A Hidden Life (2019)

02 Friday Apr 2021

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

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(For Day 2 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to reflect on a life-changing choice, so I considered the life-and-death stand of a German martyr.)

I simply stayed silent,
Not hateful nor loud.
I kept my mouth closed
When they wanted compliance.
To not join the violent,
Not follow the crowd,
To leave them opposed
Was inherent defiance.

I wonder about,
If I’d merely caved,
How easier life
Would have treated this fool.
But then I have doubt:
I might have been saved
From present-day strife,
But not God’s higher rule.
________________________

MPA rating: PG-13

On this Good Friday, a film about martyrdom seemed apropos. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen a Terrence Malick film (potential future Blindspot picks), so there is nothing to which I can compare A Hidden Life from the same director. Yet it most reminded me of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, since both are moving portraits of faith in the face of evil and social pressure. However, whereas Sophie Scholl was actively opposing the Nazis, the subject of A Hidden Life simply refused to yield to their demands, proving to be a timely hero in this age where even mild disagreement can spark undue censure.

Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), declared a Blessed by the Catholic Church in 2007, is a poor farmer in the mountains of Austria, faced with a choice when Hitler annexes his country in the Anschluss. Required to take an oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer, Jägerstätter balks, despite overwhelming pressure from his village and even his church to comply. His quiet steadfastness as he nears the inevitable end recalls the passion of Christ as he and his wife (Valerie Pachner) question the morality of a stand that none but God would remember, or so they thought.

Malick’s celebrated visual artistry elevates the poignant story even more with absolutely gorgeous cinematography that takes full advantage of the alpine setting. Almost every shot could be framed on my wall as a piece of art, which makes it criminal that the film didn’t get a single Oscar nomination. While I loved so much about the film, its epic length is sadly a big detriment, the pace slow and methodical across nearly three hours. It’s a spiritually rich, contemplative film that heightens its emotions as it progresses, but I was quite ready for it to be over when the credits rolled. A Hidden Life is a superb masterpiece of the human conscience; it just could have benefited from a little more editing.

Best line: (Franz’s father-in-law) “Better to suffer injustice than to do it.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

Soul (2020)

01 Thursday Apr 2021

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

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Animation, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Pixar

(The prompt for Day 1 of NaPoWriMo was to write something perspective-challenging based on a surreal jazz music video. I thought that the jazz and a change of perspective would apply well to Pixar’s latest film.)

Would the world appear different behind different eyes?
Before or behind them – which matters the most?
How much of his life can a man criticize
Before it’s reduced by his deep-rooted roast?

I’d hate to have nothing to show for my time,
My effort, my busyness spent every day.
If mountain views aren’t at the end of the climb,
Why struggle and strive to reach only half-way?

If I could fulfill all the hopes I once dreamed,
If I could be him or be her or do that,
Perhaps the time wasted could still be redeemed,
A medal to earn in life’s mortal combat.

How foolish, however, to think that my worth
Depends on a goal that can move as I near it!
How mindless to plan upon riches on earth,
No thought for what nurtures my soul and your spirit.

The climb can be tedious staring ahead,
A rock wall in front and a far distant peak,
But spare a glance round at the background instead
And find where you never considered to seek.
_____________________________

MPA rating: PG

Thanks to a certain virus and the advent of Disney+, I was thankfully able to watch Pixar’s latest film from the comfort of my couch right at the tail end of 2020, though I would have gladly gone to a theater for it if one had been open. With Pixar’s diminishing creative trend over the last decade, I wasn’t sure where Soul would land among their undeniable classics and good-not-great outings, but I was thrilled to join the general consensus in deeming it the former.

The first Pixar film with an African-American protagonist, Soul follows pianist and middle school music teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) as he manages to earn the jazz gig of his dreams and then promptly die, which isn’t a spoiler strangely enough. Appearing as a blue blob on his way to the Great Beyond, he escapes into an in-between realm where unborn souls are prepared before going to earth. He is paired with an uncooperative soul called 22 (Tina Fey), with whom he questions the meaning of his life and existence.

That last bit may sound overly heavy for a “kids movie,” and indeed Soul doesn’t seem designed for kids, with its middle-aged main character and existential questions of life and death. Director Pete Docter has explored weighty concepts before in Up and Inside Out, but other elements of those films seem clearly geared for a young audience. More than any other Pixar film, Soul seems especially mature, not in content, but in theme, while still retaining a likable sense of humor, and I personally love and admire animated films that can pull off such a tonal balance successfully.

