Rickstate

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

Brendan Gleeson is an often over-looked actor. His contributions to Gangs of New York and Braveheart are certainly memorable, but it was his turn in In Bruges that really made me look forward to his future projects.

In Bruges is an excellent picture made by Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Seven Psychopaths) whereas Calvary (2014), starring Brendan Gleeson was made by John Michael McDonagh; Martin’s older brother. Both brothers obviously enjoy shoot’em ups and violence, but where Martin does an excellent job incorporating deeper subjects and themes such as existentialism, morality, and romance into his tough-guy pictures, John Michael falls short.

Other than Calvary, I admittedly haven’t seen much of John Michael’s work, but Calvary seems to be an attempt to make a less humorous, less violent but unfortunately heavy-handed attempt at an overtly cerebral film. And that’s fine, the world needs cerebral films, but this movie never finds a rhythm and, though it has a few good scenes, the juice just ain’t worth the squeeze.

The movie takes place in a fictitious, unsavory Irish town where Gleeson plays Father James; a middle-aged man who joined the priesthood after his wife died.

Calvary begins with a threatening notice from a mystery character informing Father James that he will be murdered in one week. For my money, this type of narrative device rarely works. Why give us a plot point that the entire film balances on prior to revealing any character?

Anyways, as the film moves forward, we are drawn to, and sympathetic towards, Father James. The only thing that ultimately compelled me to stick out the narrative was to see the aftermath of the initial threat. Even then, the ending fumbled.

The film weighs the audience down for 102 minutes. The often despicable townspeople antagonistically question why any man would join the cloth after the Catholic faith has been disgraced by the hundreds of child abuse cases all while unabashedly displaying their own transgressions.

The trailer for John Michael’s The Guard doesn’t look particularly bad as it pairs Don Cheadle with Gleeson, but I’d still recommend brother Martin’s In Bruges or Three Billboards… before giving a John Michael project a shot.

Here is a well-written analysis of Calvary that provides a much more complimentary look at the film and though I understand where the post’s author is coming from, I simply felt the film’s execution is clumsy like a drunk and often communicates like a blithering drunk.

Even though I do like most of what Steven Soderbergh directs, I never saw this when it originally came out (2011). It’s currently available on HBO, and given the world’s present situation, I felt it was fitting to give it a go.

Generally speaking with Soderbergh films, they’re going to be good. Whether a trumped-up, celebrity-fueled caper like the Ocean’s series or a more thoughtful look at unique people and the challenges they face like Erin Brockovich (which looks at how concerned citizens and lawyers take on an industry that appears to be responsible for polluting regional water supplies) or narratives about wide-stretching issues and industries such as big pharma in Side Effects or the War on Drugs in Traffic, the movie is usually going to be well worth your time.

Soderbergh makes a conscientious effort to be unconventional and engaging. That acknowledged, he decided to make Contagion have the narrative not truly follow any particular character, opting instead to focus on the disease itself. The fictitious disease that feels all too real seems to be the main character. For a film about a fast-spreading and fatal pandemic to follow any one particular character would be difficult. That said, Contagion attempts to provide insight at how “regular” folks, political/media types (including fringe political/media types), as well as medical experts would conduct themselves during a world-changing pandemic.

The fictitious pandemic featured in Contagion is certainly far more cataclysmic than what mankind is currently dealing with, but the film does give us an idea of what a worse-case scenario pandemic looks like.

Again, the film is interesting, but the narrative is lacking. The storyline of each character, there are many, only provides a glimpse of what each is dealing with and allows the audience to, more or less, complete the narratives in our heads. This is fine, but it does leave us wanting.

It’s hard to determine whether the film is good or bad, instead, I’ll opt for interesting. Having been released nine years ago, it was interesting to see a dramatized portrayal of hypothesized protocols that politicians, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other organizations respond.

There really aren’t any spoilers to a film like this, but it is interesting to note that pigs that have consumed bat droppings in Asia are the cause of this fictitious pandemic.

If you’re curious about how the gears of a pandemic and the governmental response work, this would be a worthwhile experience.

Last November, I wrote about how during my first viewing of Nashville, I was reminded of some similarities to Short Cuts. It’s true, there are definitely similarities between the two films, but where Nashville captured confusion, frustration, and possible shame of a generation + the 1975 American zeitgeist, Short Cuts seems lost and self-indulgent by comparison.
Maybe that’s the point? 1960s brought on an acceleration of “change” or perceived change, 1970s attempted to make adjustments, 1980s became the decade of self-interest, and the 1990s seemed to have elements of everything that came before but with added complex internal conflicts and confusion (shoot, those decade summations seem obvious if you only study pop music).

Short Cuts, made in 1993, include some terrific individual performances, but the overall project tends to drag and portions of the strewn-about storylines are unneeded. Though it’s fun to see Jack Lemon, Tim Robbins, Robert Downey Jr., and many more all work together, this film ultimately doesn’t resonate. The payoff one is hoping for fizzles down the stretch.

I’m bias, but the best scenes include Tom Waits + Lily Tomlin or Julianne Moore. Tomlin plays a waitress who is ogled by customers and Waits plays her limo-driving, hard-drinking husband. The two work together remarkably well and provide a very convincing look into a troubled relationship.

Since the film is based on Raymond Carver short stories, most of the relationships featured are troubled and Julianne Moore delivers the best central performance in this regard.

Final recommendation is, watch Nashville before checking out Short Cuts. If you love Nashville and want to see something relatively similar, give Short Cuts a shot. Both films are representational of their eras and the 70s might just be more compelling than the 90s.

Circling back to Tom Waits, I’ve enjoyed his music since 2003. Rarely do I march through an entire discography, but I have with his music. Though his film credits are few and far between, I’ve made a more concerted effort to watch his films recently. This YouTube short helped spur that:

I’ve seen many of those films, but it truly has been too long since I’ve seen Down By Law and I’ll be screening that one again soon.

First off, this sad film only gets sadder. Ironweed, released in 1987, takes place in Depression-era Albany, New York and features Meryl Streep and Tom Waits as terminally-ill vagrants. Main character Francis Phelan, played by Jack Nicholson, is an alcoholic homeless man who lives a life of regret and not-very-well-masked shame.

It’s not a date movie. It’s not a fun movie. The film moves at a fairly slow pace. You know full well that there’ll be no happy endings and you have to go into the experience with the expectation of watching two masters of their craft, Nicholson and Streep, go to work. For all of these reasons, this film isn’t celebrated.

However, if you care about all-time actors working their tails off and you’re the type that “appreciates the craft” of acting, this is one to watch. It’s a gut-punching, tear-jerking character study.
That, or maybe you’re curious how well Tom Waits carries himself next to Nicholson + Streep like I was.

Giant (1956), Hud (1963), and The Last Picture Show (1971) create a powerful trio of Texas films that all weave the plight of rural/small town communities/families with industrial and cultural swings. Later, I’ll have a post that’ll go a little more in-depth on these films, but we’ll focus on the middle brother of the pictures for now.

Hud hit me a little strange. I was expecting a lovable figure that Newman excels in playing like in Cool Hand Luke or The Hustler. What I got in return was a charming jerk whose charm deteriorated as the film progressed.

Hud focuses on the relationships within the Bannon household: Hud Bannon, Homer Bannon (Hud’s father), Lonnie Bannon (Hud’s 16 year-old nephew – his parents aren’t present), and the housekeeper Alma Brown.

The film uses these relationships to tug and pull Lonnie, as well as the audience, towards Homer’s ceaseless virtue or Hud’s horn-dogging recklessness.
The cards are all laid out on the table after Homer + Hud have a row, then Lonnie attempts to defend Hud. Homer, reacting to his grandson’s defense of Hud, delivers the best line I’ve heard in a good, long while, “Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire… You’re just going to have to make up your own mind one day about what’s right and wrong.”
Truer words never spoken.

These weighty words are why I watch classic cinema. I’m reminded of an April 2012 post, when I first began to review classic Paul Newman films: The Hustler and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. These films also forced audiences to wrestle with topics such as virtue, honor, mendacity, acceptance, self-worth, and other difficult subjects. It’s not that these topics are no longer included in today’s cinema, but today’s culture is much more fragmented and today’s narratives reflect that.

Contemporary dramas that tackle challenging subject matter don’t position the crux of their work on “universal truths.” Instead, the challenges and conflicts in current artistic cinema are very specific topics such as how parents cope with the death of a child, substance abuse, coming to terms with one’s own sexuality, or the like.
That’s not to say that the issues in the classic Paul Newman films were “one size fits all,” but it is to say that these films concerning matters such as overarching morality + a man’s place as one generation gives way to another (Hud), the search for what drives an individual and how to make a career/life out of that passion (The Hustler), or the existential dilemma of how to live and function in a society that seems not worth engaging in (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – I know Tennessee Williams’s play differs from the film insomuch that the film deleted almost all subtext of a homosexual relationship between Brick and Skipper, but the film focuses on mendacity; not sexuality) –– all these themes fit larger audiences than what most contemporary artistic films provide.

