Category: Nominees – 2020s

2022 – Triangle of Sadness

The triangle of Sadness refers to the space between your eyebrows that wrinkles when one is unhappy.  It is considered unattractive, and this movie is all about beauty. It is about those who are beautiful, and who use their beauty as currency.  It is about the super-rich, and their callous, self-centered inability to care for themselves in any meaningful way.  It is about the differences between those upper-class people, and the often unnoticed and neglected lower-class people who work for them.  This movie examines that small, elite group of people, and portrays them in a light that isn’t always very kind.  Mind you, it also pokes some fun at the lower-class a little, too.

It is a part of our global culture, where a person’s career, their means of making a living, is being an influencer, someone who by virtue of being attractive, posts pictures of themselves online, and receives money and free gifts from companies who want them to use their products.  It is a culture I know next to nothing about, but apparently it is a thing.  Honestly, this movie reminded me of another movie that came out within the last year called The Menu, which I actually enjoyed more.

But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this film.  Wikipedia lists Triangle of Sadness as a satirical black comedy, which, finally, I think applies to the film rather well.  It satirizes the wealthy and the beautiful, and it makes fun of them in a way that actually had some real humor.  I think that I don’t get most movies that are categorized as black comedies.  Maybe I’m too fixated on the word comedy.  If something isn’t funny enough to make me laugh, how can it be a comedy?  In most movies of this genre, we are supposed to laugh at things that aren’t really funny because of their ridiculousness. But I don’t usually find those things funny.  I find them sad and disturbing, but not humorous, probably because they resemble reality a little too closely.

But this movie actually had me laughing a few times.  The story starts out following the relationship between Carl and Yaya, played by Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean.  They are both models.  He loves her, but she only likes him.  She is only with him because it makes her look good to be with an attractive man.  They get a free trip on an exclusive cruise, where things start off swimmingly.  But everything starts to go horribly wrong when one of the other guests, Vera, played by Sunnyl Melles, bored with her life and her inattentive husband, Dimitry, played by Zlatko Buric, forces one of the serving staff to join her in the hot-tub, and demands that all the working-class staff, including the kitchen staff, go swimming.  This starts off a little chain of events that has unexpected results.

The food at the Captain’s dinner is not prepared properly, and everyone has a vomiting party.  The Captain, played by Woody Harrelson, is a drunkard who delays the traditional dinner until a violent storm comes upon the boat.  After a night of sickness and being tossed around like rag-dolls, both the crew and the guests are weak and shaky.  Then a group of pirates attack the yacht and sink it.  The survivors are washed up on the shore of a nearby island.  Only three crew-members are there.  There is Paula, the head concierge, played by Vicki Berlin, Abigail, one of the cleaning staff, played by Dolly de Leon, and Nelson, played by Jean-Christophe Folly, who worked in the engine room.

Abigail quickly takes a tyrannical hold over the entire group since she is the only one who can start a fire or catch fish for food.  She uses these things to force everyone to serve her and treat her as a leader.  She also coerces Carl into becoming her lover in exchange for food.  The film ends with Abigail and Yaya discovering that the island they are on is actually the rear of an exclusive luxury resort.  But rather than allowing the end of her little kingdom, Abigail decides to murder Yaya.  She almost abandons this endeavor until Yaya says that when they are off the island, she will help Abigail by allowing her to work as her assistant.

But the movie did have its funny moments.  Seeing the rich people throwing up at the Captain’s dinner was pretty amusing, though even that scenario has been done before, and in a much funnier way, in the hilarious 1999 film, Drop Dead Gorgeous.  And during the storm, while Vera is being tossed about her bathroom, sliding back and forth in her own vomit, Dimitry and the Captain get extremely drunk and have a lively debate over the ship’s loud-speaker about the differences between Communism and Capitalism.  And then there was the characters of Clementine and Winston, played by Amanda Walker and Oliver Ford Davies, who amassed their fortune making hand-grenades, and are killed when the pirates toss a hand-grenade onto the yacht.  And lest I forget, the character of Jarmo, who I liked, played by Henrik Dorsin, a wealthy, kind-hearted man who is terribly lonely.  The way he cried after killing the wild donkey for food, was sad and a little endearing.

It was a strange movie, and I understand the keen social commentary.  But was it enough in my book to warrant a Best Picture nomination?  Honestly, no, I don’t think so.  The film was enjoyable, but I didn’t find it especially gripping or powerful.  It was good, there’s no denying that.  But I wouldn’t call it great.  I don’t mind that it was nominated for Best Picture, I suppose, but I’m glad it didn’t win.

2022 – Women Talking

Well, this movie is about exactly what the title says.  The entire movie only has one significant male character who even has any lines.  The rest of the movie was a group of women gathered in a barn – talking.  It brings up images in my mind of the 1957 film, 12 Angry Men.  Now, what made the movie interesting was what they were talking about, of course.  It was a horrifying subject that was made even more sickening because it was based on a true story.  But I think that it was both this movie’s greatest strength, and at the same time, its biggest failing. 

Now, what I mean by that statement is this: Having an intimate little story without much action, really allows the characters to be developed.  The script was beautifully written.  Each woman had a very distinct and believable personality.  The dialogue and the interactions between the different characters was spot-on.  But beyond that, it was just talking.  The pacing was glacial, and ultimately, the movie was a little boring to my modern sensibilities.  But I don’t see how else the story could have been told.  The movie wasn’t really about the horror that the women were living in.  It was about their reaction and response to that horror.

