Movie Diary
a) Tar
This was very good, I'd be fine with Cate Blanchett sailing to the Oscar win as expected, although if I had my pick I'd go with Michelle Yeoh. I still think Barbarian has the best post-'Me Too' character study I've seen in a movie. But Tรกr handled it interestingly, it felt nuanced, even if I found myself thinking a lot about how they had to make up a character in order to put the woman at the center of such a tale, and even then they made her sin more an abuse of power rather than rape or violence in order for it to be plausible. But what I really liked was how it felt like maybe an ambiguous Edgar Allen Poe thing where she was kind of haunted by her conscience -- I thought the place she ended up at being kind of a punchline before the credits rolled was kind of a weak ending, but still, a good movie.
b) Causeway
In Causeway, Jennifer Lawrence plays a soldier who comes home from Afghanistan after an injury and cleans pools in New Orleans. It's based on a short story called Red, White, And Water and good lord I'm glad they changed the title. Bryan Tyree Henry, who is absolutely one of the best actors of his generation, got his first Oscar nomination for Causeway, and is excellent in it. I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of movie, a slow moving drama where two people with tragic backstories find an unlikely connection (very Monster's Ball), but Lawrence and Henry are good enough actors to make it work, and the script and direction are nicely understated compared to some most movies in this style. The Russell Harvard scene was great, too, added a whole dimension to the story to bring his character onscreen that late in the movie.
I come from the school of thought that comedy is often harder than drama and most good comedic actors can pull of a serious role when given the chance, but I also tend to roll my eyes at a lot of the roles that comedians take when they want to be taken more seriously. And Aubrey Plaza never necessarily seemed like a versatile talent, given the streak of deadpan sarcastic characters that brought her to fame. But I guess she was just typecast, because she really rose to the occasion recently with "The White Lotus" and especially Emily The Criminal. I was a little surprised at just how bleak the story is, how it pulls no punches about the character's increasingly desperate situation, Plaza's character has mistakes in her past and continues making new mistakes throughout the movie, but she's also up against all these shitty systemic things and you root for her through it all, the political subtext is unmistakable but writer/director John Patton Ford never overdoes it, I thought this movie did a lot of the things Uncut Gems was praised for but better. Good performance from Theo Rossi, too, I always hoped he'd get more substantial roles after his great work on "Sons of Anarchy," and he's one of those actors who's so many different ethnicities that it's fun to see him play different characters with different backgrounds and accents.
I didn't think I would get a chance to watch this Roku original movie. But then my teenage son got a Roku TV for Christmas, so one day while he was at school I hung out in his room and watched "Weird Al"'s satirical biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe. I've been a Yankovic fan for a long long time, and always loved the way his "Behind The Music" episode function as both a parody of the show and a function episode of "Behind The Music." But Weird just delightfully thumbs its nose at reality and feels sort of like a companion to Walk Hard that skewers every music biopic trope that that movie didn't cover (one thing Weird has in common with Walk Hard: a hilarious parade of bad impressions of music legends, including appearances in both by Jack Black). The running bit about "Eat It," the homage to The Doors, the song over the credits, I laughed a lot.
e) You People
Kenya Barris hasn't written a bunch of movies at this point, but You People is the first feature he's directed, and it really just feels like he could not shake his TV background, there's even sitcom interstitials between scenes. This movie has gotten a real love-it-or-hate-it reception, but I'm kind of in the middle with it. David Duchovny's never been funnier (the song he did at the piano, the running Xzibit joke), and the first half hour of the movie is by far the best part, when they're just establishing the characters and their relationships and not contriving all the conflicts that drive the rest of the movie. And Eddie Murphy felt so reined in, like he was trying so hard to be the stern hardass, the scenes with him just turned out dull. I wish Molly Gordon had a bigger role, she's great. Also so weird to see a movie where a character's happy ending storyline is (spoiler alert) getting a job at Complex.
There are corners of the internet, particularly 'Film Twitter,' where Birdman is one of the most hated Oscar movies in recent memory -- personally I thought it was pretty good, but I do see where the detractors are coming from. And Alejandro Inarritu's first film in 7 years feels in many ways like a retread of Birdman, right down to the long, unwieldy title. I'm glad the only Oscar nom it got was for cinematography because there are some really beautiful, impressive shots in this movie. But after a while the story becomes exhausting and has the kind of twist ending that nobody ever likes, absolutely lousy idea.
g) Sharp Stick
I'm not a huge fan of "Girls," but it had a moment where it was a pretty good show in the early seasons. But the film that launched Lena Dunham's career before the show, Tiny Furniture, was awful, and so is the first feature she's directed since then, Sharp Stick. Kristine Froseth impressed me in a small role in last year's otherwise undistinguished "First Ladies," and she really commits to her performance in Sharp Stick, but the whole character and story just feel completely misconceived, it's a bad movie from front to back. Here's hoping Froseth gets better opportunities in the future.
It's hard to separate this movie from the context of Chadwick Boseman's death, it's a tribute that's built around his absence. But it's to the credit of the first Black Panther that the supporting cast and the setting were so well established that you can still tell stories in that world without T'Challa, and their mourning for him resonates because you know the cast feels the same way. I mean, after only one movie, they were able to set a story in Wakanda without Black Panther that worked as well as the various movies and shows in Gotham without Batman, that's impressive. That said, I don't think it was as good as the first movie but I'm really glad they made it, and hope they do more.
This movie did poorly at the box office and got mixed reviews, but my 7-year-old son and I really enjoyed it, I'm glad to hear it's been doing stronger numbers streaming on Disney+. I like the way its approach to sci-fi was inspired by old pulp serials and felt and looked different from a lot of comparable contemporary animated features, it was a cool little universe they created. My 13-year-old son watched it for a few minutes and complained about some abrupt scene transitions, I guess he had a point that it wasn't too gracefully paced, but overall I really liked it.
My 7-year-old has become obsessed with How To Train Your Dragon lately, watching the movies and all 6 seasons of the spinoff shows. The third movie, 2019's The Hidden World, is the only one that's not currently free on any streaming services so I went ahead and paid to watch it and, honestly, it was worth it, it was probably the best movie of the series, such a fun story and the design of the dragons is so cute.
k) Fire Of Love
This movie is on Disney+ and currently up for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, it's about Kaita and Maurice Krafft, two married French volcanologists. The Kraffts would study volcanos up close in the '70s and '80s with film cameras, most of the movie is comprised of their own footage (spoiler alert, they died in an eruption in Japan in 1991). It's a really touching story, and the footage is just incredible. Miranda July was a weird choice to narrate the movie, though.
I hadn't seen this movie before David Crosby died, so I wound up putting it on while I was writing about Crosby for Spin and quoting and referencing the movie in the piece a couple times. It's a pretty good doc, captures Croz's story and personality and musical accomplishments well, warts and all, Cameron Crowe didn't direct it but he did the interviews with Crosby for the movie and was probably the perfect person to do that.
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