tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29184749349703372472024-03-15T18:13:04.793-07:00Less Hat, MoorheadThe Notebook of M.V. MoorheadM.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.comBlogger1508125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-7926502879004259592024-03-15T11:34:00.000-07:002024-03-15T12:44:32.694-07:00PULPY LOVE, PUPPY LOVE<p>Opening this weekend:</p><p><b style="font-style: italic;"></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkZAZaJ4J5IBIjqY2KkCI5cRLkuEE728C0XQxYBrRL1b8O56uWW4W2-ioDbh_miv4c7lLNbMJ2TwsWRtuggr6TWoj3gswGsLWCroiA4qmkwLfeTmoK_ifgJB1Hq9dCo75gZANENzAEGhan2VaDLp4zDg_TVtPW0YYi568TGV9OZv3wTW_ZmAp8fTdXuPa/s1350/loveliesbleedingposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="914" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZkZAZaJ4J5IBIjqY2KkCI5cRLkuEE728C0XQxYBrRL1b8O56uWW4W2-ioDbh_miv4c7lLNbMJ2TwsWRtuggr6TWoj3gswGsLWCroiA4qmkwLfeTmoK_ifgJB1Hq9dCo75gZANENzAEGhan2VaDLp4zDg_TVtPW0YYi568TGV9OZv3wTW_ZmAp8fTdXuPa/s320/loveliesbleedingposter.jpg" width="217" /></a></b></div><p><b><i>Love Lies Bleeding</i>--</b>It certainly does, along with a fair number of corpses, before this New Mexico noir has run its course. It's 1989--the Berlin Wall is coming down on TV in the background--and our heroine Lou (Kristen Stewart), a lonely employee at a low-rent desert gym, spends her days unclogging toilets and stonewalling FBI agents who would like to talk to her about her estranged arms-dealer dad.</p><p>Lou falls hard for Jackie (Katy O'Brian), a beautiful feral bodybuilder who's in training for a competition in Vegas. Jackie moves in with Lou, but as you might guess, all does not go smoothly. Jealousy, domestic violence, gang violence, PEDs and the rage to which they give rise all intrude on this sweet romance and lead to gruesome murder and desperate cover-ups.</p><p>Stewart and O'Brian are both believable, and their passion for each other is exhilarating, even as you see the collision course with disaster that they're on. Ed Harris is at his creepiest as Lou's Dad, but Dave Franco wins the award for most odious as J.J., Lou's brother-in-law who abuses her hapless sister Beth (Jena Malone). Anna Baryshnikov is wistful as Daisy, who has the bad luck to have a crush on Lou.</p><p>The director is Rose Glass, the Brit behind <i><a href="https://mvmoorhead.blogspot.com/2021/01/maud-forsaken.html">Saint Maud</a></i>, working from a script she wrote with Weronika Tofilska. As with <i>Saint Maud</i>, Glass is adept at blending the horrific with the ecstatic and the erotic, and her style, abetted by Ben Fordesman's queasy fluorescent cinematography, shifts comfortably from bleak British nastiness to gritty, lurid '80s-style southwestern nastiness. While the story gets a bit chaotically close to running off the rails in the homestretch, Glass even manages a surreal, magical-realist flourish near the end that feels right.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-pny_aVokmtWh4a3_fPceAp0-FqVyagm-xrD_VA-5HZ579vWfCFpvhGN9AsBkqKUV74Yu8w5EFq2FHClsSq71udDAu8nNztAFvzKLR7tTNtwWv6oytp9L5wz_vpx3oYyW5uKB8jVbNx99FzQmCSqTP07InAh5ddYzBilkTTeYCRHSnUJtmHHpKnuabDd/s378/arthurthekingposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-pny_aVokmtWh4a3_fPceAp0-FqVyagm-xrD_VA-5HZ579vWfCFpvhGN9AsBkqKUV74Yu8w5EFq2FHClsSq71udDAu8nNztAFvzKLR7tTNtwWv6oytp9L5wz_vpx3oYyW5uKB8jVbNx99FzQmCSqTP07InAh5ddYzBilkTTeYCRHSnUJtmHHpKnuabDd/s320/arthurthekingposter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>Arthur the King</i>--</b>This isn't a new version of Malory or T. H. White or <i>Camelot</i>. The title character here is a scruffy third-world street mongrel of such dignified bearing that he's given the royal moniker by his new best friend. Said friend is Mike (Mark Wahlberg), an "adventure racer" who impulsively feeds the dog a meatball during a break in a grueling event in the Dominican Republic, after which the mutt shadows Mike's four-person team as they run, bike, free-climb, zip-line and kayak across hundreds of miles of jungle. He even steers them away from peril.</p><p>Directed by Simon Cellan Jones, this is based on the 2017 book <i>Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home</i>, by Mikael Lindnord. The script, by Michael Brandt, is fictionalized; Lindnord is a Swede, not an American; he met Arthur in Ecuador, not the Dominican Republic, and Wahlberg's teammates in the movie (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ali Suliman) are likewise made-up.</p><p>More strikingly, the real-life circumstances of Arthur's adoption may have been more ambiguous: an Ecuadoran man later claimed that Arthur, originally named Barbuncho, belonged to him, and that Lindnord had essentially dognapped him. Many hardcore dog lovers, of course, will be unlikely to feel much sympathy for the owner of a "pet" who's at liberty to join a dangerous cross-country race.</p><p>In any case, <i>Arthur the King</i> is an unembarrassed and pretty effective hybrid of the venerable band-of-misfits, last-chance-for-glory underdog sports movie with an old-school "I think he's trying to tell us something" dog picture. It's admirably attuned to the plight of strays; there's a hint of reproach, probably unintentional, in the contrast between Arthur's struggles to survive on the streets and Mike's self-imposed travails in his rather bougie, corporate-sponsored sport.</p><p>Ultimately, though, the movie is really no less corny than any Rin-Tin-Tin or Lassie flick. But it's well-paced, and if, like me, you're a sucker for dogs there's a good chance you'll enjoy it. Wahlberg is agreeable as the boyishly earnest Mike, but neither he nor any other member of the human cast is a match for Ukai, who plays Arthur, and steals the movie like it was a meatball.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-34213539167804157732024-03-08T00:44:00.000-08:002024-03-15T12:18:12.172-07:00PO THINGS<p>Opening this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ESpYgpoWP7bkO1t3YEDTXF0jK610xLs3Eno3EV1npUpwTq3s88X7FCjP1mK2dMkuIUBRIFFj019lyt2PuMuqfTXJJ3hbEaIq5FcUl0TJrbrhwY4osnLKkbWqu6DkZ15vva2Dz7WwXxKz97IJENCj3J7bcDXdSgBJMfCtlYKa1kOZVObN1XYeVmFHUB3v/s1583/kfp4poster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1583" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ESpYgpoWP7bkO1t3YEDTXF0jK610xLs3Eno3EV1npUpwTq3s88X7FCjP1mK2dMkuIUBRIFFj019lyt2PuMuqfTXJJ3hbEaIq5FcUl0TJrbrhwY4osnLKkbWqu6DkZ15vva2Dz7WwXxKz97IJENCj3J7bcDXdSgBJMfCtlYKa1kOZVObN1XYeVmFHUB3v/s320/kfp4poster.jpg" width="202" /></a></div><br /><p><b><i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i>--</b>The titular mammal, Po, has been promoted from "Dragon Warrior" to the more exalted status of Spiritual Leader, and is expected to find and train a replacement for his former position. But he'd rather not; he'd like to just keep having butt-kicking adventures on his own.</p><p>This entry, set again in a fairy-tale Chinese past inhabited by talking animals, has Po capturing Zhen, a light-footed cutpurse fox. The "Furious Five" of the earlier films is away on assignment, so the imprisoned Zhen talks Po into letting her serve as a guide on a quest to the distant lair of a villainous shape-shifting lizard, The Chameleon. See where this is headed?</p><p>This Dreamworks series has been at the less exhausting, more rewarding end of the CGI animated family flick spectrum starting with the original, back in 2008, and continuing with the first two sequels. It's hard to say if it will be sustainable from now on, but this fourth film, at least, keeps the streak going. The story deals in the usual kid-movie platitudes, but the lighting-fast yet precise slapstick sequences are exciting, and rise at times to laugh-out-loud funny even for adults. </p><p>The voice cast in this film, as in the earlier films, is unusually strong too. Jack Black is exuberant as ever as Po, and is joined again by Dustin Hoffman as the red panda master Shifu, Bryan Cranston as Po's biological father and the great James Hong as Po's adoptive father (a goose, you'll recall). Ian McShane returns from the first film as a sinister snow leopard. New cast members include Ke Huy Quan as a pangolin bandit, and the mighty and menacing Viola Davis as The Chameleon. But the showcase new role is Awkwafina as Zhen; she fits the series like a glove.</p><p>In another pretty good touch: Tenacious D rousingly covers "Hit Me Baby One More Time" over the credits.</p><p>Opening today at Harkins Shea 14:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh23cUBgKNU_RMRQtZL9kjIUOVgdo74Eo2AhUEtLD-G8jNzKCu_glZZnNiMnijvzelt31ZCRZXrfEoznbH2nClHsLI5tq70JRCejo7H_fNMeB5INmbiZ_UVxvHsCK9QKEwOzr4xlL8mnwgurffqeHzhGAN2eVjoZHoolR8xu2UaaILyQELGZtvE7Y7kxis/s1500/pitchpeopleposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh23cUBgKNU_RMRQtZL9kjIUOVgdo74Eo2AhUEtLD-G8jNzKCu_glZZnNiMnijvzelt31ZCRZXrfEoznbH2nClHsLI5tq70JRCejo7H_fNMeB5INmbiZ_UVxvHsCK9QKEwOzr4xlL8mnwgurffqeHzhGAN2eVjoZHoolR8xu2UaaILyQELGZtvE7Y7kxis/s320/pitchpeopleposter.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Pitch People--</i>Back in the late '60s I was fascinated by the Veg-o-Matic, the infamous manual vegetable chopper sold on TV by Ronco; it's one of my earliest consumerist memories. After numerous appeals to my poor Mom, she wearily ordered one, and we quickly learned that it did not significantly improve the efficiency of her kitchen. Decades later my kid, around the age of eight, insisted on ordering a Snackeez, a drinking cup with a compartment for snacks at the top likewise peddled on TV. The speed with which she lost interest in it was ineffably heart-tugging to me; I could hear "The Circle of Life" playing in my head.</p><p>This documentary, directed by Stanley Jacobs, is about the people who have sold products of all kinds, with kitchen gadgets a special favorite, by "pitching" them; demonstrating them with a performer's panache. The art goes back thousands of years, no doubt--it's described here as "the second oldest profession"--but this movie's focus is on the American and British practitioners who took it from boardwalks, notably Atlantic City, to state fairs to shopping malls to TV commercials and later, after Reagan-era deregulation, to "infomercials." </p><p>It's a brisk, amusing, revealing chronicle. Strikingly, many of the veterans we meet here are related to each other, members of the Morris family, with connections to the Popeil family behind Ronco (the credits pointedly declare that "RON POPEIL WOULD NOT GRANT AN INTERVIEW FOR THIS FILM"). They gleefully dissect the strategies for separating audience members from their money, but they don't seem contemptuous of them, and we're told that they truly believe in their products. In any case, they show a certain guileless pride in their performing skills. It's as if the entertainment value of their pitches should offset any disappointment in what they're selling.</p><p>Along with Arnold and Lester Morris, talking heads here include Ed McMahon, an Atlantic City pitch veteran before his TV stardom, and Wally Nash, a Brit whose effortless old-school pitch of the "hand-hammered wok from the People's Republic of China" I watched countless times on late-night TV in DC. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTOQWOXSUY">Re-watching it on YouTube</a> I was amazed at how much I could still say along with him; I wanted to buy one every freakin' time I saw it. </p><p>Inevitably the extended footage of performances makes up the strongest passages of <i>Pitch People</i>. It's also hilarious when we see behind-the-scenes footage of an infomercial rehearsal in which the presenters break several demo models of a slicer before realizing that they're using it wrong.</p><p>Alas, a number of the pitchers featured here have left us, as this movie was made in 1999. It saw play at festivals back then but was not picked up by a distributor, and actually had to be restored before it could get a proper release, a quarter of a century after it was completed. There's a delicious and stinging irony in the fact that this movie about selling failed, until now, to sell. Maybe it needed a better pitch.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-7666730626545561112024-02-25T01:44:00.000-08:002024-02-26T11:45:43.887-08:00MEAT PUPPETS<p>In theaters this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_0UeRa9YbTYYi-Zz3E3869QoiTK0A7n9f3lIw5Frt-sVZ1i9HsHo-vAGt7ChAUDXgljGxos3z-3_2O2VnYd_IWQbiXCMxrP5a-9_pEZY3QLLHbt4V4wkir5DiNd-gh5j6lPKFO8s3W9pltsZ0B3e7rrqASIzfTGKiZ7JbLGRBbnXEOXVVx7T9zq8yEkaf/s755/stopmotionposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="514" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_0UeRa9YbTYYi-Zz3E3869QoiTK0A7n9f3lIw5Frt-sVZ1i9HsHo-vAGt7ChAUDXgljGxos3z-3_2O2VnYd_IWQbiXCMxrP5a-9_pEZY3QLLHbt4V4wkir5DiNd-gh5j6lPKFO8s3W9pltsZ0B3e7rrqASIzfTGKiZ7JbLGRBbnXEOXVVx7T9zq8yEkaf/s320/stopmotionposter.jpg" width="218" /></a></div><p><b><i>Stopmotion</i>--</b>The peculiar low-tech magic of stop-motion animation has always been one of the special delights of cinema for me; it's one of the reasons I became a movie lover as a child. Because of the work of masters like Willis O'Brien, Jim Danforth, Karel Zeman and the great Ray Harryhasuen, the labor-intensive, expensive technique is often associated with whimsical fantasy or science fiction. But it can be used for nightmarish horror as well, and this nasty, self-referential British chiller, directed by Robert Morgan from a script he wrote with Robin King, takes us to that dark side.</p><p>Ella (Aisling Franciosi) is the daughter of famous stop-motion animator Suzanne (Stella Gonet), and an animator herself. Because she no longer has the use of her hands, Suzanne directs Ella in painstakingly manipulating her puppets; she refers to Ella herself by the affectionate--or maybe not so affectionate--nickname of "puppet," and she's quietly, passive-aggressively tyrannical toward her, constantly unsatisfied with her work, constantly demanding retakes. Ella would like to contribute her own ideas to her mother's work, yet when asked what these ideas are she's stymied, daunted by Suzanne's greatness. </p><p>But when Suzanne falls into a coma, Ella meets a nervy little girl (Caoilinn Springall) in her building who talks her into abandoning Suzanne's project--a traditional tale involving a cyclops--and starting a new stop-motion film based on a storyline she suggests. It involves a terrified girl fleeing through the forest and taking refuge in a cabin, stalked by a hideous figure called the Ashman. She also insists Ella start using actual dead animal parts, and worse, over her armatures. Before long Ella is haunted by visions, some of them pretty hair-raising, of the gruesome characters in her film.