Recent Viewings, Part 2

[RCMerchant]

^ Try any Sergio Leone movie from the 60's. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

[lester1/2jr]

I don't even like going to western Massachusetts. I went to a skatepark in Acton MA and got freaked out because it was too quiet. I thought the other skaters were going to rape me or something.

also this viewing choice ruined my tubi algorithm

[Trevor]

also this viewing choice ruined my tubi algorithm

😳😄😅🤣😂

[M.10rda]

Lester, here's one that technically should qualify as a "Southern" or "Centralern" as it's set in Oklahoma but it's got guys in cowboy hats terrorizing indigenous Americans, so maybe it fits the bill:

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023):
Okay, I started streaming this fourteen months ago - - and it took me no less than a dozen (possibly more) sessions to get through it. It's only a minute longer than THE IRISHMAN but Madame and I happily watched that in two evenings the week it dropped in 2019. Sometimes I'd endure KOTFM for only 5 minutes and then tap out and watch something else. That's not a good or fair way to watch a film by an elderly master auteur, but I think it's an honest reaction to a movie that is legitimately too long and legitimately flawed - though, to Scorsese's credit, it does redeem itself eventually, after greeeat length.

Most (though not all) of my criticisms focus on the first hour and fifty minutes, including (might as well mention briefly) the awkward, unnecessary, and ill-advised "discovery of oil" prologue which is easily the most hamfisted and least culturally delicate passage of this reasonably enlightened film. Soon after we're treated to the first of many, many DiCaprio/DeNiro conversations, and in the initial one DeNiro probes DiCaprio at length about his sexual hygiene. I love KING OF COMEDY and AFTER HOURS, but at some point Scorsese's wry observational surrealism transformed into pure 20th century frat boy/boomer humor, hence WOLF OF WALL STREET, probably my least favorite Marty but at least it announces itself as a "satire". Somehow  though Scorsese couldn't help setting the tone for a somber, contemplative film about hate crimes with an extensive dose of cringe comedy. That poor judgment kind of sets the tone for another ninety minutes of mismanagement.

KOTFM depends on two central tenets, the first being that DiCaprio's character is a profoundly dumb guy who will allow his rich uncle to cajole or bully him into nearly any indefensible act. Scorsese successfully establishes this first tenet within 30-40 leisurely paced minutes, but nevertheless returns compulsively to the well over and over and over again, subjecting the viewer to a dozen or more reiterations of three-to-five minute conversations where DeNiro influences DiCaprio. Yeah they're famous movie actors and the stars of this film but their shot-reverse-shot close-up dialogues (DeNiro condescending in a polite tone, DiCaprio staring dumbly and nodding) consume literally 45+ minutes of this laborious film. The silliest of these two-handers, where DeNiro literally spanks DiCaprio    gets the message across perfectly clearly, but another handful of identical dialogues must follow. Tarantino, who has made only two films shorter than 120 minutes, could've communicated this relationship dynamic in 10 minutes or less and then moved on to the good stuff.

The second tenet that KOTFM depends upon is that DiCaprio's character is kind of actually in love with his native wife (Lily Gladstone), or at least as much in love as a profoundly dumb guy can ever be, and yet is still pliable and amoral enough to abet her attempted murder and the murders of nearly everyone around her. I was also willing to accept this tenet more or less automatically, yet Scorsese also worries this bone incessantly, though at least a little less than he perseverates on the DiCaprio/DeNiro relationship. These two pairs of recurring duets (between DiCaprio and his co-leads) reflect the weakest, fattiest writing and directing in this huge film. The consolation, however, is that most of the filmmaking that surrounds these persistent two-handers is exceptional - lean, beautifully shot and edited, and highly compelling. Many of these scenes are fifteen-to-thirty seconds long, some shorter, many of them portray the various sinister proceedings in Osage, very few of them feature DiCaprio or Gladstone, and almost none of them feature DeNiro (an indisputably accomplished actor who teaches us nothing more about the banal nature of evil in 3.5 hours than we could learn from watching a brief interview with Mitch McConnell or Samuel Alito). All of these tight sequences left me wanting more of KOTFM, whereas the duets always left me rolling my eyes for Less.

