Author Archives: sgliput

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

02 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem inspired by a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account that posts obscure English vocabulary. I liked this post on déjà vu and its variants, like déjà entendu (“the feeling you’ve heard something before”), so I used it for Hollywood’s incessant habit of churning out remakes and reboots.)

An alien far out in space was lounging in his ship,
Content to intercept the many signals from the earth.
He loved the so-called “movies” on his decades-spanning trip,
And though the words were Greek to him, he theorized their worth.

The stories held his fancy, stoking joy and shock and awe,
For nothing from his planet was original like these.
But gradually he noticed creativity withdraw,
With déjà vu and entendu in cyclical reprise.

“Now wait a zeptosecond,” he protested to his screen.
“The earthlings may be different, but I’ve seen this tale before.
That killer in the mask is one I’ve definitely seen.
That RoboCop got two at least; that star who’s born got four.

“That ship that’s flipped and upside down, that planet full of apes,
That ‘alien’ that made me laugh at how wrong humans are,
And all these superheroes with their uniforms and capes;
That spider guy especially must be quite popular.

“I fear that human beings must have reached their mental limit
If they’ve taken to recycling what dazzled in the past.
For any globe, there’s only so much innovation in it.
Perhaps I’ll find some younger planet’s budding telecast.”
______________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

It’s difficult to appraise Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man films in retrospect the same as when they first came out. Five years after Spider-Man 3 seemed too soon for a reboot (never mind that Tom Holland’s Spidey would come just two years after Andrew Garfield’s second film), and Andrew Garfield was a largely unknown actor inevitably compared with the beloved Tobey Maguire. (All three Maguire films are beloved in my house anyway.) Now that No Way Home has been able to play on our short-term nostalgia for Garfield’s films, it’s hard to look at them the same way, but I’ll try to appraise them fairly since I did rewatch them in preparation for No Way Home.

The first Amazing Spider-Man is not a bad film, just a largely forgettable one that treads some of the same ground that the original Spider-Man did better. (It’s no wonder Holland’s films decided to forgo the origin setup entirely.) Garfield’s Peter Parker is a loner geek who still displays a backbone, pining for high school overachiever Gwen Stacy (the always lovely Emma Stone) and bristling at the guidance of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field). I still wish that a fourth Maguire Spider-Man film could have turned the old Dr. Curt Connors (Dylan Baker) into the villainous Lizard since there would have been more history with his character, but Rhys Ifans is serviceable in the role here, sort of a generic alpha predator bent on “curing” humanity.

The Amazing Spider-Man feels like a film that’s desperately trying to set itself apart from its predecessor, including a more realistic tone and lots of peripheral subplots around the all-too-familiar ingredients of the Spider-Man origin story. What happened with Peter’s disappearing parents? What’s up with the unseen Norman Osborne supposedly on his deathbed? Who’s that man in the shadows? It all feels like it should be more interesting, but it comes off as rather prosaic and extraneous. In lieu of an MJ, perhaps the best new addition is Peter and Gwen’s budding romance in the shadow of her stern policeman father (Denis Leary), who proves to Peter how dangerous the hero gig is for those around him. The couple’s awkward banter feels realistic for a pair of high-school students, though it also highlights that the script is generally rather weak on dialogue.

As I said before, The Amazing Spider-Man is a decent superhero film with good performances, an excellent James Horner score, an instantly classic Stan Lee cameo, and the expected impressive, high-flying visuals; it simply pales in comparison with Sam Raimi’s films, as well as the MCU ones. I hate to label Garfield as third-best Spider-Man when his future outings have improved his character and I’ve come to really like him as an actor. This first film simply shows that he and Emma Stone had a bright career ahead of them, considering they were both nominated for Oscars just a few years later. Every Spidey has to start somewhere.

Best line: (Uncle Ben’s voicemail) “If anyone’s destined for greatness, it’s you, son. You owe the world your gifts. You just have to figure out how to use them and know that wherever they take you, we’ll always be here. So, come on home, Peter. You’re my hero… and I love you!”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2022 S.G. Liput
763 Followers and Counting

VC Pick: Three Men and a Baby (1987)

01 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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(For Day 1 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to write a prose poem that is “a story about the body.” While prose poems are an oxymoron and not my cup of tea, I did my best with a focus on a baby’s small body being attended by a frenzied father.)

