I watched Dune months ago, in the theatre, and I wish I could have seen it again this week, closer to the other movies. I liked it a lot when I first watched it. The music was great, the sound was great, the production design was so awesome that made me put pen to paper and start writing down notes on effective worldbuiding... I had some problems with it though, particularly with the way Jessica Atreides was adapted and played. I didn't think it would win Best Picture or Best Script, but it's awesome to see a science fiction film in the Oscars, and I was happy to see it crushing a lot of other categories :)
Belfast
Once upon a time, I thought Belfast was certainly going to be the top contender in the Oscar race. the premise, setting and black-and-white aesthetics were the main draws to me. The protagonist is Buddy, and young boy whose family shares a street in Belfast with Protestant and Catholic families, during the Troubles. His parents marriage is strained, on account of his father working in England most of the time, his grandfather is ill and a group of Protestant loyalists has been targeting both Catholic families in their neighborhood and Protestant families who refuse to align with "the cause". Ah, and Buddy has been working hard to get a place next to his crush in class, a little girl named Catherine who's always the first in the class.
The thing I liked the most about this movie was the attention to detail. For instance, at some point, later in the movie, a particular type of biologic washing powder becomes relevant for the plot. Earlier in the movie there's an advert for said product on the telly. And there's a moment when they're watching Star Trek also, which was super cool (and extremely interesting considering the contrast between the kind of future Star Trek portrays and what was happening just outside their front door).
The thing I didn't like is that I found the black and white aesthetic confusing because, although it was beautiful, it made the movie seem like it was taking place way earlier than 1969. It could be that it was just my lack of familiarity with what life looked like in Northern Ireland back then, but my impression was that this movie would have been better in colour. Nevertheless, there were beautiful acting moments, and the action scenes were pretty cool.
What do you think would happen if someone discovered that there was a comet the size of mount Everest on a collision course with our planet, scheduled to impact in a little more than six months? Would it be somewhat like Armageddon? Would the Nations of the World come together to hatch a plan, blowing up the comet or deflecting its trajectory, and in so doing save billions of live? Well,... Maybe in the nineties...
When Doctor Randall Mindy and PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky discover a vast comet on a collision course with our planet, in Don't look up, things happen a little differently. They go straight to the present of the United states, but she is more concerned with the next primaries than with anything the scientists might have to say. After trying to make a couple of news-anchors/morning-talk-show-hosts/comedians grasp the gravity of the situation, Kate Dibiasky became a meme (and it didn't help that the comet was christened with her name). Actual news about the comet don't even gain traction for the longest time.
When news about the comet finally gain the internet, the reactions are mixed. Several teams independently confirm Dr. Mindy and Kate's calculations, but a vast number of people don't believe the comet is real. The ones that do do little more than posting rants on social media or organizing a mega concert about the whole thing. When the president's attitude shifts it's not because she finally realized the gravity of the situation but because she needs something to deflect attention in the media since her supreme court nominee turns out to be a porn-star with explicit pictures of her in his phone. They begin to build a plan to save the world, but the billionaire who owns this movie's fictional version of a giant tech company interferes to push his own risky and commercial plan. That's when attitude shifts again and several groups of people take the side of the comet, supporting all the jobs the comet's gonna bring!
Don't look up is not a perfect movie, by any means. It doesn't have the aesthetics of Belfast or The Power of the dog, nor does it have the grandiose production design of Dune, Westside Story. But it is the movie I was rooting for it this year, though, because in spite of it's imperfections, it's a great script, with great acting, and it's the movie we all need right now. A satire of the absurd times in which we're living, with a type of humor I had only seen before in The Orville. It pokes fun at everything that's ridiculous and absurd in our way of life, from our obsession with social media to the extent to which every debate has become political in one way or another. And it does it perfectly.
The president for instance, is not clearly a democrat or a republican. She conducts concert-like rallies wearing her version of a MAGA hat, but in her office there's a picture of her hugging Bill Clinton. And that's the point. We don't know which party she's from because we don't need to. Because there's no difference between them, in a lot of fundamental ways, and presenting her in this manner doesn't alienate half the audience. Empty-headed mega rich pop stars, social media journalists, frivolous newscasters and a condescending billionaire also make an appearance, all of these fixtures of what has become of our "roaring 20s" culture.
When you stop to think about it, it's actually likely that if these sort of news broke out, a large percentage of the population wouldn't believe a comet even exists. It has nothing to do with the science, and everything to do with everyone's politics.
The acting deserves applause. Leonardo di Caprio in particular. He plays Dr. Mindy, an introverted University professor, and at some point in the story, when someone from the TV team tells him he needs "media training", I caught myself nodding and stopping to realize: OMG, this is Leonardo di Caprio! He actually looks like he does need media training! How is that possible?
The thing about this movie is that it tells me there are others out there who also see how absurd the world has become. It makes me feel not alone. And frankly, I wish we had more of it. In my mind, we need this sort of satire to become a genre.
