Change Your Image
lodger-56981
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
May December (2023)
Surprisingly weird
This one was surprisingly weird... I'm not sure what Todd Haynes was trying to get at here... the music queues are loud and in bizarre places... but the script and acting are good - Charles Melton is completely underrated in this one - he's really the star of the show... perhaps this film is meant to be enigmatic... its certainly subtle in meaning - but overt in cinematic uneasiness - and perfection in acting... I'd much rather watch a movie that makes me unsure and questioning - than a regular old drama that lays it all out on the line for you to supposedly understand - Haynes takes a TV movie plot and gives it the artistic cinematic treatment... there are no norms - there are no easy answers... just a head-scratcher about a story that was a head-scratcher to most of the masses. Perplexing - but in the best sense of the word...
Poor Things (2023)
A Humanist Manifesto
Without a doubt, one of the greatest and best and most profound and beautiful movies I have seen in eons.
A masterpiece. A treatise on existence. A feminist manifesto. A humanist manifesto.
Emma Stone deserves every freaking award that can be thrown her way - she is bold, daring, willing to take enormously amazing chances and makes them pay off at maximum in every way with every choice.
Yorgos Lanthimos brings us his greatest film yet - all the missteps and eccentricities that have kept his work from being perfect in the past are resolved here into a masterpiece that explores ideas and confronts conflicts and elevates his work to expose the filmmaking genius that he truly is.
There are two kinds of people - ones who love this movie and ones who do not. There will be no indifference to it. If you meet someone who says they hate this movie - run away from them as fast as you can and never speak to them again.
Wonka (2023)
This chocolate looks like...
I'm so embarrassed for Timothee Chalamet. I've never been so sad or disappointed in him since, well, Dune. This is a horrible movie. Derivative drivel. It's like the makers of this movie couldn't figure out what to do with this undesired movie - so they just watch Annie a thousand times and decided to copy the plot points. I know this movie is for kids - but why does it have to be for mentally challenged children. Chalamet has absolutely no idea what to do here. He is so out of his depths that he just flounders aimlessly on the screen for 2 hours. Key - or is it Peele - not its Key - isn't it? Regardless, he is horribly cast as well. Apparently the guy who did Borat realized this movie was crud and turned down the role. Olivia Coleman is wasted in her role too. Any D-list actress could have done this role. They could have got one of the Kardashians and the results would have been the same. Hugh Grant already admitted he did it for the money - and it shows. (Also Ayo Edebiri should steal that little girl for stealing her face). Just disappointing all around. And the songs - oh God - the songs are lame and atrocious. Never mind that Chalamet sings about as good as he raps in that old video. This is horrible in every sense. There is not one clever or original idea here. Roald Dahl deserves better. Gene Wilder deserves better. Hell, even Johnny Depp deserves better. Let's face it - The world deserves better.
The Power of Film (2024)
Movies for Dummies
This is one of the worst, most moronic, simple-minded, psychobabble riddled, full-of-baloney documentaries I have ever seen. Howard Suber, who is supposedly a college professor, talks about movies at a third-grade level. He relies on the most banal and insipid American films that only fanboys consider worthy to punctuate his misguided and pedantic viewpoints on film. Sitting through this insufferable nonsense will only make you more ignorant about movies, the world and existence. Suber is like the Mr. Rogers of film commentators. He completely misses the point of movies. I've only sat through two episodes of this horrible series and I will not sit through more. Shame on TCM for showing this worthless series. I already feel stupider for having watched it.
Rex Harrison Presents Stories of Love (1974)
It's a shame these 3 shorts have not been more widely seen.
Running an hour and 36 minutes - this unsold pilot was presumable going to run 2 hours on network TV with commercials.
Although the biggest problem here is Harrison who is obviously reading from a teleprompter and is about as bland and uninteresting as one can get - the 3 short film segments that make up the bulk of the show are fairly good - albeit typically 70's "Movie of the Week" genre pieces with pacing that is a bit too slow. It's a shame that some of these never really saw the light of day in some other type of airing.