Good or bad, today’s blockbusters don’t say anything and the “art” or “indie” pictures say something that’s so damn specific. There was a time when quality films both were great successes at the box office while also fulfilling critics’/society’s needs for “high art.”

I would be remiss to not include a word about Patricia Neal’s portrayal as Alma Brown. Her performance garnered an Oscar (same with Melvyn Douglas’s performance as Homer Bannon) and it’s easy to see why. Neal injects a pleasant and much-needed leveling of the hostility and stubbornness that permeates every father-son scene.

Unsurprisingly, Alma is respected by everyone except Hud. Alma’s presence further exposes Hud for the cad that he is which contrasts Homer’s integrity. Her grace, wit, perseverance, and resourcefulness are an exceptional breath of fresh air that counters Hud’s overall unpleasantness.
As an added note, having been born and raised in Kentucky, it doesn’t seem as though she had to adjust her natural accent all that much as she perfectly handled the panhandle accent better than any other principal actor.

Though I do recommend Hud, if uninitiated with Paul Newman, I’d start with Cool Hand Luke or The Hustler before watching Newman embody the increasingly negative force of a film. He does an excellent job, but I believe it’s important to establish an understanding of Newman’s more established persona before seeing his darker side.

This post should conclude with another mention of Homer Bannon’s quote:

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire…. You’re just going to have to make up your own mind one day about what’s right and wrong.

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In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

After having been so fascinated by Marilyn Monroe in The Asphalt Jungle (1950, directed by John Huston), I went ahead and rented two more of her pictures: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, directed by Howard Hawks) and River of No Return (1954, directed by Otto Preminger).

I should have known better than to watch a comedic musical in GPB, but because of its iconic status as well as being a landmark for Monroe, I gave it a go. It’s funny when looking at how drastically our culture changed between My Man Godfrey‘s release in 1936 and GPB in 1953.

This isn’t to say that all comedies in a given era are the same, but it is interesting to point out that as the nation/world was struggling to bounce back from economic collapse, we have a movie about a “forgotten man” who carries the film by outsmarting and comically jabbing at the wealthy.
Seventeen short years later (and a conclusion to a world war that placed the U.S. as the foremost superpower) provides a musical comedy about two showgirls each having a goal to marry a specific kind of man. Monroe’s character, Lorelei Lee, has a single requirement– that the man be rich. Jane Russell’s character wishes to marry a tall, dark, handsome, and athletic man.

GPB continues down its path of gags and songs and I simply wasn’t up for it. There are small issues that bothered me, but the main issue is that the entire film is a celebration of superficiality. Maybe that’s the point or the joke, but where My Man Godfrey succeeds by Godfrey (as well as the father character) taking shots at the expense of self-indulgence and importance placed on the superficial, the main characters of GPB are celebrated for using cunning tricks to weasel out of any jam that their superficial desires put them in.

Perhaps it would’ve been humorous to watch that film with a date in the 1950s and begin the post-film conversation with, “Can you believe those people?” But as the earth has circled the sun 67 times since this film’s release and as I’ve seen this film’s influence evolve to iconography, this isn’t a funny joke.

Perhaps I’m placing too much blame on the shoulders of a single film that I’m certain meant well while the project was in production, but holy crap is it depressing to watch a significant historical film and have the “benefit” of reflecting on what happens when generations try to emulate a particular horrible character (or whatever a particular generation’s iteration of Monroe’s Lorelei Lee is)?
Many folks talk about rampant stupidity in our society and reference Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy (a film about a “regular guy” who, by accident, travels into the future and finds a ridiculously dumb society). Often times, art provides us the very time machine we’re looking for and it’s incredible to see what worked and resonated with audiences in the 1950s has created the modern blueprint of how to make wildly and financially successful motion pictures (or even TV shows).

Though GPB plays like a 90-minute tongue-in-cheek joke, it’s hard not to come across certain people (or shows) and feel as though they didn’t understand that the movie was satire. Yet, here we are.

Monroe isn’t ever without her appeal; I just don’t care for this character (much like I don’t particularly care for musicals). But as it is, this film is historically important. If historical importance is meaningful to you, then I recommend this film.

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River of No Return didn’t thrill me for an entirely different reason. Once again, Monroe plays a showgirl/singer (and for some reason, we’re inexplicably subjected to three songs) for saloons and casinos in the 1870s American West. Where Monroe played a comical victim of her own character’s desires in GPB, she plays a woman who becomes a victim by the actions of her husband as well as the setting/era/circumstances.

Both Robert Mitchum’s (Mitchum doesn’t begin the film as Monroe’s husband, but is obviously her eventual romantic interest) and Monroe’s characters have their own challenges to overcome, but with it being a Western, the story is able to throw in elements of natural danger anytime it chooses to.
Mitchum’s character, Matt Calder, is challenged by raising his young son while attempting to settle land that will one day be passed on as well as providing an explanation for why Calder was in prison for the the first few years of his son’s life.

Monroe’s character, Kay, has to come to terms with the fact that her husband is a slimy, greedy, miserable male. Those traits are juxtaposed with all the exemplary qualities the Matt Calder displays– and there’s your movie.

What I don’t understand is how two-dimensional Kay’s husband/ex-husband is in the film and how the audience is supposed to immediately understand how this marriage ever came to be. I understand marriage was quite a different agreement/arrangement in those days, but the film leads the audience to believe that there was love in the relationship to begin with, which, I’m the type of viewer that has to see that (I’m not just going to assume that).
But, then again, this is a 1950s Western whose runtime is 90 minutes and they’ve got an awful lot of drama, action, and adventure to pack into that time.

It would be terrible to not mention the exceptional views the film provides (the critics of the time commented on how it was almost too much to bounce back ‘n forth between the the mountains + Monroe).

Last note– Monroe clearly worked with the industry’s best in the tragically short time she had. I’ve seen three of her films. All have been directed by cinematic titans: John Huston, Howard Hawks, and Otto Preminger.

In the end, the movie was good. I didn’t quite buy Monroe as a settler in The Great American West, but the film was entertaining nonetheless.
This is a take-it-or-leave-it recommendation.
I know there are better Westerns.
I know there are better Mitchum films.
and I believe there are better Monroe films.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store, Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

This is a case of the trailer being much, much better than the actual film. Though there were some comedic moments, and even with the knowledge that it is a dark comedy, this movie fell flat.

Even with the film flat-lining, I did appreciate Alessandro Nivola‘s performance. Nivola has delivered meaningful contributions to American Hustle and Face/Off among others, but his role in The Art of Self-Defense appears to be his largest role to date.
I certainly hope the actor continues to be given more advanced roles.

Even with some pretty good performances, I don’t recommend this one.
It’s not completely terrible, but it is below-average, and I won’t be seeing it again.
Whether or not I will make an effort to re-watch the film is my baseline of whether or not I will recommend.

Nicholas Winding Refn‘s films to date make me curious. On one hand, he drove a project that I believe succeeded on nearly every level in Drive (yeah, I bet it’s predictable that I would like that film). On the other hand, he seems to make films that are lost when he’s left on his own to create the narrative (Drive was adapted from a novel).

I haven’t seen Only God Forgives (Refn’s second collaboration with Ryan Gosling) based in part to the mostly poor reviews paired with the fact that the lead, played by Gosling, has a grand total of 17 lines. I’m no stranger to silent films, but even some of the more complex silent films have text cards to help with the exposition and story of those films. Refn instead opts to showcase his vision and not be all that concerned with crafting a story or narrative.

I always bring up the point that before an audience can care for a character, we have to at least know the character (at least a little bit). Unveiling who the characters are can easily be botched. There are no certain rules for how to do it well. Most of the time, if you hit the audience over the head with a sledgehammer in regards to character, it won’t work. In The Neon Demon‘s case, we simply don’t know anything more that’s not surface level (maybe that’s part of the point?).
When character is thoughtfully revealed and the audience is able to ascertain concrete truths about the character (or, at minimum, pique our curiosity), that’s when I’ll actually be invested in what actions or plot points take place.

I think back to 2004 when I came across the worst example of a film simply using shocking images to manipulate an audience to care about on-screen happenings and/or characters. This particular film, The Butterfly Effect opens with children beating, torturing, and eventually killing animals.
Before the audience is aware of any character’s name or what the setting is, we’re simply subjected to shocking behavior.

Why do I bring this up? Though The Neon Demon does take its time to deliver some shocking images in the third act, we still don’t truly know anything relevant or below the surface about these characters.

Refn definitely has a vision. That’s his strength. I rented this film based on some stills I came across (I should really stop doing that):

The Neon Demon is problematic for many reasons– I speculate that one of the reasons he made his first film from a women’s perspective is because he simply never had before, and, perhaps, he took some criticism because of that. What’s unfortunately insulting is that when he finally makes a woman-centered film, he makes one about models and the only real, and I mean truly meaty dialogue that takes place is still between two men.

