Reviews

Don't let the budget and stars and unusual camera angles fool you.

I'd call this a first draft of a script, but seeing as it's based on a novel and the director who adapted it is accomplished, all I can call this is a failure of a script.

I love a non-standard screenplay. I have no objection to a kind of horror/satire where the characters need to be flat and 2-dimensional for that style of storytelling to work. They Live would be an example of such a film. Nor do I object to movies with unhappy endings. What I object to is going nowhere with those kinds of choices.

Nearly every scene in this movie has dialogue and character that is perfunctory or on-the-nose. Characters are inconsistent without any point or payoff to it, not even in the tone of the movie or the observations of those characters. Character motivations are at times entirely broken for the sake of the scene needing to go somewhere else.

Similarly, half of the scenes have no point to them, not even in the subtler sense of tone-building and anecdotal observation.

What was attempted was a movie about societal fears all colliding and coming together. What was acheived is 'how not to write a non-standard screenplay', which is doubly painful when we are in need of better non-standard screenwriting.

As a cherry on top, this script uses the word 'nonplussed' in the solecistic way without gaining anything from the character using it wrong. The word means 'so confused or surprised as to not know what to do'. Pretentious idiots use it to mean 'not impressed' or 'not bothered'.

Edit: given the large fraction of user reviews condeming this film's casting due to the race or nation of the actors, I find it now necessary to preface my review by disagreeing with anyone advancing those claims. If anyone condemning it is doing so in good faith, I would urge them to consider the following:

1) Having studied the writer cover to cover, I can tell you that the overwhelming ethos of the writer's works is outward-looking/cosmopolitan, playful, humanistic, and above all skeptical of any received knowledge (such as "Shakespeare must be done this way and can't be done that way"). It is a well-established tradition that productions of Shakespeare (and other classical theater/opera) on stage and screen need not always emphasize historical accuracy, but that productions can pick different aesthetics and themes to explore in different productions, and pick times/places real or imagined in which to set a given production. This is well established both in England and around the world. It's generally agreed that today's sense of reimagining Shakespeare's work (and other classical theater/opera) is itself an act of respect and reinvigoration for Shakespeare as one of the most esteemed writers in history and part of our shared cultural heritage on this planet. The majority agrees that producing Shakespeare playfully is part of what keeps the works alive, and from descending into a renaissance faire or re-enactment of a single time and place with every production. I reject rejections of the universality of great cultural works, wherever they come from.

1a) Conversely there's nothing wrong with a given production emphasizing history and place among other themes. There's nothing wrong with either, and neither can do what the other does. But the writer himself hardly put historical or geographical accuracy above all else. There is no reason, outside of ideological horse blinders, to suppose that one or the other is forbidden.

2) Following from the above, it is generally agreed in England and around the world that actors can use their own natural accent to play their roles, and that the decision of characters' accents is more a function of the above creative decisions (the setting, themes to explore and emphasize, etc.) than anything else.

3) I have utter contempt for any notion that humanity has such essential differences that groups should or must be hermetically sealed off from each other, and I reject it regardless of what ethos is supposed to require these divisions, who says so, their sob story or motivations. Specific to acting, we are far better off accepting any casting for any substantially decent reason (whatever the end result), than thinking of ourselves as fundamentally categorized and those categories as hermetically sealed. There is not always a particular reason to cast with freedom in this way above other competing virtues, but the arts across enough time have an impeccable history of disproving the rantings of cranks, puritans, ideologues and pearl-clutchers. Furthermore, it's oil and water to compare casting classical works that have been produced thousands of times with casting works about people in living memory.

All that said, I'd like to review a movie in which the casting and acting in my estimation have problems for other reasons.

* * * * *

Breathtaking retro-formalism in Coen's version of MacBeth is marred by miscasting and patchy acting.

Studio formalism (informed by film from the western world in the 30s and 40s, German expressionism, and pinches of Bergman), yesteryear's 4:3 ratio, stark yet tasteful design and sets, and mid-contrast B&W all combine for a visually exhilarating version of MacBeth.

What might have been one of the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare on film fails to hold the throne due to some combination of acting and casting problems. It could be debated whether the problem is in the miscasting of Washington and McDormand as some have said; either Macbeth and Lady MacBeth cannot reasonably be characters in their sixties, or the pair aren't right for the roles themselves, or Shakespeare at all- whatever else we can say about these two incredible actors, it is fair to say that not every actor can play every role and style. Or, it could be debated whether there is no unity in the acting tones used across the performances.

