Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin, 2020) — B+
Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019) — C
The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) — A-
Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis, 1980) — A-
A Whisker Away (Junichi Sato, Tomotaka Shibayama, 2020) — C+
The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983) — B+
Summer of ’42 (Robert Mulligan, 1971) — C
The Devil All the Time (Antonio Campos, 2020) — B
An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009) — A-
Darktown Strutters (William Witney, 1975) — B
Bicycle Thieves (Vittoria De Sica, 1948) — A+
Romancing the Stone (Robert Zemeckis, 1984) — B+
Selah and the Spades (Tayarisha Poe, 2020) — B
The Book of Henry (Colin Trevorrow, 2017) – D+
I was truly surprised by Eurovision.
Will Ferrell’s last decade has mostly been over-the-top and loud performances. It can be difficult for a comedy film star to stay at the top for any extended period of time. Comedy is based on a couple of things, but primarily the unexpected and punching up. When audiences have seen a specific star’s persona on screen for over a decade it becomes harder and harder for them to surprise us. Likewise, when you’re a huge movie star, it’s almost impossible to punch up. Even if your character is low status within the context of a movie, we all still know that you’re Will Ferrell (or Jim Carrey or Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler). Ferrell didn’t necessarily become less funny in the 2010s, we just got over him.
Trailers and images from Eurovision made me think Ferrell was going to be really going big; an accent, ridiculous costumes, musical numbers. Plus, director David Dobkin has made some truly terrible movies, especially his last two — The Change-Up and The Judge. His idea of comedy is typically some form of misogyny mixed with some dirty bodily functions.
But I liked Eurovision. The movie isn’t really mocking in any way. Whereas in something like Blades of Glory or Talladega Nights you feel like the comedy is coming at least a little bit from putting down the sub-culture that they’re set in. The Eurovision Song Contest is kind of prime for that, and yet, it felt much less mean-spirited than I expected. Maybe it’s because Ferrell’s real-life wife of 20 years is from Sweden, but the approach to the absurdly campy pop song competition felt loving and knowledgeable.
Plus, Rachel McAdams. Roles really seem to dry up for Hollywood actresses once they hit 35. McAdams literally followed up her first Academy Award nomination (Best Supporting Actress for Spotlight in 2016) with the low budget British/Irish film Disobedience and the 2018 sleeper hit Game Night. To see her not only playing a major role in a big comedy, but a role that is equal in its importance, screen-time, and comedic opportunities to her male co-star, is surprising and refreshing. McAdams gets some of the biggest laugh lines in the movie; has her own wants, desires, and character arc; and is hilarious throughout.
The movie, of course, has flaws. For one, it’s way too long. It’s not over-stuffed with jokes, which works in its favor, but not when its stretched out over two hours. Plenty of the jokes don’t really land, but that’s a tradeoff I’m happy with when the emotional journey succeeds on a high enough level. Overall, it’s one I’ll probably return to in the same way I do mid-tier Ferrell’s like Blades of Glory, Kicking and Screaming, and Old School but not as often as the classics like Anchorman, Elf, and Talladega Nights.
- I didn’t understand much of Alita: Battle Angel, but it’s one of those that I respect even existing. Wonky, out-there science fiction that isn’t part of a pre-existing franchise. I know there are some kind of Alita IP but I am not at all familiar with it. Part of the problem with the movie, at least for me, is that it feels like a miscalculated mash-up of Rodriguez’s adult movies (like Machete, Drom Dusk till Dawn, Sin City) and his family-friendly far (like the Spy Kids movies and Sharkboy and Lavagirl).
- Warren Beatty in his prime is so incredibly watchable. He’s got a magnetic screen presence even when he’s playing someone scuzzy and haggard. In The Parallax View he’s a disgraced reporter hunting down a conspiracy and he’s got that thick, helmet-like head of hair and he’s still so good. He takes a very good post-Watergate ’70s paranoiac thriller into a great movie.
- Used Cars is a great comedy that works in such a rare way for comedy films. There’s slapstick and one-liners and all sorts of visual and verbal punchlines that land, and they’re all almost entirely situational or character-based. I love that. The movie takes a strange turn in its final 25ish minutes, where it used to be about this one thing and it’s all of a sudden its about something completely different and its like Zemeckis’ Mad Max entry. You’d think cool, tough, smug Kurt Russell wouldn’t work as a fast-talking shady car salesman, but it does.
- A Whisker Away is a cute anime about a high school girl who feels like she’s on the outside accidentally becoming a cat. I get the pun of the title — whisked away, kinda like Spirited Away but cats have whiskers so A Whisker Away — but I can’t believe they didn’t stick with the exact translation of the Japanese title, which is bonkers and poetic: Wanting to Cry, I Pretend To Be A Cat.