The plot itself stays unpredictable and throws in some thought-provoking concepts without much time to consider all their implications, later utilizing them in surprising ways, much like Inside Out did. The animation is yet more evidence of how Pixar is leaps and bounds ahead of its CGI competition, full of textured backgrounds, hyper-realistic lighting, and amazing fluidity, such as the shifting forms of the charming Picassoesque entities named Jerry in the “Great Before.” And then there’s the music, both snappy instrumental jazz and a gorgeous score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which is almost a character in itself as Joe’s creative passion.

I can’t say Soul is perfect, since it does have some unaddressed plot holes and oddly stops short of explicitly affirming Joe’s job as a teacher, which I think would have been a nice touch similar to Mr. Holland’s Opus. Nevertheless, Pixar excels in its dramatic gut punches, and Soul absolutely delivers those moments, from relatable reconciliations to noble sacrifice, and succeeds in conveying a life-affirming message that doesn’t come off as trite or recycled. Since it hasn’t happened for a Pixar film in a decade, I was really hoping that Soul would snag a Best Picture nomination, but alas, that didn’t happen (though it was nominated for Best Animated Feature, Score, and Sound). While I would have liked perhaps a more religious view of the afterlife, Soul remains general and accessible enough in its spirituality to appeal to all audiences, and its message of valuing life’s little moments ultimately meant a lot to me.

Best line: (musician Dorothea Williams, to Joe) “I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, ‘I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.’ ‘The ocean?’ says the older fish. ‘That’s what you’re in right now.’ ‘This?’ says the young fish. ‘This is water. What I want is the ocean.’”

Rank: List-Worthy

2020 Blindspot Pick #11: Short Cuts (1993)

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

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Drama

The patchwork quilt of others’ lives
That covers us and those we meet
Can swaddle us or smother us
Depending on the way we treat
The people in our sphere.

If those you knew or cared to love
Could see your thoughts, your worst mistake,
The way you act in panic’s vice,
I wonder what façade would break
And where you’d go from here.
_______________________

MPA rating: R (strong R for language and nudity)

Oh, look it’s March. Might be a good time to, I don’t know, finally get back to reviewing my Blindspots from last year! I can’t wait for school to be done later this year, but I’ll probably just shorten my reviews so the blog doesn’t go dead for another month.

Anyway, there are few things as disappointing as a movie you feel you ought to like but just don’t. Robert Altman’s Short Cuts is very much my style of movie. I love watching how individual lives intersect, how chance encounters can influence the bigger picture. It’s one of the many reasons I loved Lost and admire films like Ink, Cloud Atlas, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. With some reservations, 2019’s Blindspot Twenty Bucks fulfilled the expectations I had for Short Cuts in 2020, which sadly failed to satisfy by enjoyment of cosmic connections this time around.

Ultimately, every film needs to have a story worth telling and characters worth watching, and no amount of admirable filmmaking or even a star-studded cast can fill that need. A lot happens in Short Cuts but also not nearly enough. Based on the short stories and poems of Raymond Carver, the story is an expansive snapshot of numerous lives throughout the Los Angeles area, played by a who’s who of recognizable ’90s faces. There’s Robert Downey, Jr., as a smarmy makeup artist, Lily Tomlin as an exasperated waitress, Andie MacDowell as a young mother, Matthew Modine as a doctor, Julianne Moore as his artistic wife, Frances McDormand as Peter Gallagher’s philandering wife, Tim Robbins as her cop lover, Jack Lemmon as Bruce Davison’s estranged father, and many more, including Tom Waits, Anne Archer, Lori Singer, Chris Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, and Lili Taylor. In light of the passing of Alex Trebek (whom I still grieve, as a lifelong Jeopardy fan), I was also delighted to see him in a brief cameo.

It truly is an astounding cast, all of whom are wholly believable in their roles. It’s just a shame that most of them play crude, vindictive jerks with the morals of cats. In the world of this film, infidelity is more common than marriage, and empathy is rare, all of which carries enough realism to lower one’s opinion of society in general. Beyond this, Altman’s film seems queasily enamored of sex and female nudity, from Leigh’s graphic phone sex calls to an admittedly well-acted lovers’ quarrel which would have been less distracting had Julianne Moore been wearing more than just a top. Of the 22 main characters, I’d say there are only two that remain sympathetic throughout, meaning most of the 3-hour film focuses on the others, and I believe that several of the side stories could have been trimmed to reduce the excessive runtime.

