Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

EDDINGTON: Just ten years ago, this movie set just five years ago would have played like an outlandish satire on the level of SOUTHLAND TALES; now, it seems like something that almost might have really happened. 3.5/5.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

EDDINGTON (2025):
How long will HEREDITARY's (unreasonable, unjustified) line of credit allow Ari Aster to keep making "outlandish", divisive two-and-a-half-hour films that gross only a third-to-half of their budget? I am pessimistic about it but personally I hope the answer is "forever". Madame and I greatly enjoyed the well-acted, beautifully directed (and funny) first 90-to-120 minutes of EDDINGTON, then towards the end increasingly sat silently flummoxed. Honestly it's some credit that Madame (who also hated HEREDITARY and was disgusted and outraged by MIDSOMMAR in spite of then watching it a second time on her own, but loves Pedro Pascal) even made it through EDDINGTON's closing credits. I myself am always embarrassed when I cannot offer a thesis statement about the film I just watched by the time the credits end, and that was the case here!

After having laid awake in bed thinking about it last night, however, I admit I quite admire Aster's chutzpah. EDDINGTON asks a lot of its (regrettably tiny) audience. For one thing, it begins as realism (which, as Rev. Powell indicated above, ain't what it use to be) and very slowly shifts into satire, then in its last twenty-five minutes transforms into allegory or perhaps nightmare/fantasy. EDDINGTON invites sympathy for characters who are horrible people and invites criticism of those who are seemingly decent, raises many questions that it never answers, and introduces an abrupt element of the supernatural (or, perhaps, a character who has become purely symbolic) in its final 5 minutes. Also - perhaps most impressively - Aster provides several of the film's most important pieces of information to the audience precisely once - and if you missed it or you forgot that information two hours later, oh well.

...The guy's got big huevos! I feel bad for EDDINGTON's dreadful performance in theaters, but on the other hand EDDINGTON is in many ways similar yet inferior to the breakout smash hit of the summer, WEAPONS - a film that at least makes some minor narrative concessions to its viewers, still allowing them to chew and process a whole lot of roughage on their own and presumably feel good about it but at least making their digestion manageable and even pleasant.

4/5
...But EDDINGTON is still a much better film and endlessly more worthy of box office success than HEREDITARY!

[Rev. Powell]

yah there is nothing in the song's lyrics to indicate he knew of the case.

Lester, now you should review Lon Chaney Sr.'s 1926 silent gothic classis WHAT'S HE BUILDING IN THERE?

  I always thought that an anthology film of short stories based on TW songs might make a good project. Let Jim Jarmusch direct.