The first segment is based on Kurt Vonnegut's short story Epicac with Bill Bixby and Julie Sommars. The piece has lots of annoying beeps and boops to signify its about computers including in the music. In a stroke that is both racist and progressive, the computer programmer who is German in Vonnegut's story, is Asian in this. Also - while the computer communicates with written code in the story, Bixby's character pushes a button called VOX that allows the machine to speak and then is able to have a conversation with it here. The computer is also linked to cameras - so he can "see" the female love interest and sort of spy on what happens. It is mentioned that it is supposedly set in 1979. In one scene, the characters go to a club where everyone wears headphones - sort of presupposing silent discos which is interesting. Bixby calls the computer "Ep" rather than the full name Epicac. And leaving the plot from the novel behind a bit, here, the protagonist confesses that the poetry is composed by the computer - but in this case - the female love interest does not believe him. The end does follow the original story closely.
Also in the episode is Daphne du Maurier's Kiss Me Again Stranger (with Leonard Nimoy). This is really an unusual story - and one that does not seem derivative or referenced often in later films. Nimoy has a hard time with his accent here - it comes and goes - in a story set after WWII about a RAF vet who meets a girl (Juliet Mills) that blames all flyers for her parents dying in a bombing whether German or not. She has killed some other vets and is going to kill Nimoy until his honest sweetness affects her and she kills someone else instead and gets caught. The piece ends with a scene in a police station that is quite nice and unlike anything else exactly where Nimoy's characters sweetness and kindness again directs the story to a lovely conclusion.
And the final story is the most humorous and clever of the 3. Based on W Somerset Maugham's The Fortunate Painter with Loren Greene, Agnes Moorehead and Alan Hale. This is an amusing and interesting story that does quite well in wrapping up the show in a more lighthearted mood. Moorehead is fantastic in her last role before her death. Another disappointment that comes with this short film never really being seen. She's as good as anything else she's ever been in - and quite funny. Greene is surprisingly good as a Frenchman. The ending is a bit of a surprise - and makes you reconsider all the has happened before. And it is surprising again that this story has not been more oft told. It's very good and done very well here. It's too bad these short films aren't more well know. This is definitely worth a watch if you can find it - just skip the pointless Harrison intros.
Extraña forma de vida (2023)
A sure signpost towards the death of brick and mortal cinemas if I have ever seen one.
It's partially my fault that I disliked this film. I paid my $15 and about $17 for a drink and popcorn not knowing this was a short film. I like to see films without knowing anything about them in advance. But this film may have killed this notion for me after having it serve me well for 25 years.
This isn't a short film; it's an aborted film. Almodovar - who has provided queer filmgoers like myself much to cheer about throughout his career - utterly disappoints by setting up a fantastic premise - elaborating on it for 30 minutes - and then just ending it before it has a chance to resolve in any meaningful way. When the end credit came up - I though Almodovar was doing that Warholian trick - turned into genre by Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie" and the recent film "Drive My Car" of putting the credits deep into the movie's begining. But nope - this was the end of the short film. I was shocked and angry. Worse - at the screening I attended in Austin - the short was followed by another Almodovar short called "The Human Voice" from 2020 with Tilda Swinton. As usual, the actress is amazing - but the plot and dialogue of this film is so cliched and tired, we've seen it a million times. And Aldomovar films it as some sort of homage to Lars Von Trier's "Dogtown," a film I absolutely despise.... - Then came a 40 minute interview with Almodovar where he discusses "Strange Way of Life" to the point of rendering the short film even more irrelevant - and he tells how he would end it if it were a feature film One of the most infuriating endings to a cinema visit I've had to endure since the 2010's. "A Strange Way of Life" is a strange way to make films: Abort the story when it gets most interesting - then do interviews that tell how the story ends. A sure signpost towards the death of brick and mortal cinemas if I have ever seen one.
Stop Making Sense (1984)
The concert film genre... deconstructed perfectly.