</p><p>The live action side of <i>Stopmotion</i> has a strong streak of Cronenberg-esque "body horror," while the stop-motion sequences show the influence of Jan <span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">Š</span>vankmajer and the Quay Brothers. It's a potent one-two punch of creepiness. This is one of those movies where the line between dreams and reality isn't always certain, but Morgan keeps enough of a coherent narrative that this doesn't become tiresome, and there are freaky erotic touches, as when Ella is having sex, and fingers her lover's back as she would a stop-motion puppet.</p><p>Like many films of this sort, when <i>Stopmotion</i> shifts to overtly murderous, gory grapples in its last half-hour or so, it loses some of its macabre potency. But Franciosi, who played the stowaway in <i>The Last Voyage of the Demeter</i>, is a compelling presence, and on the whole, this is one of the more memorable horror pictures in a while. The only real complaint is the same one that applies to most films that showcase stop-motion: there isn't enough stop-motion.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-3967147003997636472024-02-20T17:13:00.000-08:002024-02-21T12:41:27.910-08:00MY COUNTRY, 'TIS OF THEOCRACYNow playing at Harkins Shea:<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHPPBx1MX8MvULJLq1GP6KTZ99lxMHnfJbhDWZLfMtqx6XSBQAf20QsA00ZIcD3IPxmf7YcsG_mfje8qB9evnI1IUsrIZN7cu7BLyi1uIGQe7dfyDMFGIk-5_tNx6vR7p3MTfFt-X4aiRxZ66CwKe6NIZoFH5NPTTXv-gk2zB-FaDn_H16PDfoaQZLyN1/s380/godncountryposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="258" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHPPBx1MX8MvULJLq1GP6KTZ99lxMHnfJbhDWZLfMtqx6XSBQAf20QsA00ZIcD3IPxmf7YcsG_mfje8qB9evnI1IUsrIZN7cu7BLyi1uIGQe7dfyDMFGIk-5_tNx6vR7p3MTfFt-X4aiRxZ66CwKe6NIZoFH5NPTTXv-gk2zB-FaDn_H16PDfoaQZLyN1/s320/godncountryposter.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><br /><div><b><i>God & Country</i>--</b>Produced by Rob and Michele Reiner and directed by Dan Partland, this documentary about Christian Nationalism in American politics is impassioned but lucid and not hysterical. Based on Katharine Stewart's book <i>The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism</i>, the movie is presented as a warning to secular or non-evangelical citizens for whom the propaganda and political agenda of that movement may be largely invisible.</div><div><br /></div><div>The talking heads here are mostly Christians themselves, ranging from Russell Moore to Reza Aslan to Jemar Tisby to Kristin Kobes du Mez to Sister Simone Campbell to Bishop William J. Barber II to <i>Veggie Tales</i> co-creator Phil Vischer. They speak calmly, even a little sheepishly, but firmly and with an indisputable insider's perspective, and their message is: Christian Nationalism isn't about religious practice; it's about amassing political power.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's not exactly breaking news when we're informed that Christian Nationalists are terrified of and enraged by feminism, LGBTQ rights, secular education, uncensored libraries and abortion rights, or that the movement is historically connected to racism and segregation. But too many people may not grasp the degree to which Christian Nationalism's ultimate aim is a non-democratic, Christian-supremacist America, and the startling degree to which it's making progress.</div><div><br /></div><div>In support of this, Partland shows us copious clips of wild-eyed rants by Evangelical heavy hitters stating these aims in no uncertain terms. A comedic highlight comes when, in the midst of one of the movie's many montages of preachers bleating and screeching, we see Robert Jeffress say, with a straight face, "We cannot be silent any longer!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Partland also works to debunk some of Christian Nationalism's favorite falsehoods, notably that America was intended by the Founders as a "Christian Nation" or that the Separation of Church and State is not found in the Constitution. Attorney and author Andrew Seidel observes here that true religious freedom is impossible <i>without</i> Separation of Church and State.</div><div><br /></div><div>By way of emphasizing its urgency, the movie also notes that Christian Nationalists were central agents of the January 6 Insurrection, despite the irony of President 45 as the object of their veneration. "When I was a young Evangelical minister," notes Faith and Action founder Rob Schenck, "we used Donald Trump as a sermon illustration for everything a Christian should not be."</div><div><br /></div><div><i>God & Country</i> shares a twofold difficulty with many other worthy progressive political documentaries. First, though well-organized and smoothly edited, it's full of unavoidable footage of the likes of Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, Greg Locke, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland and Paula White, not to mention 45 himself, that can be painful for many of us to watch no matter how necessary. Secondly, many of the people who most need to see this movie probably won't watch it. To employ a more than usually apt clich<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">é</span>, it's preaching to the choir.</div>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-27328035008483464782024-02-16T19:38:00.000-08:002024-02-21T13:07:19.450-08:00COMMUNITY FEST<p>Check out <a href="https://www.phoenixmag.com/2024/02/16/greater-phoenix-jewish-film-festival-kicks-off-its-28th-year-this-weekend/">my short column</a>, online at <i>Phoenix Magazine</i>, about this year's edition of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzutZUwU80tkHvJ4gtEFN7guXFAZHbUceLuBmI7gz-pvMBiB_cjSiXwBjVNeoRRO37DBanmA1oG2ep3zrDjhxFW7Oqfl9yomlHb6Bug4FfNOyFKo-4xf8tKR8RKKjltP7QubKzeA4w_Taux0COVKhHBB2uUj28eJkm5bGY1un7MXXO0-qj-6UE2_-Jp5Y/s1064/gpjfflogo24.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="1064" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzutZUwU80tkHvJ4gtEFN7guXFAZHbUceLuBmI7gz-pvMBiB_cjSiXwBjVNeoRRO37DBanmA1oG2ep3zrDjhxFW7Oqfl9yomlHb6Bug4FfNOyFKo-4xf8tKR8RKKjltP7QubKzeA4w_Taux0COVKhHBB2uUj28eJkm5bGY1un7MXXO0-qj-6UE2_-Jp5Y/s320/gpjfflogo24.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>...February 18 through March 3 at three different Harkins Theatres around the Valley.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-6246466475493841332024-02-09T01:27:00.000-08:002024-02-19T01:08:48.591-08:00WHAT A STITCH<p>Opening this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjysTwEXPFDZ03R2KHcBzIi063cG3v839WbCHWJ6Zyv4zwPOA0Uo801ZXgmqqwbOh8-FDO_bD29OW3c9LlNsZbxztf4I4yEVriVXiIysVoUjlRqQnvYqYwyG4aN-TMgH7Ih7Uq4T3HaJSVJcrq1_AKE3LqwW5LlhXQj31dtXVxeu7K6DylvT3UFZCGGAqki/s378/lisafrankieposter.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjysTwEXPFDZ03R2KHcBzIi063cG3v839WbCHWJ6Zyv4zwPOA0Uo801ZXgmqqwbOh8-FDO_bD29OW3c9LlNsZbxztf4I4yEVriVXiIysVoUjlRqQnvYqYwyG4aN-TMgH7Ih7Uq4T3HaJSVJcrq1_AKE3LqwW5LlhXQj31dtXVxeu7K6DylvT3UFZCGGAqki/s320/lisafrankieposter.jpeg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>Lisa Frankenstein</i>--</b>Our teenage heroine's misfortunes start with her name: Lisa Swallows. She's survived the murder of her mother by a masked maniac, and the remarriage of her father into a new family, complete with a tirelessly perky stepsister, and her transfer to a new school. The understandably morbid-minded, socially awkward, vaguely Goth Lisa spends her spare time in an abandoned cemetery, tending the grave of a long-departed young fellow on whose romantic-looking memorial statue she has a bit of a crush.</p><p>The young man is jolted back to something like life by a lighting bolt, but he's still a moldered corpse until Lisa starts supplying him with new body parts, obtained from irksome people who end up dead around her. This process involves needle and thread, and a terribly strange tanning bed. With each new addition, The Creature becomes a bit, well, hunkier. </p><p>Released just in time for Valentine's Day--and for the February Island of Misfit Movies dump--this off-the-wall teen horror comedy-romance, directed by Zelda Williams from a script by Diablo Cody, is every bit as broad and silly as it sounds, but in a good way. Cody has attempted horror before, with the misfired <i>Jennifer's Body</i> in 2009. This one works better, even though it's uneven and sloppy at times, and the story makes less sense than that of the earlier film. This may even be part of the reason it works better; the wispy, nonsensical plot makes no claim that it's anything but a pretext for Cody's ornately loopy dialogue, and for some good-natured gross-outs.</p><p>And, more importantly, it's a pretext for the acting. Cole Sprouse manages to be both bestial and Byronic as the revived Creature, and he may have the best aggrieved monster moans since Peter Boyle in <i>Young Frankenstein</i>. Carla Gugino hams it up as the self-adoring wicked stepmother, and Liza Soberano, as the stepsister Taffy, is a charming surprise; in a characteristic touch of Cody generosity, she's allowed be genuinely instead of insincerely sweet.</p><p>But what really makes <i>Lisa Frankenstein</i> worthwhile is Kathryn Newton. Her performance is a comedic tour de force, at least as good as her riotous turn in 2020's <i>Freaky, </i>layered and mannered and truly funny, with the puckish slyness of the young Susan Sarandon. Newton could be the next big scream queen, not because she does a lot of screaming, but because she's a scream.</p><p>Also, this movie is a period piece, circa 1989. It's remarkable how refreshing it is to see a teen flick without a cell phone in sight.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-37344692781036054042024-02-02T01:55:00.000-08:002024-02-02T10:27:37.226-08:00ARGYLLE SUCKS<p>Okay, it doesn't totally suck; I just really wanted to use that headline.</p><p>Opening in theaters this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPYoZFNbxKxvRuunxRP8P_HYR63tI_du_fZIDZKjwoZ714cTk5fwFE1EZNeYVkDGqKtlaH1A8t7kSChuwSt3RoQXCPJluQpAMjeFLmBV68mBZfjAn5GbWbVW6GPQV_HrVQzzYA1eyIEc-P_1QcR5TdnN5thABlpG4btyYJL8wIVuOmccqmn1qrt1xdQYDj/s397/argylleposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="251" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPYoZFNbxKxvRuunxRP8P_HYR63tI_du_fZIDZKjwoZ714cTk5fwFE1EZNeYVkDGqKtlaH1A8t7kSChuwSt3RoQXCPJluQpAMjeFLmBV68mBZfjAn5GbWbVW6GPQV_HrVQzzYA1eyIEc-P_1QcR5TdnN5thABlpG4btyYJL8wIVuOmccqmn1qrt1xdQYDj/s320/argylleposter.jpg" width="202" /></a></div><br /><p><b><i>Argylle</i>--</b>For about the first half or so of this action comedy, our heroine Elly is pulled through chases and shootouts, squealing in girlish fright. Played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Elly is an author of popular spy thrillers featuring the flawlessly suave secret agent man Argylle, represented in her mind's eye by Henry Cavill.</p><p>One day on an Amtrak train she's accosted by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), a scruffy obnoxious guy who tells her that she's in grave danger, as her books are proving prophetic in real-world counterintelligence. Within seconds Aidan is defending her, and her put-upon Scottish Fold cat Alfie, from countless assassins in extended, cartoony hand-to-hand and gun combat, all the while dispensing reassurance and encouragement, and she's swept off into a globetrotting adventure.</p><p>You may recall that this was the central gag in the lame 2010 comedy <i><a href="https://mvmoorhead.blogspot.com/2010/06/spys-next-bore.html">Night and Day</a></i>, with Cameron Diaz as the civilian and Tom Cruise as the hypercompetent and comically supportive secret agent man. Rockwell's woebegone manner is funnier and more agreeable than that of Cruise, but even so too much of this film feels derivative of previous spy parodies, both recent and vintage, from 2022's <i><a href="https://mvmoorhead.blogspot.com/search?q=bullet+train">Bullet Train</a></i> to the <i>Mission: Impossible</i> and <i>Bourne</i> flicks, and beyond. As in many of those films, the preposterously over-choreographed action scenes carry no real emotional weight, and I found the first part of the movie pretty tedious.</p><p>It started to grow on me after a while, though. The stars help; I've long been inclined to approve of Howard, with her lush pin-up beauty and her sweetness, and as Elly delves deeper into the case and gains more confidence, Howard is able to overcome the condescending hysterical woman stereotype she's forced to play along with early on. And she and the self-assured sad sack Rockwell play off each other nicely and without phony bickering.</p><p>The supporting cast is also top-notch; director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs would have to work hard to prevent Bryan Cranston, as the fed-up evil kingpin, or Samuel L. Jackson as another spy boss, or the great Catherine O'Hara, pestering Elly to spend a weekend with Mom, from giving the audience any amusement. Along with Cavill's Argylle, the movie offers such overtly glamorous types as Jon Cena and Dua Lipa and Sofia Boutella and Ariana DeBose and Richard E. Grant, and they add another layer of drollery.</p><p>But just about the time I was loosening up and starting to think that <i>Argylle</i> was pretty good after all, it overplays its hand in the way of so many contemporary action blockbusters, shoveling one exhaustingly explosive finale after another at us. At two hours and twenty minutes it's at least thirty minutes too long. After a while you might start wondering if the movie has ended, and you're already a half-hour into <i>Argylle 2</i>.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-22193580342875682162024-01-19T01:35:00.000-08:002024-01-19T01:35:33.715-08:00DISCOMFORT ZONE<p>Opening in the Valley today:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxIS2RB6C_7xe4-DwrI0-L_GwPKnJM8-CFbFhFwkCxqcf4DuFhHNtmT5ICt_HsUMtDv-BWSLy7PTBMaqAwD_trdMByKT0eI4nYxE_3PJCzOwJKIvDVwqhFg2AiJZHXjTRSYP3-LBdrqo0vUao71mVpmfy7Wq-PNsWfnBU28cT_IqlNM6F3zl59sqB2qaVC/s755/zoneinterestposter2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxIS2RB6C_7xe4-DwrI0-L_GwPKnJM8-CFbFhFwkCxqcf4DuFhHNtmT5ICt_HsUMtDv-BWSLy7PTBMaqAwD_trdMByKT0eI4nYxE_3PJCzOwJKIvDVwqhFg2AiJZHXjTRSYP3-LBdrqo0vUao71mVpmfy7Wq-PNsWfnBU28cT_IqlNM6F3zl59sqB2qaVC/s320/zoneinterestposter2.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><p><b><i>The Zone of Interest</i>--</b>A happy young German family swims in a lake. The kids play in the yard of their sunlit house; the mom gossips with girlfriends, or tries on a fur coat in the mirror. The kids surprise the dad with a beautiful birthday gift. The dad's colleagues show up at the house for work meetings.