Every day, I cross the Mojave. Sometimes I cross the desert back and forth, multiple times each day. I'm not the only one, there are several of us, every day, we travel. Me, I usually go by bus, but there's a lot of walking as well. The heat is frustrating, but I'm used to it; it's really when the weather shifts too rapidly that gets to me.
That's mostly how my life has been lately. Right now, I'm living in a weekly, while I wait for my brother to be placed in a permanent home. Almost every day I go down to the hospital to see him. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few minutes as I got to get to work after. It feels like I'm always on the road, not just literally, but physically; it takes a toll. Anyway. that's what I'm going through now. I guess it's strange to be in my late thirties and to say that it's the first time living on your own, but that's my situation. If I think too long about how rough it's been these last couple years, I start crying. How rough it's still going to be. Eventually, once my brother is placed, I'll find a place near him, for a little while; I'll need to be near him while he and everyone else adjusts.
I wish I could say that in the meantime, I'm enjoying watching movies and reviewing them, or at least watching other entertainment and all, but frankly I haven't even really had the time for that like I'd like to. Like I said, every day I cross the Mojave. Even around people all the time, I can help constantly thinking that this desert can seem pretty deserted right now, and I wish my mind was less occupied. I always thought this would be the time that I would buckle down, work on my writings, my movie ideas, my thoughts, but clearly, based on how rarely it seems that I ever post these things here anymore, that's not the case. I still have my GoFundMe, I'm not getting much from it, even though I can use and deeply appreciate even the smallest donations right now, but I'm just leaving it open until everything is actually settled for all of us. Clearly that's not right now. In some ways it will clearly never be, but my life is in flux right now and has been for awhile. I wish that my troubles and issues don't paint my reviews and articles when I do actually find the time to watch movies and publish my thoughts, but it feels like everything I do is awash in my own struggles, so if my reviews do seem, a little bit too pre-occupied recently, that's why. Perhaps even keeping this blog in times like these at all is a Sisyphean endeavor, but frankly, especially now, I need to be writing something.
So, let's get to the reviews.
ARGENTINA, 1985 (2023) Director: Santiago Mitre
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I decided to google, "Last Nazi to be put on trial",- honestly that's something I occasionally do randomly anyway whenever anything like this comes up, 'cause it shows just how long, hard and difficult it genuinely is to use the justice system in order to achieve, well-, justice, for some of our most heinous, violent, insurrectionist, genocidal parts of our history. If you're at all still curious, eh, it was, last year. 2023, they prosecuted and convicted a 98-year-old man was a guard at a concentration camp, and he was prosecuted on 3,300 counts of aiding and abetting murder. Yeah, we are still finding and convicted Nazis from their crimes during World War II. (Look, I'm not saying, we should be backing Israel at all times, we definitely and probably shouldn't be some times, like, probably now, but-eh, it's not like they weren't the victims of the most abhorrent and egregious genocide in history, and that's still so recent that we're still prosecuting for that, not to mention every other atrocity they've been the victim of.)
That said, I probably shouldn't be so curious about it, because, there's been several other horrible government-led atrocities, because since then, there's been, so many, many, many others. Argentina for instance, between 1976 and 1983 was run by the U.S.-backed dictatorship, the National Reorganization Process. They were the last of a long line of military dictatorships in Argentina, and the Juntas as they were called, may have been the most vicious. They were the most recent, and when Argentina became a democracy, the first round of prosecution and trials began.
If you don't know about Argentina's recent history,- um,... I don't know a lot myself, but I do know that, a lot of people went missing. In fact, nearly every other time I happen to see a recent Argentinean film, it feels like a story about this time period and regime and how gruesome they were. (Just to be clear, there are plenty of fun Argentinean films that aren't about this, "Nine Queens" or "Wild Tales" for instance, but still...) Short story is that there were a lot of "forced disappearances" to quote the Wikipedia, and actually, in most cases, that could've been the best scenario, 'cause there were worst things, look up what happened to a lot of pregnant women during this time. "Argentina, 1985" is about the trials of the Juntas, the first ones anyway, the ones in power. This was the first time in history that a Democratically elected government investigated and prosecuted leaders of a military dictatorship, and in case you're wondering, this is something that also, like wrangling up Nazis for prosecution, that's in fact, still going on.
