What movies have you seen and anything about movies discussion

[westendboy]

A few quick musings of 4 we have seen at home and at the theatres.



By now everyone’s social media feed would have been swarmed by the endless discourse surrounding Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story and I doubt I can add anything new to it. This will be just my 2-cent’s take on the third installment in Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series take on infamous killers.




Coming into the 3rd season of the show, my general knowledge of Ed Gein’s crime would be gleaned from how he had inspired cultural touchstone movies like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs. So I know I will see chainsaws, harvesting of human skin and the sexualisation of the main character. Going in, I also know the creators will take a lot of creative liberties to make a show about an infamous killer entertaining.

Herein lies one of interesting dichotomy of human behaviour or taste if you prefer – we should all go up in arms against evil human behaviour of infamous killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Edward Gein, but yet we are fascinated by the macabre as long as evil doesn’t happen in our backyard. It’s sort of like looking at a bloody crime scene. We know nightmares will haunt us but we still want to drink in the ghastly sight with our eyes. The creators of the show definitely know this human impulse and they walk a tight rope to present the crimes and the deplorable human behaviour in a compelling manner without stepping on toes by celebrating the killers. They did it with the first 2 seasons but I am not so sure with this latest one.

Ed Gein’s schizophrenia is primed for maximum creative detours till a point there is always a tussle in my mind whether what is transpiring on screen is fact or fiction. After a while I hardly bothered anymore and just drank in everything, but I must say if you are a true crime buff you are going to be so pissed at the disrespect the creators did here. Some detours are pretty cool like seeing Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins talking at length why the former chose the latter as the lead. But this detour goes a full left turn making the story feel unfocused. Why do we need Anthony Perkins’ struggle with his sexuality taking so much screen time or having Hitchcock talking with his wife about what he plans to do next after Psycho. There are others like the one with Tobe Hooper that also impedes on the core narrative. But I must say the one on Silence of the Lambs is so cool. I just felt the creators want to do something different with the third season and they dipped their fingers in too many pies.

When I first heard Charlie Hunnam is cast as Ed Gein, I shook my head. How can Jax Teller of Sons of Anarchy even achieve this impossible and thankless role, but I take my words back and my full respect goes to him. He brought the killer to life in an all out performance.

All in all I enjoyed this latest season but I would rank it #2 with the Dahmer one in #1. At this rate Ryan Murphy is going can tackle Hitler, Hussein and Bin Laden and make us sympathetic towards them., God forbid. (3.5/5)

I am convinced the format you watch Tron: Ares will determine how much you will enjoy it. I saw this in IMAX 3D and it was absolutely mind blowing. Sure, I know the critic in me would ravage the story and plot and give kitsch lines like how it was as flimsy as a floppy disk or the storytelling is full of glitches, but hey I go into a Tron movie not expecting to see a Shakespearean tragedy, I just want to have fun and fun is what I got.

Come on, sentient AI being who develops empathy? We have seen the idea dozens of times. The writer took care in linking the Tron of the past to the future, and it opens new avenues to approach the franchise. The pulsating music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is stupendous. The visual effects with regard to the light chasing motorcycles is just wow. The 3D effects is just top class and I am guessing only 4DX can give the IMAX 3D a run for its money. So what if the villain is one-note or the female character is a little perfunctory or the plot machinations offer no surprises, it entertained me and for 2 hours I felt like a giddy little boy again in The Grid. (3.5/5)

I will clue you in on how I find out about good films. My FB feed always shows me those Criterion closet videos in which celebrities get invited into the Criterion closet and they get to talk about movies that hold a warm spot in their heart and they also get to take the movie home. Sometimes I get sweet dreams of me in the closet and I get to take many movies back home and in every dream it is always different movies. Anyway, these next two musings are films mentioned a few times in these videos and I seek them out for a watch.



Mikey and Nicky bombed at the box office in 1976 and I am not surprised. It is a gangster film like no other in that everything happens in the course of one night and it’s quite a talky film. It is written and directed by Elaine May who gives an interesting female take on a gangster genre film.

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk are cast together as small-time mobsters whose lifelong relationship has turned sour. Nicky (Cassavetes) is holed up in a hotel after the boss he stole money from puts a hit out on him. Terrified, he calls on Mikey (Falk) whom he thinks can save him.

The spit-fire dialogue is laced with satire and shades of comedy and always feels authentic. There is a kind of improv vibe to it. Over the course of a night we get to know Nicky and Mikey, and this doesn’t happen often – I loathe Nicky. He is one detestable man and I actually feel he deserves the hit put out on him. Yet, the last scene still puts a lump in my throat. (3.5/5)



Paper Moon gets mentioned in those Criterion closet videos a lot. You will notice in these videos the guests talked about Paper Moon with such passion and passion, as they say, is contagious.

