A 2010s List for Those That Couldn't Wait

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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bamwc2
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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#176 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:14 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:02 am
bamwc2 wrote:
Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:52 pm
Krisha
Krisha is certainly an unpleasant watch, but I felt Shults used the medium's more jarring capabilities well to express a narrative of deep-seated emotion and resentment, and it would have been cowardly to avoid the heaviness the material demanded. This is a film capturing the perspective of a woman who cannot stop moving- often in her mind, demonstrated through physical camera movement- and incessantly struggling with hypervigilance. It summarized the acute circumstances of an addict in early sobriety facing their triggers in the most respectful way possible. Shults utilized his skills in stylistic manipulations perfectly in Waves, across a spectrum from similar ways to this during some acute psychological crises but also ethereally during some more spiritual moments of teenage bliss- he's a tremendous talent.

Also, this is a film best experienced with less information, and it deliberately unfolds so as to keep you responding to Krisha's self-consciousness and sensory-overload. You just explained the entire plot of the movie save the last five minutes or so, including relationships that are late-act twists and her
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eventual relapse
which is essentially the climax, and should definitely go back and spoilerbox that post...
It was more like the last third of the movie, but your point stands. It's behind spoiler text.

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brundlefly
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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#177 Post by brundlefly » Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:14 pm

bamwc2 wrote:
Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:52 pm
The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi, 2019): Danish actor Claes Bang, who I previously encountered in this project with another film about art (Ruben Östlund's The Square), plays James Figueras, a narcissistic art critic who thinks he deserves to rise above the pittance he makes writing books and giving private museum tours to tourists. After hooking up with Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) at one of his lectures, wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) invites them both to his private villa where he gives James an ultimatum: either steal a painting from famous artist/recluse Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) or he will reveal that James inaccurately authenticated a forgery, thus ending his career. The amoral James agrees to do it, and finds himself increasingly compromising whatever principles he might have had. Like any good thriller, the film keeps us guessing at both motivation and outcome as it ratchets up the tension. With fine performances from all four leads, it doesn't amount to much more than the sum of its parts, but fortunately that's enough for a passing grade. Be warned though, as there are some pretty rough scenes in here of violence against women as
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James attempts to drown Berenice, gaslights her about it when she doesn't die, and later beats her to death. It's fairly graphic.
Obvious enough I'm sure it's been pointed out in every review of these films, but still odd enough to mention: Claes Bang has somehow gotten typecast as a leading man in films involving fine arts. Recently had the trailer for The Last Vermeer pop up at me and wondered if someone's pitching painting pictures just to keep him employed. And it must be contagious, witness Debicki in Tenet. I wanted to like BOH more, and enjoyed spending time with everyone but Bang (even if Sutherland's charm is a little leering and forced, I fondly humored him as you would that character), but I think found it a little too obvious and hamfisted to pull off the series of misdirections set up by Bang's opening lecture. The art of making something out of nothing, coyly considered and clumsily executed.
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And of course the painting should have been blue.
bamwc2 wrote:
Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:52 pm
Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019): 34-year-old Bridget (Kelly O'Sullivan) is an aimless slacker who drifts through life without purpose or even a desire for one. She meets Jace (Max Lipchitz) at a party, and the two start a sexual relationship the results in an abortion. At the same time, the penniless Bridget takes a job working as a nanny to a lesbian couple in Evanston, the most affluent city in Illinois. Maya (Charin Alvarez) and Annie (Lily Mojekwu), the interracial couple that hires her, have an infant that Maya looks after while her wife works, but they need Bridget to watch their kindergarten age Frances (Ramona Edith Williams). Much of the film is dedicated to the bond that develops between Bridget and her ward, but there's also a lovely relationship between O'Sullivan's character and Maya that helps to keep the story from veering off into being a film just about a cute kid. With a script also written by O'Sullivan, the film is funny and poignant without ever being cloying or overly sentimental. In fact, it has a lot of intelligent things to say about growing up both as a child, and as an adult. I really look forward to seeing more by these filmmakers.
Glad you mentioned this one, because -- aside from the occasional bout of self-righteousness and maybe a little too much bodily fluid -- for long stretches I thought it almost the ideal modest amiable indie film... which may be exactly why I'd almost forgotten I'd seen it. Liked O'Sullivan a lot.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#178 Post by bamwc2 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:01 pm

Viewing Log:

Amy (Asif Kapadia, 2015): I stopped listening to popular music as a freshman in college in the late 90s. I didn't like what MTV was playing, but my decision was more out of late-teens snobbery and an attempt to appear more sophisticated than I was. I avoided a lot of garbage this way, but I also missed out on some wonderful acts. Amy Winehouse is one of the latter. I knew a little about her during her time in the spotlight, but wasn't overly familiar with her work. I had heard a few songs used in other media, and knew about her struggles with addiction and eventual death from alcohol poising, but was unfamiliar with large swathes of her career. Asif Kapadia's documentary does a good job of filling in those gaps (though fans of hers might find much of this to be retreads) as he uses both private recordings and public appearances to reconstruct Winehouse’s meteoric rise to stardom and the demons that ultimately claimed her. Watching this, there is no denying that Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent. Idolizing the great jazz vocalists, she earned her place among them in her short life. There's little unique about Kapadia's style, but he uses it well in crafting an engaging and tragic biography of the singer.

First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019): As Kelly Reichardt's First Cow opens, a dog walker (Alia Shawkat) slowly uncovers the remains of two skeletons next to a river bank in Oregon. The film then goes into a flashback to the 1820s to tell the story of these unfortunate souls. Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro) acts as a cook for a group of trackers looking for beavers when he encounters a naked King-Lu (Orion Lee). Initially mistaking him for an "Indian" who "speaks good English", King-Lu reveals himself to be a Chinese immigrant on the run from a group of Russians hunting him. The two become fast friends and settle in an outpost where a semi-wealthy British emigre known as Chief Factor (Toby Jones) acquires the area's first cow. The two buddies begin secretively stealing its milk under the cover of darkness to bake what become popular pastries, attracting Chief Factor's attention. The scenes between King-Lu and Cookie work well. I'd like to think that such a relationship could exist, but with the massive racism that Chinese immigrants faced on the West Coast in the 19th century, it seems unlikely. I've never been the biggest Kelly Reichardt fan, but this is probably my favorite of her films. She creates a wonderful sense of atmosphere in the film, and the outpost feels like a real living place. The pacing has been criticized for a bit slow and rambling, but it fits the narrative well. The film had enormous critical buzz pre-pandemic, but was sadly forgotten when award season came around.

Rabid (Jen and Sylvia Soska, 2019): Rose (Laura Vandervoort) works at a Toronto fashion house where her mousy and modest exterior is constantly upstaged by her more glamorous colleagues. Lacking self-confidence, her only friend is her own adopted sister/model Chelsea (Hanneke Talbot), and she devastated when a blind date goes bad. Riding her scooter away, Rose is broadsided by a truck, leaving her alive, but horribly disfigured. Dr. William Burroughs(!) (Ted Atherton) offers her an "experimental treatment" which not only undoes the damage, but leaves her transformed into a more conventionally attractive and confident woman. Unfortunately, Rose starts having "vivid hallucinations" and a taste for blood that leads to terrifying results for the city. It's not my favorite Cronenberg film, but I am a fan of the original. Unfortunately, this version does not stack up well against it. There are significant changes made between the two, but mostly for the worse. Rather than focus on reimagining Cronenberg's unique style of body horror, the Soskas instead focus on more conventional gore. Moreover, the script is a mess with the characters coming off as broad archetypes instead of real people. This is my first encounter with the sisters, but apparently they made a name for themselves with their independent work several years ago. Here's hoping that they relocate whatever magic they lost in this piss poor remake.

The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt, 2013): In a century of listless and contrived coming-of-age teen dramadies, The Spectacular Now stands out as one of the best of the genre. Narrated by Sutter (Miles Teller), an aimless high school senior who likes to party a little too hard, the film recounts his whirlwind romance with the more studious good girl Aimee (Shailene Woodley). Both of them lack fathers--his left, hers died--leading to an initial bond between these two seemingly polar opposites. The film does fall into some of the more cliched opposites attract formula that lesser films revel in, but it also goes to unexpected places too. Teller is great in this (more on him later), but Woodley really shines through as the innocent and hard-working Aimee. It's a cliched role that she brings new life to with an outstanding performance.