</p><p>Only gradually do we see that these people are living literally next door to a massive factory-like complex with spewing smokestacks. Just over the wall from the cheerfully flowered yard, faintly but constantly, we hear trains arriving, gunshots, people screaming. And dear old dad leaves for work in the unform of an SS<i> Obersturmbannfuhrer</i>. It's 1943, and he's Rudolf H<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">ö</span>ss, Commandant of Auschwitz and chief designer of the camp's systems of mass murder. The fur coat, and plenty of other loot, had previous owners.</p><p>Shot in Poland at Auschwitz, this quiet, reticent film shows us no atrocities; we only overhear them. It's Hannah Arendt's famous banality of evil dramatized, but with the banality front and center and the overt evil kept in the wings.</p><p>The English writer-director Jonathan Glazer (of <i>Sexy Beast</i>), very loosely adapting the like-titled novel by Martin Amis, keeps the family's pleasures and squabbles and mild career crises in the foreground, though even these are treated in a humdrum, naturalistic style. When the Commandant (Christian Friedel) learns that a major effort to exterminate Hungarian Jews is going to be named "Operation H<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">ö</span>ss" after him, he giddily phones his wife Hedwig (Sandra H<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">ü</span>ller) in the middle of the night to tell her, as if he'd been named Employee of the Month.</p><p>This movie makes its point, powerfully and fully, within the first ten minutes or so. Yet Glazer keeps it from becoming repetitive. He also offsets the main story with scenes, shot in a weird thermagraphic effect, of a young girl in the Polish Resistance furtively stashing apples, presumably for the prisoners to find, and the artifacts she finds left by them. Though based on testimony, these moments of courage and humanity have, in the context of the film, an almost fairy tale beauty; Glazer links them to scenes of H<span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">ö</span>ss reading bedtime stories to his kids.</p><p>It's possible--not certain, but possible--that Glazer's elliptical approach here is more likely to have a meaningful impact on audiences than the piling on of graphic horrors and outrages that other Holocaust movies offer. Last year my kid and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It struck me at the time that, as essential as the forensic explanations of the mass murder were (seemingly mindful of this, Glazer includes contemporary footage of the displays at Auschwitz being maintained), it was the exhibits describing the willfully oblivious or even approving society at large, leading up to and during the genocide, that felt most horrific and recognizable.</p><p>In the same way, <i>The Zone of Interest</i> can make us reflect on what we're tolerating, comfortably out of sight just over our own garden walls.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-25492988212127950482024-01-17T00:55:00.000-08:002024-02-06T14:28:23.606-08:00THE BOOK WAS BETTER<p><span style="font-family: inherit;">One more list for 2023: Time once again to post the list of books I moved my lips to during the year just past. As always, this doesn't include articles, short stories, comic books, poems, cereal boxes, Bazooka Joe wrappers, road signs, scoreboards, skywriting, graffiti, or "the room":</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIICK9-_KZMO-XUETqAtXezQ-m9-jdqYAaevbr1J93uu_IV_YLRoiIv6kmJACekIaXHMNBqZ4buEdFYXS0qnoaZ51O8MaIsKjHuLZS-yEiHhyU8OPUV3Nwy6n6eGGmARq52PtK5TRXPavpFCN3B2gcNwUFKSAQNbu4WPTQmFytsnWn8E6x6IDI4eTw_7Gd/s1000/normchristie.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="646" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIICK9-_KZMO-XUETqAtXezQ-m9-jdqYAaevbr1J93uu_IV_YLRoiIv6kmJACekIaXHMNBqZ4buEdFYXS0qnoaZ51O8MaIsKjHuLZS-yEiHhyU8OPUV3Nwy6n6eGGmARq52PtK5TRXPavpFCN3B2gcNwUFKSAQNbu4WPTQmFytsnWn8E6x6IDI4eTw_7Gd/s320/normchristie.jpg" width="207" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>N or M?</i><span> by Agatha Christie</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Anti-Semite and Jew</i> by Jean-Paul Sartre<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>The Long March</i> by William Styron<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Hyperion</i> by Friedrich H</span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ö</span><span>lderlin</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret</i> by Judy Blume</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHr1XlC_031SDnDfyNfBLgxPXLBesD4vohyphenhyphenrdY6BhSFwwKtTzFns2bAiCZ_2Uom1mQFSZd1JGFuspRsr4w2qtU-iuZl8NzJlgIkkRS7bu9Vps5C3VUERQWhsKv0sjs7L6JS7z4LyiA1IrcoadjQb2kHqcRcFLHbv2PhN-oCphiD1OwJ9eRxfUSZugYa1t/s1000/understudydeath.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="625" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHr1XlC_031SDnDfyNfBLgxPXLBesD4vohyphenhyphenrdY6BhSFwwKtTzFns2bAiCZ_2Uom1mQFSZd1JGFuspRsr4w2qtU-iuZl8NzJlgIkkRS7bu9Vps5C3VUERQWhsKv0sjs7L6JS7z4LyiA1IrcoadjQb2kHqcRcFLHbv2PhN-oCphiD1OwJ9eRxfUSZugYa1t/s320/understudydeath.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic;">Understudy for Death</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> </i>by Charles Willeford</span></p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Coven</i> by E. Howard Hunt</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>What Makes Sammy Run?</i> by Budd Schulberg</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</i> by Quentin Tarantino</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece</i> by Tom Hanks</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The White Mountains</i> by John Christopher</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The City of Gold and Lead</i> by John Christopher</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Pool of Fire</i> by John Christopher</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6HXJFI-FvTtSOiugenLSJQ5J0QsV-Ry9u5ZMGjO5tkbbTjZrKWWdIcmiAu3oW1zf0kLZANBawkxW1gnbbfi1XQaAkxNM7CoRNazDIOvo-H_YFMgoJCp0CKTi1l7pCMkDGy3n-V-ZEGR3H5EXijW6Emy4JVL2bwJR08vcYsiZgeaNAXH_SFwl8y-sZp1ha/s1000/poolfire.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6HXJFI-FvTtSOiugenLSJQ5J0QsV-Ry9u5ZMGjO5tkbbTjZrKWWdIcmiAu3oW1zf0kLZANBawkxW1gnbbfi1XQaAkxNM7CoRNazDIOvo-H_YFMgoJCp0CKTi1l7pCMkDGy3n-V-ZEGR3H5EXijW6Emy4JVL2bwJR08vcYsiZgeaNAXH_SFwl8y-sZp1ha/s320/poolfire.jpg" width="193" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As usual, I must start by sheepishly noting how embarrassingly short this list is; nowhere near the optimistic length I was hoping for at the beginning of the year. But it was still a fine year's reading, kicking off with the appallingly still-relevant <i>Anti-Semite and Jew</i>, one of several books I pulled off the shelves at my late sister's house in Virginia as momentos when The Kid and I were back there in January for her's and my brother-in-law's funeral (my sister and her husband died less than a month apart).</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi801e3rNSLbzhvytBjCwzPnqbZmjfWFH47cAXN0GDUgZXve1k0DFnCrw8oMMvbnHlM0tC6DOYXsiwaAsqTr3b7vJ4gPRwTqAzjiVtZcnGCDfFC4crXvGaK7FkqoA6QtUq3xsPZMLIpwAx5fPL0MeXiMoDy2q_EFHPkBeHNwBXUyRpAkm1tv5K7XaHh2mYB/s1000/sartreantisemite.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="601" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi801e3rNSLbzhvytBjCwzPnqbZmjfWFH47cAXN0GDUgZXve1k0DFnCrw8oMMvbnHlM0tC6DOYXsiwaAsqTr3b7vJ4gPRwTqAzjiVtZcnGCDfFC4crXvGaK7FkqoA6QtUq3xsPZMLIpwAx5fPL0MeXiMoDy2q_EFHPkBeHNwBXUyRpAkm1tv5K7XaHh2mYB/s320/sartreantisemite.jpg" width="192" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The only book-length work I've ever read by Sartre, it offers, in its earlier chapters, the best, most concise distillation of the bigoted mindset that I've ever read. In the later chapters Sartre gets pretty deep in the weeds about the motivations of "inauthentic" Jews in ways that seemed to me presumptuous. But it's still an extraordinary read.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjrGZNYHBei7cxpSzY_x_aUH0Xm0TrwXScaxBCBuMWpHlIavRAC6EyLvBx9zOw0gC4Zhq2EVzdfhKr4vQI-9_oSUhe_221RV4tIA8C8P35Cmui_utYK1bNRUtRN6RrC7bIDfsHiTuHww54-q_Ashkl3orD1kz0fagprX3Vlxm9olQUI0vbF_-NoHRKeE4z/s257/sammycover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="200" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjrGZNYHBei7cxpSzY_x_aUH0Xm0TrwXScaxBCBuMWpHlIavRAC6EyLvBx9zOw0gC4Zhq2EVzdfhKr4vQI-9_oSUhe_221RV4tIA8C8P35Cmui_utYK1bNRUtRN6RrC7bIDfsHiTuHww54-q_Ashkl3orD1kz0fagprX3Vlxm9olQUI0vbF_-NoHRKeE4z/s1600/sammycover.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another I pulled from my sister's shelves was Budd Shulberg's <i>What Makes Sammy Run?</i> This turned out to be the first of three novels in a row I read about moviemaking, all by inarguable Hollywood insiders. The title character of Schulberg's famous 1941 yarn is the conniving Brooklyn-born hustler Sammy Glick, who runs up the ladder from newspaper copy boy to studio mogul, exploiting and stepping on everybody in his path.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Supposedly Sam Goldwyn offered Schulberg money to keep the book from being made into a movie; it remains unproduced as a feature to this day, though it was done as an early TV play and a successful Broadway musical. Goldwyn is said to have called it "doublecrossing the Jews," though as Schulberg pointed out, most of Sammy's victims in the story are also Jewish. In any case, Sammy's deviousness and sociopathic mendacity are an American archetype that transcends race. My biggest take-away from the book was that, bad as Sammy is, he's still less odious than our 45th President.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu7UfXOr2R9tGzYuOnKVXK1EabTvo6PaKXbcOxmAAqfWrSIHS3VzzvEPCdm87UM4reHYZkGfGHFaO8HSc9pbJQWHk1hYrFn868RfJsm66xBsSKhwyrrr-NoPC2PSICLh1-ryPqXV7ayh1DraPsnXqXpyp-Ctal4roDa6ta-pTBk86wIiNr1XtynQ_2APs/s350/ouatih.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="214" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJu7UfXOr2R9tGzYuOnKVXK1EabTvo6PaKXbcOxmAAqfWrSIHS3VzzvEPCdm87UM4reHYZkGfGHFaO8HSc9pbJQWHk1hYrFn868RfJsm66xBsSKhwyrrr-NoPC2PSICLh1-ryPqXV7ayh1DraPsnXqXpyp-Ctal4roDa6ta-pTBk86wIiNr1XtynQ_2APs/s320/ouatih.jpeg" width="196" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tarantino's <i>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</i> is his 2021 reimagining, as a popular '70s-era paperback, of his own 2019 movie set in Tinseltown (and elsewhere) in 1969. As with the movie, it freely mixes real-life figures with fictitious characters, movies, TV shows and incidents, sometimes ridiculing sacred cows (Bruce Lee, most notably), sometimes forging into the realm of alternate history.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The book is not, however, a "novelization" in the usual sense; though he uses the same characters as in the movie, he presents them mostly in different episodes. The boyish wishful-thinking fantasy of revisionist violence with which he climaxes the film is referred to only in passing in the novel, around mid-point, while backstories and interior perspectives are explored in detail. I loved the film, but even if you didn't, you might like the book; I think I liked it a little better.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There's a sort of guileless stylistic freedom with which Tarantino writes prose fiction that I found highly enviable. For instance, throughout the novel he keeps describing a (fictitious) episode of the (real) '60s TV show <i>Lancer</i> on which his faded cowboy star hero has a juicy guest role as a villain. As Tarantino omnisciently describes the episode's plot, and warms to it, said plot gradually, and seemingly without conscious transition, takes over the narrative so that we no longer seem to be reading a story-within-a-story; we're just reading a good ripping western yarn.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then when we shift back to the Hollywood story, it seems similarly artless and unfussy. This unpretentious feel may, of course, be an effect that Tarantino carefully worked to attain. But I doubt it; I think he's just lucky enough not to know better; blessedly unfettered by the "rules" of fiction writing.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRhBOHlkA4zuPlkB5ZuulwNM0s7x9XuqzCmIjm7e6orAhR5rpsnBwZwirOBroh58uGD8CILB5eUQ2ZizhcY41z5llKYQlSOx_f7qpH5ZDZQ8fGc0C8_S2exKDHBWMMKjMcoCdkfdJRZxw5jhv1Cpfz1bZVbWrMiBSgDt9Xz6WmVvPzwMCT8Brxr5ERBsr/s350/hanksbook.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="240" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRhBOHlkA4zuPlkB5ZuulwNM0s7x9XuqzCmIjm7e6orAhR5rpsnBwZwirOBroh58uGD8CILB5eUQ2ZizhcY41z5llKYQlSOx_f7qpH5ZDZQ8fGc0C8_S2exKDHBWMMKjMcoCdkfdJRZxw5jhv1Cpfz1bZVbWrMiBSgDt9Xz6WmVvPzwMCT8Brxr5ERBsr/s320/hanksbook.jpeg" width="219" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Third in my unofficial Hollywood trilogy was <i>The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece</i> by Tom Hanks. This one, which traces the genesis, development and shooting of a big-budget superhero flick based on a '60s-era underground comic, is also stuffed with stories-within-the-story, including two well-done fake vintage comic books, one a gung-ho '40s WWII-era flamethrower tale and the other a parody of it from the San Francisco underground scene of the '60s.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I understand the reviews for this shaggy-dog debut novel were cool at best, but I really enjoyed it. As drama it's a little mild, admittedly, with most of the characters, and especially the movie's good guy director, behaving quite respectfully and decently toward each other in a distinctly Hanksian manner. I found this sort of refreshing, and the author's digressions and obsessively-imagined worlds came to life for me. The book's overriding point seems to be that movies are made not so much by visionary artists as by relentless problem solvers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, his most vivid creation is his portrait of an insufferable young actor who's cast in the male lead and instantly paralyzes the production with his raging narcissism and unprofessionalism. The novel could have used more of this guy, and inevitably it makes you wonder if Hanks was thinking of anybody in particular.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, I appreciated that Hanks threw a shout-out to my beloved hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania (where he also set his directorial debut <i>That Thing You Do!</i>). