In the Rosenzweig/Gless household, the movies (primarily the submissions by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) have had to take a back seat to the on-going saga of “Laird” Fraser and his fabulous spouse in Outlander.
We were late arrivals to this incredibly well produced series but have now caught up… having seen all six seasons (on Netflix as well as Amazon Prime). Next is the eagerly anticipated season seven which is currently in production and scheduled for release later this year.
Rather than mourn this temporary loss, my wife and I have turned our attention to this year’s motion pictures… some of which may (or may not) be Oscar worthy. Here is a sample:
I had heard nothing but negative things about Babylon… its excesses, both in story and presentation… and, while conceding that the movie is a bit flabby and overinflated, I commend it to you. There are some delicious moments in this film, both visually and emotionally, and they are enough to make this extravaganza worth seeing.
I do not think Babylon is going to get many awards… and the voting members of the Academy would undoubtedly be correct to withhold them, but La La Land director Damien Chazelle has certainly book-ended his image of Hollywood with these two films, albeit in reverse order—beginning with the present in La La Land and ending with the beginning of it all in Babylon.
As to the cast: I thought Brad Pitt was terrific (as usual) and I have yet to become a Margot Robbie fan.
What, one might ask, have the The Whale and Elvis got in common? No, it is not that both have lead characters who late-in-life gain a lot of weight. The common denominator between the two references is the toss-up as to which leading man in those two films will get the Oscar. I am going to bet on Brendan Fraser in The Whale… but, if I were you, I would not bet against Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in the movie that bears his character’s given name. As to the builders of the “fat suits”… give that prize to Fraser’s team in The Whale over the dudes who blew up Tom Hanks, as Colonel Parker, in Elvis.
Oh yeah… their respective movies: I liked Elvis a whole lot more than The Whale even while admiring the skill sets it took to make the latter. Good as it is… The Whale is still a stage play more than a movie, while Elvis soars on the screen, as films directed by Baz Luhrmann are wont to do.
Genuine disappointments were The Menu and The Fabelmans. Personally, I liked Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston, a whole lot better than this modern-day approach in The Menu. I concede I was only seven and a half years old in 1945 when the Rene Clair version of this thriller was released, but I still remember it fondly. I saw The Menu last week and cannot think of anything memorable about it at all. Were I a bigger foodie, I might speculate as to the influence of this film on the decision to shutter Noma… a Danish eatery generally conceded to be the best in the world. Dunno. Not my table.
The Fabelmans was okay… but just okay. We are all entitled to expect more from Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner. I can tell you without qualification that I certainly do. This sorta autobiography could have been… should have been… so much more clever than it turns out to be.
There is a decent mini-moment or two in the early going of Fabelmans with the Greatest Show on Earth sequence. There is the ending, featuring the movie’s lead, barely out of his teens, with the iconic director, John Ford (a wonderful cameo performance by David Lynch). In between all of that is something like two hours plus of chuffa. Tony Award winning playwright Kushner should have studied Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love as a model for how to present a fictionalized biography of a renowned artist.
On the subject of artists, we have Cate Blanchett essaying the title role in TAR which is not a movie for everyone, but a movie some folks will want to see more than once. The picture is smart and compelling but not always entertaining or… for that matter… even satisfying. What is the other word I was looking for to characterize the entire piece? Oh yes, I remember now: pretentious. All that aside, Ms. Blanchett nails it (as she so often does) resulting in her being the odds-on favorite to take home the Oscar.
There are some awfully good movie/movies that I have written about in previous Island notes (Batman and Top Gun: Maverick come readily to mind), but perhaps the best motion picture I have seen so far this season is one no one is talking about. It is not only entertaining… it is a testimony to the craft and art of the motion picture. It is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
This adaptation of this story almost everybody knows, highlights the movie maker’s skills first brought to my attention in his previous productions such as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. All the craft that was on display in those films is advanced and enhanced in Pinocchio.
The movie is totally engaging, still it stretches credulity well beyond Pinocchio’s dream of becoming a “real boy” to think the Academy would ever give its best picture award to this film. If I am right, it is the Academy’s loss, for with this interpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 19th century novel for children, Guillermo del Toro has created his masterwork.
AND MORE REVIEWS:
One of the components that goes into my reviews of individual feature films is a kind of conceit… a self-serving sort of satisfaction that flows from a thought process stemming from the premise that I know what I am talking about and that I have a history of my own in the film and television industry that backs that up.
All of that is true… as far as it goes. There are, you are about to learn, exceptions. For instance: while I may be a child of Hollywood, I know diddly squat about Bollywood; and that matters when viewing, let alone attempting to review, a motion picture such as RRR.
