Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024): 3.5/5
A more than worthy companion film to Fury Road, it's more emotional, a film that spends years with one of Miller’s wasteland heroes in a way we’ve never done before. And the action is still spectacular. Anya Taylor-Joy manages to step into the shoes of Charlize Theron and make them her own. Chris Hemsworth is a revelation. Seeing him play an unholy combo of Falstaff and Heath Ledger’s Joker is a delight. It really makes you ponder how little we ask from actors these days.
Mother's Instinct ( Benoit Delhomme, 2024): 2.5/5
Great actresses stuck in a mediocre movie. What an incredibly awkward situation for Jessica Chastain’s character. My first thought would have been to move.
Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024): 2.5/5
Despite the going-all-the-way-through-the-bloodbath action, despite the spiritual edge to it, despite the occasional not forgetting that this is some sort of an anti-capitalist Robin Hood story, even despite the experimental optic parts they dare to implement - Monkey Man is not much more than a competently executed John Wick copycat in saffron, sandy beige and terracotta.
The triptych of the long-winded exposition of the story arc, the lengthy spiritual awakening and the long-awaited catharsis is stretched over two hours and one could argue that the producers should probably have gotten their hands in here cutting it down 20 minutes or so. Also the idea of reconstructing the protagonist’s trauma slowly and fragmented goes at the expense of the proper affective involvement of the audience.
Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023): 3/5
What starts as a seemingly tense and mysteriously disturbing drama hinting at themes of bullying and child abuse gradually reveals itself to be a tender yet devastating portrait of human compassion and adolescent pains in Kore-eda's latest. Employing a Rashomon-like approach for its story of shifting perspectives, Monster shows the same event from three different viewpoints to provide an insight into its young and vulnerable characters' blossoming intimacy and makes for a tender and touching work that's handled with gentleness. But the interest created by its first act is also where the picture peaks and then journeys down to a sensible conclusion that still leaves behind a feeling of incompleteness.
Night Swim (Bryce McGuire, 2024): 1/5
Where the water is so evil it could work for Nestlé.
The worst Blumhouse movie since the last Blumhouse movie.
Abigail (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, 2024): 1/5
Abigail sweetheart, your pirouettes and pas de bourrées need a little bit more work
Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024): 4/5
This is the movie the Dune popcorn bucket was made for.
Kinetic, thrilling, and full of life, passion, and energy, the cinematography and editing displayed throughout Challengers is full of electricity. A masterful screenplay unraveling a decades-spanning throuple that volleys back and forth the advantage in their relationships, careers, lives, and ultimately this $7,200 winner-take-all all challenger match.
There is so much to love here: the overflow of style, a force of acting, and sound design that you feel in your chest with each swing of the racket, but again I just come back to this screenplay being what sealed this for me. The time-jumping, life-spanning saga could easily have been fumbled if not executed with such precision and they nailed it.
A tennis movie where tennis is the vessel, not the subject. A sweat-soaked, horny, thrilling drama unfolding one set at a time until its thunderous conclusion. A contender for my year-end top ten.
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024): 3/5
I appreciate and admire Jane's vision and their obsession with conveying the loneliness of millennial modernity through the texts we consume. and I will always look forward to what they'll be doing next. But I ultimately prefer World's Fair over this though. Anna Cobb's disintegrative performance is so much more than Justice Smith's wheezy alto autist in this. (Why do people keep hiring him???? Why is he in EVERYTHING? God!)
Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932): 3.5/5
An anomaly in Lubitsch's filmography. In the midst of making his famous pre-Code musicals, he switched gears to make this compelling anti-war drama. The story follows guilt-wracked Frenchman Paul, who killed a German in the trenches of WWI. Paul travels to Germany to beg forgiveness from the German's family, but divisions between the two countries make this a difficult task. It's an honest and effective exploration of postwar remorse, pain, trauma. Lionel Barrymore’s performance as the dead soldier's father is magnificently heartbreaking, while Nancy Carroll as the fiancée is earnest and moving. The ending is beautiful - spiritual redemption via the Lubitsch touch.
Phaedra (Jules Dassin, 1962): 3/5
Anthony Perkins in the MCU (mommy cinematic universe).
Phaedra is a modernization of the classic Greek myth of the same name as popularized by Euripedes. Perkins plays the role of Hippolytus, here called Alex. His father, Thanos (Raf Vallone) is a boat building tycoon married to the mercurial Phaedra (Melina Mercouri). The Greek tragedy looms large when Thanos tasks Phaedra to encourage the wayward, artistic Alex to vacation in Greece over the summer. The two meet in Paris in an unusual way, but are taken with one another immediately. Alex is resistant to her request, but his undeniable attraction to his stepmother melts his heart and ignites his passions. Their affair isn't long, but it is potent. Eventually, duty calls, guilt reigns, and Phaedra must return home. When Alex is finally forced to come to Greece for the summer, the drama erupts. Ending features another iconic Perkins meltdown, this time set to Bach blasting in the background.
Unfrosted (Jerry Seinfeld, 2024): 1.5/5
This movie made me want to throw a couple Pop-Tarts into a toaster, and jump into a bathtub with it.
My facial expression literally remained unchanged throughout the entire runtime. I curse whichever Netflix executives told Seinfeld that Unfrosted was a good enough idea to fill 96 interminable minutes but I praise whatever gods may be that saved us from this being a 6 hour streaming series.
Soft & Quiet (Beth de Araujo, 2022): 2/5
OR, American Pie (2022).
Absolute banger of a twist in that first fifteen minutes, I'll give it that. But IDK it’s not any news to me that many white women are capable of being evil, monstrous cunts (sorry: The Daughters of the Aryan Unity). So then you end up with a 90 minute horror movie where you’re forced to watch white women torture and murder women of color, for what purpose? Who is this for exactly? Who's the target audience? Pitching this film seems unimaginable. “White supremacists are awful. Wanna watch how awful they can be?” “That sounds like a terrible idea for a movie, why would I want to watch that?” You’re right. It’s a garbage idea. And a real nasty piece of work. I’d recommend it to literally no one.
rewatched No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2007): 4/5
Back in the day, when this first came out, I had a small chip on my shoulder about this movie because it stole the thunder of There Will Be Blood, which I thought was a better movie. I still do, but time has been kind to PTA's masterpiece, and fifteen+ years later, it's also been kind to the Coens. If all you remember about this is "call it, friendo", it might be time for you too to revisit.
Interesting that we both watched (and had pretty much the same reaction to) Challengers and Monster (including liking Monster's set-up better than its conclusion). We both liked both! Yay for good movies!
ReplyDeleteAnd completely agree with your feelings about No Country. You could also say that There Will Be Blood's magnificence overshadowed No Country, which would probably have been the best movie that year if PTA had never been born.