Enter the previously mentioned Alessandro Nivola:

Nivola excels at playing Roberto Sarno (peculiarly uncredited– the man has more lines than nearly ever other male in the production and is, for some reason, uncredited– that’s very rare), a pompous fashion designer. Three models sit alongside Sarno when the main character Jesse (played by Elle Fanning) and her male friend Dean arrive.
A discussion about beauty bubbles up. Everyone of course defers to Sarno. Dean attempts to say that there is more than skin-deep beauty in Jesse, which prompts Sarno to respond with, “Well, if she wasn’t beautiful, you wouldn’t have even stopped to look.”
This takes place in the middle of the second act.

The film’s first act does provide a women’s restroom conversation that does have weight, but any goodwill the film earned by having that insider glimpse into the catty and competitive world of attractive women is quickly squandered.

The first two acts of the film lead one to believe that the film is going to drive home some idea about beauty and ambition being a prison of sorts (especially for those in the fashion and modeling industry).
That’s at least what I was hoping for… and then the damn wheels fall completely off in the third act.
It went totally bonkers, and might as well have been children torturing animals. Cannibalism, models taking blood-soaked showers, and necrophilia all turn a relatively slow-paced psychological thriller into a barn burner of insanity and senselessness.

This is a very easy recommendation that you pass hard on The Neon Demon as well as a very easy recommendation to watch Drive if you haven’t already.

Let’s return to sanity.
Paris Blues is not for everyone. If you’re looking to take a trip back to an over-the-top and romantic view of 1961 Paris with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong providing the soundtrack and Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Diahann Carroll providing the romance, well– then this is your film.

As a tremendous fan of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Paul Newman, I felt like I absolutely had to see this film. That said, I wasn’t knocked out by it. It had its moments and it told a very good story. But in the end, the film didn’t sit or resonate with me.

It was simply a mostly pleasant look at jazz, Paris, and short-term romance.

The film was adapted from a book by the same name. The book, however, told a story of two interracial couples. It being 1961 and such, the studios adjusted (much to the chagrin of the film’s stars). The picture still ended being just fine, though it obviously would’ve been more groundbreaking had the project been a more accurate interpretation of the book.

This is a take it or leave it recommendation. I might see it again, but I’m not hustling out to add it to my collection or anything like that. There are better films from the 1960s and as I watch more jazz-centric films, I hope to find better jazz movies.

Chopper is good enough, but not great. Why I’m chomping at the bit to write about it is because of its director– Andrew Dominik.

Back to Chopper, Eric Bana plays a hard-ass Australian convict/career criminal. The film has a better-than-average story, a pretty good pace, a lil bit of humor and a lil bit of violence. That sounds like a good recipe for a film and the end product is just that.

Perhaps it was the pre-9/11 production or maybe because I saw this director’s other films prior, but this film ended up simply being “pretty good” whereas his other two American-made features (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford & Killing Them Softly) are outstanding.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a criminally overlooked film. The cast selection and their performances are perfect. The crafting and shooting (by DoP Roger Deakins no less) is impeccable. If there is a film to recommend, it’s this one.

I can go round and round about how often I feel like I should simply give this film another screening as opposed to trying something new. Clearly, it’s an old standby of mine.

The depth and subject matter continues to resonate.
The eclectic cast (Brad Pitt, Mary-Louise Parker, Casey Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, and Sam Shepard) and their dynamic performances hit me every time.

The film does not have a track-star pace. Instead, it’s a slow cooking pot roast that produces a savory and worthwhile flavor every time. We see Brad Pitt as Jesse James wrestle with his mortality, the skeletons hanging over him, as well as the toll that hiding from the government is taking. We also see Casey Affleck as Robert Ford portray a man who has never received an iota of respect in his entire life and is clearly envious and desperate to make a name any way he can.
This is truly a fascinating and beautiful film. It’s a damn shame that Pitt and the project as a whole didn’t get as much critical acclaim as they should have.

Onto Killing Them Softly.

Brad Pitt plays an assassin in this film that brilliantly weaves modern-day politics into the sordid business of killing people for profit. Whether it’s addressing that even the mafia has fallen victim to an HR mentality or that the streets are simply more kinder and gentler than they used to be, this film is definitely smart and entertaining.

Once again, it’s expertly cast– Pitt, James Gandolfini, Scoot McNairy, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, and Ben Mendelsohn.
And again, the story provides a great mix of humor, violence, and the pace is perfect for my taste.

All of this is to say that Andrew Dominik is an outstanding filmmaker. Those are his three full-length features, but he’s also been a huge part of the Netflix series Mindhunter (which I do have some criticisms about, though I mostly enjoyed), as well as the music documentary One More Time with Feeling about Nick Cave (a film I’ll be seeing soon).

I say that I’d recommend The Assassination of Jesse James first, then Killing Them Softly, and if you like both of those, I see no reason why you wouldn’t go ahead and watch Chopper.

There was a ten-year period of my life (roughly from 1998-2008) when I’d simply purchase used films that I’d never seen before based on the price + critical reception of the film. Sideways was one such film.
I must have purchased this movie for about $6.99 in lieu of renting it for $3.99 or thereabouts.

Anyhow, I recently revisited it and it was just as good as I remembered. It’s a fantastic look at male self-destruction and self-loathing as well as an attempt to find honesty and romance in a world that can sometimes seem as though it’s constructed by shit bricks on a foundation of deceit.
There’s also a quality blend of romance and comedy; it’s simply an entertaining and thoughtful film.

And, of course, there are tremendous moments of heart that are spurred on by wine as well as an abundance of amazing views.

I obviously recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

As a child, I was initially introduced to William Powell by Warner Bros. cartoons (Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes – see below).

For some reason, these caricatures resonated with me and, early on, I had made it a point to be in on the joke as well as understand why these actors were regarded as they were. William Powell’s name popped up many times in the film texts I read, but, honestly, I generally hadn’t gone out of my way to watch comedies a whole lot; even if they were classics.

However, on a recent trip to Alamo Drafthouse, they were promoting a special screening of 1936’s My Man Godfrey. The trailer looked very entertaining and the subject matter was definitely in my sweet spot.
Powell plays Godfrey, a quick-thinking, fast-talking “forgotten man” (euphemism for “homeless”) living near a bridge on the East River in Manhattan who is attempted to be picked up by a rude debutante looking for a “forgotten man” to complete her scavenger hunt.

Godfrey complies only after choosing to help a kinder debutante, Irene, instead of Irene’s insulting sister, Cornelia. Upon helping Irene win the scavenger hunt, Godfrey is asked to address the crowd. He responds with, “My purpose in coming here tonight was two-fold: firstly, I wanted to aid this young lady. Secondly, I was curious to see how a bunch of empty-headed nitwits conducted themselves. My curiosity is satisfied. I assure you it’ll be a pleasure to go back to a society of really important people.”
The “society of really important people” being his community of “forgotten men” living in shanties.

His appearance at the scavenger hunt ends with job offer. He was hired to “buttle” for the very affluent Bullocks. The film then makes its obvious progression and I can’t help but enjoy most of it. It plays out more like a terrific theatrical performance than a cinematic achievement, and that’s understandable given its era.

When interviewed about Dr. Strangelove, William H. Macy said, “When making a comedy, if you’re not careful, the actors will start ‘being funny,’ and what any good director knows is that it’s not an actor’s job to be funny; that’s the writer’s job. The script is funny or it’s not funny. It’s the actor’s job to be truthful, and then the humor will come out.”

As I previously wrote, most comedies are concepts without a legitimate script. They start as an idea, such as, “what if these guys were ice skaters” or “on an ABA basketball team” and so forth. The project continues and eventually they have a few pages and plot points, but the hope is that they assemble a few funny people in a room, play off one another, and after a few takes, someone says something like “I love lamp” and no one during the filming is sure which ad-libbed lines are going to resonate with the audience until the film hits theaters/streaming services/cable broadcasts.

But My Man Godfrey feels and resonates like an Oscar Wilde piece. It’s critical of the affluent day-to-day lifestyle and social events on more than a superficial level. And because I’m terribly hard on films that are so entirely far-fetched and unbelievable, I’ll easily admit that this one is too. The pass that I’m giving it is based on historical significance, intelligence, criticisms of class/status, and a few other reasons.
Whenever I grow weary with contemporary films that seem as though every aspect and situation of the film is frankly unbelievable, those films compound that be feeling by coming off, in the words of Godfrey, as “empty-headed.”

You can find My Man Godfrey streaming on youtube here.
I do recommend it, but you’ll have to prepare yourself. Going directly from watching 2020 comedies to something made in 1936 will be a little jarring, but it is certainly well worth it.
Anyhow, I enjoyed it. I’ll most likely watch it again down the road.

That french line included on the above poster translates to “A formidable thriller in line of Heat.” Perhaps it’s never a good idea to include any mention of any other film on the promotional materials for a new movie because every time one resorts to conjuring up another title, they’re essentially saying that this is a “poor man’s version” of the other title.

