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Ammonite (2020)
Trying to Make Fossils Sexy
Can fossils be sexy? This movie answers that question for us: No.
Well, maybe they can. But not as presented here. I already saw this movie, and it was called "Portrait of a Lady on Fire." Except that movie was way better.
Look, Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are both excellent actresses, and just one of them in a film would be justification for watching it no matter what it's about. But both of them are undermined by this dreary movie about the volcanic passion that erupts between a taciturn scientist (Winslet) and a young neglected wife (Ronan) staying with her in a quiet seaside village. Except that nothing is volcanic or passionate about their relationship. The film is so strangled by its determination to be taken seriously that no one's given any room to breathe. It's as if the director felt that the slightest bit of pizazz would hint at frivolity. I wasn't even asking for levity, because God forbid -- I was just asking for something to alleviate the trudging procession of static, grayish scenes.
Winslet and Ronan have no chemistry together, which is the final nail in this film's coffin. In their explicit sex scenes together, the two actresses go about the motions like two professionals doing a job.
Grade: C
The Hunger Games (2012)
What a Grueling Movie
Good lord, what a grueling movie.
My 11-year-old just finished reading the "Hunger Games" trilogy and now we'll be watching the movies. This was my first exposure to the story in any form, and now I'm wondering how my child isn't psychologically scarred.
We're in serious "Lord of the Flies" territory here. This movie felt more punishing than entertaining, and it doesn't help that it's thuddingly directed by Gary Ross. To give Ross credit, this is probably the most interesting directorial job he's ever done, but when your other high-profile movies are thinks like "Seabiscuit," that's not saying a whole lot.
And why is it that my first instinct whenever Woody Harrelson strolls into a movie is to giggle only to be totally impressed by the end of whatever he's in at what a kick ass job he did with the role?
Grade: B
X2 (2003)
Heavy on the Exposition
"X2" has a lot of plot to get through, but don't worry....if you were concerned that you might not be able to follow it, someone comes along every 15 minutes or so to provide momentum-crushing plot exposition.
I was really craving much more mutant antics than I got in this admittedly more ambitious but less satisfying sequel to "X-Men." Only a handful of mutants get to use their powers; the rest just sit around for most of the movie waiting for Hugh Jackman to save them.
Grade: B
The White Tiger (2021)
Exuberant Film About the Dark Side of Indian Democracy
"The White Tiger" is the antidote to "Slumdog Millionaire." The latter film feels like a bunch of white guys appropriating Indian culture to tell their version of a fairy tale. "The White Tiger," by contrast, feels like a movie about India made by people who understand India.
It's an energetic, exuberant movie about the desperation that drives a poor ambitious man from a small village to murder and eventually a life of wealth and privilege. It's a dog eat dog story, almost literal in its telling and lacking any nuance, but pretty entertaining. It also feels very familiar to those of us living in places like the United States, where the lip service given to words like democracy, freedom, and capitalism are belied by the reality of those who have trampling over those who have not in the race to get even more.
I enjoyed the glimpses of modern-day India that this movie offered, even if they convinced me it's not a place I'm in any hurry to visit soon.
Grade: A-
The Dig (2021)
Tasteful and Dull
"The Dig" is tasteful and thoughtful and competent and......a bit dull.
It's the kind of movie that people who don't watch a lot of movies think an art film should be. It has a sheen of intelligence just by taking place in an English period setting and starring a bunch of people with British accents. It looks pretty. Everyone seems sad all the time. It's about war. It must be ART!
Carey Mulligan is a fine actress, but her character is entirely defined by one word: DYING. So how much fun can that be? Ralph Fiennes is, no surprise, excellent. Lily James brings the film some spunk, or tries to, but the tone of unrelenting moroseness does her in. The film is about a fascinating topic, but did it have to be quite so gloomy?
There's nothing especially wrong with it, but at the same time there's not a whole lot that could inspire me to recommend it to anyone I know.