It was a little body that lay on the changing table, arms flailing, legs kicking, voice attuned to a jarring key to banish all repose. Above the infant, a man scrambled, spurred by the cacophony before him to end it by means he had yet to learn. Forced by need and desire for quiet, he seized the duty he once believed was meant for women, and learn he did. His tools were diaper, powder, wipe, and pin. “I wish I could remember,” he said with hollow chuckle, “what my folks did when I was little like you.” But with every inch and pound his own body had grown, he had forgotten, just as the child he aided now would forget the man tending her. Like a sullied diaper tossed as quickly as it had fulfilled its purpose, the baby’s short memory would drop away. But what the baby had no need of, the man would keep, echoes irksome but dear, long after that body had ceased to be so little.
_____________________________________

MPA rating:  PG (definitely a PG-13 by today’s standards)

It’s been far too long since I reviewed a film suggested by my dear Viewing Companion (VC), whose recommendations have fallen by the wayside amid Blindspots and new releases, so this one is way overdue. Before this, I was only familiar with the 1987 hit Three Men and a Baby via the persistent urban legend that a ghost boy can be glimpsed in a window in one scene. That theory has been explained as just a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson, but the dark legend has overshadowed a largely likable film about three men forced to grapple with responsibility as impromptu fathers.

Directed by Leonard Nimoy of all people, Three Men and a Baby’s title trio are Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson, all at the height of their ‘80s careers and playing hedonistic bachelors sharing a large New York apartment. Soon, little baby Mary is dropped off at their doorstep, the product of a tryst Danson’s character had in London, and, due to his absence for a movie role, the other two are forced to care for her. There’s a further misunderstanding involving drugs to add some threat to the plot, but the real story is the transformation of the main three, who are not particularly likable at first but gradually grow into their roles as adoptive parents.

With how often the idea has been recycled in film and television, there must be implicit humor at the sight of inexperienced people scrambling in the face of childcare. Like the cross-dressing of Some Like It Hot and others, I don’t really get what is inherently funny about the concept, but it can be done well still. Baby Boom is my favorite such film, but Three Men and a Baby has its moments as the three men grow fond of their charge, whose cuteness is undeniable. There are also moments that I highly doubt would fly in a modern semi-family film, such as full infant nudity during diaper changing, but I suppose it’s just proof that times change. It was interesting to see Nancy Travis of Last Man Standing in a small role as the baby’s mother and feigning a British accent. While the lasting popularity of Three Men and a Baby (a Disney+ remake is in the works) is likely due to its stars rather than the film itself, it’s a pleasant slice of ‘80s entertainment to give young people an idea of what their parents went through.

Best line: (Michael, played by Guttenberg, trying to sing Mary to sleep) “Hush little baby, don’t you cry. When Peter gets home, I’m gonna punch him in the eye.”

Rank:  Honorable Mention

© 2022 S.G. Liput
763 Followers and Counting

NaPoWriMo 2022 Begins!

31 Thursday Mar 2022

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Another year gone, and we have arrived back at poetry-lovers’ favorite month. That’s right; April is upon us and so is National/Global Poetry Writing Month (or NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo for short). It’s mind-blowing to me that this is my seventh year participating in this challenge, since 2016. It has always been a great opportunity to stretch my creativity and catch up on my backlog of films to review, which is bigger than ever with my slow output of late.

Obviously, a lot has happened in the world over the last year, but that’s especially true in my own life, where I finally finished with college and secured stable employment. Now that I don’t have those worries, I would expect to have more time for writing, but other activities and obligations have just filled that time gap (including a bigger project I have in the works).

Nothing is certain, but I’m hoping that I can keep up with the one-poem-a-day pace that makes April such lyrical fun, even if it might mean shorter film reviews. I plan to follow the daily prompts at the NaPoWriMo website, and I encourage anyone interested out there to do the same. Here’s looking forward to a great month of poetry!

Wolfwalkers (2020)

26 Saturday Mar 2022

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Who knows what mystery occurs
Within the woods, what secret stirs
Outside the realm of man’s mundane
Within the cryptic and arcane
Dimension far from mine and yours?

To know that it exists might be
Enough to bring anxiety,
To paint this aberrant unknown
As one more threat to be o’erthrown,
A cause for endless enmity.

And so it stays the stuff of tales,
In deepest wood and virgin trails,
A whisper easy to ignore,
That men may not endure one more
Concern to tip their tender scales.
_____________________

MPA rating:  PG

I had wanted to post this review for St. Patrick’s Day due to the Celtic roots of a film set in Ireland, but time got away from me. Still, I’m due to get back into writing mode since National Poetry Writing Month is right around the corner. I had been eagerly awaiting the next film from Tomm Moore and the Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, but I was disappointed that Apple TV+ got exclusive streaming rights to it. It wasn’t until I finally bit the bullet and subscribed to yet another streaming service (thanks, CODA and Finch, for changing my mind) that I was able to see Wolfwalkers. Thankfully, it was exactly what I wanted it to be, a warm and colorful flight of Irish fantasy that may well be my favorite entry from Cartoon Saloon.

