Well, I'm still not posting at a rate I prefer, or used to,... but I am posting and am watching movies somewhat regularly again. (Shrugs) I'm still behind, but I am catching up.
I'm also working on other projects as well, that have kept me busy. I'm still transitioning in my life, and things are strange for me. What that means for this blog, I don't know. Frankly, I prefer writing screenplays now more than I do this blog, but that just might be that I don't have as much to say about the entertainment world as I used to. Perhaps it's age that's made me feel more apathetic and distant from it, perhaps it's my personal situations over the last few years has left me out of the loop. Perhaps, it's just that the entertainment world, it's changed so drastically from the world that I was familiar with and grew up with that, frankly me criticizing or trying to relate to it, makes me feel too much like I'm an old man yelling at clouds. Perhaps, when I was a young man yelling at clouds, it was more tolerable and the energy and vigor I had for my thoughts on whatever disaster new streaming service that comes around or whatever else it is that everyone will talk and/or complain about, felt more like a necessary release of frustration and anger, but now, eh, it just isn't always something I feel like my opinion is worth putting out there.
And that's okay. I'd rather wait 'til I have something to say anyway, than to just try to say something just to get more views or likes or whatever-it-is I'm supposed to be trying to get on this thing.
What I do have are movie reviews. Not as many as I'd like or prefer, but I do have them, and it's time to post them again.
CLOSE (2022) Director: Lukas Dhont
⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's admittedly hard for me to put myself into a perspective where I can ever imagine what I would do if I was in a, for-lack-of-a-better-word situation like the main characters in "Close". For one thing, it's about a very close relationship between two people, for another, it's about a close relationship between two male kids. It's hard for me to really be close to anybody; hell I don't even put pictures of myself on my social media, but especially that young, to be close to another person the way Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are, is.... I mean, I can imagine people like that; I might've known particularly close youth friendships between others growing up, but I can't imagine myself, especially at that young age, being apart of a close relationship like that. In fact, I can easily imagine this movie, being pitched to an American producer, and nearly all of them would recommend aging the characters up a couple years. In hindsight, I can think of several films and stories that are basically similar to "Close" in that way, except the kids were a little bit older. Not that I was particularly better at getting close to people then either, but yeah, this is definitely a movie plot that feels like it's from a more European sensibility of coming-of-age.
And it is, it's from Belgian director Lukas Dhont, and the film was nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars. Leo and Remi are very close friends as they begin their 6th grade years. How close? Well, they often share the same bed when they sleepover at each other's houses, which is quite often. Neither of their parents seem to mind or object. They often play on Leo's family's flower farm. They ride bikes together, they do a lot of stuff together. When they go to, I guess, middle school,- not sure what the equivalent in Belgium is, but when they get there, their intimacy is clear to most everybody. They're confronted about it, even asked if they're boyfriends.
Is this a film about young gay pre-teens? Perhaps. They're never sexually intimate in any way, but they do fight and wrestle occasionally with each other. If either of them are gay, it doesn't matter. It is a close relationship and when the kids start talking, that's when Leo starts getting concerned and nervous about the connotations and rumors. Eventually, he starts taking up ice hockey, and stops going to ride bikes with Remi together, and all-in-all, just slowly pushing him away from him.
This eventually turns tragic, and I'm reluctant to talk about the story or plot further. Honestly, I don't know quite how to describe my thoughts or feelings on "Close". It's clearly a good film, I don't know if it emotionally effected me, 'cause I think it's just a little too insular and unique. I feel like it's personal, I'm not entirely sure about that, this is the first Lukas Dhont film I've seen; I haven't gotten to his debut "Girl" yet. I will say I love the performances, especially by the two main kids. He's clearly a talented director, and I can definitely see this story happening to someone. I definitely remember being confronted with rumors of friendships being more-than-that with some friends of mine from school, but they were definitely older friends than this. Again, this might just be an American thing not getting this dynamic fully. Maybe I'm in the minority and I'm just lucky to not have a tragedy like this one effect me so much.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023) Director: Chad Stehelski
⭐⭐
(Sigh)
I don't get this franchise. I'm sorry, I'm trying, but-, I saw this movie a week ago, and I didn't have much to say about it, so I kept putting this review off. And I've been thinking about it since then, and I still don't have much to say about it. I'm mostly just baffled by this whole franchise.