Stop Making Sense (1984)
Interviewer: David Byrne's an unusual guy
David Bowie: Yes, he's always looking at the floor
Interviewer: That's odd, when I saw him in concert he was
always looking at the ceiling
David Bowie: (laughing) Well the floor is where the people
are.
- King Biscuit Flower Hour
This Talking Heads concert film released during the height of the band's popularity and during the middle of the Reagan administration could possibly be the best pure rock and roll film ever made. Head's leader David Byrne, who looks so young here, sets out to deconstruct the concert film with the aid of director Jonthan Demme and succeeds admirably. But the film also works on numerous other levels. For one, the performance is flawless. Also, there is the joyousness of the performance, the statement Byrne and his band mates make about movement in modern culture and seemingly about the banality of the fashion of the time. And, finally, thanks to the passage of 15 years since it's initial release, there is the nostalgia of it all.
The film brought me to tears. Watching Byrne and the band make beautiful music while they run around the stage in seeming casual abandonment is nothing short of pure joy. The smiles on our faces are there because of the smiles on the faces of Byrne and Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz and the rest of the band. Even the stoic "granddaddy" of the Heads, Jerry Harrison, cracks a smile here and there. We are watching a group of performers at their peak. They move with such grace an beauty that their motion becomes poetry. Byrne's quirkiness plays so effortlessly into the personas of those around him that they echo his movement and actions. We'd be fools not to realize that this is a well performed, precisely enacted, rehearsed performance caught on film. Every movement is preordained. But Byrne and his costars make it seem spontaneous. Their joy of performing, their love of the material and their seeming love of each other transcends the rigorous precision of the performance and catapults it into an ethereal plane where art and mind combine. The perpetual smile on the groups seeming "younger brother," Franz, spurs all of us, in the film and in the film's audience, on screen and off, to truly enjoy every moment of film here.
Byrne and Demme transcend the usual claustrophobia of live concert films by removing the stage at the film's beginning and turning it into simple "space." Byrne deconstructs the concert film genre by having the stage constructed around the band as they play. The film begins with the beat, the beat of Byrne's footsteps as he walks to the front of the stage and performs "Psycho Killer" to prerecorded accompaniment on a jam box. Tina Weymouth is brought out and then the duo of the Heads, much in the way that the band actually formed, play "Heaven," itself deconstructed from it's full band performance on the Head's "Fear of Music" album. Then Franz's drum kit is rolled out and the now trio play "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel," a song so blissful that we cannot help but be drawn even deeper into the film. Then, still true to the band's history, Jerry Harrison plugs in his guitar and comes on board for "Found a Job." Finally, as more musical instruments and more platforms are wheeled out onto the stage, background singers and other musicians appear as the foursome moves into the rhythmic excursions of it's repertoire off "Remain in Light" and "Speak in Tongues." And the construction/deconstruction phase of the film ends.
So, alive in the format, the Head's perform to a neon backdrop of projected colors, words and images as they continue to engross us in their experience. Their fluid stage movements and interaction become the definition of simpatico. Everyone "gets" Byrne and everyone moves at his movement, not in simple mimicry, but in homage, in spoof, in dance, in performance, in kinetic ritual. And here is where the film begins to have it's message about movement in modern society. Byrne is so svelte and so fluid, surprisingly so considering his quirkiness, that he sets the pace for the performers who run, jump, and dance with him. Byrne even runs in circles around the entire stage of performers at one point. Often he and the background singers and the guitarists run in place, and in unison, in pointed commentary about the "rat race" of human existence in our modern deconstructed 80's bland society. Their movement seems unnecessary. Byrne and his band work so hard to entertain us that we wonder if his unending energy will force his band mates to fall in exhaustion in mid- performance. Instead, like some cyborg aerobics class, they seem even more happy in their exercise. They follow his lead, they dance at his pace, they run right beside him, seemingly going nowhere. Happy in their activity which takes them only to the height of audience appreciation. And meanwhile, they never miss a beat or a note.