The three plus hours of brightly colored filmmaking sent me to the Encyclopedia Britannica where (and I quote): At the turn of the 21st century, the Indian film industry—of which Bollywood remained the largest component—was producing as many as 1,000 feature films annually in all of India’s major languages and in a variety of cities, and international audiences began to develop among South Asians in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Standard features of Bollywood films continued to be formulaic story lines, expertly choreographed fight scenes, spectacular song-and-dance routines, emotion charged melodrama, and larger-than-life heroes.
RRR has it… all the above… in SPADES. It is hard to know what to make of it. Is it entertaining/engaging? Yeah… at least for the most part. Are the fight scenes expertly choreographed? Yes… and graphic… and, at the same time, only believable in the way one accepts the action in a Marvel movie.
What about the song-and-dance routines? Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly would applaud, but what are they doing in the middle of this action/semi-historical melodrama? One can only wonder. And are the heroes larger-than-life? No question. The whole thing is wildly overdone, garish, fanciful, sometimes silly, too long, totally over the top… and yet… underneath all the above is a painful representation of colonialism and the brutality of the abject racism perpetrated by the English on the people of India in a way that had me trying to think of something comparable in American film making and the black experience of slavery.
My mind culled through titles, from Birth of a Nation to Roots, to 12 Years a Slave. Mississippi Burning came to mind, Gone With the Wind, Home of the Brave, The Defiant Ones, Imitation of Life, A Raisin in the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird, Black Like Me, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Great White Hope, The Landlord, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ragtime, The Color Purple, Get Out, Do the Right Thing, Crash.
Graphic as these films are… powerful though they may be… the ugliness of racism in those presentations is not delivered as overwhelmingly pervasive as that which is represented in this hokey, Bollywood thing to which I became riveted. This is not your daddy’s Gandhi. Revolution is in the air… and on that screen. And I question if you have ever seen the totality of this kind of disdain and hatred from one race to another, anywhere that is more prevalent than it is in this film.
Underneath all that glitter, those outlandish musical numbers, the bigger than life action sequences, and the melodrama… that message is what director S. S. Rajamouli put out there, and that is what I came away with. I think you will too.
I had heard mostly good things about a minor filmic effort called Pale Blue Eye starring the almost always interesting Christian Bale. What really sold it for me was a pal of mine from New York (who shall, for now, remain nameless). My big city friend is more cerebral than I, but still a guy whose analysis is one I almost always find compatible with my own.
What can I say? I regret seeing this movie more than my simple words can convey. I feel as though two hours have been taken from the precious few I have left. I found the acting horrific, and the casting even worse. The script had more holes than any mystery should ever be allowed, and when the movie was not being just embarrassingly bad, it was downright silly. See this at your own risk. I mean, there are people who like it… and what is two hours in the grand scheme of things? Most of you, I am sure, can afford the time, but only assuming you are considerably younger than me.
All Quiet on the Western Front is another battle ground all together. It is brilliantly executed and, as it has been in the past, a story worth the re-telling. In this case it is done expertly with a group of actors and extras who seem devoted to this re-creation of one of the greatest anti-war message films of all time. There is nothing new here. It is simply phenomenally well done by the film maker, his cast and crew. I highly recommend it. So, incidentally, does the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This film has received nine Oscar nominations.
The other side of the spectrum is She Said… an overlooked (by the Academy) but still very strong social drama of the true-to-life story of the two reporters from the NY Times who broke the Harvey Weinstein scandal and were at the forefront of the MeToo movement. Maria Schrader, who directed the award-winning series Unorthodox has scored once again with this motion picture.
People I respect, publications I admire, even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, have singled out Women Talking for an inordinate amount of praise… not just the kind that respects the effort, even though the “patient” died, but authentic praise, including a nomination for an Oscar for best adaptation of a screenplay.
I counter with a resounding BS. The film is a yawn, despite its illustrious cast and good intentions. The script is not a screenplay but rather a (at best) modest vehicle for a small theatre way off Broadway. Everything and anything that might be of cinematic value takes place off-stage. The title of Women Talking says it all.
Producer Frances McDormand has done for the oppressed females of rural anywhere what she previously did for rootless Americans in Nomadland… which, let’s face it, is not very much. Ms. McDormand may be married to the very brilliant producer/director Joel Coen, but she seems to have learned little from that association.
Finally, I owe an apology to Margot Robbie to whom I gave short shrift in last week’s review of Babylon, saying something to the effect that I had yet to become a fan of hers. Not true. My oldest daughter chimed in to remind me that Ms. Robbie essayed the role of Tanya Harding in the motion picture I, Tonya. I had forgotten that… more accurately, I did not remember that it was Margot Robbie who so expertly played that title role. So, I guess I might be described as an erstwhile fan who just was not impressed by her latest effort. In other words, as to fandom and Ms. Robbie, I come on board, but with something less than a resounding me too.
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Barney’s “reviews” are always appreciated and saves me lots of time deciding what to see.