It's been a weird running theme of these movies, whether I like them or not, my fascination is with the severe reactions to this franchise. It seems a lot of people love John Wick (Keanu Reeves), and I mean really love these movies. Sometimes people really hate them. Me, I don't understand either reaction, 'cause I just, don't have any reaction to these movies. I don't get why those who love them find them so beloved, and I also don't really get why those who don't like them, hate them.
At least that was true enough of the first two movies, I actually did like "Chapter 3", but part of that was just because of how batshit the world-building had started becoming. Honestly, it was the first time that I actually felt there was something memorable about the franchise. That and-eh, Halle Berry stealing the show. Not the first time she's been the best thing in an otherwise forgettable entry in a long-running action franchise.
Well, I guess that's not entirely fair; I think it all depends on whether or not you like the John Wick character, and-, I-eh... (Shrugs) um.... Am I missing something? Cause I just don't remotely have any interest in this character. And that sucks, 'cause you can get away with a lot of ridiculous bullshit if you care about the character, apparently others do, but-, actually, I'm not even sure that's true, 'cause I think they just like Keanu Reeves. There's been a major social media offensive in defense of Keanu in recent years, mostly random stories about how nice and down-to-earth a guy he is, and for everything I've ever heard, he is and all of that is true. I don't hate Keanu Reeves in general, and I think he's fine in these films, I just am not captivated by him in these films. I've been in others, I love most of the "Matrix" films, but I also am more captivated by the world of "The Matrix" than I am, the world of "John Wick". Or, really, this, underworld of "John Wick".
"John Wick", really is one of those movies or movie franchises where, the poor guy who works down at the morgue is having the worst days of his life because of all the ridiculously absurd body counts that the movie adds up. I think my favorite movie like that is John Woo's "Face/Off", and that's really the perfect example, that movie is insane, but just the gimmick of Nicholas Cage and John Travolta having to switch places and faces, it takes something that's otherwise just a bunch of people getting killed and makes it a compelling acting exercise and frankly, it's even a decent story of cop and criminal having to live each other's lives. Of course, that's not what these movies are going for. The story of these movies, is really just, people want John Wick dead, and John Wick survives.
I had a friend of mine who likes these films say that; he thought they were reminiscent of an old Clint Eastwood western? Eh, I guess there's something to that, John Wick is about as close to a Man with No Name we probably have, although I'd argue in recent action films, Jason Bourne is a better version of that. But, Eastwood-, he was mysterious, the whole issue with those films, is that, a lot of insane stuff happened around him too, but you didn't know what he was thinking or how he was going to react. There was something compelling about him. Wick, has a past that we've learned about. He's Russian, and tried to leave his assassin life, but eventually, things fell back for him, but there's nothing naturally compelling about him. Now, the "High Table", is determined to take him out, so he has to rejoin "a family", in this case, his old Berlin family,- but first he has to kill a member of the High Table, as well as go along with the strange and surreal rituals that I think only make sense if they were cut scenes in a video game, and then, he has to challenge, the Marquis (Bill Skarsgaard) to a duel in order to rid himself of the High Table.
Didn't this all start 'cause of a dog getting killed?! Honestly, this is one of those movie franchises that started someplace concrete and realistic and then, just keep getting more and more moon logic insane. How did this "High Table" come about? How did these bizarre archaic rules come about? How has nobody just beaten the crap out of everybody for all these bullshit rules by now and overthrown this underworld government? Why are these "rules" still so stringently followed for hundreds of years by all these criminals? And how does nobody know about this damn thing, despite the countless dead bodies that they keep lying about? That's really all I think about now with this movie franchise.
