What's Up?
The Oscars, that's what.
I suppose, this column is essentially both review and critique. I am a critic and therefore I crit. I suppose you could label me a specific type of film watcher, but generally I think my viewing habits - especially with films - are varied and wide reaching. Therefore, I can disagree with peoples opinions until the cows come home, because it's my opinion and I'm sharing it with you. I just want to get that out there and emphasise it's nothing personal.
I seem to be old. I seem to be unable to see the masterpiece inside certain films, which I have never been particularly fond of. Sometimes I can see a good film even if I'm not enjoying watching it - god knows there's been enough of that - but usually I wonder about the opinions of others. Take One Battle After Another, I think it was loud, rambling and utterly pointless. Paul Thomas Anderson's films are largely built around chaotic whimsy. I don't dislike his films, he's a kind of Avant Garde Woody Allen for the 21st Century, but I didn't really like Allen's movies, so... meh.
This particular winner of six Oscars was so memorable, the wife asked me when she saw it had won to remind her what it was about - we watched it 10 days ago. It wasn't funny. It wasn't dramatic. It felt like someone wanted to make a Cohen Brothers movie but had never seen a Cohen Brothers movie. I saw no reason why a film consisting of lots of shouting, peculiar scenes and borderline slapstick would be able to win like that. If [IMHO] the film wasn't really that good, are we talking about rewarding the best films or the best marketed films?
Don't get me going with Sinners. We watched it almost a year ago now and thought it was a strange mixture of post WW1 ethnic poverty and oppression and vampire movie. I didn't see the message. I didn't think it did a very good job of telling what little story there was. It was full of characters and had the rhythm of a modern-day black version of Towering Inferno, but with less jeopardy.
Except... looking at the list of films nominated for best picture - we've only seen half - there are a couple we have to [can] watch and there were a few we're unlikely to ever watch, so this can't be definitive, but that's a shit selection of 'the year's best films,' isn't it? I can't really remember that many of the previous few years' winners either and if reminded I'd probably shrug. It's like Oscars have become like the Turner Prize for films, maybe crossed a little bit with the Darwin Awards. I don't think it reflects what people watch and enjoy and it probably hasn't for a long time.
Yet, the day after the annual snoozefest, we had my 'favourite' newspaper claiming the Academy Awards are now 'for everybody' and 'have changed for the better'... Really? Because a black vampire film won a couple of gongs? Because Paul Thomas fucking Anderson was finally rewarded for not giving up with his quirky overlong bits of nonsense? The Guardian*, as usual, can go fuck itself. How this newspaper can even call itself a serious commentator of film, when it gives positive reviews to all manner of shit, has been up for debate for a long time.
* Yes, I know it's an obsession, but tough; it's my column... The Guardian gave Maggie Gyllenhaal's second directed film a FOUR star review and called it 'electrifying' and literally fell over itself to praise actor du jour Jessie Buckley in her role in The Bride, a 'post-modern' reworking of the Bride of Frankenstein as a Bonnie & Clyde gangster movie - yes, that's what it's about. Film fans have been a little less ... accommodating, as it - today alone (Wednesday) - has wavered between 5.8 and 5.9 on IMDB. The reviews have been a little more critical: "Strong concept, thin execution," or "About halfway through The Bride!, I found myself doing the one thing no director wants: checking my watch," or "Did anyone at Warner Bros. watch this film before releasing it?" One reviewer, who claimed they really wanted to like it, called it "Excruciating," while another said, "a terribly slow, misguided, incoherent mess."
But, you know, The fucking Guardian claims it's a FOUR star triumph, in the same month it claims the Oscars are now 'changed for the better,' perhaps the people running the newspaper will give each other reach arounds if this piece of stylised shit gets nominated for an Oscar next year? Suffice it to say, I will not be watching this or even giving it house room...
The only awards I give a minuscule fuck about are ones given to people who have made sacrifices or helped others in the face of adversity. If you have to give gongs out for films, they should be voted for by the people; they should reflect what people like; they should reward acting that makes a shit film average or an average movie good. If I was Michael B Jordan I'd be thinking of all the great black actors who didn't win Oscars for far better performances rather than think of myself as something special.
