Recently Watched Films

la la land had to be like 5/10 if I'm being generous

Moonlight is the best film I've seen in years possibly ever, and the fact that it won Best Picture is personally inspiring to me for a number of reasons I won't delve into here. If you want my complete thoughts, PM me; I'm not comfortable having them up in public, or even in a forum anyone can access by registering, because a lot of the reasons it affected me so greatly are quite personal.

(Disclaimer: I've known one of the film's producers for literally two thirds of my life. That's not why it affected me this strongly, though.)

Logan is one of the best comic book films I've seen in awhile. Maybe since Guardians of the Galaxy; not entirely sure. It's definitely unique. Think Shane and Unforgiven crossed with the X-Men. It also has an incredibly timely message and it's well pulled off.

HBO’s Temple Grandin film. It’s pretty much perfect and everyone should watch it. My only complaint, and this honestly seems pretty churlish given how well the film was done, is that it doesn’t explicitly note that autistic people’s nonverbal communication is different from neurotypicals’ (and for that matter, it can vary from other autistic people’s as well). Then again, Claire Danes’ performance in the title role implies that about as strongly as it could have, which is why I feel strange even complaining about that. Danes’ performance is probably the second best I’ve ever seen in a television production (the best, of course, being Tatiana Maslany’s in Orphan Black, and actually, it feels strange even to compare them, since they’re so different).

Anyway, yeah, pretty much flawless, and anyone who hasn’t seen it yet should.

Alien Covenant
Flawed, but fantastic.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
I loved it. This will definitely piss off some of the people who liked the first film, though (including a certain group of cultural reactionaries whom I won’t dignify by repeating their name), because it’s a scathing and not at all subtle attack on toxic masculinity. That honestly delights me all the more.

I’m too tired right now to write a deep analysis of the film (I’m in the midst of a move right now), but I will note that it’s one of the most visually stunning science fiction films I’ve ever seen, and the soundtrack was, if possible, even better than that of the first one. (One particular track Gunn selected has deep personal meaning for me for reasons I don’t care to get into here; I’m honestly not certain he could’ve selected a track for that scene that would’ve had a greater emotional impact on me.) The film’s women also probably have more agency than you’ll find in at least 90% of films of the past decade.

The returning cast members are at least as good here as they were in the first film; Rooker, Saldana, and Gillan are better. Gamora and Nebula may have become one of the most interesting sibling pairs in cinematic history. Of the new cast members, Russell and Klementieff made the largest impact on me. (Keep an eye on the latter; she could very easily become a star.) Stallone’s role wasn’t really much more than a cameo, but he made good use of what screen time he had, and apparently we’ll see more of him in the future. Debicki is set up as an intriguing potential antagonist for future films.

The film overall is an expansion on the themes of the first film, so it won’t feel as thrillingly fresh as the original did. That’s fine. The first film hid a certain amount of anguish beneath its cheery exterior, and this film explores that anguish in full. The ending is unexpectedly emotional. I won’t spoil any of the film’s major plot elements, though you’ll probably see most of them coming. That won’t dilute the film’s emotional impact in the slightest.

It’s strange that the two films that have left me a blubbering wreck at their endings this year have been comic book films (this and Logan). Moonlight and Temple Grandin have resonated more with me overall, but I feel comic book films have really come of age over the past decade or so.

I’m not sure I’d say I enjoyed this as much as the first film; does anyone really enjoy The Empire Strikes Back as much as they enjoy A New Hope? Yet we all recognise that Empire is the better film. I think the same might be the case here. Both films have bittersweet endings, and they’re not as unprecedented as their predecessors, but their emotional depth is greater. I’m not sure I’m willing to declare this better than its predecessor just yet (I’ll need to see it at least once more; I want to watch it in 3D), but I think it’s just as good.

Logan

9/10

Not that great, but like many I love Huge Jackman's Wolverine and this (SPOILER) was an immensely fitting end to his character.

Infestation_Pit wrote:

Alien Covenant
Flawed, but fantastic.

Yeah, lots of script problems like Prometheus, but I kind of loved it. All on board for three more of these.

Drav wrote:

Infestation_Pit wrote:

Alien Covenant
Flawed, but fantastic.

Yeah, lots of script problems like Prometheus, but I kind of loved it. All on board for three more of these.

Yeah, although I'm kinda worried about Ridley's age. I wouldn't trust anybody else with Alien. The franchise is much more than a plot, it's also about symbolism and art.