Grade: B-
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
A 70s Noir
Director Dick Richards has another go at the Raymond Chandler story that had already been filmed in 1944 under the better title "Murder, My Sweet." Dick Powell played gumshoe Philip Marlowe in that one, while Robert Mitchum gets that honor here. While I think shot for shot I prefer the 1944 version (it's dripping with noir style and atmosphere), when it comes to the leading man, there's just no comparison. Mitchum was practically born to play roles like this.
Because this came out in 1975, "Farewell My Lovely" is a much less euphemistic version of Chandler's sordid story, and the film does a pretty good job of establishing a sleazy style of its own, much of it copped from "Chinatown," the classic that had come out the year before. Where this movie stumbles is in the casting of Charlotte Rampling as the femme fatale, especially considering that Claire Trevor played the role as a hotsy-totsy piece of something in the 1944 version. Rampling is a drip in the role, and she's not as sexy as the film needs her to be. She has relatively little screen time though, so it's not a huge detriment to the film. Mitchum picks up the slack, and he's helped by John Ireland in the role of police chief.
"Farewell My Lovely" earned a spot in film trivia annals when Sylvia Miles, in a brief role as a boozy informant, received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Miles made a bit of a specialty out of getting Oscar nominated for tiny roles. She had done the same thing in "Midnight Cowboy" six years earlier.
Grade: A-
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Ambitious Horror Comedy
There's a lot going on thematically in this uneven horror comedy.
The film is the brain child of writer/director/star Jim Cummings, whose film "Thunder Road" I adored. "The Wolf of Snow Hollow" isn't as good as that movie, but that's partially because it's more ambitious, so I give him credit for trying.
Cummings plays a police officer (again) with rage issues (again) and an alcohol addiction. Gruesome murders start happening in the small Utah town of the film's setting, and after Cummings first rejects the far out theory that they might be the work of a werewolf, he begins to toy with the idea that maybe there's something to it as the murders continue to go unsolved.
The werewolf concept acts as an allegory for both the monstrous impulses Cummings himself feels and that he's driven to when drinking, and the predatory world of men in general and the danger they pose to women in general and his teenage daughter specifically. There's clearly a MeToo inspired vein of male apology running through the film, but it all gets a bit muddled by a screenplay that doesn't quite know where it wants to go. The ending is unsatisfying, but the movie leading up to the ending is pretty decent. It doesn't do a great job of striking the right tone -- the humor isn't ever quite funny enough but everything else is treated a bit too lightly to ever be taken seriously -- but the film does have a bold sense of style that I appreciated.
I like what I've seen so far of Cummings as an actor and director and this film will keep me coming back for more.
Grade: A-
Claudine (1974)
Slice of Harlem Life
Films about the Black American experience are still pretty rare now, so think about what a rarity a film like "Claudine" would have been in 1974.
Diahann Carroll earned an Oscar nomination for playing the title character, a single mother of six in Harlem, trying to raise a family on welfare. The movie is part social critique of the welfare system itself, a program that doesn't help enough but puts in place just enough rules and regulations that prevents families from being able to help themselves, and part romance between Claudine and a sanitation worker played robustly by James Earl Jones. It's refreshing to see a movie that gives its audience something other than the standard stereotypes of Black people living within the welfare system, and it's a fascinating slice of life look at Harlem in the 1970s. It's unfortunate that in order to avoid Black stereotypes, the film has to instead make caricatures of the few white people in it. It's as if movies with both Black and white characters don't know what to do with themselves if one of the groups isn't pigeon holed in some way. Maybe we'll get there some day.
"Claudine" is a just a little lightweight to achieve greatness, and a screwball ending is directed poorly and sticks out like a sore thumb. But it's worth a watch for the performances of the two leads.
Grade: B+
Butterflies Are Free (1972)
Showcases Goldie Hawn's Immense Appeal
"Butterflies Are Free" is pretty lightweight stuff. I can't imagine shelling out top dollar and getting gussied up (in the pre-pandemic days when people still actually got dressed for the day) to see something as forgettable as this on Broadway. But in the comfiness and much cheaper confines of your living room (where you don't even have to wear pants if you don't want to), this screen adaptation is an engaging way to spend a couple of hours. More than anything, "Butterflies Are Free" showcases the immense appeal of Goldie Hawn, who, for a run of years there in the 1970s, cornered the market on singlehandedly turning what otherwise would have been mediocre movies into minor comedy classics.