"Argentina, 1985" tells this story from the prosecution side. It's basically a straight-up historical courtroom procedural, even shot in many of the same courts and locations of the actual trials and tribunals. Told through the perspective of the chief prosecutor Julia Cesar Strassera (Ricardo Duran), the movie focuses mainly on the struggle of the prosecution as they tried to compete with the high-end attorneys that the defense had, as well as document as many of the stories of the disappeared as they could from their families and loved ones. This actually required finding college law graduates to fill their team, since they were the only ones without a reputation they needed to protect which made the more well-known and expensive lawyers back out of the case. And the case itself was a struggle, it even started with a bomb threat.
"Argentina, 1985" is best when it's down to the story of the actual dynamics of the how they build and construct a case, and how difficult it is. It reminded of other similar procedurals like "Ghosts of Mississippi" or "A Civil Action", only on an even higher and riskier scale. The scene with all the Juntas outright refusing to recognize the courts' jurisdiction when getting arraigned was frightening. It's also stirring how much dictatorships of all kinds tend to take on a cult-like vibe. "Argentina, 1985" is an important albeit, way too recent history lesson, and probably should be a good tool when it becomes necessary to prosecute others who's misused and abused their powers while in office, whether democratically elected or not. It is perhaps nothing unique or special in terms of the narrative or beats, but it does them really well and tells a story that, unfortunately might be more prescient now than ever, and is unfortunately gonna remain prescient for awhile.
DON'T LOOK UP (2021) Director: Adam McKay
⭐⭐1/2
You know, there actually is a comet that could potentially hit us. And soon, 12 years from now they think, at it's current projections. It's not gonna completely destroy us, but it's pretty damn big. They think it'll slam into the Pacific Ocean, and cause a giant ripple effect that would do things, like completely erode the entire California coastline, among other coastlines. I've seen Neil Degrasse Tyson even talk about this. It's only about a 1 in 40,000 chance it'll happen, and there's backup plans in place. Some want to send up ships to run next to the comet and move it out of it's current orbit. Some just want to blow it up. The point I'm making is that, for a movie, this obnoxious, it's not exactly that far off.
"Don't Look Up" was by far the most controversial and divisive movie of the year in 2021. The people who loved it really loved it, it got a few Oscar nominations, including sneaking into Best Picture. Yet, it also made a lot of Worst Films lists too. A lot of people didn't like it in fact. I hadn't seen it, but I knew people who really loved it and thought it was hilarious. I heard the song from it and thought that was hilarious. And I loved most of Adam McKay's work; he's been the preeminent comedy director for awhile now, dating back to "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and I've liked his previous forays into telling stories of political and cultural importance a lot. "The Big Short", about the housing crisis that led to the Great Recession was my pick for best film of the year when that one came out, and I liked "Vice", his biopic on Dick Chaney, quite a bit as well. That easily could've also made my Best list that year. That said, I haven't liked everything he's been doing lately.
I might be in the minority on this one, but I didn't really get the appeal of "Succession". His highly-acclaimed HBO series; I'm not saying it's a bad show or anything, it's not, but I just, don't really get the mass appeal or all the critical acclaim it's gotten. Like, seriously, all those Emmys? Like, I get it, the people who are in the mansions on the hill and all that are just as ignorant, stupid and fucked up as we are, and they're all essentially greedy assholes.... It just felt so cynical;.... I have a friend who does love "Succession" and he compares it to "Shameless", another show that I appreciate way more than I actually like, and he's right, it's basically "Shameless" if everything took place in the Getty Villa or Hearst Castle, but I don't know, I feel like having too many of these truly vile and cynical takes on life, all aspects of life, you end up just filtering out the actual aspects of important stuff, like, media, and the government, and y'know, the complete and total destruction of the planet, and make everything seem so...- I don't know, perhaps in a different time and place I can appreciate this, but yeah, "Don't Look Up", is...- it doesn't work.
It worked in the beginning, but then Meryl Streep's President character came onscreen, and I just had several questions. One, what is she playing? Two, why? And I'm not talking performance, she's Meryl Streep, she's great in this role, I'm talking, why this character? In fact, that's kinda the issue with the whole film, there's a lot of things that, he's making fun of here, and there's a lot to make fun of, but I don't really get why he's throwing in all this stuff he's making fun of. Like, why is this President, such a locust of a human being that she's easily bought off and manipulated, basically into selling the office to all her friends, and being the literal epitome of a ditzy YouTube influencer? I'm not saying, this couldn't be funny in another context, but why in this movie are these characters portrayed like this here? Even in "Dr. Strangelove...", Peter Sellers didn't play the President like he was a buffoon. Is she the female Trump? Is she, a-eh...- Hillary-type? Is she a Lauren Boebert-satire? I guess that's the closest I can come up with, but- I don't know what this is, why it's here or what is it commentating on?
