(Sigh)
I'm not crazy about this list.
I mean, no shit, it's a worst list, I shouldn't be crazy about it, right? Ehhh, sometimes it's a drag doing a Worst Films list, other times it isn't, sometimes it's cathartic and soothing, like a cleansing, but this time,- on top of being just, so far behind in general- I thought about not doing it at all. I mean, like, what's-the-worst that could happen, I get more behind schedule? I start posting even less than normal?! It's not like it really matters. And frankly, worst lists, especially for films from five years ago now,- frankly I should probably just move on. 2019's list, I felt like I had to make, especially when I realized "Joker" had to be my number one, an opinion that apparently wouldn't sound that weird now, based on the reception of the sequel. But even still, was it really the worst film? Probably not. But it was the worst I had seen, and there was a lot of movies that year, that just, absolutely bored me to death. That was a year I felt like I needed to do this. Other years, I used to not bother with a separate blogpost for this, and I'd just shove my Worst List on the bottom of my Best List, with maybe giving a one-sentence thought on it. I did that originally because I figured one sentence or two was all the films were worth, although apparently that's now called a "Letterboxd reviews", whatever that is.
Anyway, this isn't a Worst List that inspires me or anything, but I haven't posted in a while anyway, so, yeah, I'm doing this. Final nail of the coffin of the formerly previous worst year in modern history, until this current one, belongs to me. Even if, I- like other years, decide not to bother seeking out the real bottom of the barrel. It's the worst of the year, that I saw. I have a few opinions here that are gonna be controversial possibly to others, but, for me, this list is mostly bleh. There's still some terrible here, but,- eh, maybe I'm just still giving it a pass because it was 2020. (Shrugs) Anyway, let's-eh, you know, count down, I guess? Sure.
Anyway, this isn't a Worst List that inspires me or anything, but I haven't posted in a while anyway, so, yeah, I'm doing this. Final nail of the coffin of the formerly previous worst year in modern history, until this current one, belongs to me. Even if, I- like other years, decide not to bother seeking out the real bottom of the barrel. It's the worst of the year, that I saw. I have a few opinions here that are gonna be controversial possibly to others, but, for me, this list is mostly bleh. There's still some terrible here, but,- eh, maybe I'm just still giving it a pass because it was 2020. (Shrugs) Anyway, let's-eh, you know, count down, I guess? Sure.
THE TOP TEN WORST FILMS OF 2020
Number 10.
I don't know if this is a controversial pick now, but I bet it was at the time.
10. Tenet
It seems stupid now, since I love his Oscar-winning "Oppenheimer" so much, but yeah, "Tenet" was an obnoxious, overbloated, self-indulgent meaningless mess. Oh yeah, traveling through time, is just hitting the rewind button. I stand by this, "Tenet" is Nolan's worst film by a mile, even worst than his bizarre mix of sci-fi and magic that was "Interstellar".
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Christopher Nolan has always been fascinated with time. I have too, and I've usually been willing to go with him on his journeys through his prognostications on time. People think of him now, mostly as the filmmaker behind the "The Dark Knight" trilogy more then anything else, and don't get me wrong, I love those films, but if you're looking for his main motif in his films, it's clearly time. His breakout feature film was "Memento" a movie about a guy who, due to an accident, lost the ability to retain long-term memories and had to develop tricks to solve the mystery of who killed his wife. That movie itself, is noted for telling it's story backwards, starting at the end of the film, and then catching up one scene to another 'til it ended at the beginning.
That movie probably has the most relevance to "Tenet" of all his films, but it's popped up even in his most innocuous works. "Insomnia" was about losing sleep in a world where the sun never sets, so it always seemed like it was daytime, and how that adjustment from outsiders can be, well, insomnia-inducing. Losing track of days and nights. "Interstellar" shows characters literally missing decades of their lives through space travel in an effort to struggle to find a new home for Earth to survive on in the future and it even has cross-generational time messaging magic in it. ("Interstellar," to me, is when he officially started losing it.) His best film with time being the central motif is "Inception", and watching "Tenet", I think I get why "Inception" works so well, while "Tenet", is visually impressive, but very hollow and uninteresting despite no real lack in the quality of filmmaking from Nolan. "Inception" was about controlling dreams. I know people have their own metaphors to the meaning of the film, but dreams are fairly common. Everybody's had a dream, everybody can relate to all aspect of dreams and we've all lost track of time and often ourselves while being caught in our own dreams. The concept is a relatable and an easy metaphor for audiences and it's an easily accessible way to grasp concepts like losing track or getting trapped in our own timelines. It's so easy, it's been used to death in film, since "The Wizard of Oz", probably even before that.
I'm not saying that "Inception"'s simple and easier to relate to means that it's automatically better then "Tenet" or any of his films, I'm hypothesizing that that's why it's the easiest and best of his films to connect to. As to "Tenet", where, I get what the idea is, but I don't really care.