The Truth (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2019): Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne Dangeville, an aging grand dame of French cinema in Hirokazu Kore-eda's first film made out of Japan. Fanienne is, of course, a fictionalized version of Deneuve herself, and like the real-life actress, has a daughter who works in the film industry. Though she’s based in LA, Lumir (Juliette Binoche) returns to their countryside estate along with her husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) and their bilingual child Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier). Fabienne comes across as crusty (she dismisses Hank as a mere TV actor) and envious of the younger actresses playing the roles that she built her name on. The real center of the movie, however, is the mother daughter dynamic between Fabienne and Lumir. Despite loving one another, they seem to lack the means of letting it be known. Instead, they spend the majority of the film trading barbs. Such material is all too familiar--indeed, the film feels interchangeable with a lot of French dramas over the last few decades--but the leads turn in excellent performances. Ultimately it comes across as minor Kore-eda. He does a competent job, but no new ground is broken.

Waves (Trey Edward Shults, 2019): Told in two acts, Trey Edward Shults's magnificent third film sees him shedding the (separate) problems that dragged down his two previous films. United by domineering patriarch Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), the film begins with his son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a promising, but on edge high school athlete. Early on Tyler's world comes crashing down when both an injury ends his wrestling career, and his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Dernie), becomes pregnant. This leads to
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an argument where Tyler strikes Alexis. She hits her head and dies. Charged with her murder, Tyler receives a life sentence.
We pick up with the family trying to make sense of what happened when a still reeling Emily (Taylor Russell) begins a new and exciting relationship. While It Comes at Night suffered from uneven storytelling, there is no fat on this script. While Krisha seemed to employ visual trickery that wasn't in service to the story, Shults is more reserved here. He still does some fairly impressive things with the camera, but he also knows when to slow it down, even opting for some shot/reverse shots instead of swinging around to whomever is talking. Waves is a magnificent film from a director who's reached his maturity.

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014): Before he became Hollywood's golden boy, director Damien Chazelle was a musician whose first foray into film was a microbudget indy about this life. Unable to secure funding for a second film about jazz musicians, he first turned the script into a short subject that won enough critical praise to get financial backing. Thank goodness this strategy worked, because the end result is nothing less than phenomenal. Miles Teller plays Andrew Neimann, a talented drummer and recent high school graduate who begins his first year at a Julliard-esque academy. Andrew desperately wants to avoid the sort of mediocrity that led his writer father to take a high school teaching job, and dreams of becoming the next jazz great. To do this he divests himself of all distractions (including girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoist)), and gives his all to his abusive instructor Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Simmons is a force of nature here as the destructive teacher who shouts slurs and forces Andrew to drum until his hands are covered in blood, but attempts to justify it as his way of making the next Charlie Parker. I know nothing of the world professional jazz musicians, but I hope I know fine filmmaking when I see it. The two leads here give the performances of their lives, and Chazelle hits every beat as director. A special shout out to Tom Cross, the film's editor, who, along with Simmons, took home Oscar gold for his work on the picture. Thanks to him this was one of the best edited films of the decade.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#179 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:58 pm

Truth is not at the top of my Kore'eda list (then again, that list really has no "bottom"), but I would need to watch it another time or two before I decide exactly what I think. In my experience, every film of his so far has had a lot of complexity buried beneath the surface -- so this one may also be deeper than it looks at first.

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zedz
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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#180 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:03 pm

bamwc2 wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 12:39 am
After seeing Sach's impressive Little Men, I was eager to see more work by him. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel let down by his 2019 follow up.
Most of Sachs' body of work has been a letdown for me, but only because his first two features were so strong. I have no idea how easy The Delta is to see, but it was a stunning debut, more indebted to Hou Hsiao-Hsien than any other American Indies of the 90s.

Forty Shades of Blue might be even better, a fraught relationship drama set amongst the Memphis music scene with two electrifying lead performances by Rip Torn and Dina Korzun, who are acting in completely different registers throughout, but in a way that has internal coherence for the drama.

Keep the Lights On and Love Is Strange are pretty good though, and they're eligible for this list project. The latter is kind of a gay Make Way for Tomorrow / Tokyo Story that's buoyed by several great supporting performances (and fine work from Alfred Molina and John Lithgow as the star-crossed lovers)

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#181 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:26 pm

bamwc2 wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:01 pm
The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt, 2013): In a century of listless and contrived coming-of-age teen dramadies, The Spectacular Now stands out as one of the best of the genre. Narrated by Sutter (Miles Teller), an aimless high school senior who likes to party a little too hard, the film recounts his whirlwind romance with the more studious good girl Aimee (Shailene Woodley). Both of them lack fathers--his left, hers died--leading to an initial bond between these two seemingly polar opposites. The film does fall into some of the more cliched opposites attract formula that lesser films revel in, but it also goes to unexpected places too. Teller is great in this (more on him later), but Woodley really shines through as the innocent and hard-working Aimee. It's a cliched role that she brings new life to with an outstanding performance.
I'm glad you liked this, though it's interesting you frame Sutter's problem as being one who "likes to party a little too hard" since this is the exact kind of attitude the film is exposing as false, and even dangerous. It's evidently about the throes of teenage alcoholism, using the backdrop of a YA romance to demonstrate how one's life is more than just their problem, as well as how it affects others. Perhaps it's partly because I identify so hard with this narrative, but there are clear indicators that Sutter is not "liking" his powerlessness over alcohol in certain settings (the culmination of his job situation being one of his more depressing bottoms, despite not being one of the louder events). What I love and admire so much about this film is that it's a direct response to the neglectful oversight of most adults who look at teenage drinkers as kids who "like to party a little too hard." This is most of our reactions in America, but nevertheless problematically ignorant towards the warning signs of the indiscriminate disease of addiction by chalking it up to developmentally appropriate behavior, not to mention a phrasing that contributes to the stigma that addicts got that way by 'having too much fun'. The film's progression is key, as Ponsoldt takes his time to demonstrate more and more problems until we're no longer able to deny that it's unquestionably about alcoholism, so in the process we ourselves sober up right with the characters to accepting what is really going on (and this is only helped by dressing it up as a standard teenage romance, which of course, it also is).

I highly recommend checking out his previous film, Smashed, if you liked this and are interested in films about addiction. The one-two punch makes Ponsoldt one of our most enlightened filmmakers on the experience of active addiction.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#182 Post by dustybooks » Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:06 pm

The Spectacular Now also features one of the most realistic depictions of a sexual encounter between teens — in all their fumbling but good-natured awkwardness — I’ve ever seen, and one of the most harrowingly honest characterizations of a neglectful parent (to such an extent that I’ve hesitated showing the film to a loved one whose relationship to her dad is essentially re-enacted therein).

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#183 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:33 pm

Absolutely, it's truly the rare kind of film that wears familiar blithe skin and chooses to infuse it with realism in every respect- including the earned romantic arc

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#184 Post by bamwc2 » Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:40 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:50 pm
And if Brian's Trump Prophecy comments make it seem astoundingly bizarre but you don't want to legitimise the filmmaker's politics (or perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the film: their soundtrack choices) too much then there's a Cinema Snob video about it here. "Whereas Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel so shall this man shall be to the United States of America" indeed! Though I get the impression that the filmmakers intended that to be some sort of compliment?
Oh my God! I just found out that The Cinema Snob has its own PornHub channel. Do I really need to see the uncut dirty version of The Trump Prophecy? Yes. Yes I do.

MOD NOTE: Link to Pornhub removed. Google can find this channel on PH for you if you cannot manually find it

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#185 Post by bamwc2 » Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:33 am

Viewing Log:

Charlie Says (Mary Harron, 2018): The writer/director team behind American Psycho reunite to tell a story about the Manson Family. Screenwriter Guinevere Turner crafts a hodgepodge work out two separate books: Ed Sanders's The Family and Karlene Faith's The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten. The use of these two texts explain part of the schizophrenic feel of the film as it jumps back and forth between the Spahn Ranch where Charles Manson (Matt Smith) domineers his followers, and Faith's time working with Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendón), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon), and Leslie Van Houtenin (Hannah Murray) as they serve life sentences in an isolated wing of the California Institution for Women. While the constant shifting back and forth may sound jarring, together they create a rich portrait of the women. However, I would have preferred a bit more time explaining how the three of them were deprogrammed. Instead, we go from a reading group led by Karlene to the women questioning whether Helter Skelter will ever happen without much of a thread connecting the two. Smith has the flashiest roll in the film as he does a good job of approximating the Manson I've seen in interviews, but it's the performances of Rendón, Bacon, and Murray than anchor the film. I have to say that I prefer American Psycho to this, but it's still good enough for a recommendation.