All that is not to say Short Cuts is without merit. I was actually impressed with how balanced the treatment of the characters was, switching between them often enough to give almost everyone in the expansive ensemble a memorable moment or two. Yet the jumping around between stories also doesn’t get overly confusing, and the artful direction weaves the stories together with subtle but identifiable connections, which is an impressive feat. However, the film ultimately falls into the “That’s It?” category, with the credits rolling before most of the intersecting storylines get even a semblance of closure. After over 3 hours with people I would not care to know personally, the bathetic conclusion settles for its status as a collage of experiences rather than offering any clear point. I realize everyday vignettes can be very compelling and endearing and don’t necessarily need an overarching purpose, but I suppose my distaste for much of the film’s content has soured my opinion of its storytelling as well. Unless the plot warrants ambiguity, I like my stories to have endings, not vague implications.

Rank: Dishonorable Mention

2020 Blindspot Pick #10: Primer (2004)

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by sgliput in Blindspot, Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Drama, Sci-fi

Time is a string,
A straight line following
Every inch with the next,
And no one expects
That line to turn back
In its infinite track
Or be wrinkled or folded
Or otherwise molded
To anything but
A straight line, never cut,
For if that occurs,
Men are mere amateurs
In the Pandora’s boxes
Of time paradoxes,
And no one is certain
What’s under the curtain,
The dreadful reveal
Of sci-fi-made-real.
_________________________

Rating: PG-13 (though Netflix shows it as R, which is odd since there is nothing objectionable)

I suppose I never appreciated how much free time I possessed when I had just school or just work taking up the bulk of my day. Now that I have both, it seems like everything else has been sliding to a lower priority level, including this blog sadly. Nevertheless, I have not forgotten it! Speaking of time, it’s time now to check another entry from my Blindspot list, a film about time travel that has earned a reputation for being intractably complex. Indeed, Primer is the kind of movie, like last year’s Tenet, that doesn’t just benefit from but needs a diagram or outside explanation to fully grasp it, which makes it a hard sell for people who enjoy understanding what they watch.

Made on an extreme shoestring budget (about $7000), Primer is not your typical time travel flick; there are no flashes of lightning or fancy special effects to adorn its bare-bones tale of accidental scientific discovery. Its two main characters, Abe and Aaron, are a couple of moonlighting engineers who share resources with other small-time inventors; there’s no attempt at making them personable for the audience or even translating the scientific jargon that makes up much of the dialogue. A weight-reduction experiment somehow results in an unusual small-scale time loop, and the two inventors realize they’ve stumbled onto something big when its application for humans becomes clear.

Many a time travel movie tries to pass itself off as “realistic,” even though the paradoxes involved with the ever-cool concept make it inherently not; Primer attempts this through its low-key, unglamorous style and how it injects actual science into the dialogue. I liked the idea of discovering time travel by accident, similar to the excellent anime/game Steins;Gate, and I was preparing my thinking cap as the characters figured out how to make it work. The concept of entering a box where time is reversed and exiting at a point in the past, keeping yourself isolated beforehand to avoid interacting with your double, made sense for the most part, and I started thinking, “This isn’t so complex.” And then the plot went off the deep end….

I have read the description and rewatched parts of the movie to try to wrap my head around the story, and I can honestly say that I believe I understand most of it (which is more than I can say for Tenet), but not without a good amount of mental effort. I don’t mind films that make you think, but I find it a bit annoying when a film throws a wrench in the plot and doesn’t even care to give the audience a shred of time to decipher its meaning. There’s a running narration, but the language used seems intentionally vague, and certain plot points are dropped without any explanation whatsoever. And this was on purpose, according to Shane Carruth, who served as director, actor (as Aaron), composer, writer, and editor, a true auteur like Jamin Winans. Carruth wanted this sense of bewilderment to stress the confusion of time travel for the characters, and he succeeded, though whether that is a good thing is debatable.

Primer is a puzzle-box movie if ever there was one. The puzzle is the reason for its existence, with things like character development or eye-catching visuals pushed to the background. I enjoyed that moment of “eureka, I think I get it,” which only happened after the credits rolled a second time, but the intentional opacity of the plot certainly doesn’t equate to entertainment value. Whether the appeal of the former outweighs the latter is entirely subjective and dependent on each person’s capacity for wondering what the heck is going on. I would agree that Primer is a required watch for anyone seeking a comprehensive view of time travel in cinema, but I don’t consider it a positive that the main reason to see it again is to gain a semblance of understanding as to what you just saw.

Best line: (Aaron, to Abe) “Man, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.”

Rank: Dishonorable Mention (That seems harsh, but I doubt I’ll watch it again.)

2020 Blindspot Pick #9: Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

02 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by sgliput in Blindspot, Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Drama, Triple A

“Honor thy father and mother.”
How simple and subtle a rule!
Our methods may vary
And end up contrary
To what we expected in school.

