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Reviews
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)
Pretty much the best you can expect from a movie led by Will Forte
This served it's purpose in that I felt like watching something but not something good that I'd have to pay particularly close attention to. The movie tells more or less the same story as every other biopic about a somebody in the entertainment industry. They rise as a scrappy underdog followed by sex and drugs and depression as the next high gets harder and harder to attain, culminating in mediocre drama. And the result is about the best movie you could possibly hope for with Will Forte in the lead role. Which is to say it's a very bad movie and not particularly funny either. Forte's character is obnoxious, his every line a one liner that isn't ever particularly novel, clever or funny. The acting is mostly bad, Forte doesn't have any range, so there's no immersion, and while he's framed as a tragic figure, he's so self-involved and childish that you never feel any pity for him. More just mild distaste for the screenwriters who kept throwing women at him who we're supposed to believe would actually care about him for some reason. To be honest, the funniest part is the dog magazine cover, and that's just a reference to something made fifty years ago.
Cowboys (2020)
Beautiful film, great acting, some aspects of the story could have benefited from more nuance
This was a really beautiful film, great performances, especially from young actor Sasha Knight, it's great to be seeing more trans stories and representation in Hollywood these days albeit largely in smaller films such as this.
Steve Zahn was also excellent, though I feel his character could have been written with more nuance at the climax, and the deterioration felt a little overblown and undercuts the fact that he is trying to do what's best for his son even if his methods are wrong. Perhaps the writer/director Anna Kerrigan didn't want to portray other characters too harshly or stray too close to condoning the sort of actions that Zahn's character chooses to take. Nevertheless, this is a story issue, Zahn's character was largely heartwarming and his performance deeply moving and enjoyable to watch. And of course the themes are so timely. There are scenes when you really get a visceral feeling of what it might be like at times for a trans kid growing up in cis society.
The cinematography and score were also lovely. The opening shot really transports you to Montana, there's a feeling you get cresting a hill and taking in country like that that is hard to describe but beautifully captured here. Definitely worth a watch!
Joker (2019)
Good acting can't save a bad movie
Phoenix's Joker is creepy and different from previous portrayals, and he is clearly showing off his acting chops, but the movie is poorly made, kludging together cinematic-seeming but empty shots around a poorly written script.
The main issue is the film makers, who seem to understand what cinematic shots should look like without understanding that imagery is supposed to be evocative, building on the themes and pushing a general message. Essentially it seems they weren't sure what they wanted to say, just reverting to form for a DC movie these days: dingy, dark, gritty without substance. There were some almost worthwhile exchanges with the social worker, but the poor writing undercut any message that might have come across there, and in the end, the film makers' message is muddled.
Phoenix did the best he could with it, but the way his character is written seems confused between emotionally stunted, almost child-like, and just plain unstable. He personifies that subtle misogyny of men who believe they are owed romance and blame women for their self-perceived failures, and for that reason I found it a pretty uncomfortable movie to watch. This Joker is nowhere near as fun as Ledger's confident, evil-for-evil's-sake take.
Just watch the trailer, it was better than the movie, and about as substantive.
TFW NO GF (2020)
A fairly shallow look at
It is novel that this documentary follows a few men in the incel subculture over a period of a few years, but the film is mostly lacking narrative or statement.
Instead, we are presented with a collage of clips platforming the subjects' ideas. They do offer some insightful thoughts about consumer culture and the way young men are expected to behave in our society, but the men also spread some blatantly misogynistic or racist ideology, the latter presented caged in a flimsy veneer of "satire" (a term which those in the subculture misinterpret to mean transgressing for the sake of transgressing, rather than using irony to make a larger point).
Personally, I felt that the misogyny and racism were brushed off too easily in favour of humanising the subjects. That may be the best approach for reconciling these sorts of men with society, but it means that we end up with a fairly shallow look into the subculture that only briefly references the hate and extremism it has generated. You get the impression that the incel community is mostly a place for commiseration and that those within it eventually graduate to more typical lives. This is probably true of many, maybe even most, but it still misses an important fact.
