Final Thoughts on 2022 in Film

-Stephen Spielberg thanked Tom Cruise for saving movies with Top Gun. You can call the film over-rated due to how big it blew up but, by that standard, a lot of things are overrated. Think of how little you expected when you walked into that theater and think of how you (most likely) were moved; how well done all of the film's elements were. Moreso, think of how this was not a Marvel film and managed to rule the Box Office for 3 weeks in the middle of Summer. It was the top grossing film of the year in an age where the only stuff thriving is superheroes and cartoons.

-Best director is likely going to two guys named Daniel. Although I don't love Oscars being used as lifetime achievement awards (like Don Ameche in Cocoon or Lee Grant in Shampoo who were indistinguishable from the rest of their casts when they won Academy Awards; I'll go to my grave saying Al Pacino did a great job in Scent of a Woman if people stop comparing it to the 70s), I tend to think it's a little embarrassing to have people who aren't particularly accomplished in that category. More than any other award, we can't tell what a director does from a single film since he relies on various craftsmen and actors to create his vision. The best director award comes close to reflecting a list of the best, but when you have the guy who directed Rocky (can't remember his name), Delbert Mann or Tom Hooper, you run a risk that the award is diluted. I'd prefer if the award went to someone with somewhat of a track record for doing big things.

-We need to just collectively admit this was not a particularly good year for American films:

*Baz Luhrmann is an erratic and polarizing guy. Whatever your opinion of him or this movie is, we should recognize this was not something that all viewers considered a success. I found it to not vary enough from the typical beats of the biopic to merit any special recognition.

*Tar is 2 hours and 37 minutes long. My friend Khari typically avoids films over two hours and while I disagree with that method of film going, this was a film that could have easily been told in an hour and 45 minutes. It's set in a highly specialized world of orchestral conducting and does little to explain why waving your arms in front of a group of classical musicians merits millions of dollars

*The Whale was gross (although that was probably the point) and a bit heavy-handed in its metaphors (the guy loves in a city with more thunder than any other). It's interesting.

*The Banshees of Inisherin is about two people who are mentally off and the film doesn't acknowledge that.  One person basically spends the whole movie whining that the other isn't his friend and the other responds in the worst way imaginable: Self-harm, not locking his door, etc. It's supposedly also about the Irish civil war and loneliness and coping, but all that stuff is muddled in the background. I could see someone reading it differently, but it didn't work for me.

-The result of the lack of decent films and the momentum behind films that were actually pretty good (at least in my opinion) like Empire of Light and Armageddon Time resulted in a bunch of foreign films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, RRR, Bardo, and Triangle of Sadness either getting nominated for BP or getting close. RRR and Triangle of Sadness I found to be terrific films but I also rarely add foreign films to my viewing diet so that was a positive effect on me.

-In spite of the Glass Onion's length, it worked as a critique of rich people. The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, and Death on the Nile also had this element which was a nice new direction. For films.

-Underrated films to me: Deep Water, The Bubble, Where the Crawdads Sing, Armageddon Time, Metal Lords, and Amsterdam

-Unfortunately, there is a sphere of entertainment-centered journalists who will always manufacture some controversy about how Hollywood doesn't properly honor people of color. They continue to attempt to drive headlines around this cause even when the facts don't support their case. This year, their double standard was highly evidence when Michelle Yeoh's broke existing campaign rules to knock down competitor Cate Blanchett.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michelle-yeoh-deletes...

I don't think that Michelle Yeoh should be raked over the coals or even found guilty, but she violated a rule about campaigning by taking a potshot at a fellow nominee on social media.

There is no source that Andrea Riseborough directly marketed the film herself illegally (it was the director's wife who was under suspicion) and she investigated and found innocent, but her name will now be tainted because she's not really a name in the industry anyway.

That Michelle Yeoh gets all this support because of a strong double-standard here where if you're on the right side of what the identity politics crowd perceives to be social justice, you got cheered for getting on your soap box no matter what you say.

