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The Florida Project (2017)
Down in the Gutter with Mickey SPOILER WARNING (Not really, not a surprise in the film)
Just finished "The Florida Project." Ouch. That was chore. Could someone tell these indie filmmakers even the slightest bit of a plot would be nice sometime?
This might be a best picture nominee, oh, man. The plot, well, there is no plot. This film is about a little girl (6 or 7?) living with her white trash foul mouthed mother (and learning to grow up just like mom!) in a motel near Disneyworld. The kids play. The mother tricks.... for an hour and 51 minutes. That's it. It's not a slice of life at this length and pacing, it's a basement freezer full of carcasses -- and I wasn't digging it, probably because I'm forced to encounter these types every time a new bus pulls into LA from Arkansas.
Of course, they come to take her little girl away (thankfully. I was actually praying it would come much sooner. I considered calling Orlando Child Services myself halfway through the film), otherwise it was going to end with the wise-mouth kid getting hit by an tour bus of people in Mickey Mouse ears (my preferred ending).
And the big FINAL SHOTS. Wow. Talk about the ultimate cheap, easy, and student film ending. I bet director Sean Baker is so proud of his shaky eight seconds of "guerilla filmmaking" shot within the walls of Disney world. Big deal. I hate to break it him, but a half a million parent a day take the same footage, and most of it probably looks better iPhone. This was was definitely a student film gone on too long. If they had trimmed 140 minutes it almost might have been bearable.
I just want to know what these reviewers who gush about balancing the "golden visions of childhood" (6-year olds telling old ladies to f-off) with "poignant reality of the underprivileged" (mom stealing Disney passes while she gives.... service) are taking? Is it a new fad to take antidepressants before you go to the theater? Another film like this and I'll have to start.'
Of course those in love with meandering mush that screams and chokes on ARTISTIC! will love it. They go on about how touching it was. Right. Even the earliest Italian neo-realist films had the good sense to come up with a story -- even something simple like stealing a bicycle?!!
Now I remember why I avoid Florida.
Stranger Things (2016)
Sci-fi "Mash-up" = Manipulate Another's Stories to Hide Unabashed Plagerism
I only manage to finish this series by "purge watching." It's my own term. It's the opposite of "binge watching" where you're apparently so enraptured by a show you can't stop watching. "Purge watching" is when you can't wait for a series to be over, so you use the fast forward button during the throw-away, series-padding scenes. And there's a lot of padding in the show. Like a cheap Stephen King Santa. Honestly, are we supposed to really accept this asa "homage" or is it just the ultimate recycling job? A number of critics thought 8 hours devoted to the somewhat thin story of "Stranger Things" was excessive. I was thinking about the story in my head, and if it hadn't been given the soap opera drag out treatment, condensed down to a 2-hour movie it would have been even worse -- exposing more clearly the basic silliness and retread plot. The watered-down tempo helped what otherwise would have been Cream of Condensed Tripe. You could claim running the same old numbers is in the name of "homage" or you could argue there's really not a lot of new ideas in the show. From the first scene where the scientists get pulled upward into the elevator, dangled by an unseen beast, I went "ho hum." Like I haven't see that visual in a million monster films. An old clever show like the X-Files would have had a pair of eyes creepily material in the wall of an elevator and then maybe the doors close and a scream. That show as extremely creative at coming up with original ideas and images -- which is why it was a great show. But immediately I wasn't that impressed with the "Duffer Brothers" mise en scene. I need more "things I've never seen before" from Sci-fi. And little touches like the elevator scene are where true originals and moderate talents separate themselves. I nearly bailed completely on the series. Episode 3&4 were sluggishly directed by Shawn Levy, who is pretty much an incompetent as a stylist. By episode 4, it has completely lost the "vintage feel" and leaning on the influences of contemporary cable: Let's play a moving piece of rock music over amontage of the different actors staring thoughtfully into space. The music swells... It's the HBO Method of audience intercourse. A directorial cliché. Sorry, but this doesn't have the "feel" of a 70s or 80s production at all, maybe a bit in the opening episode or two, but it pretty much is quickly replaced by a run-of-the-mill cable show feel. Vintage Spielberg always had a very kinetic feel. 70s and early 80s films were riffing off the vibe of Altman, Pennebaker, Penn, but sanitizing them a bit and joking them up. The vibe of this series is probably closest in spirit to the lousy cheapie Steven King films, and not in a good way. It's a leaden feel. I'm still skeptical of the "tribue" aspect