When I started watching the Westside story, I thought I would care for it very much at all. I knew I would like it (it doesn't take much for me to enjoy a musical), but I didn't think it would be particularly good, especially because I wasn't sure the musical even needed a new iteration. After all, the 1961 movie nails the singing, and I really like the aesthetics - it's probably the one "regular movie" that reminds me of Star Trek's settings and colours.
I was pleasantly surprised though. The aesthetics of this new version are very different, but it looks great, still. most of the actors look like they just stepped out of a time machine, specially Riff, who was probably my favourite of the mix (and someone I could definitely see in the Best Supporting Actor nomination roster). Some of the songs were switched around/given to different characters, and the choreography overshadowed the singing in a few places, but in my mind, at this time, it worked out fine.
I think it was particularly clever not to modernize this story. The original movie is a tragic love story between a white boy and a puerto rican girl, during a boom in immigration in the fifties. It would have been very easy to switch things up a bit, and address modern immigration issues through the story. The original even has a tomboy/non-binary/trans character (Anybodys), a character whose plight is taken in an entirelly new way by a 2022 audience than it would have been by 1961 viewers! Actually, when I first hear about this new adaptation, I was sure they would modernize it. I am glad they didn't though, because doing so would probably only alienate half the audience, depending on how different issues were tackled. Instead, the story was allowed to breath and be itself... It's much better this way.
The fact that it didn't change much from the original though begs the question: did we really need another version? I can't answer that. And I don't think it matters. The direction is so good - has such personality - that even telling the same story, the film felt very different, and I can't fault anything about the direction at all. If I'm telling the truth, I have to admit I had a little bit of hope that Spielberg would win up until the last moment during the ceremony.
CODA has one of the most interesting premises of all best picture nominees this year. It tells the story of Ruby, a teenage girl in her final year of high school who's the only hearing member of her family. Her parents, Frank and Jackie and older brother Leo are deaf. Actually, when Ruby first started school, she spoke like a deaf person and to this day the resident mean girls still poke fun at her for that. She balances school work with helping her family at the boat: her father and brother are fishermen and she works with them, being responsible, among other things, for answering radio signals and executing other tasks that require hearing. The work is tough, and she has every expectation to continue doing it after she graduates.
In the first week of class, when she's picking electives, her best friend is trying to help Ruby pick a low-energy class, since she already has so much work. But when her crush signs up for choir Ruby decides to do the same. She actually enjoys singing and her teacher believes she has a chance at a scholarship. But trying to make her family understand her connection to the music is a challenge much bigger than any she has encountered before.
This movie is sweet. I wasn't rooting for it to win (like I explained, I was rooting for Don't Look Up), but I enjoyed it enormously. The subplots were beautifully interwoven (I particularly like her conflict with her brother and the disconnect between them both when neither was successful in communicating what they were actually thinking) and there were some very clever scenes - such as the scene in Ruby's presentation at school when we enter her father's perspective and the sound is cut. Troy Kotsur actually looked like a fisherman in every way, and the things he was able to convey without words were... Astonishing.
It turned out to be the winner of this year's Academy Awards. Definitely worth a watch.
My one word for the Power of the Dog is: surprising. I was so surprised when I watched this! And I shouldn't have been. In retrospect, all the clues leading towards what was going to happen were there from the beginning, and this is how the best mysteries are made.
The setting is rural Montana. Phil Burbank is a loud and rugged ranch owner. George, his brother (and also owner of the ranch) is a quieter fellow, who seems to prefer a suit and tie to leather chaps and cowboy spurs. Rose Gordon is a widow, working at a nearby inn. Peter, the skinny teenager who makes paper roses alone is his room is her son. These are the protagonists in this story.
Nothing however is simple. Phil, the cowboy is also a graduate of Classics from the University, knowledgeable in Latin, Greek and a few modern languages (he slips a little bit of French and Italian here and there), and a proficient banjo player. Rose used to be a movie theater pianist, and her first husband, a doctor, did from suicide years earlier. George, who becomes involved with Rose, doesn't understand the difference between the tunes played in a theater and the playing necessary at a dining party. Peter straddles the line between effeminate and odd, though for all his apparent sensibility, his father used to say, in his words, that he wasn't kind enough. In addition to them four is a fifth protagonist, Bronco Henry, the cowboy who taught the Burbanks everything they know about managing the ranch, dead when the story start, though still very much a presence in their house, or at least in Phil's mind.
When George decides to marry Rose, their lives are thrown up in the air. Phil is convinced she's only with his brother for their money. She is driven to drinking. George doesn't seem to realize the extent to which his home is being torn apart. Peter is taunted by Phil and by the other men. The story unravels from this confusing beginning, each character opening up a little bit more with each passing scene and each of their lives becoming more entangled in the others. It was interesting, the western setting was compelling, and my only complain about it is that I wanted to know more about all of them, and one of them in particular, but the story had me mourning my favourite character and asking myself: "what on earth is going on?"