Set in Kilkenny in 1650, Wolfwalkers draws on Celtic mythology, like The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea before it, specifically the notion of forest-dwelling werewolf-like folk who become actual wolves while their human bodies are sleeping. Young Robyn Goodfellowe (Honor Kneafsey) is an English girl brought to Ireland by her father Bill (Sean Bean), a hunter commissioned by the dictatorial Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) to clear the nearby woods of all wolves. Not welcomed by the Irish children and reluctant to work as a maid, she desperately tries to help her father, eventually ending up alone in the forest. After a fateful encounter with a Wolfwalker named Mebh (Eva Whittaker), Robyn finds she’s become a Wolfwalker herself and must find a way to save her newfound friend from her own father.

Wolfwalkers has the same distinction I mentioned of The Mitchells vs. the Machines:  so many elements of its plot have been seen and done many times before, yet it uses these well-worn tropes so well that it exceeds the sum of its parts. We have the concerned and controlling father figure of The Little Mermaid, the prejudiced nobleman villain of Pocahontas (who even resembles Ratcliffe), the conflict of a supposed enemy turning out to be friendly from How to Train Your Dragon, the look-through-their-eyes transformation of Brother Bear, and I could go on. While I personally love all of these movies too, those who don’t like recycled ideas could easily label Wolfwalkers derivative. Yet the way the story unfolds is so much better than the cut-and-paste formula it might have been. The conflict goes beyond human and wolf, extending to the drudgery of dirty city life compared with the freedom of nature’s communion, and it’s notable that Robyn’s father is kept sympathetic and shown to be similarly hemmed in by the weight of responsibility and expectations. (Some unfortunate religious justification from the villain makes it a church vs. magic hostility too, though there’s also a line connecting the Wolfwalkers to St. Patrick.)

One aspect that certainly helps the film stand out is Cartoon Saloon’s ever-gorgeous animation influenced by illuminated manuscripts, which uses its symmetrical style to full effect in contrasting the dark, angular town of Kilkenny with the lush, painterly backgrounds of the forest. It’s an intoxicating style of picture-book illustration come to fluid life, and it still warms my heart that one lone Western studio is keeping the spirit of 2D animation alive, no matter how much time and effort it takes. In addition, it seems inevitable that I would love a film with a montage set to an Aurora song, the fitting and enchanting “Running with the Wolves.”

While I also loved The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea and admired The Breadwinner, Wolfwalkers feels like Cartoon Saloon’s most complete and satisfying film yet (with a 99% Rotten Tomatoes score to back it up), though I am still partial to Song of the Sea too. It well could have won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in one of Pixar’s off years, but Soul proved too strong a contender. Even so, Wolfwalkers is an animated delight that feeds my inner fondness for all things Celtic and distinguishes itself from similar stories with exceptional artistry and a winning blend of friendship and myth.

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
759 Followers and Counting

Cyrano (2021)

11 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by in Movies, Music, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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I glance at you like Moses gazing toward the promised land,
His sight the only starving sense to perish satisfied.
No such content will compensate my ears, my lips, my hand,
For God has deemed to make the gulf between us two too wide.

My covert dreams alone can see you near me, arm in arm,
The scorn of cruel reality that jostles me awake.
I cultivate my nobler traits, my eloquence and charm,
Yet never do they seem enough for your transcendent sake.

I spy so many all around, in stories and in song,
Who find their love without the threat of mockery or laughter.
I’d whisper every secret of this lonely love lifelong
If only I lived not in fear of what might follow after.
___________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

It’s so easy to associate musicals with Broadway since Hollywood usually only seems interested in adapting musicals into film if they have a reliable following that promises a decent box office. I can understand that instinct; no one wants to take a risk for a flop, especially when musicals are considered more effort with extra talents of singing or dancing required of their cast. Yet there are a host of excellent musicals out there that have never made it to Broadway, like Tick, Tick… Boom! or Frank Wildhorn’s The Count of Monte Cristo. I may never have heard of Erica Schmidt’s Cyrano stage production if not for this film adaptation, which only deepens my love of musical cinema and my desire for more like it.