When Moze (Ryan O’Neal) is unexpectedly saddled with getting the 9-year-old Addie (Tatum O’Neal) to relatives in Missouri after the death of her mother, his attempt to dupe her out of her money backfires, and he’s forced to take her on as a partner. Swindling their way through farm country, the pair is nearly done in by a burlesque dancer and an angry bootlegger.

Those people in those Criterion videos were absolutely right. This film crackles with an indelible energy and it is tied up to the Kansas dustbowl during the Depression. The B&W cinematography is the perfect setup for the story.

Tatum O’Neal at age 10 became the youngest Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner in 1974 and she absolutely deserved it. It didn’t hit me at first that her chemistry with Ryan O’Neal is so natural. A quick read up on IMDb made me realise they are father and daughter.

It’s hard not to fall in love with Paper Moon. It’s the perfect marriage of every cinematic element that makes a great movie a classic for the ages. I especially love the economical writing that is without long passages of exposition. Just like the movie still above, one look of stoicism on Addie’s mien, a stiletto focus on Moze’s face, coupled with the stark but gorgeous B&W cinematography is enough to convey how hard life is. I love watching how their relationship develops. One example would be a simple scene where Moze asks how much money they got. “$600!” comes the reply from Addie who has previously said she is just sticking around till she gets her $200 back. That is a brilliant moment in that you know they are in it for the long run without needless dialogue.

This is a classic and my heartfelt thanks goes out to all those celebrities who recommended this and how the movie made them want to be a part of the movie industry. I can’t recommend this enough. (5/5)

 

[westendboy]

Quickies: Wake in Fright, Barbarian, Stolen, Songs of Paradise, Three Sisters, The Perfect Neighbour

My aim in life is to watch all the best films of the world but sometimes there are films that totally escape my attention because they don’t get a lot of love. So my interest is piqued when random …

reelthoughtsfromageek.wordpress.com

 

[westendboy]

The first two are still showing at the theatres, the third is a recommendation and the last one just ended its run. I would say all of them deserve your attention.



No Other Choice received numerous rave reviews and I am not surprised because Park Chan-Wook seldom ever misses at this point of his career. His work reads like a Haruki Murakami novel – there are always digressions from the main plot-line and other-worldly submission to weird visions. This has become his signature and his blend of ultra-violence and dark comedy is a potent concoction. This, unfortunately is not top-tier Park Chan-Wook, but I dare you to find a better film this year that skewers the prescribed idea of the perfect family unit, the perceived masculinity, the corporate work hire culture and frankly, the state of the world itself.

The opening scene is one of a beautiful family: You Man-Su (Lee Byung-hun) is grilling eels while his wife Miri (Son Ye-jin), her son from a previous marriage and their daughter (a cello prodigy) look on. Completing the family are two Labradors. He will soon be made redundant by the paper company he works for and he will be desperate to land a job in the paper industry before his severance pay runs out. He soon hatches a cockamamie idea – what if he sets up a phoney job recruitment ad to see who are the competition he faces and then he eliminates the competition giving himself a beeline to the top job.

This is one man’s crazy journey to reclaim his manhood in the eyes of his family. It is also a clever critique of capitalism and how our self-worth is tied to our jobs, especially for men. Man-Su wouldn’t need to go through the extreme if he picks up another job but pride always has a way of stepping up and screams in your face that you are better than this. The story doesn’t just make Man-Su work through the chain of better men for the job the main focus, it also goes off-tangent in exploring how the family dynamics changes when Miri brings home the dole, side-plots with their son and daughter also come into play. The ending doesn’t feel like a cautionary warning but a statement that the future for mankind is a bleak one when AI starts to invade every facet of society.

Perhaps it is because of all these side-plots that I feel the satire is not biting and everything feels overly done when it should respect the audience’s intelligence to connect the dots. Still, this is almost a masterpiece in the same breath as Oldboy and The Handmaiden. I just felt a tighter edit would bring this into Park Chan-Wook’s top tier works of art. (4/5)



Good Boy is about a loyal dog who moves to a rural family home with his owner, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows. As dark entities threaten his human companion, the brave dog must fight to protect the one he loves most.

This is a cleverly made movie, the story is told from the dog Indy’s point of view and all the heavy lifting is done by him. The low angles, the play with shadows and eerie sound effects, all served up a wonderful smorgasbord. The star of the movie is Indy – every wag of its tail, twitch of his eyes, flapping of his ears, give the story much emotional heft and weight. All the human faces are conveniently kept in half shadows keeping your sole focus on Indy.