I can't fault this movie in any way... Great direction, great cinematography, great acting, great sound, great soundtrack... This story is based on a book and that book has climbed to the top of my reading wish list.
Were Gary and Alana first met, they were in school. He was a fifteen year old actor getting ready for his year book photo. She was a twenty-five year old working for the camera team. She offered him a mirror, he boldly asked her out. She told him he was just a kid, he went home and told his little brother that was they girl he would marry one day.
The movie is set in 1973. I had to look that up. Not because it didn't look like it but because it looked like it too much. It wasn't chock-full of pop culture references or casual mentions of what year it was. Instead, one could tell by the haircuts, the clothes, the way they talk I suppose. At times, it felt to me like it could have been a movie actually shot in the 70s when all of those little details would have been routine.
Gary is a teen actor, and a rather entrepreneurial young man. He spends a lot of his time working on some big idea, from a water bed selling business to a pin ball palace. He is a regular at a local restaurant, and orders "two cokes" for himself and his twenty-five year old companion with the confidence of a grown man ordering something with alcohol in it. Alana on the other hand is much more withdrawn. She hates her job, but doesn't really know what to do next, and there's nothing and nobody in her life to inspire a change of course. Until she met Gary that is.
Most traditional coming of age stories focus on teenage characters getting through a bucket list of predetermined character-forming moments: first kiss, first cigarette, first time having sex, first time getting high... It can make it seem sometimes that there is only one way to become an adult, and that every stop on this road must take place before one goes to college. But I don't think life is actually like that. And it's cool that neither is this film. When Gary and Alana kiss - oh, yes, there is a kiss - we don't know if it's the first kiss for either of them. Because it doesn't matter. We don't know if either of them is a virgin and neither of them makes a big fuss about alcohol or drugs. Alana isn't even the right age for a coming-of-age movie! She is twenty five! She's a woman, by all measures, but she is also a girl. The youngest of three sisters, still living in her childhood room in her parent's home, without a relationship in sight. Trying to make it look like she knows what she's doing when someone offers her a martini in a restaurant.
Licorice Pizza is a sweet story. It's not a straightforward romance, though romance is a big part of it. Neither it is a coming of age story, at least not in any traditional way. It features two protagonists, each with their own character arts. Their paths split apart at times and come back together again, not in a space of several years, as some stories do, but rather in what looked like a single summer in the San Fernando Valley (The same place where everything in The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai happen!). Instead of a single down moment at the three-quarter mark, both characters experience a lot of ups and downs, sometimes together, other times apart. It felt... real. A sweet-flavored, smile-inducing, summery reality.
Also, the music was pretty good.
This is the best movie in this year's selection. It was not going to win, which I get, after all the Academy Awards are supposed to focus on movies produced by members of the Academy. But it's the best.
I'm not even a Murakami fan. It's not that I dislike him, but I never read any of his books. I actually haven't been able to connect with Japanese literature yet. I read a couple of Kawabata books, Mishima's Forbidden Colours and Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter and couldn't connect to any of those. But I am definitely gonna read the short story in which this movie was based.
The characters in this movie unfold slowly, like blossoming flowers, over the course of the story, and although the movie is long (just short of 3 hours long actually), every single minute of it feels necessary. None of the characters are simple. As they unfold and get their stories interwoven, we get to know them and the both make sense and don't make sense at the same time. They are real. And much like real people, you realize it's pointless to judge them or try and put them into small boxes. They are complex. multidimensional. Alive.
In the beginning I was so full of myself. I was like "so obvious, the characters start silent, then they're gonna spend so much time in the same car that they'll eventually gonna start talking to each other." But the movie is so well crafted that by the time the characters start talking I was eager, hungry even for them to start, and every interaction, every work and look and touch was like... like having water for the first time after a long walk in the desert.
Best movie in the year. Glad it got the international feature award.
Okay, this movie had a lot of potential to be my number one favourite this year. I love the circus. Both going to the circus and reading/watching stories about it, and I even managed to write an important work project around Tod Browning's 1932 Freaks once. So I was excited for this movie.
My biggest criticism of it though, is that the first half hour of the movie felt like a big prologue. In my opinion it would have been better to chop that into smaller parts and deliver it as flashbacks throughout the story. There would be collateral damage - it's mainly in the beginning that we actually get to see circus life - but the story would have been better for it. I still enjoyed it though... If it was up to me, we would have a circus movie every year.
King Richard
I have nothing to say about this one... It's a good movie, though it's not my style, but after what happened last night... i got absolutely nothing to say about this.
Great reviews! I think this was a good year for The Academy Awards despiste some absences like Spencer, Benedetta and Titane.
ReplyDeleteAbout King Richards: after The movie i was planning to buy an international copy for my collection, but I gave up after The Will Smith's inccident. Maybe Ill get it in The future in some sale!
Maybe you could pick a director to make some posts in this awesome blog. Just an idea of course. Keep it up The good work!