And what was that horror?  Well, the story takes place in 2010 in a Mennonite community.  They are a strongly religious people who make the practicing of their faith an active part of their every-day lives.  But the community has a dirty little secret that it goes out of its way to hide.  The men of the community regularly rape the women by sedating them with cow tranquilizer while they are sleeping, so that multiple attackers can sexually molest them on a regular basis.  The women would just wake up every now and then with bloody sheets, knowing that they had been violated in the most horrific way.  And to make it even worse, the abuse would sometimes begin with girls as young as eight years old.

In the beginning, a voice-over makes it clear that the men have been telling the abused women that it was nothing more than ghosts, and that they just had to accept what was happening to them.  They would have to endure the pain and pregnancies without complaint.  But one day when some men are caught in the act.  They are arrested and taken to trial in a nearby city.  As all the men in the community go to help post the bail, the women have two days to reach a decision. 

They have three choices.  They can do nothing and forgive their attackers.  They can stay and fight, or they can refuse to forgive the men, and leave the community.  This last choice, according to the men, has the added result of making the women unfit for the kingdom of Heaven.  This is where the film actually begins, as the women meet in a barn to debate what they must do.  They discuss the pros and cons of each choice and go into detail over the nature of forgiveness.  They also talk about when forgiveness is appropriate, and when it is not. 

And that’s about it.  That’s about the whole movie.  The women talk, and talk, and talk some more.  And while the debates are sometimes spiritual, sometimes heated, and sometimes tearful, they bring the women to the most inevitable conclusion.  They vote to leave, for their own safety, and the safety of their daughters.  It was the right decision, but a hard one, knowing that they would likely never see their husbands or brothers again, and would go out into a world, woefully unprepared.  It was made even worse because they were never allowed to go to school or learn to read.  But in that situation, staying just wasn’t an option.

As you might imagine, the acting in this film was incredibly good.  The actresses had a very good and dramatic script to work with.  Though the film really had an ensemble cast, Rooney Mara arguably played the lead, Ona, a girl who has been impregnated by the rapes.  Her sister Mariche is played by Jessie Buckley, and their mother, Greta, is played by Sheila McCarthy.  Another woman is Salome, played by Claire Foy, who is angry enough to kill the men for their abuse, and to protect her little daughter from further harm.  Her mother, Agata, is played by Judith Ivey.  Michelle McLeod played Mejal, Greta’s niece.  They all did a fine job, but I think that Shiela McCarthy and Judith Ivey both stood out as really great actresses.

And I have to mention the transgender man, Melvin, played by August Winter, who, after being raped, stopped pretending to be a woman, and stopped speaking to anyone but the children.  And then there was the only significant male character, August, played by Ben Whishaw, a community teacher.  He is asked to attend the meeting to take the minutes.  He has romantic feelings for Ona.  They both did a fine job, but their characters seemed almost unnecessary.

And Oh yeah, the ads made a big deal of Frances McDormand being in the movie, but I think she had a total amount of about three minutes of screen time in the entire film.  She was great, but I wish there had been more of her.  It was a good movie, but I think it would have been better if the pacing had been a bit faster.  There was just so much talking, and not much else.  I mean really.  That was the whole movie.  Women talking themselves into leaving their homes forever to protect themselves and their children.  Powerful, yes, but slow.

2022 – Tár

This was a really good movie.  Not only was the acting top-notch, but it was socially relevant, exploring issues that are significant to the times in which we live.  The drama was deep and engaging, and the script was incredibly intelligent.  It deals with themes of women in male dominated roles, power and the abuse of that power, and the effects of cancel culture in our society.  It was a movie that made me think about whether I agreed with what happened in the story, and what characters could have or should have done differently to change the outcome.  It also made me think about how celebrities have to deal with similar circumstances.

It always amazes me when I hear about a celebrity behaving in a manner that is morally, ethically, or even physically reprehensible.  With all the infamous downfalls of well-known people in the public eye who have had their lives and careers ruined because of wildly inappropriate behavior, how can it be that they think they will not get caught, and will not have to suffer the terrible consequences of their actions.  But in this film, the lifestyle and behavior of the prestigious orchestra conductor Lydia Tár, played by Kate Blanchett, is the cause of her downfall.

Through talent, skill, and knowledge, she has attained a high-profile position as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.  She is brilliantly intelligent, well-spoken, and charming.  But she has a habit of showing favoritism to women to whom she is sexually attracted.  It is implied that her predatory behavior might also include sexual affairs and conquests, though it is never explicitly stated.

The film revolves around Lydia’s behavior towards a female cellist named Olga, played by Sophie Kauer, though it is evident that this is just her current fascination.  It is clear that showing professional favoritism towards certain women is a pattern that is continually repeating itself.  Her wife, Sharon, played by Nina Hoss, is the principal violinist of the orchestra, her personal assistant, Francesca, played by Noemie Merlant, is obviously in love with her.  And there is a subplot about a former professional colleague named Krista, who has fallen out of favor with the Maestro, who has committed suicide.