Those brief sequences also demonstrate that Scorsese knows better and could've done better, yet chose otherwise. The fact that KOTFM is exactly three hours and thirty minutes suggest that somewhere there was a maximum-running-time clause in his contract and he damn well intended to use every minute of that time, and were it not for the clause, KOTFM might be even longer. It's poor form to play Monday morning quarterback with someone else's gameplay, but the film's development indicates that Scorsese was actually on the right track to making a better, more concise, more effective film before he went in its inevitable direction. DiCaprio was originally supposed to play the FBI agent who arrives in Osage to investigate and cease the murder spree. That FBI agent finally shows up at 1h50m into KOTFM - 52% of the way through the running time! - and he's played by Jesse Plemons and at that point the film picks up significantly, and we still have an hour-forty to go - you know, a whole feature length film. I don't mind saying that DiCaprio probably should've played that guy, saving us the weaker 110 minutes of KOTFM. But even if DiCaprio really wanted to play a profoundly dumb pre-MAGA footsoldier in an evil old rich white man's reign of terror, the tapestry was already in place for him to play out his entire dumb-guy internal conflict at the film's end, where his character (in the final cut) finally spills the beans, at length and in great recapitulatory detail, even replete with  a few flashbacks. Had Scorsese started KOTFM in media res at 1:50:00, the entire film would've been far more mysterious and suspenseful and thought-provoking, and he still could've backloaded an extra 30 minutes of DiCaprio hand-wringing and blank-faced nodding at the climax. Total running time: 2h10m! (Maybe I'll make my own fan edit.)

But - ah well - how much should I penalize a great filmmaker for making an imperfect film? Again, that 100 minutes is better than 100 minutes of many other films I've seen lately.

First 52% = 2/5
Last 48% = 5/5
3.5/5 seems fair - the same score I'd give INGLORIOUS BASTERDS or DEATH PROOF, two Tarantinos with infuriating s#!t halves and exhilarating brilliant halves.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Spaceballs" (1987)
Heroic space jockey Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his sidekick Barf (John Candy) rescue a lovely princess (Daphne Zuniga) from the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and save Planet Druidia's air supply from being stolen in Mel Brooks' parody of "Star Wars" and sci-fi films in general. A total hoot from beginning to end. I've seen this one a bunch of times over the years and even after all this time, it still makes me laugh.

[M.10rda]

How to follow up an excessively long 3.5/5 review of the excessively long Oscar-nominated KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON? How about an equally exhaustive analysis of the non-Oscar nominated...

SCAVENGER HUNT (1979):
...Which Fat Freddy's Cat recently called a
>>>silly "race and chase" slapstick comedy in the vein of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"... mostly gets by on the likeability of its large, impressive cast... not a must-see but an OK time waster.
..I then reflected:

I had a very skewed perspective on SCAVENGER HUNT as a kid. Tried to revisit it a few years ago but didn't get far into it. I will finish it eventually and write it up here. Suffice to say, my small child brain processed a very different movie than the one you watched and reviewed... 

Well I finished SCAVENGER HUNT last night and actually I pretty much agree w/ FFC's critical assessment! However I shall still perseverate at Scorsesean length about my childhood reaction to S.HUNT, which was only slightly out-of-touch w/ reality - I loved this silly film when I watched it on TV at age 5 or 6, but I still like it. However, I remembered my underdeveloped child brain's allegiance to be terribly misplaced - I rooted for the entirely wrong characters (or so I recalled)  and was disappointed by the inevitable victors in Dead Vincent Price's memorial Sc**t. How warped was toddler 10RDA? Well let's scrutinize.

* TEAM 1 is Price's shrill, shrewish sister Chloris Leachman, her sleazy second-husband Richard Benjamin (who is very funny in one of the film's largest though still profoundly underwritten roles), and her hulking adult failson Richard Mazur (who is extremely annoying, but that's his character). Describing a Chloris Leachman character as "shrill" and "shrewish" is like describing a Pat Hingle character as "Irish" and "a cop" - it's totally redundant. I will say though that Leachman looks younger and hotter here than in any other role of hers I've ever seen. Okay - to be more precise in my language, she looks much younger than in any Mel Brooks movie and about as young here as she looked 24 years earlier in KISS ME DEADLY where she was I guess in her 20s... and unlike any other role I've seen Leachman in, she looks hot.     She's rockin' a bad little shrill shewish hardbody, tbh.

* TEAM 2 is Dirk Benedict aka Face from "The A-Team", which is fine, and his brother Willie Ames.        They're joined by Leachman's teenager daughter, who is played by no one you've ever heard of. The brothers are so anonymous I can't even remember how they're related to Price.