Edward Albert (son of Eddie) is quite good in this too, as a young blind man trying to make a life for himself and away from his tyrannical mother in hippie-dippy San Francisco. What ever happened to him? What makes this movie more than just a minor footnote in film history is the performance of Eileen Heckart as Albert's mom, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her efforts. No one could toss out a withering one liner with more acerbic finesse than her.
The movie takes place almost entirely in Albert's rundown apartment, which I nevertheless still wanted to live in (all those windows!). I also wanted the cool shirt and hat he buys when Hawn's character takes him shopping to funk him up a bit. Charles Lang earned his eighteenth and last Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, and though I don't begrudge such a talented veteran his due, I'm not sure I understand what was so impressive about his work in this movie. Maybe it's much more difficult than it looks to light and frame in such a confined space? And ditto the Oscar nomination for Best Sound that this movie picked up. It's mostly two or three people talking, with little in the way of sound effects or music to mix in, so that nod is a bit of a head scratcher.
Directed serviceably by Milton Katselas.
Grade: A-
Victim (1961)
Fascinating
A fascinating and light years ahead of its time thriller about a blackmailer targeting gay men in 1960s London, when homosexuality was actually illegal.
The movie is structured almost like a murder mystery, but unlike most mysteries (which I usually don't like because of how convoluted they get and how frustrating all of the misdirection is), this one parcels out its secrets and clues at just the right pace, always withholding enough to keep you in suspense but never so much that you feel frustrated or confused. Dirk Bogarde is a high profile attorney who decides to unravel the mystery at the expense of exposing himself, and he gives a wonderful performance. It was only after seeing the movie and reading more about it that I found out he was a closeted gay himself in real life, which gives the fictional story of the film a sense of real-life urgency.
The movie is expertly directed by Basil Dearden, who I'd never heard of. You can tell he approaches the material with a sense of wanting to get everything just right, and there are all sorts of directorial flourishes that contribute to this film's success. Many of them are subtle -- a move of the camera here, a bit of striking framing there -- but they all add up to a whole lot of visual interest for a movie composed mostly of people talking.
A great find on TCM, one of those movies you've never heard of and then wish were better known.
Grade: A+
Possessor (2020)
Just Terrible
A fellow film reviewer described this film as "droning," and that word perfectly captured how I felt watching it. And not just this film -- it applies to a whole genre of (usually) horror and/or sci-fi films that pick dreariness as their primary aesthetic. Recently, films like "Mandy," "Color Out of Space," and "Relic" are good examples, just to name a quick few.
"Possessor" actually has a good premise, but it moves at a funereal pace, the tone is relentlessly one note, and everything is set to a droning (there's that word again), atonal, synth score that's probably meant to make everything happening on screen feel more portentous but instead makes it all feel ponderous. This is also a nasty movie, full of gratuitously graphic violence happening to flat, vaguely unpleasant characters who aren't given any inner lives by the screenplay. These people could be anybody, and they feel like creations made for the express purpose of having bad things done to them. There's a great premise at the heart of this film, but no actual ideas springing from that premise. It's an exercise in nihilism.
An all around gross movie experience that left me feeling icky.
Grade: D
Kajillionaire (2020)
Delightfully Weird
A delightfully weird movie directed by --- no surprises there! --- Miranda July.
This is the kind of movie that could never succeed without actors who know how to play the material just right, so let's start with Richard Jenkins and the unrecognizable Debra Winger, shall we? Could these two be any better? They play a married couple (or at least a couple) who try to live off the grid but in the middle of Los Angeles, a tricky business. They have all sorts of conspiracies about how the government, big business, etc. is trying to mind control people, so they don't do things like shop in stores, have an online presence, bathe, things like that. Instead, they spend every waking moment coming up with cockamamie schemes to steal and rob whatever they can. They're raising their daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) in this environment, and things seem to be going ok, or as ok as such a situation could ever be, when the family dynamic is upset by the addition of a normal person from the actual world (Gina Rodriguez) who wakes Wood up to all the ways her parents have failed to show her love or even affection.
