A Few Quick Movie Recommendations

I have been doing pretty well lately at picking the movies, so I thought I’d list a few here that I’ve seen lately that are highly recommended. All of them are better than Birdman.

Top Five: This 2014 Chris Rock film might have fallen below the average movie fan’s radar, but it is a must-see. Rock plays comic and movie star Andre Allen as he is interviewed in a day-in-the-life piece by Times reporter Chelsea Brown, played by Rosario Dawson. This film is smart, hilarious, and it will have you tossing around your own “top five” list. I believe I’ve mentioned this film in a previous post. It is worth mention again.

Joker: Origin stories for the most enigmatic super-villains of all have been fast and loose since the character never really had such a backstory in the comics. Hangover director Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix may have created the best such story yet. A satisfying yet subtle story arc for the guy whose brand of evil everyone hates to love.

The Nice Guys: Russell Crow and Ryan Gosling schlemiel and schlimazel it up as would-be PIs who get entangled in a fiendish, twisted plot that has them way in over their heads. This 2016 “neo-noir” effort is just about worth seeing to watch Margaret Qualley, daughter of Andie MacDowell, who would next go to play a pivotal character in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Knives Out: I most recently witnessed Knives Out, a true, effective whodunnit led by Daniel Craig but with countless surprising notables including Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Christopher Plummer FTW. No matter how many steps ahead you think you are of this 2019 mystery, you’ll only see this plot zooming out to pass you hard. Apparently writer/director Rian Johnson should stick to more earthly works.

Top Five

I wonder if Chris Rock has a t-shirt that says “I Made One Of The Best Movies of 2014* and All I Got Was Three Critics’ Choice Nominations.”

I’ve been talking up Rock’s Top Five to my Dad for a while now after having re-watched it recently. We finally sat down to watch it today, and I could probably put it back on again now and enjoy it just as much.

Top Five features Rock playing fictional comedian and actor Andre Allen, who is tasked to give a-day-in-the-life press availability to “Times” reporter Chelsea Brown, played by Rosario Dawson. Allen, best known for a cop-buddy franchise called Hammy the Bear, is trying to swim out of that current with a serious film about the Hatian slave revolt of 1791. But all anyone wants him to be is Hammy.

Chelsea Brown proves to be an intrepid reporter, chipping away at Allen’s shell until she finds the cracks. This setup launches a movie that is 80 percent dialog and story over action, a difficult presentation to make riveting. But we’re talking about Chris Rock here. Top Five never stops being funny, entertaining, surprising, and utterly smart, even when it’s being a little gross.

Top Five may well be in my top five. It is a good, solid comedy.

And, oh, here’s mine: M.C. Serch, De La Soul, Public Enemy, Chubb Rock, Missy Elliott. If I get a sixth, it’s Earl Sweatshirt.

*Yes, 2014. The same year that Birdman won the Best Picture Oscar. Disgrazia.

Blue Hawaii

I think Turner Classic Movies is essential during a pandemic. You can put on the TV and get a little escape while at the same time working on your cultural literacy.

I mean this even for a movie like Elvis’ Blue Hawaii. This is Elvis’ eighth feature film and was made after his return from military service. Thus, the plot of the movie, Chadwick Gates returns home from a stint in the military. His dad wants him to go into the family pineapple business (of course), and he doesn’t want to.

There are of course a buncha musical numbers. And some dramatic stuff. And of course, by the end of his movie, Chadwick Gates works out his dilemma and gets the girl. Happy happy happy.

Fun fact: The producers of Blue Hawaii took the bank they made on it and used it bankroll another film called Becket.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-falsely-claims-covid-19-is-dying-out-as-cases-surge-in-over-20-states


In Other Funny

Nobody Puts Gidget In The Corner

A young girl in summer. She is introduced to a new world. She is an oddity in this world, naiive when all the others seem more worldly. She is initially perceived as immature looking, overly-eager, and as an outsider. Even her nickname brandishes her immaturity. Soon, though, despite this underworld’s attempts to send her home, she becomes more ubiquitous as days go by. Her parents approve before they know more but later disapprove. She develops a friendship though with this scene’s mentor, who begins helping her master the group’s essential cultural activity. Indeed, she is invited to a nighttime party that is of the hush-hush variety and is witness to a scene most outsiders do not see, with music and bonfires and dancing. And she is pulled away suddenly. There is conflict and hurt, and she is forbidden by her parents from rejoining this crew. Yet, through happier circumstances, she rejoins her old friends, and the result is surprising.