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Elsewhere on this blog I commented on <i><a href="https://mvmoorhead.blogspot.com/2023/05/dumb-and-plumber.html">The Coven</a></i> by E. Howard Hunt and William Styron's <i><a href="https://mvmoorhead.blogspot.com/2023/03/err-cover.html">The Long March</a></i>. My year-end choice was more relaxing; I finally got around to John Christopher's "Tripods" trilogy of <i>The White Mountains</i>, <i>The City of Gold and Lead</i> and <i>The Pool of Fire</i>, which I'd been curious about since elementary school. Good stuff; I would have enjoyed them greatly back in my younger days. That's what I get for being lazy.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSOBkGXrF0yd92WuF6qwCvhIBfYwaWHRD-SxGdqCYWyBvLIQUX4pvyLN1GrB2JRmojs_0YkWqN7Qg0KoBg5oTw_mU3d4hrcSo1HHnBV4QVdPhTJvGNfDS2yJ4qnWyJVmwbbtJ9_Svf97TOUY2LZXqTDMqHkISQLowphll-dpSsq8h4YEruVwEQVEr1T42/s701/hyperion.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdSOBkGXrF0yd92WuF6qwCvhIBfYwaWHRD-SxGdqCYWyBvLIQUX4pvyLN1GrB2JRmojs_0YkWqN7Qg0KoBg5oTw_mU3d4hrcSo1HHnBV4QVdPhTJvGNfDS2yJ4qnWyJVmwbbtJ9_Svf97TOUY2LZXqTDMqHkISQLowphll-dpSsq8h4YEruVwEQVEr1T42/s320/hyperion.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I also took on <span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">H</span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ö</span><span>lderlin's <i>Hyperion</i> (1797), which, like <i>The Long March</i>, I picked up at the VNSA book sale. It's a philosophical yarn--it probably influenced Nietzche and Heidegger more than it did other novelists--written in a heightened poetic language, hence pages and pages of rhapsodizing about Love and Nature and the Beauty of Greece (where </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">H</span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ö</span><span>lderlin never set foot</span><span>) and the superiority of classical Greek culture to modern culture. It can wear you down after a while, even if you more or less share his feelings.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A sample: At one point the titular hero is holding forth to his lover Diotima:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span face=""Segoe UI", sans-serif"><i>“‘Let me,’ I cried, ‘let me be yours, let me forget myself, let all the life of the body and spirit in me fly but to you; but to you, in blissful, endless contemplation! O Diotima! So did I once stand, too, before the shadowy divine image that my love created for itself; before the idol of my lonely dreams; I nourished it faithfully; I animated it with my life, with my heart’s hopes I refreshed it, warmed it, but it gave me nothing save what I had given, and when I had become impoverished, it left me poor; and now! Now I have you in my arms and I feel the breath of your breast, and feel your eyes in mine, your beautiful presence flows into all my senses, and I can bear it, now I possess all that is most glorious, and tremble no longer, yes! Truly I am not he who I was, Diotima! I have become like you, and divinity plays with divinity like children playing together!’”<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To which Diotima replies:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span face=""Segoe UI", sans-serif"><i>“‘But try to be a little calmer,’ she said.”</i><o:p style="font-size: 10pt;"></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That was my favorite line in the book.</span></p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-78293634230868994392024-01-12T02:00:00.000-08:002024-01-12T10:05:50.810-08:00GOLDEN MEAN<p> Opening today:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgx7eqZUqiKvmpjWNjAAboFd4jy3TP23hxUdaXxXHoCpGL_gTRP6eFqyJbMR4lIVJeytxL-e1wS9wxKo3GUYOTpF59_dD3MkYv85PVEE7QSwWKC-Pqu-v7jgMV1aJXeCkC13ek3Ys4VqU_CP22SJmCvwujPfm2_wpgrwlnriPuPMZ6ojKllS7JvELM3nL/s3000/meangirlsposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="1922" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgx7eqZUqiKvmpjWNjAAboFd4jy3TP23hxUdaXxXHoCpGL_gTRP6eFqyJbMR4lIVJeytxL-e1wS9wxKo3GUYOTpF59_dD3MkYv85PVEE7QSwWKC-Pqu-v7jgMV1aJXeCkC13ek3Ys4VqU_CP22SJmCvwujPfm2_wpgrwlnriPuPMZ6ojKllS7JvELM3nL/s320/meangirlsposter.jpg" width="205" /></a></div><p><b><i>Mean Girls</i>--</b>"<i>It's a cautionary tale...</i>" So the Greek chorus characters Janis and Damian sing to us at the beginning of this musical remake of the well-loved 2004 teen comedy, pared down from the 2018 Broadway version. This may be the secret of <i>Mean Girls</i>, in each iteration: it really <i>is</i> a moral tale with a cautionary point, and the heroine really does go to the dark side.</p><p>As you'll recall, Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is a smart kid who grew up in campsites in Africa; her mother (Jenna Fischer) is a researcher. When she lands at a suburban American high school for junior year, the divisions in cafeteria clique and caste strike her as similar to those in the animal kingdom. She gets sucked into spending lunches with "The Plastics," a circle of glamorous sycophants led by uber-mean girl Regina George (Ren<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">é</span>e Rapp). Cady agrees, initially, at the urging of artsy girl Janis (Auli'i Cravalho) and big gay Damian (Jaquel Spivey) to serve as a double agent in a revenge plot against Regina. But gradually, of course, the plastic begins to take over for real. </p><p>Or maybe the secret is just that the film, scripted, like the original, by Tina Fey (freely adapting a book by Rosalind Wiseman), is funny and sweet, but not so sweet that it forgets to be, you know, mean. Or maybe it's that most of the songs, by Nell Benjamin and Jeff Richmond, are delightful, and buoyantly staged by directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr.</p><p>Overall, these actors don't have the vibrancy or distinctive personalities of the original film's cast, but they make up for this with terrific musical performing. Rapp brings such a baleful moan to "Meet the Plastics" that she really is a little scary, and Rice shades herself from guileless to conniving very believably. A few vets are around; Fey and Tim Meadows reprise their roles from the first film, and Busy Phillips and Jon Hamm contribute funny bits. The standouts, however, are Cravalho as Janis and Spivey as Damian, both equipped with gorgeous voices and the ability to act while they're belting.</p><p>Fey's generous-hearted--and sensible--take on popularity and self-esteem has provided a solid and unsentimental piece of role modeling for teens (and the teens that endure within most adults) for twenty years now. Maybe this movie will extend it for another twenty.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeSNq0axMn_c4cMW2j_40QpdeO1qBzCpiLucKg38uGw0p3Gbb7rs8EApxhs1P-ftOTF1usbVjHv19ZVdmYxUXYAwmRwAlxFAipNwNxL1Yle6E0AWjZXJzN4pOQKD3qshERvj9jd9sAi-bQO0CM-SC3u1S3l3NCU-g5oszDMwklhYmdAJt-8Iinbn9QaWL/s2866/freudslastsession.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2866" data-original-width="1934" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibeSNq0axMn_c4cMW2j_40QpdeO1qBzCpiLucKg38uGw0p3Gbb7rs8EApxhs1P-ftOTF1usbVjHv19ZVdmYxUXYAwmRwAlxFAipNwNxL1Yle6E0AWjZXJzN4pOQKD3qshERvj9jd9sAi-bQO0CM-SC3u1S3l3NCU-g5oszDMwklhYmdAJt-8Iinbn9QaWL/s320/freudslastsession.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br /><p><b><i>Freud's Last Session</i>--</b>The "session" in question is fictional, or at best nervily speculative--a meeting of the titular psychoanalytic pioneer with the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. It's September of 1939; England has just declared war on Hitler's Germany, and Freud, who has fled Austria for England with his obsessively devoted daughter Anna, is in the agonizing homestretch of terminal mouth cancer. Irked by Lewis' parody of him in <i>The Pilgrim's Regress</i> (1933), Freud has invited the young Oxford don to his house in London for a civil but contentious chat.</p><p>Freud is played by Anthony Hopkins; Lewis is played by Matthew Goode. The direction is by Matthew Brown from a script he co-wrote with the American playwright Mark St. Germain, based on St. Germain's play (which I saw well-produced by Arizona Theatre Company in 2013). The play is a two-hander, but this handsomely-produced movie expands on it with scenes involving Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) and her partner Dorothy Burlingham (Jodi Balfour), flashbacks to Freud's childhood traumas and to Lewis' PTSD from the trenches in the earlier war, his eyebrow-raising cohabitation with Janie Moore (Orla Brady), etc.</p><p>But the juice in the film is still in the theatrical sparring between the two leads, especially Hopkins as the chuckling, cheerfully furious Freud. He's as lovably cantankerous here as he was as Pope Benedict in 2019's <i>The Two Popes</i>. For his part, Goode is smart enough not to make Lewis saintly or jolly; he gives him an edge of defensive aloofness alongside a deep decency.</p><p>It's hard to say which, if either, of the two men's viewpoints St. Germain and Brown are most in symapthy with. Many of us are likely to feel ourselves somewhere between Freud's staunch and bitter rationalism and Lewis' somehow rather half-hearted pose of orthodoxy. But the point of the film seems to be that what underlies both is, at least partly, existential terror, of a sort to which intelligent, intensely imaginative people like these two are particularly subject. Neither strict nonbelief nor strict belief seems to offer much deliverance.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-22588509346382165902024-01-08T12:51:00.000-08:002024-01-08T17:47:14.328-08:00'23 SKIDOO<p>Before rattling off a list of my top ten movies for the year, I should offer a disclaimer. As with most years, it's based on incomplete information. There are still quite a few significant movies I haven't yet seen. But here, based on what I've seen and how I'm feeling at this writing, is my Top Ten List for 2023.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48QroQpm8mZhSttkNruThS6af2SqdWGI5GWM23H4v6hlSMNmy2odBQ3Acwevd4CPgATVMGm7HWNvN4CgBFAhtYYzikqUBKeK4ppSK6tk_0jqnKZbGaS_3pRhLBcsC2LpAfEHWO9fv50KqVp-8u4r2eQCpG3W_qZZyG4I3zTJG1tHJk4G6JLqqxsf2IGck/s442/killersflowermoonposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48QroQpm8mZhSttkNruThS6af2SqdWGI5GWM23H4v6hlSMNmy2odBQ3Acwevd4CPgATVMGm7HWNvN4CgBFAhtYYzikqUBKeK4ppSK6tk_0jqnKZbGaS_3pRhLBcsC2LpAfEHWO9fv50KqVp-8u4r2eQCpG3W_qZZyG4I3zTJG1tHJk4G6JLqqxsf2IGck/s320/killersflowermoonposter.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><p><b><i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>--</b>Martin Scorsese's epic yet intimate nightmare about the Osage murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s is a masterpiece; one of his best works and probably the best movie of the year.</p><p><b><i>Oppenheimer</i>--</b>Half of the midyear hit duo, this chronicle of the atom smasher of White Sands is a dazzling directorial performance by Christopher Nolan, fracturing his narrative yet keeping us focused. Possibly a hair overlong and anticlimactic, it's riveting at its best.</p><p><b><i>Barbie</i>--</b>The other half of "Barbenheimer." Greta Gerwig's brightly-colored take on the Mattel icon is crazy, imaginative and deeply goofy, yet in its own way no less serious in its ambitions. Margot Robbie is improbably touching in the title role.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0I8qeAE5AkWE4dot5ItK3oP1kic4JFWzVTEHneLvPPyG3JecRhzOT3kd_FWPcEtrTum-J7F3wPlAQaJ95bb2iEFj-X9ec-WJjO8QAg3mwZRuDTDTJxBjHy77FxUjj4B0fqIhssYgh-2ScuEirYChjQ0cgr_G2-atZv4vjyWDzzstsTftfTxX0l6BoEK2L/s378/americanfictionposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0I8qeAE5AkWE4dot5ItK3oP1kic4JFWzVTEHneLvPPyG3JecRhzOT3kd_FWPcEtrTum-J7F3wPlAQaJ95bb2iEFj-X9ec-WJjO8QAg3mwZRuDTDTJxBjHy77FxUjj4B0fqIhssYgh-2ScuEirYChjQ0cgr_G2-atZv4vjyWDzzstsTftfTxX0l6BoEK2L/s320/americanfictionposter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>American Fiction</i>--</b>Jeffrey Wright is quietly marvelous as an African-American novelist who so resents being expected to pander to white ideas about the black experience that he does so with a vengeance and becomes a smash. Cord Jefferson's adaptation of the Percival Everett novel <i>Erasure</i> is both rueful and hilarious, often at the same time, and beautifully acted by Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Issa Rae, Miriam Shor and the criminally underutilized Erika Alexander.</p><p><b><i>Maestro</i>--</b>It's not so much a biopic in the usual sense as a portrait of the marriage of Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre. Bradley Cooper is luminous as Bernstein, and his reserved directorial style balances Bernstein's grand self-dramatizing manner beautifully. Yet it's Carey Mulligan's Felicia who emerges as the movie's guiding spirit.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNsE0QbkcgECtduCjvDDp_z4VOV0zzdhrPr3Qo1Jxq1eb2qtryFQSq9sPAJoQW43hqbqGuFOWZaNuY0dXT0qNQtEI_kB5sWoJEeCKwJUQRwE7nDArk-Y3zMBnHyYiFPD4ZD_kUNVaUdbmgI-tFxn6VJShAum08FUvJV0Kh84msBbYfUZAVSdGw1BKygKlZ/s1600/g-oneposter.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNsE0QbkcgECtduCjvDDp_z4VOV0zzdhrPr3Qo1Jxq1eb2qtryFQSq9sPAJoQW43hqbqGuFOWZaNuY0dXT0qNQtEI_kB5sWoJEeCKwJUQRwE7nDArk-Y3zMBnHyYiFPD4ZD_kUNVaUdbmgI-tFxn6VJShAum08FUvJV0Kh84msBbYfUZAVSdGw1BKygKlZ/s320/g-oneposter.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p><b><i>Godzilla Minus One</i>--</b>The Lizard King stands in for postwar despondency in this one-off, one-of-a-kind monster spectacle that's also a surprisingly moving portrait of a nation coming to terms with utter defeat, and gradually starting to rise from its own ruins.</p><div><b><i>Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret</i>--</b>Judy Blume's classic for adolescent girls was a long time coming to the screen, but under the direction of Kathleen Fremon Craig it struck just the right note; sweet and lighthearted.</div><p><b><i>Air</i>--</b>Sneakers have become such a cultural touchstone that it's probably inevitable that we'd get an origin story for athletic footwear. Ben Affleck's account of the development of the Air Jordan line and the issues around it is absorbing and amusing.</p><p><b><i>The Holdovers</i>--</b>Alexander Payne's '70s-period comedy, set at a private school in Massachusetts, is essentially a vehicle for the performances of Paul Giamatti as a splenetic ancient history teacher, Da'Vine Joy Randolph as a bereaved cafeteria manager and Dominic Sessa as the kid they're stuck with for the holidays. But what performances they are.