If you are the kind of viewer who demands realism from your movies, this one will try your patience. There are at least a couple of events in this film (like what happens to Rodriguez's apartment, and those of you who've seen it know what I'm talking about) that not just strain credibility but try mighty hard to entirely break it. But the thing is, they don't. They feel credible within the world July creates in her movie, a world that's just a hair out of kilter with the world as we actually know it. And for me, everything worked.
Well, almost everything. I didn't love the lesbian themes that become increasingly prominent as the movie progresses, not because I have a problem with lesbian themes in general, but rather because they didn't feel well integrated into this particular story. But the movie is about loving and being loved in return, and there are all kinds of love, so in the end that too mostly worked for me.
Evan Rachel Wood is sensational, but this movie is stolen by, of all people, Gina Rodriguez. Who would ever have thought?
One of 2020's standout movies.
Grade: A
The Beast of the City (1932)
Run of the Mill
A run of the mill Warners gangster movie from 1932.
Walter Huston is pretty good, but he was much better in lots of other things. Jean Harlow is Jean Harlow. If you like her, you'll like her. If not (I generally don't), this movie won't make you a convert.
The movie hilariously opens with a scroll condemning vice and crime and extolling the virtues of our police officers. This was just an excuse for Warners to then give us as tawdry a movie as possible without freaking out the censors.
Grade: C
The Sandlot (1993)
Cute and Nostalgic
A cute and nostalgic movie about kids and baseball.
I can see why this film has developed a cult following. It's got kind of a "Stand by Me" vibe, and if you're not into baseball, there's still much to be enjoyed through the childhood memories the movie is sure to evoke in many. It's not as funny as I thought it would be. That's not a criticism of the movie, because it doesn't try to be super funny. It's just not the kind of comedy I was led to believe it would be, so my expectations were a bit disappointed. But it's still worth watching.
I imagine a certain age group (those who were kids around the same time as the movie is set) will enjoy this more than others. I'm too young to relate specifically to this time period.
Grade: B+
Outrage (1950)
Ida Lupino Is the Bomb
Damn, Ida Lupino did not hold back in this movie.
She takes all of that experience gained from years of appearing in film noirs and applies it to her directing here. The result is a years-ahead-of-its-time film about the rape of a young woman and its toll on her psyche. It is unflinching in its frankness, and it's also damning of a culture in which rape was perceived to be largely the fault of the victim and something that branded her forever after as unworthy in some way.
The most striking thing about "Outrage" is that it anticipates the MeToo movement decades later by showing us how predatory the world looks to women. After she's raped, the woman in this film has something to fear from every man in her life, and the movie highlights how aggressive and menacing men can be, even when they're trying to help.
"Outrage" is a watershed film that deserves to be better known.
Grade: A-
The River (1951)
Gentle and Meandering
Jean Renoir's gentle, meandering film is about three young women coming of age and awakening to romantic and sexual desires while growing up in India.
The film is a little bit reminiscent of "Pather Panchali" in its attempts to capture the day-to-day life of Indian culture and of "Black Narcissus" in its story about a virile man who upsets the delicate emotional balance of a bunch of young women. But it has more artificial dramatic narrative imposed on it than "Pather Panchali," and it treats its story with much less gusto than "Black Narcissus," so it ends up feeling a bit pale compared to either film. I just didn't care all that much about who (or whether anyone) ended up with the appealing American who throws this group of women into a tizzy. I did, however, enjoy the parts of the film that are closer to documentary or travelogue, explaining Indian customs and traditions, all captured in restored Technicolor.
I think the other Renoir movie this one reminded me of most is "The Southerner," obviously not in its setting or even plot, but in the mood and the way it goes about telling its story. But I was riveted by "The Southerner" while I found myself merely admiring "The River."
Grade: B
The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)
One of the Best Movies I've Seen This Year
Radha Blank has created one of the best movies of the year.
She plays a version of herself, a forty-year-old struggling playwright who tires of being treated as a black commodity by the world of white theater and decides to reinvent herself as a rap artist, where she can truly give voice to her roiling emotions. Along the way she fights and makes up hilariously with her longtime friend and agent and strikes up a tentative romance with a much younger man.