Yeah, "Tenet"'s biggest problem is that, with all his other films, even "Interstellar" which I contend was previously his genuinely only bad film, at the center of his experimental thought projects with time, were genuine characters and stories we cared about. "Tenet", I don't know how else to say it, it just doesn't have that. It's main character is literally named Protagonist (John David Washington) and he works for the CIA and after a bizarre failed mission, I think failed mission anyway, at the Kyiv Opera House. He finds out that in the future, somebody has invented a way to reverse entropy. Mostly, this shows itself in bullet holes that appear before the shot it taken, and once you get shot in the present or future, or whatever, with a reversed-entropy bullet, it's particularly ghastly in the present. It also means that time travel has occurred and that somebody has reversed the entropy on nuclear weapons and deposited them, in the past, in order to take out the past.
This is a cool idea in theory, but in practice, and as the lines between the past and the future start to come together, the time lines start to not matter as much as what happens. We often see the crash in a car chase before it occurs and we reverse to the point, where we see the results of the fight, before some really interesting fight scenes, essentially play in reverse. In fact, I think a lot of this movie could just be playing the shots in reverse order. That's a cool trick, but I don't know if it really works unless you're not supposed to notice it, but it's all I could really think of honestly.
Anyway, Protagonist, tracks this down through an Indian arms dealer, Priya (Dimple Kapadia) a Russian oligarch named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who, for reasons I don't even understand, wants to blow up the world, as he's out seeking the entropy-reversed weapons, which he has to bring together in order to, succeed.... I don't really get this plot. Anyway, they go through his art appraiser wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) to get to him, and because there's also the time travelling thing, there's also multiples of each other depending on the events that occurs.... It's not that this is too confusing for me to understand, I don't need to understand what's going on exactly for me to like a movie like this, even a complex movie that's dealing in quantum socioanalytical theory, it's just that, I'm struggling to care about any of this.
Nolan has said that scientific accuracy isn't his main goal with this movie; apparently that mattered a bit more with "Interstellar" with him, either way, I don't particularly care one way or another with that, but this is the first time I've felt like he's just fallen way too far into his own gimmick and has fell into a literal time loop of himself. If you're wondering what the hell the title means, the word's used as sort of a code for the characters who are aware of this future reversal of entropy thing, but also there's something called a "Sator Square". It's this weird, kind of supposed coded word square that pops up in ancient Christian and Pagan texts and mythology. I've never fully gotten the big deal of this thing, but all the words that are made in this appear in the film. Sator, of course, is the villian, Opera, is where the first incident took place, Arepo is the name of an art forger in the film, although never seen onscreen, and Rotas, just means, turning, so you could easily call that time traveling aspect, I guess. It's an interesting piece of inspiration but I think it's tenuous connections at best.
Anyway, there's a lot of these weird missions both going forward through time, and through reverse entropy backwards, with dueling competing opposing guards at practically every location, plus several double-agents and potential double-agents caught in this time loop to stop or not stop the destruction of the world....
(Sigh)
Honestly, and I hate to say this about a Christopher Nolan film of all filmmaker, but I felt like I was watching somebody else playing a video game with "Tenet". I'm not caught up in his own little world, and there's simply no way for me to grab onto anything that I can care about. He's moving pieces together, we're going from level to level without really a complete explanation of why.... Actually, the thing the time travelling aspect reminded me of most, was that "Sands of Time" aspect of "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time". I hated that movie and really didn't care what the hell that little sequence was about, until I heard somewhere that the movie was based on a video game and that reversal of time was an aspect of the game itself, which, yeah, that explains a lot of the stupid in that film.
Honestly, I tend to despise any movies that remind me of or follows video game plots and structure in general, and honestly, this does feel like that, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should just outright pan this film. I don't want to do that, 'cause I like everybody here, and there was clearly a lot of work put into this film, and I think there is something here in the ideas, but I don't think he's exploring it as well as he could or worst then that, giving us any reason to explore it with him. It feels like I'm combatting with the movie to try to follow it, not with the movie trying to follow it, and that's just not the kind of movie I want from Nolan. It's not him at his best and he's trying to be too cute with it.
Honestly, I tend to despise any movies that remind me of or follows video game plots and structure in general, and honestly, this does feel like that, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should just outright pan this film. I don't want to do that, 'cause I like everybody here, and there was clearly a lot of work put into this film, and I think there is something here in the ideas, but I don't think he's exploring it as well as he could or worst then that, giving us any reason to explore it with him. It feels like I'm combatting with the movie to try to follow it, not with the movie trying to follow it, and that's just not the kind of movie I want from Nolan. It's not him at his best and he's trying to be too cute with it.