Chad Stahelski, the former stunt coordinator-turned-director is still on board with directing, but this is the first time he got new writers for his movie; this is the first movie in the franchise not written by Derek Kolstad, which,- I mean, his stuff was confusing too, especially with "Parabellum", but I thought the look of that movie as well as the intensity of the acting, kinda made up for a lot of that in "Parabellum". I think the world of this movie did just get lost though. It's way too long, there isn't as many interesting developments and it's just a mind-numbing amount of violence that's only really appealing if I was playing a video game. Frankly, I liked the movies better when I just complained about how they were just average normal hitman movies and I couldn't figure out why everybody was so fascinated with them.
FULL TIME (2023) Director: Eric Gravel
⭐⭐⭐
Let's talk about Italian Neorealism. Yeah, that Italian Neorealism, that movement that led to those sad movies shot around Rome on low budgets that depicted the struggles of the poor and downtrodden in post-WWII Italy, the movement that completely changed cinema forever, inspiring every low-budget independent movement from French New Wave to Mumblecore ever since, that one. You know where, curiously, those movies weren't particularly popular? Italy.
No, seriously, they were hugely popular in the rest of the world, and everywhere else, but they actually weren't that beloved at the time in Italy itself. In fact, Vittorio Di Sica, who made, arguably the three best Neorealist films, "The Bicycle Thief," "Shoeshine" and "Umberto D", he was more beloved, for his studio films that he was also making around that time, and believe it or not, most of them were lighthearted comedies. Hell, arguably he was more beloved as an actor than a director; he was quite a popular handsome actor, and in a few big films too. He took a lot of his money from those gigs to make those Neorealism passion projects; he was Cassavettes long before Cassavettes, but yeah, those films that probably defy Italy's most famous film movement, Italy, didn't actually like them much, and the reason is simple. Their lives were terrible and frankly they didn't just want to be reminded of it. Poverty was rampant, people were struggling to get by, and yeah, literally one stolen bicycle could lead to financial ruin and disaster for some. They wanted the light-hearted comedies to escape those lives for a bit, not to be reminded of them. And yeah, I get it. I love most of those films, but boy do I need to be in the mood for them before I revisit them.
"Full Time" is a French film, but I couldn't help but think about those classic neorealist films, 'cause that is essentially what this is. It's a good film, but it's a movie about a struggling single mother, Julie (Laura Calamy) who's struggling to keep her head above water, and what happens when just one thing changes around her. See, she takes the transit system to work as a head maid at a major hotel in Paris, but the transit system, has gone on strike. She doesn't have other ways of travelling, and she can't afford, or have the time to move closer to work. She's also got a job interview lined up, and already, she's struggling to maneuver the time off just to get to that, plus, if everything goes to shit, she's gonna be late picking up her kids, and she's struggling to keep babysitters going, if she can either get the new job she wants, or keep her current job. Ugh! Honestly, all I could think watching this film was just how fragile my life can be. I've had days where travel hang-ups cause me so much frustration and time. Everything feels so out of your hands, and yet, you must somehow continue and stride on. I know, at least, if the bus drivers around me go on strike, they'd be replaced by scabs, but that doesn't assure me anything would be easier.
I felt for Julie, but mostly I watched "Full Time" feeling for myself, and that's-, well, it wasn't the mood I really wanted to be in at that moment. It's the second feature, I haven't seen his first, "Crash Test Algae", although based on the description of that film, about a girl who loses her factory job after it was relocated to India, and she decides to go there to keep her job, I get the sense that he is fascinated by the neorealist struggles of those who are living on the edge of their rope, and in order to make their lives work, need literally everything around them to work perfectly in sync, and then suddenly, something goes wrong and everything gets thrown for a loop. I guess we all live there to some degree, some more vehemently than others though. Perhaps if I was in a better position, I can more appreciate "Full Time" for the document of modern life that it's trying to be, but in the meantime, it only played like a reminder of how fragile my life is at the moment. Again, the right mood, I'd appreciate this more....