Many things fell into place for the creation of this film based on a musical play based on Edmond Rostand’s classic play Cyrano de Bergerac, the original catfishing story. Schmidt’s husband Peter Dinklage played the title role on stage, along with Haley Bennett as Roxanne, and Bennett’s involvement no doubt helped convince her partner Joe Wright of Atonement and Darkest Hour to take up directing the film version. Both Dinklage and Bennett reprise their stage roles and prove how well-cast they were from the beginning, joined by Kelvin Harrison, Jr., as Christian, the soldier who loves Roxanne and is aided by the eloquent Cyrano to woo her via love letters. Instead of the traditional abnormality of Cyrano’s large nose explaining his self-loathing and hesitance to pursue his love for Roxanne, Dinklage’s short stature is used instead, yet there are only a few direct references to his height. Indeed, the songs seem to be written so that any uncommon or “ugly” physical quality could take the place of Cyrano’s nose, even down to the series of taunts he lists for himself while dueling.

Musicals come in many different forms, and Cyrano is certainly not the typical Broadway product with big showstoppers. The choreography is decent but never vies for any kind of wow factor, and some of the lyrics are less than inspired in terms of rhyme and complexity, particularly a rather drab villain song for Ben Mendelsohn. Yet the songs, provided by rock band The National, still work on a more subtle level, with layers of sensitive piano and violin seamlessly folding the musical numbers into the score. Dinklage may not have a wide range, but his baritone complements his ever-expressive face, while Bennett gets more musical highs in songs like “Every Letter” and “I Need More.” I think “Every Letter” is my favorite, achieving its goal of making the sadly outdated act of letter-writing sensual with its beautiful staging of fluttering pages falling around the three overlapping singers. I’ve listened to the soundtrack quite a bit lately, and my love and appreciation for the songs have only grown with time.

It must be said that Dinklage absolutely deserved a Best Actor nomination, and the Academy’s ignoring of him is probably the worst snub since Amy Adams was passed over for Arrival. His eyes alone convey Cyrano’s latent heartache as he pines for Roxanne, especially when he is so close to her as a friend. Heck, the film could have deserved multiple nominations – Best Actress for Bennett, Cinematography, Score, Original Song for “Every Letter” – instead of just the one nod for Costume Design. Yet despite an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’ve seen many articles labeling Cyrano a “failed musical” or a flop, which may be true in a purely box office sense but certainly not for the film’s quality. I don’t know what the moviegoing public wants in a musical, but their apathy toward recent movie musicals breaks my heart.

Though I may just be easier to please, I found Cyrano to be a perfect mixture of sincere and superb for any fan of tragic romance, elevated further by Wright’s elegant direction and a palpable fondness for the written word that rivals Violet Evergarden. To be honest, Steve Martin’s Roxanne was my previous touchpoint for Cyrano before this and sort of spoiled me with a happier ending than the source material had, but this Cyrano is the new gold standard for me, an exquisite film and a personal one for any sufferer of unrequited love.

Best line: (Roxanne, singing) “What is it you’re so afraid of losing?”
(Cyrano, singing) “That I might lose everything if I lose the pain.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
759 Followers and Counting

Ultimate Decades Blogathon 2022: The Pianist (2002) by Rhyme and Reason

03 Thursday Mar 2022

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It feels good to get back to blogathons! Check out my poem and review for The Pianist, my contribution to the Ultimate Decades Blogathon, focusing on films from years ending in 2 and hosted by Drew’s Movie Reviews and Kim of Tranquil Dreams. And take a look at all the other reviews as well. There are plenty of great films from ‘2 years.

Drew's avatarDrew's Movie Reviews

Hello, friends!

We’re midway through the second week of this year’s Ultimate Decades Blogathon. Today’s entry is also the final participant before Kim and I wrap up the blogathon to close out the week. And our last participant is one of the most unique film bloggers I know: SG from Rhyme and Reason. I describe his blog as unique because he is the only blogger I know who combines his passion for poetry with his love of film. If you aren’t familiar, you can see what I mean below. Follow his site to keep up with all of SG’s poetic musings. Today, SG reviews 2002’s war film The Pianist.

What would you do were you hunted and hated?
What if your value were hotly debated?
What could you share with the Cain to your Abel
To sway them to see you as more than a label?

What if…

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Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

27 Sunday Feb 2022

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Let history judge me for what I have done.
Let God alone bless or condemn.
Was I one who lived by the plow or the gun?
Was I part of us or of them?

Don’t ask me my politics, views, or beliefs.
Don’t paint me in black or in white.
Don’t ask if I’m proud for another man’s griefs.
Don’t classify me wrong or right.

I did what I did, though I still question how.
Was I more a tool or a sinner?
Perhaps I indeed am less holy than thou,
But no one can claim to be winner.
_______________________

MPA rating:  R (for some gun violence and frequent profanity)

While everyone else is focusing on this year’s fast-approaching Oscar ceremony, I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t reviewed a single one of last year’s Best Picture nominees. While I’ve liked all of the ones I’ve seen, the one that most surprised me was Judas and the Black Messiah, a hard-hitting biopic of both Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and the man who betrayed him to the FBI.

