jared finds the overbearing and constantly talking camp councillor leader and therapist of dubious background, Victor Sykes (Edgerton). Sykes constantly berates, belittles and tells his “students” that they need to not be gay and pray it all away. The place isn’t exactly a prison but they confiscate personal belongings and lock the young adults inside. But Jared is going to college and expanding his horizons, something that Sykes says that would distract from Jared’s therapy. But the more Sykes and his cronies try to break Jared down, the more he tries to break free.

Hedges puts in a pretty great performance that slowly evolves. Maybe a wee bit too slowly because he is almost completely stone faced for the first half of the movie but that makes sense since he’s been so meekly forced into this by his parents. As the movie goes on, he reveals more and has a couple of really great scenes, climaxing in a dramatic confrontation with the therapist, Sykes. Pulling triple duty, Edgerton plays Sykes and more insidiously evil, saying really hateful, hurtful things in a very calm way. Edgerton’s direction is a lot of chilly, slow, shadow enveloped wide shots which adds to the sense of menace. It isn’t right what is happening to Jared so tonally it makes the movie feel like a horror movie. There’s a really disturbing scene involving Jared and someone he meets at college that absolutely horrific that it doesn’t flinch away from what is happening. The scene is a bit easily exploitive but it is dramatic.

Crowe and Kidman as the parents are both sympathetic and pretty horrible people because they’re forcing their kid into this even though they love him. Kidman grows over the course of the film, she clearly cares for her kid but the way she goes along with putting him in the conversion camp is seems to be because she is trying to be an obedient wife. There is a small moment when Jared points out their “course” handbook is riddled with spelling errors as she starts to doubt the authenticity of the place. Probably the best moment she has is a brief bit where she asks Sykes what his qualifications are. As the father, Crowe doesn’t play it loud or overbearing, which he often can, but instead Marshall seems to think this is what is best for his kid. The best scene in the movie is when Jared as a full on freak out during one of his sessions. It’s very intense but afterwards the movie still devotes time to Jared and his parents which isn’t as dramatically stirring as Jared’s big confrontation.

The movie feels claustrophobic that Jared is stuck in a situation where he can't leave. Sometimes there might be a bit too many monologues that happen over and over that the audience starts to feel that they're stuck there too which sometimes gets a bit wearying. It sort of seems like a boot camp movie, the intensity of the overbearing leader feels very much like the Drill Sargent in Full Metal Jacket except way less funnier. Frankly, Boy Erased could use a little levity since it's so intensely dark while Jared is in the conversion therapy. Probably the closest thing to a joke is when, in a absurd moment, one of the girls is told to organize the boys by who looks the most “manly” and there's a really funny reaction when she puts one right at the opposite end and they look really confused why they're stuck at the back. Also that same person is stuck in a batting cage later and basically falls all over themselves which is darkly funny, especially when the parents show up later and tear a strip off Sykes saying he could have caused their kid a concussion.

There's a bunch of characters that populate the centre and they all have a lot of briefly sketched out depth to them. Sarah is a girl who looks really sad all the time about being there as actress Jesse LaTourette gets in a great, heartbreaking monologue where she indexes her “sins”. David Joseph Craig plays a office worker and who lays out the rules of Jared's stay and seems like he could snap at any moment. Red Hot Chilli Pepper's bassist Flea plays an ex-con convert who is gives a lot of scary speeches about how he's been “cured” but in private moments he also seems like a complete leering creep. One of the saddest characters is Britton Sear as Cameron, a big quiet guy who is holding a lot back. There’s a chilling scene where he is tormented by people trying to “save his soul” and he is pretty instrumental in Jared's important moments near the end.

There is a lot of great stuff in Boy Erased even if it does seem to make the same point a few times, underline it, and then circle back again. But that’s probably what it is like for people stuck in these “therapy” camps so it feels very true. It is a pretty dark movie yet it does show that eventually love can find a way out of the darkness if they look hard enough.

 

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut). This is my third attempt to watch the film, as I was only able to get through an hour or so the first two times.There are some fantastic musical performances, but for the most part I found the film to be an overlong bore.

 

The Happytime Murders (2018)
Eh. As I told a friend of mine about the movie, it barely lived up to the low expectations I already had for it. I really don't like Melissa McCarthy. IMO she tries too hard for a cheap laugh and doesn't really mesh well with any of her co-actors (even puppets). Kind of like Ralph Breaks the Internet (which I reviewed before), the best scenes were already played out in the trailers.