Our strained obligations
To past generations
Are wholesome but no longer cool.

Our lives take priority
Over seniority
Lest we be labeled a fool.

Good children are rarest
Where they be embarrassed
By wrinkles, dementia, and drool.

A list of excuses
Can equal abuses,
And lack of concern can be cruel.
_______________________

MPA rating: Approved (easy G, though likely not of interest to kids)

Continuing with my 2020 Blindspots has still been subject to delays, but I’ll finish them one way or another, even if it means keeping my reviews short. It’s time now for the oldest entry on the list, 1937’s Make Way for Tomorrow, which seems to have earned the distinction of being a desperately sad drama long before more modern tearjerkers stained viewers’ cheeks and made this unsung classic fade from cinematic memory. Boasting a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes yet failing to earn a single Oscar nomination, it’s one of those films that leaves you surprised that it’s not more well-known.

Make Way for Tomorrow qualifies as what I call a Triple A movie, one that is All About the Acting. The performances are nuanced and subtle, a far cry from the histrionics associated with old Hollywood, with stars Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi in top form. The pair, both significantly aged up with makeup made seamless by the black-and-white format, play the elderly Bark and Lucy Cooper, who are forced out of their home by the bank and must rely on the goodwill of their five grown children to board them. No one can take both parents, so they must live apart; as they wear on the nerves of the kids and their families, everyone wishes in vain for some better arrangement.

Based on a play that was based on a novel, the script of Make Way for Tomorrow is notable for its realism and pervasive sense of empathy. It’s the kind of situation that many families have no doubt had to endure, and you can’t entirely blame anyone for their frustration with it. One daughter (Elisabeth Risdon) who takes in Pa Cooper seems needlessly harsh and impatient, but Pa Cooper also acts opinionated and stubborn as he misses his wife. We can all say how we would act in such a situation, but I expect most people would find they have less patience than they think they do.

Ma Cooper’s motherly idiosyncrasies in the home of her son George (Thomas Mitchell) brought to mind the more humorous aggravation from Doris Roberts’ Marie on Everybody Loves Raymond, and it’s a testament to the authenticity of the characters that such universal circumstances can inspire both comedy and drama. Bondi as Ma Cooper is the real heart of the film, and her last selfless scene with her son is a punch to the heartstrings. (It’s interesting to note that she plays Thomas Mitchell’s mother here, while she would play his sister nine years later in It’s a Wonderful Life.) By the end, I’ll admit the film does seem longer than its relatively short 91-minute runtime, but Moore and Bondi fill their few scenes together with the comfortable chemistry of a couple whose love has persisted through decades, which only makes the pitiable situation sadder. The director, Leo McCarey, actually won the Best Director Academy Award that year for The Awful Truth but said on stage that he thought they “gave it to [him] for the wrong picture”; I haven’t seen The Awful Truth myself, but I tend to think he was right.

Best line: (Lucy Cooper, quoting a poem, the source of which I’m still unsure but it deserves a place on my Poems in Movies list)

A man and a maid stood hand in hand
Bound by a tiny wedding band.
Before them lay the uncertain years
That promised joy and maybe tears.
“Is she afraid?” thought the man of the maid.

“Darling,” he said in a tender voice,
“Tell me. Do you regret your choice?
We know not where the road may wind,
Or what strange byways we may find.
Are you afraid?” said the man to the maid.

She raised her eyes and spoke at last.
“My dear,” she said, “the die is cast.
The vows have been spoken. The rice has been thrown.
Into the future we’ll travel alone.
With you,” said the maid, “I’m not afraid.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

2020 Blindspot Pick #8: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

18 Monday Jan 2021

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Comedy, Drama

It’s really a shame that mankind at its worst
Is seen more conspicuously than its best,
Like children who cry getting tended and cursed
By those who decide children all are a pest,
While one quiet child can’t hope to reverse
The hostile impressions ingrained by the rest.