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaOR1obKRNdsJmhSPcCs8AuCYwd8D2Eu4NtRvmYMRqlUnVC6E0QtFbyQrMYYUq81OQ6BQfd9ajDnsdv7RR4xX9waypn9nts9zKmjfagJWKpcYCmdAnOfyxCF4B5j6mBnQVi4lwDzIGH3u4s9ZGLswQehu2-gLNy5hhREHv_m3TkQP-TwcCHnt0t7TLiVGl/s1481/saltburnposter2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1481" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaOR1obKRNdsJmhSPcCs8AuCYwd8D2Eu4NtRvmYMRqlUnVC6E0QtFbyQrMYYUq81OQ6BQfd9ajDnsdv7RR4xX9waypn9nts9zKmjfagJWKpcYCmdAnOfyxCF4B5j6mBnQVi4lwDzIGH3u4s9ZGLswQehu2-gLNy5hhREHv_m3TkQP-TwcCHnt0t7TLiVGl/s320/saltburnposter2.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>Saltburn</i>--</b>After her stunning debut with <i>Promising Young Woman</i>, Emerald Fennel's second feature, a neo-gothic take on class, is by comparison a little overwrought and sour. But it's no less brilliant, and it comes together joltingly at the end.</p><p>A few others that I found to be worth my time: <i>The Blackening</i>, <i>A Haunting in Venice</i>, <i>Dumb Money</i>, <i>Jules</i>, <i>Theater Camp</i>, <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i>, <i>Thanksgiving</i>, <i>Somewhere in Queens</i>, <i>Cocaine Bear</i>, <i>Renfield</i>, <i>Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves</i>, <i>Napoleon </i>and <i>The Boys in the Boat</i>.</p><p>A superb 2024 to us all!</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-70945820098932274682023-12-25T18:33:00.000-08:002023-12-28T09:54:22.296-08:00EIGHT MEN IN<p>Merry Christmas everyone! Now in theaters:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFBsrLvo6sUOJISbpDEF6JychfOorKKngd4tiS8vCsOWKzHsXgBP7P9rldff3t4WfA8YNJ0w6NaylEInKxtG_1c8xO9U3V6E_ftJ96CeqJvINe8IarCNluFqtEgaqG_QfODVAyDhkU0yOPZLYta1FdQc9TXQk4ZrHv06aNTGsPpfIlipYVQEfMdhkkLaI/s377/boysintheboatposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="255" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFBsrLvo6sUOJISbpDEF6JychfOorKKngd4tiS8vCsOWKzHsXgBP7P9rldff3t4WfA8YNJ0w6NaylEInKxtG_1c8xO9U3V6E_ftJ96CeqJvINe8IarCNluFqtEgaqG_QfODVAyDhkU0yOPZLYta1FdQc9TXQk4ZrHv06aNTGsPpfIlipYVQEfMdhkkLaI/s320/boysintheboatposter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>The Boys in the Boat</i>--</b>The 1936 Berlin Olympics was a highly satisfying episode for the good guys. Most famously, when Der Fuehrer said his was the Master Race, Jesse Owens heiled (phfft!) heiled (phfft!) right in Der Fuehrer's face. It wasn't enough to prevent the war that was coming, but it was a great foreshadowing of who would win.</p><p>Yet alongside that glorious debunking of supposed Aryan racial superiority, right under the noses of its promulgators, was another splendid underdog story. Briefly played by Jyuddah Jaymes, Owens is a minor figure in this period spectacle about the improbable rise of the University of Washington's eight-man crew to compete for the U.S. in those same games. It's directed by George Clooney from a script by Mark L. Smith, based on Daniel James Brown's 2013 book.</p><p>The story was remarkable before the crew got to Berlin. The UW boys were already upstarts in the sport, long associated with elite, affluent Eastern schools. This crew included working class, Depression-era grunts; the focus here is on Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), who when we first meet him is literally homeless. He lives in a junked car in a Seattle hobo jungle, patching the holes in the soles of his shoes while trying to eke out an engineering degree. He joins the crew for the stipend and the roof over his head. </p><p>"Eight-man crew is the most difficult of all team sports," the coach here pronounces to the aspirants. "The average human body is just not meant for such things." I once had occasion to learn first-hand that my below-average human body wasn't meant for such things. Two of my nieces rowed crew, and back in the '80s I myself had the opportunity to take a one-man shell out onto the Potomac River; my near-helplessness in managing to get the thing to go anywhere gave me a small taste of how much delicate skill the sport requires, even setting aside its physical demands.</p><p><i>The Boys in the Boat</i> gets across hints of this subtle precision; Clooney shows us, for instance, the hiccup-y little wrist-flip that precedes the return stroke. There's a great deal to like about the film, really, starting with what a wonderful, heartening story it tells. It's handsomely produced, with lustrous cinematography by Martin Ruhe, crisp editing by Tanya M. Swerling, another lovely score by Alexander Desplat. And it has rich, sometimes fascinating period detail, like the swanky spectator trains that run along the river banks at the fancier courses.</p><p>But as with several of Clooney's earlier directorial efforts, this movie is well-made, well-intentioned, good-hearted and generally enjoyable without being entirely satisfying. And unlike, say, <i>The Monuments Men </i>or <i>The Tender Bar</i>, it doesn't even have vivid star character actors to liven things up.</p><p>Joel Edgerton as Coach Al Ulbrickson and Peter Guinness as master boat-maker George Pocock are authoritative presences, but not complex characters. The guys playing the crew aren't, as in the standard sports movie template, a ragtag band of misfits with distinctive oddball personalities; they're just pleasant, good-looking young men. Rantz's coed love interest (Hadley Robinson) tries to generate some playful, mischievous heat, but she's rowing upstream opposite her bland leading man.</p><p>Overall, this film has the flavor of a feature length Super Bowl commercial. Like the best of those commercials, it can raise an inspirational tingle. But I don't know that it does much more in two hours than a good Super Bowl commercial can do in sixty seconds.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-20633577895224271152023-12-23T16:52:00.000-08:002023-12-23T16:52:10.893-08:00MALL WONDER<p>Last-minute shoppers will be relieved to know that The Millcreek Mall...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzMNA7pGmETt6huAvAPpGgDEWUvTgUbnMuR39BG2MkzDzEzHxWI9avA8UD4DEaAB5wwUtEi4tRByGn-94VGzE9DOpxAAaoRUGmKxweYL4tZPTCPL_ulQE1Rra9FBY4Nh1dMR50hlEes1e4ROJKRPG-Qxp9UApwITK83fgs_m19-E1pc0MzGew_xH5XWTVr/s400/millcreekmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzMNA7pGmETt6huAvAPpGgDEWUvTgUbnMuR39BG2MkzDzEzHxWI9avA8UD4DEaAB5wwUtEi4tRByGn-94VGzE9DOpxAAaoRUGmKxweYL4tZPTCPL_ulQE1Rra9FBY4Nh1dMR50hlEes1e4ROJKRPG-Qxp9UApwITK83fgs_m19-E1pc0MzGew_xH5XWTVr/s320/millcreekmall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>...serving my beloved hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, <a href="https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/48578424/millcreek-mall-earns-top-spot-as-best-hideout-for-a-zombie-apocalypse">was named "Best Hideout for a Zombie Apocalypse"</a> last March by gambling site JeffBet, beating out even The Mall of America in Minnesota (which came in fifth on the list). More recently, Millcreek Mall <a href="https://www.goerie.com/story/news/2023/11/21/millcreek-mall-ranks-among-top-malls-for-christmas-shopping-journo-research-study-erie-county-pa/71657680007/">was rated the seventh-best mall in America for Christmas shopping</a>.</p><p>You can read how both distinctions come together in my novel, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Night-before-Christmas-Living-Dead/dp/1913452506/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JR0CAX46GN1X&keywords=night+before+christmas+of+the+living+dead+moorhead&qid=1703378208&sprefix=night+before+christmas+of+the+living+dead+moorhead%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-1">The Night Before Christmas of the Living Dead</a></i>...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPrIYrpVUIU7RYBsDdl8mefGIBvJA79C3kpg_j8Sb9hBH0SDdiT5fA8aYTTig5svsIwLb6VN9sEdbRwBgRaxrzcE2h0OtcMmkdfSgHG4xjfaClToEeyz2cAjjso-tlRHK5BBZayZTseUf2ym1OavMLiFnQLDORex1jb7YlG4VrEP466v8INsyczpXs-CP/s320/nbcotlddockyard.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPrIYrpVUIU7RYBsDdl8mefGIBvJA79C3kpg_j8Sb9hBH0SDdiT5fA8aYTTig5svsIwLb6VN9sEdbRwBgRaxrzcE2h0OtcMmkdfSgHG4xjfaClToEeyz2cAjjso-tlRHK5BBZayZTseUf2ym1OavMLiFnQLDORex1jb7YlG4VrEP466v8INsyczpXs-CP/s1600/nbcotlddockyard.png" width="200" /></a></div><p>...which is set at the Millcreek Mall, and whose hapless hero is indeed a frantic last-minute shopper.</p><p>A safe, zombie-free and Merry Christmas to all from Less Hat, Moorhead!</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-10324202742137563122023-12-19T16:27:00.000-08:002023-12-20T09:08:31.326-08:00barbenheimerflowermoonemmaryanjustken…<p>The Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I'm an enduringly proud founding member...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSrSjCW5R9eDTpsjOvuRfOZBCPi8wCs9XF9nsJqvQ8-sjpNe06v9Msk6SUSLlr5dLpqkMxj9Xbd-Sgyy2lTA8wZv7ZItZ3vQFSZHYqSt-s6A7ZgMGMumJmiawSufXrPEBUqW2MHPTJsXMd2VVgfl9B6fohnhuc4IEtyFjLtSbRQnOff4xGJ3pWx-lw1mH1/s183/pfcslogo.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="183" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSrSjCW5R9eDTpsjOvuRfOZBCPi8wCs9XF9nsJqvQ8-sjpNe06v9Msk6SUSLlr5dLpqkMxj9Xbd-Sgyy2lTA8wZv7ZItZ3vQFSZHYqSt-s6A7ZgMGMumJmiawSufXrPEBUqW2MHPTJsXMd2VVgfl9B6fohnhuc4IEtyFjLtSbRQnOff4xGJ3pWx-lw1mH1/s1600/pfcslogo.webp" width="183" /></a></div><p>...has <a href="https://phoenixfilmcriticssociety.org/home/f/killers-of-the-flower-moon-wins-best-picture-and-2-other-awards?fbclid=IwAR2hYaniXd74ZzDoahHEiGdhZpwPX9oNf1GEH34EpsKiptgSqXDxOkT1f_4">announced its 2023 Award winners and Top Ten list</a>. As always, some of the selections represent my voting--I'm especially glad my colleagues agreed with me about Da'Vine Joy Randolph in <i>The Holdovers</i>--others do not, but there's a lot of good acting and moviemaking represented on this list.</p><p>While I'm on the subject, I think the PFCS Awards need a name. The Pheenies? The Nixies? The Dry Heaties? Just spitballing...</p><p>I'll post my own Top Ten list after the New Year. Happy Holidays everybody!</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-80046671217039494952023-12-13T20:47:00.000-08:002023-12-14T09:11:30.337-08:00FEEL THE BERNSTEIN<p>Now in the multiplexes; opening December 20 on Netflix:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXERveYSlYN-VAPYcTBZzV_ZMiq5bU7iTAQoCBmYkV3Xj8g_af33jklU8IBo39zcFn4lozHgd_P0tcIJPoBzt9ydT_lwkM75PjrIV4BifUjVUGU0gJA4zvwPl0z5DEFMAroDLSVmQ5ssZund0Jq28P7wZCv4wVLaomFP2TnWnfX8IuiuYP4dxEk4K42LQ/s384/maestroposter.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="259" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXERveYSlYN-VAPYcTBZzV_ZMiq5bU7iTAQoCBmYkV3Xj8g_af33jklU8IBo39zcFn4lozHgd_P0tcIJPoBzt9ydT_lwkM75PjrIV4BifUjVUGU0gJA4zvwPl0z5DEFMAroDLSVmQ5ssZund0Jq28P7wZCv4wVLaomFP2TnWnfX8IuiuYP4dxEk4K42LQ/s320/maestroposter.png" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>Maestro</i>--</b>Bradley Cooper's imitation of Leonard Bernstein conducting is uncanny. Cooper captures Bernstein's histrionic, self-dramatizing, ecstatic style perfectly, and gets across how he used his gestures and facial expressions and body language not just to lead his musicians through a score but to tease the interpretation and intensity he wanted out of them.</p><p>The conducting scenes in this film, directed by Cooper from a script he wrote with Josh Singer, also suggest that the podium gave Bernstein a sense of liberation which he may have known in few other areas of his life. Cooper's performance, in general but particularly in these passages--especially a lengthy recreation of a celebrated performance of Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony"--is luminous.</p><p>I'll admit that it's taken me a while to come around where Bradley Cooper is concerned. But after <i>A Star is Born</i> and <i>Nightmare Alley</i> it was impossible to deny both his talent and the intelligence and heart with which he deploys it. Aided here by Kazu Hiro's amazing (and laughably controversial) prosthetic makeup, he gets across the conductor's mix of authority, of self-conscious, performative sophistication and of boyish wonder, and makes you see what made him beloved, both publicly and by his friends and family. You see what made him difficult, too.</p><p>Very wisely, Cooper chooses not to direct in the same florid manner that Bernstein conducted. Despite some flashy transitions, most of <i>Maestro</i> unfolds in long, sustained takes, beautifully shot by Matthew Libatique from a discreet distance; we're made almost into eavesdroppers at times. This directorial reserve balances the extravagant acting superbly.</p><p>The movie isn't a conventional biopic; there are no explanatory dates or places onscreen, no follow-up summary at the end, and only incidentally does it trace Bernstein's career highlights. The focus is on the relationship between Bernstein and the Costa Rican-born stage actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), who married him in 1951. The other characters, though well-drawn and convincingly played--Sarah Silverman is a good fit as Bernstein's sister Shirley--are decidedly subordinate to the leads.</p><p>According to the film, Montealegre was well aware, going in, that Bernstein was a gay man (though his affairs were not exclusively same-sex even before she came along). "Let's give it a whirl," she says breezily to him toward the beginning, and you think, uh-oh.</p><p>On the whole, they don't seem to have done too badly; they had three lovely kids, sensational careers, countless friends, and they seem to have profoundly loved each other. But entering into a marriage with somebody of uncongenial sexuality cannot come without turbulence, and this can only be compounded when they're a titanic cultural legend.</p><p>It's possible that even the movie itself succumbs to this, a little. With her brittle yet mirthful, keenly observant, wholeheartedly engaged line readings, Mulligan is marvelous; the spine and centering force of the movie (she's top-billed in the credits, even over Cooper). But we learn far less of Montealegre's remarkable career or her activism than we do about Bernstein. The movie sees her in relation to him, and doesn't always make clear how formidable she was in her own right, not just within the marriage but in the world at large. Even when part of the point of the movie is the perils of putting yourself in the shadow of a legend, the person at the podium tends to get the attention.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-57078413301167426562023-12-08T01:46:00.000-08:002023-12-08T09:18:18.635-08:00PROPHET SHARE<p>Opening this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvmCVduz3pFB8e7p9HgYABLf8fHC0LzFv4SwOwWR0-5dXcAuUUTOUdN6PRTONJjmErEmoZklEPK6g-PePe2E_6J_V3VC-Sh2bIb8sir1M59SUJ4dYKAouEnqeLKZKR_oIKF6vc1TI6P410PSJmbHKSsaJe3Em30I-afs0vhCLQi-zHCZMmyxPKKT9e7h_5/s600/oathposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvmCVduz3pFB8e7p9HgYABLf8fHC0LzFv4SwOwWR0-5dXcAuUUTOUdN6PRTONJjmErEmoZklEPK6g-PePe2E_6J_V3VC-Sh2bIb8sir1M59SUJ4dYKAouEnqeLKZKR_oIKF6vc1TI6P410PSJmbHKSsaJe3Em30I-afs0vhCLQi-zHCZMmyxPKKT9e7h_5/s320/oathposter.