Cuties (Maïmouna Doucouré, 2020) — B+
Downhill (Jim Rash, Nat Faxon, 2020) — D+
Love, Guaranteed (Mark Steven Johnson, 2020) — C
48 Hrs. (Walter Hill, 1982) — A-
Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) — A
Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) — A-
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001) — B+
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962) — A+
Schizopolis (Steven Soderberg, 1996) — B
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988) — A
Putney Swope (Robert Downey Sr., 1969) — B+
Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983) — A
Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968) — B+
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, 1969) — B+
I finally decided to wade into watching the French 2020 film Cuties. It’s a movie that’s gained some attention based on the response to Netflix’s marketing campaign for it, which seemed to play up the sexualization of the young girls in the movie as a selling point rather than anything with any nuance in the context of an entire movie. Truthfully, Netflix should have been called out and criticized for the way the movie was advertised in America, but the movie itself and the filmmakers deserve none of that scorn. This is a coming-of-age movie about an 11-year-old black Muslim girl growing up as an immigrant family in Paris and trying to find some sort of balance between her conservative and religious home life and the pressures of assimilation, the rush to grow up, and the sexualization of young girls in media and society in general. Instead of ignoring the way the distribution company treated the film and taking it at face value, some bad-faith actors, including lawmakers in Texas and any right-wing Qanon-ready sycophants who like to scream their heads off about perceived pedophilia over any action taken towards actual sex crimes, have decried the movie, called for a boycott of Netflix, and made a general stink about the portrayal of children succumbing to societal pressures. This is like if we all boycotted Avengers: Endgame for being pro-genocide. This movie is not pedophiliac. It is very clearly the opposite, in fact. It goes without saying that depiction does not always automatically equal endorsement, but Cuties barely even hides that fact. In the most unnerving scene, the climactic dance contest in which the prepubescent girls are dressed wildly inappropriate and performing a dance that includes thrusting and very sexual movements, it is very clear how awkwardly it is received by the crowd. This, the first time the girls have danced in front of any sort of audience, brings on blank stares, disgusted looks, and a number of boos. The camera lingers on audience members as they cringe and look away and dials in on the older men who seem to be enjoying it too much, and really lets us realize how much they’re enjoying it. Based on the media frenzy surrounding Cuties, I had assumed much worse on screen; instead, it’s a series of very sexual dances that I, having worked with young children and served as a substitute teacher in an elementary school, have no doubt mirrors some very realistic behavior. The problem is not this movie showing young girls acting like adults, it’s the real-life societal pressures and media depictions of unrealistic feminine ideals that lead to actual children actually behaving like this.
By the way: how do I know that a large percentage of the people complaining about the sexualization of young girls in this French coming-of-age movie starring a black Muslim girl haven’t actually watched the movie? Because it’s in French and it’s about a black Muslim girl, and they’re right-wing hacks. I would love to hear one of these detractors explain to me why they let Toddlers & Tiaras run for 120 episodes or Dance Moms for 224 episodes, but this is the breaking point for them. In what world is hundreds of hours of reality in which real girls are encouraged and judged upon their looks, behavior, and sexualization better than a 90-minute fictionalized indictment of this society? Honestly, the only difference I can see is religion and race. When it comes to Texan Republicans, I can’t say I’m surprised. The fact that people are pretending to care enough about an issue to criticize this movie while the movie itself not only actually cares about it but is facing it head on and making the same critique in a much more substantial and artful way is absurd to me. I’ve been to Tyler County, Texas once and I saw a great concert and had some incredible BBQ, but this recent indictment by a Tyler County grand jury makes me want to fuck off of Texas for good.
Now, it’s insane that so many words need to be expelled before actually talking about the quality of a movie, but here we are. I think Cuties is wonderful at times. At its sharpest it is biting, and at its warmest it is inviting. It does an incredible job at creating a world in which you completely sympathize with the characters even while you want to condemn everything that they’re doing. It doesn’t always hit its marks and the main characters home life subplot feels just slightly undercooked, but I’m also as far from having any kind of personal experience similar to that of a Senegalese Muslim pre-teen emigrating to a European country, so you can take that with reservations. I both assume that there are things I may be missing, culturally, and also things that just may not be hitting me as strong as they would someone else.