The movie is short but even at 80 over minutes I felt its runtime because the second act started to get repetitive with no pay-off. The story also feels a little too linear with little twists and turns, so other than the dog, none of the characters feel explored. There is also a couple of scenes that didn’t make sense like how the first scene, which is essentially the ending, doesn’t coalesce with the last scene in the movie. It gave me a narrative itch I couldn’t square away. That said this is still a superb exercise in creativity. (3/5)

10 minutes into The Stranger (2022), my mind told me this is an exercise in style over substance and the director has made the mistake of thinking atmosphere is the storytelling. Then 5 minutes later, a little narrative bomb exploded and I started to see the edges in every jigsaw piece and how they start to fit together.

If you want things with clarity and every element tied up in a neat bow, this movie isn’t it. The storyteller gives you nuggets but at the same time he withholds important elements. Clearly it is the work of a confident director with the upmost respect for the audience.

I like the casting of Sean Harris, an actor with a unique aura and his raspy half-whispery voice is a character in itself but I must stress that you will better appreciate the movie with subtitles. The movie has atmosphere to boot and doesn’t do the usual cliches. If it’s done by Hollywood you will know the studio heads will say “we need to a flashback scene of the crime”, but not here. Through mere effective dialogue we recreate the terrible crime in our head.

This is a superb slow-burn of a crime thriller but I wouldn’t say it’s for everyone. (3.5/5)


HBO’s Task just ended its run and the characters are swimming in my head, a testament that the writing is stellar. This isn’t surprising because the writer is one Brad Ingelsby who wrote Mare of Easttown.

A Philadelphia-based FBI agent and single dad (Mark Ruffalo), who is going through family drama, is put in charge of a task force to end a string of violent robberies undertaken by an unassuming family man whose wife left him with 2 kids (Tom Pelphrey).

The show didn’t suck me in with flashy dialogue, big twist or jaw-dropping set-pieces. It did it with an ensemble of actors caught in some Greek tragedy. Even the crime committed is illogical and downright amateurish. It’s like the antagonists don’t know the rule that one should never sh*t where one eats. The story is populated by damaged and hurt people and hurt people hurt people. The story doesn’t have any major twist and it builds towards the inevitable. By virtue of its lack of mystery to be solved I can’t say this betters Mare of Easttown but it doesn’t mean it’s not compelling. The climax is essentially the penultimate episode, but they reserved the best for the last episode which rounds up the themes of forgiveness and renewal in an emphatic way. I dare say Ruffalo and Pelphrey will earn Best Actor nods at the Emmy next year because they are so strong in their performances. It’s not top tier TV but it comes really close. (3.5/5)

 

[westendboy]

Since it was Halloween we saw a couple of horror movies. What do you think of my horror shrine?



Nothing like putting us in the mood for the nasty eh. My wifey is never in the mood for horror movies but when I go the full nine yards to set the stage, she is so touched she couldn’t say no. We started with Martyrs, the French original, that I have heard so much about and have never seen.

Martyrs (2008) is about a young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

This has got to be one of the most disturbing and harrowing movies I have seen and this isn’t for everyone. Even if you are a horror fan you might feel some of your buttons being pressed making you feel very uncomfortable; you might even find out you have buttons you never knew you have. I would even hazard that it will make you question your religious beliefs.

I will just give you a brief rundown so you can decide if you want to get tormented. For me it is simple – I want to watch all the great horror films and this is definitely a great one but your mileage might vary. It starts off with a young girl Lucie escaping from her unseen tormentors. The terror in her eyes and her entire being is palpable. She is soon institutionalised and befriends a girl Anna who is also a victim of physical abuse. Fast forward a few years and both girls have grown up. Lucie takes a shotgun to a family because she is sure they were the ones who had tortured her and proceeded to let them eat some lead. Anna then comes to help bury the bodies and then the story goes somewhere you will never expect. I need to tell you the next hour plus is all manner of torture and abuse, more than a human being can take. For the audience it will be the most sustained physical abuse and mental torture you will probably witness.

If you can get through this you will realise human beings are the worst. You don’t need ghosts and demons to show you all manner of monstrosity, throughout history human beings are the best exponents of cruelty. It is easy to say this movie is all splatter and gore, but I tend to feel this movie has a higher purpose. It makes you question your core beliefs and the idea of martyrs who have the ability to go beyond death and see what’s on the other side. The direction is splendid and doesn’t pull any punches, the acting is very committed, the writing is balls to the wall and the tone is so unapologetic. This is a horror movie that sets a standard that all other horror movies should aspire to. (4/5)




Wolf Creek (2005) is about three backpackers who travel into the Australian Outback only to find themselves stranded at Wolf Creek crater. Once there, they are encountered by a bushman, Mick Taylor, who offers them a ride back to his place. Little do the three know that their adventure into the Outback would be a complete nightmare.

The movie takes its own sweet time getting to the meaty and bloody part. I know the purpose – it is to make you empathise with the three backpackers before they are embroiled in a world of pain. But for me these scenes are so nondescript and uninteresting, they do not serve the story. That said, there is a realism to everything and friends do shoot the wind with random conversations like what they do. I do like how the outback was shot and you can feel the stark magnificence and also how fraught with danger it is.