There are a few acting flaws that I think are beyond debate, and they are intertwined. Most of the performances in Coen's MacBeth fail to unfold Shakespeare for the modern ear, failing to capture the thoughts and feelings within the text. I think it can also be said that the changes in MacBeth and Lady MacBeth, particularly the strangeness they both find themselves in and wind themselves up into, are not rendered in the performances. It pains me to conclude this on a project by one of my favorite directors, but I fear that the acting is more often that not too high-paced and general, and generalized acting is the absolute death of Shakespearean language on stage or screen. One could speculate further on the possible disconnects between what Shakespeare and Joel Coen each do well and why the combination did not bear fruit, but since I deeply admire both in their own right, I will leave off with a sigh.

There are movies that are deliberately unrealistic, or meandering, or defy story logic. Some fraction of those movies are unconventional masterpieces; either they are perfect in tone or aesthetic, or they get at something that was better said by eschewing realism or normal narrative. One might point to various movements in film where extending a middle finger to normative storytelling is integral to the film.

But why PT Anderson has extended the digitus impudicus at story logic and realism during Licorice Pizza, for the sake of these scenes and bits, is beyond my interest after watching it. Surely 70mm film and good acting with a PT Anderson label on it aren't enough reason for the willful anti-story he's told here.

By all means, not every film must respect narrative norms. But this combination of choices, flouting norms to serve these mediocre set pieces and nostalgia-masturbation.... I find wholly shruggable. Anderson's moved past the point where he or anyone else can tell him no.

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, but not in a "so bad it's good" way. This is a zero out of ten, but with two stars given for Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle on the soundtrack.

One from the Heart is essentially a lighting and camera exercise, with a script written to accomodate the exercises. And though the exercises were something of a success, the failure of the movie is less invigorating than some critics suggest.

Nothing worthwhile happens for the first fifteen minutes, and I felt no obligation to find out what doesn't happen for the next ninety.

The edits and shots of the opening scene to 2018's "remake" of Suspiria come from the JJ Abrams school of 'just any shot at all, and just keep cutting'. This is what Gordon Willis called 'dump truck directing'. When this dump-truck of shots and cuts is done with a budget by professionals, it's more of an abomination than when it's done by amateurs who can't help themselves. It creates an impression of 'quality'- we see the production values on screen. But no amount of money in the world can make this scene, as is, come off as anything but the worst of what comes out of the "prestige cable" mill. When a director and an editor take the budget and hard work of other filmmakers and make this what comes out of the other end of that process, it's nothing but a disgrace.

Ixcanul is a practically flawless work of naturalistic cinema. Much has been said about the cutural specifics of the film, but not enough about Ixcanul as an argument for the vitality of naturalism, in an era that has been blinkered with frivolous spectacle. The movie treats its audience as adults, never telling them what to think or feel. It's beautifully lit and composed, subtle, thorny and complex. If you can find nothing engaging here, it's hardly the fault of the film.

The narrative, character and dialogue in Mandy are stripped down to a kind of deliberate camp and pulp that could have been written by an incompetent storyteller, and then maximalist lighting and color grading has been applied with $6M. This is likely done on purpose, but any purpose in making it - beyond profit and yum-yums for those who hanker for retro-pulp and saturation sliders at 200% - any purpose beyond that fails to exist. As a reviewer I'm usually with the kind of believer that the arts should have something-somehow worthwhile to say, and I will shunt any discussion of art-for-arts-sake or deliberate camp as a kind of yuck vs yum discussion: I may find such art tasty or not, but any disagreement about that kind of work is a matter of pure taste. It's easy to see how a sketch parody of Mandy might instantly have more to say than Mandy itself does. Yes, cinematic freak-outs, midnight movies and deliberate camp can absolutely be great fun, but so can frozen yogurt, or your drug of choice for your midnight movie viewing- it's mere taste.