It got me asking another question? Who was this role originally for? I couldn't find that out, but, I could guess that say a Maya Rudolph might find a different take on this character? But, anyway,- that's what ultimately got me to the real problem with this movie...- it's in the wrong medium. "Don't Look Up", isn't a movie; it's a bunch of sketches....
Adam McKay was the head writer of "SNL" during much of the late '90s, and he was and is a good writer. Even this movie, is pretty well-written, but it's not written as a movie; it's written as a lot of long sketches.
Like, imagine, the opening sequence, Dibiasky, (Jennifer Lawrence) finds the comet, realizes how big it is, informs her professor, Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and he does the calculations, and realizes that the comet, is too big and is heading directly towards us, and everybody completely freaks out! That's a great sketch idea! And if you saw that sketch, for like five minutes on "SNL" one night, you'd like that sketch. Let's say, later on in the episode, or perhaps, the next week, they continue that sketch, and then, these two characters, are being transported to the White House, to tell the President, and they're freaking out about having to tell the President it's the end of the world! That would also be awesome!
Then, the next weeks, you'd see them in the President's office, trying to describe to her all the problems, and she's not getting in, and there's her cronies trying to usher them out or call them down....
For those who don't know, this isn't a new idea, a lot of older variety shows had sketches that actually did play out like small little series, with long-form narratives in the middle of TV shows, that you had to keep coming. Probably the most famous one is "The Family" sketches from "The Carol Burnett Show" that eventually evolved into their own series, "Mama's Family", but it's older than that; I think "The Honeymooners" to a degree qualifies for this, and especially in their early days, "SNL" would have a few of these over the years. Even kids variety series did stuff like this; "Rocky & Bullwinkle" were great at this, and from my childhood, I turned into every episode "Square One" just to watch that week's "Mathnet" episode. The more I watched "Don't Look Up", the more it felt like this should've been a very long drawn-out series-of-sketches during an episode of "SNL"; the weekly, "A comet's coming to destroy the world" sketch, the one that airs before the second musical performance by Ariana Grande but after the sketch that parodied how rancidly preposterous and chipper the early cable news show segments and hosts are. Until, that sketch crosses over when Mindy and Dibiasky go on one of those shows. Dibiasky freaks out by all the artifice that she becomes a meme, and Dr. Mindy gets sucked into the world by Brie Everhart (Cate Blanchett) the news reporter, and eventually gets brought into the President's sphere, under the guise of being able to destroy the comet, until she's influenced, by, another weird character that only makes sense if you imagine this as an SNL sketch, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance). Mark Rylance is playing, some kind of Steve Jobs meets Elon Musk, meets, I-don't know, some kind of faux-deity-type, uh,- honestly, he actually kinda reminds of the Heaven's Gate guy-, the cult, not the film.... I get that he's an amalgam character, and he would make sense in a sketch. The black turtleneck, the talking about advancements in computing in terms of evolution towards the future, meanwhile he's just as money-hungry and bloodthirsty a CEO as anyone else, and he sees money potential in the comet hitting the planet.
See this is why the sketch of Dibiasky, frustrated and given up on life, thrown off the project for speaking the truth, hanging out with a bunch of teenage skateboarders outside at night so funny, countdown is coming, and she realizes how stupid everybody is, and just starts making out with the flirty teenage dirtbag Yule (Timothee Chalamet), is funny. There's a funny story here, there's even sharp satire here. It just doesn't come across like that, because this is the wrong medium for the story. In a sketch, these scenes that would normally be funny and sharp takes on the state of the world and ourselves, our government,- given a big budget and no benefit of the studio audience laughing along,- hypothetically, I guess they could be funny, but they come off as cringy. It gets better by the end of the movie, the closer to the apocalypse we get, but man, it takes a long time to get there. In sketch form, when you're not dealing with some of these characters for achingly minutes on end, they can be more palatable, but this movie dragged in the meantime. What you end up getting are really confusing and conflicting caricatures on the government and pop culture,- just things that don't-, they just don't feel right in this cinematic world.