At one point, we see a brief clip from the Toronto Van Attack (an act of misogynist terrorism that took place in Canada's largest city in 2018), but its roots in incel fora are not explained at all. The perpetrator was a member of the incel community, and he and other domestic terrorists like him have been idolized in some incel circles since. One could argue that this film is about the less extreme members of the community, and that the hateful acts of extreme factions are for another movie. Frankly though, to me it feels irresponsible to spend so much time in the subculture without directly addressing the fact that it has spawned domestic terrorism.
My advice: give this one a miss. If you want to know more about the incel subculture, listen to the CBC podcast about the Toronto Van Attack, I found it much more enlightening.
Nature: Pumas: Legends of the Ice Mountains (2021)
Great visuals, script is mediocre
This documentary suffers from the ever-familiar problem of not being narrated by David Attenborough. It features a lot of really incredible shots of the Patagonian landscape and the intimate lives of these animals--on par with just about any other series--but the script is lacking.
Before I go off on my frustrations about the industry, I want to say first that this really is worth watching for the visuals. I've never seen such an in-depth look at mountain lions (or cougars or pumas or catamounts or whatever you want to call them, in central Canada I grew up calling them mountain lions), and struck by the beauty of Patagonia, I found myself wondering why it hasn't been featured as heavily in those big-budget Attenborough films. All those drone shots panning across the jagged Andes made me really wish I could visit them, and the sequences where these big cats were hunting guanacos were pretty incredible.
This film is part of a real renaissance in natural history documentaries over the past 10 years or so, where we've seen techniques pioneered in the first Planet Earth series as well as new technology like drones and improvements in digital cameras making really world-class cinematography more accessible to productions without an Attenborough-scale budget. The issue is that there hasn't been commensurate improvement in script writing so we end up with these oddly mismatched shows. Particularly among American productions that suffer from the sensationalized ecosystem of the modern TV documentary, you end up with scripts that are full of forced, mediocre imagery, are thin on actual scientific insight, and they're delivered by Hollywood actors who don't know what they're talking about and can't help but turn their narration into a performance.
To an extent, this is preference. I've definitely been told I like boring movies, but this is usually coming from people who don't usually watch nature documentaries anyway, so I feel my grievances aren't entirely unfounded. The trouble to me seems to be that producers think a documentary will fail without gravitas in the narration, and they think an actor will be able to emulate that better than taking a chance on an expert or at least some sort of a naturalist. The result is this lack of credibility, and as the script is delivered by somebody who'd rather watch Shakespeare than Attenborough, these actors probably don't even recognize that they're missing the mark. I've seen a few documentaries that were narrated by the wildlife photographers, or narrated by there credible naturalists like David Suzuki in Canada, and for me, the end product is far superior to anything Hollywood can put together.
Fantastic Fungi (2019)
Less a nature doc, more a sermon on fringe medicine
I was expecting a BBC-Earth-style documentary about mycorrhyzal fungi and its symbiosis with plants, so I was disappointed that a lot of the film ended up being dominated by anecdotes about spirituality, miracle cures and businesses that sell fungi. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stuff to be learned about psychoactive drugs, but neuroscience just strikes me as being such a nascent field that anytime somebody talks about it using broad strokes like this, my pseudoscience alarm bells start ringing. I have never encountered a convincing scientific discussion that mentions "raising consciousness" for instance, such discourse tends to be limited to people with an agenda. Nevertheless, Schwartzberg's time lapse cinematography is really beautiful, and the CGI showing root systems was unlike anything I have ever seen. Paired with the actual-expert commentary from UBC forestry professor Suzanne Simard, this, to me, made enough of the film worth watching that it's not a complete waste of time.
Savage Kingdom (2016)
Some good footage spoiled by overwrought narration
There is some good footage in this series, but the script and narration are lacking. As is typical of Disney nature productions, the animals are anthropomorphised, having been given names. The script goes so far as to describe of the animals' ambitions to "conquer", even giving inner monologues for some of the animals, there's a lot of talk of plans and thrones, and silly analogies to systems created by medieval humans.