The more egregious thing here is that it's not even Andrea Riseborough's control that she was White when she had the greatest Cinderella story campaign in recent Oscars memory. The story doesn't matter: Just her skin color.

And I'm repeating myself here, but the absurdity of citing racism due to a (very probable, beforehand) snubbing of a four-time Oscar nominee dilutes the word beyond belief.

Disobedience (2018) Review

Rachel Weisz stars as a Rabbi's daughter returning to an Orthodox Jewish community that's shunned her because she didn't want to adopt their ways. This is a common problem in Orthodox communities when people choose a different belief system than the one they were raised with. It presents a myriad of challenges to navigate and this film portrays it with the utmost delicacy.

The film has a brilliant pseudo-horror vibe with the voyeuristic looks that her disapproving peers inflict upon her with as she sits with them at dinner or walks through the streets alongside them. 

The film is advertised as a film about a lesbian relationship, but it's really a film about free will because being in a pre-marital sexual relationship, dating a secular jew, even having secular Jews in your friend circle or getting an education all lead to the same end result of shunning anyways. 

Perhaps it's my experience in this type of community, but the film is beautiful, spot-on, tense, sexy , and treats each of the three leads (Rachel McAdams and Allesandro Nivola) and their character arcs with a great sense of respect.

Project Greenlight and the Liesure Class

"Project Greenlight" wrapped up its fourth season this past month.

If we assume that the other nine "Project Greenlight" finalists (whether team or individual) had at least 95% of the talent of Mann, better people skills and a measurable level of enthusiasm for the project, than wouldn't it have been a better logistical choice to suggest one of them? The answer is an emphatic no: A cooperative director would not have given the show the requisite amount of drama to make the show interesting or even remotely watchable.

Ultimately, Mann being chosen was a good thing from not just an entertainment perspective but from an educational one as well. "Project Greenlight" taught me quite a bit about film and keep in mind: It will soon be approaching nine years that I have been blogging on here; I have interviewed people who have created TV shows and starred in films; and I minored in film in college. None of those things tell me where exactly a director stands during filming, how many people work in an editing room, or how a director spends his time before the production starts. It is through "Project Greenlight" that you learn the ins-and-outs of what filmmaking is like on a tangible visual level.

On top of the film making narratives of art verse commerce and conflicting artistic visions, the show allows us to see the more mundane battles being waged like getting another shot vs. upsetting neighborhood ordinances, or on  Hollywood stand-in vs. tax-break-friendly Georgia vs. authentic Connecticut on the location front.

The film had two veritable villains in the form of line producer Effie T. Brown (another thing the show does well is answering the casual film fan's number one head scratcher, "What does a producer do?") and Mann himself which led to plenty of debate fodder on the internet over who was really "ruining" the movie. Of course, Mann provides pretty reasonable evidence in a Washington Post interview that many of his villainous traits (i.e. taking forever to choose a location) were exaggerated by the cameras so any TV show viewer familiar with reality show conventions should know better than to truly condemn Mann or (considering we have no reason to assume the camera weren't as drama-hungry for his counterpart) Brown.

The curious thing about the condemnations in online reviews and on message boards was the constant floating around in association with Mann of the most overused word of the year in TV criticism: "Privilege." Mann is a white, male and came off as petulant but that doesn't mean there's a correlation between those things or any on-screen evidence that he grew up pampered with wealth. It was even referenced in the season's second episode that Mann lived somewhat of an ascetic lifestyle to fund his projects. Some comments also surmised Mann was of unreasonable wealth because he went to film school, which I found disturbing for that criticism's undercurrents that taking the time to subjugate yourself to professors in an academic environment isn't something to be admired (and for ignoring the possibility that a person talented enough to win Project Greenlight wouldn't also be able to win an academic scholarship).

I suspect reviewers had difficulty divorcing their impressions of Jason and his overblown aspirations from the final product. If the job of a reviewer is to meet a film on its own terms and to discern what those terms are, the second part of that process is made extremely easy since Jason's obsessions with lighting and the fine details are well-documented.