Dark Waters (Todd Haynes, 2019): Working on an adaptation of the New York Times Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare", Todd Haynes goes against type and crafts a movie unlike any other in his oeuvre. When the film begins, desperate West Virginian farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp) travels to Cincinnati where he attempts to elicit the aid of Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) at the advice of his grandmother. Strange things are happening on Wilbur's land. Crops are dying, animals are born with deformities, and the livestock's teeth turn black. At first Robert demurs, but after traveling home he find himself embroiled in a battle against DuPont. The film doesn't break any new ground, but it is a fairly effective legal thriller. Ruffalo is competent in it as are most of the supporting cast (with the exception of Bill Pullman whose Southern drawl is never really that believable), but the cinematography is the best part of the film. Haynes is a talented visual director, and he milks every ounce of beauty he can from the Appalachian Mountains as the obligatory Country Roads plays over it.

Driveways (Andrew Ahn, 2019): Although we never meet her, the specter of April looms large over Andrew Ahn's film. She's recently died of an apparent heart attack, and her younger sister Kathy (Hong Chau) drives from Michigan to her home in New York to get it ready to sell. The single mother brings along her introverted eight-year-old son Cody (Lucas Jaye) and the two discover that the reclusive April was a hoarder that piled junk from floor to ceiling in every room. Initially a neighbor offers the services of her two grandsons to look after Cody, but their rambunctiousness proves to be an ill fit for the boy. Instead, Cody, and then later Kathy, form a bond with April's next-door neighbor Del (Brian Dennehy), an elderly Korean War vet. Del and Cody share a beautiful bond that transcends ordinary tropes of elder caregivers. Instead, this quietly observed film tells a tender and endearing story of the mutual respect that can exist in an intergenerational friendship. While I don't remember race ever being specifically addressed in the film aside from an ignorant white neighbor briefly making a fool of herself, it’s still very much a movie about the Asian-American experience. Ahn oversees a film about Asian people navigating white spaces. I can only assume that it's no coincidence that Del is a veteran of a war that the US fought against an Asian nation. I doubt that these facts can be ignored by Kathy or Del, but Cody lives in a state of youthful ignorance where he can easily slip in and out of racially coded spaces. As the white husband of a Chinese-American wife with a biracial child, it's refreshing to see race relations handled in a simple yet profound manner.

The Rover (David Michôd, 2014): Set a decade after some sort of economic collapse, The Rover is occurs in a future Australia that's eerily similar to George Miller's Mad Max. The remnants of civilization in the Outback have been reduced to rusted out shanties and the occasional car that still has some gasoline in it. In fact, it's one of these cars that kick starts the action as a group of what seem to be primarily American bandits flee from an unseen threat before totaling their car. Led by Henry (Scoot McNairy), the three men steal the next automobile they find, which just happens to belong to Eric (Guy Pearce), a Max-type road warrior who just wants his ride back. Taking another car Eric gives chase, but is eventually battered and left unconscious on the side of the road by the armed Henry. Soon Eric meets up with the grievously wounded Rey (Robert Pattinson), who is the brother of Henry and was left behind to die after being shot. Eric brings Rey to a doctor where he's saved through surgery. Once healed the two of them go on a quest for revenge. While derivative of Miller's work, the film carries on interesting aesthetic that Michôd and his crew carryout well. Pearce is frightening in his role of Eric who'd just as soon shoot you as talk to you, and Pattinson brings Rey to life effortlessly communicating his deep damage from trauma and betrayal. Original? No, but when most directors liberally borrow from one another that hardly seems like a disqualifying sin.

Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011): The last thing Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) remembers is piloting a helicopter in Afghanistan, so he's surprised when he suddenly finds himself aboard a commuter train in Chicago. Sitting across from (Michelle Monaghan), she keeps calling him Sean. Colter stumbles about trying to make sense of his situation when the train suddenly explodes. Instead of dying he wakes up in a pod talking to military officer Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farminga) through a two-way television monitor. She informs him that he's part of a secret military program trying to stop a terrorist act. The same person who bombed the train is set to detonate a dirty bomb hours from then somewhere in the city. They know that the bomber was on the train and need Colter to identify him. What Colter experiences is not the actual bombing but some sort of reconstruction of the events. Sent back, he must identify the terrorist before the next bomb takes out the city. I'm not a physicist, but do a little philosophy of physics. I know enough of the subject to be able to say that the explanation for the program is complete gobbledygook. Of course, that's par for the course for a lot of science fiction, and is easy to overlook in the service of a good story. Fortunately, that's what Duncan Jones delivers. Going in I thought that the premise sounded silly, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one. I really felt for Colter as he slowly realized the truth of his situation, something that wouldn't have been possible without a solid performance from Gyllenhaal. A decade ago Duncan Jones established himself as a talented sci-fi craftsman, so it was dispiriting to see his career derailed by his 2017 flop (okay, I've never seen Warcraft, but given everything I've heard...). Here's hoping he gets back on track with his next feature.

Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, 2019): Middle class Hunter (Haley Bennett) marries Richie (Austin Stowell), a self-possessed scion to a wealthy family. Hunter is in the early days of her first pregnancy when she finds herself alone all day while her husband works. Initially Hinter busies herself with housework even though they can afford domestic help, but the ennui of the situation soon overwhelms her. She begins picking up objects around the house like a marble and a thumbtack. She closely examines them before tentatively putting them in her mouth, and eventually swallowing them. Hunter does this for a while before a medical emergency requires all of the foreign objects to be removed via an endoscopy. Her doctor explains that she's suffering from pica, a compulsive need to swallow non-nutritional objects. While pica is sometimes triggered by pregnancy, the film postulates an alternative explanation when it's revealed that
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Hunter is the product of her mother's rape. She says that she's dealt with this trauma by "thinking about it", but her actions in the last act reveal that it’s still very much an open wound for her.
Bennett does an impressive job of communicating Hunter's broken psychological state as Richie and his family slowly begin to restrict her freedom. Equal parts drama and psychological horror, the film lives or dies on Carlo Mirabella-Davis unique style. Fortunately, it works well. The scenes of Hunter slowly deciding to ingest the objects are masterfully handled moments of tension. The film could turn into cheap shocks, but even in its most extreme images (Hunter choking, Hunter leaving a toilet filled with fresh blood), there's a measured restraint in the filmmaking that makes it all the more effective.

True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel, 2019): Set in the mostly rural 19th century Victoria countryside, Justin Kurzel's biopic tells the life of Australian outlaw/folk hero Ned Kelly in two parts. The first fifty minutes or so are focused on Ned's youth (played by Orlando Schwerdt) where we trace how Kelly was taught to kill by bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) as he wages war against the English authorities. When we pick up with Ned as a young adult (now played by George MacKay) he's stripped down to his underwear and engaged in a brutal boxing match. It's a fitting opening to a second act that's characterized by both the gleeful breaking of sexual mores (there's a scene where the whole gang cross dresses) and rampant non-stop violence. But it's also the violence that mars would could have been a better movie. There's nothing wrong with extreme violence when it serves some point--poetry in The Wild Bunch, satire in Robocop--but there's no clear purpose to it here beyond Harry's hatred of the British. The gang are cruel to everyone around them and Kurzel is never apprehensive to let the blood fly. But why? Is the point to deglamorize mythical Ned Kelly? Is it there to reflect the realities of his time? It's not clear and feels like it's just there to be there.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#186 Post by bamwc2 » Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:35 am

bamwc2 wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:40 pm
MOD NOTE: Link to Pornhub removed. Google can find this channel on PH for you if you cannot manually find it
Oops. Sorry. I didn't know that wasn't allowed.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#187 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:19 am

bamwc2 wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:33 am
Source CodeA decade ago Duncan Jones established himself as a talented sci-fi craftsman, so it was dispiriting to see his career derailed by his 2017 flop (okay, I've never seen Warcraft, but given everything I've heard...). Here's hoping he gets back on track with his next feature.
He didn't. Warning: Do not see Mute

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#188 Post by bamwc2 » Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:40 pm

Viewing Log:

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (Michael Rapaport, 2011): Though he might be best known today for trolling Howard Stern's staff, he's also a hip hop superfan with a deep love for the New York acts from the early days. His appreciation for the act A Tribe Called Quest is in full view as he gives us a documentary that's part history lesson and part an attempt to catch up with the band at the start of the '10s. Though members Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White get some time in the spotlight, the focus of the film is clearly on rappers Phife Dog and Q-Tip. It makes sense that the two are singled out given their shared history (they became friends in the early days of elementary school), their fame within the group, and their divergent career paths post-1998 breakup. While Q-Tip went on to be one of rap's top acts of the '00s, Phife Dog's sole solo album, Ventilation: Da LP, was both a critical and commercial failure. The film takes on a new sense of tragedy that it lacked during its initial release. The documentary goes into great detail exploring Phife's struggle with diabetes, and poor lifestyle choices. Despite having dialysis three times a week and getting a donor kidney from his wife after his own failed, Phife explains how he can't break his sugar addiction. Five years after the release of Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, his diabetes claimed his life. I had heard some of their music growing up, but didn't know much about the band. I liked what I heard though. Rapaport was right to pick a group with both talented and charismatic members, but that could be said of most East Coast acts from the scene. Still, the relationship between Q-Tip and Phife makes for some compelling drama that should make the film of interest beyond fans of the band.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015): I had previously seen Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I liked both (especially the latter), but neither hinted at how astonishingly good her 2015 debut was. Working on her own adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's novel, Heller crafts a story that is tender and true to teenage girls (I never was one, but used to know a few about 25 years ago) that perfectly captures that awkward age where they're somewhere in between their transition from child to adult. When the film begins 15-year-old Minnie (Bel Powley, who was 23 at the time the film was released but convincingly plays younger) strolls through the night as her voice over announces “I had sex today. Holy shit!” Her partner turns out to be Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), a college professor who is 20-years her senior. The two become lovers with multiple (and highly illegal) assignations that are further complicated by the fact that Monroe is dating Minnie's mom Charlotte (Kristen Wiig). But the film is about so much more than their affair, as we explore Minnie's friendships, experimentation with other men and women, her insecurities, and her dreams. It's one of these dreams--her desire to become a cartoonist like her hero Aline Kominsky--that give rise to some of the movie's most inventive moments. She creates autobiographical comics where she looks more like one of Robert Crumb's dream women than her actual appearance. Ashamed of her imagined form, the film turns these India ink drawings into gorgeous animation. I won't spoil anything else, but Heller takes several bold risks beyond animation, and they all work. Powley was so good in her part that she deserves more starring roles than she's gotten in the intervening six years. You guys, this was sooooo good!

End of Watch (David Ayer, 2012): Throughout the course of his career David Ayer has made a name for himself as storyteller (first screenwriter, then director) of damaged men who expresses their machismo through violence. Law enforcement is his favorite well to dip in, and this trend reaches its apotheosis in this bloody, kinetic action piece. Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) spend their days and nights patrolling the streets of South Central L.A. with a little too much enthusiasm. The film, which makes frequent use of shaky footage from body cams and camcorder footage that Mike shoots for a film elective as he studies pre-law in night school, begins with a high-speed chase that ends when the pair ram the car into a fence. The driver and his passenger jump out guns blazing as Brian and Mike shoot them and later high five other officers. Seeing the world divided in stark contrast between the police and the gang bangers they're at war with, our two leads regularly brutalize those that they take into custody. We do spend some time away from the film's constant intensity, when we delve into their personal lives (Mike is married to his high school sweetheart Gabby (Natalie Martinez), while the promiscuous Brian settles down with girlfriend Janet (Anna Kendrick)). Their domestic bliss is threatened, however, when they run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel that's recently encroached on their territory. Ayer's bombastic style occasionally makes this feel like an episode of Cops before the blood and swearing (and, man, there's a lot of both) gets edited out. The relationship between the two main characters carries the film even when it seems to be treading water. The climax somehow manages to ratchet up the ferocity. Back when I was a teen, I wanted to be a cop. This movie makes me so glad I'm not.

The Guard (John Michael McDonagh, 2011): Gleefully indulging in all of the vice crimes he's supposed to stop, Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) begins the film by patting down a dying teenager thrown out of a car wreck that killed his friends. After finding a bag of drugs on the lad, Gerry ingests a tab of LSD and heads out to investigate a homicide. The victim who was left with some cryptic clues, is linked to a team of drug smugglers tracked by FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle). The racist, foul mouthed Gerry ends up working with the straitlaced Wendell in a very Irish version of the buddy cop comedy. There's nothing flashy about John Michael McDonagh's direction, but his script is what really makes the film work. The quips between Gerry and Wendell don't always work, but the villains are devilishly fleshed out weirdos. When we first meet them, they're trading jabs about philosophers before things turn deadly serious. Bertrand Russell is my favorite philosopher, but I didn't know that he was born and died in Wales. Thanks for the trivia, John Michael McDonagh!

Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2017): Chance strikes when fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) encounters Del (Steve Buscemi) on the side of a dusty Oregon road. Del needs help getting the lug nuts off of his flat, and offers Charley a job working with his race horse, Lean on Pete. Charley is eager to earn some extra cash since his hard working single dad Ray (Travis Fimmel) lives on a modest budget that barely supports the two. Del and his jockey Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny) treat Pete as a mere commodity, but Charley quickly grows attached to him despite their warnings. When
SpoilerShow
Ray is killed over a romance
and Pete is threatened with death, Charley absconds with the horse in the hopes of reaching his aunt's ranch in Wyoming. I've been a sucker for a good boy-and-his-horse story since seeing Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion as a kid, and this one doesn't disappoint. It's a simple, but moving story about the bond that we can have with nonhuman animals, but ultimately the story is
SpoilerShow
really about Charley. Pete dies after being hit by a car with more than thirty minutes left in the film, and we follow Charley as he completes his trek to Wyoming.
This is the third film I've seen by Andrew Haigh. While I really liked Weekend, this is probably my favorite of the lot. I find it remarkable that the UK born and based director had such a wonderful understanding of the dusty small towns and open plains of America.

Never Goin' Back (Augustine Frizzell, 2018): Writer/director Augustine Frizzell's wonderfully observed and deeply funny film plays out kind of like a female Beavis & Butthead if the two were slightly smarter, more self aware, and occasionally made out with each other. Seventeen-year-old Jessie (Camila Morrone) and Angela (Maia Mitchell) are a pair of seventeen-year-old high school dropouts that share a bedroom in a scuzzy Texas apartment with Jessie's gangsta wannabe brother Dustin (Joel Allen) and clueless loser Brandon (Kyle Mooney). At the beginning of the film Angela reveals that she used their share of the month's rent money to buy Jessie a weekend birthday beach excursion to Gavelston, and the two figure that they'll recoup the cost by picking up extra shifts at the IHOP-esque restaurant where they wait tables. Fate, however, has a different plan as the BFFs go on a picaresque adventure around town that's fueled by both drugs and their deep abiding love for one another. It's refreshing to see a comedy about friends without any forced division between the two. They may not be the brightest of characters, but there's no doubt that mean well even if they have to break the occasional law or two. The humor is very, very juvenile, but I couldn't stop laughing. I really liked this one.

Slow West (John Maclean, 2015): Writer/director John Maclean made his debut with yet another in a long line of quirky revisionist westerns. Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has traveled from Scotland to find his love Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius) who ran off to disappear in the American wilderness with her father John (Rory McCann). Within seconds of the film beginning, a group of men chasing a Native American man pass him. One stops and holds Jay at gunpoint until he declares his race, but a stranger appears out of nowhere to blow him away. The mysterious man is Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), a seasoned gunslinger whose motives aren't always transparent. In order to survive in the wild Jay hires Silas as his bodyguard, but trouble awaits them around every bend. The film alternates between absurdity (such as when a pair of Native American horse thieves get their comeuppance seconds later) and scenes of dead seriousness (e.g., when Jay kills his first person). I realize that life is full of diverse moments, but some more tonal consistency would have been appreciated! Still, it's a decent film with good performances from its two stars. Maclean has a real eye for bringing out the terrain the film covers. It's a shame that he hasn't made anything else since this.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#189 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:50 pm

I like The Guard, but in particular I love Mark Strong's WTF response to the stupid questioning by the cops about the payoff. It's hilarious on its own, but doubly funny by deconstructing all of those moments in crime movies rendering them as inane fluff. Plus it's one of the times I've seen my dad (who loves all those cheap cop crime flicks) laugh the hardest, so it gets points for that. I feel like the industry has done us all a disservice over the last decade by casting Strong in parts that don't play to his comic strengths.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#190 Post by dustybooks » Fri Mar 26, 2021 11:16 am

bamwc2 wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:40 pm
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015): I had previously seen Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I liked both (especially the latter), but neither hinted at how astonishingly good her 2015 debut was. Working on her own adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner's novel, Heller crafts a story that is tender and true to teenage girls (I never was one, but used to know a few about 25 years ago) that perfectly captures that awkward age where they're somewhere in between their transition from child to adult. When the film begins 15-year-old Minnie (Bel Powley, who was 23 at the time the film was released but convincingly plays younger) strolls through the night as her voice over announces “I had sex today. Holy shit!” Her partner turns out to be Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), a college professor who is 20-years her senior. The two become lovers with multiple (and highly illegal) assignations that are further complicated by the fact that Monroe is dating Minnie's mom Charlotte (Kristen Wiig). But the film is about so much more than their affair, as we explore Minnie's friendships, experimentation with other men and women, her insecurities, and her dreams. It's one of these dreams--her desire to become a cartoonist like her hero Aline Kominsky--that give rise to some of the movie's most inventive moments. She creates autobiographical comics where she looks more like one of Robert Crumb's dream women than her actual appearance. Ashamed of her imagined form, the film turns these India ink drawings into gorgeous animation. I won't spoil anything else, but Heller takes several bold risks beyond animation, and they all work. Powley was so good in her part that she deserves more starring roles than she's gotten in the intervening six years. You guys, this was sooooo good!
I love this film as well -- Heller is really an impressive talent -- and it prompted me to pick up Gloeckner's book which is tremendously good. Both novel and film have a rawness and intensity that I appreciate in comparison with Lady Bird, which I also really like but which more closely approximates the kind of sheltered life and parental passive-aggression I remember from my own youth: no less thorny and personal, for sure, but a bit less dangerous.