The Wonder Woman film was basically everything I'd hoped it would be after the reception it had gotten, and far better than I'd expected before the reviews started appearing. I wrote a longer post, but it got eated while I was trying to submit it and Lazarus unexpectedly didn't save it. I'll edit in further observations when I feel like rewriting them. The short version is that it's very reminiscent in both tone and content of the first Captain America film, but it manages to pull that off without feeling like a carbon copy, and I'd say it's every bit as good.

(Yes, eated Is intentional. It came from a webcomic originally, was then popularised by lolcats, and even later was adopted by the blogger Atrios/Duncan Black to describe banks being taken over by the FDIC.)

I’ve been watching a lot of films lately. Brief reviews to follow.

Wonder Woman – I wrote a much longer review of this shortly after seeing it, but it got EATED and I don’t remember everything I said. The comparison to Captain America: The First Avenger seems apt; they feel pretty similar, but this isn’t a carbon copy. The decision to move the setting to WWI works well, I think; first of all, there aren’t nearly enough WWI films, and secondly, the moral ambiguity of the war seems better suited to the character arc. This film remembered not to leave out the warmth and humanity, which distinguished it wonderfully from DC’s other recent film output. Overall, I can’t see much to complain about here. I definitely appreciated the film’s message that superheroes can’t save humanity; humanity has to save itself.

Dog Day Afternoon – I’m attempting to remedy gaps in my film viewing; this is the first of several films I’d inexplicably never seen. Pacino’s performance is spectacularly good, possibly a career best; if Cuckoo’s Nest hadn’t been the same year, I’d have said he’d gotten snubbed for Best Actor. It’s astonishing that a film this progressive on queer issues was made in the mid-’70s, and Lumet does a fantastic job making the film’s flawed characters relatable. One observation I made during the phone conversations in the middle of the film was how little any of the characters were actually listening to each other. Lumet was in the midst of an incomprehensible sequence of classic films here; it’s as though he could do no wrong.

Withnail and I – Cult British comedy featuring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann as two dysfunctional, struggling actors. I feel as though I’ll probably need to watch this again to fully appreciate it; it seems like The Big Lebowski in that respect (I didn’t entirely get that film on first viewing either). There are some incredibly hilarious lines in this, though, and it’s ultimately surprisingly poignant. This is another film where all the major characters are extremely flawed people but ultimately end up mostly sympathetic despite their flaws. I haven’t seen anything else like it and I’m not surprised it wound up a cult classic.

Animal House – Another in the “how the hell did I not see this before?” list. A few of the gags haven’t aged well but overall it completely deserves its stature as a comedy classic. I’d honestly say it very nearly renders every subsequent college comedy superfluous; I think part of the reason is because it actually throws in some fairly cutting social satire, but it does so without oversimplifying American society or whitewashing its flaws. But mostly, it’s just much funnier than most of its imitators.

Psycho – Yet another film I’d inexplicably never seen. I’d seen most of Hitchcock’s other major works (Rear Window, Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, The Birds), but somehow had never seen this one. I think this may be his best. This is another film I intend to watch at least once more; with Hitchcock, there’s almost always substantial foreshadowing you’ll miss even if, as I did, you know the main plot twists of the film ahead of time, and the framing of shots and cinematography and so on are always very deliberate and usually have symbolic intent. If more modern horror films were like this, I’d probably watch a lot more of the genre. Overall, my only complaint with the film is with the Hollywood psychology; the split personality trope is ridiculous. Then again, this was one of the first films to even use it, and it does so in a much better manner than most films that do so; it’s also a much more sympathetic treatment of violent mental illness than you usually get in Hollywood. (SPOILER) Bates is ultimately a sympathetic, tragic villain, as it’s clear that he was driven out of his mind by his heavily abusive treatment at his mother’s hands. Even today, abuse is frequently treated as far less serious a problem than it actually is; it’s kind of shocking that a film made in 1960 recognised how badly it can break people.

I now have Paul’s Boutique stuck in my head since it sampled the Psycho soundtrack several times and will probably listen to it later today. I also should probably go look for some of Hitchcock’s other lesser-remembered films (Rebecca, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Shadow of a Doubt, Dial M for Murder, Notorious, etc.).

