The Rest - February 26, 2023

And this was back when you could smoke on planes.

A quick wrap-up of everything else I watched this week.

Close (2022) - Belgium scored an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature with this story of an intimate friendship torn apart by institutional homophobia. It's powerful, though a little manipulative, with some really great performances from the two young leads.

EO (2022) - Another International Feature nominee. It's like watching Au Hasard Balthazar filtered through Koyaanisqatsi by Terrence Malick. Appropriately, it just premiered on the Criterion Channel. Oh, and it's scary AF. I'm not sure people are talking enough about that.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA - A Review

Does this look like anything to you?

 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

-Maya Angelou

My friend Adam has been quoting the great Maya Angelou every chance he gets for as long as I can remember. Which, admittedly, isn't very long. Now, I may have immediately complicated my use of the quote by recounting two people who said it while being unable to recount how it made me feel, but that's not important right now. We're here to talk about how the MCU all blends together these days and its diminishing emotional returns, which is what made me think of Ms. Angelou's words in the first place. It's a fine quote, and it applies to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I had a good time, but also can't recall all that much of it just three days later. Is that enough to recommend it? The answer is a resounding "...Probably!" followed by an enthusiastic shrug emoji.

Influences: Podcast Edition

Sorry, folks, this is as good as the photoshopping gets.

I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to podcasts. (This is an assumption. I haven't done the research.) In 2022 alone, according to Podcast Addict, my total time came to 24 days, 3 hours. I don't know how to feel about that. Seems like too much. But... what else was I going to do while driving, walking the dog, doing yard work, or playing video games? Listen to music? Nothing against music, but when you spend so much time alone (intentionally, mostly, in my case), you need conversational stimulation, even if you aren't part of it. I listen at normal speed and rarely skip ad breaks, week after week. Because I'm a good listener. Hopefully on the healthy side of the parasocial divide. I mean, notice how I wrote listener and not friend. That's because all of these people are strangers, and I'm okay with them staying that way. This is proof that I don't have a problem.

Anyways, a lot of the podcasts I consume are about movies. Each has in some way shaped the way I think about the medium. Feels only right to give them a shout out on this site that no one knows about. It's (quite literally) the least I could do.

The Rest - February 19, 2023

Every audience 5 minutes into Mac and Me.

A quick wrap up of everything else I watched this week.

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) - I'd been putting off this beast of burden passion play for decades, and rightly so. This story of a donkey enduring the cruelty of man is devastating. It's powerful stuff, but don't put it on if you're already feeling antisocial.

Cunk on Britain (2018) - Good news! This precursor to Cunk on Earth is available on YouTube. Same structure. Same sense of humor. An absolute gift to idiots like me who love to laugh.

TITANIC - A Reflection

DiCaprio and Winslet recreate their favorite scene from Love Actually.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Titanic was the most important movie that I didn't see in 1997. This wasn't unusual, because I was a child. I was 10 when it started hitting icebergs in theaters that December, old enough to know about the famous ship, but not yet old enough (in my mother's opinion, at least) to see it replicated on screen. But it was a craze that none could escape. I remember other kids bragging about getting to see it and the scandal this caused in my conservative elementary school. I remember my aunt telling me it was okay that her daughters (both younger than me) saw it, but that boys shouldn't be allowed because you saw a naked lady. I remember it still being in theaters in the spring, and talked about regularly on the news. I remember Billy Crystal hosting the Oscars and singing a Gilligan's Island parody ("The Propeller Guy... and the Ice!" is permanently lodged in my brain), and James Cameron winning Best Director and yelling he was the king of the world after requesting a moment of silence. And I remember a girl crying the next day in gym class because Kate Winslet lost Best Actress. This was wild to me, the weird kid who loved movies, for a number of reasons:

1. Because someone else my age knew an actor's name.
2. Because someone else my age was aware of the Oscars.
3. Because these two things meant more to them in this moment than they did to me. (If I had been slightly older, this would have led to infatuation.)

The Rest - February 12, 2023

Diane Morgan is probably the best way to teach ignorant Americans (like me) world history.

A quick wrap-up of everything else I watched this week.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) - Francois Truffaut once said "Every film about war ends up being pro-war." This one continues that tradition. It's no Come and See.

Cunk on Earth (2023) - A mockumentary series covering the evolution of civilization from its origins to today, it plays like a series-long Daily Show segment. (That's a good thing.) Also, Diane Morgan would make a great Doctor.