This allows me also to recommend the British TV series My Mad Fat Diary, which tackles adolescent existence with similar honesty, also based on a woman's journals from when she was a teenager, and which I've just been revisiting lately. I'm going over the top probably, but I really think it may be my favorite television series ever.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#191 Post by swo17 » Sat Mar 27, 2021 4:18 pm

Friendly reminder that Round 1 ends in about a month. Feel free to start sending me your lists at any time!

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#192 Post by bamwc2 » Sat Mar 27, 2021 6:26 pm

Viewing Log:

Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, 2014): Desiree Akhavan wrote, directed the movie in addition to starring as Shirin, an aimless 20-something Brooklynite that can't seem to get her life in order. We've seen this film before (e.g. Frances Ha, and a number of late '00 and early '10 mumblecore films), but this one stands out for its unique infusion of race, religion, and sexuality. Shirin, like Akhavan herself, is an American-born woman from an Iranian family. She's a secular Muslim who also happens to be bisexual. Despite having just exited a long term same-sex relationship with Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), she keeps her parents in the dark over her sexuality. Much of the film is told in flashbacks to her relationship with Maxine whose suspicions about her bisexuality get in the way of their romance, but Shirin does plenty to screw it up as well. Like the aforementioned Baumbach move, the film does a wonderful job of exploring '10 hipster malaise with a little bit of The Big Sick (which came out three years later, so Akhavan can't be accused of theft) thrown in. It also has a perhaps the most realistic depiction of kids making their own movies I've ever seen. I won't spoil it for you, but I could totally see my son doing the same at five. Akhavan has apparently explored some of the same themes of sexuality in both a subsequent film and television series. I look forward to checking out both!

Barbara (Christian Petzold, 2012): Christian Petzold, who himself grew up under the thumb of East German totalitarianism, wrote and directed this story of a Berlin doctor from the wrong side of the divide who is banished to a provincial hospital after requesting an exit visa so she can be with the man she loves. Set in the 1980s, the film is less about the Stasi paranoia (though there is some of that) than it is about the class and urban/rural divide that exists in German society. Barbara (Nina Hoss) resents her new position away from the action of the city, while her new coworkers consider her haughty and simply refer to her as "Berlin" to highlight her foreignness to them. Still dreaming of an escape to the West, Barbara's is forced into a tough decision when the pregnant an ill teenager Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) comes under her care. I'm not the biggest Petzold fan, but thought that like most of his work, this one was okay. His frequent collaborator Hoss does a good job as she usually does under Petzold's direction, but I rarely find myself absorbed by his work. I wish I could give an explanation for the failure on my part, but it’s as inexplicable to me as it would be to his most ardent fans.

The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011): Writers Carlen Altman and Alex Ross Perry star as siblings JR and Colin in this brilliant and hilarious indie. The two are miserable, terrible people that somehow come off, not as lovable, but at least strangely open to our empathy. When the film begins, the sexually frustrated Colin pleads for (at least) a handjob before he engages on a road trip with JR. Like most things in his life, the aspiring writer (something he loathes being) fails to get what he wants. His sister is an equally big loser. She's a college drop out who needs to travel to the house of her former journalism professor/lover to collect boxes of her belongings. When they finally get there, things go hysterically askew as JR grows jealous of the fact that her ex has found a new undergrad to sleep with. Other episodes carry the same awkward themes that I won't spoil here. The film culminates with an impressive uninterrupted nine-minute take as JR and Colin lie in bed with one another talking about all sorts of things, including the smell of their mother's vibrator. I loved the dialogue in this movie, but have no idea how much of it was scripted and how much of it was improvised. It comes off as so natural and effortless, that I suspect much of it was developed on the spot, but I can't find any answer to the question. Regardless, this is one of the best slacker comedies I've ever seen.

In Another Country (Sang-soo Hong, 2012): I'm not terribly familiar with writer/director Sang-soo Hong, though I have seen several of his films. In Another Country might well prove to be his most experimental yet. It not only stars a foreign actor (French grand dame Isabelle Huppert playing Anne as she speaks all of her dialogue in English), but it's also a series of three lightly connected retellings of the same basic story with the same cast of characters each roughly divided into thirty-minute segments. All involve Anne arriving in Mohan, South Korea as a guest of a couple, who, like Anne assume different stories in every iteration. The only real constant in the film is Anne's quest to find the seaside city's light house where she meets a clumsy and officious lifeguard (Joon-Sang Yoo). The film is an interesting experiment, but I'm really not sure to make of it beyond noting its central conceit. Hong is a deeply humanistic filmmaker (from what I've seen), who imbues his characters with a sense of life that makes this worth a watch.

Love is Strange (Ira Sachs, 2014): As the film begins, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow) find themselves marrying after a 39-year relationship when same-sex marriage is legalized. However, their joy is short lived as George, a music instructor at a Catholic school, is fired by his bishop for formalizing their relationship. Without the benefit of two incomes, and seemingly too old to find a new job, the couple find themselves unable to afford their New York City rent. After vacating the premises, they take up residence in Ben's nephew Elliot's (Darren Burrows) spare room bunk beds. Finding themselves without enough room to live together, George volunteers to sleep on a friend's couch until something more permanent can be found. Ben stays behind, but tension with Elliot's wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and son Joey (Charlie Tahan) threaten to boil over. The scenes between Ben and the possibly gay Joey (something he forcefully denies without ever being directly asked) are among some of the most beautiful parts of the film. The portrait of George and Ben is tender and moving, and the film offers a strong indictment of the economic conditions that keep them apart. This is the third Sachs film I've seen for the project. I really liked the first, but felt mild disappointment over the second. Fortunately, this one reinforces my impression of him as a talented director.

Memphis (Tim Sutton, 2013): What Tim Sutton's Memphis lacks in plot, it makes up for in mood as we follow musician Willis Earl Beal (playing a version of himself) during his wanderings through the eponymous city. The city of Memphis is famous for its bluesy melodies, and we're treated to a good deal of that here as well. The black church also plays an indispensable role in the film as Willis takes in the city's gospel scene. As someone who's visited Memphis multiple times, I think that Sutton does a good job of conveying the city's atmosphere, at time making it feel almost alive. However, some of its most powerful moments lie in its quiet moments, when Willis walks in nature with his arms outstretched like a gliding bird. The film's lack of a conventional structure means that it won't be right for everyone, but with gorgeous images and great music, it's worth a watch.