Yeah, you know what, I think I am gonna pan this one. If he's not trying to get me to connect with it, then I don't need the movie, period. It doesn't help that Nolan was the symbol of those seeming completely out of touch with the theater vs. streaming debate during the pandemic, even if I do kinda get his point; this movie would probably be more interesting to me in a movie theater, but nah, this is a just a weaker Nolan movie, one that makes me ponder why I enjoy his better movies so much more then this one. I'm certainly not giving up on him, "Dunkirk" wasn't my cup of tea, but it was a good movie, but maybe he should find a new motif to be inspired by. I think he's starting to run out of time.
Yeah, I haven't heard a lot of people talking about "Tenet" lately, and especially with how great "Oppenheimer" is, I think we've all collectively come together on Nolan's best films, and I think his core cinefile fanboys has also quieted down and shut up, but "Tenet" is genuinely lousy. This is Nolan at his most pretentious yet. He's so far up his own ass with this film, I'm glad he came out the other way eventually and can still create and tell some amazing stories, but this was such a bad film. It really was. He never sacrifice compelling characters and narratives before in exploring his fascinations with the abstractions of time before and this time he completely abandoned it. I gave it 2 1/2 STARS, I was probably being nice, this is bad. Just unwatchable.
Number 9:
Thank god I put "Tenet" number ten, at least I have something to say with that film, 'cause I don't have much to say about this one.
9. Some Kind of Heaven
Yeah, this list has documentaries, again. This one is called "Some Kind of Heaven" a look at the biggest planned retirement home community in the country, and frankly, it made me feel like, retirement kinda sucks. I guess that arguably could've been part of the point, I don't think it was, but even if it was, this is a painfully slow, boring documentary that made retirement look, well uninteresting.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Retirement is not something that's ever really been on my mind much, thankfully, but I have always kinda wondered about it. I can't imagine anybody who's ever been young who has ever actually imagined themselves living at a retirement community; I don't think we want to imagine that no matter how glamorous or luxurious such a place would be. I can't think of too many positive portrayals of them in media, at best, there's some sort of twist along the lines of, "Well, it's nice to see them having fun, at their age".
(Shrugs)
Are they really having fun? Most of the time, I doubt it. I'm sure they enjoy not working anymore and all, but I doubt it. I think, if you're at all physically capable of anything, and have a good mind at work, then retirement, especially retirement to a place like this, isn't so much a natural progression to life as it's always seemed more like a way to escape from it.
"Some Kind of Heaven" documents "The Village", the biggest gated planned retirement community in the country. With over 130,000 people in Central Florida, developed by a Harold Schwartz a Michigan man who was selling land in the 1960s, and like everybody else during that time, started turning the swamps of Florida into, well, Florida what it is today. Mostly, the whole area is full of tall tales of it's so-called history though, local reimagined myths. Honestly, it is kinda like if Disneyland was a gigantic neighborhood full of old people. So, it's Celebration, Florida, but full of old people.
We meet a few of the residents, including one guy who isn't quite a resident, but lives in his van trying to coarse his way into the beds of some of the women in town. He's Dennis, the most interesting character for much of the movie. We also meet Reggie and Anne, a couple who've been married well over forty years before moving into the neighborhood, and things have been going downhill for Reggie ever since, and not just normal downhill. Like, he's getting in trouble with the law, downhill....
Honestly, I kinda get it; you've spent the majority of your life living one way, and now you're not bound by your old lines and obligations, you suddenly get into some things. And Florida is full of some things....
We do get glimpses of the brochure images of this place, but I still think the movie, overall is mostly too slight for me. It's got some interesting characters to follow, but I feel like I don't learn much that I didn't already know and what I know is not much at all. I think documentary is actually a strange genre for this kind of story; I can think of several movies, most notably "Cocoon", that take place in retirement communities like these, and frankly it's a good setting for a film. I think I would've preferred that to this documentary oddly enough.
You know, this movie,- I've rarely seen a documentary showcasing old people who are so consistently and thoroughly uninteresting. Even the ones who are kinda interesting, like the rebels in this world, who get in trouble for drinking too much and doing too much drugs, or sleeping with everybody else, they're not interesting either. They're just old, pathetic versions of people they probably were in their youths. I hate to be mean, and it's not actually a criticism of them, it's a criticism of the filmmakers for either not drawing out the more compelling aspects of these characters, or just not finding interesting subjects to focus on. This place, "The Village" feels like the retirement home for a bunch of people you really wouldn't want to be around. It made me feel like, retirement is so boring. At it's this huge, rich gated community,- so all these people are like, really separated from the rest of the world-, if this movie was an advertisement this was a bad one. I betcha there's more interesting people and stories in any half-decent old folks home; at least if this was all the filmmakers could find,- I mean, y'know, yikes.
Number 8
Can somebody tell Tom Hanks to stop writing now?