But even that would be a stretch. I saw this film 10 years ago when it originally came out. I may have had a few drinks while watching it the first time 10 years ago or I may have been itching to see some kind of “shoot’em up” and simply forgot how dull the film is.

I like Jeremy Renner when he’s not playing scuzzy trash, tolerate Ben Affleck when he’s not playing a hopeless romantic, and look forward to a future when Jon Hamm will be able to play something other than a federal agent. Unfortunately, this film includes all of those things.

The romantic interest between Affleck and Rebecca Hall is particularly bunk. If there ever were a case of men being “allowed” to have three-dimensional characters while women are always pushed to the sidelines and simply play flat nobodies without a shred of dynamism, this would be quite the example.
That’s not to say that the men’s characters are particularly well-shaped and formed, but hell, they’re certainly more developed than the two female leads.

Yeah, I know, “it’s a bank robbery film” and arguably, to call back to Heat (one of my favorite bank robbery/caper films), the worst scenes in that film all include Val Kilmer’s love interest– Ashley Judd, and if I were to be extremely critical of that film, the scenes including De Niro’s love interest also were not good. It would, however, be a failure to not also point out that some of Heat‘s best scenes include Pacino with his love interest played by Diane Venora (pictured below).

With it being acknowledged that it can be difficult to squeeze in a meaningful love story into a robbery/caper film, how is it that The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and so many other film noirs were able to do so?
I think that’s what my film study ends up pointing out– cinema used to have a lot more heart. Or maybe I’m just a sap?

In any event, this film, The Town, that I had hoped was going to be a quality shoot’em up, was simply barely tolerable and, if you’re jonesing to see men dressed up as nuns shooting at cops, I propose you stream this one and fast-forward through the failed attempts at story crafting.

Note: there are many benefits to film study. One is, as previously mentioned while talking about the cartoons portraying William Powell, to always be in on the jokes, homages, nods, repurposing, etc.
I noticed The Town paid quite a few tributes to The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
M.G. McIntyre of Film School Rejects writes:

The Town, Ben Affleck’s 2010 ode to Boston and bank robbery, bears more than just a passing resemblance to Yates’ film, despite being based on a different book. Slicker, faster, more overwrought perhaps, yet there are several scenes taken wholesale directly from  Eddie Coyle. The bank hostage forced to walk, blindfolded, toward the shores of the Mystic River, in a wide panorama. The unsettling vacancy of rubber-masked eyes. The penultimate scenes take place at a Boston sports stadium. Affleck’s film takes its cues more from action films, but a straight line can be drawn from  Eddie Coyle  to the modern reinvention of Boston as a crime film location ripe for new stories.

Anyhow, even though I didn’t love either of these films (The Town + Eddie Coyle), it’s interesting to note the connections they share.
I recommend you either pass on this film or speed through it (if you’re looking for a quality action scene or two).

Due to SXSW’s cancellation, Vulcan Video made an early call to host an outdoor screening for any interested filmmakers that had planned to screen at the festival. The team that made The Mystery of the Pink Flamingo took up Vulcan’s offer.

The filmmakers created a funny and interesting way to present a documentary. They crafted a narrative that allowed them to interview these outlandish and eccentric characters all sharing an affinity for kitsch and the outrageous, but did it under the guise of a curious party, Rigo, searching for the answer to the question, “What makes the pink flamingo such a unique, interesting, and beautiful bird?”

That leads Rigo to interview an assortment of folks in both Europe and the U.S., most notably Baltimore-based director John Waters, to get many thoughts on topics such as individuality, style, flamboyance, and, of course, flamingos.
What was so darn refreshing was the entertaining narrative woven around a film that is essentially 90+ minutes of 7+ interviews. Through the many documentaries I’ve watched, I’ve often thought that whether or not I cared for the subject matter, the presentation was flat and not particularly engaging. In The Mystery of the Pink Flamingo, I cared more about the presentation and style than I did the subject matter.

Though I most likely won’t ever see it again, the film was highly entertaining and I do recommend it.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

Jojo Rabbit – In order to speak critically about a film that uses the backdrop of World War II to illustrate how senseless fascism, war, and, hatred are, I have to address the concern that this specific era continues to be recycled.

I suspect that storytellers turn to this particular war because the story is already told for us. Very little explanation is required. A human sees a swastika and emotions are immediately triggered. This war eliminates the necessity of world building and stage setting. The chess (or checkers) pieces are easily laid out on the board and the game need not be explained.

This is what I find problematic– what used to be a touchstone of award-winning cinema was how films managed to tackle challenging storytelling and complex subject matter. Whenever I give contemporary cinema a chance, I’m finding weaker stories created by artists who are about as subtle as our politicians with unfortunately increasing frequency.

To return to the film at hand, simply put, I watched this film for Sam Rockwell, Scarlet Johansson, and the kid who plays Yorki (Archie Yates). Those three actors and their characters did not disappoint. They each took turns delivering the film’s best lines as well as its most satisfying moments while the lead did his best to pull us through his journey.

The lead, Roman Griffin Davis, doesn’t perform poorly, but his character certainly is overshadowed by everyone around him. I’m finding it tough to remember a time where I enjoyed a film whose main character was the fourth or fifth best character.

Final point: period pieces that are scored by anachronistic pop music torture me. Jojo Rabbit included The Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1964), the Tom Waits original “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” (1992), Bowie’s “Heroes” (1977), and Love’s “Everybody’s Gotta Live” (1974).
Rarely do modern scores made specifically to accompany the setting and the era of the project work for me, but using a Tupac song in the middle of an industrial revolution film would be jarring and if you believe that’s ridiculous, then you haven’t seen classic rock used as the soundtrack to A Knight’s Tale.

After considering the lazy music choices, reliance on history to propel the narrative, and the lack of interest in the main character, I wouldn’t watch it again.

Without attempting to provide much context on the “big picture” motivations of why all these characters found themselves in the grotesque trench warfare of World War I, 1917 quickly enlists the audience on a dangerous mission. In a certain light, it felt similar to how some video games begin. Normally when I weave an aspect from a video game into a film criticism, that’d usually be grounds for an insult, but Sam Mendes and DoP Roger Deakins stunningly pull this off.

Speaking of Roger Deakins, I’ve already mentioned his work before. The man is arguably the best at his craft. All his films are impeccably shot and it doesn’t take long to realize you’re watching a project that he’s had his hands on.

As mentioned, the film plays out by following two young soldiers who have just been ordered to attempt a dangerous mission. Again, this might seem a little on the “ho-hum” side, but I assure you, this film is meaningful and adept at setting up a scene and delivering.
Also refreshing was the lack of history lessons between each act. This expository curse plagues too many history-driven or action-packed films and, yet, this film barely has any scenes featuring dialogue that feels more for the audience than any character actually in the picture.

I saw 1917 in the theater and it was well worth it. I’m up for watching it in a home theater, but I’ll definitely jump at an opportunity to see it in a large theater once again down the road. This is one to watch.

Have you ever caught yourself watching a show or film where you simply didn’t like any of the principle characters that you were choosing to watch for whatever reason? I imagine this happens when some people watch reality television (not sure, but it must? Right?).

I came across this scene on a film-centric Instagram account:

And, somehow, that’s all it took for me to rent Mike Leigh’s Naked.
That clip, surprisingly, was one of the more “pleasant” moments. This movie basically carried on as two hours and fifteen minutes of aggression, depression, and faux intellect.

It was simply terrible the whole way through. I didn’t believe the main character, Johnny, to be the misunderstood genius that he believed himself to be. There’s also a consummate prick – Jeremy – who is inexplicably injected into the movie to perhaps neutralize (or lessen the blows) any of Johnny’s social ills and out ‘n out shitty behavior, but instead turns the movie into a weird exhibition of how these two men terrorize these poor women who happen to live together (as well as whoever else’s paths they cross).

Sometimes cinephiles need a tough viewing. We’ll need a film that pushes our comfort levels and makes us reevaluate what exactly could be labeled as truly difficult to watch. Perhaps the film will later grow on me? I generally tend to enjoy art that prominently positions the British nihilistic streak found in a variety of art from the 1970s through the 1990s, but this film simply felt like watching two men destroy everything and everyone around them without any recourse.

It truly was difficult to watch.
I don’t believe that I’ll be interested to give it another shot. Ever.
I recommend you pass on this one unless you’re trying to really give your tastes a stretch.

A buddy of mine invited me to a screening of VHYES and I was happy to attend. For as difficult as it is to really enjoy full-length comedic features, I find sketch comedy to be a much more accessible method of enjoying comedy.

Most stand-up specials or comedy sets usually top out at about an hour. VHYES runs at 72 minutes.
I’m not sure why studios try to force some kind of narrative into all of these buddy-cop comedies or buddy-college guy comedies or ladies on a vacation comedies or dudes on a vacation comedies or funny guy dresses up like a lady comedies or funny guy dresses up like a whole family comedies or dudes magically go back in time comedies or mash two people from different cultures together comedies or culturally-specific comedies when it is so obvious that these films are generally built around two or three jokes.