of this show The Winonna"Poltergiest" ripoff/tribute is the worst bit so far. Where's the dwarf psychic? As I also noted they managed to pay "homage" to "Under the Skin" and "Pan's Labyrinth" Were those nostalgic "homages?" If your pose a show as a tribute (and make sure to let people know up front to cover your tracks) does that eradication the icky "borrowing." I think a couple of producers (the Duffers you would assume) sat down and said: "Yeah, I like the kid with powers from FireStarter, let's use that. And the kids from "It". The whole kid thing from King. "Alien" was a great movie. How about goo? And we'll stay away from the afterlife and just make it a portal to another dimension...." Add Shaw Levy's teleplay staging (someone should let him know the camera moves) and it's all a bit snoozy. By the way, I also notice that the Duffer Brothers didn't write the series. They farmed out the episodes to a bunch of writer. Right there, their auteur status goes down the drain, IMO. Interestingly, I noticed that the Duffer Brothers wrote the teleplay for Episode 8, but another writer suddenly turns up with a "story by" credit (for the first time in the series) for that episode. That tell's me the Duffers' couldn't even figure out how to put a cap on their own series and brought in someone else to make sense of it. And the ending is all pretty perfunctory and predictable. They even managed to reproduce Steven King's most reliable device ... not being able to produce a really satisfying ending. So anyway, that's that. I'd give it a"C." And warn Steven King to keep his paper covered during the next test.
Trudno byt bogom (2013)
Tasty as a mud pie
Take the worst aspects of the dark ages and ostensibly reset all the phlegm, muck, and mud (I'm sorry, but even the middle ages must have had a few sunny days) to an "alien" world in the name of a soggy "Heart of Darkness" metaphor, and the result is the unwatchable "Hard to be a God." Nearly plot less and as pleasant to watch as a boil lancing, this film which nearly wasn't made, shouldn't have been. If watching actors (and I use the term loosely, the director seems to have cast with a sideshow mentality) snort feces and propel snot is your ideal way to spend three hours, feast away from the trough. You be richly rewarded in that direction. "Hard to be a God" is in the worst tradition the grotesqueries of the muck-and-mire school of eastern European art films. These directors and filmmaker bludgeon you with their hyped- up "realism," sparing no expense or lack of taste, to portray the lowly ground man has trod over the ages. Always set-decorated, costumed, and performed so verily over-the-top, these films wind up feeling so overtly phony in their "truth," they like marionette shows in an outhouse. Yes, they frequently achieve authentic repulsiveness -- and but that is a questionable achievement from the standpoint of a viewers force to chug the slime. Setting an excruciatingly high watermark for ugliness in the name of enlightening us to the beast within, "Hard to be God" achieves half it's goal: it's a truly repulsive film. There's none of the poetry or metaphor of even a patience-tester like "Salo" and the only thing cooked up from its cauldrons of phlegm and boot-scrapings of dung is an empty, and tasteless, serving of mud pie.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Eight down, two to go. Do something!
I just got back from seeing "The Hateful Eight" and my head is spinning because it's such a weird movie I'm not sure if it's somewhat good or exceedinly awful. What's sad is that it starts off wonderfully -- I felt myself getting excited by the prospect of Tarantino returning to form for about a half hour -- then keeps getting sillier and sillier until it's nothing but a comedy -- and the comedy is so unsubtle, it might have been made by Mel Brooks or Jerry Lewis on acid.
What's funny is the much touted, rich color of the Panavision stock and the fake cabin interior of "Minnies Haberdashery (not a hat in sight)" makes the film look like the over-saturated movies from the sixties like "Paint Your Wagon" which always looked vaguely fake to me -- a plastic universe cobbled together on a back lot and lit with huge overhead arc lights. Add big splashes of red blood and it started to look like the garish color of some the 60s Disney films, so there was this bizarre set of associations going through my head.
When the finale of the film turns to grand guignol slapstick in these hyper-pumped colors, I felt like I was having a flashback to a bad 60s Dick van Dyke comedy like "Fitzwilly" or "Cold Turkey," and, honestly, I left the theater stunned by the near absurdity of it all. It's as if someone unearthed an awful 60s comedy (Sergio Leone? Hah? That's a laugh) that was buried in the vaults by the studios.
This "love letter to the cinema" is really a love letter to himself, as Tarantino riffs off elements of his own movies like "Reservoir Dogs" and throws in some steals from Paul Thomas Anderson (it almost sounds like Anderson doing the narration. Narration? Where the $%^& did that come from? Wow, talk about the weakest attempt I've ever seen to clue an audience when some sloppy structuring fails the film.)