There still are some saints that can shine over sin,
Their kindnesses somehow worth more in our eyes.
But how can we drown out the negative din
If so few are willing to re-humanize?
It doesn’t much matter who’ll lose and who’ll win
If basic civility meets its demise.
________________________

MPA rating: R (for profanity, a couple violent scenes, and a few explicit paintings)

“Better late than never” will be my catchphrase for the next several weeks, since school and life in general have put me so far behind my desired posting schedule. Heck, I’m only ¾ of the way through last year’s Blindspots. But here at last I am continuing the list with Wes Anderson’s most decorated film, the ornately madcap farce The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I’m still not sure what my opinion of Wes Anderson is in general. I’ve seen Rushmore, Isle of Dogs, and Fantastic Mr. Fox before, and I can’t say I loved or hated any of them. I enjoy his eccentric and fastidious production design to a certain extent but mainly as unique oddities, admiring his work from the outside but never feeling drawn in by the world of the story. The Grand Budapest Hotel probably comes the closest to achieving that, thanks to the well-drawn characters and how Anderson’s ever-present drollery gives way to pathos by the end. It’s an odd set-up, the plot being portrayed as a reading of a recollection of a conversation of a memory, jumping back in time with each story layer, but the way it breeds a sense of bygone nostalgia is rather remarkable.

Although this movie mainly won Oscars in non-acting categories (Best Production Design, Score, Costume Design, Makeup), one area in which Anderson’s films excel is casting. The Grand Budapest Hotel is chock full of recognizable stars, sometimes as mere cameos, including frequent collaborators like Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Willem Dafoe. Foremost in the cast is Ralph Fiennes as the titular hotel’s esteemed concierge Monsieur Gustave H., and his portrayal of the demanding dandy is surprisingly layered as he takes under his wing the hotel’s new lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori, a.k.a. Flash Thompson in the MCU Spider-Man films). Revolori gives a marvelous debut performance opposite Fiennes, and their relationship grows sweeter and more poignant with time. What at first seems like an alpine comedy of manners takes turns morphing into a murder mystery, a prison break film, and a black comedy, somehow surviving these tonal shifts due to Anderson’s unmistakable stamp of ownership.

At times it felt as if Wes Anderson the auteur was tossing in elements he had always wanted to film, such as the extended jailbreak sequence, which goes on too long but seemed like it was fun to implement. At another point, there’s an artfully shot scene of a man being stalked through dark interiors which felt directly inspired by Hitchcock. I do wish that Anderson had excised some of the more mature elements, since they seemed contrary to the film’s overall old-world charm and refreshing eloquence of speech. Yet there is much to enjoy and commend about The Grand Budapest Hotel, from the expansive ensemble to the picturesque locations and cleverly articulate script to Gustave’s gospel of refined gentility and moments of unexpected humor that warrant a chuckle if not a laugh out loud. As with the director’s style in general, the fragmented narrative may not be to everyone’s taste, but I would say The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson at his best.

Best line: (Mr. Moustafa, of Gustave H.) “There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity… He was one of them. What more is there to say?”

Rank: List Runner-Up

2020 Blindspot Pick #7: Heathers (1989)

31 Thursday Dec 2020

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Comedy, Drama, Thriller

The more I see in movies
Of a high school student’s woes,
The tricks and cliques and politics,
The mockery of clothes,
The favoritism, criticism,
Narcissism, hedonism,
Overwhelming pessimism
All the films have shown…
I feel more blessed for all the pros
Of being schooled at home.
_____________________

MPA rating: R (for frequent profanity and occasional violence)

Well, it looks like my Blindspot list for 2020 didn’t go as expected, along with almost everything else about 2020. I may have only gotten to #7 out of the initial 12 Blindspots, but I’ll do my best to knock out the last few ASAP before getting to a new list for 2021. Still, I wanted to get one more Blindspot pick out of the way this year, which has also been the most accessible one all year. (It’s on YouTube in its entirety.) I’ve been hesitant to watch Heathers, though; I’ve listened to and greatly enjoyed the soundtrack to Heathers: The Musical, and I just wasn’t sure if the original film would measure up to my expectations, minus the show tunes. I’d say it did meet them, but I can’t help but have mixed feelings.

Heathers follows Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), a half-willing member of the feared/admired high school clique known as the Heathers: Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), Heather Duke (Shannon Doherty), and the queen of mean-girl stereotypes Heather Chandler (Kim Walker). Bristling under the thumb of Heather Chandler, Veronica grows close to classmate J.D. (Christian Slater), whose ideas of retaliating against the popular kids become more and more psychotic. Repressed teens may often wish their bullies were dead, as Veronica does, but J.D. is willing to grant such wishes.