This is especially damning towards the end when it does start to work more as movie. I like the endings and how it both feels like other apocalyptic movies as well as undercuts them. The ending in particular feels a bit like "WALL-E" if the idiots who destroyed the planet actually survived, that's kinda clever. There's great performances here too, I like DiCaprio and Lawrence in particular. And that's the thing, I have no doubt that McKay, could tell this story straight, even dramatically if he wanted to; he can make "Fail-Safe" or "Dr. Strangelove...". Clearly he went more for the latter, but it's a matter of the choices he made, and I think he could've made better choices. More cinematic comedic choices, instead of sketch choices. He made them in the filmmaking. I've been going back-to-forth trying to figure out what film he's trying to make. I've mentioned "Dr. Strangelove..." a few times, as I was watching the movie I kept thinking about "Wag the Dog", but that's not the right comparison either; there's great satire in that film, but..., eh, maybe something like "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!", that's an underrated little Cold War-era comedic gem, but nah, it doesn't feel like that either. No, the movie this really feels like is "1941". It feels like Spielberg's bloated attempt at an over-the-top political comedy. That movie is just too big and overblown, but the thing also was that, Spielberg isn't a natural comedic director, McKay is. It's kinda the opposite problem but the result is the same, the material's either too small for the budget or the comedy's not big enough for the filmmaking, and either way it's just too long. This movie, could've been cut by like half-an-hour and I think it would've been more appreciated,- or not even cutting, just make it go quicker. (Snaps fingers) Have more snappy comedy moments and quick-witted dialogue, go all "His Girl Friday" with it. McKay's serious films were paced better before,- I'm stunned this movie got an Editing nomination in hindsight, but perhaps they just worked with what they gave him?
"Don't Look Up" is polarizing. It's polarizing me even, I can barely tell if I like it or not. I like the message, I generally like the messenger, but eh,- maybe in twenty years, if we're still around, I'll look at it again and regain a certain appreciation for it; some comedies do in fact age better with time, but eh, once I, and perhaps you, start realizing that this movie would play better as a series of sketches like I did, you really can't unsee that the biggest problem with the movie, is that, it is indeed a movie. It really does showcase the missteps taken in trying to take this is up from sketch ideas to movie more. E for effort and I won't begrudge anybody for liking it, but yeah, this needed a few more drafts and maybe more than that, just a different way of approaching this material. This could've and probably should've been funnier, and it just wasn't. Maybe fewer potshots at the vapidness of the culture at large, some of those jokes kinda felt mean-spirited and not necessary too. It's a good idea, good cast, good filmmaker, good writers, I'd even say it's good material, it just unfortunately made way-too-many of the wrong choices, approaching that material.
ATTICA (2021) Directors: Traci A. Curry & Stanley Nelson
⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
Back in 2003-ish, back when the American Film Institute still made that annual lists every year, they did one for the Top 100 Movie quotes of all-time. I remember not particularly liking that list, and I suspect if they did that one now, there'd be more changes than you'd think, but I do recall that on that list, at number 86 in fact, was simply the words, "Attica! Attica!" It's from the movie "Dog Day Afternoon". I wrote about that film before, it's in my Canon of Film. I talk about how "Attica!" has essentially become the iconic quote and scene from that movie, as angry, obsessed and scared man has failed to rob a bank, succeeded at creating a hostage crisis and becoming a star on the New York television for the day, at he manages to keep the police at bay, by screaming "Attica! Attica!" at them in front of the crowd and cameras all around. I wrote about how "Attica" was a successful prison uprising in 1971, at the federal prison, that was a cornerstone moments for the Prisoners' Rights Movement.
You see, that's not actually, why he was yelling "Attica!" It's true, that, for a time, the prisoners took over Attica. They took most of the staff as hostages, and insisted on their demands of better treatment and conditions to be met. And in a way, a little while, they did accomplish their goals, not just in Attica, but statewide. A lot of them got reversed, and while I say they accomplished their goals....- well, it's because the protestors were massacred by the cops. That's why he was yelling it.
Thankfully, "Attica" this documentary by Stanley Nelson, doesn't even mention that film. Instead, it focused in intensely on simply detailing from as many of the survivors and archival footage he can find, to just go through the events as they happened during those four days. And what happened after. The intensity of the film is striking as the events seem to get constantly gloomier and gloomier for the prisoners as they go on. How, at first, they were getting treated better, and the police were negotiating, but after one of the hostages died, all bets were off. No more shot at getting immunity for the uprising. Governor Rockefeller, on Nixon's advice, wouldn't come down to talk with the prisoners.