* TEAM 3 is Richard Mulligan, the hardest working man in any movie (and Richard Benjamin is definitely earning his own paycheck). Mulligan plays "Marvin Dummitz", a cab driver who was inadvertently responsible for the corporate takeover that made Ghost Price the two-hundred-millionaire that he was. Marvin is eventually aided and abetted by Scatman Crothers (!) as a security guard in a suit of medieval armor. (The always-welcome Scatman also sings the closing credits tune.) Richard Mulligan was never better or funnier than on TV's "Soap" - however he's Richard Mulligan, and for small-child 10RDA, Richard Mulligan was at the top of the Greatest Screen Actors sweepstakes, just right behind Harrison Ford, Donald Sutherland, Ernest Borgnine, and Jack Elam. 

* TEAM 4 is Price's household staff - the totally overqualified and mostly bored-looking Roddy McDowell and James Coco, and not-at-all bored-looking Cleavon Little (I'm sorry, I mean "The Great" Cleavon Little!) who probably gives the film's strongest and funniest performance, even with fewer lines and less screentime than the Richards. They're also joined by a sexy French maid played by Stephanie Farracy, who was in lots of stuff in the 70s and 80s and still turns up in dumb comedies occasionally in this century. And...

* TEAM 5 is Tony Randall as Price's son-in-law "Motley" and his four ragamuffin children. (They're his "crew", get it?) I also liked Tony Randall as a child, and thus his casting here as "Fun Dad" probably makes perfect sense from a '79 perspective, and saddling him with four useless, unfunny tykes also probably made sense as, let's face it, the humor in S.HUNT is calibrated approximately at the age level of those four tykes.

Okay, wackiness ensues for 75 minutes, then the Teams reach the finish line and there's more wackiness as the victors are determined by Price's lawyer Robert Morley (also in '65's THE LOVED ONE w/ McDowell). Now it's time for the SPOILER: Team 2 technically wins, but - because they only beat Team 1 through the last-minute assistance of Teams 4 & 5 and especially through a hail Mary pass from Mulligan & Crothers - they decide to split two hundred million dollars among the roughly 20 characters on those four teams. Now, from an adult perspective, that's a good ending. But as a child, I hated it - I was ruthlessly disappointed by that ending. Team 1 was my favorite - followed by Team 3 - and dammit, I was a sore armchair quarterbacking loser. (Also, I think I missed the nuance of the abrupt final announcement from Benedict that he was splitting up Team 2's prize money.)

I was wrong as a child - morally and ethically - but actually, I was also right - dramatically, artistically, and intertextually. Yeah, Team 1 are terrible loathsome characters - they cheat, they're nasty to everyone (even each other), and they already have money and don't deserve more. But, they're easily the most entertaining Team of actors - Benjamin and Leachman are great fun together, breaking a sweat and, with Mazur but unlike almost everyone else in the film, apparently improvising most of their dialogue. Mulligan and Crothers are also great value (though scripted), yet of course they each win ten million bucks at the end. Team 4's Little is excellent and Farracy is sexy, yet Coco and McDowell are basically just slummin' it for paychecks, and Tony Randall's kids suck. And then there's Team 2, the nominal "winners" - three bland generic grinning white people with no personalities - plus one of them is played by legitimately bad human being Willie Aames. Of course they won - it's 1979 and this is a movie for undemanding adults and small children. Oooooo I'm getting mad again!      Six-year old me was right!

Did I mention that Stuart Pankin and Stephen Furst play "fat guys" - I'm not calling these generously proportioned thespians "fat guys", I'm saying their characters exist exclusively to be regarded as "fat" by the Teams. In fact the traditionally husky Furst has to be augmented by a fat suit to look comically fat instead of just naturally well-nourished.  Also, did I mention that Foster Brooks plays a cartoonish native American who hunts Team 1 with a bow and arrow?    Maybe I do hate SCAVENGER HUNT. On the other hand, I watched this in a marathon triple-header with the renowned works of international arthouse cinema LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE and A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY and SCAVENGER HUNT made me the least angry of the three and was easily the most entertaining... 

3/5 I even LOL'd once at an ostrich disappearing improbably into a hole in the Earth.

Also with sweaty, hammy Avery Schreiber as the ostrich's enraged rifle-wielding zookeeper, funnyman Pat McCormick protecting his testicles from flyballs, 70s Arnold S. as (what else?) a bodybuilder in a gym, Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon onscreen for about 90 seconds, and Meat Loaf as a biker gang leader named "Scum". Mazur was nominated for a 1979 "Stinker" Award (which I guess predated the Razzies) for Worst Supporting Performance, but surprisingly that was SCAVENGER HUNT's only nom. Other folks besides FFC and I must've also been entertained against their better judgment by this silly, stoopid, amusing trash.