Personally, I found plenty to like in "The Leisure Class." The HBO film (screened a night after the finale) was an admirable stab at a genre (a comedy of manners) that doesn't exist today outside of stage plays and period pieces set in Britain. By transplanting that style to an American setting, the film has something relevant to say about class in America and that's a pretty decent baseline for a comedic film. The film mostly succeeds at throwing twists and turns at each character to heighten the intensity of the hijinks as the night goes on.

The most interesting part of the viewing experience is deciding for yourself if each of the dramatic episodes behind the scenes made a difference in the final product. For example, there was a car crash that Mann and crew missed out on capturing the way he wanted due to logistical issues. Watching the film made me learn first-hand that I couldn't have cared less about the magnitude of the car crash. On the other hand, the last-minute decision to change rollerblading to pillow fighting in one of the film's later scenes did make a noticeable difference in my viewing experience. In that case, it would have given me a stronger visual image of two people running amok.

The chemistry between leads Ed Weeks and Tom Bell (something Jason Mann had to fight for) was also tangibly noticeable. The characters needed slightly better motivation, but acting salvaged quite a bit in my opinion.

Safety Not Guaranteed: An ill-fitted romance for the ages

Hollywood  has come a long way in breaking from the molds of the storytelling conventions strictly imposed upon them in the Golden Age.

You would think that with all the diverse possibilities of  stories to tell, just a few less movies out there would be obliged to go the romantic route between its two main characters. As Todd van der Werff pointed out in this article making the case for more friendships and less romances on TV:

"The world isn’t full of potential romantic partners who constantly dance around each other; it’s full of men and women who navigate complicated friendships and find their way to happiness within those friendships."

If films are to be accurate portrayals of the different colors of life, filmdom collectively has to consider different endings to their stories. More to the point, film's lose a sense of being unpredictable if every time a man and woman make googly eyes at each other, we know where it's heading.

Case in point: Safety Not Guaranteed.

The film, about a trio of journalists who track down a store clerk who thinks he can time travel, had the makings of a good story and was without a doubt a unique tale.

It's an independent film so I would have thought that these guys had more leeway to be unconventional which is why I was baffled that they sealed off their story with a conventional romantic ending that I don't really think was organic of the relationship between the two main characters on screen.

Aubrey Plaza's Darius (why do all quirky indie movies have to give their female characters male names?) and Mark Duplass's Kenneth seemed to me to be people with holes too big to just dive into a relationship right away. Moreover, I think the film would have been just as emotionally satisfying if the two arrived at a point where Darius understood Kenneth as that would have been a long journey as is.

Despite that, the film was punctuated with an effectively pleasant aura, the movie was interesting and there's a lot to say about building a story around a "red herring" that undoubtedly works.

Movie #25: Humpday

I've now seen 25 2009 films, so here's a new ranking:
Adding to 1 Up in the Air, 2 Inglroius Basterds, 3 Soloist, 4 Star Trek, 5 In the Loop, 6 Up, 7 District 9, 8 Funny People, 9 Hangover, 10 Extract, 11 Angels and Demons 12 Invention of Lying 13 Night at the Miseum 2 14 Julie and Julia 15 Whip It 16 Invictus 17 Humpday 18 2012 19 Sunshine Cleaning 20 Brothers Bloom 21 Proposal 22 Wolverine 23 Julia 24 Land of the Lost 25 Bruno:

My review/thoughts on humpday.

Humpday is a film about two straight guys who get caught up in a dare to have sex with each other on tape for an amutuer porn competition. Intrigued yet? The will they/won't they angle on this is certainly amplified quite a bit from the typical straight couple romantic film.

The film had its weaknesses. At times, the dialogue wasn't that strong and it meandered a bit too much en route to the climactic finale. Perhaps, that's a defining trait of indie films: with no studio pushing them to be ecnomical, there's no urgent need to make the movie minute-by-minute interesting. I think the audience just suffers here.

The film, though, really passed the main test that I generally use to determine what I thought of a film right as the end credits are rolling by. After I think about it a while, I might have a fully formed opinion but my initial reaction over whether I was satisfied with how I spent the past two hours is based on two things:
1. Right before the film's ending, If I was invested enough in the characters to want to know how the film would end and how anxious I was for that ending
2. What I thought of the ending.