Moana was basically perfect. It’s possibly the most beautiful animated film I’ve ever seen, and the soundtrack was at least as good as you’d expect with Lin-Manuel Miranda being involved. The characterisation was done fantastically as well, and who knew Dwayne Johnson could actually sing? (His acting was more nuanced than he’s usually given credit for being as well.) You’ve seen the basic plot dozens of times before, but this put interesting new twists on it and unpacked it in ways I don’t think I’ve seen in a Disney film before. Probably one of my favourite Disney films to date; I expected it to be good, but it exceeded my expectations in basically every way.

(Also, TIL Dwayne Johnson is half-black and half-Samoan. Would never have guessed either of those.)

I wrote a thing about Blade Runner 2049 and another thing about the Oscars and I might as well post them both here. I've seen a lot of films in the past several months, but I haven't written about most of them because after writing as much as I have about Moonlight, writing one or two paragraphs about a film just seems woefully inadequate.

All right, so. I think Blade Runner 2049 may have run up against the same obstacle that its source material did: it took an essentially journalistic approach to depicting its subject matter, and a lot of people expect science fiction to explicitly spell out its message. This sort of subtlety works for drama - I'd point to The Wire and Moonlight as exemplars of this storytelling style, both of which have been some of the most acclaimed works in their respective media in the last couple of decades - but it often leads to misinterpretations in works of science fiction, because I think our culture trains people to expect sci-fi to deliver a sort of Star Trek or Twilight Zone-like summation of the message at the end.

This isn't a knock on Serling or Roddenberry, both of whom were some of the finest storytellers of their generation. It's simply a different approach to writing. But for whatever reason, sci-fi often runs up against readers utterly failing to pick up on an author's subtle messaging.

(Spoiler warning for a few works, I guess. Specifically, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Slaughterhouse-Five - I don't think I discuss anything from either Blade Runner film that really qualifies as a spoiler.)

One of my favourite examples for this is Slaughterhouse-Five. A reader who takes it at face value will read it as a broadside against the existence of free will. This is, in fact, Billy Pilgrim's point of view. Because the novel matter-of-factly reports everything that Pilgrim says happens to him, readers frequently assume quietism is also Vonnegut's point of view. In point of fact, several subtle clues in the novel suggest that his is the exact opposite. The most telling clue for me is a remark in the first chapter, which is, apart from a brief aside in the final chapter, the only part of the novel Vonnegut writes from his own perspective. Vonnegut mentions to a friend that he is writing an antiwar novel, and the friend, endorsing a fatalist perspective, says that he might as well write an anti-glacier novel, because it would do as much to stop glaciers as an antiwar novel would do to fight wars. Despite this, Vonnegut still wrote and published his antiwar novel.

There are several other clues in the novel that suggest that Pilgrim's stance is not to be taken at face value; indeed, an alternative interpretation is that Pilgrim is dealing with PTSD and all the sci-fi elements of the novel are really just coping mechanisms. His time travel back to the war is all PTSD flashbacks, and his glimpses of the future, of aliens, of meeting with porn stars, and so on are all just in his head. There are aspects of his story that aren't internally consistent, and there are aspects that suggest that he's internalising details of things he sees in real life and crafting narratives about them (the narrative mentions that Montana Wildhack went missing, and then he shows up in an alien zoo with her). His account of his supposed death in the future also contradicts his fatalist stance - if he knows what could occur to him, then surely he has every chance to alter his actions and avert it, but he never takes any of these - and perhaps most importantly, Vonnegut describes Tralfamadorians as having blown up the universe at some indeterminate point in the future, which isn't the sort of thing an author sympathetic to their perspective would be likely to do.

This brings us to the source of Blade Runner 2049 (and its predecessor), Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick himself explicitly stated that he deliberately wrote the novel as an examination of the forms of dehumanisation that led to the Holocaust. It is a story, in many ways, about the banality of evil - about the subtle ways society others people.

But none of this is explicitly spelt out in the novel, and many people, coming at it from Blade Runner without having read any of Dick's previous works, will lack familiarity with his style and assume that the narration of his characters is reliable. In fact, there are several points in the novel that suggest that society's entire belief system about androids - specifically, that they lack and are incapable of learning empathy - is completely false.

One of two key points in the narrative comes with the revelation that androids have four-year lifespans. This is not used as a plot twist in the film (and to be fair, not all replicants in Blade Runner's universe have such lifespans), but it is not revealed until well past the halfway point of the novel. Most people don't even pick up on it, but it casts the androids' behaviour in a wholly different light.