However, now that they're over we can go back about our normal viewing habits until some cunt mentions the O word just after New Year and the machine grinds its way back into view, yet again...
Trailer Trash
Is it a big thing now when Marvel has a new movie out? It's not like every time you take a shit there's a new MCU film any more, therefore there does seem to be something - dare I say it - exciting about a new feature from the place formerly known as the House of Ideas. This time it's the first official trailer for
Spider-Man: Brand New Day and I've watched the trailer three times to give you my thoughts on it... Meh. That's it. Meh. So it has Frank Castle in it. Bruce Banner. Possibly Sadie Sink (she doesn't appear in the trailer, but do a search for the film on something like Duck Duck Go and she pops up all over it). There's the Scorpion - aka Mac Gargan - and there's something wrong with Peter Parker...
So why meh? Well, trailers are supposed to get you psyched up, aren't they? This didn't. This felt a little like we were going through some motions. Nothing reached out, didn't grab me by the balls or slap me around the face like an ancient Tango advert. This felt... meh. This could be a good thing; I mean how often have we watched trailers for BIG films and ended up with disappointment etched on our souls?
What have we discovered? Well, Parker is still unknown, but Spidey's life seems to have gotten better. He's still lonely and missing his friends. He bumps into The Punisher and the two clearly know each other because Peter calls him Frank. Peter also asks Bruce Banner for some advice, because Peter is beginning to have strange things happen to him, which he doesn't understand and there's a narration over the top suggesting that he is mutating, the way real spiders (apparently) do. There's the briefest of appearances by the Scorpion and the suggestion that Spidey is about to come into direct contact with the Hand (or some other Yakuza-like organisation). Glasgow looks cool though... but... I dunno, I expected something with a little more oomph.
However, while Zendaya is back as MJ, she's also back as Chani of the Fremen in Dune 3, which appears to be arriving about four years earlier than first thought. Denis Villeneuve's third instalment, thus a trilogy, arrives at Christmas and takes the apparent 'impossible to film' Dune: Messiah and makes it the concluding part of the tale, with Timothée Chalamet (sans hair) back as Paul Atreides. This is also a BIG thing and is coming out around the same time as Avengers: Doomsday and is likely to be a huge success. Maybe it's because these trails have caught me on a down cycle in my mood swings or I'm simply growing largely indifferent to any film where I'm supposed to get excited about, but, you know... meh.
It Was Inevitable
We watched
White House Down on Friday, so it stood to reason we'd watch
Olympus Has Fallen on Saturday. What we didn't know was the latter was directed by Antione Fuqua, the guy who directed
The Equalizer movies we've watched over the last ten days; so there's been a link.
Olympus Has Fallen is head and shoulders a better film that
White House Down. Not only was it tonally right, it was considerably more visceral, ruthless and while neither movie is plausible, this had an immediacy about it that other features similar have lacked. I'm not a huge fan of Gerard Butler - he had just about hit his peak with this - and Aaron Eckhart's star had also... ahem... fallen. However, this was far better than the two main stars. It's now opened the door to watching at least one of the two sequels (but maybe only one, because the second film has a shit rating on IMDB). 7/10
Spousal Abuse
I've never been remotely interested in the film
Mr & Mrs Smith; despite quite liking the recent TV adaptation of it, the movie simply never pressed any of my buttons and after finally giving in and watching it, I feel utterly vindicated. I think the wife enjoyed it; I found it tortuous, annoying and largely incomplete. This was a film that was two hours too long [it's two hours long] and I struggle with Angelina Jolie at the best of times - I don't think she can act - and while I like Brad Pitt, I didn't like him in this. John and Jane are both hired killers who don't know their other halves are also hired killers. The laughs were strained; the premise was absurd and when it ended it felt like there was a great deal of confidence there would be a
Mr & Mrs Smith 2, because they won a battle but not the war. I just didn't like this. 4/10
True Lies False Truths
Paul Greengrass's
Green Zone is a fictionalised version of how some people from the USA discovered there were no WMDs in Iraq and how this was manipulated to allow the USA to stage a full scale war and invasion of the Arab country. Whether the events are true or have been sensationalised for the benefit of a movie I don't know, but I think I probably watched a very close approximation of how some people discovered other people had lied about things and those people were the government and the people who knew this were the CIA and they ended up being powerless to stop it. Matt Damon plays a chief weapons searcher coming to the conclusion he's searching for imaginary WMDs; Brendan Gleason is the CIA man who just wants the Americans to allow Iraq to police itself; Greg Kinnear is the shit-bag administrator from George W Bush's office trying his best to cover his and USA's arse and Jason Isaac plays his enforcer for Kinnear. There was an almost documentary quality to this, but it ended up feeling like the main story was lost - or that might be what it was trying to convey. 6/10
Going Anywhere Soon?