If the folks that make full-length comedy features are happy about their two or three jokes and want to profit off them by unimaginatively constructing a film around those gags, I propose they do what the VHYES team did and simply find a creative way to make a sketch show and instead of serializing it and airing it on television, simply screen it at the theaters and stream it online.

That’s the way I prefer my comedy. The majority of films that attempt to be funny for 90+ minutes are generally terrible by most metrics. In defense of anyone’s proclivity towards full-length comedic features– yes, I have called the sheriff of the “fun police” before.

I enjoyed VHYES. I recommend it over watching 98% of full-length comedic features or re-watching two or three episodes of a comedy program you’ve seen a thousand times.
I’d gladly stream it if/when it’s available.

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project is an interesting documentary about an intelligent but troubled woman who shut herself off to nearly everyone while she recorded and archived television for 30 years.

Marion Stokes made quite a few prescient decisions that grew her wealth and, at some point, this becomes a film about how wealth allows one to do pretty much whatever they want. Obviously, it’s more complicated than that, but only a wealthy person could use eight VCRs and TVs to record and document the media for 24 hours a day for over three decades.

As always, the most interesting question is why? That’s where this documentary shines.

Previously, I’ve pointed out that I’m rarely knocked out by documentaries, and that remains true here. This doc is perfectly fine and worthwhile, but what it boils down to is an 87 minute look at a peculiar and determined woman.

I’ll most likely never see it again and you can take it or leave it as my non-committal recommendation.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

Let’s take a moment to talk about Film Noir.
One of my earliest introductions to this movement or genre (there’s an academic debate whether or not FN constitutes its own genre or just a movement that has come and gone with the exception of the occasional spoof or neo-noir) was through Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. Tracer Bullet, my favorite of Calvin’s alter-egos, is a hard-boiled detective and spoof of what we usually find in FN.

I enjoyed the imagining of this kid governed by so many arbiters of personal behavior as something he so totally isn’t: a Man who plays by his own rules.

The tough talk and dark visuals certainly appealed to me. I, much like Calvin it seems, thought that’s what was waiting for me in adulthood- a life where people lived with much on the line. Where decisions are crucial and consequences weigh heavy.

Onto actual Film Noir. The characters are usually people who live outside of the accepted norms. Sometimes those characters placed or threw themselves into the margins of society, and other times, society pushed them there: career criminals, hoods, street toughs, private investigators, crooked cops, desperate men who had lived on the “straight and narrow” until tragic circumstances placed them ethically between a rock and a hard place.
For the most part, these films live within the gray areas of life.
And it makes perfect sense that the art of this era had no choice but to accept tough realities. Technological advancements came at a much faster pace than societal advancements. The Second Industrial Revolution gave way to a depression sandwiched between two world wars. Much like how the printing press opened a new era in discourse and sharing of ideas, advancements in radio, television, and other forms of broadcasting ideas began to shrink the globe and provide people with new perspectives.

Through a variety of factors including war-time efforts and contributions, women and persons of color had made meaningful steps towards equal rights, yet there were obviously many more battles ahead that continue today in regards to equity and opportunities.
The main point is that the world was moving fast and what many folks used to believe was the correct and virtuous way to live one’s life was morphing. Values were changing.
WWII had ended. Europe was in physical and economic repair. The Allies won, but what the war had shown to many people is that not only is war ugly, but humanity is plain ugly.

Enter the filmmakers of this era. They wanted to depict lives caught in double-crosses, ironclad loves whose fate was to eventually break, and dirty business dealings concluding violently. It’s an era of outstanding photography, characters, subject matter, and intrigue.

I’ve always made an effort to live in a city that provides opportunities for cinephiles. Austin, Texas certainly isn’t an exception. Austin Film Society, as well as the Paramount Summer Film Series, and of course the many Alamo Drafthouses provide many opportunities to experience cinema that I’m very thankful for.

Austin Film Society screened The Asphalt Jungle a handful of times in December. Directed by the much heralded John Huston, it stars Sterling Hayden (who I had only previously seen as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove and as Captain McCluskey in The Godfather) as Dix Handley, a strong arm for hire. He’s crewed up with a driver, a safecracker, and an older man who has masterminded a jewel heist.
The only problem comes in the financing and fencing of the stolen goods. Enter Marilyn Monroe, in one of her earliest performances, as Angela Phinlay – the financier’s gal on the side.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t seen too many of Monroe’s pictures. After seeing The Asphalt Jungle though, I’m going to have to correct that. You’ve heard it all before, the magnetism, the effortlessness (or perceived effortlessness) and it’s totally true. She makes everyone involved in the scene melt and, in the audience, we do the same.

James Whitmore, who worked like crazy from 1949-2007, is easily identified as Brooks Hatlen (the librarian who ended up becoming “institutionalized” as Red phrased it) in The Shawshank Redemption, plays a getaway driver who also runs a diner and seems to be the best adviser that Dix has.

The film world builds perfectly, introduces the characters and explains their motivations, then sets the stage in such a fluid and easy to consume manner. During the heist, a hard-to-believe and fluke occurrence transpires. My ability to sacrifice realism in order to allow myself to enjoy the film took a slight hit. Dix punches a nightwatchmen, knocks him out cold with one punch causing the security guard’s pistol to fall in such a way that induces the firearm to discharge and of course the bullet catches a member of Dix’s crew.

Now, this event essentially closes the second act of the film and it’s the very first time where the film has asked me to give it some leeway in its storytelling. My film companion had noted that when watching many other films, particularly contemporary films, they ask you to accept all of these impossible attributes, otherworldly circumstances, supernatural occurrences, and then also accept some ridiculously fortuitous events in order to propel the story.
I find it more comforting to having only been asked one slight oversight as opposed to what Martin Scorsese recently referred to as “theme park” cinema.

The Asphalt Jungle is worthwhile; would definitely recommend.
I will see it again soon enough.

Not one for getting overly hyped about Christmas, I told myself that I should at least try to see one holiday picture. I remember Scrooged being broadcast on Comedy Central in the late 90s. I caught portions of the airings back then and figured this would be 2019’s holiday film for me.

What a mistake. It’s simply a terrible film. Even with me trying as hard as I could to be in some kind of holiday spirit and enjoy whatever BS that was going to be screened, it was still a very dumb and poorly executed film. While experiencing how bad it was, I googled what Bill Murray had to say about it and it’s clear that there were many arguments during the production of this film.

As I have spoken about Anti-Heroes in the past, what makes them interesting are the complexities and contrasting motivations. Bill Murray’s character is about as flat and unfunny as any character I can imagine. The film attempts to save this unredeemable leading man with a half-cocked cry for help in the last five minutes of the film.

It’s cheap. It’s a waste of time. I don’t see how even the most crazed Bill Murray fans could enjoy it.

Public Speaking is a film by Martin Scorsese about noted writer/critic Fran Lebowitz. It was released in 2010 and I remember Fran Lebowitz describing the “suburbanization of New York” around that time. I obviously was interested in hearing more.

However, even as HBO GO became more prevalent and HBO has allowed the majority of their content to be streamed, this has yet to be offered online (to my knowledge) and I had to rent it from my favorite video store, Vulcan Video.

The film plays out like most biographical docs. Scorsese uses an excellent variety of clips showcasing writers/critics like James Baldwin and William F. Buckley while Lebowitz shares quips and insights about contemporary society.

Her points are interesting, some possibly controversial, but they’re certainly not boring or dumb. And after having watched Scrooged, I was happy to not see anything dumb.

I recommend it.
I’ll watch it again. Which is saying something because I generally don’t revisit docs all that often (American Movie probably being the only exception).

Terrance Malick certainly has his strengths: Photography, the use of natural light, and making a committed effort to showcasing earthly truths are his principle strengths.
Storytelling may not be. Whether that’s true or not, it seems like his scenes play out nearly scriptless. That’s fine. Many landmark moments in cinema have been unscripted, but hell, Malick seems to think that every actor is just as good at improvising as they are at acting.

If you’re not familiar with the story, August Diehl (who was outstanding as Major Hellstrom – the guy who calls out Fassbender for how he uses the wrong hand signal for the #3 in the tavern in Inglourious Basterds) stars as an Austrian farmer who is liked in his community, devout in his Catholic faith, and a very loving husband and father.
That all changes as Hitler assumes power. Diehl’s character, real-life Franz Jagerstatter, can’t swear an oath to Hitler and that’s the crux of the film. The film breaks this conflict down, the excruciating decision Jagerstatter had to make, in so many ways (and so many times!).

I heard a podcaster’s take on The Irishman as, paraphrasing here- we didn’t need six scenes of Pesci pulling De Niro aside and advising him to go calm down Hoffa (Pacino). Two or three would’ve done the job, but they just kept going back and forth with it and it was unnecessary.
Similarly, this film repeatedly presented the same dilemma over and over again and consequently, the film ran upwards of three hours… for a single conflict.