Then, the massacre happened. It was reported at first that the prisoners had murdered the hostages, but even of the hostages that were dead, most of them were killed by the cops during the invasion. The autopsy revealed that the cops were the ones who were just going to kill everybody if they could, under the backdrop of the right-wing law & order culture believing that the criminals had to be the ones that were just complaining and worst off. "Attica" is a quiet sobering documentary that recreates the events of those days from every perspective and the successfully shows all the perspectives, of those days. The media, which documented it surprisingly soberly at the time, those officers and the loved ones of those who were held hostage, the police, who were at first conflicted, before eventually moving into action. It's the kind of movie that you can listen to like a book on tape and imagine the horrors, but gets more powerful when combined with the archived images. "Attica!" can easily become a forgotten footnote, a punchline in recent years, and frankly it needs to be more remembered and documented. In recent years, prisons are arguably worst than ever, especially with privatized prisons, but it's still bad in regularly and frankly, most of the rest of the modern world has caught up and realized that dehumanizing prisoners doesn't work. A lot of them don't have the issue of race often separating prisoners and guard or prisoner and society though. I don't know if "Attica!" will naturally make everything better, but it's good to make sure that everything is documented like this so that we all know what actually happened.
LOVE AND MONSTERS (2020) Director: Michael Matthews
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Eh, I gotta be honest, as much as I can appreciate these kind of quirky, youthful, apocalyptic stories that have come about in recent years, and I usually like most of them admittedly, eh, I'm really getting tired of them too. Actually, I'm just generally tired of apocalyptic stories in general. Every time I see one, I feel like it leans into our worst tendencies. Our cynical nature that everything is too far gone and we're just laying down and accepting the inevitable as opposed to actually trying to envision a better world. I don't want apocalyptic tales of survival; I want futuristic stories of a better world that we've made and cultivated, through visionary technology and the advancement of humanitarian ideals. I want us to be inspired by what we can create or become and not doomed to settle; I find these stories so cynical, and frankly, along with all the over-abundance of superhero stories, fear that it's psychologically making us less inclined to achieve the simple things in the world that indeed we could easily do ourselves that would make the world better, and I like stories told in those worlds. More "Star Trek", less, "Planet of the Apes", as much as I do like most of the films in that franchise, (Both franchises of it).
Or in this case, a land of radioactive monster superanimals-monsters? It's the end of the world and the animals, due to human error when trying to destroy a giant asteroid that was threatening Earth. Okay, I'll give the movie a little credit here, in that it takes a very obvious plothole from "Armageddon" and makes it end the world. Anyway, the humans have moved to live underground in colonies, and one such colonies includes Joel (Dylan O'Brien), a lonely young man who was in high school when the monster apocalypse happened, and lost both his parents in the original attack. His colony is full of paired-up couples and survivalists who have begun adept at keeping their colony safe by the outside world while also able to canvas out for surviving ingredients, gardening seeds and their only surviving cow. He's not a particularly good shot with the makeshift crossbows and other weapons they've created. He's mainly the cook, and the only person in their underground bunker colony who isn't coupled with anybody.
He does eventually, through an old CB radio, he decides he must brave the outside world and head to a Coastal Colony to see his old high school girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick). Hence, the love aspect of "Love & Monsters". From there, the story becomes a more traditional tale of traveling through the deserted lands in a post-apocalyptic pilgrimage tale. It's a good pilgrimage; I was mostly entertained, and like a lot of these tales, it's about the characters we meet along the deconstructionist way. He meets Clyde and Minnow (Michael Rooker and Arianna Greenblatt) a couple of survivalists who live on the surface and give him tips and training on how to survive. It probably gets a little too, emotional when it really isn't at around here, but I like these characters, and I like the connections.
Along the way, there's several other monsters and experiences until he does get to Aimee's colony, and they kinda run into an extra plot at the end, that's a bit arbitrary, there's an obvious liar reveal. (Shrugs) I don't know, a lot of the comparisons to the movie noted "Zombieland" as an obvious comp, and yeah, that's the movie I was thinking of too. "Zombieland" was genuinely unpredictable though. The characters were more interesting and mysterious and the fact that their was a zombie-based world meant that, there was almost no chance of real connections to the past that the characters would be seeking out. The only ultimate goal was survival and there was only multiple ways of determining the best course of action to achieve that. "Love and Monsters" does have the slightest connections to the past still around, and it leans into that. There's nothing inherently wrong with that as a narrative, but it does limit the story and the possibilities of what could happen. It makes the story, the relationship and whether or not, if he gets there, which we all suspect she will be there, we're more interested in whether or not she'll be with someone or be someone else, or whether he can get the girl, and then what then? It's still the apocalypse and even if he gets her, will they be happy?