Premium Rush (David Koepp, 2012): Bristling with the same intensity and moxie of its characters, Premium Rush's story unfolds over just a few hours. Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a law school graduate who takes up a job as a NYC bicycle messenger working for table scraps because, as he tells us, he's afraid of getting a job that makes him wear a suit. But it's obviously more than that. Wilee enjoys the freedom and intensity of his job as he navigates routes around the city, making them in seemingly impossible times. His on again/off again girlfriend/fellow bike messenger Vanessa (Dania Ramirez) is roommates with Nima (Jamie Chung) a Chinese scholar in the US on a student visa. One late afternoon Nima gives Wilee an envelope to deliver to Chinatown, but before he can even leave the campus where she works, Wilee is confronted by someone claiming to be the head of university security under the name Forrest J Ackerman (I see what you did there). He demands that Wilee hand over the envelope and chases him throughout the city when he refuses. Soon we find out that he's police detective Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon), but why he wants Nima's message remains a mystery. Packing more action--but significantly less violence--than your traditional action flick, director David Koepp masterfully crafts an intense ride through urban environments with plenty of cool tricks along the way. I could have done without the repeated sequences of Wilee predicting the possibilities of routes he might take as it felt like stylish excess, but it's some truly fun filmmaking.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#193 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:03 pm

Like many of Hong's films, In Another Country got better with rewatching. Not certain about its meaning, but I liked the feeling it left me with even more on re-visitation.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#194 Post by bamwc2 » Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:22 pm

Viewing Log:

Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013): David Gordon Green and Nicolas Cage have both experienced career ebbs and flows throughout their time in film, so it seemed strangely inevitable that they would end up working together. Cage plays the eponymous Joe, a heavy drinking ex-con in the sort of character driven dramas that both excel at. Joe works for a timber company in the deep south along with the elderly, but nefarious fellow alcoholic Wade (Gary Poulter). One day Wade's estranged teenage son Gary (Tye Sheridan) comes to their worksite looking for a job, but finds a father figure in Joe instead of Wade. Both Joe and Wade are capable of shocking acts of violence, but only one of them seeks redemption. The relationship between Joe and Gary forms the emotional basis for the film, and both actors give good performances. Green may have his share of failures, but this is not one of them. Based on a novel by Larry Brown, this film is a tragic and endearing look at how family bonds can develop between those that come together through circumstance. Combine that with Green's unique eye for cinematic beauty, and you have a real winner.

Mississippi Grind (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2015): Co-written and co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Mississippi Grind plays almost like a loose remake of Robert Altman's California Split. Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn), a veteran gambler whose addiction ruined every relationship in his life, meets the much younger mouthy Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) at a game of Texas holdem. Instead of acting like a mentor to the 35-year-old Curtis who is old enough to know his own share of tricks, the two form an enabling relationship where they gamble and bet on anything and everything. The film's title comes from their plan to drive the southern length of the Mississippi river, hitting up all of the action along the way. Gerry sees the trip as the solution to his mountain of debt; for Curtis it's just another thrill. Buddy comedies like these live or die based on the believability of the comity between the leads. Fortunately, the sad sack Gerry and the unctuous thrill seeking Curtis feel organic with one another through their ups and downs. There's nothing new about the film, but it works well enough for what it is.

A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn, 2014): Most famous for his work in music videos (including a whole bunch that I loved as a kid in the 80s), director Anton Corbijn has only dipped his toes into feature filmmaking three times. The first, a musical biopic, seemed like an outgrowth of his previous work, but his career took a different turn with 2010's George Clooney spy-thriller The American and this similarly themed adaptation of a John le Carré novel. The film's centerpiece is Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) a man who turned to radical Islam after learning that he was the product of a Russian man who raped his Chechen mother. After a lengthy stint in a Turkish jail, Issa looks to leave that life behind as he enters Germany as an undocumented immigrant seeking refuge. Issa finds help in the form of a crusading immigration attorney Irna Frey (Nina Hoss), but a spy outfit operating outside the bounds of the law refuses to leave him alone. Spymaster Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) keeps Issa under constant surveillance, determined to either recruit him as an asset or neutralize him. I love me a good spy thriller (e.g. The Five Fingers), but with the exception of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, most le Carré adaptations leave me feeling cold. I suppose that I liked this one a little better than average, but not by much. Sadly, Hoffman is never believable in his role (mostly because he doesn't pull the accent off), and the whole thing feels over bloated. There's potentially a better movie in here if it were 30 minutes leaner.

A Touch of Sin (Zhangke Jia, 2013): With the exception of Jia's first two features, I've now seen all of his non-documentary film. There's some spectacular work in there, but his 2013 A Touch of Sin may be his best. Told in four parts, each story is united in their use of violence. When the film begins Zhou San (Baoqiang Wang), the focus of the second segment, is stopped by knife wielding gang who he shoots and kills without any noticeable change in his expression. From there we go into the story of Dahai (Jiang Wu), a poor laborer who grows tired of living under the greedy corruption local administrators. They beat him for speaking out against it, and "Mr. Golf" responds in drastic fashion. We next return to San who, as we learn, has a penchant for firearms and thievery after he returns home for his mother's birthday. Next up is the segment on the adulterous Hubei (Zhao Tao). She works in a spa where she's mistaken for a sex worker, leading to an extreme reaction to the violence she receives from one of its clients. The final segment concerns Hui Xiao (Luo Lanshan), a loverlorn laborer who is the first to turn the violence within instead of focusing it externally. A Touch of Sin is a brutal indictment of the realities of contemporary China, and I'm shocked that their government allowed it to be made. Be warned, there's extremely graphic violence against humans here, as well as two scenes of real animal abuse. If you can stomach it, however, this is essential viewing.

Viola (Matías Piñeiro, 2012): Breezy in its brevity (the film clocks in at a lean 65 minutes), Matías Piñeiro's work focuses on an all female theater troupe putting on a production of Shakespeare's gender-bending play The Twelfth Night. While about a third of the film's runtime is dedicated to the cast rehearsal, the rest explores the day experienced by these characters as they travel about the city, drink beer, and talk to one another (some of the play's dialogue makes its way into their conversations). We don't even meet the titular Viola, a bicycle courier who make a living dropping off pirated DVDs, until the halfway point. She's quickly welcomed into their ranks and becomes a more fleshed out character than the rest. Viola is less a plot driven film than it is a glimpse into one day in the lives of artists. In this way, the comparisons with Rivette's Out 1 seem inevitable, though this one is mercifully about 1/13 the runtime. There's not much to say in the way of critique other than the exploits of the characters were never boring, and Piñeiro's matter of fact direction never gets in the way of story. Apparently, this is part of series of works he made related to Shakespeare. I've never seen any of the others, but if they're like this one, then I'd be happy to give them a go.

While We're Young (Noah Baumbach, 2014): Cornelia (Naomi Watts), is the daughter of famed documentarian Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin). Her husband, Josh (Ben Stiller) is a frustrated documentary maker himself, who achieved acclaim with a film made in his twenties, but has spent the last ten years stuck in a never ending project interviewing the Noam Chomsky-esque Ira (Peter Yarrow). The middle-aged Josh and Cornelia's life is thrown through a loop when they meet twenty-somethings Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is an aspiring documentarian himself, and the pair bring Cornelia and Josh back into a side of NYC that they aged out of more than a decade ago. Jamie wants Josh's help with one of his projects, but things stop making sense quickly. As a 41-year-old I definitely identify with the plight of Josh and Cornelia. Your body really does give out on you at this age, and Baumbach does a pretty adept job of showing it. I felt like the
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Jamie is a fraud who stages footage
subplot didn't work as well as the first two acts, but there's still enough here for a mild recommendation.

Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014): The final film of Turkish maestro Nuri Bilge Ceylan I had yet to see from this decade proves to be a bit different from his other works. The film revolves around Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a loquacious failed actor who likes to project an air of sophistication and cosmopolitanism, but it's just a thin veneer for his petty tyranny. Aydin's family has long owned much of the land in a secluded region of the Anatolian mountains, and acts as the landlords for the renters therein. Early on we learn what kind of person Aydin is when a young boy, angry at the cruelty his father faces at his hands, throws a rock at his car, breaking a window. The vindictive Aydin chases him back to his father, demanding punishment. The fact that Aydin treats his tenants cruelly is never really in dispute, as he uses his underlings to keep them scared. However, as winter sets in, we learn that there is a fragile exterior to Aydin that belies his own insecurities and lack of confidence. Like I said at the outset, this film differs from Ceylan's other works in a number of ways. He was always one of the most talented photographers of landscapes, but with a few exceptions, we get little of that here. Instead, the overwhelming majority of the film takes place inside Aydin's estate without so much as a window giving us a glimpse of the world outside. This is also far talkier than the average Ceylan film, who typically gives his audience time for contemplation. There's very little of that here. These aren't necessarily complaints, just differences worth pointing out. That being said, there's probably going to be at least one of Ceylan's films on my list, and this isn't it.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#195 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:55 pm

bamwc2 wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:22 pm
Viola (Matías Piñeiro, 2012):Apparently, this is part of series of works he made related to Shakespeare. I've never seen any of the others, but if they're like this one, then I'd be happy to give them a go.
I like this movie a lot, and it gets better with repeat viewings, owing a lot to Mai Zetterling's The Girls. The only other Piñeiro film I've seen is The Princess of France, which operates on a similar wavelength though perhaps a bit more straightforward as to what's real vs. performance, if not linearity.

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Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#196 Post by senseabove » Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:51 am

Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010) I wish this were canonically 2009. I could've spent that time powering through three of the slump episodes of Twin Peaks on my way to rewatching The Return for this list.