Paradise switched between the outside world and Colorado pretty evenly in the sixth part of the second series. The focus from the inside was Jane, who it appears was the subject of a prophecy when she was born that she would be the person who brings about the end of the world. Jane is the Secret Service 'dumb blonde' who killed her boyfriend, framed the President's girlfriend for killing him and has been playing everyone for her own benefit. On the outside, Xavier is planning on attacking the compound to free his wife, using cobbled together explosives without realising he's also being played. We're hanging in there, but sometimes the plot feels extremely contrived and there's feeling sometimes that the writers don't seem to have a clear direction.
Gung-Ho USA
Two themes are emerging this week in things we're watching: war and the USA.
12 Strong has both of these things in spades. It's the story of the USA's immediate response to the 9/11 incidents; when a team of 12 green berets went to Afghanistan to join forces with freedom fighters to attempt to beat both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Obviously we all know how that eventually panned out, but I suppose at the time it was an important mission for the USA to be seen involved with. Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon are the two notable actors in this as they play Captain and Warrant Officer to a small selective group of soldiers led by Michael Pena. Modern war films are a different beast, even compared to movies of the 1990s; there's a visceral feel and the weaponry is designed to do as much damage as possible, so nothing is pleasant viewing and that old gung-ho feel of a John Wayne war film is replaced by a general feeling of fear and fight. This isn't a bad movie and does a reasonable job of humanising the soldiers. 7/10
Mistaken Identity?
I have never in the slightest bit been interested in
Lucky Number Slevin. I remember seeing Jonathon Ross review it back in the noughties and thinking, "that's something to avoid." Yet, here I was, on a Wednesday night, watching it. For the opening hour I was feeling vindicated as Josh Hartnett bumbled his way into two situations he didn't appear to know much about. Was this really a case of mistaken identity? Was he really that stupid? The two crime lords wanting him - Ben Kingsley as The Rabbi and Morgan Freeman as The Boss - were surrounded by a lot of vaguely comedic henchmen and there was always a feeling that we were watching a comedy rather than a drama. Lucy Liu played a slightly ditsy pathologist who fancies herself as a detective and Stanley Tucci as the cop trying to make sense of it; while Bruce Willis, who was prominent in the 'prologue' was most definitely pulling the strings. Then it changed tack completely and while the wife had an idea what was coming, I was hoodwinked and realised the film I thought was a load of shite, was actually a cleverly put together idea that I had somehow missed, because I thought it was about something else entirely. 7/10
Struggling
There's still an element of treading water in this middle section of the final season of
Shrinking. Gaby is grieving and hurting about the death of a patient, especially when she discovers things she should - as the therapist - have been aware of and this subsequently leads to issues with some of her other patients. Jimmy ends up becoming an impromptu therapist for his new girlfriend Sofi (Coby Smulders) and her ex-husband and Paul seems to be babysitting his staff a lot, at a time when he should be winding down. There's maybe now this feeling creeping in that this show is going to simply end with stuff that's been telegraphed happening - Paul's retirement, Gaby may get married and open her own practice and Jimmy waving Alice off to uni and starting a new relationship with Sofi, while the world just carries on, because almost everyone else in this show has had their moments and are moving on. If that's what happens then it fits in perfectly with how the show has gone. I won't be disappointed in the slightest if no one dies and Liz stays perfectly horrible.