Is this “Dirty Dancing,” or is it “Gidget?”



Meanwhile, in other funny…

Joker

Since the year 2014, my small movie going clique has felt hesitant about films with huge buzz and Oscar Best Picture wins or nominations. I myself cannot believe that it’s been six years since the year of the Birdman. But ever since we experienced this wretched, pretentious insult of a film, the lowest of low bars for a film has been, well, was it better than Birdman?

Thus it is that I have only just now watched Todd Phillips’ Joker last evening.

I had not expected to enjoy the steak I cooked as much as I had, and nor had I imagined that I would be seeing such a fine film. The steak because, despite it being a wonderfully marbled New York strip that sat in a sous vide bath at 130 degrees for nearly four hours that was then perfectly seared for 38 seconds a side in a piping hot cast iron skillet, but that I realized somewhere in the process that I did not have a drop of red wine in the entire place.

The film because I could not have imagined how many things a single film could do and how well it could do them, and also because from what I had seen and read and heard of it previously, it kinda smacked a bit of Birdman. But I can guarantee that Joker is far and away better than Birdman.

There is the sublime performance by Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, how he inhabits his character, how he fills out the space, how he runs, how he laughs uncontrollably, often showing Fleck fighting this often inappropriate response. Also remarkable is Fleck’s visible transformation as he assumes his role as “Joker.” This change is clear-cut, and the audience is transparently privy to Fleck’s decision points, misguided as they might be.

There is this film’s most effective origin tale. Any comics-based movie is going to be tempted to tweak the character-origin. See 1989’s Batman, directed by Tim Burton, which introduced the detail that, indeed, it was a young Jack Napier / Joker who was responsible for shooting down Thomas and Martha Wayne in cold blood while young Bruce looked on.

This detail provided motivation and conflict for Batman in that film, but it has always seemed too pat an explanation to me, and certainly not one we had seen previously in the Batman lore. I am much more comfortable with the story told by this Joker, that the Waynes’ murders were not directly the Joker’s doing but instead were carried out by his inspiration and example.

And while Joker is yet another try for an origin tale, it is also a deeper-reaching story. Our villain’s metamorphosis is presented sympathetically—he is beaten into it, physically, mentally, emotionally. This is a story of the overrun, the neglected, of those screwed by society’s inequities. It is a story that highlights mental illness, its taboos, of a guy who, to be honest, made legitimate attempts to seek help from a system that pushed him into the cracks. This Joker was not born. But he was most certainly created.

It is a shame my misgivings kept me from Joker so long, and it was only serendipity that had me sitting down to my late steak dinner when this happened to be showing on the HBO. Joker is better than Birdman, by far. We may in fact now start asking if such-and-such a film is “as good as Joker.”

Now that’s a bar to meet.

Uncut Gems

Dad and I marveled over the USA Toady’s “best movies of the decade” list over lunch on Saturday. They were:

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
‘Arrival’ (2016)
‘Sing Street’ (2016)
‘Get Out’ (2017)
‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014)
‘BlacKkKlansman’ (2018)
‘How to Train Your Dragon’ (2010)
‘Inception’ (2010)
‘A Ghost Story’ (2017)
‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ (2013)/’Lady Bird’ (2017)