 

30th anniversary one off cinema screening of Die Hard. A film I’ve seen hundreds of times over the last 29 years, but because it was a certificate 18 when it came out I was unable to catch it at the cinema.

It was a totally different experience seeing it with an audience. It was like a lot of people were seeing it for the first time in a long time, they were laughing at the funny lines and in the right places and overall it brought home to me how this film works on pretty much every level. The setting and the action are always lauded as it’s strength, but I think it’s the whole package, the relationships between characters, the dialogue, the performances, a great villain, a vulnerable hero, I don’t think a character is wasted. It’s one of those lightning in a bottle moments. Great to see it on the big screen.

 

For a counterpoint, watch "Gimme Shelter". It ends up as basically the polar opposite of "Woodstock".

 

or monterey pop

 

A Bay of Blood (1971) While Mario Bava handled direction, cinematography, and co-wrote this film (which would directly inspire Friday the 13th et. al.) it really doesn’t feel like a Mario Bava movie.

Playing up Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, everyone wants the Bay property an elderly countess refuses to modernize. She’s murdered by her husband who is then killed by an unknown person. As more people show up, it’s simply an excuse to kill them. Sleazy realtor, illegitimate son, some young guy and his hippie pals, the daughter of the man who married the countess, and a hilarious, bickering couple all prove to be potential suspects (The drunken, tarot card reading wife was the only mildly interesting person in this movie. Something I’d forgotten having last seen this 15 years ago).

When the reveal comes, it is typical Bava (if more than one person is involved in the murder plot), but the story finally feels like a Bava movie in the last ten seconds. That very black sense of humor pops up and the actual thought of what just happened is the only unnerving element of the movie. The sense of being in an environment of murder inspires that final moment, but the accompanying dialogue is corny funny and horrific at the same time.

Of course, when discussing this movie everyone talks about Rambaldi’s gore FX being copied for Friday the 13th (Savini would borrow and improve upon the machete to the head in Dawn of the Dead). These are pretty tame compared to what was done in other European horror films that year (namely Tombs of the Blind Dead which boasted far more realistic demises for two characters). I think the bigger influence on slashers came in the form of making uninteresting characters cannon fodder. There wasn’t a single likable person in this which gave the film a very jaded, resentful vibe. I think that was smart from a story perspective, but dangerous in keeping the audience engaged. There are long snatches of zzzzzzz in between murders too. I remember seeing this film in 2003 made me put aside Mario’s other movies (except for Black Sunday) until I stumbled across the charming Danger, Diabolik! a few years later.

There’s a great theme song and the occasional use of color, but if you want to see a similar story play out in far more inventive and garish style, please check out Mr. Bava’s Blood and Black Lace instead.

 

The World's End. My girlfriend had never seen it, so we did the entire Cornetto Trilogy over a few days. All three are among my favorite films ever made, so, you know... I was pretty happy. And it's not a movie, but I'm watching Spaced right now.

 

The World's End is the weakest of the trilogy by far imo. Such a strange direction to go for a goofy comedy.

 

The Meg. A ridiculous-looking B-movie-style would-be blockbuster where Jason Statham, Dwight Schrute, and several beautiful women fight a giant shark? How many boxes can one movie check?

This was pretty much exactly what I hoped for: cheesy, good-natured fun with some solid shark action. A very PG-13 shark movie, it doesn’t lean into the terror element so much as the action-adventure side of the premise, which is fine because it’s got Jason Statham fighting a giant shark.

Look, this movie is exactly what you think it is. If you’re up to see Jason Statham fight a giant shark, this is the movie for you. If you care about pretty much any other aspect of filmmaking, well, it’s really a perfectly decently crafted cornball B-movie. It’s not incompetent or Sharknado-style campy. But, you know, don’t expect too much. Just watch it for Jason Statham fighting a giant shark.

 

A Quiet Place. Horror is not my thing at all. Jump scares, gore, grotesque imagery, and being creeped out just don’t do anything for me, and the genre’s never appealed to me at all. So while the trailer definitely intrigued me with the bold, creative premise, this wasn’t a movie I sought out. But it got such great reviews, I have great residual affection for Krasinski from The Office, and I do love tension and an unsettling vibe, which is more like what this seemed to be goig for, so I went for it.

