Movie Diary
a) Frankenstein
Of all the IP that Guillermo del Toro has been attached to over the years without him ultimately directing a movie, dozens of adaptations or franchises and characters, I'm not thrilled about his last two features being Pinocchio and Frankenstein, some things have just been done too many times for me to care. The latter certainly is right in the wheelhouse of the themes and visuals that he excels at, though. It didn't dazzle me like Pan's Labyrinth or anything, but I thought The Creature was rendered really well. Jacob Elordi had the right physicality to make him terrifying when he needed to be (I'm glad Andrew Garfield had to drop out due to scheduling issues, I can't picture him being as effective). But he also pulled off the voiceover stuff in the second half way better than I expected, and I was amused that del Toro had him in little yellow shorts like Rocky Horror for half the movie. My wife pointed out that Oscar Isaac is really too old to play Victor Frankenstein as written, which is probably a good point, but overall it worked for me, it not terribly memorable.
b) Sorry, Baby
It was only like 6 years ago that Eva Victor was someone who occasionally posted funny videos on Twitter, then a supporting player on the underrated cable drama "Billions," and now the star and director of a very good A24 feature. Sorry, Baby manages the interesting feat of a very visceral, haunting depiction of a sexual assault that doesn't show any of the actual act taking place -- you just see the before and after, how the protagonist is shellshocked by it, how the betrayal reverberates through their life. And then there are these moments of happiness, warmth, or comedy that feel like such a relief and a release in that context -- friendship, a kitten, a new relationship, and one of the most memorable one-scene performances in a movie in recent memory by John Carroll Lynch.
I wasn't crazy about Daniel and Michael Philippou's first big word-of-mouth horror hit Talk To Me. I liked Bring Her Back a bit more, but I chuckled when I saw someone call it a 'poor man's Hereditary' and don't entirely disagree. 12-year-old Jonah Wren Phillips gives perhaps the most disturbing performance by a child in a horror movie since Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but I don't know if I mean that unconditionally as a compliment, it felt a little gratuitous after a certain point. Sally Hawkins also great, but it kind of felt like Sora Wong's visual impairment was kind of used as a cheap plot shortcut.
The Substance is, depending on who you ask, roughly the 7th or 8th horror movie to ever be nominated for Best Picture, and I was really hoping it'd live up to that lineage. But I thought it was about 40 minutes longer than it should've been, some things about the plot didn't hang together well, and the satirical aspect was kind of hamhanded, Dennis Quaid in particular was really Going For It in a way that I just rolled my eyes at. Some of the visuals in the second half were really impressive, I'm glad it won the Oscar for hair and makeup, but I wish it got across the concept of one person alternating between two different lives onscreen as well as "Severance."
e) Smile 2
I called Smile a "perfectly average mainstream horror movie" and hoped that writer/director Parker Finn would make good on the potential shown in his debut feature in something other than the "inevitable Smile sequels." But I gotta say, he really knocked it out of the park with Smile 2, building on the original with something that's better and more gripping in every way, and it ends in a way that actually makes me excited to see what he does with Smile 3 (although, again, I hope he starts diversifying and doesn't become one of those horror directors who just milks one franchise for most of his career). Smile 2, like The Substance, taps into how fame can be a force multiplier in horror movies -- whatever the protagonist is going through can be so much worse if they're a major celebrity trying to hide it from the world -- but uses that much more effectively though Naomi Scott's bravura performance.
f) Thunderbolts
Definitely one of the most enjoyable recent MCU movies, although I liked the first half with the whole ragtag crew slowly banding together more than the second half's usual bombastic supervillain spectacle stuff. Great cast, Florence Pugh really led the ensemble well and it was fun to see "The Wire" guys like Chris Bauer and Wendell Pierce populating a Marvel movie.
g) Presence
There was a lot of handwringing about the recent revelation that Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh pitched a Star Wars movie that didn't get made. But the thing I like about Soderbergh is that he's just gonna keep making movies even if he doesn't land a big franchise gig -- he's probably going to direct his 40th feature before Quentin Tarantino (who's the same age) makes his precious 10th and final film. Presence is one of those small budget Soderbergh experiments that I always enjoy seeing him attempt, although like Linklater, I think the quality of the direction and the acting suffers a little when he goes all out on trying something new. I think critics were probably too generous to Presence, but I liked what worked enough that I don't really mind.