Looking at this and feeling around for ironic purpose is a tough sport, especially the kind of deliberate camp here, done by professionals with a budget measured in millions. It often reduces to watching the nearly-crippling decadent kinks that a director and his flock need to finish. Did they really need all that equipment? How precious. Sontag's Notes on "Camp" must come to mind here, and I'll finish my brief thoughts on this movie in communication with that essay. I might differ from Sontag on deliberate camp; to me, deliberate camp can indeed have as its purpose a kind of ironic or farcical statement. That said, Mandy certainly has the ready-made characters and the style-over-substance of camp. But just as one can differentiate naive camp from deliberate camp, one can differentiate between deliberate camp as 'mere taste and detatchment for dandies', versus deliberate camp as 'dethroning and detatchment '. Foppery and insurrection don't overlap much. With Mandy's mock-dramatics yet responsible artistry and too-quality cinematography, it must be mere taste. Mandy is a quality version of what you wanted if you wanted more vaporwave/oversaturation/formal lighting, 80's pulp, Nic Cage, metal, fantasy, action, horror and thriller. It's stripped of anything to straightforwardly say or anything to ironically feel. It's camp as flavor. Don't confuse that with even the simplest things camp can do in dethroning seriousness.

Having seen the film twice, I'm amazed by the cinematography. One would be hard put to find a single bad shot in the film, and the editing is unobtrusive. I found the long, slow, contemplative nature of much of the movie to be very fitting, and even exhilarating in the sense that it wasn't rapid-cutting superhero trash.

Unfortunately, there are also a few flaws. The narrative has some carelessly convenient jump-aheads, and some plot holes or story logic problems. At this point this is a consistent pattern with Denis Villeneuve- staggering visuals and narrative stumbles. Second, the sound design has been compromised by a BRRRONNNGG noise that plays through quite a few scenes and feels like a cheap manipulation.

For those of you wondering about the sacrilegious content of this film, in my estimation this film is ultimately critical of humanity as a whole (and therefore all religion) and not specifically critical of the Abrahamic religions, although it uses an often profane and shocking allegory about humanity's corrupt misinterpretation of the Old and New Testaments to get at its critiques of humanity.

That said, not only am I going to write a 8/10 review of a movie that everyone seems to 10/10 LOVE or 1/10 HATE, but I'm also going to talk about this contriversial ironic allegory without using spoiler-examples to explain my points. I must love down-votes.

Mother! Is, without doubt, the most aggressive movie that Aronofsky has written and directed. Though many of his movies have either profane content or intellectual challenges, this one is shocking for people of the Abrahamic religions en masse, and it has a layered intellectual challenge to it.

The first challenge, for anyone seeing the movie without prior knowledge, is "what the hell am I watching?". Neither absurd/surreal movies, nor allegorical ones usually come with A-list stars and a name director, let alone anything this cruel and grotesque. And here I will spread the blame for people's mid-movie anger on two causes: 1) The film was sold as a horror movie in some quarters, which is the latest example of a battle that's been raging between filmmakers and suits for decades: don't misrepresent a movie in marketing for short-term opening weekend gain and long-term bad word of mouth. Nearly anyone who went to this movie in order to get a horror-genre fix left infuriated. 2) The fact that American audiences react with indignant cries of "pretentious crap!" when they don't immediately understand a movie can be blamed on both individual closed-mindedness and insecurity, AND on Hollywood conditioning audiences to expect easily-understood wish-fulfillment. You don't have to search real far to find the user reviews reacting to all of this. (Tangentially, we need more articles saying "Hey, *none* of us immediately understand challenging movies, and we're not supposed to understand them immediately, so would you please stop being mad and insecure about it?")

That said, allegory itself has been derided for being a narrative form with a low ceiling: either the allegorical correspondences and analogies are off, or the didactic intent is for the unsubtle browbeating of the unsophisticated. I'm not sure that I can blame viewers for reacting to the allegory as a form, or this one as heavy-handed, though I think the movie rises above these problems. Here is where the second layer of intellectual challenge happens in mother!, and where it is most diabolical: 1) allegory dates as far back in the Abrahamic religions as you care to go, and allegorical interpretation (sometimes forced) has been practiced by scholars in those religions for centuries. Therefore allegory is a fitting form to use to criticize humanity's willful misinterpretations. 2) The movie's allegory is chock-full of challenging (or if you please, blasphemous) ironies that amount to something akin to a 21st century Gnosticism. 3) The allegory here is NOT in a point-for-point correspondence, but asks the audience to abstract a bit since there are several analogies running in parallel here, and they interact in a fairly unstable Moby Dick kind of way (sometimes the whale is just a whale). Combine these three things with the profane content of the film and you have a work that is profane in the way that all great satire must be, and in the way that may prevent it from being received more comprehendingly. However, I think it should be received in this way: the target of attack here is human interpretation; the attack is on what kinds of behavior humanity will excuse by willfully interpreting their own religion until they get what they want the answer to be. This mother ultimately objects and the audience like the humans in the movie say "But mom.... dad said I could!".

