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johnbozeman
Reviews
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Violence for Violence's Sake
If endless, mindless violence is funny, no question this one's for you. Or at the other end of the spectrum, if you are the kind of worshipper at the high altar of culture who reflexively bows down to critic-Svengalis, then here is another pretentious film they are calling upon you to venerate. I walked out, regretting once again having been taken in. When will I ever learn?
Maidan (2014)
See "Winter on Fire"
"Maidan" is a series of long, raw videos that fail to come up with a story. Spend 60 seconds imagining a string of unedited home movies of a protest--in a foreign language with the occasional random subtitle. OK, done. You've saved yourself over two hours.
If you're interested in Maidan itself, catch "Winter on Fire" which cares about its audience and edits vignettes of participants into a moving portrait of patriotism: fearless, compassionate, and unbelievably strong. These were heroes. As they are today. They have my deepest respect.
It's free on YouTube, courtesy of Netflix.
Ukraine on Fire (2016)
Conveys a partisan, pro-Putin conspiracy theory (why, in detail)
Oliver Stone produced and starred in "Ukraine on Fire" (2016) to compete with "Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" (2015). Where the earlier documentary concentrates on the people's pro-democracy movement on the ground, Stone puts forward Vladimir Putin's point of view through an extensive interview with Viktor Yanukovych, president of the Ukraine at the time who ordered police to attack unarmed protesters. The documentary dovetailed neatly with the Trump campaign at the time in its attempt to link Joe Biden with the Ukraine. (Paul Manafort was a long-time advisor in the pay of Viktor Yanukovych.)
Background:
"Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" by Evgeny Afineevsky (Netflix, but available for free on YouTube), documents the 93-day-long Euromaidan protests in Kyiv from November 21, 2013 to February 22, 2014 that deposed president Viktor Yanukovych and cost the lives of 125 protesters and 13 police. 65 Protesters remain missing and 1890 were treated for injuries. The Euromaidan (Euro Square) protests were centered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) and were triggered when Yanukovych reneged on his promise to associate the Ukraine with the EU, signing an agreement with Vladimir Putin instead.
On February 22, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Eight days later (March 2), troops from the Russian naval base at Sevastopol (Crimea's largest city) reinforced by forces from Russia itself had taken control of the Crimean Peninsula from the Ukraine.
Back to Stone's "Ukraine on Fire":
Stone's documentary conveys a partisan, pro-Putin conspiracy theory largely based on interviews with deposed President Yanukovych; Vitaliy Zakharchenko, former Minister of Internal Affairs (head of Ukraine's police); and Vladimir Putin himself. Journalist Robert Parry contributes to Stone's theory that all "colored revolutions" were the results of subversive conspiracies organized by the US Government: the State Department, the CIA, and NGOs in general (more specifically, the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID--which oversees foreign aid). George Soros, Joe Biden, and John McCain were named as co-conspirators.
In short:
Regarding democracy as subversive puts Oliver Stone and his documentary in bed with dictators and autocrats. His documentary (based on interviews) holds that Euromaidan was carried out by anti-semitic and anti-Polish nationalists with links all the way back to the World War II Nazi occupation.
"Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" shows on-the-ground action footage of ordinary people involved in the pro-democracy people's movement.
On March 8, 2022, YouTube deleted Stone's documentary. Vimeo soon followed.
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)
Unbearable
"The French Dispatch" lost me in the first minute as manicured hands placed a flourish of drinks and hors d'oeuvres on a round tray in the most cutsy-wootsy manner imaginable: Wes Anderson's first gleeful squeal at the audience of "Look at me! Aren't I clever?" I can only guess it was meant to be funny. After the 2,000th squeal, increasing pain brought me to the discovery that the best way to watch "The French Dispatch" was with my eyes closed. This allowed me to appreciate the superb sound work by Jean-Paul Mugel, each vowel, each consonant popped with loving care, and by foley artist Steve Baine and his team who filled in delicious footsteps like true masters and brought cacophony to the screen every 8 minutes with a series of creative explosions, something like fireworks. Well-deserved kudos aside, the fittingly-named Alexandre Desplat contributed an incessant two-note musical score ("da-da-dee-dee-da-da-dee-dee") with an unvarying rhythm, which almost made me want to open my eyes for relief. Almost, but not quite.