As always, Malick’s visuals are beautiful and there’s plenty of positives to take away from the film, but it can understandably leave one thinking, “why did we have to see the same damn scene over and over again?”

I’ll probably not see again though I did enjoy the film.
Take it or leave it.

I was caught in a strange circumstance where a friend invited me to an afternoon screening of A Hidden Life followed by another asking me to go to a 70mm screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey later that evening. I happily obliged both invitations.

One of my good friends and college roommate loved 2001 and his DVD copy stayed in my room for a good month or so and though I put it on a dozen times, I’m guilty of having never completed it in one viewing. In recent years, with all the opportunities this town screens 2001 on the big screen, I was committed to finally taking it down.

I was not disappointed. Plenty of people smarter than I have had a ton to say about this film. I’ll simply offer that seeing it on the big screen is obviously a worthwhile experience and Kubrick is basically too good to pass up.

I left the theater knowing that there was certainly going to be a ton of material available to answer the few questions I had.
This New Yorker article helped sort out some questions such as “How many Monoliths were there?” (three), as well as simply needing some clarification on the ending.

Anyhow, it was a spectacle and I’ll probably be seeing it again in the theater in a couple of years.
I recommend.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

Denis Villeneuve was a successful French Canadian filmmaker in his own right before he made his first Hollywood feature, Prisoners (2013). Since then, he’s gone on to direct Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049.
Villeneuve, along with brilliant DoP Roger Deakins (check out his impeccable filmography), uses every opportunity to showcase his command for creating a shot, a moment, a scene. Due to the aesthetics, score, and overall production- it’s very easy to feel his films. This is by design of course, but it’s worth noting just how good he is. Villeneuve simply seems better than most at utilizing all aspects of the medium to ensnare his audience.

With Prisoners, we find two families within a middle-class community struggling to keep it together after the recent disappearance of their daughters. This film could have spun its wheels down the same cliche highway as the many other hostage, family, crime dramas- but Prisoners is different.
Prisoners barely touches on the abductor’s story, instead opting to focus on the psyche of the terrorized loved ones of the abducted (as well as the cop trying to get to the bottom of the case).

This was a great film that was perfectly executed in the performances and production. The film was an exceptional ride, albeit a little on the dark side, and the only criticism I have is about the ending. It left me wanting more. I wanted an extended denouement that wrapped up what I felt was being teed up since the very beginning.

Anyhow, it was still very much a worthwhile experience.
I recommend.
I will gladly watch it again.

If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know that I was very motivated to see Jonathan Glazer’s films. Sexy Beast was a captivating film that illustrated a gripping story circling very strong characters.
Glazer’s next two films, Birth and Under the Skin, screen more like film exercises or extended shorts than they do full-length features with a fully-formed narrative.

Where Birth seemed like an opportunity for Glazer to coax a tremendous performance out of Nicole Kidman, Under the Skin feels like an excuse for Glazer to showcase hyper-cool visuals akin to the work he’s done on music videos.

Scarlett Johansson plays an alien being of sorts that more or less lures men into a weird building where they are somehow consumed. It’s a strange picture. I wouldn’t say that I was at the edge of my chair, but neither was I totally disinterested. The film basically moved along like a 6-2 baseball game in the 7th. You’ve seen some cool stuff, perhaps you’ve enjoyed it overall, but there’s still a part of you that’s simply counting the outs until it’s over.

I’d recommend if you want to watch Scarlett Johansson lure men on screen for 2 hours.
I most likely won’t revisit this movie.

I’m not going to say anything unexpected here. This film was fine. Some people are upset about the length or the uneasy special effects and some folks are losing their minds saying that this film is the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. I can handle the length and wonky visuals of these elderly actors performing awkward violent acrobatics, but my final opinion is that, though this film is fine in its own right, its real value lies when it’s shouldered beside its brothers: Casino and Goodfellas.
So much previously-learned information is distributed in a new way that we, the viewing public who has been raised on mobster movies, are given the sweet gift of having another layer of the Cinematic Mafia Onion peeled back (or added depending on how you look at it).
Experiencing these old stories rehashed with different or new or now considerably older faces was what brought me the most enjoyment.

To that point, it’s easy to wish that The Irishman were made in the mid 90s, but the book wasn’t published until the early aughts, and what good is it to wish a silly wish?

While watching The Irishman, I felt very similarly to how I felt while watching The Old Man & the Gun. I was watching actors perform at an age where they had nothing to prove and were clearly enjoying themselves as they went through makeup and wardrobe and positioned themselves in front of a camera and a crew on their final rides into the sunset.
That’s about all I have to say on this film.

If you’re wanting to see a great Scorsese film, he’s got better films.
Same can be said for the actors.
If you want to see a great mafia film, there are certainly better mafia films.
If you already like all of these things and already have an appreciation for most of the films from this auteur and these actors, well, this film was made specifically for you (and you’ve probably already seen it and I bet you loved it).

I’d recommend this film only if you’ve already seen the mafia film canon.
Otherwise, go see one of the many classic mafia films.

The Inventor is a stranger-than-fiction account of how a young, ambitious Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford in order to fake it until she sort of made it.
The story is bizarre. Other than a brief employment with uShip, I don’t have much experience with tech people or the ass backwards “culture” that industry manufactures, but from what I’ve gathered, rich folks with even the faintest connections in the the tech industry seem to randomly throw millions of dollars around hoping that one of these million dollar ideas will be the next trillion dollar idea and this lady, Elizabeth Holmes, somehow convinced many, many investors that she was just the person to lead these investors to that trillion dollar Promise Land.

Not one to usually complain about length, but this film could’ve been edited down significantly.
I’m not going to see it again.

Like many docs, if you’re going to spend time on a film, there are so many other films to watch before this one. But if you’re looking for a “true” story about how one young woman pulled the wool over on some corporations and tech investors while exhibiting some Zuckerberg-ish behavior – then I’d say that you’ve found the right film.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

Robert Altman (1925-2006) directed over 30 full length films and more than fifty television programs. Having only seen a handful of his pictures, I recently decided I was way past due to watch one of his most acclaimed films- Nashville (1975).

The film walks the audience through five days in an inherently American city that is gearing up for a political rally for a third-party candidate that seems to have been created in direct response to all the ways that many Americans felt (perhaps still feel) our political system was falling terribly short.
There is no on-screen action or discussion about Nixon, but the production was created and shot immediately following his resignation. I mention Nixon not because this is a particularly political film and though most of the characters are musicians, the film also isn’t specifically about country western music- hell, the film isn’t even about its namesake of Nashville- this film is an effort to illustrate what the country’s collective conscious felt like at a very particular time.
The narrative is gently pushed along by country music, political distrust, and a collective sense of failure meanders in and out, but the film isn’t about these particular topics. Every generation deals with benchmarks that shape the collective attitude and this film’s aim was to serve as a mirror so that we could take a good, long look at one another.

Though I wasn’t alive in 1975, the film feels like a tremendous success. It’s easy to imagine these characters maneuvering through their lives just as depicted in the film as well as many Americans carrying on and sharing the same attitudes that permeate throughout the film.

The few Altman films I had seen prior all provided a clue as to what Nashville had in store, but none more than Short Cuts (1993). In SC, Altman weaves about a dozen Raymond Carver short stories together using an extraordinary cast and setting them all in LA. SC definitely primed me for being guided through an extensive character landscape and jumping from one intimate conversation to another; each revealing something true about people. In a very positive way, Nashville brought Short Cuts to recall and I can’t wait to visit it again.

Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies offered that:

In Nashville and his back-to-back triumphs The Player (1992) and Short Cuts (1993), he [Robert Altman] pointed the way for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). The buried message may be that life doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion to the neat ending of a story. It’s messy and we bump up against others, and we’re all in this together. That’s the message I get at the end of Nashville, and it has never failed to move me.

Too many times we are forced to watch films with tidy conclusions where the story is wrapped up and packaged in such a way that makes me believe the narrative has to be hollow or overly simplistic in order to end so neatly. If it could reasonably be concluded in such a way that makes the audience say, “what a great story – let’s eat dinner” or it provides an unimaginative cliff-hanger that pre-milks you for a second (or third or fourth or fifth or sixth) installment of what you have just seen, then I would just as soon leave those films well alone.
I prefer films that leave you with a head full of ideas and leave you wanting whiskey, conversation, and rumination about what you have just seen. Nashville certainly delivers in this regard.

I would definitely recommend.
I will definitely revisit this film in the next couple of years.

I’ve been trying to work through Robert Mitchum’s filmography and I came across the above film poster online and decided that was all I needed to give it a go.
Knowing that, I wasn’t knocked off my seat like I was hoping I’d be. Even though it was fun spending time with Mitchum on screen, I wasn’t prepared for this to be a departure from his signature style of a hyper-perceptive, quick-witted and often tender tough guy (and sometimes ruthless bad guy) who was nine times out of ten, two steps ahead of his opposition.