It’s such a great premise, and Krasinski definitely does very well as a director handling it. But such a bold and distinctive concept inevitably raises questions which the movie didn’t seem very interested in answering. Things like how you run a farm without making any noise. How you gonna harvest corn silently? Where’s all this electricity coming from, because generators are noisy as hell? How can the things be so sensitive they hear somebody fall through a hatch across a farm but they can’t hear somebody breathing two feet away? The film wants its concept, but it doesn’t want to commit to it thoroughly enough to deflect surface-level questions. This is exacerbated by the sound design, which achieves its unsettling quiet and sound-centeredness not by playing up the quiet, but by dropping out all incidental noise to create an artificial silence. It’s not that they live in a world of small noises, but that they live in a world in which nothing they do makes any noise at all. The world is completely silent unless they do something unusual. They walk on wooden floors, eat, and run without making a peep. Instead of a sound design of oppressive stillness in which little sounds are magnified, it’s one in which little aounds are erased. It’s a legitimate choice in terms of what you think would ultimately be more effective in immersing the audience in the world, but combined with how selective the film is about what sounds matter, I couldn’t escape the feeling that the film spent its entire runtime basically cheating on its premise.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well-made and very effective thriller. I quite liked it and though Krasinski did a great job directing and both he and Blunt gave wonderful performances (Blunt steals the movie). The daughter was quite good too. But unfortunately, the premise is just so bold, so conceptually overwhelming in a way, that it requires very delicate, very considerate execution, and in my experience the film didn’t manage to avoid distracting me with its execution of the premise rather than immersing me. It felt like it had found a brilliant concept and it wanted to play with it rather than wholly commit to it.

 

It's A Wonderful Life (1946) - More like It's A Miserable Life, amirite?

First viewing, and the last of the Capra myth that I hadn't seen. I watched the color version on Amazon Prime, I kinda wish I had watched it in black and white.

Well...this was a very strange experience. I had never seen even a full minute of this movie, but as I watched it, I found that I had seen or heard of so much of it over the years referenced in other fiction that I sorta knew what it was as I was watching it, which gave me a strange sense of predictability greater than usual. Yet, the actual substance was unexpected to the point of being a shocking experience.

I was expecting this to be very sugary and sweet, I was not prepared for so much suffering and so many sacrifices and shattered dreams. Misery was called for, as Jimmy Stewart was on the edge of suicide...but the level of suffering was far beyond anything I've seen in any of these Capra myths.

I've seen this life. I've lived this life. It's not so wonderful. You want to know the reality? The real **** in this story? It's when Jimmy goes off and yells at his kids. That's real life, and that's his future. That stress isn't going away, he will continue to live on the edge, just barely staving off destruction, and that stress will lead to more and more anger and abuse. It's not going to be a wonderful life for George Bailey, or his wife and kids.

Check out Jimmy Stewart's violent proposal. It's shocking. The result of sexuality sublimated and dreams deferred. There was no doubt a lot of rough, angry, revenge sex in their marriage. I hope Mary liked it that way. She doesn't have any complaints, but then again she hardly speaks and exists only to love Jimmy Stewart.

The ending just doesn't work for me. It's not all that great, or life affirming at all. It's not enough to offset the life of misery up to that point. Where did the people come up with $8000? They could hardly get by the whole movie, suddenly everyone has cash to spare. The whole thing is just phony, but even putting that aside, it's just not all that inspiring. The most grating thing is Mr Potter getting away with stealing the money. Potter is one of the greatest villains in movie history, Lionel Barrymore was so locked in to the role he made Jimmy Stewart look like an amateur by comparison. There's nothing I would have liked more than for Potter's greed to come back and humiliate him, it was incredibly frustrating to see him get away with it. I can't believe Capra didn't go back to it at all. Might have added some satisfaction to the ending.

This was a very strange experience. There were good times: Stewart dancing the Charleston, that guy telling Stewart to stop talking and just kiss the girl already, etc. There were bad times: the suffering as Stewart had his plans dashed over and over and was forced to make sacrifices and settle for a life he didn't want, with the resulting frustration, stress, and anger coming off as by far the most real and powerful emotions of the film. The result is a very unbalanced and frankly tragic story; It's a Miserable Life, and it's never going to get better. Not one of my favorites.