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><p><b><i>The Oath</i>--</b>The warrior Moroni lives in a cave in a primordial forest. The strapping fellow is the last surviving member of his clan, exterminated by Aaron, the King of a rival tribe. One day he comes across Bathsheba, a beautiful concubine who has escaped Aaron's clutches. He gives her shelter from the storm, and they gradually bond. But of course, the cruel Aaron isn't done with either of them.</p><p>From his name alone, you may recognize that this film's hero is based on a figure from <i>The Book of Mormon</i>. The last of that tome's prophets, Moroni is supposed to have stashed the gold plates on which it was written, and after his death is supposed to have revealed them, as an angel, to Joseph Smith near Palmyra, New York in 1823.</p><p>In this movie, he's played by director-co-writer Darin Scott, buffed and bearded and armored in a reasonable approximation of the Viggo Mortensen-Alexander Skarsg<span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 11.5pt;">å</span>rd mold, but with little sense of barbaric danger (despite some broadsword combat, the movie is only rated PG-13). He's a studly but saintly paragon; at one point Bathsheba playfully tells him "You are boring." She's not entirely wrong, alas--he murmurs his lines, and spends a lot of his footage meditating or gazing into the spiritual distance--but he has a dash of guileless, unassuming Mormon sweetness that makes him endearing anyway.</p><p>Besides, the heavies liven up the picture. Most amusing is Billy Zane as the rotten Aaron, belting out his lines from behind a Muppet-like ball of frizzy beard in what at times sounds for all the world like an Irish accent. Karina Lombard is formidable as a lethal archer, as is Eugene Brave Rock as Aaron's henchman. "Why fight for a soulless coward?" Moroni wails at them at one point; it struck me as a good question for the contemporary Republican party.</p><p>Whether any of this is scripturally accurate or doctrinally sound in LDS terms, I'm clearly in no position to say. But taken simply as a sword-and-sandal romance-adventure, the movie is pleasant, using breathtaking New York State locations to (mostly) belie its budget limitations. The first half is sort of slow going, and the New-Agey music gets a little oppressive at times, but when we finally get to the confrontation between hero and villains, it's pretty satisfying. It's certainly no sillier in any way that I could see than, say, <i>Conan the Barbarian</i> or the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> flicks. And it's at least as heartfelt.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-547870653002568512023-12-06T22:08:00.000-08:002024-02-05T09:45:44.388-08:00G, SPOT ON<p>Now in theaters:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2-OMpoCniAMje1V_MCYnfIKCXPdyatHCx4E_KrPWlqIRvphmhjaHEKPA3LMDrF2plK-wRqzIrKzH1GvI3mt3_zKqoaIlwIN0Ual-VXjJaSHsXQYsVS-Cu9iHdePuSPiUNaSjWTaJp1xIBowmPmLojiqpEZn2R0iQDs7A2COIULPmLIvZOL3qUDsuIYNmE/s376/godzillaminusoneposter.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2-OMpoCniAMje1V_MCYnfIKCXPdyatHCx4E_KrPWlqIRvphmhjaHEKPA3LMDrF2plK-wRqzIrKzH1GvI3mt3_zKqoaIlwIN0Ual-VXjJaSHsXQYsVS-Cu9iHdePuSPiUNaSjWTaJp1xIBowmPmLojiqpEZn2R0iQDs7A2COIULPmLIvZOL3qUDsuIYNmE/s320/godzillaminusoneposter.jpeg" width="226" /></a></div><br /><p><b><i>Godzilla Minus One</i>--</b>To paraphrase Yeats: What rough beast, its hour come round again, slouches toward Tokyo to kick ass?</p><p>Who else? This new <i>kaiju</i> flick, from Godzilla's home studio Toho, celebrates the title character's 70th anniversary. Released in the U.S. with minimal fanfare (no screening for critics in my area), this entry tells a standalone story, unrelated to the earlier Japanese or American films, and it feels very different from either series.</p><p>For one thing, it's a period piece. It begins in 1945, with Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a young <i>kamikaze</i>, first shirking his suicide mission, then freezing up when he's confronted with the supposedly legendary sea monster at a small airbase in the Odo Islands. This lapse results in horrifying losses. Then when Shikishima gets back to the ruins of postwar Tokyo he's a pariah in his neighborhood.</p><p>Over the next couple of years, the guilt-haunted Shikishima becomes the reluctant head of an improvised family after Noriko (Minami Hamake), a young homeless woman, takes shelter in his house with an orphaned baby she's picked up. To support them, he takes a job with an oddball minesweeping crew on a small boat, clearing the leftover mines surrounding Japan. Then one day The Big G surfaces, made gargantuan after being irradiated during the Bikini nuclear tests, and heads for Tokyo.</p><p>The monster scenes here are spectacular, staged by writer-director Takashi Yamazaki with panache and a feel for dizzying ponderousness. There are some genuine jolts, too, notably Godzilla's first appearance. Best of all, the behemoth's big scenes employ Akira Ifukube's masterly score from the original 1954 film.</p><p>But at some level <i>Godzilla Minus One</i> feels less about monster action and more about Japanese society struggling to come to terms with an almost unimaginable defeat. The big scaly guy seems more like a symbol of the magnitude of despondency that had to be overcome for the country to survive and rebuild. This, along with heartfelt acting from an appealing cast and an effective sense of period detail, makes the film unexpectedly moving.</p><p>Having a failed <i>kamikaze</i> as the hero set the story up for an obvious payoff that I found troubling from the first scenes of the film: The perceived need for redemption from the eminently sensible decision not to carry out the lunacy of a futile suicide mission. Here, I thought, is the sort of intractable nationalism that makes for good melodrama, but in real life leads countries into war and horror and misery.</p><p>I'm happy to say that <i>G-1</i> is having none of it; while giving full credit to worthwhile self-sacrifice, the film is resolutely life affirming. "<i>This country never changes," </i>one of the characters mutters,<i> </i>about some governmental folly. "<i>Maybe it can't.</i>" But that country <i>did</i> change, albeit at a Godzilla-sized price, and this movie gets at the pained yet exhilarating spirit of that change.</p><p>My Kid accompanied me to this film, and after checking out the trailer on the way to the theater, she disapprovingly said "I think they're going to hurt him," him being Godzilla. She was right; the monster is not, here, a long-suffering defender of humankind against some bizarre alien or primal abomination, but a rampaging destructive force who must be stopped. Even his roar sounds scarier; it's not the usual nasal, irritable honk. But even so, I too felt sympathy for him during the efforts to destroy him. Something about that big lizard is lovable, even when he's being a bad boy.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-77702385507996864532023-11-22T01:36:00.000-08:002023-11-24T14:58:10.400-08:00SHORT PEOPLE GOT NOBODYOpening in theaters today:<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2g8Q_63n8Fli1X0mq_9-ISaaFIxXus1_kLfAxGkNknQGYbVuzRozk3Gvzdme6vMux2ZVP0JpUM9VXuq5FTTw816WQ0n-VudcOdzPnOfzAbv_X0HTO0TjAQA3N6eEjtM7yHig-ul27_DUwWiHzDkisvcYBjx3CXW2rkcTtlz1InBeSyFrP1hIgDT5VmbCP/s2560/saltburnposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1728" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2g8Q_63n8Fli1X0mq_9-ISaaFIxXus1_kLfAxGkNknQGYbVuzRozk3Gvzdme6vMux2ZVP0JpUM9VXuq5FTTw816WQ0n-VudcOdzPnOfzAbv_X0HTO0TjAQA3N6eEjtM7yHig-ul27_DUwWiHzDkisvcYBjx3CXW2rkcTtlz1InBeSyFrP1hIgDT5VmbCP/s320/saltburnposter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><br /><div><b><i>Saltburn</i>--</b>The title refers to the enormous, somewhat faded English country mansion in which most of the movie unfolds. But it may also suggest the proverbial pain of salt poured into a wound, as might be caused by the very sight of such a residence and the class system it represents.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a slight, nebbishy scholarship student to Oxford, is befriended by a classmate, the blueblood Adonis Felix (Jacob Elordi), who invites him home for the summer to the title pile of bricks in 2007. Felix's family is a fairly gothic bunch--abstracted Dad Sir James (Richard E. Grant), blithe, cordial Mom Lady Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike) and addled wreck of a sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), along with the sneering biracial American cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Carey Mulligan is also around as Elsbeth's nutty parasitical friend Pamela, as is Paul Rhys as the imperious butler Duncan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather quickly, Oliver finds himself enmeshed with each of the family members, and drawn into the intrigues and occasional casual decadence of their isolated and mysterious lifestyle. While Oliver initially seems like an honest but in-over-his-head <i>parvenu</i>, like Balzac's Rastingnac or Faulkner's Ben Quick, we gradually see that he has his own wormy, calculating, opportunistic side.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>This is the second feature written and directed by Emerald Fennell of 2020's <i>Promising Young Woman</i>. If it's a sophomore slump, that probably says more about the incisive brilliance and focus of <i>Promising Young Woman</i> than it does about any shortfalls of its own. The fury that charged Fennell's first film was direct and uncomplicated. Seemingly wanting to get across something more subtle and nuanced about class, <i>Saltburn</i> flails around a bit and sometimes feels confused, overwrought, overlong, even borderline campy.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>But stick with it. It ultimately adds up to a potent piece of moviemaking, and of storytelling. Shot with hallucinatory garishness by the marvelous Linus Sandgren, the movie brings its setting vibrantly to life; there's none of the comforting stodginess of, say, <i>Downton Abbey</i> to it. Better, Fennell's narrative is involving. Even as we sense the influence of everything from <i>The Shining</i> to <i>Risky Business</i>, we're also pulled into investment in a yarn we haven't seen before. And she doesn't let us down; despite the movie's gratuitous thrashing about, in the end the plot snaps together to a satisfying and fairly devastating point.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Fennell also gets uniformly superb performances from her cast. Probably the wittiest and most endearing is Rosamund Pike, but Barry Keoghan, maybe the single best thing about <i>The Banshees of Inisherin</i>, is spectacular here, giving a tour de force turn in a role that is not only wildly mercurial on an emotional and psychological level, but also required physical fearlessness. <i>Saltburn</i> may end up being most remembered for literalizing a common expression for finding somebody extremely attractive, but Keoghan's draining performance makes a splash. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1GKcUKw0W2EmuqMAk6g-SqM1ZczOeJIpLaa6q2-VJSPOPZSG4tUYqLV3BJqB6E59fbjkz7eFn30o3vIXRDa3pMGdcnqVuN63qQl8PibUzHIa_HB8yf7ZKqQ_fliUdputMpgn44PWGLGody__i6ErjzP9tLmq5z0qzJO3g0UUjf_i1wp2rnLUevGSY0MT/s1350/napoleonposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1GKcUKw0W2EmuqMAk6g-SqM1ZczOeJIpLaa6q2-VJSPOPZSG4tUYqLV3BJqB6E59fbjkz7eFn30o3vIXRDa3pMGdcnqVuN63qQl8PibUzHIa_HB8yf7ZKqQ_fliUdputMpgn44PWGLGody__i6ErjzP9tLmq5z0qzJO3g0UUjf_i1wp2rnLUevGSY0MT/s320/napoleonposter.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Napoleon</i>--</b>Returning to France, uninvited, from exile in Elba, the title character is confronted with a regiment of soldiers he used to command. "I missed you," he tells them, seemingly sincerely. Soon he's back in charge.</div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently there is some historical basis for this scene; Napoleon is said to have had a fond and comradely relationship with his troops, despite his willingness to get them slaughtered. But to the casual viewer of this Ridley Scott epic, the moment may come as a surprise. Nothing in the movie prepares us for it. Played by Joaquin Phoenix, this Napoleon shows little affection or even interest toward anyone or anything apart from himself, and a certain almost adolescent erotic fixation on Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). In between campaigns, he makes rather unromantic attempts to impregnate her, and reacts with sullen outrage when they don't succeed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Scott's movie, based on a script by David Scarpa, is largely a pageant of carnage. It begins with a graphic depiction of Marie Antoinette's meeting with Madame Guillotine, then shows us Napoleon navigating the deadly mayhem of the Revolution and the First Republic. It then traces him from battle to battle: Toulon, Austerlitz, Moscow and some of his other greatest hits, culminating, of course, against Wellington (Rupert Everett) at You-Know-Where.</div><div><br /></div><div>This <i>Napoleon</i> isn't boring. It's entirely watchable and well-staged. Scott deploys his forces with the care of a child playing with toy soldiers on his bedroom floor. But it doesn't really hit hard emotionally; something is missing from it. Early on, we see a cannonball splat into the chest of a horse, and the resulting explosion of gore is so obviously computer-generated that, for me at least, it carried little shock (it has this in common with the splatter effects in <i>Thanksgiving</i>, which, exhaustingly enough, I saw the same day). This sort of detached unreality hangs over the movie's horrors, and the same detachment extends to the central character. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>While Phoenix holds our attention with his movie star charisma, it's as if he's working in a vacuum. Except here and there in his scenes with Kirby's drolly unflappable Josephine, Phoenix seems to be anomic, walled off from the other characters by his own narcissistic self-regard. Maybe that's deliberate; maybe Scott is trying to dramatize the Napoleon of Walter de la Mare's unforgettable poem:</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>What is the world, O soldiers?</i></div><div><i>It is I.</i></div><div><i>I, this incessant snow,</i></div><div><i>This northern sky.</i></div><div><i>Soldiers, this solitude</i></div><div><i>Through which we go</i></div><div><i>Is I.