KAJILLIONAIRE (2020) Director: Miranda July
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I know I'm late for "Kajillionaire", which, as I currently have DirecTV, I was surprised to notice replaying on a few of the basic cable stations I have somewhat regularly. I hadn't watched it, but I saw it replaying. (Also, cable TV replays a lot of movies that should not be replayed all the time. Why are all the superhero movies on all the fucking time? Those aren't movies that you want to watch again and again, even the good ones! Jesus, these people used to know what movies were actually rerun-able.) Anyway, I found it curious 'cause the one thing I knew about the movie was it's director, and she's not somebody I think of as making a mainstream popular film.
Miranda July is-, she's made a few movies, this is her third feature film, but it feels strange or wrong even calling her a filmmaker or a director; she's more of a,-, for lack of a better word, she's an artist. What kind of artist? Um, it feels like all kinds? I guess, technically you can categorize her as a performance artist, but even that feels limited. She's put on plays, she's written a couple books of short stories, she was way ahead of her time regarding multi-media art, she's released a couple music albums, she's got collections of short films that have been shown in museums. She's even started acting more regularly, and not just in her own movies; she's done voiceover work for documentaries as well. Her parents were East Coast academics, but she really started making noise, as part of the Portland Riotgrrl scene in the mid-90s, but even saying all this, doesn't really give you a sense of her work, or her odd point-of-views and perspectives. It's not just that she can, and does, do basically all of this, it's how she does all of this, even only three feature films in, her work is really distinctively her.
Her first feature we a multi-narrative indie called "Me and You and Everyone We Know", and it's a polarizing film. I love it, and to some extent, I'm kinda wondering if that film has kinda clouded my judgment on her other two features, including this one, "Kajillionaire". "Me and You and Everyone We Know," is- it's got a lot of odd and questionable material in it, but there's such a sense of abandoned to it, like she threw every weird idea and experience she ever had into it. That movie literally begins with a main character lighting his arm on fire, as a way to entertain his children, but forgetting to soak his hand in lighter fluid so that it doesn't burn, so he ends up hurting himself. That's kinda how I like to think of July, she is a fascinating portrait of reckless abandonment, and the rest of that movie, is full of thoughts and ideas so obtuse and twisted and weird and in this conflicting sunshine-y and blissful sheen,...- it's so out there that you wondered if she just insisted on getting these ideas out of her head, fearing that she'd just never be allowed or able to make another movie again. And yet, her ideas are odd and comedic, just-, weird thoughts and observations on very slight and typical behaviors. Her second feature, "The Future", was more of an insular narrative. It involved a couple who decided to test out whether they want to move onto the next phase of their relationship, by adopting a terminally ill cat, but can't take him home for 30 days while the cat recovers from surgery, and thinking that, if they take good care of the cat later on, that it's such a responsibility, that they should spend the time living freely. It's almost too absurd to say it's plot out loud, these two people in their '30s trying to get a cat and are so inept at adult relationships that they struggle to adjust to that and think they need to spend time apart freeing themselves of their inhibitions. (Like her stories kinda remind me of what I think people who hate Lena Dunham think her plotlines are about, but because she's not such an aggressive extrovert and exhibitionist that they don't notice.) She's deft with her humor, and despite her movies seeming pretty and bright, there's a strange darkness underneath it all.
I think her movies are about realizing the absurdities in one's own lives and having to confront them. In "M&Y&EWK", there's too many plots of this to mention, but "The Future" definitely is about characters being confronted with how low-maintenance and blissfully inept they actually are at being a loving couple, or adults for that matter. In that sense, I get why "Kajillionaire" is the one that broke through to the mainstream. It's about a character realizing that their world is, patently ridiculous and absurd.
This character is named Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood). Old Dolio, named after a homeless man, is the daughter of two con artists, Robert and Theresa (Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger) and Old Dolio is also a con artist with them. They spend their days, trying to find a scam, like stealing and returning a piece of jewelry for reward money, or something to that effect. They live in a makeshift place and they're about to get kicked out of that. Old Dolio comes up with a scheme involving flying to New York but getting their luggage lost in order to collect the insurance money, and this one seems like it'll work, but the insurance check could take weeks to arrive. Meanwhile, her parents befriend Melanie (Gina Rodriguez) on the plane, and soon, they begin inviting her along on some of their schemes, even coming up with a couple of her own as she works as a physician's assistant at an eyeglass store and knows some old people who've befriended her and are likely to give her stuff they can resell. This works a couple times over, although sometimes in disturbing ways, like when they have to pretend to be one person's family while he's sick and dying in their house, because it comforts him.