As Lydia’s stress and troubles mount, she begins losing her grip on the reigns of her life and her sanity.  Her obsessive attentions towards Olga are noticed by other people in her professional circle, causing offense to some and indignities to others. Her legal troubles, caused by Krista’s parents who are suing her over their daughter’s death, take an emotional toll.  Her wife leaves her and prevents her from having any contact with their daughter, Petra, played by young actress Mila Bogojevic.  And eventually, despite all her brilliance as a conductor, she is forced to step down as the head of the orchestra.  In the end she is reduced to taking what work she can, conducting in Southeast Asia, playing video game music for an audience full of cosplayers.

While the entire cast did a fantastic job, Blanchett’s acting was phenomenal.  This roll could not have been played without a fundamental knowledge of music and orchestral conducting.  I am an amateur musician, myself, and have sung with orchestras for many years.  I can tell when a movie conductor knows what they are doing, and Blanchett most certainly did.  Not only that, but there were a few scenes in which she had to play the piano, and she clearly “did her own stunts.”  And as we have come to expect from the actress, she absolutely nailed the dramatic scenes.  I might even go as far as to say, this must be a contender for one of the most powerful performances of her career, and that’s saying a lot.  She was amazing!

But you can’t please everyone.  There were a small number of critics who didn’t like the movie.  To quote Wikipedia, “In an interview with The Sunday Times, conductor Marin Alsop shared her dislike of the film, calling it ‘anti-woman’, saying ‘I was offended: I was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian. To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser – for me that was heartbreaking.”  But to that I say, if a story like this could be told about a predatory man, why couldn’t it be told about a woman, and be taken just as seriously?  The movie wasn’t about a female lesbian conductor.  It was about a conductor who happened to be a female and a lesbian.  It was about a person in a position of power who abused that power and was eventually forced to deal with the consequences of their behavior.  And where is the drama in a movie about a person who does nothing wrong, and simply performs her job competently?  That would be a pretty dull film, don’t you think?

Tár was a very good movie that made me think, and that is never a bad thing.  It was a glimpse into a world that few people really know, and it was handled with care and sensitivity.  But the themes it explored could easily be applied to other careers and other situations.  It doesn’t matter what kind of status you have achieved, it will not, nor should it, protect you from the consequences of being a predator of any kind, professional, social, or even sexual.  Behavior like that is never acceptable, and while cancel culture is usually viewed as a negative thing, if it puts a stop to abusive behavior, maybe there is some value in it.

2022 – Top Gun Maverick

I have to admit, when this movie was first nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, I had really low expectations.  After all, I remember watching the first Top Gun film way back in the day, and I was not all that impressed.  That bias was only reinforced when I re-watched that 1986 movie, just so I would have a better context with which to understand Top Gun: Maverick.  The original wasn’t a very good movie.  The script was juvenile, the soundtrack was ridiculously repetitive, and the acting was, in some cases, barely passable.

But I was so incredibly wrong about Maverick.  This was a good movie that had depth, character development, a plausible narrative, very good acting, and a thrilling climax.  This is one of those cases where I was quite happy to be proven wrong.  Not only was this a great film, it is one I wouldn’t mind seeing again.  So, to be sure, this was a sequel done right.  It took the main character from the first film, and developed him, moved him forward in his arc, and made him more experienced, more mature.  The drama was good, and the action was exciting!

First off, I have to talk about Tom Cruise.  That isn’t usually a name I associate with Oscars, though he certainly isn’t a stranger to the Academy Awards with movies like Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire.  Let’s face it.  Despite what you might think about Cruise as a celebrity or a personality, he’s just a darn good actor.  When he plays a part, no matter what the part is, he commits to it one hundred percent.  He gives each character everything he’s got, and it shows.

And that’s what he did here.  One thing that many action films fall short in is drama, but Cruise took the juvenile character of Maverick and gave him a sense of maturity that naturally comes with age, all-the-while staying true to the character.  He was fantastic, proving that he still has what it takes to be a leading man.

Here they paired him with Jennifer Connoly, who is a talented actress in her own right.  She played Penny, his love interest, who is also a single mom, and the woman waiting for him to come home from his dangerous mission.  She still looks incredible, and she had great chemistry with Cruise on the screen.

And of course, we are introduced to the new generation of daredevil Top Gun pilots, all of whom are mostly referred to by their call signs.  There was Glen Powell as Hangman, Lewis Pullman as Bob, Monica Barbaro as Phoenix, Jay Ellis as Payback, Danny Ramirez as Fanboy, Greg Tarzan Davis as Coyote, and others.  And lest we forget, the upper brass who continually waffle back and forth between trusting and not trusting Maverick over the course of the film.  There was John Hamm as Cyclone, Maverick’s main adversary, Ed Harris as Hammer, Val Kilmer reprising his role as Iceman, though now he is an admiral, Charles Parnell as Warlock, and Bashir Salahuddin as Hondo. 

And the most important new pilot was actually in the first Top Gun film, at least the character was.  Goose, who was originally played by Anthony Edwards, died in the first movie, and his son, Bradley, is now grown up, and is one of the best fighter pilots in the Top Gun School.  His call sign is Rooster, played by Miles Teller.  Part of the drama of this new movie was how neither Maverick nor Rooster had been able to get past feeling the guilt of losing Goose all those years ago.  And in order to protect Rooster, Maverick held back his training by several years, claiming he was not ready for the prestigious training school.

But let’s not forget that though Top Gun Maverick had some pretty amazing dramatic content, it was, first and foremost, and action film.  The amazing aerial flying sequences were phenomenal!  This movie made stunt piloting look cool again!  And from what little reading I have done about the making of the film, I have learned that virtually all of the flying sequences were real, not CGI.  The actors were actually in real airplanes that were piloted by professional Navy pilots.  They experienced all the g-forces that real pilots have to deal with, adding to the realism of the action sequences.  Let’s hear it for those practical effects!