Being familiar with the musical meant that very little about the plot of Heathers surprised me, though certain characters were combined and events shuffled around as needed for the stage adaptation. I was mainly surprised that the film already began with Veronica as a member of the Heathers, whereas the musical takes a little more time portraying her initiation. However, where both versions excel is black comedy, which is a very touchy genre for me. I can appreciate something like Beetlejuice, which also starred Winona Ryder and Glenn Shadix the previous year, but such films can also just come off as mean-spirited or in bad taste, which I don’t find entertaining. While I knew going in that it’s not exactly High School Musical, Heathers threatens to be in the latter category with its frequent profanity and making light of teenage suicide and homosexuality. Yet the film has some surprising depth to its satire and manages to weave some insightful themes into its droll plot: the stress of not liking your own friends, the eagerness with which the powerless can exploit newfound influence, the sensationalism that dark subjects impart in those with good intentions and no solution, and the difference that empathy or its absence can have on someone. Oh, and of course the signs that your boyfriend might be a psychopath.

One ingredient I can say I liked was Winona Ryder, on whom I have something of a celebrity crush. She perfectly originates the sarcastic frustration of Veronica and evokes a sense of growth as she seeks to atone for the evil influence of Heather Chandler and J.D. Slater is also an effective bad boy doing his best Jack Nicholson impression, and the rest of the cast excel at their high school clichés, though it’s disturbing that two cast members later died in ways that the film foreshadowed. Another aspect worth commendation is that unique confidence of style that certain ‘80s films had, regardless of director, as if they knew they would become iconic eventually. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Say Anything come to mind, and Heathers likewise feels like the kind of film that knew exactly what it wanted to be, which is rare for high school movies these days that often just try to imitate what came before. Maybe my exposure to the musical accentuated that, as I recognized the origins of songs like “Big Fun” and “Our Love Is God.” So, although my feelings remain mixed on content, I largely enjoyed Heathers as a paragon of dark high school humor, mainly because its ultimate goal is empathy, something that we could use a lot more of nowadays.

Best line: (Veronica) “All we want is to be treated like human beings, not to be experimented on like guinea pigs or patronized like bunny rabbits.”
(Veronica’s dad) “I don’t patronize bunny rabbits.”
(Veronica’s mom) “Treated like human beings? Is that what you said, little Miss Voice-of-a-Generation? Just how do you think adults act with other adults? You think it’s all just a game of doubles tennis? When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

Happy New Year, everybody!

2020 Blindspot Pick #6: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance

They say not to judge a book by its cover:
A frontispiece hater could turn to a lover,
If only you got to the end.

You may still despise it a few chapters in,
But stopping too early is almost a sin,
For still you do not know the end.

You may get halfway and still loathe it intensely,
And yet sticking with it could pay off immensely,
If only you got to the end.

Not much more to go, but you’re tempted to quit?
That’s something that nobody wants to admit,
For still you do not know the end.

You finished! I see, and your hatred’s the same?
I thought you would like it, so that is a shame,
At least, though, you now know the end.
________________________

MPA rating: PG-13 (for much sexual innuendo)

Oh, Baz Luhrmann, I don’t know what to make of you. I take pride in enjoying musicals, and I fully expected to like Moulin Rouge! if only for its status as a jukebox musical. I knew it incorporated more modern songs into its 1900 Parisian setting, so I was prepared for the requisite anachronisms. But my gosh, I haven’t watched a film that was this bipolar in tone since, well, Strictly Ballroom, also by Luhrmann.

I remember Strictly Ballroom as a wholly unique experience. It started out as an obnoxious mockumentary that I was certain I disliked after the first few minutes, but then it just kept getting better, from the romance to the dancing, until it actually won me over by the end. Moulin Rouge! attempts to do the same thing but not nearly as well. The story follows the tragic love story of young poet Christian (Ewan McGregor), who is hastily initiated into a troupe of Bohemian artists and introduced to the lovely Satine (Nicole Kidman), starlet of the Moulin Rouge cabaret and desire of a jealous duke (Richard Roxburgh). That short plot description sounds normal enough, but the in-your-face style is utterly insufferable for the first thirty minutes, with rushed character introductions, sudden tone shifts, cartoonish sound effects, lowbrow humor, choppy editing, and hard-to-decipher dialogue during the musical numbers. My VC decided to stop watching entirely, and I considered it too, though my Blindspot obligation made me stick with it. I read that Luhrmann was trying to channel the tonal rollercoaster of a Bollywood film he had seen, but all his extravagance does is make it difficult to take anything seriously.

And then, slowly but surely, the romance element grows more intense and more serious, managing to achieve the intended epic tragedy of the star-crossed lovers. Despite partaking in a few of the puerile scenes that made me wonder how this movie snagged eight Oscar nominations, McGregor and Kidman are the film’s greatest strength, sporting palpable chemistry and decent musical chops. Their bravura medley of love-themed songs was the first clue that Moulin Rouge! might have more to offer than the beginning indicated.