In The Friends of Eddie Coyle however, Mitchum plays a down-on-his-luck criminal/truck driver who can’t seem to catch a break and is waffling about whether or not he should trade information to authorities to keep his away from a jail cell.
That’s all well and good, I had simply never seen him portray a sad sack of a man. Of course he did an outstanding job, but the film still fell short for me.

One of the many reasons the film fell short was because it simply moved towards the same conclusion you’d expect it to and it took its sweet time doing it. Regardless of pace, I was only intrigued with how Eddie Coyle (Mitchum) was going to play his predicament and whether or not he’d be successful. The film does include some robberies, but as far as robbery scenes go, they’re not in the Pantheon of Top Robbery Scenes (the masks the robbers wear are a cool visual though).

Anyhow, I’m glad I got this Mitchum film under my belt, but I wouldn’t recommend it to you unless you’re also looking to scratch Mitchum pictures off your list.
I most likely won’t see it again.

Robert Redford is a treasure who always plays a measured man that seems to always know what’s at stake. The only difference in The Old Man & The Gun is that this will most likely be the absolute last time we’ll ever be able to see Redford throw his charisma around on the big screen.
I watched The Irishman last night (will write about it later), but similar thoughts circled through my head while watching both The Old Man & The Gun and The Irishman – these are good films and I’m having a good time watching these titans ride into the sunset, but to use a sports metaphor, this feels an awful lot like watching Michael Jordan on the Wizards, or Hakeem on the Raptors, or Willie Mays on the Mets, or insert whatever analogy of a way past their prime athlete performing in their final season.

So here we are, an American public that has watched the dapper Robert Redford rob banks and romance women for over 59 years and what do we think about TOM&tG? Other than the fact that Tom Waits is in it (that was a welcome surprise) and that it showcases elderly folks living life in a non-elderly manner, I didn’t come away from the film believing it was a signature moment for any of the people involved. Casey Affleck was fine, Danny Glover was Danny Glover, I always like seeing Sissy Spacek, and I just about beamed anytime Tom Waits was doing his Tom Waits stuff on screen, but this film basically felt like a quality way to pass the time and not a momentous occasion or high-praised cinematic achievement.

I would recommend if you love any of the cast members.
I probably won’t see it again.

Contemporary westerns are few and far between. That’s too bad. Westerns provide the setting of men and women living by a personal code (and not by any governmental law), of having participated in a tragic war and wanting to run West as a way of escaping from the complications that remained in the war-torn eastern part of the country, or simply desiring land and true freedom even if it meant they’d have to stake it and defend it, and on and on.
These timeless ideals are beyond generational (or should be) and I welcome authors and filmmakers to continue growing this genre. With this entire globe having been meticulously mapped and adventure seeming expensive or unattainable, I certainly do enjoy watching two brothers setting out on horseback on an adventure that, if they are successful, will pay handsomely.

The Sisters Brothers is expertly cast. They’re all more sensitive than your stereotypical westerns of decades past, but that’s the point. Joaquin Phoenix is temperamental, John C. Reilly is capable and paternal, and Jake Gyllenhaal showcases a very real connection and brotherhood with the man the principle conflict is centered around.

The cast naturally waltzed through the story and the finished product provides just enough intrigue and more than enough enjoyment.

I definitely recommend this film.
I will probably circle back to it in a few years.

I was hoping for something cerebral and expansive like Interstellar or something along those lines and what we got in return was… something wonky as all hell. There were carnivorous baboons, space pirates that patrol the moon’s surface, and other head scratching moments.
My favorite part was when Pitt was embarking on a long quest through space and for about ten minutes of screen time, his character asks himself self-reflexive questions that people should ask themselves every so often:
Am I happy with where I am and how I got here?
What were the mistakes I made and have I grown from them?
Have I been terribly selfish?
Other than this particular scene, I could pass on the entire film.

I do not recommend this film.
I won’t be revisiting it.

I revisited GoodFellas simply to gear up for The Irishman. If you haven’t seen it, do the damn thing already. This is a film worthy of being regarded as a cultural landmark.
If you care about cinema, culture, music, etc- sit back and enjoy walking through the Copacabana and taking a trip through the cultural history of the mob.

Last time I posted, I raved about Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2002) and Birth was his follow up to that. Birth was a hard turn from his first film. Where SB was hyper-stylized and centered around the decision to participate or not participate in an inventive heist, this film is a dark and brooding drama that attempts to put you inside a family dealing with a random child claiming to be the reincarnation of the family’s deceased husband.
Fairly wild.

Even though Nicole Kidman gives an excellent performance and Lauren Bacall (LAUREN BACALL!) provides a perfect supporting role, the film doesn’t hook me like I believe it’s supposed to. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the intended audience because I certainly couldn’t become invested in the central conflict, but I will say that the execution on the part of the actors and director was very good.

To reiterate, this was the best Kidman performance I’ve ever seen, it just happened to be in a film where I couldn’t really become gripped with the dilemma.

Recommendation? I wouldn’t tell anyone to stay away nor would I highly recommend it.
I probably won’t see it again.

In an effort to curtail my cycle of binge watching (and re-watching) programs available on streaming services, I’ve made a more concerted effort to support the local video store – Vulcan Video. Their mid-week 2-for-1 deal keeps me returning fairly regularly.
With that in mind, I figure I’d log a somewhat quick-hit rundown of the films I’ve recently experienced (because, you know, there aren’t already enough people recreationally writing about movies).

As an undergrad, I loved the Directors Label series. This series was released when I was a 20-year-old who had the highest regard for hyper stylized art. It was from this series that I was first introduced to Jonathan Glazer. His music videos were engaging and they, at minimum, did the music they were accompanying justice. In many cases, his visual product proved to be the stronger and more expertly executed half of the project.

Anyhow, I somehow stupidly lost track of Mr. Glazer and have only now decided to watch his filmography. It won’t take long, he’s only made three full-length features, Sexy Beast being the first and followed by Birth (2004) and Under the Skin (2013).

SB was outstanding. Glazer’s direction sets the tone with an opening that could double as a music video for the excellent song “Peaches” by The Stranglers. The lead is terrifically played by Ray Winstone; an actor I only recognized off hand from his portrayal of Mr. French in The Departed but has a long performance history. Winstone’s performance as Gal, however impressive it was, was certainly surpassed by Ben Kingsley. This isn’t just because Kingsley plays an intense maniac who sucks all of the air out of every scene, but I was reminded of the many quotes from respected theater professionals claiming that Morgan Freeman was the most terrifying performer they’d ever seen on stage.

As Don Logan, Kingsley uses every look, breath, movement, and mind game to maximize his intimidating nature. It’s important to note that he doesn’t implement calculated intimidation tactics, this man is simply intimidation incarnate. He’s a man who will not be said “no” to. The film succeeds in generating a very sincere and captivating fear in a scene featuring five people sitting around a living room and essentially making dinner plans.

Centered around a negotiation between Gal and Don (and the negotiation’s aftermath), the film is exceptional. It’s cool. It’s tense. It’s a cinematic rush. And I’m very much looking forward to catching up on Glazer’s other two films as soon as possible.

I would definitely recommend.
I will definitely revisit this film in the next couple of years.

I usually avoid biopics. They usually rely too much on blowing a single event of the main character’s life out of proportion and usually feel narratively wonky when trying to boil thirty or so years down to ninety minutes. That said, I’m a pretty big fan of both Ryan Gosling and Damien Chazelle so I had to give this a go.

While watching this film though, my fandom faded ever so slightly as I was happy to be watching the film, but not particularly pulled into the narrative/performances/production/etc. My favorite part was easily the petty rivalry between Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I haven’t done research to confirm whether or not there was actually a substantial feud between the two NASA icons, and maybe my immaturity and taste for conflict and competition is showing here, but that’s the kind of film that I imagine would be captivating. Hollywood being Hollywood however would probably turn an eloquent, thoughtful, and dramatic screenplay about true-life discord amongst two titans of American space exploration and turn it into a Will Ferrell buddy comedy.

Anyhow, Chazelle still showcases moments of exceptional direction and Gosling still turns in a great performance (as does the entire cast), but the film simply falls flat for me. One interesting point is that at age 34, Chazelle provides one of the first instances that I can remember a considerably young artist making a reverential film about a landmark moment and pursuit by the Greatest and Silent Generations. I’m curious as to whether or not we’re going to see other films made in the same vein.

It’s a complicated recommendation:
I’m happy I saw it.
I don’t believe I’m going to go out of my way to see it again.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that you should avoid seeing it, but I wouldn’t encourage you to move this film to the top of your list.