The main drive of the film’s action sequences was a mission to destroy an unnamed country’s underground bunker, in which traces of uranium are detected, indicating the production of nuclear weapons.  The had to speed their way through a winding canyon at a very low altitude, scale a steep mountain, flip over its peak, and dive-bomb a small target in two waves, and then perform a ten-g ascent, after which, they are vulnerable to attack from anti-aircraft missiles and technologically advanced enemy fighter jets.  It was a thrilling ride, and exciting to watch!

So yeah, I can see why Top Gun: Maverick was praised so much by both audiences and critics alike.  It was just a good movie, and an incredible sequel.  And as I said, it was a sequel done right.  It didn’t rely on the tropes and plot points of the first film.  It advanced the characters and the story.  And yet, it remained true to the spirit of its predecessor.  In fact, it was so successful, I read that in certain circles, another Top Gun movie is being discussed, following the character of Rooster.  If that ever gets made, it is sure to be just as thrilling as Top Gun: Maverick.

2022 – Elvis

After watching Elvis, the big question I’ve been trying to answer is… did I enjoy the film?  And I think the answer is, no.  That is to say, I enjoyed certain aspects of the movie, but on the whole, I don’t think it worked for me.  And I’m sorry to say, I think I know why, and I know there are many, many people who are going to completely disagree with me.  It was the director, Baz Luhrmann.  He has a very distinct style, and his fingerprints were all over this film, from the script to the cinematography, from the editing to the pacing, from the music to the set design.  It had Luhrmann’s stamp on every frame.

Now, on the one hand, that’s awesome.  Luhrmann told the story the way he wanted it told, and it is always really cool when you can tell who directed a film just by watching it.  But it was the subject matter that threw everything off.  Luhrmann’s style worked perfect for another of his big hit films, Moulin Rough.  But here, I think the biopic of the life of Elvis needed a more subtle approach.  The director is great at the bold and in your face spectacle, and Elvis was certainly known for that… on the stage.  But behind the scenes, I wanted more intimacy, more sensitivity, more detail.

One thing I’ve seen Luhrmann use in other films is split screens and panels, and this worked just fine for the story.  It was especially effective during the montages and expositional excerpts.  But there were too many other things that didn’t quite work.  For one thing, the break-neck pacing was too fast, and constantly left me feeling like I was getting the cliff-note version of Elvis’s life.  I wanted more details, longer scenes that delved into Elvis’s relationships with his family, his manager, and his wife.  I don’t feel like I got the detail I wanted.  I mean, the film barely touched on his military career or his movie career, and I felt like I wanted to know more about that. I mean, Elvis was actually in 33 movies over a 16 year period, and this two hour and forty minute movie barely spent ten minutes on it.  But when it came down to it, I suppose this movie wasn’t about Elvis’s career.  It was about the abusive relationship Elvis had with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

And then there was Luhrmann’s choices concerning the film’s music.  I mean, here we have one of the biggest rock music sensations of all time, and yet there were scenes underscored by modern rap music, which felt disconnected from the story and absolutely unnecessary.  Didn’t ELVIS have enough music to cover the whole plot of the movie?  Of course he did.  And modern rap music in a story that took place before modern rap music even existed brought me out of the story. It just felt like a lost opportunity to showcase the King.  And even when they did use Elvis’s music, they mixed it with more dramatic underscoring the changed the tone of the songs to fit the scenes.  It was like Luhrmann was trying way too hard to be dramatic, and it made the movie feel a little too full of it’s own subject matter.

And finally, I have to say that I didn’t care for the way the character of Priscilla, played by Olivia Dejonge, was handled.  They didn’t do anything wrong.  They didn’t show her in a bad light or make up things that weren’t true.  I just don’t think they gave her enough prominence in the film.  To be certain, she wasn’t ignored.  But I do think she was underused.  It was a little bit as if she was an afterthought that was only there to make the film a little more historically accurate.  Maybe that is just me showing my ignorance of the singer and his life and career, but I would have expected the love of his life to have a more prominent role in a film about him.

But there were things that I did like about the movie.  I loved the costumes.  They were spot on, and looked great on the big screen.  I loved the acting.  Tom Hanks, did a great job as always.  Actually, he arguably played the lead role, as the entire film was told from the perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, who manipulated and abused Elvis, taking most of his money.  It is hard to picture Hanks playing the bad guy, but I think that’s exactly what he did here.  Austin Butler was amazing as Elvis, himself.  There were times when he looked exactly like the real superstar, but then there were other times when he really didn’t.  The structure of his face was just different enough to break through the illusion the filmmakers were trying to create.  I wonder if this might have been fixed with a little deep-faking technology, or would that have been too expensive to accomplish.

Other significant characters in the movie were Elvis’s parents, played by Helen Thomson and Richard Roxburgh, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. as B.B. King.  There was even a great little scene with Alton Mason playing a very young Little Richard.  But mostly, I loved the recreations of Elvis’s most famous performances.  The ’68 Comeback Special in his black leather outfit was so cool!  That’s one thing this movie did brilliantly.  It showed Elvis as the fantastic performer he really was.