When the world of pain comes it is relentlessly unapologetic. Those little triumphs, small reversals and bitter fails, all hit like a tidal wave. John Jarratt playing the psychotic killer is a revelation – he offers no quarter, no mercy and only a cynical smile as he immerses the victims in a sea of pain. Yet, he isn’t scary in the beginning and you start to feel sorry for him for being so lonely in the Outback. Of course, all of it is a ruse. The torture scenes are inventive and the vibe is excruciating. I really didn’t think Australia can come out with such a genuinely horrific movie and I meant it with the highest praise. (3.5/5)

Every year I will watch all the Best Picture Oscar nominees before the ceremony. This year I failed because the crop of films in this category is weak compared to other years. So few game changers, only one defiantly brave film and some entries felt like they are there to fulfil a LBGT quota. I would even say there are two I could barely finished and one I just plain gave up after a pretentious 15 minutes. Yes, Anora is a wildly entertaining movie but Best Picture, I don’t feel it, very 6-7 to me. Anyway, I was left with one movie that I have not seen, I’m Still Here, which I couldn’t get my hands on until now.

In 1971, in Rio de Janeiro, former congressman Rubens Paiva is a family man and engineer, who lives with his wife Eunice Paiva and their five children at Avenida Delfim Moreira, in front of the Leblon Beach. One afternoon, several men arrive at their home and ask him to go with them to a “deposition” to the authorities while three of them stay with his family. Then they take Eunice and her teenage daughter Eliana with hoods to give a statement at an unknown place. Eunice remains arrested for several days while listening to the torture of other people. She returns home, moves with her family to São Paulo and never sees her husband again.

I like this almost from the get-go. A profound sense of grace and honesty permeates the movie without resorting to high histrionics. It’s a story that is familiar to all and I am pretty sure every country in a certain trying historical time has a story like this to tell. Fernanda Torres disappears into her role and she is very compelling to behold. Her righteous sense of justice points true north but eventually it is how she holds the family together through the ordeal that is amazing.

The movie could have ended at the scene when the government gave her the death certificate of Rubens Paiva but it didn’t. The story goes forward many years later to show how the family continues to be a tightly knitted one and I find the falling action scene full of grace and quiet power. I also like the theme of how a photograph can capture a moment in time with everyone’s emotions at that point the photo was taken. This is not a photo taken with a phone but with a camera and with everyone posing for it. Somehow this made me think back to those good old days when my family would go to the photo shop to get our family photo taken to commemorate a great occasion. We go through the hassle of dressing up, posing and sometimes a rehearsal to get that photo taken. These days everyone takes photo-taking for granted because of our phones. (4/5)


We saw Predator: Badlands at the theatre last night and it is simply the best Predatormovie since the original. A friend was asking me if his 11 year-old kid can see this because he requested it. I texted him that there is not a single drop of blood and not one vulgar word being uttered. Come to think of it, isn’t it amazing a Predator movie doesn’t have any of these ingredients. Baffling isn’t it? But yet it worked. I was smiling like a 11 year-old kid all over again. This should be renamed Predator: Badass!

Prior going into the theatre I didn’t have high expectations. I like Prey and Killer of Killers, but the modus operandi seems to be putting a Predator in various historical times and see how it interacts with the human beings of that era. First time is pretty cool, second time still cool but if Dan Trachtenberg does it a third time I am not sure anymore. By this logic we can have Cowboy Predator, Gladiator Predator, Civil War Predator and the list goes on. Thankfully, Trachtenberg doesn’t tread the same path.

Surprise, surprise, this Predator has feelings and unlike all the other movies in the franchise, the protagonist is a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi). The story is established from the get-go that Dek is the runt in the family and the dad wants him dead. He is saved by his brother and he vows he will earn his spurs by killing Kalisk, some monster on planet Genna, and earn his place in the clan. On the godforsaken planet he is joined by a half-bodied, synthetic (synth) Weyland-Yutani being named Thia (Elle Fanning).

This movie breaks its mold firmly established in the other movies by making it family friendly. If you are a purist you are going to hate it. The thing is I am a Predator purist and I thought Trachtenberg has managed to do the impossible – Disney-fying it but yet never stinge on the violence.

The movie has a rite of passage vibe, a coming-of-age theme and definitely adheres to the odd couple theme. Thia talks non-stop earning the irk of Dek and before you forget this is a Disney movie, along the way a cute creature drops in and Thia names it Buddy. This is when you know it’s a Disney movie.

Somehow Trachtenberg manages to sell the movie to me with some inventive action set-pieces and world-building with planet Genna. Some of the stuff are amazingly cool like the minefield with those cactus like plants. All in all, the movie expands the franchise to new possibilities and I can’t wait for the next installment. (4/5)