Well, almost anyway. Expounding upon the true nature of the film, as the band's evolution plays out it progression onstage, Byrne leaves the floor and allows Weymouth and Franz, as Tom Tom Club, to play their hit song "Genius of Love." Suddenly we realize why there is no band without these 4 people together. Franz, in his unrestrained giddiness, won't shut up and barely gives wife/band mate Weymouth a chance to sing her part of the song. The film would pretty much grind to a halt if this song wasn't granted a eternal life due to the repetition of nightclub play and the sampling the song has been subject to in the 90's, including a hit song by Mariah Carrey.
Another problem with the film is Bernie Worrell. From his disjointed keyboard solo on "Burning Down the House" to his bug-eyed mugging, Worrell can stop any forward moment the film may have simply by having the camera placed on him. He's the one sore thumb in the entire production.
Thankfully, behind the scenes, Demme and his team "get it" too. They understand what makes Byrne and the band tick. They "grok" it and capture it on film. Rarely, but occasionally formulaic, Demme often pulls back to reveal the band, in it's evolution on stage, as a audience member's view of the proscenium. It's typical but important and necessary in the film's progression. It's a sentence in the film's language that must be repeated at times to show the importance of the different inflections of it's words, it's own progression and evolution. Demme's camera captures it all, appearing to be everywhere at once. Some of the most beautiful moments in the film come when he tries to follow Byrne with his camera and gets lost in the stage's black backdrop before, amazingly, finding that facade again in some unexpected movement, in some unexpected phrase. Byrne, looking like the b*stard child of Mr. Rogers and David Lynch, is ceaselessly attractive to view. His facade consistently in motion, his face endlessly searching out the perfect expression of the moment. Byrne seems at home, on stage and in front of the camera. It's no surprise when the stage literally becomes such a place (during "This Must Be the Place") and, using a floor lamp as a prop, Byrne dances with it in awkward abandon. Like the finest performance artist, taking his cue from the New York avant-garde, Byrne uses every inch of the stage, every note of the music, every beat of the clock to his fullest advantage, to enlighten and entertain. He puts his everything into the performance and his band mates follow suit. It's proverbial poetry in motion.
Re-released for it's 15th anniversary, "Stop Making Sense" becomes a nostalgic document of a seemingly perfect band at the seemingly perfect time, both of which no longer exists. The band would make only one popular album after the film, "Little Creatures," before solo work and side projects would lead them to the divergent paths and, inevitably, disbandment. This is a band that no longer exists at a time that no longer exists performing perpetually on celluloid for our wonderment and ceaseless gaze. It is as beautiful as any Talking Head's record. It's is as perfect as any supposed film "masterpiece" ever made. It is a joyous moment in time crystallized.
Yes kids, I was there.
I didn't know it then.
But I know it now.
God, I know it now.
Notes:
Songs on soundtrack CD: Psycho Killer Swamp Slippery People Burning Down the House Girlfriend is Better Once in a Lifetime What a Day that Was Life During Wartime Take Me to the River
Also in the film: Crosseyed and Painless
Report Card
Music: A+
Sound: A+
Preformance: A+
Cinematography\Lighting: A+
Final Grade: A+ Viewed again on 10/15/23 - and I stand by this review written in 2000.
2081 (2009)
Watch Harrison Bergeron
This adaptation of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron is completely lacking and almost without merit. It's main interest now lies in the fact that Armie Hammer plays the main character here. He is horribly miscast. While Vonnegut's source material is a 7 page short story - there is room for interpretation here - and this film misses it -
If you want to see a truly brilliant and thought provoking extrapolation of the Vonnegut story - seek out a film make in 1995 starring Sean Astin called "Harrison Bergeron." While this adaptation takes flight with the source material - expanding it into a 100 minute movie - it is far more honest to the feeling of the Vonnegut tale.
Harrison Bergeron, the film, might be hard to find - do yourself a favor - and find it!