Admission (2013): Tina Fey and Paul Rudd star in a rom-com about an admissions officer at Princeton who discovers that the son she gave up for adoption a long time ago is now college age and his untraditional teacher/mentor/ready-made love interest is pushing hard for him to get into Princeton for reasons that only exist to drive the plot forward. The lack of rhyme and reason behind an admissions officer throwing her integrity down the drain by giving preferential treatment to a son she never knew existed becomes a pretty distractable plot hole considering the opening voice over talks about how seriously Tina Fey takes her job.
While we're on the subject, I'm getting tired at this point of Tina Fey playing the same character over and over: Intelligent late-30s women who are often the only sane person in the room, and filled with worries of being a childless spinster as age creeps up on them.
Additionally, the courtship between the two lead characters tips too early in the first act.
So why did I see it? It had a killer trailer. Those will get you:
Amadeus (1984)-My favorite old film I saw in the past year. The best picture winner from 1984 was included on AFI’s initial list of 100 Greatest Films of All-Time for good reason. The film is essentially a tone poem exploring the concept of jealousy which is quite novel. Even more clever is the idea to use a lesser-known historic figure to tell the story of the movie's main subject. Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham were largely unknowns when they took on the respective roles of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and rival Salieri. The film is based on a a myth that Salieri poisoned Mozart out of jealousy for his genius and while the version of Salieri seen here is a heavily bastardized version to fit the plot, it does help illuminate the life of Mozart and the context in which he lived.
I wrote an article for TopTenz about classical music icons who lived like rock stars and found the similarities between the two pretty eye-opening: The reality is that Mozart could generously be described as a foul-mouthed prankster and a brat at worst. "Amadeus" treads in that territory and carefully layers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's wardrobe and mannerisms with subtleties indicating the parallels between Mozart (the pink wig, the unchecked embracing of weird, the love of attention) and modern-day rock idolatry.
Whatever Mozart's cause of death, there was a tragedy to his life that was universal to any artist and while the film brilliantly allots audience sympathy between both central figures, there's something endearing about Mozart and the fact that sales of Mozart spiked by 30% in 1985 is indicative that Hulce's Amadeus did something right.
9 to 5 (1980)-A good meditation on the #MeToo movement. I watched this mostly because I loved the song and found the movie serviceable. It was one of the highest grossing films of 1980 and deserves to be mentioned among landmark films of that time period. The film's pairing of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton (in her acting debut) and the dream sequences in which the three fantasize about killing their bosses, are also among the most notable things about the film. The best thing about the film is the natural camaraderie between the leads and just how impressively villanous Dabny Coleman's character was.
World's End (2013)-After seeing Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver and admiring Edgar Wright's work in all three of those films, I thought the time was right to approach this ode to the apocalypse.
The film was a dueling film with Seth Rogen's This is the End and coming into this film having watched the Seth Rogen film throws the viewer for a curve because it's not apparent until about an hour in that this is an apocalyptic zombie film of sorts. The film takes the facade of a stunted middle-aged man who recruits his more well-adjusted adult friends for one last attempt at some sort of epic monumental pub crawl. The idea of a pub crawl might not be as epic as it seems, but the film sells us that this is a substantial deal to the protagonist. It also sells us on his delusion by showing how little of a deal it is to the other guys. The adult-friends-coming-to-terms-with-their-youths genre here provides quite a bit of narrative thrust and the film nicely adds the attacking zombies when the former needs some pick-me-up. The film lacks the comic depth or the game-changing gimmickry of the other three films I saw but those films set the bar quite high, so I'm quite pleased with the film's more moderate resolution. The film also has a lot of Easter Egg symbolism (look at the royal connection in the character's last names) that I didn't pick up until I saw the IMDB section so that might have affected my opinion.
Wish I Was Here (2014)-Confession: I didn't care for "Garden State." The plot felt by-the-numbers, uneventful, and I spent most of that film scratching my head over why Zach's character would be into a disabled girl. The story attempted to be more than a romance and embody several facets of his life, but the protagonist's relationship with his dad and friends seemed easily solvable (or, again, uneventful) and considering the big ending was him getting together with Natalie Portman, was it really that much more than a romcom masquerading as a holistic indie film?
In contrast, "Wish I Was Here" has a lot of non-romantic plotlines that aren't treatest as afterthoughts. Mandy Patinkin's father character is a genuinely tough obstacle to the protagonist's well-being and he even has some valid points underneath his crusty facade about the protagonist being financially unwise by pursuing acting full-time. The film deals with money, spirituality, maintaining a marriage, death, fatherhood, and being a good son and treats each of these plots with a good deal of weight.
In contrast to how "Garden State" meanders slowly without significant actions, the world of this film's protagonist is one of near-constant chaos as he juggles an array of responsibilities and desires.
The remarkable thing about how much this film won me over is that I retroactively like "Garden State" a little more because I now have a sense of the guy's style.
West Side Story (1961)-I've seen this before, but it's even better on second or third viewing. For instance, like a John Hughes film, "West Side Story" really captures youth and what the world looks like through the lens of those with immature life experiences: Yes, it's not particularly rational that the Jets would embracee sloth in Officer Krupkee or exxagerate their feud with the Sharks, or that Maria and Tony would sleep with each other after their brother and foster brother were killed, but these are teenagers whether they try to deny their rebellious nature (as Tony does) or not (the rest of the Jets).
The inherent problems of racism and othering also caught me here. I didn't catch in any previous viewing that Tony was short for Anton and isn't considered a true Caucasian by Bernardo, that "America" has such prescient foreshadowing to the 2010s (references to hurricanes, debt and many people not being aware Puerto Rico is part of America) and that Lt. Shrank is racist as a matter of practicality: He detests gang violence because it makes his job harder, but he assumes that the Sharks are a bigger problem than the Jets. And the choreography! Jerome Robbins got fired before the completion of the movie and his main contribution were the four dance numbers (Mambo, The Prologue, America, and Cool).
No comments:
Post a Comment