 

Mile 22. Look, this never looked like it was going to be a great movie. Reviews were bad. But it’s got Iko Uwais. Ultimate action star Iko Uwais. I was never not going to see this movie.

And it’s not a very good movie. It could have been; it’s a thoroughly competent action movie with several things going for it. But it’s held back by that crappy action movie standard of fetishism of uber-competent professionals being swaggery badasses, which drains most of the personality out of it. And it’s got these godawful inserts where Wahlberg spouts pseudo-philosophical tough-guy nonsense to some interviewer and almost all of it is non sequiturs and it’s just super obnoxious. Sand the heavy layer of stupid jingoistic swagger off the movie (and it contributes nothing) and you’d have a perfectly good action movie. Wahlberg is otherwise rather amusing as a hyperintelligent, hyperactive, motormouthed jerk who bullies everyone else in the movie constantly. The movie is perfectly comfortable making its protagonist unlikable and Wahlberg is having a ball being a dick so for whatever weird reason it totally works, and it’s something different and a little daring, at least. Confident. It’s also got Iko Uwais, who is an absolute monster, and it unleashes him for a couple incredible fight scenes. Uwais can make any movie worth watching. And once the movie stops talking and starts shooting, it becomes just a relentless barrage of rock-solid action built on the wonderfully simple premise of a small team trying to cross a hostile city. Also it has John Malkovich with a bad haircut.

Point is, it’s a dumb, obnoxious movie that’s much worse than it has to be, but it’s also completely satisfying as an action movie once it gets going, with some really great sequences. I enjoyed it very much despite itself. I mean, Iko Uwais kills two dudes while handcuffed to a gurney in an insane fight scene. Then he kills a bunch of guys while handcuffed inside a car. I wouldn’t care if the rest of the film was Wahlberg sticking a bagpipe up his ass and trying to fart Amazing Grace.

 

I've seen that as well. A much better and more watchable film I thought, probably because I din't have to sit through as many bands I don't care for.

@duende I will see Monterey Pop at some point, but the Blu-Ray is a bit expensive and Criterion don't tend to put their box sets on sale over here so it might be a while.

 

Creed 2 (2018)

I’ve never seen a Rocky film before, but I caught the first Creed in the cinemas when it came out and enjoyed it, so I was quite looking forward to this one. And it was good. Probably on the same level as the first one.

The cast all gave fantastic performances. I love watching Sylvester and Dolph in action films, but it was nice seeing them in such serious roles, and they both nailed it. But Michael B. Jordan was the best.

The story had a similar layout to a lot of other films though, which kind of stopped it from being anything amazing. But the boxing scenes were really, really well done. With the way they were filmed, and the way the sound editing was done, it actually made you feel all of the punches that were being thrown. You might have to see it to understand what I mean, but it’s super effective. 7.5/10.

 

Mary Poppins

 

Currently knocking Christmas Vacation off my Christmas to-view list. It's on one of the movie channels so the language hasn't been toned down for daytime TV viewing.

 

This is going to be my new line for any time a plot point in a movie doesn't make sense.

 

The Post

 

Yah I liked this movie too, decent action scenes, good twisty ending, great performance by Uwais, an entire run where Lauren Cohan drops about 15 f bombs in 30 seconds, and Mark Wahlberg being such a jerk that at one point he even throws a birthday cake on the floor. I actually liked it better, or at least as much, as the past few Very Serious Based On A True Story Wahlberg/Peter Berg collaborations like Patriots Day or Lone Survivor (haven't seen Deepwater Horizon). Cuz Berg movies at his heart he's a pretty B-movie trashy, wry ironic filmmaker - his first movie is Very Bad Things - and while that has sometimes peeked around the edges of his serious movies - this really embraces it. Also it's barely 90 minutes considering how long the other ones are that's pretty grateful! I'd rather watch Mile 23 and Mile 24 than another Wahlberg/Berg Serious National Tragedy Movie.

 

Yeah, I feel like we tend to push everything before we were born (or old enough to recall it) into a very generalized "past," and just sort of assume it as remotely distant, despite the fact that many of the people alive concurrently with us, shaping our world, can remember much of it firsthand.

I was quite struck, when my grandfather died, by the realization that the distance between his birth and death was greater (and not by a small margin) than the distance between his birth and the Civil War. History, for good and ill, is never as far away as we think it is.