It's fine on it's own, and overall I'm recommending the film, but when you do realize and think about the influences, it does feel like a lesser film and idea. They definitely put a ton of work into the film. The movie got an Oscar nomination for the special effects, and it definitely deserved it. If you like romance with your wild radioactive bugs and monsters, than I guess "Love and Monsters" is good enough. It's probably not for me, but I can appreciate it.
THIS IS GWAR (2022) Director: Scott Barber
⭐⭐⭐1/2
I must confess I've never listened much to Gwar, but I've known about them for years. The first time I saw them was on "The Jerry Springer Show", and I remembered more or less just being perplexed by them at the time. I didn't get them, but I also think that was kind of the point. They showed a few clips of their appearance on Springer, as well as another appearance they had on Joan Rivers's show, but the first time I really, got them, was not a show they aired a clip of in "This is Gwar"; it was from VH-1's "Where Are They Now" show. Mainly 'cause that was the first time I saw them, out of character. Honestly, I think that helps me appreciate a lot of the shock rock artists more, seeing them outside their performance characters. That might just be how I relate to music; I find music more interesting and compelling when there's less artifice involved in the production of it. I'm not saying that I'm one of the weirdos who preferred non-makeup KISS or anything, but seeing Gwar as human beings for the first time, helped me in appreciating what exactly they were doing, and I think this really helps with shock rock.
I actually met a few people in shock rock bands weirdly enough, one of them, actually was friends a few people in Gwar, including Dave Brockie who, when I knew this person, was still mourning his passing from a heroin overdose. "This is Gwar" details the origins of the band, and interviews, what seems like nearly every living important member of the band; there's actually quite a few members and several changes in the band have occurred and honestly, while I think Gwar still tours, I don't think any of their original members do. Which, I think makes sense. Gwar, basically originated as a crazed film school project that somehow morphed into this depraved satirical punk rock band by taking the costumes and effects they were using for the film and creating a band out of it. The film itself never got finished, but the band took off. I mean, they did have a dinosaur on stage, no matter the quality of the music, that's gonna get people's attention, and frankly that was the most normal and least obscene thing that the band did and had on stage.
Like, I said, I never really got it, but I could appreciate it. Gwar, really is basically more of an artistic collective than a band, but actually the musicianship is pretty strong and a lot of their music has held up over time, but Gwar really is more of a brand than a band. What is Gwar exactly without the outrageous Viking costumes or the bloodsplattering beheadings at every concert? It's a special effects extravaganza; I'm not at all surprised a lot of the members of the band found outside careers in film and theater, often designing things like sets and effects.
Gwar is an odd strange entity in music. "This is Gwar" does a decent job at showing how it was this strange passion project that morphed into a surreal shock rock band. They never earned much money, if they did, they poured it into their production on their tours and their music videos which, for the most part weren't shown much on mainstream music video outlets, but were beloved by those in the know. Even the Grammys recognized them a couple times. At one point, they mentioned that they thought they were gonna be the Walt Disney of Metal, and that's kinda what they did evolve into. Their were bands who cared about the performance aspects of rock & roll, in particular metal; I mean, Alice Cooper was putting on gorefest nightmare fuels at his concerts from back in the '70s, but he was more about the performance accompanying and interpreting the music; the music always came first with him or other similar acts. If Gwar has an influence still felt in the community, and I believe they do, it's that they reversed that dynamic, and made the outrageousness of the gimmick and the show outflank and overpower the music.
Even they and their fans will tell you that the joke of Gwar is that they're actually pretty good at music.