The Black Panthers are a group that is hard to label definitively, but owing to my schooling, I always viewed them as little more than a terrorist group, born of the same righteous indignation at prejudice as Martin Luther King, Jr., but choosing the path of violence instead.  FBI Special Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) voices a similar rationale, comparing the Panthers to the KKK as he tries to convince undercover informant Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) to continue his infiltration of the Black Panthers, led in Chicago by the fiery Fred Hampton (Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya). Even after the film, I still think Mitchell had a point, but that doesn’t mean the government opposing the Panthers was any more in the right. It’s so easy to paint the conflicts of history in broad strokes of simple heroics and villainy when the truth is much more complex.

While Judas and the Black Messiah does its job in exploring a piece of American history I never knew, it goes above and beyond in presenting this tragic, difficult story with impressive nuance. In his impassioned speeches, Kaluuya’s Hampton extols action and revolution with persuasive zeal but loses me when he gets to killing “pigs.” Based on that, it’s no wonder he was labeled a threat, yet he later balks when O’Neal presents a plan to blow up city hall, trying to catch Hampton in the act of violence. The FBI’s narrative of Hampton as a danger couldn’t reconcile facts like how the Black Panthers fed daily breakfast to the black children of Chicago or how his Rainbow Coalition united disparate gangs and organizations in cooperation, even one sporting a Confederate flag. These were just lumped into his reputation of subversion, with no consideration of their positive impacts. My political opinions are a far cry from Hampton’s anti-capitalist philosophy, but I can certainly recognize that the government’s response to such revolutionaries only served to justify their grievances.

And the film doesn’t shy away from this dichotomy of good and evil actions. In a series of back-and-forth acts of violence, one Panthers member is shown killing a cop in cold blood before being killed himself. Yet soon after, Hampton speaks with the killer’s mother, who bemoans that her dear son, a well-behaved seven-year-old in her memory, will only be remembered by society as a murderer. “He did that. He did that,” she says, “but that ain’t all he did.” Paired with that violent scene is one of my new favorite scenes of poetry in film, wherein Hampton’s pregnant girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback, who deserved an Oscar nom herself) reads her own verses to him, expressing the apprehension of bringing a new life into such a dangerous, conflicted world.

With such a nuanced screenplay, the acting had to be on point, and indeed it is. Kaluuya and Stanfield especially act the heck out of their respective roles, bringing to life Hampton’s intensity and O’Neal’s desperate uncertainty. I can understand Kaluuya winning out, since they were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but I probably would have preferred Stanfield, even if he is the “bad guy” of the story.

As he helps and gets to know Hampton and the Panthers, O’Neal clearly sympathizes at times but is too easily manipulated by self-interest to take the stand others around him do, preferring to do as he’s told rather than figure out what’s right for himself. The Biblical title is actually quite fitting, with the FBI standing in for the Pharisees wanting a concerning upstart out of the picture and using a weak-willed follower to make it happen, complete with further parallels.

As with so many Oscar-caliber films with that overly common R rating, the frequent profanity is the worst part of the movie for me. It might add authenticity and no one else may share this peeve of mine, but I still insist that the film would be better and more watchable without all the obscenities flying. Yet by the end, I was able to look past the language and the apparent political and racial divide between me and the film’s subject and recognize that Judas and the Black Messiah is a great film, with outstanding actors bringing to light a historical tragedy through a personal lens, with themes of action vs passivity and how people are remembered. Nuance is sorely lacking in the world these days, just as it was back then, but it’s certainly welcome when looking back at the past.

Best line:
(Deborah, reading her poem to Fred)
“We scream and we shout and we live by this anthem…
But is power to the people really worth the ransom?
Because that’s what a mother does –
Gives the world the most precious things she loves,
And I love you and I love our baby too,
And there’s nothing more radical than seeing that through,
Born pure to the blood, with the heart of a panther.
No regrets… I know my answer.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
758 Followers and Counting

2022 Blindspot Pick #1: National Velvet (1944)

19 Saturday Feb 2022

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A girl once loved a rebel horse,
As girls so often do.
She saw its gentle side within,
And by her gentleness, it grew.

She watched and loved its every move
And praised its every feat.
What others feared and labeled wild
She kissed, caressed, and called it sweet.

She never bore a single doubt
Of what her horse could do.
If she imagined it could fly,
The horse and she would make it true.