- Downhill is just so absolutely miserable, it feels impossible to enjoy, let alone like. Despite a lukewarm reception, I still love The Way Way Back and was looking forward to another movie from the directing team. This movie, which is essentially about a contentious marriage between Will Ferrell and Julia Louise-Dreyfus and the ways it becomes moreso while on a family vacation, kind of confused some audiences when it came out earlier this year because its not an out-and-out comedy in the way you’d expect given its cast. My dislike didn’t come from any rug-pulling on my expectations, though. There are occasionally funny moments, these are, after all, incredibly funny performers, but they’re too few and too far between and the things they’re between are too unpleasant and unenjoyable. Louise-Dreyfus’ character is a nagging, miserable shrew and Ferrell’s character is a selfish, miserable buffoon and they hate each other and there’s no reason for me not to do the same for either of them. I haven’t seen the Swedish film that Faxon and Rash are adapting here, so I can’t speak to whether or not the gloom and discomfiture are inherent here or if Downhill just fails to portray it with the right touch, but either way, it’s a boor of a watch that had me checking the time even at just 86 minutes long.
- Netflix romcoms have always leant a little bit towards the Hallmark romcom (a genre I am intimately familiar with) but Love, Guaranteed is the Hallmarkiest yet. A single lawyer who does pro bono work for sweet old people in need (and doesn’t even seem to get a percentage of the payout when she wins, for some reason) meets a seemingly-arrogant, seemingly-womanizing man in the coffee line. The movie doesn’t even really try very hard to actual make the love interest, played affably by Damon Wayans Jr., seem all that arrogant or all that womanizing, but Rachael Leigh Cook’s tough, judgmental warrior-lawyer keeps telling us otherwise. He hires her to sue an online dating company for guaranteeing him love and failing to deliver, hey share some ultra-light banter (sometimes to light that other people have to tell us that it’s banter) and then they fall in love thus inadvertently finding him love thanks to the online dating site. The movie was incredibly predictable, but simply watching two pretty likable characters was honestly just such a relief when watching it immediately after Downhill that the movie somehow endeared itself to me. Long may Hallmark, Lifetime, Freeform, and Netflix make wafer-thin, logically inconsistent romantic comedies starring people I like who can’t headline any other kind of movie, even if just because nobody else is making any kind of romantic comedy.
- I think because it’s Eddie Murphy’s film debut, I always assumed 48 Hrs. was more of a comedy with dramatic elements, but it’s very much the opposite. It makes sense; after all, nothing else in Walter Hill’s filmography points toward much different than hyper-masculine crime dramas. But even still, Murphy and the comedic elements of his performance are what make the movie shine. He plays a convicted felon who gets pulled from a jail cell to help Nick Nolte’s loose cannon detective solve a kidnapping. Surprisingly, the movie really understands how off-kilter the dynamic of a white cop/black criminal pairing is and plays into it without screaming it.
- Rarely in film do you see satire that is as well-written, sharp, and funny as Dr. Strangelove. It often goes for big laughs and dulls the force of the satirical elements, whereas Strangelove plays it very seriously and very straight. It still finds a way, though, to be funny without all those big joke attempts and punchlines.
- Having seen a bunch of Peter Bogdanovich’s movies but not this one, I was pretty surprised watching it. Targets is his debut and while so much of the dialogue and even certain scenes feel like his style, the story and the impersonal nature of it feel very different from his later, warmer films. It’s basically a movie about a killing spree, and it’s nerve-racking at times. Bogdanovich shows a strong control over the timing and the tension.