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Ghersh
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 7:05 pm

Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#197 Post by Ghersh » Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:39 am

senseabove wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:51 am
Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010) I wish this were canonically 2009. I could've spent that time powering through three of the slump episodes of Twin Peaks on my way to rewatching The Return for this list.
Shutter Island is not too good if you ask me. A weak Scorsese. It starts out quite promising then becomes a thriller which a friend once described as screaming "I am thrilling!" through a megaphone. DiCaprio doesn't suit the character and gets destroyed by Jackie Earle Haley in five minutes of screentime, while Kingsley and Von Sydow run on autopilot, and it all leads to an ending that sucks every rest of mystery and character out of the film, with Kinglsey literally standing in front of the camera and explaining the plot verbally for what feels like ten minutes.

Twin Peaks: The Return on the other hand is a beautiful mess. It isn't as much a continuation of the series for me as I enjoy it basically as my favourite filmmaker and artist who has already retired from filmmaking having endless resources (most of all a huge pool of great actors and 18 hours of screentime) to throw everything including the kitchen sink at me, one giant and crazy David Lynch supercut. Not everything is perfect but it has too much great material for me to leave it out of my list.


Yesterday I took a first closer look at Sion Sono and found out the man did countless films, including five in one year. I thought they must be shorts, but no, he really made five features in a year. I couldn't believe it so I watched The Whispering Star and highly enjoyed it. A minimalistic and soulful piece of Sci-Fi about an android package delivery girl flying through space with her ship that looks like a flying house. Great film that reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Otto e Mezzo in certain aspects.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#198 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:21 pm

I also had a rough return with Shutter Island recently, which I placed in the noir thread because, well, it's trying to delve into the genre- perhaps a bit too hard thematically and ultimately loses itself..
therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:52 am
Shutter Island (revisit): This film has not aged well. I seem to recall a lot of stylish homages working to flesh out a psychological thriller that really understood how to manipulate the viewer into the unreliable narration of its surrogate. While Scorsese can occasionally succeed here, the film frequently stalls and continuously loses steam as it fails to achieve the dramatic weight or self-serious tones its striving for amidst the aesthetic playground. Honestly even those technical attributes feel cheap here - am I the only one who detected blue or green screen dissonance between actors and backgrounds, be them the ocean at the start or the nature in the rainstorm? The final flashback is grating and not because of its content, but the last scene earns the noir influences in its embrace of fatalism, even if none of this is executed with investment. John Cope's defense in the film's dedicated thread is excellent, and I wish I saw the film he did this time because this kind of validation for the pains and coping mechanisms of a subjective reality is my bread and butter, but unfortunately this stopped working at all by the last act and it was a chore to finish. Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight, used prominently and optimally in Arrival, is featured in some of the film's best scenes though- like the Michelle Williams-to-ash fantasy early on. If only there were more moments like that.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#199 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:57 pm

Amy Adams in the 2010s: The Missing Pieces
[Warning: For the purpose of community service, I will not be spoilertagging any of the following posts so that nobody else needs to suffer through these films as I have; unless of course there is a single reason beyond Adams to justify sitting through one of these movies, in which case I will spoilertag any critical content of said writeup]

First, I was thrilled to read that Love & Distrust is an omnibus film, and I had already seen Pennies, so I passed on catching the rest of what is most certainly four more pieces of trash. So onto Leap Year.. “Finally a stupid rom-com where Adams plays the lead!” you’re asking yourself, and you wouldn’t be wrong (she’s led non-stupid rom-coms already, so hereth completes the circle) but it’s still a chore to sit through. Even in most of the shitty relationship movies, Adams’ character is hardly wholly repelling (well, aside from The Wedding Date) but here she plays an irritating, immature adult woman that I wouldn’t marry either after four years of serious dating. Her social ignorance is not cute (see Enchanted for the that) and that’s enough to avoid this mismatched-personality rom-com road movie like the plague.

Trouble with the Curve is a textbook example of the formulaic programmer of characterization. The script’s contrivances don’t help things- Adams spouting off baseball knowledge at a restaurant after her superficial boyfriend tells her their relationship makes sense on paper so they should take the next step- which I thought was reserved for satirical comedies making fun of this kind of movie, at least in anything coming out post-2000. She may be presented as an empowered individualist, but the handholding screenplay has her identity branded by daddy issues, from her first scene pitching to her law firm why she should be made partner to the only topic of conversation during her courting process with Timberlake. In spite of this, Adams’ chemistry with Eastwood evokes some earned sentiment in patches, and cutesy romance with Timberlake. But since most of us only showed up to this to see these actors rise above some B-grade material anyways, it’s like watching a low scoring baseball game where your favorite player gets a solid hit. Not memorable but not a complete waste of time either.

Lullaby explores the ‘Right-to-Die’ argument and the consequences of voluntary euthanasia from the subjective lenses of affected family members, in forced Lifetime dramatics fused with indie-stylized frenetic editing to convey distress. There are some real opportunities to explore complex grief and validate selfish perspectives in crises, and the film even postures in their directions, but these moments almost always take a dive into manipulated exploitation. The narrative tries to meditate on relationship struggles and generational cultural dissonance, and the importance of faith and family dynamics, but it never really says anything, even about the rhetorical nature of the questions, which are so lazily written they are barely asked at all.

If you think it's funny to see children with cancer ask Hedlund what sex is like, and then rationalize that he should tell them because they're going to die soon anyways, this is the movie for you. Plus like, lots more sex and romance 'bits' coming from these little kids (and they're honestly more digestible than Hedlund's own sincere responses to one cancer patient's romantic requests). The emotional climax occurs when a nurse tells Hedlund that it would be nice for him to lie down with his father who's dying, in the bed that he just shat in, as if it's any of her business; and then when Hedlund says "but the bed's not clean" she responds sweetly, "does it really matter?" As Hedlund realizes that no, it doesn't really matter and that he should lie in feces to be intimately linked with his father then and there, his mother approaches unnoticed to watch them cuddle and cry silently out of sight as string instruments tell us to acknowledge this breakthrough sacrifice of lying in excrement to prove your love.

Adams shows up at all the opportune beats to help us and Hedlund reflect and self-actualize, like a MPDG who has ‘moved on’ into an independent life divorced from our star, yet still functions to validate his worth. This kind of engagement in wish fulfillment is catnip for men who want the One That Got Away to still think and care about them, even if they’re no longer available- something many of us can relate to but that feels so trite and gross when actually produced. Adams does nothing with the part, even if in her defense the part has nothing to give, but at this point in her career she had no business taking this role. After the streak she just had, this is grounds to fire one’s agent, not only because the movie sucks but because the part is contrived and slight, and a significant regression for an actress of her caliber with the accumulated support of public recognition.

Adams is the best part of the Snyder DC films involving Superman, but even she can’t save these movies. Her best scenes happen in the Snyder Cut of Justice League, which I’ve written up elsewhere, but it’s really amazing to contrast those scenes with Whedon’s version where she had no arc and literally appeared out of thin air to tame Superman during his revival. I'm glad Adams doesn't seem attached to any DC films in the near future at least, and hope that there are less Hillbilly Elegys and more Arrivals in her future of Oscar-seeking perfs, because I guess I'm now committed to continuing this terribly misjudged self-imposed burden 4 life.

bamwc2
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:54 am

Re: A 2010s List for Those That Can't Wait

#200 Post by bamwc2 » Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:11 pm

Viewing Log:

The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013): The year is 1921. Polish immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotillard) arrives at Ellis Island with her sister. The sister is taken to an infirmary because of a cough, and we later learn that she has tuberculosis. Officials want to deny Ewa entry into the country because she's an unaccompanied woman without any male citizen there to take charge of her, but instead a seemingly sympathetic bureaucrat sneaks her off with Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), an owner of a vaudeville theater. Bruno tells Ewa that he can get her sister out, but it'll take a lot of money. She wants to ply her former trade of nursing, but Bruno gives her a low wage position as a seamstress. He soon coerces Ewa into appearing on stage (clothed) in a topless burlesque performance, and ultimately prostitution. The Catholic Ewa hates herself for this, but finds a possible source of hope in the form of illusionist Orlando (Jeremy Renner). I have mixed feelings about this one. Director James Gray does a meticulous job bringing 1920s Brooklyn to life, but the performances by Phoenix and Renner seem uncharacteristically flat and unbelievable. The melodrama of the film also feels forced. I recommend giving it a pass.