The doubts of others held no sway,
As mountains scoff at breeze,
For love’s conviction can make real
The smallest chance no other sees.
________________________

MPA rating:  Passed (easily G)

I may be a month late for my first Blindspot, but I’m still better off than the last couple years when I didn’t get started till April. For no particular reason, I decided to start with the oldest film on my 2022 Blindspot list, 1944’s National Velvet. This is a film my mom convinced me to see, and I wasn’t expecting much since I’m not a big fan of horses. So it was an utterly pleasant surprise to find it an absolute gem deserving of its classic status.

Set in England and based on a 1935 Enid Bagnold novel, National Velvet stars a twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor (in her first major role) as Velvet Brown, a country girl obsessed with horses who is thrilled to win a brown beauty she calls The Pie. Befriending Velvet is Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney, not even attempting a British accent), a former jockey whose self-serving instincts are won over by Velvet’s earnestness until he agrees to train The Pie for the illustrious Grand National race.

Older films like this can easily suffer from dated or exaggerated acting, but National Velvet is outstanding in every regard. While Velvet’s oddball little brother (Jackie “Butch” Jenkins) is an exception, I loved the warm portrayal of her family, from Angela Lansbury’s boy-crazy sister to Donald Crisp’s gregarious father. However, the standout and the winner of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar is Anne Revere as the family matriarch, seemingly stern and stoic but with a warm-hearted affection just below the surface as she verbally spars with her husband and encourages her daughter to chase her dreams. The family could be compared with the Morgan clan of How Green Was My Valley, which also starred Crisp as a father among lovely British countryside a few years earlier, but the Browns won me over even more than the Morgans.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t think I’d ever seen an Elizabeth Taylor film before, unless you count her brief introduction in That’s Entertainment! I’ll have to see more, but it’s clear from this first major role that she was a star in the making, her guileless determination making Velvet a perfect cheer-worthy underdog. Likewise, Rooney shows dramatic grit beyond his lighthearted musicals, and I enjoyed his character’s moral transformation over the course of the film. The commitment of both leads makes the final race a nail-biting climax; even if you may assume what the result will be, it still bucks predictability. (It also features some surprisingly realistic horse falls, making me think films like this led to more stringent protections for animals on film sets.)

I’ve known girls like Velvet who are obsessed with horses, including my own mother who loved books like Misty of Chincoteague. I’ve never been enamored of them like that, so I wasn’t expecting much from National Velvet. As I so often quote from La La Land, “people love what other people are passionate about,” and the devoted enthusiasm of Velvet Brown made me root for The Pie just like her. I love when expectations are blasted away, and National Velvet is a pure, eloquent family classic that left me smiling for much of its runtime. Now that’s the way to start a Blindspot series.

Best line: (Mrs. Brown, to Velvet) “We’re alike. I, too, believe that everyone should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly once in his life. I was twenty when they said a woman couldn’t swim the Channel. You’re twelve; you think a horse of yours can win the Grand National. Your dream has come early, but remember, Velvet, it will have to last you all the rest of your life.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
756 Followers and Counting

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

11 Friday Feb 2022

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When the world is opaque,
Every day within walls,
With nothing worthwhile behind or ahead,
There’s just the dull ache
In your heart’s empty halls
To prove to your mind you’re not already dead.

In times such as these,
We require a pillar,
An anchoring star we can navigate by.
One person, one dream
Can make life more than filler
And topple the walls that obstructed the sky.
_______________________

MPA rating:  R (mainly for a couple scenes that seemed more violent than the previous films)

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a fourth Matrix film seemed utterly unlikely and rumors of a new entry going into production were the stuff of excited gossip among my friends. It’s certainly a case of hype overshadowing the final product, since I have yet to meet anyone who has embraced The Matrix Resurrections without heavy reservations. Disdain is the more common reaction (including among my friends), but I’ve found myself defending the film’s good aspects among the waves of contempt. It almost goes without saying that a Matrix sequel will end up flawed, but one’s personal mindset can heighten those flaws to make them worse than they are.

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This may be a spoiler (no one should watch this who hasn’t seen the original trilogy), but the original Matrix trilogy ended on a rather downbeat note, with both Neo and Trinity giving their lives to bring peace to both the Matrix and the real world. So how could returning director/co-writer Lana Wachowski, going solo this time, resurrect both of them, fulfilling Neo’s Christological parallels even further, for a new entry of the cyber-dystopian series? That mystery fuels the first half, as Neo (Keanu Reeves) is now famous game developer Thomas Anderson, who achieved acclaim for his hit video game series called… The Matrix. While Neo is clearly blue-pilled into believing this illusory life, thanks to his smarmy therapist (Neil Patrick Harris), the film has great meta fun referencing its own franchise, poking fun at what The Matrix is as a series amid plenty of Easter eggs and callbacks to the previous films. After being freed by young captain Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and some version of Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), Neo learns that much has changed since his climactic sacrifice, and he might need to make another to save Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss).