As for the other filmmaking elements beside the narrative, they are flawless.

I'm grading mother! At 8/10, with the main flaws being that the didactic side is (necessarily) heavy-handed, and that the movie probably wouldn't wouldn't sustain more than two viewings worth of interest.

A few opinions on how to think about big budget film/TV.

Here's what a huge budget can get you: 1) Production value: Great work on design, camera/lighting, editing, FX, VFX, sound and music; competent-to-good acting, writers who know story structure, and who can make a plotboiler. "What's gonna happen next?!?" I have deep respect for the filmmakers in these fields, but with talented people, these results are generally reproducible at will. The budget for Westworld is $100M before advertising for 10 hours of content (with plenty of repetition of locations and even shots). 1a) Good looking people naked, some of them famous. 1b) A bunch of squibs and muzzle flashes and bashed-in heads and so on. 2) All of the above plus marketing/PR which will give you an instant fan base. I doubt it will give a long-lasting one.

Here's what a huge budget will not get you: 1) a sci-fi trope newer than "are these things people?" which traces back to the 1930's at least, and has been done in too many movies/TV to count, and could use a rest for a decade or more. 2) new ideas, new points of view on thoughts, emotions, insights; wisdom. Westworld has a few, but not enough, and it's mostly done in dialogue and nowhere else. 3) audience engagement that goes beyond plotboiling. Plotboiling gives you a buncha surprises (no spoilerz!!!) and no lasting value. 4) any of the above well-expressed through picture, design, sound, etc.

Most of the actual scene-by-scene writing is on a level with an afterschool special from back in the day: moralizing without complexity, and with a bunch of fan service to go with it. Although there are not many people vocally disagreeing with the show, those who are complain about pretension and shallowness. I agree. Since I'm loathe to accuse shows of being pretentious, let me specify: here we have sophomoric and hackneyed philosophizing about human nature/personhood coupled with quotations from classic literature and music (plus sex, violence, plotboiling and moralizing). If you can't come close to Blade Runner or work a new angle that works, don't do it.

I will disagree on complaints about the acting: I think any imagined problems here are results of the ultimate shallowness of the show, plus the fact that those who play host bots are required to play a person/thing that is sometimes rigidly following their programming, and sometimes not. I think they are doing quite well there, and the deficits are inherent to the show.

If only the show disobediently, willfully and intelligently went away from the 'program' the way those hosts do.

Across twenty-four five minute episodes (each being one scene), First Dates with Toby Harris is consistently pitch-perfect, subtle and raw by the moment, amusing without being farcical, and well-balanced between the foibles of the main character and others. The variety across the episodes is satisfying.

The premise (a sad sack's first-date history) has been done in many ways, usually poorly, by other programs. Here it catches fire.

Genre-wise you might call this character comedy or social satire, since it's the sort of progress-free, learning-free repetition of human folly that is akin to Curb Your Enthusiasm, albeit in gentler and more realistic form. Points here for working in a perfectly natural genre that is severely under-used.

This is a moving chronicle of a semi-fictionalized White House butler as seen through the civil rights movement. It has a fantastic montage (or maybe more like a series of intercut scenes) of the black staff at the White House and the Freedom Riders in Alabama. It was one of the more amazing intercut sequences I've seen. I teared up twice during this movie. Whitaker is great.

This movie is also an over-the-top melodrama. It is so melodramatic that, even given the subject matter, I'm calling it melodramatic.

So I think a 6 is about right.

The movie is a biopic/history series of events, with a few threads tying it together. But given the subject matter, I can't really fault it for not having a more traditional structure or conventional dramatic arc.

The World's End doesn't know if it's an ensemble R-rated comedy, a middle-age crisis movie or an action sci fi dystopia movie.....

and you will be glad it doesn't. The movies sets out to create a weird blend of genres and succeeds.