How many movies do we get about the experiences of black forty-something women made by black forty-something women? Not enough, so thank you Ms. Blank for giving us this one. And one of the things I appreciated most about this movie is that it's not about the black experience in context of white people. It's about a world of black culture where white people are maybe necessary but tangential. I want to understand what the world is like for people who aren't like me, and this movie gives me that.
If I have any complaints, it's that it does overstay its welcome a bit. It's long, and I was ready for the movie to be over before the movie was ready to be over. But despite that I would highly recommend this to anybody.
Grade: A
Soul (2020)
Pixar Has Lost Its Touch
I think Pixar has lost its touch.
Movies like "Wall-E," "The Incredibles," and "Toy Story 3" could hold their own with the best of any live action movies out there. But "Soul" has a generic animated movie quality about it. It's full of platitudes about what it means to be alive, and there's never anything really funny about it nor moving about it, which are qualities in which other Pixar movies have excelled. It felt more like a marketing ploy to get more viewers to subscribe to Disney+ than anything else.
And the ending really cops out. Too pat, too happy. It had a chance to go somewhere poignant but chooses not to.
Grade: B
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
Sweaty and Monotonous
A sweaty and monotonous film about (among other things) the white appropriation of black popular culture.
"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," like "Fences" from 2016, is a screen adaptation of an August Wilson play produced by Denzel Washington. Washington doesn't find a role for himself in this one, handing over the heavy lifting to Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. Like "Fences," this film never breaks free of its stage artifice, and what I'm sure was powerful when performed live feels stilted and overly scripted when captured in intimate closeup. It's a whole lot of one thing, and I was amazed to see that its running time was a lean 94 minutes, because I would have bet money it cracked the two-hour mark.
Davis gets a couple of opportunities to flex her acting chops, but it's Boseman who's getting all of the attention and will sure to be recognized come awards time. I have a feeling at least part of that will be due to the fact that he tragically died right around the time the film came out and sentiment for him will be strong. But it's also the kind of performance that awards groups like. It's big and loud and full of monologues, but it always felt to me like Boseman was trying too hard to ACT instead of naturally embodying a character.
Grade: B
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Aaron Sorkin Fights Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin, the smart-as-a-whip screenwriter, battles it out with Aaron Sorkin, the I-went-to-the-Ron-Howard-school-of-directing director, and hamminess wins the day.
I was actually incredibly entertained by this movie while watching it. It preaches to the liberal progressive choir, of which I'm a card-holding member, and it decides that such things as nuance, subtlety, or even slightly different points of view are unnecessary clap trap and offers us instead the admittedly cathartic experience of a two-hour shout of outrage at our messed up culture. But hoo boy, is this movie pretty ridiculous. Even while I was being entertained by it, I knew I was being shamelessly manipulated, which I could tolerate for a while, but the end of this film, which plays against one of those blaringly self-righteous movie scores, would make even Steven Spielberg cringe.
This movie is as watchable as it is because of the actors, and though there are many fine performances in this ensemble cast, I have to single out Mark Rylance, as the defense attorney for the 7, who deserves an Oscar for trying to make a serious movie out of Sorkin's superficial pap.
Grade: B- (This is one of those movies that feels like an "A" while you're watching it, but sinks lower and lower in your esteem the more you think back on it).
The Underworld Story (1950)
Dan Duryea as Leading Man
It's nice to see Dan Duryea get the chance to play a leading role, since he was usually relegated to slimy villain roles. But other than that, there's not a whole lot to recommend this pseudo-noir from 1950.
If the film had gone full-on noir it would have been more entertaining, but it's a bit too soft where it should be tough and gritty. And I know it wasn't uncommon at the time, but it's so hard now to not bristle at the sight of a white actress playing a black character. They didn't even make an attempt to make her look black, and I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.
I was really in the mood for a good, juicy noir, and over the course of a few days I watched several movies thinking I would get one, only to be disappointed. And "The Underworld Story" was one of them.