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, the movie has a point to make about the appetite for an autocratic "strongman" leader that seems to inevitably arise in reaction to the messiness of democratic movements. It's a theme which would, admittedly, seem to have a slight smidge of relevance to our current times. It should be noted that, warmongering megalomaniac though he was, Napoleon was also a tremendously intelligent and curious person, which puts him in a very different category than our most notable current would-be Emperor.</div>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-8858211206066215132023-11-17T03:18:00.000-08:002023-11-24T15:14:13.919-08:00TROUBLE WITH THE CARVE<p>Opening this week:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguI6sYvd3r3Y-BVvXX83YaIwf_nbT0CFNV23GwYFkA4Jh1efysNDkjCPqW6Pry0c_wWAvm5y44bZaZsGa9VL8ia2Rti8NVvo92M5K5ng9UKZ0yW0uhjT09LNXx7eq0O91bzxWjAkMhVvmK4D0AEONjY9_IlGRLEpLEHQyUscZbQKMmjaTq9-UjdH2NGv5D/s1000/thanksgivingposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguI6sYvd3r3Y-BVvXX83YaIwf_nbT0CFNV23GwYFkA4Jh1efysNDkjCPqW6Pry0c_wWAvm5y44bZaZsGa9VL8ia2Rti8NVvo92M5K5ng9UKZ0yW0uhjT09LNXx7eq0O91bzxWjAkMhVvmK4D0AEONjY9_IlGRLEpLEHQyUscZbQKMmjaTq9-UjdH2NGv5D/s320/thanksgivingposter.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><p><b><i>Thanksgiving</i>--</b>Slasher movies of the '70s and early '80s were often holiday-themed. <i>Black Christmas</i>, <i>Halloween</i>, <i>My Bloody Valentine</i>, <i>Silent Night, Deadly Night</i>, <i>New Year's Evil </i>and <i>April Fool's Day</i> are all examples, while <i>Friday the 13th</i> and <i>Happy Birthday to Me</i>, though not strictly about holidays, are still tied to special dates and the convenient unity of time they provide. But Thanksgiving was somehow the major holiday the genre seemed to miss.</p><p>There actually were a couple of little-remembered attempts--<i>Home Sweet Home</i> in 1981 and <i>Blood Rage</i> in 1987. But neither seemed to count, perhaps because they didn't use the holiday in the title, or perhaps because they didn't sufficiently exploit the gruesome possibilities offered by the day's rituals. Whatever else may be said about it, the newly-made but self-consciously old-school slasher picture <i>Thanksgiving</i> works hard to include every classic Turkey Day trope.</p><p>A shoppers' riot and stampede at a store that shouldn't be open on Thanksgiving leads to bedlam and grisly death in a small Massachusetts town. "One Year Later"--as a subtitle traditionally informs us--a figure in the mask and garb of a Pilgrim skulks around exacting vengeance on those deemed responsible for the disaster. Everything eventually converges in a ghastly sit-down dinner.</p><p>The film traces its inception back to 2007, when two movies, the Robert Rodriguez shocker <i>Planet Terror</i> and Quentin Tarantino's stunt thriller <i>Death Proof</i>, were released as a double feature under the joint title <i>Grindhouse</i>. In and around the two features, the show included several "fake trailers" for fictitious grindhouse-style movies. Two of these have already wagged the dog as the basis for real features, <i>Machete</i> (2010) and <i>Hobo With a Shotgun</i> (2011); <i>Thanksgiving</i> marks the third.</p><p>Directed by Eli Roth, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2243570735863467">the <i>Thanksgiving </i>trailer in <i>Grindhouse</i></a> captured the nastiest, most low-rent atmosphere of a vintage gore movie, complete with scratched, faded footage, some really sleazo shocks, and the smarmy, glottal tones of the narrator (Roth himself?). You could almost believe it wasn't a put-on.</p><p>The new feature, directed by Roth from a script by Jeff Rendell, doesn't try for this level of faux-authenticity. The setting is contemporary, the budget clearly comfortable, and cell phones and social media figure prominently in the plot. But the movie still has a nice old-fashioned pace and structure and flavor, and the nostalgia of this is much of what makes it unsavory fun.</p><p>I'll admit that in recent years I've largely lost my stomach for slasher flicks. Moreover, I thought Roth's 2002 debut feature <i>Cabin Fever</i> was an interesting misfire at best, and I took a pass on his 2005 torture flick <i>Hostel</i>. But he strikes an affectionate tone here, and he employs techniques that distance us from compassion for the victims. Most simply and effectively, he makes many of them, especially the early ones, deeply and amusingly unsympathetic.</p><p>The cast is livened up by some veterans, like Patrick Dempsey, Rick Hoffman and Gina Gershon, and the "final girl" (Nell Verlaque) has a lovely presence, and unlike so many heroines back in the day, she fights back, resourcefully and successfully. It was also great to see Lynne Griffin, the first victim from 1974's <i>Black Christmas--</i>and the Hamlet figure in the Bob and Doug McKenzie movie <i>Strange Brew--</i>in a bit here.</p><p>Most notably, the film keeps it light. As with two other movies from earlier this year, <i>Cocaine Bear</i> and <i>Renfield</i>, <i>Thanksgiving</i> goes in for extreme, over-the-top splatter effects, and they aren't scary, nor do they seem meant to be. They aren't even all that gross. There's no visceral substance to them; the bodies of the victims go to pieces like gingerbread men, and the effect, seemingly deliberate, is cartoonish slapstick. We're about as likely to take their suffering seriously as that of Wile E. Coyote.</p><p>Maybe it's how entertainment like this works best: as a sort of anarchic Punch and Judy show, using humans instead of puppets. Like Thanksgiving dinner, it wouldn't be healthy to consume this sort of thing every day, but about once a year, it can hit the spot.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-26401680541653798362023-11-15T15:24:00.000-08:002023-11-16T16:36:08.357-08:00FORECASTING DIRECTOR<p>As prestige movie season approaches, Your Humble Narrator had the chance to chat about Oscar-bait movies with Lauren Gilger for this morning's edition of <i>The Show</i> on KJZZ...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUX9prBw8xLi7HZt8_1vn5QDj_p45yNDUtmSqnQbzl23BCwPBalMxl9B7vXyGOfJciM0zL9hqMg9p5rKLwhJyj5ZOCoQPhkmaMAjY7QrOsSjU_orMsTKlu0OJ9z6Dk6Z8NvCn6pKS6MKNGkP9YVMHC5FC_auuo2C5UYBDDXPACOemZK_kX9u1UF0bT_c8V/s1600/showlogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUX9prBw8xLi7HZt8_1vn5QDj_p45yNDUtmSqnQbzl23BCwPBalMxl9B7vXyGOfJciM0zL9hqMg9p5rKLwhJyj5ZOCoQPhkmaMAjY7QrOsSjU_orMsTKlu0OJ9z6Dk6Z8NvCn6pKS6MKNGkP9YVMHC5FC_auuo2C5UYBDDXPACOemZK_kX9u1UF0bT_c8V/s320/showlogo.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>You can listen to the interview <a href="https://theshow.kjzz.org/content/1863049/oscar-season-nears-film-critic-gives-his-predictions">here</a>.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-90057329309059357822023-11-04T17:35:00.003-07:002023-11-04T18:08:01.950-07:00UP AGAINST THE WALTZ<p>Check out <a href="https://www.phoenixmag.com/2023/11/03/celebrate-the-45th-anniversary-of-martin-scorseses-the-last-waltz-in-the-valley-this-weekend/">my short article</a>, online at <i>Phoenix Magazine</i>, about the 45th Anniversary of Martin Scorsese's <i>The Last Waltz</i>...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheWe4zp1PFYiLSNMu8-I9TsCZq8gfQEQsb0cdIN2cS3ccJmYJGbG_jf4rhk_hpPXEUCj_1aL0x8M5aRvYly2s4Ra8IM9SHBt9y7bHLGtmDW5ZeVqUIw8O4l6F2fXcsdv10ZCvAeS-g5eB0HEbQ3llZ0WncLqueppdXkJm3YHxutdSzSdIDL0PrLiYagOMO/s277/lastwaltzposter.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="182" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheWe4zp1PFYiLSNMu8-I9TsCZq8gfQEQsb0cdIN2cS3ccJmYJGbG_jf4rhk_hpPXEUCj_1aL0x8M5aRvYly2s4Ra8IM9SHBt9y7bHLGtmDW5ZeVqUIw8O4l6F2fXcsdv10ZCvAeS-g5eB0HEbQ3llZ0WncLqueppdXkJm3YHxutdSzSdIDL0PrLiYagOMO/s1600/lastwaltzposter.png" width="182" /></a></div><p>...presented at various theaters by Fathom Events.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-49915783789897504202023-11-03T00:07:00.003-07:002023-11-03T00:07:00.134-07:00(CHRISTMAS) BREAK MASTER<p>Opening this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LC4tuEn8x-DIkcJ4NJEkDYPDPit1y7KFcX_SNIVCNlpVMgeUXYBpQKrfRA0fDlSjeF4dRh0pToavkBWB2Ug2kX0h9JSAlrvLPIKihzPTzoh5osS30rvf4IBTE21OsymWgTz2u3REfX_W6-YpcyNvviKIaeJ5kJWbu1k60Ui-s88J-IhVH4gBWU5TYbEQ/s1481/holdoversposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1481" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LC4tuEn8x-DIkcJ4NJEkDYPDPit1y7KFcX_SNIVCNlpVMgeUXYBpQKrfRA0fDlSjeF4dRh0pToavkBWB2Ug2kX0h9JSAlrvLPIKihzPTzoh5osS30rvf4IBTE21OsymWgTz2u3REfX_W6-YpcyNvviKIaeJ5kJWbu1k60Ui-s88J-IhVH4gBWU5TYbEQ/s320/holdoversposter.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><p><b><i>The Holdovers</i>--</b>Nobody does bitterness like Paul Giamatti. From his earliest noticeable roles, as "Pig Vomit" in the Howard Stern movie <i>Private Parts</i> or as a pit bull owner on <i>Homicide: Life on the Streets</i>, he made his mark as a vessel of bristling, eye-bugging, impotent rage, and this has carried over into his best lead roles, in <i>American Splendor</i> or <i>Sideways</i>, or even in his miniseries as John Adams.</p><p>His seething high dudgeon generally is played for comedy, but even then this great actor brings it a stinging, near-tragic undercurrent; he makes his pained ineffectuality moving. With this latest from <i>Sideways</i> director Alexander Payne, Giamatti gets another vehicle for splenetic, barely-contained fury and defeated disgust. It's one of his best.</p><p>The time is 1970; the setting is a blueblood boys' school in Massachusetts. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a brilliant, exacting Ancient History teacher. Paul is single and friendless in his personal life; in class he brims with acerbic, sarcastic contempt for his lunkheaded, entitled rich-kid students.</p><p>On the eve of Christmas break, Paul gets stuck with a miserable detail: supervising the "holdovers," the handful of students stranded on campus with nowhere to go for the holiday. Perhaps the unhappiest of this unhappy lot is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a bright kid with a troubled past whose Mom has excluded him from her holiday plans with her new husband. Paul's only adult ally is Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the cafeteria manager and chef, who's in mourning for her son, recently lost in Vietnam.</p><p>It likely won't astonish you to learn that as this little group clash, and then get to know each other and their backstories better, bonding and compassion start to develop between them. Working from a script by David Hemingson, Payne shades this process carefully, generating genuine and plausible warmth without slipping into holiday-movie sentiment. Not only is the film set in 1970, Payne seems to be trying for the modest, unassuming style of a Hal Ashby or James Bridges flick of that period, right down to the opening rating card and production company logos (even the movie's trailer was crafted as a throwback to this time).</p><p><i>The Holdovers</i> is perhaps a bit on the poky side; little in the story gives much urgency to the pace. But the actors bring their connections to life. Giamatti's initial bile is highly entertaining and his gradually rising empathy is touching. Tall and tousle-haired, with a look of stricken perplexity on his handsome features, Sessa has a pleasing, callow awkwardness as Angus. Carrie Preston gives the movie a lift in each of her couple of scenes as a sunny-natured school administrator. And as Mary, Randolph steers around any hint of overt pathos, and as a result makes the character heroic.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-30364583902554955602023-10-31T18:39:00.008-07:002023-11-01T10:02:04.305-07:00LITTLE MORE THAN PUMPKIN, AND LESS THAN KIND<p>A safe and Happy Halloween to all from Less Hat, Moorhead!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZHnD3T6Oki0soQgbDr3d4-6xgyard6_nONpX0eKLN12JcA_DfILM1Xfc9PjbG1LWkKYXI9vVrKuToGZY-n5NkT1DsnTpfVdyqGOvEEYWqY4jVNiGRDwx8lIDDRlfah_sDcRco3jl0IMfKoEWOPUeYieLVWEg_Idco5WICb40-NukSELv2YQ2c2ODyjOJ/s600/scarymask.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlZHnD3T6Oki0soQgbDr3d4-6xgyard6_nONpX0eKLN12JcA_DfILM1Xfc9PjbG1LWkKYXI9vVrKuToGZY-n5NkT1DsnTpfVdyqGOvEEYWqY4jVNiGRDwx8lIDDRlfah_sDcRco3jl0IMfKoEWOPUeYieLVWEg_Idco5WICb40-NukSELv2YQ2c2ODyjOJ/s320/scarymask.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>The Wife gave me a Dracula PEZ and Frankenstein Peeps...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgAbnulU9YhckEz3eUcfJxntw1ArVTV-DDWt66hcmh1nszIVZXMieDz6xfzlHtfCGqVnZPskkbI0AY0or1OsNHPdeq943wtwXqP-AuS4FnU1fvrX5HJY5AcGkIcoiFxl4zOL6Ba7cMDX1EspldgFHU5fGwVgjAT3H0MJG8dvhvFHDYvpxuVVnLRaiN8Hb5/s701/pezpeeps.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgAbnulU9YhckEz3eUcfJxntw1ArVTV-DDWt66hcmh1nszIVZXMieDz6xfzlHtfCGqVnZPskkbI0AY0or1OsNHPdeq943wtwXqP-AuS4FnU1fvrX5HJY5AcGkIcoiFxl4zOL6Ba7cMDX1EspldgFHU5fGwVgjAT3H0MJG8dvhvFHDYvpxuVVnLRaiN8Hb5/s320/pezpeeps.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p>On another note: Recently I found this rather badass hornworm in the backyard...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQhmAEQc1LDVx84XQrb2nulSRU73rpjIAn2g4DAbzsynSLv05l40V1BEHhnzqUKW_hdB3w3tw6WL1aaoq208iRkYXHHLsEC8BB-CfkhfZWlRHF_KRscM-JUf_Bhu4vN8dGZJ_N0jWwG_gNXMHXjcdRz2VUcphyphenhyphen8STzaTres4Q9oXSqGlu76UySu9GkQTX1/s600/hornworm.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQhmAEQc1LDVx84XQrb2nulSRU73rpjIAn2g4DAbzsynSLv05l40V1BEHhnzqUKW_hdB3w3tw6WL1aaoq208iRkYXHHLsEC8BB-CfkhfZWlRHF_KRscM-JUf_Bhu4vN8dGZJ_N0jWwG_gNXMHXjcdRz2VUcphyphenhyphen8STzaTres4Q9oXSqGlu76UySu9GkQTX1/s320/hornworm.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p>As I escorted him into the alley behind the house, I was startled by how muscular his flexing against my thumb and finger was...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObf8J_CiWgV6QngNsT9f54Msd8HWFEyFzezCfuUCMTpRKKH_4O6HPG4frkiRyx8gV4xsZ9ZYBYu7XWPu22_lUdYTyIrl864IrSLwk0w9NPi9TbBO9g2KRJqaos8wMAuP9USgwMW_NAXmihizyr1Gcte_vvwgl6RYt2ty2o79sgRg4IOpzpixnRAsG9F9y/s600/hornworm+me.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObf8J_CiWgV6QngNsT9f54Msd8HWFEyFzezCfuUCMTpRKKH_4O6HPG4frkiRyx8gV4xsZ9ZYBYu7XWPu22_lUdYTyIrl864IrSLwk0w9NPi9TbBO9g2KRJqaos8wMAuP9USgwMW_NAXmihizyr1Gcte_vvwgl6RYt2ty2o79sgRg4IOpzpixnRAsG9F9y/s320/hornworm+me.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p>It made me sympathize with poor Ida Lupino, attacked by the giant hornworms in 1976's <i>The Food of the Gods</i>...