2022 – The Banshees of Inisheran

This was a strange movie.  After I finished watching the film, my first though was that I liked it, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.  The acting was incredibly good, but that wasn’t it.  I mean the story.  Did I enjoy the plot?  I think yes, I did.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it didn’t have a very enjoyable plot.  The two main characters were barely likeable, and they made decisions that just didn’t make much sense.  But I’ll get to that in a bit. 

I’ll give a very brief plot synopsis.  Pádraic, brilliantly played by Colin Farrell, is a simple man who is completely content with his life on the small fictional Irish Island of Inisheran off the coast of Ireland.  His lifelong friend and drinking buddy is Colm, played by Brendan Gleeson.  One day Colm decides he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic, saying that he is too dull, and that he no longer has room in his life for dullness.  So he no longer wants to be friends.  Hurt by this rejection, Pádraic attempts to reconcile with Colm, who initially treats him with indifference that soon grows into anger.  Colm tells Pádraic that if he ever speaks to him again, he will cut off one of his own fingers.  More than once, Pádraic continues his attempts to get his friend back, and Colm keeps his promise, throwing his severed digits at Pádraic’s door, until his left hand is nothing but a fingerless stump..  But when Pádraic’s beloved miniature donkey chokes to death on one of the bloody fingers, Pádraic retaliates by burning down Colm’s house, knowing that his former friend is still inside.  The next morning, the two men meet on a beach, and Pádraic says that the feud would only have been settled if Colm had stayed and died in the burning building.  The end.

What on earth did I just watch?  Wikipedia describes this as a black comedy, but once again, I found nothing funny about the movie.  Maybe I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud, or maybe I’m taking the plot to literally.  Maybe I’m just not getting the humor.  But critics actually praised the comedic content of the film.  Personally, I just found it depressing and unnecessarily macabre.  Was the death of a lifelong friendship, or Colm’s inexplicable inability to feel any sort of empathy for his former friend’s pain supposed to be amusing?  Were the extreme acts of self-mutilation supposed to make me cringe, but chuckle at the same time?  They didn’t.  Were the dire predictions of death by the mysterious old lady supposed to make me laugh?  Were the village idiot, Dominic, played by Barry Keoghan’s desperate attempts to look for love and attention supposed to make me feel awkward, but tickled?  They didn’t.  They just made me feel sad for him, and sympathetic for Siobhán, Pádraic’s sister, played by Kerry Condon, who was the object of his affections.

I have to think that the things that happened in the film were supposed to be metaphorical.  I mean, what man in his right mind would cut off his own fingers to make someone leave him alone?  And after the first finger had been severed, what man in his right mind would continue trying to reason with him?  I guess the basic plot just made no sense if you take it at face value, because normal people don’t behave that way.  And the characters were not portrayed as stupid.  So I have to think that it was all a metaphor for something that I just didn’t get.  Pádraic was so desperate to have his friend back that he couldn’t see when to leave well enough alone, and Colm was so mentally unstable that he horribly maimed himself.  That’s what I got out of the story.

Now… all that being said, the movie can still be enjoyed if you focus on the acting, the poignant score, and the directing.  The movie was nominated for nine Oscars, and unfortunately, it didn’t win a single one.  All four of the main members of the cast were nominated in the acting categories, but my personal favorites were Farrell and Keoghan.  I’ve seen Farrell in other dramas, and had an idea of what he was capable of.

But Keoghan really surprised me.  He was so good and so believable as Dominic.  The scene in which he asks Siobhán if she could ever love someone like him was so sweet and so sad.  Keoghan was absolutely wonderful in that moment.  She gently turns him down, but it is the last time he is seen alive on the screen, and when he is later found dead in the lake, I have to wonder if he committed suicide after the rejection.  It was never made clear what happened to him.

Then there was the score by Carter Burwell.  It was one of those film scores that was incredibly expressive, and did a fantastic job of setting a sad and depressing tone over the entire film.  It was drastic and melancholy, and yet somehow beautiful at the same time.  It easily draws you into the story and makes you want to weep for the sake of loneliness.  Simply enchanting.

And the director, Martin McDonagh, really did a great job of telling the dark and bewildering story without being flippant or apologetic for either the macabre tension or the un-believability of the actions of Pádraic and Colm.  It is what it is, and when it comes to it, I supposed I didn’t need to understand the movie to enjoy watching it.  I liked it.  But again, I’m just not exactly sure why.

2021 – The Power of the Dog

When I sat down to watch this movie, I really didn’t know what to expect, other than a Western.  It was certainly that, but it was very complex, transcending the Western genre.  The setting just happened to be in a Montana cattle herding community in the mid-1920s.  But I can almost see how the story might have easily been translated to just about any other time and place, if not for the ending.  The climax of the film was pretty specific to the setting.

The narrative had several different themes.  One explored the extremes a son would go to in order to protect his mother.  Another examined homosexuals in a typically straight and macho environment.  There were themes of desire, regret, love, and understanding.  The problem, is that for the first half of the movie, it was difficult to tell what those themes were.  Director Jane Campion did a pretty good job, taking her time in that first half, to establish characters, and letting us get to know them on more than just a surface level. 

Benedict Cumberbatch played Phil Burbank, a college educated man who chose to live the rough and uncouth life of a cattle rancher.  He is a hard man who established his dominance over everyone around him by being mean and constantly putting people down.  Even his own brother, George, played by Jesse Plemons, is a victim of Phil’s acerbic demeanor.  He calls George Fatso, a nickname that the gentle and kind-hearted George just accepts. 