The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012): On December 26, 2004 an earthquake triggered tsunami hit the coastline of much of southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. Over 300,000 people--mostly native Asian--died in the natural disaster, but you'd never know that watching J.A. Bayona's film. Instead, you'd think that it primarily effected posh white people who sought an "exotic" Christmas experience. The very British Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (Ewan McGregor) travel to Thailand with their three sons, including an impossibly young Tom Holland as Lucas. They're having fun poolside when the tidal wave comes in, sweeping the family apart. The film first focuses on Maria and Lucas as they're swept out to the coast line and very nearly drown. Improbably, they wind up together and battle their way back inland. Halfway through we learn that Henry and the two younger boys remained behind at their resort, as the father goes through a mad search for the rest of his family. Through it all native Thais are either pushed to the background (I don't remember seeing any in the disaster footage or as patients in hospitals--everyone there was white) or are presented as saviors there to take care of the white folk. Yes, what the family went through was horrific, but the decision to tell a story about a group of affluent Europeans who get their happy ending when so many others of Asian descent did not, strikes me as kind of racist. We're even told that this is based on a true story, but the afterward gives us a family portrait with the family's real names, and they are obviously Hispanic! The studio felt that the original story was not white enough! Look, it's a competently made film even with its cheesy dialogue, but it’s also one that betrays its colonial ideology throughout. If you're a fan of racist disaster porn, then this is the movie for you.

A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016): Terrence Davies is a filmmaker deeply invested in a certain time and place. Nearly all of his films are set in WWII era-London, which, uncoincidentally, is where he grew up. It's telling that the only times he stepped outside of this--the NYC based The House of Mirth and turn of the century Scotland in Sunset Song--are both literary adaptations. Sticking with these literally themes, Davies gives us a biopic of Emily Dickinson instead of an adaption of any particular work in A Quiet Passion. When the film opens, we get the first inclinations of Dickinson's iconoclasm when the teenager (played by Emma Bell) bucks her preparatory school instructor's exercise on salvation. The young Emily comes off as a proto-feminist in her rejection of the day's mores, but much of this seems to have been worn away by the time we get to see her as an adult (played by Cynthia Nixon) who portrays the poet as more world worn. Both actresses do fantastic jobs in their roles, but the real star of the film is Davies's screenplay which features some of the sharpest dialogue I've heard in a good long while.

The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012): When Wayne Blair's film opens, he treats us to an obligatory montage of the social upheaval going on in Australian and abroad during the late 1960s. The only thing that separates this from the countless other films that have done it is that it features dulcet a cappella harmonizing instead CCR's "Fortunate Song" or another rock anthem of the day. When the film proper begins, we meet a trio of Aboriginal sisters--Gail (Deborah Mailman), Julie (Jessica Nauboy), and Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell)--who just wanna sing American country and western tunes over the objection of their over protective mother. During a competition in front of an all-white audience, the girls sing a Merle Haggard song that fails to attract anyone's attention aside from Dave (Chris O’Dowd), a British talent scout that just happens to be at this tiny battle of the bands in the middle of nowhere. He promises the girls that he can get them a dream gig if they only switch over to R&B and learn some dance moves. They give up their whole identity at the advice of a strange white man, and are rewarded with a USO tour entertaining the troops in Vietnam. There they are joined by their biracial cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens), who is a member of Australia's Stolen Generation. This could have been used to make an incisive comment about race, but nope. Instead, it's just glossed over in favor of depictions of the Vietnam War that break no new ground, and performances of songs we've heard countless times. For a film that's ostensibly about race, there's very little analysis of it here. There's an interracial romance, and a character that uses the n-word, and that's about it. The members of the band aren't even fleshed out people. They're given one identifying character trait and spend the film repeating it in two dimensional performances. This film was on my to-see-list because someone (I can't find the individual ballots right now) voted this as one of the 10 best films ever made in 2012's Sight & Sound poll. What the actual fuck?

Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015): In 2010 the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Iran handed down a sentence against Jafar Panahi that forbid him from making any films until the year 2030. Despite the ban, Panahi has found enough wiggle room to make the 2011 documentary This is Not a Film and 2012's Closed Curtains. He completed this exile triptych with the deceptive faux documentary (I thought it was an actual documentary with the first fare, and didn't realize that it was staged until the second passenger gave away the game) Taxi. The conceit of the film is simple. If the Iranian government won't allow Panahi to officially make films, then he'll document a day of himself driving a taxi around the streets of Tehran. Told with a dash cam that records everyone in the cab, there are a number of memorable passengers. Gender politics hangs over much of the film. A grievously wounded man wants to record his last will and testament on a smartphone or else his property will go to his closest male relative instead of his wife; a pair of women need to rush to a meeting that Panahi doesn't know the way to when they're not allowed to drive himself. His young niece, which makes up much of the film's final act, highlights the absurdity of the position that Panahi finds himself in. She's assigned to make a film for her elementary school, but is hampered by ridiculous rules to keep it in line with the official state views. I'm a huge fan of Panahi's work, and I'm happy to say that this one stands up well with the rest of his films. It's a daring experiment made in the face of state oppression, and it's really good to boot.

Their Finest (Lone Scherfig, 2016): Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) wants to help out with the war effort, but is hampered by her failed artist husband Ellis's (Jack Huston) inability to bring in a livable income. The solution seems to come when she's hired by the UK film board to work as a script doctor, making men written dialogue of women characters believable. She soon finds herself with a banger of an idea for a war film, when a pair of twins tell her about their experience rescuing soldiers from Dunkirk. After fighting for it, her project is green lighted, but she finds her vision constantly undercut by committee. Most of the movie is about the production of the film, but there's plenty of time for the obligatory romance as her marriage to Ellis collapses and she finds herself attracted to fellow screenwriter. The shooting of the movie within a movie is unoffensive wartime reminiscing, but the gender dynamics of Catrin as the only woman in a man's world (with the exception of higher up Phyl (Rachael Stirling)) are far more interesting. Fortunately, the movie divides its time between these two aspects. It's not a great film, but it’s a decent way to spend two hours.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Susan Johnson, 2018): Adapting the first of Jenny Han’s semi-autobiographical young adult romance trilogy, Susan Johnson's To All the Boys I've Loved Before became a minor cultural phenomenon. Just as many of the films released by Netflix become the talk of the water cooler for a couple of weeks, discussion of this teenage rom-com was everywhere in the late summer of 2018. After finally catching up with it, I wish I hadn't. The film follows the exploits of Lara Jean (Lana Condor) a suburban girl with a Korean-American mom and white dad. She's the middle child in a trio of sisters, and jealous of the attention that her older, college bound, sis gets with the boys. Unlucky in love, the 16-year-old has written notes to the five boys she's had crushes on thus far in her life, but never sent any of them out. One day the letters leak, and in order to avoid the embarrassment of the one sent to her sister's ex, she suddenly kisses a different ex-crush that was standing near her: Peter (Noah Centineo). Peter has just come off of a relationship with Lara Jean's junior high ex-BFF turned mean girl, but the two agree to start fake dating each other to avoid the drama of other romances. In case you didn't know romcom conventions, this is a surefire way for them to fall madly in love, and that's exactly what happens.
SpoilerShow
Misunderstandings from a school ski trip leads to a temporary breakup before every character reveals their hidden emotions and all is well again. I don't know why I put this in spoiler text since anyone familiar with the genre could see it coming from a mile away.
The film follows teenage romcom conventions to a fault. No new ground is broken here. It could be forgivable if the film at least did something right, but the writing comes off as a bad John Hughes imitation. This is two strikes against it since John Hughes was bad to begin with! I suppose that the characters are likeable enough, but they're also romcom stereotypes trapped in a prison of the genre's own making. Unable to deviate from their prescribed actions that the film comes off as an exercise in fatalism. I'm sorry, but I don't get the critical praise of the movie. It felt like it was in the same league as a made-for-TV movie my tween son would watch on the Disney Channel. I did, however, appreciate two things. First, there was the scene where they called out the racism of Sixteen Candle's racist Asian character Long Duk Dong (an allusion to the film's debt to Hughes). Of course, it immediately undercuts this by making a joke about how the girls will excuse the anti-Asian depiction because Jake Ryan is totally hot. Second, I appreciated how Lara Jean's dad (played by John "here the Hell Have I Been" Corbett) encourages his daughter to practice safe sex and gives her an envelope of condoms. Good. That's what a parent of teenagers should do. When Lara Jean told her BFF that she came prepared for a good time when they were at the ski lodge, she reached into her backpack. I fully expected her to pull out the condoms, but was let down when it was a pair of romance novels. Sad. In a better, less saccharine movie it would been the condoms.

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