[Rev. Powell]

MONSTERS AND MEN (2018): Drama showing the effects of the filming of the shooting of an unarmed man on three protagonists: the bystander who films it, a conflicted cop, and a high school athlete. Sure, it's an important subject, but though well-acted, MONSTERS AND MEN brings little that's new or insightful to the table, and the narrative inconclusiveness is hardly reassuring or cathartic. 2.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Grove (short 2022) - Here's something different: a found footage horror movie made entirely by adults with developmental disabilities. Why, you might ask, the f**k would they want to make such a film? Well, it's apparently all part of a program to teach them the skills they need to work in the entertainment industry, as they are out in California. It's not great, but it has it's moments and at only 45 minutes you can't really complain.

A guy wants to do a documentary to try and figure out what happened to his late girlfriend, who allegedly killed herself but no one believes that, least of all him. They end up at the titular Grove hotel, a 1920's throwback themed place that's kind of like a mini version of the one from The Shining. Prior to her death, she had been sending bizarre messages about a "music box" so that's their big clue.

Not exactly rewriting the book of the horror here and it's carried out pretty typically and sloppily, but give them credit for having ALL developmentally disabled people as the cast and crew. It's a start. As cliche as the story was, the actors were likeable and the acting itself was no worse than you'd generally see in one of these things.

3/5

[M.10rda]

Interesting. Brings to mind Crispin Glover's WHAT IS IT?, but, uhhh, presumably less problematic?

[lester1/2jr]

I saw that at The Middle East in Cambridge MA with Glover there. He was an early proponent of mentally retarded/ disabled people performing as themselves instead of embarrassing "Like Normal people" situations.

[M.10rda]

Yeah, I met him a couple of times too, at screenings of both WII? and IT IS FINE, EVERYTHING IS FINE! I think his heart was in a right (if weird) place with WII? but the product still comes off looking a little exploitative to me. IT IS FINE, EVERYTHING IS FINE! is also highly, errr, provocative, but I think it is a stronger argument for the onscreen agency of the physically disabled than WII? is for the developmentally disabled. Actually I've seen IIF, EIF! twice and it really lives in me. Wish I could get a home copy but of course that defeats Glover's entire ethos...

He's a nice guy, btw!

[M.10rda]

brings little that's new or insightful to the table, and the narrative inconclusiveness is hardly reassuring or cathartic. 2.5/5.

This is why I admire the Rev - because he can communicate in 18 words what it takes me 1800 to get across! The above quote could suffice as a fair review of this next film. But, per my OCD, it won't.

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (2012):
I've failed to vibe with Abbas Kiarostami in the past but this late Japanese entry seemed like it might be the one that clicked for me. Covering about 18-20 hours in the lives of its central characters, it begins w/ a college girl having three tense, somewhat ambiguous conversations in a nightclub. Then she travels to the apartment of an elderly retired sociology professor and they chat for a while. Exhausted, she falls asleep in his bed. The next morning he drives her to campus and they run into her on-again/off-again boyfriend, an imbalanced auto mechanic who thinks the professor is the girl's grandfather. The three take a ride, cross paths with a few random characters, and then the professor drives home. But a little while later, the girl returns to his apartment.

All of the above takes about 90 minutes to happen. The cinematography is nice, the performances are great, and the screenplay (though elliptical) is intriguing enough that I was never bored. This whole stretch has the flavor of the great French character dramas of the 90s and early 00s - not a lot seems to happen, but you don't mind spending time watching interesting people relate to each other. I was thinking LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE might be 4/5 material or even better. In fact, at the point at which the girl returns to the professor's apartment, I was game for another 30-45 minutes of story. Instead things take a dark turn, escalate quickly, and the film ends abruptly. The credits rolled, and I was... mad! I liked the film this was and didn't understand why it shifted tracks so drastically and suddenly. I visited Letterboxd and read some reviews, all of them glowing. Many of them mentioned the role of "reflection" and "reflections" in LSIL, and thus the sudden shattering of glass in the final shot is perhaps justified. After reading those reviews, I was less mad at this film, and no longer confused. But the more I think about it, the less I'm sold on the ending. As in past encounters, I don't buy what Kiarostami was selling.

LSIL's ending initially seems like it belongs to a category of endings like EASY RIDER or LOOKING FOR MISTER GOODBAR or FAT GIRL or TWENTYNINE PALMS. All of those films have "shock" endings but all of them more or less have signaled the potential for tragedy, as does LSIL. The difference may be that, formally speaking, those other films allow the viewers minutes or at least seconds to process the tragic turn. LSIL ends as abruptly as the last episode of "The Sopranos", though attentive viewers of "Sopranos" had been programmed for at least an entire season to anticipate (and process) what to expect when the (door)bell tolled. LSIL also doesn't let us get bored of its characters for 60 hours like "Sopranos" did. It just makes you care for and worry about its leads, then leaves you high and dry.