George falls in love with the lovely widow, Rose, played by Kirsten Dunst.  Rose’s almost comically effeminate son, Peter, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, is a medical student who is clearly gay.  His very presence seems to violently irritate Phil.  When George marries Rose in secret, and brings her to be the lady of the Burbank homestead, Phil believes she is a gold-digger who is only after the Burbank family’s money.  He refuses to accept her as his sister-in-law, and makes her feel like an unwanted interloper in her own house.  His treatment of her drives her to become a terrible alcoholic, the worst kept secret at the ranch.

But later on, we discover that Phil, himself, is a closeted homosexual, who once had an undefined, yet possibly physical relationship with his old mentor, Bronco Henry.  After Peter accidentally discovers Phil’s secret, Phil changes his attitude toward the boy, and begins to mentor Peter in how to be a rancher, and the two become strange friends, something which horrifies Rose.  Unable to get away from Phil’s abrasive attentions, she sinks deeper into her self-destructive addiction.  That much story brings us to nearly two thirds of the way through the film.  I was following the story, but I didn’t really understand what the point of the narrative was.  I didn’t get it.  I was trying to figure out why this movie received so much attention.  Why did it receive eleven nomination at the Academy Awards?  Yes, the acting was good, but what was it about the story that earned a Best Picture nod?  I mean, the characters were pretty well fleshed-out but the plot just wasn’t very gripping, and the slightly slow pace of the film didn’t help.  But then the last part of the movie brought it all together, and the power of the story was revealed.

So here’s the big spoiler.  It is a question I have to ask because when the movie was over, I spent some time thinking about it.  And when I came up with the answer, it all made sense.  It made the story good, and the drama great.  The question was, did Peter purposefully murder Phil, and the answer is a resounding yes.  In order to save his mother from the dangerous Phil, Peter, being a medical student, knowingly exposed Phil to anthrax, despite the man’s obviously growing affection for him.  It was a strange ending to the movie that turned out to be powerful, showing Peter as a much stronger character than he had been portrayed to be.  He manipulated Phil, allowing him to believe in a bond made out of their shared sexualities, and then murdered him for driving his mother to drink.  And after Phil’s death, it is shown that Rose sobered up.  The fact that Peter only handled the lasso while wearing rubber gloves proved that he knew what he had done.  Watch the movie and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The ending surprised me.  I wasn’t expecting murder, but like I said, it made complete sense, and elevated the film from vaguely bland and slightly confusing, to deep and complex.  And the acting from the ensemble cast was fantastic.  Of course Cumberbatch was incredible, but then, he pretty much always is.  I was actually really impressed with Plemons and Dunst, as well.  Dunst has come a long way since the first time I ever saw her on film, in Interview With a Vampire.  But Plemons, who I have only seen in a few films, and always in supporting roles, was perfectly cast, and he did a great job.

As I mentioned, before watching The Power of the Dog, I had no idea what the movie was about.  But now, it is a movie I’m glad I watched.  It is a movie that was very well made, and I’m surprised that out of its eleven Oscar nominations, it only took home one.  That was the Best Director award for Jane Campion.  It was a well-deserved Oscar, but honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t win for Best Cinematography or Best Score.  Both were stunning.

2021 – West Side Story

Before seeing this movie, I was really questioning why a remake needed to be done of such a great film from 1961.  The earlier version was so good that it took home the Oscar for Best Picture.  The dancing was beyond incredible.  The music was fantastic.  What more could a modern filmmaker bring to the table?  But now that I’ve seen the film, I get it.  I understand why it was done, and I loved it!

There are three kinds of remakes that I can really appreciate.  First is the kind that follows the original so closely that it is like an homage.  The second is the kind that can use modern visual effects and filmmaking techniques that the original could not have done.  And then there is this. Directed by Stephen Spielberg, the only thing about this movie that was not updated in a significant and fantastic way was the music and lyrics.  If you change those things, it is no longer the same show, and I wouldn’t exactly call that a remake.  And besides, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s work can’t really be improved upon, as it is pretty much perfection. 

But the book was updated, in very large and significant ways.  A few songs were put in different places in the show, so that while the music and lyrics were exactly the same, they took on completely new meanings.  Minor characters who were important to the plot were given more fully fleshed out personalities, allowing their actions to have more weight.  Major characters were given plausible backstories, making their story arcs more meaningful and relatable.   The aesthetics of the film were given a more modern and gritty makeover, making it seem no longer like a filmed stage-play, but a completely realized movie grounded in the real world.  It was fantastic, and completely appropriate, because the basic story remained the same.  Even all the dialogue was modernized, while keeping the story the same.

For example, the street gang, the Jets, were depicted as dirty, tough, juvenile delinquents. They were actually scary because their fights weren’t choreographed dance fights.  In the fight at the beginning of the movie, and at the rumble, later in the film, they tried to beat the crap out of their rivals.  The vandalized public property.  They habitually stole things from local stores.  And yet they were kids.  The sharks were actually portrayed as more civilized and home oriented. 

But here they were given aspirations and dreams.  They were given relationships and realistic motivations.  They went from being two-dimensional characters to realistic three-dimensional people.  For example, in the 1961 film, how much did we really know about Bernardo?  He was leader of the Sharks, and he was Maria’s brother, and Anita’s boyfriend.  But here he is a professional boxer.  He is in America, though not by choice, acting as the head of the household, in which he and the two women all pay rent.