It’s a fun game to start calling out movies that are much better than any of these that are not on the list. Easy. But fun. ‘Dunkirk’ (2017). ‘American Hustle’ (2013). ‘Bridesmaids’ (2011). ’12 Years a Slave’ (2013). ANYTHING BY QUENTIN TARANTINO. ‘I, Tonya’ (2017). ‘Winter’s Bone’ (2010). ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ (2013). ‘Lady Bird’ (2017). ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ (2017). ‘The Favourite’ (2018). ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013). ‘Lincoln’ (2012). ‘Big Eyes’ (2014). ‘Dear White People” (2014). ‘Dope’ (2015). ’20 Feet from Stardom’ (2014). ‘True Grit’ (2010). ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ (2016). ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018). ‘The Lone Ranger’ (2012). ‘Nebraska’ (2013). ‘The King’s Speech’ (2010). ‘Eighth Grade’ (2018). ‘The Death of Stalin’ (2017). ‘Game Night’ (2018). ‘Bad Words’ (2013). ‘The Heat’ (2013).

Wasn’t that fun?

I’ll add ‘Uncut Gems’ to the list, too, although as DOD opined: “I think it’s a great movie. But imagine spending a couple of hours in a room with loud, angry, anxious assholes. Don’t want to do it often, for sure. When it’s over you think maybe it ended happily.”

I may also be the only person in America who saw a Hemingway short story in the thing. I saw it as a loosely-rendered telling of Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Maybe that’s just me. Regardless, there are a few things you may want to know about this film if you are considering seeing it.

I found a “Breaking Bad” aesthetic to “Gems.” If you are a viewer who requires exposition, go see the Star Wars thing. This film means for you to see the story, not to be told. So much so that you actually begin the movie looking up the ass of the main character, Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). This is where Ratner’s story begins, at his colonoscopy, which is one of the few times in the film that the character isn’t frenetic at the least.

Ratner is a man trying to support a big life, with a wife and kids at home and a pretty little thing on the side at his apartment. He is a gambler and a dealmaker, and every deal and every gamble that he makes ratchets up the butt-clench level just a bit more. ‘Gems’ is mostly lauded as a new direction for Sandler, who usually plays a goofy mensch in an otherwise sometimes likeable film. It is a stretch for Sandler, and often, it is a stretch for the audience, too, a difficult movie to watch.

But it is worth it.

Shit in ‘Purple Rain’ that Doesn’t Make Sense

The film Purple Rain makes soooooooooo much more sense if you assume that the mother is dead and is a ghost haunting his father.

I don’t see another way to explain the profound level of derangement that Francis L. exhibits throughout the film, all the way to his attempted suicide (or suicide? the film isn’t clear on this) near the end. I mean, Francis’ uttered complaints toward his wife (played respectively by Clarence Williams III—better known to you perhaps as Linc Hays—and Olga Karlatos) are random and weird, mainly he seems to think she runs around on him and that she doesn’t keep a clean house. His lines, according to the screenplay, are: “Listen to me! You come home when I say come home! You’ve got no business in the streets!” and then “You do what I say, do you hear me?! You’ve got to keep this place clean! You here, no place else!”

The derangement of Francis L. and his wife (unnamed in the film so far as I can tell)—to the point that I prefer watching the film with the assumption that she is actually a dead person—is but one of the things regarding this film that I often comment don’t make any sense. I’ve commented often enough that my Mom asked me today, well, if it’s such a bad movie, then why do you watch it?

This week, I spun it up on the old DVD machine because it was released 35 years ago July 27. So to some extent, I watch it regularly because of nostalgia. Because its music was life-altering for me. Because it is the vehicle that propelled Prince into orbit. Because the performance footage is still some of the best ever filmed. Because Prince died three years ago and I’ll never forget.

That doesn’t mean the story itself makes any sense at all.