Some of the disagreement in the user reviews can be explained by noticing that the movie is something of a satire or farce, and what it does well does not require us to take the characters, tone or plot seriously. It uses its monstrous hybrid of genres and tones to unseriously bat around a few serious ideas. This rubs some people the wrong way. Too bad for them, really.

For those of you who are considering seeing this movie, a few thoughts:

From my point of view, the user-reviewers who didn't like it missed out on the subtleties and complexities of character and tone. A movie's not obliged to follow the same form as most, or tell a story we've heard before.

There's odd, dry humor that percolates through it, as you might expect from the Coen brothers, but this is their more serious side.

Unlike many of their other movies, this has a more sincere warmth to go with the darkness, the oddness, and the intelligence.

It's a rich, sad, dark winter's tale. It's the kind of stiff drink of storytelling that would not be out of place in the Bible or Gilgamesh or other classic literature. It's about a man stuck in a time and place and manner of being, as he hits up against the limits of what is possible for him, and often is his own worst enemy.

See this when you are in the mood for more nutritious entertainment, and feel free to give yourself just enough distance from the main character that you can have a good look at what makes him human.

The music is great, and it's all live performances.

Short version: Upstream Color is a good-but-flawed, puzzling, poetical, unusual movie. It's not easy to watch or digest, but will give you plenty to think and feel.

Users have noted how flawed this movie is while (unkindly- cruelly even) rating it low. Some very good critics (Zacharek among them) have given it lukewarm reviews. There is some truth to what they say. It is hard to follow, artsy-fartsy, and pretentious (as in: intellectual ambition failed, as separate from artsy-fartsiness). How severely to penalize an American movie in 2013 for these three flaws is an open question. For me, not one of these flaws, or all of them together, is as ugly as any one of the flaws we get most often in our movies, whether big-budget or indie or in between. It's not based on a franchise, it's not a vehicle for celebrities, it's not a recycled-story excuse for special effects or tear-jerking, it's not quirky and too cute by half, there's no particular exploitation of sex or violence, and the relatively happy ending is probably too troubling (in my interpretation) to call tacked-on, facile or restorative.

Upstream Color is a good, unusual movie with a lot of unusual flaws. Piecing the story together takes place across the entire movie. The characters are the sort of two-dimensional types that are necessary for an allegory, especially one that's puzzling, lyrical, metaphorical and maybe deliberately inscrutable. you might love this movie. You might hate it. You will not have the same old movie experience.

Before Midnight is the third of three movies, shot about a decade apart each, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as lovers with a very push-pull dynamic. It's not necessary to see the first two movies to follow Before Midnight. The movie features long takes (sometimes not cutting for 10 minutes at a time) the story takes place over a day, and dialogue and naturalistic acting are paramount. There's a complexity to their characters and relationship that refuses to fully romanticize or demonize them. It's something of a realist romance in (deliberate) contrast the beautiful settings. Careful viewers will notice a handful of ironies that ground the romance in reality. I won't give examples here, or go into the details that keep me from giving this a 9 or 10 as many critics do. The movie is the proverbial breath of fresh air, though. I'd say that the main weakness of the movie stems from its strengths, in that when artists set out to make something so true to human nature (as opposed to fluffier rom coms or Nicholas Sparks movies) it's easy to hear the (few) false notes that are played. There are very few; and unless you're jonesing for a mere-nonsense 'entertainment' movie, this movie should appeal to practically anyone.

Not at all bad, but not great or memorable. Given her talents and experience, it seems that Bell might have done better with her first feature if she'd made a sketch-driven comedy, and saved a comedy with a serious side for a later outing. As it is, there aren't enough of the funny bits, while more or less everything about the serious side falls flat.

The dramatic elements, the depth of the character and writing, the framing and composition, the social satire; they're all pretty slight. The tone shifts back and forth between a sort of pure-laughs comedy (Anchorman etc) and a serious comedy or satire (some Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach etc). The clash inherent in this tone shift undercuts the serious side rather forcefully. If that weren't enough, the serious elements in themselves are pretty sophomoric.