A very good film, of course, is one that has me anticipating an ending that would be plain wrong outside of the movie-going experience.

One really good example of this was my experience watching the 1915 film Birth of a Nation: This film, is pretty much the first full-length movie epic and introduced many innovations into the art of making movies. The one catch about this film (it's noted for its technical achievements but certainly not its misguided sense of history) is that it glorifies the KKK. The film is so effective, even with the technology available in 1915, that I actually found myself rooting for the KKK before doing a double-take and thinking about how messed up that was.

In this film, what I wanted to happen for the characters (to have sex with each other) and what the protagonists wanted to happen themselves was completely devoid of reason ordinarily but it made complete sense within the context of the film. Because you see: This wasn't a film about having sex, it was a film about searching for something we don't know how to define but we know how to define it against. One character is newly married and uncomfortable with the new impositions of his life. In wanting to produce a sex tape with his male friend, he is acting out of a desperation to retain some part of his identity that doesn't have to do with being married. Both characters also want to establish themselves as people with artistic credibility: Neither of them are artists or define themselves as artists but they enter into a world of bohemian free-living people and want to feel like they belong in that community. These two friends are reuniting and want to show that they still have some of their wild youth in them.

So off they go on this truly misguided journey before it hits them (I won't reveal exactly how far they go, how much they get away with) that this very thing they want that will satisfy their identities might be a very unpleasant thing after all. Not the best film I've seen this year but one of the most memorable

Sunshine Cleaning: Getting a little bored of the indie style

I just saw Sunshine Cleaning and it felt old and recycled to me.
I wrote in my last post about dramedies because I saw this film and was dissapointed by it's depressingness. I believe it was advertised as having had some connection to Little Miss Sunshine (same director, same writer, something like that) and it wasn't much of a follow-up. LMS made me laugh, cry, and jump for joy. Sunshine Cleaning just made me cry a little. The highs weren't as high and the story wasn't as interesting.

Proponents of indie films like that they don't have heavy plots because actual stories with action or plots get greenlit by studios and storyless stories are too risky. Therefore, indie films tend to be character-centered. The problem is that these characters on screen are ones I've seen before and I am rapidly becoming bored of. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt play two sisters in arrested development with real responsibilities that they can't handle that well. They trace it back to lack of a mother and work through those issues. As siblings who grew up in the same estranged circumnstances they make teammates on this journey. Emily Blunt's character also does drugs.

Let me recall the number of times I've seen this female adult-child variation:
There was Julia just this year whose protagonist had substance abuse problems. Last year, there was Rachel Getting Married whose protagonist was estranged from family and had substance abuse problems. Her path to retribution was through her sister. There was Laura Linney a year before that who went on a path of self-discovery with her brother in the Savages. Two years before that, there was In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz being perpetually jobless and drunk. She and sister Toni Collette grew up (one overcomes commitment issues, one overcomes joblessness) through oming to grips with their mom's demise into insanity and early death. Good Girl has a Sunshine State features Edie Falco in a state of arrested development because she's been living in the same town forever You Can Count on Me features Laura Linney as an aduilt child who lost her parents at a young age to a car crash. She revisits those memories through a visit from her brother.

I happen to love You Can Count on Me (because it was novel at the time and it had a very sharp self-awareness), Sunshine State (the disillusioned adult-child was part of a large ensemble) and In Her Shoes (because they switched the roles up and made the main character not as much of an adult child), os I can't say that this is a bad trend but it's being overused to the point where I just didn't enjoy this film because I've seen these exact characters before so recently.

Worse, it's also becoming surefire Oscar bait. Two of Laura Linney's three Oscar noms have resulted from this type of role, and Anne Hathaway got an Ocsar nod last year for Rachel Getting Married. Tilda Swinton has gotten buzz for her role as well, so this exact role is bound to be repeated.

What's funny is that people are always saying indie films are better than studio films because they're aloud to be original, but I don't see that happening at all.