Similarly typical is the narration. Actors tend to view nature documentaries as performances, and that's not really what they are. Dance's overzealous delivery is unnecessary, the animals are interesting enough without it.
This is a pet peeve of mine. It is arrogance to think that animals think in the same way as humans. The script also promotes negative stereotypes about hyenas being morally bad. Such stereotypes have done a lot of harm to these animals.
Together, the writing and delivery undermine the documentary. The unscientific terms and novice narrator take away from the credibility. I'd recommend watching it on mute. Put some music on, you'll get more out of the experience.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Near perfect, superb
Are there really this many people that thought that Force Awakens was a 1/10? How is that a thing? That's like Gerard Butler levels of bad. Have you seen Olympus Has Fallen, now there's a 1/10 for you.
Yes, I grant you that the plot involving the Resistance was rather simple, and that the bad guys probably should have realized that Stormtroopers and Death Stars are not nearly as effective as they seem on paper, and that it doesn't really seem like Han Solo to misplace the Millennium Falcon, but frankly I don't care.
First of all, The Force Awakens is beautiful. That alone doesn't make a movie (or independent movies would be the only movies), but it helps. You can say all you like about directors like JJ Abrams as being uncool because they're part of the machine, but that man can make a movie that is a real feast for the eyes. Planets seen from space, derelict spacecraft in the desert, Tie Fighters approaching at sunset, and little things like wingtip vortices left as the Millennium Falcon ploughs through the atmosphere all make for a stunning picture of the universe we've all come to love.
The claims that this movie is a "farce" are really just silly because, though it was rife with callbacks and references to the original trilogy, they didn't seem intrusive to me, they never took me out of the story.
The characters were great, too. Rey and Finn were captivating characters played by excellent young actors. These two as well as Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron, and BB-8 integrated seamlessly with the old characters and had great banter-filled dialogue with them. Frankly if there was one character who wasn't quite up to par, it was the slightly wooden Princess Leia.
Speaking of dialogue, this movie was really funny. As ever Han and Chewy were great particularly when joined by the youngsters, and Poe's wit often brought reminisces of a younger Harrison Ford.
Finally, and I've never taken film studies so I don't know exactly how to characterize this, but the movie just FEELS good. I expect its a mix of writing, pacing, characters, plot, cinematography, and a dozen other things that I don't know the names for, but they make the FEEL of the movie for me. If you watch something really horrible, like an action movie that takes itself too seriously (most anything with Mr. Butler in it), it just feels off. But The Force Awakens feels perfect, the aesthetic and the characters and so many other things make it feel like the original trilogy again (as opposed to the feelings we all know from the prequels, sorry George). It feels like the way I felt watching movies as a kid, I feel like I could watch it over and over again like I used to with VHS rentals when I was little. I can't exactly justify it, but the movie really stayed with me, and as goofy as some aspects of the plot seem, I just really, really loved it.
I've watched The Force Awakens three times now, and I still just love the heck out of it. I know there are those of you who hold the original trilogy sacred, but for me, TFA is nipping at Jedi's heels. I can't wait for more!
The Expendables 2 (2012)
Terrible
You can't expect much from a movie that Sylvester Stallone co-wrote, but this is especially bad. The majority of the actors -- each of whom was famous for films with the usual blend of high action, zero plot -- all seemed to be too old to be in such violent scenarios, and it didn't help that none of them (except maybe for Bruce Willis) was any good at acting. Not even Willis was able to pull off the sort of compelling charters that he portrayed in 12 Monkeys, Looper, or Sixth Sense. In fact the only remotely interesting character, Bill the Kid played by Liam Hemsworth, was killed off in a ridiculous combination of a karate kick and a knife that only a talentless actor like Jean-Claude Van Damme could pull off. If you want to see a combination of carnage, explosions, and awful dialog, this is your movie.