Yet even if the core romance works well, so much else does not. The musical numbers and the choice of who sings them are a mixed bag and brought to mind the why-not(?) silliness of Mamma Mia! Just as I didn’t really need to hear Julie Walters sing “Take a Chance on Me,” I could have happily gone through life without hearing Jim Broadbent croon “Like a Virgin.” I admired the sheer number of recognizable songs used, but how they were deployed was often cringe-inducing. And even if the tone gets more serious over time, the film still indulges in occasional sound effects that undermine the pathos.

Moulin Rouge! is a case where its substance is upstaged by its distracting style. Strictly Ballroom managed to even out its tone and become a serious feel-good romance, and I suppose that’s easier than transitioning from surreal comedy to heartbreaking tragedy. I am aware that some people are able to look past Moulin Rouge’s faults and enjoy its over-the-top stylings, such as the Oscar-winning art direction and costumes, and I’m glad they can. I’ll acknowledge it’s original and took a risk, but this is one style I can affirm is not for me.

Best line: (several characters, quoting the song “Nature Boy”) “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Rank: Semi-Dishonorable Mention (a rarely used ranking to reflect my mixed feelings)

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

23 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Action, Drama, Thriller

We all need a code,
For our lives, for the road,
When the plans we prepare
Hit a wall and explode.

However we fare,
And whatever we bear,
Our constant is known,
And it always is there.

It may be your own
Or it may be borrowed,
But when we’re alone,
Every man needs a code.
______________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Finally, a holiday break! And that means I finally have some extra time to allow for blogging outside of work and school. So we once again return to the Fast and Furious franchise, with the sixth entry that, for lack of a snappier alphanumeric title, is simply Fast and Furious 6. Despite everything I’ve heard about Fast Five being the turning point of the franchise from small-timer to blockbuster, this sixth film feels even more like a watershed entry, transitioning from a series I’ve largely tolerated thus far to a movie I thoroughly enjoyed.

Fast Five ended with the “shocking” reveal that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Dom’s girlfriend killed offscreen in the fourth film, was still alive, which wasn’t so shocking for me, since I had seen her in the trailers for the last three movies. (One of the perks of waiting to get into a series until late in its popularity.) Now the promise of his lost love, as well as clemency for past crimes, convinces Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew to join Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in stopping a criminal mastermind named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who has recruited the amnesiac Letty into his own team of mercenaries.

Beyond the destructive action, Fast Five’s greatest pleasure was how it brought together so many characters from past films, with Fast and Furious 6 doing the same. The whole team is back, from Paul Walker to Tyrese Gibson to Gal Gadot. Well, those two Spanish guys are absent, but who remembers their names anyway? The main difference, and the one that made me enjoy 6 more than 5, is that Dom and his roadworthy companions finally get to be the good guys. They’re not plotting to steal millions or drag racing illegally; they are pitted against a less moral version of themselves, trying to save the world with redemption and a chance at normalcy on the line. While Walker’s Brian O’Conner was a good cop undercover at the beginning, the truth is that Dom and his buddies were little more than small-time crooks with insane automotive skills, who eventually ended up turning Brian into a wanted man as well. They’ve been the protagonists of this series thus far but rarely unqualified heroes, and that’s what this sixth film finally makes them.

The amnesia subplot with Letty may seem like a soap opera cliché to retcon the fourth film, but it’s not unwelcome. In fact, Dom’s attempts at convincing Letty of their former life together add much-needed heart to a story where there’s little interest in developing any of the other already established characters. Luke Evans makes a decent baddie, if only because he and his cronies actually prove to be more than a match for Dom’s team, and the action manages to one-up even the safe scene from Fast Five, particularly an outrageous chase involving a tank. By the time of the final set piece, which includes what has to be the world’s longest runway, I could tell this was my favorite film yet in this crazy car-themed series. It’s also the only action franchise I can imagine featuring the main characters saying a genuine prayer together, which again rings truer now that they’re not closet criminals. It even ends with a cliffhanger that both builds hype for the next installment and clears up a bit of confusion surrounding the series timeline, messily but well enough. For the first time, I’m actually looking forward to the next Fast and Furious film.