Here are the items that stuck out to me as I enjoyed the film last night:

  • The Kid is ALWAYS late to rehearsal.
  • Apollonia is from NEW ORLEANS? NEW ORLEANS? And she’s come to Minneapolis to make it? MINNEAPOLIS? Who is she, Mary Tyler Moore?
  • The Kid never speaks to Morris. Not once.
  • Francis L tells the kid that he has all of his music in his head. “I don’t write them down,” he says. “I don’t have to. That’s the difference between you and me.” We never see The Kid notate any music anywhere in the movie. Nowhere. The Kid never puts pen to paper anywhere in the movie, not even to sign a check, much less to create a music manuscript.
  • Billy Sparks, proprietor at First Avenue, has three acts and don’t need four, so one of ya’ll has got to go. What would you do in his position? I’d tell you that doesn’t make any fucking sense. A music venue needs many many many acts playing to keep the audience showing up. This is why bands tour. I’d invite bands from other towns to come in and play at your club, man, rather than trying to make your house bands compete so they can go from four to three so you can have a smaller take in the end. That is a business model that does not make sense.
  • The film “Purple Rain” spends 21 seconds watching Apollonia applying for a job. 21 seconds. Why not extend the scene and let’s watch her fill out her W-2s.
  • The Kid is a terrible kisser.
  • The Kid attacks shelves and shelves of home preserves. THESE PEOPLE HAD TIME TO GARDEN? WHEN? WHEN?
  • “I never meant to cause you any sorrow. I never meant to cause you any pain.” Then maybe let’s cool down on the bitch-slapping your girlfriend, Kid.

Mary Don’t You Weep

With the litany of production credits that trails at the end of the “new” Aretha Franklin film Amazing Grace, it is an astonishing miracle that the film exists as it does, completely unadulterated. There is a brief text crawl that introduces the film, explaining why this rare and exceptional performance occurred, and then you are allowed to simply watch. There are no self-aggrandizing interviews, such as in The Last Waltz, for example. Nobody talks about what’s happening or attempts to shine light on the events. You just get to watch. And that is wonderful.

Franklin is brilliant as expected, but you’re also treated to one of the finest call-and-response partners there is, James Cleveland; not to mention the Southern California Community Choir. As Mr. Cleveland points out to the audience at one point, the project could have just been another studio effort by Franklin, but that the point of recording at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church is to get audience reaction on the record, as well.

And hey. Mick Jagger and his friend Charlie Watts are in the audience as well. Because of course they are.

The film, captured on 16 mm film by filmmaker Sydney Pollack, could not originally be released because of a technical screw-up that prevented audio synchronization. Later techniques fixed this problem, but, I was sad to learn, Franklin sued to keep it from being screened. That’s a shame because it’s a film that shows her as a mighty powerful presence.

Amazing Grace is a joy for a music nerd like me. The only problems I had with it are that it made me want so badly to be in the room and that made this non-believer want to find a black Baptist church and sign up. Have you ever been to one of those services? I have. One of those might make Bob Ingersoll a believer.

Seriously, though: Amazing Grace is one of those things you will regret not having seen in the theater. It is a beautiful document, treated carefully and honorably by its caretakers. What a wonderful thing to get to experience.

On The Basis of Sects

“Well, if that’s how you think you want to spend your time.” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s initial response to her nephew Daniel Stiepleman when he pitched her the idea of making a movie based on the first case she ever argued with her late husband Marty)

So, Sunday my Uncle Hat and I saw a movie. He is here for family business and also for a bit of fun here in Rochester New York. And there are some movies he ain’t seen. So we have been going to some movies.

Today we saw On The Basis Of Sex, the new biopic of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Enjoyed it well. I am glad to note that RBG herself finds the portrayal to be mostly accurate, largely because she was profoundly involved in the project. And it is a fine film, though I did find myself going over the laundry list that most biopics seem obligated to tick off. This film does everything you anticipate it to do. Here’s her first day at Harvard, where the professor calls on two men before being placed into a force to call on Ginsburg, whose answer is far superior. Here’s her fighting with the chauvinistic dean. Here’s how she found her landmark case. Blah blah blah. Check, check, check.

Fortunately, this movie does it well. Really well. No Oscar love for this thing–not even Original Screenplay, Academy? Really? Oh, well. Perhaps there’s too much RBG power in the nominations with the two nominations of the documentary of that particular honorific. But it is a fine film. A little rote, but well done.

Anyways, since I’m writing movies today, let’s for my own reference most of all list all the Oscar-nominated films I’ve seen…and, go: A Star Is Born, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Vice.

Wow. I’ve really got some work to do.