The dialogue is Tarantino-lite, like a second-rate writer trying to imitate him (Samuel Jackson's goading of Bruce Dern is probably the worst monologue Tarantino has written) and the story is Agatha Christie with a lobotomy. There are some good performances (Kurt Russell is great as John Wayne) and some awful ones (Tim Roth at his over-the- top worst) but the film itself unravels like a spoonful of spaghetti Western. And this isn't a spaghetti Western, it's a pizza and beer comedy. I'm sure it will be a big hit at frat houses across America.
I'm amazed how some people (known critics, as well) even venture to justify the racial undercurrent as social commentary. Tarantino has never written symbolically or allegorically. He writes character, and that's that. "The Hateful Eight" is a "political statement" in the same way that "I Spit on Your Grave" is an indictment of contemporary religion. Please.
How do I sum this movie up in one word? Well, the one that comes to the top of my head right now is: "Goofy." Maybe those big Panavision camera got to Tarantino because he subconsciously started to think he was making a bloody version of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
I need to have a drink. At this rate, I have to say "thank god there's only two more to go."
Ex Machina (2014)
Lots of talk about AI, but film's intelligence feels artificial
There was a time when the future looked quite bright, indeed, and that was from behind the black shades of 'Sixties Ray Bans. Trips to the moon were actually taking place instead of being debunked on the internet. And in the sci-fi classic, "The Tenth Victim," Ursula Andress writhing in a miniskirt to the abstract jazz of Piero Piccioni promised even sex in the future would be better, too, at least much more interesting.
Then suddenly came along HAL9000 - the archly wheedling, we-hope- you-enjoy-your-trip steward of "2001: A Space Odyssey" - and dark- minded Stanley Kubrick prophesied that maybe trekking in all those gleaming spaceships might just prove as dull as a cross-country Greyhound excursion and that those data-spewing Univacs may not have in mind handing over the Meaning of Life, but delivering the final blow to ours.
Maybe that's when we should have started pulling the plugs...
But then a generation fell hopeless and inextricably in love with technology. There was social networking, YouTube, sexting, and funny pre-made memes to express their most profound thoughts for them - all without the tiresome honing of skills of self-expression. And that is why - despite the warnings of a few somewhat tech-savvy folk like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk - the near-presence of the Singularity, the moment when machines finally step up to the plate as the next- big thing, is seen by some more like the arrival of a new iPhone than the sudden devaluation of organic life - including our own.
Who knows? Maybe they're right. Maybe the Singularity will be cool. Awesome, even.
Or maybe they haven't had their HAL moment yet.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a devoted science fiction fan. So I was anxious to see "Ex Machina" as soon as the trailer made it's appearance on the Web. It seemed a dark film. Foreboding. Would it deliver the kind of punch to the groin that the great cautionary sci-fi of the past mustered?
The answer, sadly, is no.
This is director Alex Garland's first film and "Ex Machina's" suffers from his inexperience behind the camera. There's a large body of filmmaking now that I call the "Apple Commercial" school of filmmaking - it a highly derivative style that borrows from television advertising and is littered with visual clichés generated in a cookie-cutter ashion from Apple's movie software. This film indulges way too much from this style, so much so that feels like a thousand other bits of commercial celluloid out there in the last five years.
And these hipster trapping are at odds with the rather brutal material Garland has penned which comprises most the film. And that's my main problem with "Ex Machina" - its over-fascination with the psycho- sexual subtext of the story. For a film that promises a glimpse of the future, it's more concerned more with the same failures man is err to as a hapless slave to sex.
"Ex Machina" dangled the fascinating subject of AI and the singularity as it core but, instead, "Ex Machina" plays out less like Asimov than servo-driven de Sade. Despite occasional snippets of debate on what it means to be human, the story is little more than damsel-with-pneumatic-limbs in distress melodrama, and the cloying presence of the mad doctor's psycho-sexual sadism toward his dolls makes the film feel more like a "Red Shoes Diary" episode than than opening a book of the Golden Age. The actors are all fine, but despite being a tale of the evolution of consciousness, they're not given much of transcendence to work with. It doesn't transport viewers into a vision that could transpire for the 21st Century, but back to the 19th and misappropriate lust for the automaton of the "Tales of Hoffman," with a little "Bluebeard" thrown in for good measure or for bad.