- Coppola basically had as successful of a decade in the ’70s as any director ever has. He directed four movies, all four of which are unimpeachable masterpieces — The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Pt. II, and Apocalypse Now. Three were nominated for Best Picture, with the snug going to The Godfather; he had three nominations and one win for Best Director. These four were collectively nominated for 33 Academy Awards. Films he wrote or produced but did not direct (Patton, American Graffiti, The Great Gatsby) were nominated for an additional 17. But his ’80s took a different turn, at least in terms of contemporary critical acclaim and cultural footprint. The Outsiders is one of those right at the beginning of his ’80s output. The movie is so melodramatic, so heartfelt. It’s about rough-and-tumble, unsupervised boys as they try and learn how to be softer. The MVP of this movie is Patrick Swayze’s handspring over a chain link fence on the way to the rumble.
- Going through my Letterboxd stats I realized that I had only seen two Robert Mulligan movies but had rated them both five stars. So I checked if my library had any of his movies and came home with Summer of ’42. I feel like this movie, like the other two I’ve seen — To Kill A Mockingbird and Man in the Moon — are real vibe movies, in that you really need to be on the same wavelength as the movie to get it. I was definitely not on the same wave with Summer of ’42. The atmosphere is beachy and nostalgic and pretty, but the dialogue and the performances were near-unwatchable and the movie’s plot was pretty listless and, ultimately, boring.
- The Devil All The Time is a wicked, gnarled, violent movie about faith and intergenerational trauma. It’s got a killer cast, and I love that the author of the book serves as the narrator, but it doesn’t really earn its 138-minute runtime, as the sprawling timeline doesn’t end up coming together as well as you’d hope, or painting a wide enough picture to feel truly mosaic-like.
- Sometimes I’m just so sure I’m going to like a movie before I’ve even seen it. I love coming-of-age movies and the poster for An Education really nails that feeling. Carey Mulligan is great, and I’m a big fan of screenwriter Nick Hornby’s novels. And so yes, I did love An Education. It has so much to say about childhood and dreaming and what we are taught vs. what we learn and school and growing up. But at the same time I was not at all expecting it to be about an age-inappropriate romance, so that kind of soured me a bit, but once I get over it, I settled in and it really is a beautiful movie.
- Darktown Strutters is a pretty unclassifiable film. Sometimes it’s a little incomprehensible and sometimes it’s a little cheesy, but there’s a real thriving spirit. It’s a blaxploitation sci-fi musical comedy featuring the leader of an all-female biker gang looking for her abortionist mother while facing off against the police and a Colonel Sanders-style rib magnate. There are soul, funk, and R&B inspired musical numbers, but they’re never sung by the main characters. There’s conspiracy and comedy and its a very disorienting but a very, very enjoyable watch.
- Bicycle Thieves is beautifully simple and simple beautiful. Post WWII, an out-of-work Italian man scores a life-saving job that requires him to use his bicycle, and almost immediately has his bike stolen from him. He and his son then traipse through Rome trying to find his bike. It feels real and grounded and is heartbreaking. I can understand why its considered such a classic.
- Romancing the Stone is an incredibly tight and a very fun movie. There’s really nothing I would change, though having watched it immediately after the first two Zemeckis movies, it doesn’t quite feel like its his voice. It’s Spielberg-y in that it feels like the romance version of an Indiana Jones movie, but it’s not quite as wacky and outright comedic as the first two — I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars — or the ones immediately following it — the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
- Selah and the Spades immediately introduces the visual style and cinematic aesthetics of its first-time director. The boarding school-as-gangster setting is wonderful and the movie nails the tone. The story peters out a little bit before the end but I still really liked it and am excited for Tayarisha Poe to make more movies.
- It’s weird because The Book of Henry has a horrible reputation. I went in expecting a complete trainwreck and it basically is but not really in the way I was expecting. Obviously Trevorrow is a competent visual director and can string some scenes together. But its Spielberg-acolyte tone and Oscar bait-y ambitions make the plot all the more bizarre feeling as you’re watching it. There’s an unbearably precocious child — who has more knowledge than even any adult ever could ever have — and then it gets worse from there. There’s child molestation, a complex murder plot (or at least a murder plot that they tried to convince me is complex), and the main character dies of a sudden brain tumor less than halfway through the movie. I do think there’s something interesting about a child who is smart enough to understand how the world should work but struggles to figure out how to deal with a problem when the solutions aren’t working the way that they should. But The Book of Henry does not explore that in any meaningful way. The movie was so off the rails by the end that I was actually frustrated she didn’t just shoot Hank Schrader in the head.