Best line: (Owen Shaw) “You know, when I was young, my brother always used to say, “Every man has to have a code.” Mine: Precision. A team is nothing but pieces you switch out until you get the job done. It’s efficient. It works. But you? You’re loyal to a fault. Your code is about family. And that’s great in the holidays, but it makes you predictable. And in our line of work, predictable means vulnerable. And that means I can reach out and break you whenever I want.” (Dom) “At least when I go, I’ll know what it’s for.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

Tenet (2020)

13 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by sgliput in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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Action, Drama, Sci-fi

If I were to live my life backwards in time,
Would it be hellish or sublime?
I’d walk and babble in reverse
And watch my history recurse.
To see the end before the start
To know both part and counterpart,
Is it a blessing or a curse,
Upstream against the universe?
Is it a blessing or a curse,
To know both part and counterpart,
To see the end before the start
And watch my history recurse.
I’d walk and babble in reverse.
Would it be hellish or sublime
If I were to live my life backwards in time?
_______________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Tenet was an interesting theater-going experience, mainly because it looks like it will be the only 2020 film I actually get to see in a theater. (I did see Weathering with You and Ride Your Wave pre-pandemic, but those were both from 2019.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but I learned that the local theater where I watched Tenet planned to shut down the very next day. The theater was completely empty, so it was like a private screening. There were hopes that Tenet might kick off a resurgence of theater-going, which sadly didn’t happen, but it’s the kind of film that could have under different circumstances. Action films get labelled “dumb” more often than not, but Christopher Nolan once more proves that the genre can reward and require intelligence, sometimes more than the audience wants to spare.

Nolan specializes in bending time, expanding it across nested dreamscapes, jumping around between different perspectives of Dunkirk, and now reversing it entirely. John David Washington plays a man with no name, labeled the Protagonist but never actually referenced in the film, a CIA agent who sees a bullet seem to move in reverse during a thrilling extraction at an opera house. After proving his loyalty, he is initiated into the organization called Tenet, which seeks to prevent a coming catastrophe evidenced by the existence of objects moving backwards in time, such as the reversing bullet. From there, it’s a globe-hopping spy caper as the Protagonist makes allies to take down a Russian oligarch named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who has knowledge of the future.

I loved Inception and still think that it is Nolan’s best film; with his latest film’s incoming hype as a mind-bender, I was hoping for lightning to strike again. While I still enjoyed Tenet, it’s more like thunder. Tenet is a puzzle for puzzle-lovers, thriving on unique backwards action and a purposefully constant pace that encourages viewers to accept what’s going on whether they understand it or not. And that’s where Tenet struggles. No matter how much Nolan or the film’s characters believe that the reversed time concept makes sense, I remain unconvinced. It makes for some utterly cool and compelling visuals, but there’s always a nagging feeling of doubt about how items/characters moving backwards in time actually interact with forward-moving items/characters. In that opening opera house scene, an “inverted” bullet goes from a bullet hole in the wall backwards into someone’s gun, but I’m left with the question of how it got into the wall in the first place. The idea is fascinating in short bursts, but over longer stretches of interaction, a disconnect grows between how inverted characters experience time forward (from their perspective) while the non-inverted characters observe them as “reactions.” If that doesn’t make sense, I don’t blame you. I’m sure someone could try to explain these apparent inconsistencies, and it would make some semblance of sense, but the effort to understand dwarfs what Inception required.

Washington’s Protagonist doesn’t have an abundance of personality, but he has just enough swagger and uber-competence to be an engaging audience surrogate thrust into an even stranger spy life than he led before. The rest of the cast always live up to their talent, from Robert Pattinson’s secretive ally to Branagh’s brutal Russian villain, who might as well be his character from Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. However, Nolan’s best films also have an underlying heart to complement the mind-twisting, typically in the form of parental love for children, like in The Prestige and Inception. Tenet tries similarly with the excellent Elizabeth Debicki as Branagh’s long-suffering hostage/wife, but, with the plot being the real focus, the attempted emotional beats were overshadowed by the cold big-concept narrative.

Ultimately, Tenet revels in its high-minded theories and spy antics punctuated by sci-fi coolness, but casual viewers shouldn’t expect a straightforward James Bond-style story. I appreciate Inception the more I think about it; with Tenet, I get more confused, though I’m sure it will reward repeat viewings. I admire Tenet in many ways, from the audacity of its concept to the Easter eggs sprinkled throughout (look up the Sator square), but maybe turning your brain off for an action movie isn’t such a bad thing.

Best line: (Andrei Sator) “How would you like to die?” (The Protagonist) “Old.” (Sator) “You chose the wrong profession.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

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Tag Archives: Drama

A Hidden Life (2019)

Soul (2020)

2020 Blindspot Pick #11: Short Cuts (1993)

2020 Blindspot Pick #10: Primer (2004)

2020 Blindspot Pick #9: Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

2020 Blindspot Pick #8: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

2020 Blindspot Pick #7: Heathers (1989)

2020 Blindspot Pick #6: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Tenet (2020)