KNOCK AT THE CABIN - A Review

Sure, they're zealots. But this lot is delusional and conflicted. That's enough to make them sympathetic, right?

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

It's no secret that M. Night Shyamalan's favorite subject is faith. Before The Sixth Sense established him as a household name he made two (largely forgotten) films that dealt with belief overtly, and the theme has surfaced to greater and lesser degrees throughout his career. He's tackled belief in the supernatural (Sixth Sense), in oneself (Unbreakable), in God (Signs), in your community (The Village), in his own storytelling abilities (Lady in the Water), etc. With very few exceptions, faith has been one of the guiding principle of his career, right up there with plot twists and horror tropes. Faith triumphs movie after movie. It feels compulsive, as if he's moved by a steadfast spirit designed to identify and exterminate doubt. This makes Knock at the Cabin a tricky one to dissect. Because in Shyamalan's latest, faith motivates the terror and doubt drives the tension.

The Rest - February 5, 2023

Sofia Oxenham and Máiréad Tyres are both Extraordinary in Hulu's new comedy series

A quick wrap up of everything else I watched this week.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (2022) - Feels like a book of pleasant affirmations turned into an animated short. Because that's what it is. It's very sweet and a bit cloying. Odds are it's taking that Oscar.

Extraordinary (2023) - A British comedy set in a world where everyone gets superpowers on their 18th birthday - everyone but Jen (Máiréad Tyres). She and her roommates are living their 20-something lives like they're in any other sitcom, but with the added annoyance of suped-up society. The ensemble is great, the humor is sharp and weird. I can't recommend it enough. It premiered last month on Hulu.

GROUNDHOG DAY - A Reflection

Is this the most poignant scene in cinematic history?
Yes. Of course it is.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spoiler warning, I guess. I mean, it's turning 30 next week, so... You've had time.

There are movies you're always in the mood to watch. You know all the lines, the music cues, what the next scene will be, and the scene after that. There's comfort in the recitation, tranquility in the omniscience, relief in the option to engage or zone out. For me, these films include A League of Their Own, Jaws, Raising Arizona, and - God help me - National Treasure. Good or bad, they're yours and you love them.

And then there are the movies that burrow deep into your soul, inextricably tangling themselves in the fabric of your being. A cinematic soulmate that won't b.s. you. I have one of those too, and that movie is Groundhog Day. Like the comfort watches listed above, I quote along, clock the landmarks (Fake John Candy, absurd red hat, etc.) that shift into focus after a couple dozen watches - and yet the movie is more mentor than friend. The familiarity is overshadowed by its "what if" thought experiment and how the answers to the question of what you would do if you were living the same day over and over evolve from viewing to viewing, even if it's only been a month or two. It's a movie that meets you where you are, every time, and the results can be borderline epiphanic. It's a beautiful thing.

BLOOD, SWEAT & CHROME: THE WILD AND TRUE STORY OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - A Book Review

Jacket design by Gregg Kulick

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My first viewing of Mad Max: Fury Road was all wrong. That is to say: not in the cinema. We were living in China when it opened in most of the world, but foreign releases were limited back then. So that summer we got Jurassic World, Cinderella and Tomorrowland... But not Max Rockatansky. Reality reflected cinematic disappointment as Laura and I found ourselves needing new employment. This led to a desperate move across the province for jobs that didn't work out, and in September 2015 we found ourselves returning to America well ahead of schedule, uncertain of what would happen next. Somewhere shortly after that we rented a DVD of Fury Road from Redbox and watched it on a 32-inch TV in a friend's basement. Not quite watched-it-on-a-flight bad, as far as first viewings go, but close enough. It's a testament to the filmmaking that its genius translates to the small screen, but it clearly desired to be as overwhelming as possible.

I didn't see the film again until last Saturday. On a bigger TV. In higher definition. I still feel like I missed an important cinematic moment, but after reading Kyle Buchanan's book the geographical isolation and chaotic circumstances that caused me to miss so much of the online hype and the theatrical experience of Fury Road are somewhat appropriate. It was a movie that took 20 years to make; if it takes me a few more to see it in a theater, that's okay. Blood, Sweat & Chrome also does such a good job of transporting the reader back to the times and places it was made that it felt like I was getting a do-over.