But there were two minor characters who were brought out into the foreground a bit and we got to know them and their motivations.  One was the character of Anybodys.  Here, they made her a trans-boy, a girl who thinks of herself as a boy, and so, is attracted to women.  I think it was brave and smart to turn the tomboy into a trans-boy.  It modernized the character without changing his function in the narrative, and it was great to have the minority represented in such a positive way.

But for me, the most significant character update was that of Chino.  In the original, he was barely there.  He was an afterthought.  But here, they made him Bernardo’s best friend with plans to be a respectable accountant.  They gave him a likeable personality, giving weight to his decisions, emotions, and actions.  They showed how his feelings were hurt when Maria left him at the dance.  It allowed us to understand why he hunts down Tony and murders him in the story’s climax. And it allows us to feel bad for him as he is taken into custody by the police.

And those weren’t the only two minor characters who got fleshed out.  The character of Doc was changed to Doc’s wife, and was played by Rita Moreno, who of course played Anita in the 1961 film.  They also gave the song There’s a Place for Us to her, as a serious and touching backdrop to the terrible things that the street gangs were doing, all in the name of hate and intolerance.  It was very well done.

But I also have to make mention of another significant difference in this wonderful remake.  They used Latino actors to play the Puerto Ricans, not white people with dark makeup.  And here, their modernized staging put a ton of extras as regular background actors, a realistic, busy New York, something that was strangely missing from the 1961 movie.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t name some of the wonderful actors like Ansel Elgort as Tony, Rachel Zelger as Maria, Ariana DeBose as Maria, David Alvarez as Bernardo, and Mike Faist as Riff.  They all did a great job, and boy, could they dance, especially Alvarez and DeBose.  And I’ll say it again, I loved Josh Andres Rivera as Chino and Iris Menas as Anybodys.  I loved all the wonderful updates that made this a worthy remake that I wouldn’t mind owning in my personal collection.

2021 – Nightmare Alley

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I sat down to watch this movie.  The trailer made it look like a psychological thriller set in a gothic and mysterious carnival freak-show, and there was that element to the narrative.  But it was a lot more.  There was no supernatural element to the story as I had expected, which actually worked very well.  In fact, the story goes out of its way to show you how some of the mysteries work, the trickery used by the carnies to guide their audiences into fooling themselves.  But that’s just the setting.

The movie is actually about how one man, through greed and hubris, caused his own downfall.  Bradley cooper played Stan Carlisle, a drifter in 1939, who wanders into a carnival, where he takes a job from the owner of the carnival, Clem, played by Willem Dafoe. Cooper turns in yet another great performance, and I have yet to see Dafoe not act the hell out of whatever part he is playing.  Other carnival performers are Toni Collette, playing Madame Zeena, and her husband Pete, played by David Strathairn.  He falls for Molly, the electric girl, played by Rooney Mara, and meets her guardian, Bruno, the strong man, played by Ron Pearlman.

The second act of the movie moves to Buffalo and the wealthy elite, where Stan and Molly start their own show at a fancy nightclub.  They are so convincing that they attract the attention of psychologist Lilith Ritter, played by Kate Blanchette, Judge Kimball and his wife, played by Peter MacNeill and Mary Steenburgen.  Also the super-rich Ezra Grindle, played by Richard Jenkins.  So there are quite a few big names in the ensemble cast, which is always pretty impressive.  The actors all knew what they were doing and did a great job.  No complaints there.

But I have to make special mention of Toni Collette.  I have never seen her turn in a bad performance, and she really stood out to me here.  She had this strange serenity about her that made her draw my focus.  She was perfect as the tarot-reading Madame Zeena.  The first movie I ever saw her in was Muriel’s Wedding, which came out in 1994.  I also loved her in The Sixth Sense in 1999.  But she also proved she could play a common woman in a great comedy in 2006, in Little Miss Sunshine.  She was great in those films, and she was great in this one.  She has come a long way, and she’s doing great.  Good for her!

Something else I loved about the film was the aesthetics.  In the first half of the movie, there was the dark and mysterious carnival, which has a gothic charm all its own.  But the second half of the movie switched gears, and had a gorgeous Art Deco style that has always grabbed my attention in a good way.  From the set designs, to the costumes, to the hair and makeup, I love the look of everything.  And the haunting score by Nathan Johnson was a wonderful backdrop to the dark and sometimes horrifying narrative, something that is fairly indicative of director Guillermo del Toro’s style.  He seems to have a knack for those dark themes with disturbing images, and I generally like what he directs.

As I consider about it, I think one of the themes in the film are the dangers of temptation, not only from greed, but also of alcohol.  In the beginning, Stan makes a point of staying away from drink, like an alcoholic who has sworn off liquor.  But through his criminal con-artist association with Lilith Ritter, he begins to drink again, which leads to his eventual catastrophic and horrific downfall.  Even the supporting character of Pete is shown to have ruined a successful career as a side-show mentalist because of an addiction to alcohol.  And he ignored Pete’s rule of never making people believe you could talk to the dead.  Only bad things could come from that, and boy, did they ever.