Describing the actions of these characters, doesn't describe exactly how odd these characters are. At some point, it seems like her parents had some kind of education, they even get confused for professors or academics at times, and yeah, they do feel like a random husband & wife team you'd think were college professors somewhere that spend their days like George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", or like modern-day post-hippie era versions of them. It's through Melanie, who is so much more outgoing and forwardly observant, that Old Dolio finally starts to see how bizarre these parents of hers actually are, and realizing that real upbringing and stunted adulthood might also be severely messed up.
Honestly, this movie reminded me a lot of "Dogtooth", the breakthrough Yorgos Lanthimos film about a family that was also otherwise shielded from the outside world to a disturbingly extreme degree. This isn't quite that extreme, but these parents definitely have thrusted their daughter into their world too much, and Melanie has taken it upon herself, to help Old Dolio get out of it.
Basically, it's July's version of Plato's Cave Alleghory, only instead of being stuck in a cave, she's stuck in a never-ending string of cons by her parents. Even her name, apparently was a long con, as they named her after a homeless man who won the lottery believing he'd give them money he had left after he passed, but he spent it on cancer treatments instead. I'm not exactly sure how these parents got this way, but despite all the strangeness and occasional cringe, "Kajillionaire" is still July's most relatable film. Who doesn't feel like their parents somehow left them unprepared for the outside world? Probably not so much as to believe that somehow surviving an earthquake while stuck in a confined space makes gas station snack foods seem joyous, but there's definitely a feeling that July's tapping into in her own strange, surreal way.
It's a shame July is such a Renaissance Riotgrrl, 'cause I think if she did focus more of her attention to feature films, we'd get more special ones more often, but she's definitely always felt that there's something wrong with anybody being held down by people, places or even things, and I also presume by artistic mediums as well. I hope afterwards in that same artistic spirit, Old Dolio goes down to the courthouse and pick her own name.
TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL (2020) Directors: Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I knew I was waiting for something before I released a Top Ten List for 2020. Other than, getting around to watching all the movies that I need to watch, no, what I needed was to watch this film. A film, about the COVID pandemic itself, and all the ways that, America, the Trump administration, really screwed up the response. And made by, arguably the pre-eminent documentary filmmaker of our times. Alex Gibney's films are probably the modern standard for expose documentaries. Ever since his breakthrough "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", he's put out some of the most talked about and important documentaries of our time. He puts out documentaries so often that you can blur over how well-made and written some of the best ones of his are. I think his last great one for me was "Going Clear", which took a really good deep dive into the inner sanctums of Scientology, and that along with Leah Remini's TV show spurred up a lot of the current criticisms of the so-called "Church". "Totally Under Control", takes a look at just how Trump and America really botched up the entire COVID outbreak, something I think, especially now, we need to reminded of. The GOP and the Trump administration, admonished and despised the expert opinions and dismissed those who insisted on saying that the situation was as bad as it was. They made everything political, all the way down to masks, and slowed down testing in order to make it seem like there was less of the disease out there. Not to mention, getting rid of all the safeguards and plans that the Obama administration specifically laid out for him. While other countries came together and limited their death tolls and managed to find ways to even not be so confined during the pandemic, their ineptness killed people at astonishing rates. It was the equivalents of a 9/11 a day of deaths at their worst, and it is very fair to say that Trump killed lots of Americans.