There's a scene where one of the androids (I think it's either Pris or Rachael; I haven't read the whole novel in awhile) casually mentions that she has a habit of seducing men in order to manipulate them. The thing is, though, she mentions this to one of these men, which completely undoes the manipulation - she's made him aware of it. But she's not capable of understanding this.

The seduction, obviously, isn't at all childlike, but the rest of it - that's exactly what a child would do. They don't possess the understanding of human nature to understand that telling someone about your ulterior motives makes them aware of those motives. They're just proud of their actions and want to tell someone, and they don't realise that who they tell makes a difference.

Humanity, throughout the novel, makes a big point of treating androids as soulless, as irreparable dangers to humanity. But the thing is, it's also using androids as slave labour offworld (which is exactly why they want to escape) and humanity's painstaking care for animals (who admittedly are extremely rare thanks to what is referred to as "World War Terminus") is directly contrasted with its treatment of androids.

But androids do frequently come across as cruel. There is a passage near the end of the novel where three androids are tormenting a spider in order to mess with J. R. Isidore, a human who is brain damaged from World War Terminus. (The humans who remain on Earth, it may be noted, are implied to suffer some brain damage from the fallout, which is another reason we can't simply rely on what the human characters tell us, or even on what they observe. Again, the unreliable narrator is a favourite technique of PKD, almost as much as it is of Christie.) But then Isidore has a major emotional freakout, and the android Irmgard Baty explicitly says that this makes her "terribly upset", and says by means of reassurance, "Don't look like that". If that isn't actually empathy, it's certainly a really solid impression of it.

But all of this is beneath the surface, so a lot of readers don't pick up on it. Some readers have argued that it's an anti-AI tract. It's not. Society in the novel is anti-AI, but Dick's perspective is not society's. The novel is, at its core, an examination of the processes that lead to dehumanisation - even when those being dehumanised aren't technically human.

Blade Runner 2049 takes the same approach: it is not necessarily endorsing what it depicts. Director Denis Villeneuve explicitly spelt out his intentions with the movie's gender politics in an interview: "Blade Runner is not about tomorrow; it's about today. And I'm sorry, but the world is not kind on women." The novel's depiction of women has been strongly criticised from some quarters, but I feel Rachael Kaines of Moviepilot has the right of it: "The movie is about secondary citizens. Replicants. Orphans. Women. Slaves. Just by depicting these secondary citizens in subjugation doesn't mean that it is supportive of these depictions – they are a condemnation." Helen Lewis' review in the New Statesman also touches on another of the film's major themes: a man's rage that women can do something that he cannot (childbirth).

In short, I see Villeneuve as essentially taking the same approach with his film that Dick did with his novel (and, for that matter, as Ridley Scott did in the original film): clinically looking at an oppressive society and subtly examining the factors that cause its oppression. This isn't to say that every aspect of it works (in particular, the sex scene comes across as bizarrely awkward and unsexual, though that may have been the point), but I think it's a superb film and I can't wait to re-watch it.

I wasn't really surprised by any of the winners in any of the categories most people care about, nor was I particularly disappointed on the whole, though a few of the choices felt rather safe. But the Academy could've done way worse.

I'll say right out the bat that the fact that people tried to make Del Toro versus Peele for Best Director etc. an issue of racism is one of the most ludicrous hot takes I've seen this year; you're literally talking about a Mexican immigrant and an African-American. (Del Toro commendably defended immigrants in his Best Director acceptance speech.) The outcome (Peele getting Best Original Screenplay and Del Toro getting Best Director and Best Picture) was exactly what I expected; Best Original Screenplay is often used by the Academy to honour great up-and-coming directors, and Best Picture/Best Director are often almost as much lifetime achievement awards as they are honours of one film in and of itself. Which is fine. In some cases there isn't a clear standout, which I kind of felt was the case for the Best Picture category this year (admittedly there are still several I haven't seen), and in that case honouring the biggest and best overall body of work that hasn't yet received a Best Picture/Director nod is fine to me.