Lewd, Rude and Quaaludes
I don't usually associate Martin Scorsese with comedies; yes, there are comedic elements in some of his work, but
The Wolf of Wall Street is a bona fide LOL film. It is without a doubt the film of the week in the Hall house and I'd forgotten what an absolute gem it was. It's a movie that pulls no punches; it's full of nudity, drug taking and some of the dodgiest things you could imagine on a screen, yet it keeps you completely hooked for its almost three hours. It is both astounding and astonishing, not that it is based on a true story, but because the people involved actually got away with what they were doing for so long with almost complete impunity. Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic as Jordan Belfort, who became a stock market broker the day of Black Wednesday and took that to become a phenomenal power and influence broker across the USA for over a decade, while simultaneously shoving all manner of drugs into his body.
This movie also stars Jonah Hill, Jon Bernthal, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Favreau, Cristin Milioti, in fact, it pretty much has an all-star cast with people only appearing for seconds when they'd be the stars of their own films. It is also crazy and brilliant as it follows Belfort from wannabe stockbroker to the head of a company that cut every corner, broke every rule and threw every dwarf it could to make its staff millionaires. It is quite an extraordinary movie and thoroughly deserves a 9/10.
Remarkable Man
Several weeks ago, the wife said to me, "I've never seen
Gandhi." I realised that I also had never seen this Richard Attenborough epic from 1982. I mean, how do you go 44 years without seeing one of the classic movies of all time? I won't bore you with the details, but actually being able to watch this film took more than just three hours of our time, but instead of watching some action-packed adventure on Friday night, to finish our week's viewing off, we settled down to watch Ben Kingsley and a who's who of stars tell the story of Mohandas Gandhi from idealistic young lawyer in apartheid South Africa in 1893 to his death in New Delhi in 1948.
I wouldn't call it a work of cinematic genius; it needed to tell far too much. What it was though managed to educate me about the man who transcended specific religions and believed in the power of humanity, whatever religion you followed. In many ways, because this was made by the British, there was probably an element of downplaying the atrocities, especially from the Partition - a holocaust if ever there was one, which may well have killed more Indians and Pakistanis than the Nazis killed Jews; but, you know, the British were responsible for that so it's an episode of history that we don't hear much about. However, there was much more to this than just a chronological march through Gandhi's life, but one got the impression that he did so much and touched so many if this movie had been eight hours long it might still only have scratched the surface to his story.
I'm going to break with tradition here and not mark this out of 10. It's simply a film that if you get the chance and are not familiar with some of the less heroic parts of British Empire history you should watch.
What's Up Next?
Daredevil: Born Again is back for a second season - but we all know it's just the second half of the first series. There's also some hints that one of my favourite TV shows of the 21st century might be back on the screens before the end of the month, but I'm not going to tempt fate by naming it, but if you've followed this long enough you'll know it's on Apple TV+ and is an alternate history series about how the USSR beat the USA to the moon and what happened next...
Also, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen arrives on Netflix. This might be a load of shit, but the reason I mention it is because... [ahem] ... there's a big feature on it in today's Guardian by Rik Samadder claiming it is the latest series from the Duffer Brothers - you know, the guys who brought us Stranger Things - except it isn't. They are credited as Executive Producers, which means their input into this was at a basic production level, It isn't their idea; they don't direct or write any episodes, they basically stumped up some cash... Yet the Guardian, for some reason, makes then the stars of the show and not creator Haley Z Boston (no, me neither).
Literally an hour before I put this blog to bed, the news arrived that Nicholas Brendon had died, aged 54. To be honest, in a week where Sarah Michelle Gellar announced that the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot was dead in the water and wasn't going to be making a comeback, the death of Xander feels like a real kick in the balls. Nick Brendon was a victim of his own success; he never really reached the potential he showed as Buffy's BMF, got into trouble with the drugs and the law and then discovered a few years ago he had a congenital heart condition - which ultimately killed him. It seems like a huge waste of talent and a tragic end for one of the reasons why
Buffy was such a great series...
Anyhow... next week is also a pub quiz week, so there won't be a Friday night feature and it could be a thin week of reading material for you as I'm also supposed to be going out boozing tonight. Whatever happens, you'll be the first people to hear about it...
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