- I feel like A.I. Artificial Intelligence is kind of a monster of a movie to try and parse through. It was developed for years by Kubrick and Spielberg and directed by the latter after the former died. You can see touches of both of these film auteurs — men from pretty far ends of the spectrum — in the movie, but it’s impossible to know what exactly ‘belongs’ to who, but I think that’s a pretty futile exercise anyway. The movie has a lot to say about religion and the creation of life, parenthood and what we get out of it, and technology and humanity’s many attempts to destroy themselves. It’s at times very beautiful, but mostly it taps into heartbreak — from many different angles, too.
- Cleo from 5 to 7 is a real-time portrayal of a slice of its main characters life: the two hours she has to wait before she gets her test results back on a potentially serious illness. During those two hours, Cleo, a famous singer, runs errands and just generally wonders around Paris, exuding a palpable existential dread. We see the many ways in which societal pressures facing women are acted out upon her daily life and how much she, as a beautiful woman who has benefited from her beauty, has internalized them. It’s a beautiful movie despite its incredible simplicity and it feels like a progenitor to so many other real-time movies, especially the Richard Linklater talk-and-walks.
- Schizopolis does not feel like a movie made by a director who has already established themselves. If I hadn’t known before I watched it, I would’ve assumed this was a lofi, very early Soderbergh, even a student film. But this is actually his fifth film, following his breakout, multiple Cannes accolades, and a few productions with small-but-not-indie-level budgets. It goes to show you how unpredictable Soderbergh has been right from the very start of his career. Schizopolis is absurd and disjointed; it stars Soderbergh himself in a dual role. At times it feels overstuffed, jumping from idea to idea, and that remains true about much of the first half of the movie. But some things make a little more sense and coalesce nicely in the latter half and there’s some genuine laughs.
- The best part of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is that the villains secret plot is about killing public transportation and profiting off the freeway. That’s not to say everything else is not also amazing, because it is, but I absolutely love that this dark, comedic, animation live-action hybrid noir movie is also secretly about the death of public transportation. The movie is, of course, also about otherness and segregation in a way that some of the best art uses metaphor. There is not a direct one-to-one for every single aspect of the metaphor. If the movie just treated toons exactly the way African Americans in Hollywood were treated, the depiction would lose some of its punch; we’d be able to see right through it for what it is. Instead, Zemeckis and company create a rich metaphor that completely stands on its own without serving as a simple stand-in for something in the real world while still having plenty to say about things in the real world.
- Putney Swope kicks off feeling the way that Strangelove did; it was absurdity played straight. The chairman of the board of a large advertising firm dies and during the vote to replace him, each of the board members — unable to vote for themselves — votes for the lone black man on the board in an attempt to throw the vote away. Instead, he is elected chairman and promptly turns the entire board and company on its head, firing most of the white employees and becoming a superstar firm in their industry. The actual character Putney Swope sort of remains static throughout the rest of the movie, though, and I’m not really exactly sure what I was supposed to take away from the ending.
- Sometimes I just love a big, weepy, family drama with big stars and fairly routine conflicts. Not to say that dying from cancer is routine, but it’s not something incredibly unique, and it’s only introduced in the last third of the movie. Terms of Endearment tracks a single mother’s relationship with her daughter across decades, from birth to death, and all the big moments in between. It would’ve been nice if they had occasionally gone for some small moments that didn’t realize around huge life decisions or events and focused on the characters a little more, but it’s just not what the movie and Brooks is interested in.
- Head is one of those movies that you really have to be on the same wavelength in order to enjoy. Luckily, I was completely in from the beginning. It’s less a movie with a traditional plot and characters than it a series of interconnected scenes, sketches, and music videos starring The Monkees, though they’re not quite playing their TV show characters.
- Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice feels like a stage-play: mostly just characters talking to each other and it is broken up into very long segments where we stay with one of the two titular couples. Bob and Carol (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) are home from a holistic, almost culty-feeling retreat where they’ve been transformed by the idea of being completely emotionally honest; but there’s a clash when they attempt to apply it to their real lives and their best friends, the more traditional and tight-lipped Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon). The movie is intimately talkative and relatively frank in its discussions and portrayals of sex lives, marriage, infidelity, and sexual freedom in the 1960s.