However, it is enjoyable and warm-hearted, and Bell shows some chance of a better outing in the future

All is Lost is a predominantly realistic movie about a lone sailor's struggle to stay alive on the Indian Ocean across multiple days, and through very plausible moments of good and bad luck. It is a far more unique foray into what a movie can do than most of us have seen in a long time. It's an antidote to both fluffy sentimentality and heartless, mindless effects movies. This is a one-character movie where we know very little about that one character's life on land, just enough to capture our imagination and curiosity as to who he is when he's not fighting for his life on a 39' sailboat, alone at sea, in a tempest. The metaphoric nature of those last phrases are brought out in the movie subtly enough for us to carry them with us through the movie, and never in a heavy-handed or sophomoric manner. Furthermore, the man's a good sailor but not a great one, which lends to both the realism and the subtle and assured storytelling virtues of the movie. Lastly, it's also one of the few movies where if you like the trailer, you will certainly like the movie.

In an American film industry of recycled ideas, sequels and nostalgic masturbation over things men liked as kids (comic book movies, toy movies, etc), I have to give this a 7 for its importance, its freshness and its premise of looking at the man's life from several angles in 20-24 hours. Where I have to lower it to 7: some of the acting is mediocre at best, but that may very well stem from the main problem. That problem is the writing, which is sophomoric in the irony with which it portrays everything the main character does that day. Everything is seen through a lens of "but he dies later!" in a forced or melodramatic way, such that it's hard to see the story as a true portrait.

What promised well from the early seasons has become, more seasons than not, a safe and homogenized sketch comedy. It's the McDonalds of TV sketch that has pushed worthier competitors out of the way for years.

Performers and writers are basically encouraged to ruin sketches with one-note repetition/dragged-out premises, breaking character (essentially on purpose) and smug self-satisfaction... and all of this in the least interesting way possible. What could have been an American version of the avante-garde sketch-breaking started with Monty Python has instead evolved into the pettiest of petty irony "lol I'm in a sketch" onanism; professional high school pep assembly sketches.

The teleprompter-life-support terrible acting that has plagued the show since the 80's or so deserves its own separate paragraph.

The next part may be tough to talk about in a year as politically polarizing and maddening as 2016 is, but I'm nothing if not willfully oblivious: The sketch and satire has picked a direction instead of bravely throwing punches at all valid targets. However, due to the nature of most kinds of satire, from the Ancient Greeks onward, this political directionality itself is forgivable, even if the occasional punch in the other direction would be more intellectually honest. But far, far worse is that instead of an open-minded, sharp, liberal satire, it has chosen, especially in the last 15 years or so, a sophomore-level, party-line Democrat 'satire'. So instead of leading in their own particular apologize-to-no-one way that satirists should do (and as South Park does and The Daily Show and Colbert Report almost always did- they are not always right, but they are always satirists), they follow the party line.

Instead of the 2/10 that I'm giving for the occasional good sketch, would you find it reasonable to give a 1/10 to a show that has for 40 years: had essentially its pick of the litter on writers and performers; had a decent budget; has cornered the market (merely by being first to market) on the national attention that no other show of its kind has come close to rivaling; and for all that has given us a batting average of good/rewatchable sketches somewhere around the 5% range?

A War (Krigen) is a realistic drama about a Danish commander in Afghanistan, his unit, and his family back home, focusing on several key decisions that the commander must make, both in Afghanistan and back home in Denmark. Using naturalistic lighting, unobtrusive straight cuts, and a mix of stationary camera and hand-held, A War examines the moral complexities of asymmetric warfare and military justice. There are no easy answers, but there are spectacular natural performances from all of its cast. The sum total of these parts is an engrossing and seamless minimalistic movie, and another success from Tobias Lindholm. The Oscar nomination for A War is well-merited.

Karen Gillan's writing/directing debut is an absurd dark comedy about a b-movie horror actress who can't get roles anymore and resorts to horror conventions to make a few dollars from appearances and autographs... and so on. The grotesquerie on all sides, the humor, and the perfect tone of the short all indicate that greater things may be to come from Gillan as a writer/director/actress.

The framing, horror lighting, restrained hand-held camera, and assured shot sequences prove that Gillan and cinematographer Zach Voytas partnered well. The combination of that partnership with Gillan's mature writing style and her acting prowess make Conventional far more than a small-channel youtube find. It's a hidden gem and a great dark comedy short.