THE PEZ OUTLAW (2022) Directors: Amy Brandlien Storkel & Bryan Storkel
⭐⭐1/2
You ever, once-in-a-while, hear an obscure fact, somewhere out in the ether somewhere, that you know, is a thing, but it's so obtuse that you don't think about it, or recall it, and then suddenly you're like surrounded by that fact? No? Just me? Yeah, that would actually explain a lot now that I think about it,- so anyway, Pez collecting is a thing. Yeah, pez dispensers. People collect them. I bet people aren't terribly surprised by that, people collect a lot of weird things, pez dispensers are something that's been around forever and are a fun little toy that holds candy, I'm sure everybody has kept a few around here and there, and some are pretty big collectors of it, right? Um, actually, Pez and Pez Dispensers are actually a huge goddamn deal and some pez dispensers can be sold on the market for thousands of dollars, easily. In fact, European pez dispensers, ones that are made and sold only for the European market, would rack up lots of money to American collectors. "The Pez Outlaw" is a brief documentary about Steve Glew, who spent years travelling back and forth from Europe, around the Croatian area, and on the border of a war at times, in order to smuggle in knockoff European dispensers through customs in order to sell them on the open market in America. He got so good at this, he got to the point of the Pez company trying to go to extreme lengths to go after him.
Part of it is their fault, they never registered Pez never was put on the list of items to be verified through customs, so all he really had to do was get ahold of them, and that included finding the factories and getting the pez from the factory. He claims that there were some people high inside the company that were helping him out.... Honestly, it's kind of an interesting story, I just don't know if it's a movie.
I think I would prefer "The Pez Outlaw" as like, a 40-minute short film. There is a somewhat compelling afterstory when he tried to design his own Pez dispensers and Pez basically ripping off his designs and selling them for cheaper to make him bankrupt, and the fact that he started this lifelong endeavor to help subsidize his wife's illnesses and bills is heartfelt, but "The Pez Outlaw" is one of those harmless documentaries that gets made and nobody can really bash them for being bad, but they're not exactly great either. These kind of docs get well-reviewed as this film is too, but eh,- I don't know, there's definitely compelling stories out there about people who care greatly about stuff on the far off fringes of very specific niche interests, "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" for instance, comes to mind, but, eh, I don't know, this isn't on that level. I guess I could be nicer to it, but eh, for me, I wish Pez was better. Dispensers were cool, but the candy itself was never that good.
PETITE FILLE (aka LITTLE GIRL) (2021) Director: Sebastien Lifshitz
⭐⭐⭐
It's been difficult for me lately trying to figure out how to review movies for awhile. Personal issues mostly, things are on my mind.... But, it's particularly tricky to review "Petite Fille" or "Little Girl". Mostly 'cause I'm not sure what to review here. Frankly, it's kinda odd for a documentary, in that, there's not much, in terms of like...- well, it's just oddly filmed for me. It kinda feels more like it's scripted than most docs, even more than ones that are blatantly scripted; I saw one review compare it to a Dardenne Brothers film; that's not a terrible description, but honestly I don't think it's that narrative, it's more like, they shot a lot of scenes and the characters just talk, but like, not to the camera, usually to the doctors or others involved.... (Shrugs) Perhaps it just feels weird to me because of the content....
"Petite Fille" tells the story of Sasha, a 7-year-old boy, who has always been aware that he's actually a little girl, just born in the wrong body. So, there's a lot of controversy recently with this topic, so,- look, I'm totally in favor of anybody exploring their gender fluidity or whatnot. I know that gender is not genitalia-based, hell I think gender might arguably be fluid, and hell, sometimes I suspect gender as a binary concept, is itself, something that we made up more than something that actually exists perhaps. I mean, at one point, we all start as female, and then in the womb become either male or female, or whatever other gender their is; trans, I guess? My point is that I think that it's important to explore all sides of that personally. That said, I'm not entirely sure, when, we should explore all those things. In my mind, before puberty, feels too young.
And I'm not saying that because I think Sasha isn't firm in her commitment that she's a girl, or that she's even wrong for having such strong feelings so young, but that said, we are having several reports out there of people who've altered their genders, many of them young, through such processes as hormone treatment and surgery, and then later regretting it. Bill Maher thinks it's because kids are trendy little edgelords and now that trans and gender fluidity is trendy, they jump in before actually thinking out the possibilities. I think that's a part of it, although I also just think that it's possible that some people just don't know what exactly they are and just come to a wrong conclusion sometimes. Or perhaps, they thought they were one other thing, because they only figure that it was the only other option and once they realize their were other possibilities, of who they could be, they realized that that new option might fit them better...- I don't know, but something tells me that, whether or not it's your first or your last change-of-gender, either you should be really, really, really sure, at that moment that it is absolutely what you have to do to help yourself be complete and happy, and I don't know if I trust somebody so young to be so confident about that. I don't know if I trust somebody 3x older than Sasha to be that fully sure, honestly.