I cannot recall experiencing a worse film.
A Doll's House (1973)
Deeply Profound
It's been a long time since I've seen a dramatic production so fully realized. The acting was superb, the script brilliant, and the play proceeded step by inevitable step. There were no "bad guys." In different ways, each character was a prisoner of herself/himself, caught up in a role not of her/his own choosing but impossible to shake, because of the enormous courage/selfishness it would take to accept the self as it was. In the end, in a fit of rage, for only a moment, Torvald revealed himself for what he was, and then desperately tried to patch things up and reassume his role. But everything had changed. Nora could pretend no longer. She was stripped bare, which allowed her to find the courage/selfishness to leave. To find herself. And be unhappy forevermore.
That is the play's central paradox, which rings painfully true to life. To exist, love requires roles, the diminution of self. To exist, self requires selfishness, the diminution of roles. Society chooses the former and wraps its members up in cozy belonging. The individual chooses the latter, to his/her peril.
That pretty well describes my marriage of 30 years. I don't think I am alone in being unable to find the courage/selfishness to walk into the snow drifts.
And that is why this film is profound--and modern. It shook me to my very being.
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Maybe you had to have been there
Ceremonies are ceremonies. Their forms exist so people can repeat conventions and draw reassurance from joining in the collective experience. Some slight deviations are OK particularly in marriages, but also particularly in marriages, sunshine must--MUST--prevail. It's no wonder that in strangers' weddings only the accidents are interesting. And in "Rachael Getting Married," there just aren't enough "accidents."
The film started by jumping right into midstream, with all the throwaway lines and quaky camera of a home movie. If people were saying anything important, I didn't know. I needed subtitles.
The actresses--especially Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Debra Winger--were gorgeous. I could have looked at them forever. But despite their suburban Sturm und Drang, I could not see beneath their surfaces. What made them the way they were? Only Bill Irwin, the father, showed himself in trying to hold his family together, and I felt great sympathy. But never mind. The film ignored him.
The best scene turned out to be his and the groom's loading and unloading the dishwasher--no, I'm not kidding--which built with some genuine spirit before it luffed away into stone, cold "significance."
The rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself were too real, that is, too long, too personal, and too embarrassing. "Love"? You want yet another toast about "love"? Gag me with a spoon.
More isn't better. The sheer number of disjointed moving parts throughout the movie diminished each one. How many bands were there anyway? Where did the dab of Indian influence come from? Brazilian? Carribbean? Jazz? Was the lame altar song from the cypher of a groom supposed to hint the music was on his side? Then why wasn't the bride's family more amazed?
Actually, hold that thought. Don't know. Don't care. Don't go.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Profane and Pointless
This is hard to write. The rules against "forbidden words" make it that way, because, after all, "Y tu Mama Tambien" is nothing if it is not soft-core porn laced with profanity. But I've got to try--using euphemism and innuendo, I guess--because I'd hate to have others suckered into believing this film was actually "intelligent" and "funny." Far from it. Fluids are what this movie is about: exchange of, drinking, vomiting, spitting, peeing, sweating, masturbating, and swimming (in clean and dirty swimming pools and in the ocean). The actors form a threesome of spoiled upper class brats who, when they are not expressing themselves with fluids, swear and stink and smoke (whatever) as they speed past the grinding poverty of their fellow citizens. Well what the hey, the roads are good. The trio is magically immune from police roadblocks. Reviews had me believing this juxtaposition would be the source of social commentary, but I did not expect it to come in the form of god-like voice-overs pronouncing on details--that turned out to be largely irrelevant. Regardless of what the last voice-overs wanted me to believe, when I took the full frontal view, I saw a thin story about the vulgarity of teenaged boys and the young married woman who "taught" them. A must miss if ever there was one.