But if I look at the film in a different way, it is also a bit of a study about the dangers of the seven deadly sins.  At one point or another in the movie, Stan falls prey to each one of them, greed, lust, wrath, pride, sloth, envy, and gluttony, as long as you can substitute alcoholism for gluttony.  And the choices he makes, only lead him further and further down into a spiral of self-destructiveness.  He falls so far that in the end, in order to get that next drink, that next sip of alcohol, he puts himself on a path of self-pity and misery that can only end in his own horrifying death.  The ending was just chilling.  And it emphasizes the idea that Stan is a man who just doesn’t know when to quit.  As a lead character he goes on that journey and has a powerful story arch.  From low to high in both love and success, and back down to low, all because he didn’t know when to walk away from his con.

So really, this movie wasn’t at all like I expected, but I really liked the story.  It was unique and well-written. But apparently, it wasn’t as original as I had thought.  it took very little reading on my part to discover that this is actually a remake of a 1947 film of the same name, which, in itself, was based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham.  I was actually a little surprised by this because there were some pretty disturbing themes in the film, and I wouldn’t have thought that a film from the 1940s would have tackled the dark subject matter.  Now, I’m curious to find that original film version, just to see what the differences are.  And I can only imagine what kinds of things had to be left out from the original novel.

Drive My Car – 2021

I find myself thinking of the quote by Mark Twain.  “My books are water, those of the great geniuses is wine.  Everybody Drinks water.”  Drive My Car is the wine.  It was a deep and complex movie that explored themes of grief, loss, and regret.  It had some really beautiful cinematography and a very somber and dramatic score.  The problem is… I’m not terribly fond of wine.  Some film critics call this movie a masterpiece by Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and it has a high score on film aggregation websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.  But my goodness, it was so slow, making it feel like they were just trying way too hard to be deep.

The movie was three hours long and it felt like six.  The pacing of the movie was glacial!  I’m not saying it needed to be as fast paced as an action film, but there were too many lengthy establishing shots, scenes that could have been shortened, dialogue that could have been cut.  I think a film with this little actual story would have been just fine with a two hour run-time, but maybe I’m wrong about that.

So here’s the plot, in a nutshell.  Yusuke Kafuku is a theatre director, played by Hidetoshi Nishijima.  His wife Oto, played by Reika Kirishima.  Kafuku knows his wife cheats on him regularly, but he still loves her, and knows that she loves him.  Unfortunately, one day, she dies of a brain hemorrhage.  Two years later, he agrees to direct a multilingual production of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima, and a condition of the theatre company is that the director must have a hired driver.  He is not allowed to drive his own car.  We then meet Misaki, a young girl who is a professional driver, played by Toko Miura.

As fate would have it, one of his wife’s lovers, Koji Takatsuki, played by Masaki Okada, auditions for a role.  Yusuke casts him in the lead, and the two men get to know each other.  But Koji is forced to leave the production when he is arrested for murder.  Yusuke must take on the demanding role himself, but in order to do so, he must first get past his grief over Oto’s death and the regret he feels for never having confronted her about her infidelities.  We also learn that Misaki had issues with an abusive mother.  Together, and seemingly in a single two-day period, Yusuki and Misaki face the demons of their past and overcome them.  That’s the bare bones of the narrative.

So, on the surface, it is a simplistic plot.  But the overall feeling of depression that permeates the story is strong, and it is interesting to see how Yusuke deals with his emotions, or I should say, how he doesn’t deal with them.  He seems to ignore his own feelings.  He had every right to be outraged, or at the very least hurt, by his wife’s habitual cheating.  But in order to keep his perceived balance in their marital relationship, he allows her behavior without comment or complaint.  And when she died, he had every right to feel cheated by fate.  Yet accepts her death with a kind of sad resignation.  The only other indication he is upset is that he cannot continue his performance as the lead in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

And it isn’t until the cathartic scene in the end, which he shares with Misaki, that he puts his anger with his wife and his anger with her untimely death into words.  It was a powerful scene.  I often think of it as a common trait of Japanese people and culture to strictly keep one’s emotions to one’s self.  So it is always pretty intense when someone who is a part of that culture breaks down in tears.  And Nishijima did a great job letting us see that side of his character that is normally so guarded.

Misaki’s story was given far less attention and so her catharsis seemed a little less important to the narrative than it could have been.  Her mother used to beat her.  But having a kind of split personality, would take on the persona of a young child, the same age as her daughter, to console Misaki in her pain.  Then when an avalanche crushed their house, and the young girl escaped, she made a decision not to save her mother.  Thus, in allowing the abusive mother to die, she also killed the sweet comforter.  But the films ends making it clear that after their shared catharsis, they were both able to move on with their lives.  And apparently, as a symbol of the bond that was created between them, and as a way to leave his past behind him, Yusuke gives his beloved car to Misaki.  So, happy ending, I guess.  It just took so long to get there!

One thing that the filmmakers did that I found interesting was to put the opening credits in a strange place.  They put them about forty minutes into the movie, during a traveling montage that took place in the two years following Oto’s death.  I’m not sure that worked for me.  It was distracting me from the story a bit, though I suppose it could be thought of as a way to divide the story between the past and the present, as if the first forty minutes was a prologue.

Two other actors who deserve to be recognized are Jin Dae-yeon playing Gong Yoon-soo, one of the program directors at the theatre company, and his wife Lee Yoo-na, played by Park Yu-Rim, who acted her part in Uncle Vanya in Korean sign language.  I liked their characters.  As I think about it, I wonder if I would have understood the drama of the film better if I knew Chekov’s play Uncle Vanya.