But, if the formal qualities of its ending was my sole complaint about LSIL, I'd get over it. That ending, and what Kiarostami seems to mean vis a vis that ending, poses a bigger, though admittedly subjective, problem for me. I acknowledge that Kiarostami was a smart guy who knew something from personal experience about oppression or even about fascism. He has every right to process those experiences and make thoughtful art about them, as I suspect he did here, even if that art is somewhat contemplative and understated (as LSIL is) about the problems of being an intellectual focused on theory (or "reflection") to the exclusion of reality or to the exclusion of the possibility of meaningful action. That's a perfectly reasonable observation to make on film, and maybe it was a less inoffensive use of 100 minutes in 2012, when the dawn of a second Obama presidency allowed for the prolonged illusion that said president might still affect significant and lasting positive changes on the American and global landscapes. Kiarostami's observation has aged pretty badly though by 2025, I'd reckon; it remains every bit as accurate but in the absence of proposing a bold solution to his prescribed problem, the prescription itself has become extremely trivial. As a survivor of violent aggression and as an American, I know something about  fascism as well - I know (yes, from first-person experience) that irrational and/or organized violent aggression tends to persist and/or perpetuate when met with reason, empathy, or equivocation. It generally only goes away when it is met with equal or greater aggression. This is a sad fact of our life on Earth, and one that LSIL's professor is ill-equipped to contend with.

As soon as the mechanic enters the professor's car an hour into the movie, my automatic reaction was to hope the professor somehow, against expectations, had it in him to cajole the mechanic somewhere quiet and then get him into the trunk of his car and then into a deep hole in the ground. But the professor isn't John Wick or Liam Neeson from TAKEN, and LSIL isn't that kind of movie, and to be fair Kiarostami and some of the other characters recognize this about the professor and about the bubble that Kiarostami has created for the professor. Unfortunately, I have little time for theoretical or morally relativist bubbles lately. This is probably why I got so irritated at Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, which felt like it needed 3.5 hours to convince viewers that dumb south central Americans are eager to be manipulated by evil rich old white guys. Curiously I have more time and patience for mindless onscreen idiocy like SCAVENGER HUNT than I have for earnest-but-misplaced understatement and equivocation as seen in LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE. 21st century cinema needs bold agitprop solutions, not equivocation. Equivocation is tres 1938.

3/5 Still a commendable film until the end.

[indianasmith]

STRANGE DARLING (2023) - This is a very twisty film that leaves you scratching your head for the first half hour or more as to exactly who the villain is in this tense pursuit drama.  A man and a woman go to a hotel together for a night of bondage, but things take a dark turn.  First we see the girl running for her life with a bloody ear, then we see her and her pursuer sitting in a car talking, then we see her begging for shelter in a remote farmhouse, and then the killings start.  Several sharp plot twists come thereafter.  I must say, I was entertained by this movie, but I almost want to watch it again to see if I missed some clues to the finale.  4/5

[Dr. Whom]

The Electric State (2025)

The Netflix algorithm suggested this to me, and I thought, why not. Then I noticed that everyone and their dog were attacking it on Youtube. So I avoided all that and went in cold.

I must say I'm amazed at all the hate. True, they took a book that is apparently haunting and thoughtful and turned it into a Guardians of the Galaxy clone, but that is essentially how Hollywood (for lack of a better term) adapts things: they take some superficial elements for brand recognition and produce a typical blockbuster.

Also true, it is completely by the numbers, but it exists in that sweet spot where something is made up entirely of tropes, so it is easy to follow, but with just enough twists to keep your attention going. Likewise, you have a cast playing the type of characters they are best known for. Not exactly original, but you do have competent performances.

As dumb pseudo blockbusters go, this is more entertaining than most. It won't make film history, but it is perfectly watchable.

[indianasmith]

ARENA WARS (2023) - Man, Michael Madsen must be hard up for work these days!  He plays the announcer in a futuristic death match TV show called Arena Wars that pits death row inmates against psychotic serial killers through a series of seven different arenas - and those who survive to the end win their freedom.  Of course there is the heroic marine, imprisoned on false charges, who winds up beating the odds, a sinister producer who tries to rig the contest against him, and a motley band of killers who rise above their past to help the Marine win the day.  Predictable trash, but kinda fun to watch. 3/5