So what happened, what's the results? As far as I can tell, it was the best choice for her and the procedure's a success. Honestly, there doesn't even seem to be a lot of difficulty for her, most of the troubles and conflicts of were spoken of and not really shown. Honestly, I just found those scenes, I don't know-, it felt too stagey I guess....- I feel like there are better movies out there on the subject, like "Born to Be", the wonderful documentary about the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, but I do like just, seeing this documented case over time and what to make of it. But,- I don't know, for somebody so young....
You know what it is, this is, Part 1 of a film. What's really gonna be interesting is, the sequel, like ten years down the road, what happens to Sasha and who she's become since this. I think I'd like to see that more than this film personally.
REWIND (2020) Director: Sasha Joseph Neulinger
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Home movies are strange. I'm not even sure that they really exists anymore, not the way that, they used to exist. The giant camera you'd put on your shoulder, those old VHS tapes,- the look of a home movie is so different from even looking at something shot on a modern phone camera..., it always feels like it's from another planet as oppose to another time. Now, you can argue that the modern Tiktok and Youtube videos are just as artificial as those from the home movies of the past, and we'll probably look at the picture quality of those projects a lot differently thirty or forty years from now, but-nah, there definitely is, something off-putting about those old home movies. I remember my family shooting a bunch of them, and I remember even trying to shoot one when I was a kid. I'm sure it's on some VHS somewhere in my garage, but I don't remember being particularly proud of it or anything. Now, I kinda just wish I had it to remember all those who've passed and those memories, but for the most part, our home movies weren't hiding some awful realities.
For director Sasha Joseph Neulinger, these home movies represent a falsehood. It's not the first documentary I can think of that uses the contrast of home movies and old photos that depict supposed happier times to reveal the darker underbelly underneath; off-the-top-of-my-head, Daniel Zwigoff's "Crumb" is probably the most notable and earliest film I can think of that uses this effect. That's not a fair comparison though, "Crumb" itself seemed to be a movie where you had to look, not only underneath the subtext but even it's main focus seemed to be slightly unwilling to even let himself in. A better comparison to "Rewind", would be "Capturing the Friedmans" which also utilizes home movies to undermine a shocking secret within the family, in that case, it was a widespread child molestation charge against two of the family members. "Rewind" is different in that, the story is told from the perspective of the abused; Sasha and his sister as well as other family members were sexual abused by several members of his family, including a renowned and beloved cantor.
I don't know how much I should go into the details of what eventually transpired and the eventual investigations and prosecution of Sasha's family members, as well as the secrets of the family that, him coming forward with these accusations revealed. What I will say is that, what "Rewind" brings is kinda of a lucky draw in that Sasha's father was a TV director and ended up documenting a lot more home movies than others might've; in my mind, at least until it became unfeasible, we made, maybe one home movie a year, unless there was like, a wedding or something we needed to document. So, we get something kinda more interesting here, we see the aftereffects of the abuse, resonating in some of the footage. The changes in the behavior of Sasha and his sister over the year, especially as he became more angry and starting acting out much more after as a preteen. It's the kinda thing that usually you would only recognize in hindsight. We're kinda starting to see some of that now in real life. As I was writing this review, that docuseries on HBO about Dan Schneider's and others predatory behavior on the sets of many of the Nickelodeon show he was producing got released and suddenly a lot of people have been going back and looking up some old interviews and stuff, and I think I saw one Tiktok video comparing an interview Amanda Bynes gave when she was twelve with one that occurred just a year or two later, during which time, according her at least, Schneider raped and impregnated her and forced her to have an abortion, and yeah, there's- there's clearly a behavioral shift in her, and considering some of her antics in her life post-fame, it definitely feels like, in hindsight, something happened. (I haven't seen the documentary yet,... I might later,- but, yeah, from everything I had already long heard about Schneider and all,- there's nothing that would surprise me right now about what happened on those sets.)
So, yeah, looking at something like "Rewind" is kinda fascinating. Disturbing and troubling to watch, but-, you know, there's an old myth that some think the camera reveals a person's soul; it was a popular Native American belief back in the early days of photography, but-eh, you know, sometimes it feels like they might've been right, you just have to know where to look for it.
Hence the issue with home movies, they around to document the good times, but it always seems to be the things that occur when the camera's off....
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