A guy named Joe Shrapnel wrote this movie. I think I'd have the confidence to write a mediocre screenplay if I had a name as awesome as Joe Shrapnel. Silly story but the cast did a decent job of treating it with seriousness.
j) The Amateur
Sometimes even when a role is right in the brooding intense niche that Rami Malek made his name on, it feels like he's just not a very good actor. I liked the premise of this movie but I feel like it would've been a lot more enjoyable with a more charismatic established leading man.
k) Midway
It's funny to think that even Roland Emmerich's passion project that he worked for years to get produced independently is just another bloated, formulaic war movie, just without big name actors, so it bombed at the box office.
Actress Amy Seimetz has had a good run of directing TV, and I also really liked this low budget horror feature she made. Visually interesting, good performances, reminded me a little of one of my favorite cult movies, Pontypool.
Good movie, the strength of Adriano Tardiolo's performance really makes that ending hit hard.
John Candy died about a month before Kurt Cobain, when I was 12, and those may have been the first two celebrity deaths that meant something to me and left an indelible impression (just a few months after the first family death that meant something to me and left an indelible impression, my maternal grandfather). So this movie was going to make me laugh and cry even if it wasn't an effective tribute, but it was, I was impressed. It was great to hear so many stories from family members and friends and SCTV people and co-stars. It felt sometime like the movie was too focused on how young he died, repeatedly rooting each chapter of his life in how many years he had left, but for the most part it was a very warm and moving doc that did justice to his work and his talent.
o) Being Eddie
Eddie Murphy was part of a very good documentary about Black movie stardom, Number One on the Call Sheet, earlier this year that aptly captured the impact of his career. So I didn't necessarily have high hopes that Being Eddie wouldn't feel quite as essential, and might just feel too much like a guy sitting in his mansion talking about how great he is. This was great, though, Eddie has a really interesting perspective on his career and broke down so many elements of his performances and the evolution of his roles. One of the recurring themes of Being Eddie is how Murphy's survival in show business is a pretty rare thing, especially for someone who became so famous so young. And I'm glad that they emphasized that so well, it felt especially poignant because I watched it the same week as the John Candy doc, it makes you appreciate that Murphy navigated his life and stardom so deftly that his low points are as benign as Vampire in Brooklyn or not winning an Oscar.
Pryor's one of my all-time favorite comics, but some of his concert films I've only seen in bits and pieces, so it was fun to finally watch this from front to back. And it was especially entertaining in light of Eddie Murphy really detailing how much he was influenced by Pryor in Being Eddie.
q) Jaws
Another movie that I'd seen here and there on TV over the years but finally watched in full. It's entertaining, having heard all the stories of how the animatronic shark barely functioned and they had to limit how much it's on camera, to see how well that functions in the context of the movie, how much the strength of the cast and the visual storytelling works around that beautifully. I particularly loved Robert Shaw, it was sad to realize he died just 3 years after Jaws came out. Namedrop time: weirdly just a few days after I watched Jaws, I met Steven Spielberg! I teleprompted his speech when his portrait was unveiled for the National Portrait Gallery, so I got to shake his hand and work with him for a couple minutes on script revisions, pretty cool.
r) Mamma Mia!
I like ABBA's music and pretty much the whole cast of Mamma Mia! so I always kind of assumed I'd enjoy this movie. But as soon as I started it, I remembered that I almost never like movie adaptations of stage musicals. There's this stiffness that undermines the songs, the actors, everything.
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