And just to be clear, the movie does show that Obama's team wasn't always perfect when they had to deal with other coronavirus outbreaks. Oh yeah, pandemics are much more common than people realize. H1N1, SARS, MERS, all these were during Obama's administration, but they listened and trusted the experts and put plans into action. Got tests out, corrected and acknowledged their errors quickly. A lot of stuff that Trump just refused to do, under some misguided belief that things would get better. (Also, I didn't realize that they were also coronaviruses. Yeah, if you don't know this, "Coronavirus" just means that two viruses were combined together)
Meanwhile, Trump sees one social media post from a doctor dealing with too many patients to count and tries Hydrochloroquine and it gets a little immediate results, but then they try to publish that, or Ivermectin as wonderdrugs. It's like, he just wanted a quick fix, instead of just, following the procedure, but they couldn't give any credit to those who came before, and they couldn't also make it seem like it was as bad as it was, because there's an election out there to win, and he believed the economy was good enough to stay elected, if they could just make the COVID, go away. (Not that the economy was actually doing that good at the time, or even that Trump did anything to make it good, but whatever, when you're that dumb, even the economy can't help you.) They even started making the government bid alongside the states for supplies, thinking the free market is the savior of everything. (Boy, there's a lot of the GOP's positions that I don't understand, but man, that one that trust the free market as much as they do, just completely befuddles me.)
Gibney, along with co-directors Opehlia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger compiled a pretty exhausted and fully realize doc, shot during the pandemic on multiple continents, to tell the story of COVID-19, and how the U.S. should've stepped up, was capable of being the example for the rest of the world, and instead fell to pure incompetence and arrogance. Look, I hate just spewing vitriol towards the Trump administration, but frankly there's little other ways to put it. He said it was "Totally Under Control", when clearly it wasn't, and literally, the day after the this film was completed, was the day Trump got COVID. And somehow, the worst of it all still came after all this with him.... (Sigh)
76 DAYS (2020) Directors: Weixi CHEN, Hao WU and Anonymous
⭐⭐⭐⭐
If "Totally Under Control" was the autopsy of the COVID pandemic, up to that point anyway, than "76 Days", is the- uh, the patient zero? The birth? Uhhh, sorry I started writing that sentence before I had this down and thought something would come to me, but- Anyway, "76 Days" is a cinema verite look at the front lines of the pandemic. The patients and hospital workers at the Wuhan Hospitals during the outbreak of the pandemic. The title references the number of days that the city was under strict quarantine, which, feels like a lot less than what we were under, which, hopefully means that despite everything, they were easily the more prepared and willing to listen when things got bad. Also, in case you don't know, Wuhan has eleven million people in it, not to mention it's a big worldwide hub location, so a there's a lot of travel normally throughout the city, but at this moment at the beginnings of the pandemic, it's in lockdown.
All the doctors and nurses are in HASMAT suits with several masks. The patients range from older people who've long worried they've lived to long to young newborn babies who are born under quarantine and have to be protected from the world around them so they won't get infected. Families can't see their loved ones, and when they pass away, they have to walk outside in a designated walled-off location, where their loved ones' belongings are eventually given to them, after they'd been bagged and disinfected.
It's weird watching this documenting of the front lines a few years later, knowing everything that went on, knowing how the U.S. Government so fundamentally blundered this entire thing. Even with Wuhan getting it the worst and first, it's kinda startling that they managed to only be in lockdown for so short of time. I'm not saying that even that was necessarily the best idea, this movie won't go into those details but it shows us what it was like in the heart of the COVID pandemic, and how those who dealt with it head-on and most directly. If "Totally Under Control" was about how the higher ups dealt, or didn't deal with it, "76 Days" shows up the groundlings who had to work their way through it. Sure, we were all there, but not all this close. It's a haunting reminder that, while COVID might not be as viable and debilitating as it once was, just how close it really came to completely taking us out. Imagine these people weren't in a world of science, medicine and technology and weren't prepared with all the tools, knowledge, and equipment we now have to combat such pandemics. How easy, in another world, this pandemic could've been a plague.