Grade: B-
Lady on a Train (1945)
Cute but Forgettable
"Lady on a Train" may literally be the only Christmas musical comedy film noir ever made.
Deanna Durbin is pretty fetching as an amateur sleuth trying to solve a murder, and there are quite a few amusing moments in the movie, many of them involving that old reliable comic Edward Everett Horton. It's cozy as all get out, the way an old fashioned Agatha Christie story is cozy. I was disappointed with it, but that's because I was in the mood for an actual film noir, which this movie isn't. In a different mood, I might have found more to like.
"Lady on a Train" was nominated for a Best Sound Recording Oscar in 1945. Seems pretty random to me, but...ummmm....ok?
Grade: B
A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
Technicolor Noir
That rare thing, a film noir in blazing Technicolor.
Robert Wagner couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, but there's something just so naturally smarmy and creepy about him as a person that he's good casting as a calculating and murderous psycho. To make up for him, the film casts Joanne Woodward as his doomed girlfriend, and though she doesn't get exactly grade A material to work with, she gives it all she's got.
This movie is a blast. It's total B subject matter married to top-notch production values. The result is something weirdly off kilter in a good way. The huge Cinemascope framing and bright colors, instead of diluting the noirish creepiness, instead makes everything more feverish and sordid. I don't know whether or not it was intentional, but the ridiculously wide aspect ratios at times create these sort of abstract expressionist compositions, like a scene filmed on a set of school bleachers, a mundane setting turned into an oppressive, almost military regimen of horizontal bars looming behind two characters, or the finale set against a giant crater that looks like a scene taking place on another planet. Even a scene set in a chemistry supply closet feels otherworldly, with bright lighting shimmering off multi-color bottles filling the frame like the lab of a mad scientist.
Also, the movie throws in a twist mid-way that genuinely caught me by surprise and had me both laughing at the melodrama and nodding my add in admiration, thinking "Well played, sir."
Grade: A
Cape Fear (1962)
Terrifying Performance by Robert Mitchum
I really hated the Martin Scorsese remake of this film, so much that I never had much interest in seeing the original. But I finally decided to give it a try, and hot damn what a good thriller it turned out to be.
Robert Mitchum is absolutely terrifying in this film, much more so than Robert De Niro, who gave an undisciplined and campy performance. Mitchum is understated, ominous, and sexy in pretty equal parts, and watching him makes one recognize what a shame it is that this underappreciated actor was only recognized with a single Academy Award nomination over his entire career, and that for a supporting role in 1945, before he had become a leading man. Gregory Peck is also exceptional in a part that fits him like a glove. J. Lee Thompson directs with flair, and even though I knew how things would turn out, his direction had me biting my nails.
I expected the film by necessity to be much tamer than Scorsese's version given how long ago it was released, which it is, but not by as much as I anticipated. This is a frank, shocking film for 1962, one that got under my skin and freaked me out.
Grade: A
They Drive by Night (1940)
Wildly Uneven
I settled down to watch this one because I was in the mood for a film noir, not paying attention to the year this movie was released, 1940. Most noir aficionados contend that noir didn't really properly exist as a genre until the release of "The Maltese Falcon" in 1941. Whether you believe that or not, "They Drive by Night," though you'd think it would be a noir given its cast (Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Raft, Ida Lupino); its director, Raoul Walsh; and its setting (cheap diners and blue collar shipping yards), really isn't. It's a standard drama, and a wildly uneven one at that.
The first half is really pretty dull. The big dramatic conflict is between two truckers who want to go different directions with their business, not the stuff of gripping drama, at least not as presented here. Raft wants a big score, Bogart wants to settle down more and be home with his wife. There's some romance between Raft and Sheridan, a tough talking waitress. But it's all a bit of a snooze. Then the second half of the film comes along, featuring Lupino as a psycho, and things pick up a bit. Her performance is fantastic, and she single-handedly makes the film worth watching. But it feels like halves of two different movies were stuck together with chewing gum.
"They Drive by Night" is probably described as a trial run for film noir. Pretty much everyone involved in it would go on to become major players in the genre, and they would all get to show their talents in much better things.
Grade: C+