Best Director was perhaps the least surprising outcome in that category since I really started paying attention to the awards - the Academy loves honouring auteurish films with Best Director, and if there was a more auteurish film last year than The Shape of Water, I haven't seen it, and it really was a gorgeously directed film in every aspect. In fact, I called "Del Toro is getting Best Director next year" basically as soon as I left the cinema, and I had a pretty strong hunch that it would get Best Picture as well. (Disclaimer: I still haven't seen Get Out, though I plan to. I tend not to enjoy horror on the whole, but I'm pretty sure this film would be an exception, particularly since I've greatly enjoyed Jordan Peele's overall body of work. Also, my objection to the genre tends to be more than anything to its frequent gratuitous gore and employment of cheap tricks like jump scares, and I get the impression Get Out doesn't rely heavily/at all on these. As for films I have seen, Blade Runner 2049 may have been as auteurish, but the sci-fi ghetto is still a thing. And yes, a romance featuring a fish-man is fantasy, but the Academy has historically been more willing to honour fantasy.) I do find it kind of unusual that two years in a row the Best Picture winner has been a romantic drama (SPOILER) with a mostly happy ending - such films are rare in Hollywood, much less as Best Picture winners. (I remarked on that possibility after leaving the cinema as well.)

Oldman getting Best Actor and the makeup crew winning that category were two more I called right after leaving the cinema. Again, probably a lifetime achievement award for Oldman as much as anything, but I frequently had a difficult time believing I wasn't actually watching Churchill.

I haven't seen I, Tonya yet, but I called Janney winning long before I even knew who the nominees were. The woman is a fucking force of nature.

I have some issues with Three Billboards overall, but I can't argue too much with either of its cast members winning. Perhaps my only moderate surprise for either category was that Harrelson and Rockwell didn't cancel out each other's votes. That's happened several times. I get the impression that the Academy may use a different voting system now than it used to, partially with the aim of preventing this, but I haven't actually researched it. (My overall issue with the film was its ambiguous redemption arc for Rockwell's character - I suspect McDonagh may not have thought through all its implications. The overall message of the film - "Violence begets more violence" - is one I have difficulty taking issue with on the whole; my only other concern is that less perceptive viewers may not get that this is what the film is trying to say, even though the script explicitly spells it out towards the end of the film, and in exactly those words.)

I do think The Shape of Water was snubbed in these categories, though, especially Doug Jones, who wasn't even fucking nominated. The fact that Jones and Sally Hawkins manage to make a romance between a woman and a fish-creature seem plausible without either of them ever saying a fucking word is an astonishing achievement in dramatic performance, particularly since Jones had to act beneath all the practical effects. Both of them say more with their eyes than many actors say using their entire bodies.

Haven't seen any of the documentaries, short films, foreign-language films, or animated films, but I understand Coco was odds-on favourite to win and considered by some measure the best. This shouldn't surprise anyone; Pixar doesn't have many duds.

I haven't seen Phantom Thread, but I felt The Shape of Water was the best score of last year by some margin. Desplat is certainly one of the finest composers in Hollywood right now.

The sound categories were the only ones where I strenuously disagreed with the Academy. Dunkirk was just too fucking loud when I saw it in cinemas (which was one of two major complaints I had with the film - its downplaying/erasure of women/minorities' contributions to the evacuation was the other). I'm not how much of this was the sound crew's fault and how much was the theatre's, though my understanding is that the film crew wanted it to be loud. And I get what they were going for - war is loud - but there's such a thing as too much. I would've given (at least one of) the nods to Baby Driver - the way the action was synchronised with the music was a minor miracle. I'm not particularly surprised at the Academy's choice, though; I'd figured one or the other would win going in, but I had no idea which. (I actually half-expected the Academy to split the categories between the two films, which I think I'd have been happy with.)

Best Cinematography for Deakins was long overdue, and Blade Runner was by some margin the most beautiful film made last year - even against The Shape of Water. I can't really argue with the latter getting Best Production Design though; its sets were absolutely phenomenal. Blade Runner also deserved the visual effects award. And I can't really argue with the film editing award for Dunkirk; the vast number of scene transitions in that film were deftly handled. Finally, Phantom Thread winning for costume design may be the least surprising result of the entire evening - is anyone really surprised that a film about clothes design wins the costume design category? I could tell just from the trailer that the clothes were gorgeous.

Maybe I'll write some more detailed reactions to a few of these films later. I'll admit to having a bias towards Del Toro overall because Pan's Labyrinth is my second favourite film ever (only last year's Best Picture winner has supplanted it), but The Shape of Water is probably the second best thing he's made ("probably" because there are still a few works in his oeuvre that I haven't seen yet) and I have little issue with it getting recognised.

I should note that I don't actually personally know any of this year's winners, so I'm not as awed by them. It occurred to me the other day that if amateur plays and crew credits count, then I have a Kevin Bacon number of 3.