Early on in the film’s meta phase, an alternate version of Smith (now played by Jonathan Groff) tells game developer Neo that Warner Brothers wants to develop another sequel to The Matrix with or without him, and it’s hard to fight the feeling that this film is the result of the same kind of ultimatum aimed at the Wachowskis. With only one of them deciding it was worth revisiting the franchise, we can only wonder whether that was the right move or if some other director/writer might have added a bit more freshness to a fourth entry. Yet I think there’s something to be said for the original director having a say in where their story goes, even if not every fan is pleased, and I can’t help but feel like much of the negativity surrounding The Matrix Resurrections is the result of overly high or predetermined expectations from uber-fans, not unlike the flurry of opinion surrounding every Star Wars sequel.

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It’s true that Resurrections is downright messy in a lot of what it attempts, shoehorning in new versions of characters that probably would have been better off left out. I liked the self-awareness, but others have found it smug or overdone while also complaining that Neo’s superpowers have laughably devolved into a mere force field. The convoluted plot often adheres too closely to that of the first film, and a climactic heist strangely skates by on the fact that the machines apparently don’t have any cameras guarding their hostage.

So yes, it’s messy as all get-out, but there are still entertaining action and good, if underdeveloped, ideas to enjoy. For one, the humans after the end of the Machine War have developed a new society with surprising cooperation from some programs, allies against the control of the Matrix, and I found the method for these programs to manifest in the real world very cool. And, even as the philosophizing about choice and control remains constant, this new version of the Matrix has some intriguingly different rules, such as dispensing with Agents in favor of mobs of undercover programs posing as humans that can be activated at any moment, which leads to one of the franchise’s nastier action set pieces. Plus, it was nice seeing familiar faces again, with Reeves and Moss easily stepping into their old roles despite the nearly twenty-year gap and turning their love story into the driving force of the movie (a decision one of my friends didn’t like either, but I think still works well). While the absence of Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving is unmistakable, the new players like Bugs are solid additions, and some other character cameos were quite welcome, as were visits to the hall of doors from Reloaded and whole scenes from the first film.

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I can understand dissatisfaction with The Matrix Resurrections, especially if you’ve spent the last eighteen years fantasizing about what a new Matrix story could be, since it is almost certainly not what you might have hoped. But I can’t bring myself to outright hate it like others have, though that’s true of most films; indifference or a desire to look for the good among the bad is far more common for me than hate. I just remember being dissatisfied with the ending of Revolutions, and the ending of Resurrections is a far happier conclusion than the original trilogy. Like the other sequels, it still can’t hope to compare with the game-changing original, but it’s a film that seems fine with basking in the strength of what came before and having a bit of fun with it. That may not be enough for some fans, but it was for me.

Best line: (Smith) “I know you said the story was over for you, but that’s the thing about stories… they never really end, do they? We’re still telling the same stories we’ve always told, just with different names… faces… and… I have to say I’m kind of excited.”

Rank: List Runner-Up (like the other sequels)

© 2022 S.G. Liput
752 Followers and Counting

Violet Evergarden: The Movie (2020)

03 Thursday Feb 2022

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, TV, Writing

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I wear a weak smile
With weights on each end.
I faithfully labor
And greet every neighbor
To be a bulwark
On which all can depend.

Yet what I have lost
Haunts that which I’ve found.
Like one stubborn ember,
Your face I remember,
A past that burned bright
Upon life’s battleground.

They say what I know,
That I have to move on.
I still love the trace
That remains of your face.
I doubt it will ever
Be totally gone.
_________________________

MPA rating:  Not Rated (should be PG-13 for some violent flashbacks and heavy emotional themes)

Although I love anime, I’m often not sure how to review films based on anime series. For example, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train was literally the highest grossing movie of 2020 worldwide, smashing records and becoming the first non-Hollywood film to top the global box office. Yet I don’t really know what to say about it. Because it’s a feature-length middle chapter for the Demon Slayer series, it’s hard to recommend it to those unfamiliar with the show, since a full appreciation of the film depends on some familiarity. It was exciting, eye-popping, a good continuation, and apparently a real tearjerker for some (not me), but its attachment to an ongoing TV series limits its appeal in my view. I feel the same for other anime films based on series, from the Steins;Gate sequel to the growing number of My Hero Academia features, which typically end up feeling decent but unnecessary.