SERVANTS (2020) Director: Ivan Ostrochovsky
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Something Communism, in practice, always seems to get wrong is what to do about religion. I'm not saying Capitalism's record is spotless with it either, but it definitely feels like they're more perplexed by it than other governing systems. Even Marx and Weber didn't entirely agree on how it should be integrated into society. That is kinda understable on the surface, religion, especially Catholicism has served several different roles in western society over the years. At one point, they were, the ruling class, and were the oppressors of society. Even as recently as the American Revolution, people forget, we weren't just getting rid of our political rulers, but a theological ruler as well, as the King of England was/is also the head of the Church of England. However, it is also fair to say that, since the Church, for all intensive purposes, doesn't serve that role anymore, that it has since become a more corruptive force for the world. In that, whatever, or whomever runs the ruling class of the society, be it Capitalist or Communist, they end up corrupting the religion and using it for serving their own purpose.
We, in the West, don't really think about how much power the Soviet bloc actually had over Eastern Europe much anymore, and frankly, it's hard for us to even fully understand its depths, even back then. Hell, I recently had been going through old Presidential Election Debates, 'cause I wanted to remind myself how they used to be relatively normal, and I totally forgot that one of the reasons Gerald Ford lost to Carter was that he stated quite bluntly in a debate how the Eastern countries, like Czechoslovakia for instance, weren't under the thumb of the Soviets. Hell, one of the big points in 2012 was how we should be regarding Putin and his stronghold over Russia, and this time the roles were reversed, with Romney saying that he feared Putin's continued reign and corruption and Obama saying that they were well on their way to easing into the modern western world, and I'll give credit where credit is due, he was laughed out of the room at the time, but Romney was right on that one. Perhaps he caught it earlier because, as a practicing LDS member, he was more religious and therefore conscious of those in the church who are indeed threatened to be oppressed by the ruling class than others? (Shrugs) I can only speculate there, but the fact is that, during the Cold War, those who were Catholic were oppressed by the Soviets.
"Servants" takes place in 1980 Bratislava, shot in black-and-white and with a tone, pace and visual style that more than once reminded me of the films of Bela Tarr, focuses on two seminarian Juraj (Samuel Skyva) and Michel (Samuel Polakovic) but the story is really about how the Church was suppressed during the authoritarian reign of the Soviets over the Eastern bloc. The Warsaw Pact troops have begun invading the city, and they intend to censor the church, confiscating typewriters so undesirable pamphlets can't be written or promoted, threatening the Church's existence if they don't conform to their strict guidelines, things like that. Questioning the students, even arresting one. Things like that. One member is killed after being tortured by them, possibly because he was involved in the Underground, or perhaps because he just refused to cooperate.
As the intrusion becomes more severe, and the rebellion, quiet as it is, most notably a widespread hunger strike, the two friends begin to grow apart. Juraj eventually getting weaved more and more into the State Security, while Michel, quietly encourages the rebellion.
"Servants" is directed by Slovakian director Ivan Ostrovochovksy, the first film of his I've seen, who was born in the old Soviet Czechoslovakia, and it's a fascinating moody look at what happened when the Church is compromised by a dictatorial regime. They are supposed to be servants to god, but is that even possible in a world like this? What is the correct path, compromise? Death? Rebellion? Michel did get messages to Radio Free Europe and The Vatican? The radio can report, but that's it, and it's not like anybody was gonna take up arms, and what exactly could do, quietly secretly name a Bishop or Cardinal? I think Juraj and Michel represent both sides of that conflict and take with that what will with how their paths end up. "Servants" is quite a rare and stirring look at what life was like from behind the Iron Curtain and from a perspective that we don't think enough about.
MUCHO MUCHO AMOR: THE LEGEND OF WALTER MERCADO (2020) Directors: Christina Constantini and Kareem Tabsch
⭐⭐⭐
So, I guess I never fully picked up on it, but apparently astrology is really big in Spanish-speaking households. And apparently, big on Spanish television.... So, I-eh, I didn't know the name, Walter Mercado before watching "Mucho Mucho Amor..." He definitely looked familiar,- nobody as distinctive-looking as that are you able to fully get out of your mind, but-eh,- yeah, I'm not as familiar with Spanish-language television history as I'd like to be, so the fact that the first documentary I've come to watch about a famous Spanish-language personality from the small screen, is about this,- flamboyant and flashy,- guy who-, gives the astrology report on the news broadcast....? Yeah, clearly, I'm just not familiar with this.