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnLFaZIQTTQC_J2XM3yM_f55dNhXFHHyBYOQQoLOuGnFGG2BRuPeiHlPQVGzC51iqCsJhSFFDDX61bOyUjQNZ3_04fqrxcLQfipXrncNyyTH_pgRGTDJB9wvHvGYEwHmyDrN5WufIJL3uh9hmP9e7A2NaXjs1h6vyhIw6LhJ7g-1reZJ95l1XtkSQJzkd/s768/ida2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="610" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtnLFaZIQTTQC_J2XM3yM_f55dNhXFHHyBYOQQoLOuGnFGG2BRuPeiHlPQVGzC51iqCsJhSFFDDX61bOyUjQNZ3_04fqrxcLQfipXrncNyyTH_pgRGTDJB9wvHvGYEwHmyDrN5WufIJL3uh9hmP9e7A2NaXjs1h6vyhIw6LhJ7g-1reZJ95l1XtkSQJzkd/s320/ida2.jpg" width="254" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yxoKbTLiQGC-U4ZyU7Vg-PEDnRmWpBvfcFlniPfw2uXK3t-s337WwkIROeXPZ-6xrtw-_AantdOzYH15Q8SyF_PJ8u8t8NNO5x5mg13RpYKAsYHc_BDyntfs17ZuiejgUdR6C-0YruLmA8UI9wCDFSJdSlct5dtPMMnz1WIG0A_UwrhtrEEO_GgBX0Hp/s247/ida.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="247" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1yxoKbTLiQGC-U4ZyU7Vg-PEDnRmWpBvfcFlniPfw2uXK3t-s337WwkIROeXPZ-6xrtw-_AantdOzYH15Q8SyF_PJ8u8t8NNO5x5mg13RpYKAsYHc_BDyntfs17ZuiejgUdR6C-0YruLmA8UI9wCDFSJdSlct5dtPMMnz1WIG0A_UwrhtrEEO_GgBX0Hp/s1600/ida.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><p>A couple of other odds and ends:</p><p>I was very saddened to hear that Matthew Perry has passed on. He was possibly the funniest of the Friends, but I also loved him as White House Counsel Joe Quincy, one of the increasingly mythical-seeming "good Republicans" that <i>The West Wing </i>liked to optimistically depict. Nobody could deliver a line like "<i>Sure, we'd never want to compromise the aesthetic integrity of the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue</i>" with the effortless aplomb of Perry. A real loss.</p><p>RIP also to Richard Moll, best known as towering but sweet-natured bailiff Bull on <i>Night Court</i>. He was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed, for the <i>Erie Times-News</i> back in the early '80s when he was in town for a convention or something. Very nice guy. In <a href="https://www.metv.com/stories/rip-richard-moll-gentle-giant-bailiff-bull-on-night-court">his MeTV obit</a>, he's quoted saying that when he was auditioning for <i>Night Court</i> and they asked if he would shave his head for the part, he said "I would shave my legs for the part!" He told me the same story back in the day.</p><p>Here's a sample of the Halloween decor at Chez Moorhead...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9KzKAwzgDRTKCnSCouOHisH7uE0_xmECGEwZmeE_jd5jdpUiwyLilwGAgxOwXz8cheG9aVq0rXo4tCDJhVypADKxdytkmT7W36cQimZz2Vutn5sTXMW8sCMm7dzFXgyJHNW7jpSZLqnyndJiAvBdU7g_RlbMVKFNiBpOLrSSvWo7SOhxAjeEBFlWURtI2/s2048/halloween23.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9KzKAwzgDRTKCnSCouOHisH7uE0_xmECGEwZmeE_jd5jdpUiwyLilwGAgxOwXz8cheG9aVq0rXo4tCDJhVypADKxdytkmT7W36cQimZz2Vutn5sTXMW8sCMm7dzFXgyJHNW7jpSZLqnyndJiAvBdU7g_RlbMVKFNiBpOLrSSvWo7SOhxAjeEBFlWURtI2/s320/halloween23.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mFLMKxIKtDGjZM6sD6eTgLV8jw-ceLVoNS16V9yatDg6roeGsPFw0H0xQ-Fyv9rgD73A0GZLsmQ-SXd9jBXrB1mSuAowfhtXNZbMVQ9TUudapYx_5Fu0x-qHzU8dxJomYvfvPGV644fheV0wQT7UQ68Y16ITXG6UOVDa2-7fyr5rIpjhqhjdCNks4VEA/s2048/halloween232.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mFLMKxIKtDGjZM6sD6eTgLV8jw-ceLVoNS16V9yatDg6roeGsPFw0H0xQ-Fyv9rgD73A0GZLsmQ-SXd9jBXrB1mSuAowfhtXNZbMVQ9TUudapYx_5Fu0x-qHzU8dxJomYvfvPGV644fheV0wQT7UQ68Y16ITXG6UOVDa2-7fyr5rIpjhqhjdCNks4VEA/s320/halloween232.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzrB0IW3kaY1jv3fqUAbedh7Ud2q6alJJELJjzsbACyr1o4EwsVhbuAcfmbvh-kph9L0PJRLjPAO0jTl6El5V_fEPmNRVLKagnbeqnsBCT_nnPdr_1XQJosbdnlo-KlohR6Hiy_erKTiryh0lRZ-n1YzL5TwOm5AENNgxe9iWWb11uaqnsZ-toCqb78iFC/s2048/halloween233.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzrB0IW3kaY1jv3fqUAbedh7Ud2q6alJJELJjzsbACyr1o4EwsVhbuAcfmbvh-kph9L0PJRLjPAO0jTl6El5V_fEPmNRVLKagnbeqnsBCT_nnPdr_1XQJosbdnlo-KlohR6Hiy_erKTiryh0lRZ-n1YzL5TwOm5AENNgxe9iWWb11uaqnsZ-toCqb78iFC/s320/halloween233.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoVgO5IEKWaLAoeQaC86g0KJ_4zvXEvmqQY6JWyuC-bxeM0jeGAmz5_0kvJ8YBtExlnlvYX2IG_hVfetp1x1Y_zj7tMQ7F0mJhOui3FtNXZoZv5PpLDKA2o4Uh95e5qnPcOy-qr3LET1RqhAQm93uBXDitySypVCQzyqj2LpmMHFthgRKLtSJ0qPgSF05/s2048/halloween234.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghoVgO5IEKWaLAoeQaC86g0KJ_4zvXEvmqQY6JWyuC-bxeM0jeGAmz5_0kvJ8YBtExlnlvYX2IG_hVfetp1x1Y_zj7tMQ7F0mJhOui3FtNXZoZv5PpLDKA2o4Uh95e5qnPcOy-qr3LET1RqhAQm93uBXDitySypVCQzyqj2LpmMHFthgRKLtSJ0qPgSF05/s320/halloween234.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS8VMy1JU1Cqw4zmIIqTO9Tnx6KxaBgWdkfl6xVe0VfDx7LOPhNkWTWDAz7V7cicRLJc9zyFLe6tZk424QR56BU8Q91J1oEqd2yzCTgVEiTRqUNHzFDyn648QRZSuTRzTUe6O64P_T_xEiLF-TDnka84l0R8OWf750Q6-hRtEJ0Xi92AsW8MqnNRkSN3NY/s2048/halloween235.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS8VMy1JU1Cqw4zmIIqTO9Tnx6KxaBgWdkfl6xVe0VfDx7LOPhNkWTWDAz7V7cicRLJc9zyFLe6tZk424QR56BU8Q91J1oEqd2yzCTgVEiTRqUNHzFDyn648QRZSuTRzTUe6O64P_T_xEiLF-TDnka84l0R8OWf750Q6-hRtEJ0Xi92AsW8MqnNRkSN3NY/s320/halloween235.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh002kUgmTObdC2g0ePEv-q-g15kg9qPbIALjoXbVAqf2YoFhJgt7rEb87I3TRHIUKOK_U3hIGD_fvxU81ys5hNLEhC9wJvkcgdPyQ2gmORZhDExachEe1F_SS_zqobD9OF9rxwHBCqu6ut5dUAWzEDGkzk_4CruGGLDURhF47UbwfOh8kgD2H222jftBbP/s2048/halloween236.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh002kUgmTObdC2g0ePEv-q-g15kg9qPbIALjoXbVAqf2YoFhJgt7rEb87I3TRHIUKOK_U3hIGD_fvxU81ys5hNLEhC9wJvkcgdPyQ2gmORZhDExachEe1F_SS_zqobD9OF9rxwHBCqu6ut5dUAWzEDGkzk_4CruGGLDURhF47UbwfOh8kgD2H222jftBbP/s320/halloween236.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>And finally: Let's go D-backs!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVP6bWPi9AzkXIgUY3Q6u2RV-4mxS3qgwY3Kq0zfdvjqMZqYps8Z7ZWXZ1Dwa8zVZrHRx9HCl6i2njEaN9oMQPzuyiopK5MCsWOolioFt5XbCa9s-om6SudLAxjDObT7TfrDKGi7e0w728qCDjcFdIZ1RY7cLW2aOxK0UJxIRyuabqOJk7P404SRTuaSVj/s701/halloweendbacks23.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVP6bWPi9AzkXIgUY3Q6u2RV-4mxS3qgwY3Kq0zfdvjqMZqYps8Z7ZWXZ1Dwa8zVZrHRx9HCl6i2njEaN9oMQPzuyiopK5MCsWOolioFt5XbCa9s-om6SudLAxjDObT7TfrDKGi7e0w728qCDjcFdIZ1RY7cLW2aOxK0UJxIRyuabqOJk7P404SRTuaSVj/s320/halloweendbacks23.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-45348256566884983902023-10-27T03:10:00.001-07:002023-10-28T13:37:58.679-07:00THE BEAR MINIMUM<p>In theaters this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjESDRuZyrxJkIfEPbghrKBmaXJPVUBKJzDHRVsNZTxuLW_-MOXdd4upHhVb57ZN6P77d22K8rosTwv97-SGv1s3NTdRNCbn_FvnPRokXH-vixOtP0BiD4Xh8p6eWn37mLnCBb0VKUoEJy06PfHs2ndULVqA6z2laiR3SJUr5kbm3F50vMJYGiYB1yjaSOi/s390/fivenightsfreddysposter.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="247" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjESDRuZyrxJkIfEPbghrKBmaXJPVUBKJzDHRVsNZTxuLW_-MOXdd4upHhVb57ZN6P77d22K8rosTwv97-SGv1s3NTdRNCbn_FvnPRokXH-vixOtP0BiD4Xh8p6eWn37mLnCBb0VKUoEJy06PfHs2ndULVqA6z2laiR3SJUr5kbm3F50vMJYGiYB1yjaSOi/s320/fivenightsfreddysposter.jpeg" width="203" /></a></div><p><b><i>Five Nights at Freddy's</i>--</b>The Freddy's in question is Freddy Fazbear's, a defunct and long-shuttered pizza joint and game arcade of the Chuck E. Cheese or Peter Piper sort. Our down-on-his-luck hero Mike (Josh Hutcherson) accepts a job as a third-shift security guard there. Before long, he finds that the gone-to-seed animatronic animal characters featured in the place may still have some murderous life in them.</p><p>This chiller is based on a popular 2014 video game that has given rise to a series of sequel games, novels and other spin-offs. I've never played the games or read the books, so I can't remotely say if the movie is faithful to its source material, or if it should be.</p><p>On its own terms, it's okay at best. Like <i>Cocaine Bear</i> from earlier this year, it has a nice '80s throwback flavor in its look, editing and music. Director Emma Tammi manages a few amusingly staged sequences, and Freddy and the other animal characters, products of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, have the repellent horror of deliberate, calculated cuteness gone decrepit. They're legitimate additions to the stable of Universal Monsters.</p><p>But the script, by several hands including Tammi and game creator Scott Cawthon, feels overcomplicated. The premise, right down to the title, would seem to suggest a simple approach: A guy stuck in a bummer job, alone in a creepy setting, finds things getting creepier and creepier and more and more perilous every night, until at last he knows he's not imagining it; the cartoony animal robots really <i>are</i> trying to kill him. Five acts of rising tension.</p><p>Instead, Mike is given flashbacks concerning a family tragedy which he's still trying to solve via dream therapy--which means sleeping on the job--as well as a little sister (Piper Rubio) he's trying to keep custody of. This backstory is genuinely poignant and disturbing, to the point that it makes the overt spookhouse horror stuff seem trivial and unfrightening. It's like a <i>Goosebumps</i> movie was mixed with a grim <i>Dateline NBC</i> episode.</p><p>The smallish cast is capable; Rubio is a sweet presence as the sister and Matthew Lillard gets some laughs as the guy who offers Mike the job. It should be said that the former child and teen actor Hutcherson (from the <i>Hunger Games</i> flicks and <i>The Kids Are All Right</i>) shows impressive chops in this grown-up lead. He brings Mike an understated but believable aura of lifelong anguish. For me, again, he was too potent for the fun, silly shocker that this should have been.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2918474934970337247.post-80738302126634957112023-10-20T02:17:00.000-07:002024-01-16T16:09:25.000-08:00FLOWER MOON SHADOW<p>Opening this weekend:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBOnIEOZxPEL1FxWUNExuorutI4k7wjrxpx13VzP4giXTA__wzymq-qAa4qU7qEjhuCsJDVG-Hs_V0PngVoUfwTOYTpQUboCiwxnT9TCfGHGPLSC-CU1dm8Ip12HRAlox0nJ2Y2QemrtpPCTToJiQuHk_2Jv8VIQZnQpYwD1Iozp2Uu_j7QwJEqS88Dk1/s442/killersflowermoonposter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBOnIEOZxPEL1FxWUNExuorutI4k7wjrxpx13VzP4giXTA__wzymq-qAa4qU7qEjhuCsJDVG-Hs_V0PngVoUfwTOYTpQUboCiwxnT9TCfGHGPLSC-CU1dm8Ip12HRAlox0nJ2Y2QemrtpPCTToJiQuHk_2Jv8VIQZnQpYwD1Iozp2Uu_j7QwJEqS88Dk1/s320/killersflowermoonposter.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><p><b><i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>--</b>In the 1870s the Osage Nation settled on a large reservation in northeastern Oklahoma consisting of land thought to be of little value. But in the late 1890s, it was discovered to be sitting on an ocean of oil. Because the Osage had retained mineral rights to the land, by the early '20s they found themselves to be the wealthiest people, per capita, on the planet.</p><p>It need hardly be said that opportunistic white folks moved in fast to snatch this bounty through a variety of schemes, perhaps the vilest being the practice of marrying into an Osage family and then murdering the spouses and other heirs. Because the case was eventually broken by the nascent FBI, the story was briefly dramatized as one episode in <i>The FBI Story</i>, Mervyn LeRoy's 1959 chronicle (and whitewash) of the Bureau, starring James Stewart.</p><p>Martin Scorsese's account is not so brief. Scripted by Eric Roth and Scorsese from David Grann's 2017 book, the director's three-hour-plus <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is an epic nightmare, solemn and heartbroken yet charged up with a fierce and sweeping vitality. The style feels different from his previous work, yet somehow it's still unmistakably a Scorsese picture.</p><p>The focus here is on Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI vet who arrives in Osage country to work for his uncle, the cattle rancher William King Hale (Robert DeNiro). Ernest soon marries an Osage woman named Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and starts a family with her. A dull, malleable sort, Ernest seems to genuinely love Mollie, yet all the while they're married he's secretly serving as a thuggish henchman for the sanctimonious Bill Hale, who condescendingly professes love for the Osage while conspiring in the deaths of Mollie's mother and sisters and others in the community. Eventually and inevitably, Mollie also becomes a target of Bill's plans.</p><p><i>Killers</i> is shot in chilly shades of gray and sepia by Rodrigo Prieto, edited by Scorsese's longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker and moved along by a brilliant, pulsing score by Robbie Robertson, to whose memory the film is dedicated. Yet despite the presence of these cronies, this isn't business as usual. Scorsese doesn't give us the kinetic flashiness of his gangster sagas here. There's no darting, antic camerawork, no wall-to-wall narration.</p><p>But this isn't a staid historical drama either; the tone is feverishly immediate and chaotic, almost hallucinatory at times, and there's a tinge, especially in the scenes between DiCaprio and DeNiro, of deeply grim comedy. Scorsese's comic edge doesn't distance us from the horror, either, as perhaps it could be accused of doing in <i>Goodfellas</i> or <i>Casino</i>. The murders and other violence are presented with an angry bluntness, as nothing but sordid, wasteful and evil.</p><p>Essentially, what Scorsese gives us here is a vision of life in hell, not just a hell of butchery and menace, though this is amply depicted, but of the fractured spirit and toxic guilt generated by racial terrorism and piracy. The agony of this life is reflected in the superb performances of DiCaprio and the serene, gravely beautiful Lily Gladstone. DeNiro is at the top of his form as the genially satanic Bill Hale, and the enormous cast includes fine turns by Tantoo Cardinal, William Belleau, Cara Jade Myers, Brendan Fraser, Scott Shepherd, Sturgill Simpson, Katherine Willis and Barry Corbin, among many others. John Lithgow appears as a prosecutor; he's always welcome but gets less of a chance than usual to flex here.</p><p>There's also a strong supporting performance by Jesse Plemons as Tom White, the Texas Ranger turned G-Man who led the BOI (later FBI) investigation. The case was an early success for the Bureau, depicted here as a largely unknown agency at the time (Grann's book is subtitled <i>The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI</i>), and Plemons, speaking softly and politely but firmly from under his Stetson, lightens this bleak and grueling movie's mood just enough to get us through; we at last feel a dawning of hope for justice and salvation. He shows up just in time.</p><p>One more note: I was expecting, and hoping for, the usual afterword before the end credits, explaining what ultimately became of these people. Kudos to Scorsese for coming up with a more creative and witty way to present this information. It's an ingenious coda to this great and terrible American tale.</p>M.V. MOORHEADhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15398205168324140929noreply@blogger.com0