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Obviously, that’s not always the case. I’ve sung the praises of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which built beautifully on its original show, and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, which stands on its own just as well. I suppose it’s easier when a film comes after a show ends, rather than in the middle of its run. Anyway, it should indicate my high regard for Violet Evergarden: The Movie that I’m reviewing it at all, beyond making it List-Worthy.

For those unfamiliar with Violet Evergarden, it’s a show from Kyoto Animation based on a popular light novel series about a girl in a fictional semi-Victorian country where gas lamps exist alongside advanced prosthetic limbs. Utilized as a lethal child warrior during a horrific war, the girl is taken in by a Major Gilbert, who gives her the name Violet and hates using her on the battlefield, despite her effectiveness. In the midst of a major victory, both of them are severely injured, and the Major is lost and presumed dead. With the war over, Violet is sent to a friend of the Major’s who runs a post office, and she gradually eases into the more peaceful life of typing letters for others, a job called an Auto Memory Doll (basically a transcriptionist with a typewriter). While struggling to understand simple concepts like love and pining for the Major, she meets an array of customers who help her grow as a person.

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The short 13-episode series itself is quite good, with strong characters and emotions, but its greatest strengths are the glorious, Oscar-caliber score and drop-dead gorgeous animation. It’s honestly some of the finest, most detailed animation out there, and almost any single frame could be hung on a wall as a work of art. I will say that the script can be weak at times, often ascribing great profundity to the letters Violet writes even when they’re more earnest than deep. But the film’s poignant themes grow more affecting with time, and the largely stand-alone tenth episode remains one of the most tear-jerking episodes of television imaginable. Even the thought of it makes me want to cry. The studio could have left the show alone or stopped after the spin-off film called Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, which falls under that “decent but unnecessary” status that I mentioned before. But the studio decided to cap off the series with a finale film, despite delays from the infamous arson attack and COVID, and I’m glad they did because it’s everything I could have wanted in a conclusion (hello, 100% Rotten Tomatoes score).

It was a canny choice to frame the story as a retrospective investigation, with a young woman from decades in the future looking back on the tale of Violet Evergarden, and the woman’s connection to that moving tenth episode had me close to sobbing right from the start. The film soon jumps back to Violet’s time, after she has grown into the most popular Doll in the city, though her thoughts remain with her long-lost Major Gilbert. After accepting a job from a sick boy in the hospital who wants her help to write letters to his family once he is gone, Violet and her boss learn of evidence that Gilbert might be alive on a distant island, and they go in search of her beloved.

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There were many ways that the film could have gone wrong. Would they pull a fake-out and say it wasn’t Gilbert? Would it be a tired amnesia scenario? But the way it plays out is both touching and makes sense for the characters, highlighting Gilbert’s guilt from the war and how much Violet has grown apart from him. The eventual climax is a massive tug to the heartstrings, and I felt like the film was effective in encapsulating the overarching story and its emotions, even for those who may not have watched the series. (Even so, I certainly recommend watching the show first for the full context and emotional punch.)

I’ve always thought that the concept of an Auto Memory Doll seemed odd and quaint, like something that would be unrealistic in the real world, though that view is likely shaped by the prevalence of modern literacy and easy communication methods. The film actually addresses that head-on, with the advent of the telephone threatening the entire Doll profession. One shot of a lamplighter gazing up at a newfangled electric streetlight perfectly captured the theme of technological progress. I suppose the job of writing letters for others could be compared to something like the Pony Express, short-lived but memorable, and while the story could have been antagonistic toward such progress, it manages to show the positive aspects of both the telephone and letter-writing in, of course, the most poignant way possible.

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I can see how someone cynical could easily view Violet Evergarden with detachment and scoff at its overly melodramatic qualities. It can lay on the tragedy pretty thick at times and certainly falls under that category of anime that intentionally aim to bring the audience to tears, like Angel Beats, To Your Eternity, or anything from Mari Okada. But if you can truly connect with Violet’s journey to understand love, it’s well worth tears, and I like the fact that I’m not too jaded to be moved by it. I liked the series on its own, but Violet Evergarden: The Movie took the series’ strengths and elevated them with a near-perfect culmination of all that came before and left me with a precious lump in my throat. I feel sorry for those who don’t give anime a chance, because stories like this transcend the medium to be great films, period.

Best line:  (Daisy, the woman learning about Violet) “If there’s something I can’t tell them in words, maybe I could tell them in a letter. I want to finally tell them my true feelings. We don’t know how long we have, so I need to tell them while I still have time.”

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2022 S.G. Liput
752 Followers and Counting