Ever since 2011, Matthew McConaughey made the decision to pursue darker and more honest projects that many would believe would be tougher for large audiences to swallow than fluff pieces like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Those decisions have swapped out his stack of PG-13 rom-coms from the aughts and traded them for a collection of gritty, critically acclaimed films (Killer Joe, Mud, True Detective (Season 1), Dallas Buyers Club, Gold). Most of which have been good-to-great-to-exceptional, and that’s why I was excited about White Boy Rick.

I try to go through the thought process of what makes any actor, let alone an A-Lister who can have nearly any project they like, decide to pass or agree to get involved in any given production; especially if it’s a donkey of a film.

This is a donkey. The idea seems pretty good. Take a look at the film’s tagline on the above poster, “In 1980s Detroit, Rick Wershe Jr. was a street hustler, drug kingpin, and FBI informant all before he turned 16.”
That sounds pretty interesting; it also sounds too good to be true.

I’m guessing that McConaughey was lured into the film because of the above idea, but the script simply isn’t any good. It’s a drug film that falls in line with so many drug film tropes and cliches but only with a slightly different perspective. This movie found a way to turn guns, drugs, and 80s hip-hop into a blasé experience.

Though the soundtrack is cool, the on-screen conflict is lacking, and the actors try their best to prop up a non-cohesive screenplay that seems to throw the audience into weird, manufactured heartfelt situations crammed between the inevitable drama that on-screen criminals and cops always find themselves entangled in.

Last important note, Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie are sort of in the film, but could have been replaced by any actors over 70 and it wouldn’t have mattered. Why include them if they’re simply not going to get any screen time? Oh well.

Wish I would’ve passed on it.
I don’t recommend it.
I do not expect to see it again.

This is regarded as one of the first (perhaps the first) important documentaries about insider politics and campaigns. Perhaps I’ve been desensitized to insider politics due to so much media (both fiction and non-fiction) about Washington-types doing everything they can to make sure that their ideas or mouthpiece gathers as many votes as they can encourage Americans to gift them, but I don’t see any particular type of exceptionalism or genius on screen that I was hoping to see.

It is easy to see how this documentary was groundbreaking for its time, but watching it today does nothing for me other than serve as a reminder as to how out of touch political types are.

I certainly watched it in hopes of gaining a perspective on a foundational political documentary as well as simply mixing up my film list, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you had a massive appetite for political documentaries. If that’s the case, check out The Party’s Over if only for Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

There were many reasons I chose to watch this film: I actively root for Jon Hamm to find his way onto the Big Screen and create a role or acting identity outside of Don Draper, it’s supposed to be a stylized/hip/cool Thinking Man’s type of action film (just watch the trailer), and of course, Jeff Bridges.

Though during my first viewing, I felt like I had already seen the film and had already experienced the same exact “okay, here are all the introductions, and then there’s going to be a big showdown and yada, yada, yada” and I had. This movie felt very much like watching 2018’s version of Smoking Aces.

And you know what? That’s fine. There needs to be X amount of dialogue heavy, psuedo-suspenseful “Talk it Up and Shoot’em Up” type of films per year. I guess I was looking (or hoping) for something a little more substantive and not so excessively stylized.

The film showcases the ability to annoy its audience with scenarios such as why an accomplished man in the world of federal law enforcement would all-of-a-sudden behave so incompetently and why a panicky character would spend three-quarters of the film portraying a man who lacks any type of fortitude instantly transform into some kind of Rambo-esque superhero and there’d be no way to forget the over the top odd-ball Charles Manson-type cult figure played by Chris Hemsworth. I’m not the type to actually roll my eyes, but I’m pretty sure I did a few times.

Here’s my not-so ringing endorsement– as far as “smart-guy action flicks” go, sure, I guess it’s okay – but I’m not gonna see it again.

Yeah, alright, I went and saw the film that everyone had to see.
Depending on your definition of what a “spoiler” is, there might be one below.

Due to the many oft-repeated and much heralded reviews Joaquin Phoenix received for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck, I gladly revisited Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master to remind myself what I really, really liked about a strong Phoenix performance. There are certainly great solo performances out there (Nicholson’s many portraits come to mind), but it is truly something different when two formidable masters of craft are both sharing and building something so grand and layered as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix did in The Master.

This particular picture doesn’t resonate at all like that. Todd Phillips’s Joker is getting many comparisons to Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, but this film felt more like Micheal Douglas’s Falling Down to me (that’s not a compliment). A down-on-his-luck (and down-on-his meds) chum who is continually getting kicked and beaten down by The System, or society, or his possible billionaire father, or possibly mentally-ill mother, or his own mind/psychosis can’t seem to catch a break and eventually violently spirals into madness.
I won’t go too deep into DC lore, but one thing I’ll note is how helpless and hapless Arthur Fleck is for 80% of the film. In the last act of the film he somewhat takes control (or in his deranged perspective he believes he’s taking control), but I’ll always know DC’s The Joker as a mastermind who can battle wits with Batman. At no point, would I imagine The Joker to previously be some guy who became The Joker because of a lack of societal compassion and our nation’s backwards health care system.
That’s a weird origin story– if only people were nicer and pharmaceuticals were more readily available, Gotham City wouldn’t have to worry about The Joker?

To continue with the political and societal takeaways, the film paints Bruce Wayne’s father as a Donald Trump-type figure and Fleck loses the only pseudo-supportive person in his life (other than his mother, who happens to experience a very odd conclusion) due to a lack of government funding. These forced scenes and manufactured layers to a hollow onion don’t come across as profound, groundbreaking, or meaningful. Instead of being invested in the evolution of Fleck, I was watching a film without a single endearing, worthwhile character. Save your Age of the Anti-Hero counterpoint because most of the so-called Anti-Heroes are multi-dimensional and generally aren’t unreliable narrators that require a Fight Club-esque flashback.

The film uses two Sinatra tunes to push along the narrative, “That’s Life” and “Send in the Clowns”, which is a bummer for me, because it’s going to be awhile before I hear either of those songs I truly enjoy without recalling the corresponding scenes.
The thought I had going into the film was, “The Hollywood hype machine has made it seem that ever since movie studios have simply become creators of serial comic book blockbusters, that this particular film is what high art and Academy Award films are now destined to become.”
While watching the film, all I could do was pout, beg, and hope that this isn’t where art films (or films worthy of high praise) are headed.
I don’t want to get into “moral responsibility” or any of that, but this film showcased a person unable to connect with society en masse and how he responds to that disconnection is the defining characteristic of the film. I happen to believe that there are a great many people who don’t feel at ease in society and some of our best artists have a way of capturing that feeling of disconnect and turning that feeling into something relatable and worthwhile.

Anyhow, once the movie concluded, I made a beeline straight to the men’s room. Playing softly from the speakers overhead was Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” and the music lifted a cumbersome weight off me. For me to experience something from artists that are able to eloquently illustrate their deep frustrations with humanity and the disconnection they have with society en masse without going bonkers was a welcome departure from what I had just spent the previous two hours doing.

You’ve probably already seen it.
I wasn’t a fan.
I don’t believe that I’ll go out of my way to give it another screening.

June 16, 2019

Prior to the lights dimming and the previews rolling, the Alamo Drafthouse ingeniously fills the early moments of a showtime by running clips that are generally on theme with the picture that is about to begin. Prior to the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse’s screening of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” we were able to experience James Baldwin discussing urban renewal among other similar clips.

With little insight into the film (other than the obvious title, beautiful trailer, and the previously-mentioned Baldwin clips), I hoped for a film that wouldn’t excessively focus on the homogeneous byproducts of gentrification. I was not disappointed.

Though the film is about a man’s quest to reclaim what once belonged to his family, the film doesn’t linger too long or incessantly draw from the well of “gentrification as the villain.” Sure, the film includes roles that are very much in line with illustrating just how shitty gentrification is, most obviously a very easy-to-dislike realtor as well as some malcontent techies, but TLBMiSF does an exceptional job of balancing gentrification themes with the challenges Jimmie and Monty, the two main characters, face within their own community.

This culminates in the third act when Jimmie declares that “people aren’t ONE thing” which leads to Monty protesting moments later that [very loose paraphrasing here] “people are born into systems and walls. That these walls are what hold people back and that we all need to break through and break free from all the shit and uselessness we’re all born into.”

People are not one thing.
Regardless of circumstances, people should not blindly and willfully perpetuate exactly what they were born into.

After watching an exceptional and well-balanced film that touches on many themes including identity, friendship, family, death, and gentrification, I walked out of the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar- an area of town I’ve been familiar with for fifteen years and have seen undergo drastic changes (from humble and beat-down strip mall featuring a Short Stop hamburger hut to gaudy, real-life SoDoSoPa)- and observed conspicuously comfortable folks capping off an Austin Sports & Social Club event at a spiffy new seafood patio bar and… the irony was not lost on me.

I wondered how many other theaters that screen arthouse pictures share similar surroundings?
Who is this film’s intended audience?
What are we to learn?
What (if anything) are we to change?

My first inclination is to reflect on my personal experiences and answer those questions publicly. But I will abstain and simply recommend that you enjoy the film and consider the above.