And that's not to say that I'm anti-astrology, in fact, my mother used to do astrological charts; it was a big passion for her. I don't think she was a "believer" per se, but she definitely found it fascinating. And you know, come to think of it, when I have occasionally channel-surfed and stumbled onto the Spanish stations, and tried to figure out what was going on,- well, first of all-, seriously, why don't Univision and Telemundo, have an English-language subtitle option? (Okay, I just looked it up and apparently there is very limited English captions options available on those channels, but I'll be damned if I've ever been able to find that option when I'm watching them) Secondly though, there does seem to be more astrology influence on Spanish TV than I would've thought. Like, I've stumbled across "12 Corazones" a few times. I didn't quite get all of it, but I definitely caught that it was a dating show, and the contestants are separated and partially matched up based on their signs? Like, that if you told me, that their was an American English-language game show that lasted for 12 years, and asked me, when I thought it aired, I probably would've said something like, (Shrugs) maybe, from the late '70s to the late-'80s, early '90s at the latest? Eh, no, that show was on from 2005-2017! Like, really that's when it aired?
I'm not criticizing, just an observation; I never realized or thought astrology was, such a big deal in the Spanish-language communities. Apparently, the horoscope report was more apart of a Spanish news broadcast than the weather report was! And, if you grew up in a Latino household, than that astrology report was probably presented by Walter Mercado. "Mucho Mucho Amor..." the documentary shows him, right before he passed in 2020 and goes over his rather exuberant life. He was an actor before finding his way into in astrology bit, mostly in local theater and some TV in his native Puerto Rico, but his style and flash got popular reactions from the audience, and he eventually became a popular character on the news, and his work eventually spread across the world.
During the height of his popularity and acclaim, you can find him on a lot of English language TV as well. He appeared on several talk shows, and even did a couple of those old psychic informercials that used to be a thing. Everybody remembers Miss Cleo, but if you were around, you know there was a lot more than her.
He claims that as a child, he believes he had visions, and he even majored in psychology, pedagogy and pharmacy in college, although he pursued acting originally, the gimmick seems to be something legitimate to him. Although, he does mention that he never gave out any negative notes or words in his horoscopes, which, hmmm,- look, while I am fascinating by astrology, I am still a skeptic, and that's-, like even some of the most atrocious of people in these fields, they weren't 100% positive all the time. (Look up on Youtube some of the times, Sylvia Browne "got it wrong"...- Sidenote: man, we really should talk more about Montel Williams at some point....) . And Mercado was apart of some of those more atrocious informercials of the time. He says he never promised something like lottery numbers, but-eh, the movie shows that he did.
Granted, the movie also shows how basically, his entire image and gimmick were basically sold off to his manager and much of his image and even his Intellectual Property was in his name, which-, yeah, he's a performer first, they're not good at business decisions, so, yeah, I'm not surprised that a lot of his absence in recent years got caught up in a lot of BS like that, attempts to try to get his money and name back. I mean, he had so little control over his image newspapers were often literally just copying old horoscopes of his from the past, and re-running them, and he couldn't do or say anything about it; even for astrology, that's low. (And horrifying if I ever read any of his horoscopes; man, I could've been doing things completely wrong at certain points in my life. What? I'm an Aquarius, I'm a free spirit who takes his own path, but that doesn't mean I won't listen to ideas once in a while.)
"Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado" as a film, is not much, it's a typical documentary about it's subject; I really don't have much to say about the movie itself. If you're interested in learning about this dominant figure in modern Spanish-American culture, than it's definitely worth a watch. Mostly it was just a learning experience for me, and I guess a fun one, just-, an odd one. I don't know who I would equate him to that I would be particularly familiar with, maybe somebody like the recently-passed Richard Simmons? But, I don't know, it's weird, I don't tend to think of astrology as such a modern mainstream part of culture, but perhaps I need to reevaluate that, knowing now how big Walter Mercado was. Y'know, my horoscope did say I'd have to stop being a teacher and be more of a student for awhile; maybe this is what it was talking about? Why did I have to be learning while Mercury was in retrograde, that really is annoying.