That's why as I science fiction purist, I felt myself increasingly pulling away from "Ex Machina." There's a tawdriness that permeates the film and the story of the sweet-faced female robot being held prisoner by her Google-Age Dr. Frankenstein. About 20 minutes into the movie my hopes sank for seeing a smart little sci-fi film, when realized I wasn't going to be treated to speculation, but titillation. "Ex Machina" promised a look into the future, but feels like peek into a volume of inappropriate Victoriana.
So will "Ex Machina" be the film that challenges a generation over the error of its ways in so blindly falling for technology? Unfortunately not. No one is going to be leaving the theater desperately texting: "Hey, dude, turn off your freaking computer now!"
Which is a shame, because that's the stuff of great sci-fi.
Monsters (2010)
Clever, inspired and, in the end, a touching scifi film
This film is now on Netflix and it is a joy to watch. I'm sure we're seeing the birth of one of the great new directors. He is an absolute genius, technically, on the scale of a Spielberg. To think he put this film together on laps and built his own effects is staggering. The film looks like a 50 million dollar Hollywood film. While at times a little bit slow moving (though not often), "Monsters" is a terrific departure from the standard telling of most science fiction films. It's as though the director set out to say, "How can we make an alien film feel new?" His answer is to discard frenetic action, and firefights for a non-hurried tale of love unfolding under risk and the strangest of circumstances. I was reminded of the brilliant Nick Nolte/Gene Hackman film "Under Fire" set against a science fiction backdrop. Yes, there is alien invasion; Yes, there are great battle scenes, yes, there are massive special effects, but these set piece are framed within the story of two strangers meeting and surviving against the odds - told in a very low key and naturalistic manner. It feels like one of those tales of human survival you hear from WWII - the struggle of two ordinary people in a time of danger. That's what makes so film so sublty effective. No gamma ray guns or face-hugging in "Monsters." It's a tale of an infection as nameless and faceless as war itself, yet ever-present and inescapable. Even the film's 'big' scenes are told with a sense of wonder and beauty which makes this a very unqiue "Monster" picture. The brilliant ending makes clear any doubt of that. When we finally see the creatures left alone to interact, it is a moment of revelation - touching and inspired - and brings a wonderful insightful end to the film. You suddenly realize you've been watching a tale of love and survival on more than one front. This is really a very clever film and much underrated. Its reputation should grow over the years, I'm certain. It certainly looks and feels as large as any major Hollywood production, sans the gratuitous action and racheted-up soundtrack (there is no soundtrack and that's nice in this case). The special effects are superb and wonderfully used. Quiet, moving and completely effective, it's large scale science fiction told with more heart than explosions. Yet, it delivers enough stunning images and enough moments of fear to make it a fantastically satisfying experience for the mature moviegoer looking for something new from Sci Fi.
Night and the City (1950)
You can't reclassify a turd
I waited many years to see this film that had been given new life by a reassessment of the film noir period. "Night and the City" became one of those must-see films which was difficult to catch through normal channels. Luckily, NetFlix recently added it to their list of streaming films and I was overjoyed by the prospect of screening this film. However, as I watched "Night and the City," a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach told me something was amiss. Did I have the wrong film? Was the hyper overplayed about this little B&W ditty? Was this film as mediocre as I was making it out be? Well, I did have the right film, but my suspicions were correct in the other two areas. "Night and the City" has some redeeming graces such as excellent photography and some very good performances. But the film's story is pure B-picture hokem. Although it has been "revisited" by the film noir crowd, I think the New York Times original review of the film still stands"
Bosley Crowther in The New York Times: "Dassin's evident talent has been spent upon a pointless, trashy yarn, and the best that he has accomplished is a turgid pictorial grotesque...he tried to bluff it with a very poor script—and failed...the screenplay is without any real dramatic virtue, reason or valid story-line...little more than a melange of maggoty episodes having to do with the devious endeavors of a cheap London night-club tout to corner the wrestling racket—an ambition in which he fails. And there is only one character in it for whom a decent, respectable person can give a hoot."
I agree completely with this assessment, in fact, I labored to sit through the entire film. It's simply a waste of good direction, acting and atmosphere thrown away on a pointless story. I appreciate the efforts of recent critics to restore the prominence of little films important in the development of the cinema, but this little film noir "gem" is in actuality, a faux stone. One is tempted to make comparisions between it and "The Third Man" (for atmospherics) but "The Third Man" was scripted by the brilliant Graham Greene, while "Night and the City" is more reminiscent of a desperate Bowery Boys plot line than Mr. Greene's thoughtful entertainments.