8. Greyhound
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I don't know why exactly I'm surprised that Tom Hanks would write a World War II movie. It's not like it hasn't been a personal subject for him for years, but it's still somewhat surprising. Hanks's scripts up until this point, have been much more light-hearted, at least in terms of the theatrical feature film route. His writing and directorial debut, "That Think You Do!" is still a lovely beloved tale of a '60s one-hit-wonder band. "Larry Crowne", which he also directed, and co-wrote with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"'s writer Nia Vardalos, was significantly less interesting and memorable, and felt almost too much like some bad sitcom plots shoved together and somehow got the biggest stars in Hollywood to star in them. (And it's better left forgotten). That said, he has written more dramatic work, mostly in teleplays for the miniseries he's produced, including a particularly beloved episode of "Band of Brothers". So, no, this is not unthinkable, but still,- something does seem odd with this one.
At barely 90 minutes including credits, "Greyhound" is very stripped down and bare for a World War II movie. We get a brief introduction to Hanks's main character, Captain Krause, talking with Evelyn (Elisabeth Shue, in basically a glorified well-lit cameo) and then, we're on a World War II submarine, and shit's about to go down and continue to go down.
The movie details the Battle of the Atlantic, and yes, this is a section of World War II that for various reasons hasn't been that dramatized before, so kudos there. Krause is the Captain of the U.S.S. Keeling, and most of the movie takes place in the Mid-Atlantic Gap. This is an area of the Ocean called the Mid-Atlantic Gap where the subs are essentially on their own. There's no help through the air, and because of the German's ability to hear radio signals, their essentially relegated to radio silence, unless of course, there's no other option, for fearing that the Germans would take advantage of any assumed weakness they can detect, which they would. Meanwhile, they're orchestrating a strategic attack on their own anyway, and the Keeting, or "Greyhound" as it's known through their radio call sign, is shot directly into the middle of it. The rest of the movie, is essentially, a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the Germans and the Americans, with the Greyhound in the middle.
Occasionally, you'll run into a movie where, the people who are real history buffs, and I mean, the real hardcore history buffs, not just the people like me who are quite knowledgeable about history but generally more about the over-arching narratives of what happened and why, as opposed to buffs who care about the most minute and intricate details of events, those people, are gonna really like and appreciate a movie, but show the same movie to a general audience, and sometimes to people who are more film buffs then history people, and they're gonna be, way more underwhelmed by it. In my mind, the most quintessential example of this is "Tora! Tora! Tora!", which probably is the best movie out there ever about Pearl Harbor, and from everything I've ever heard, it's distressingly accurate, but it is not that fun to watch. It's made by good filmmakers but not necessarily great ones, and the look of the movie, especially considering when it was made, just seems too old-fashioned even for the time and has certainly not aged well. "Greyhound" is basically that, but not as good.
This is one of those weird cases where a war movie suffers from not being an epic, or at least not feeling or seeming like an epic in scope. "Greyhound" is relatively short and very astute and knowledge about it's story, but it's just so intricate and detailed that I feel like that I have to be a seaman on board the ship itself to even known what I'm talking about with the film. I guess, to me, it's the difference between reading a Patrick O'Brian novel, and watching "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World", it's not that one or the other is better, but it requires a lot more work and knowledge to appreciate the intricate details of the novel, while the movie, you can appreciate the authenticity and the accuracy, but there's also a lot more to grab onto. Mostly the characters that are interesting admittingly, but there's more even beyond.
I don't want to bash "Greyhound" because it doesn't go for character; it's intentional that we barely know anything about anybody; it's showing that heroes are other, these humble, quiet, nameless men who put their lives on the line in the worst of situations, often against their will and better judgment, and, (Sigh) yada, yada, yada, and- I hate to be dismissive 'cause there is something to that, but does it rarely make for good films. Especially war and action movies, when if you're really not caring about the people and characters involved, it just feels like watch computer effects battling each other. It's not that bad, for one the special effects are way better then that, but it's close enough to it that I have to pan the film.
I don't want to blame director Aaron Schneider, who is a really good director, despite seemingly never being able to make a damn movie. He won a short film Oscar in 2003, and he didn't get a job to direct a feature length film famously for six years after that with "Get Low", despite being a fairly successful regular cinematographer as well, and that was the last time he directed anything until now, and that eleven year gap is amazingly even more shocking and depressing, but this just isn't a good film, and while it's competently made, I can't help but imagine he deferred more towards Hanks's vision of the story and just handled the parts that would be a little more technically difficult for him to pull off. "Greyhound" is technically successful for being what it sets out to be, but the entry point to appreciate that is just way too deep for most people, and I suspect for those who are at that entry point to appreciate it, I can't imagine they're just gonna be blown away by it, or absolutely love it, and I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble to dig deeper to try to appreciate it.
Yeah, I think I was more apologetic to this film than I probably should be, and I still suspect, in other years, if I watched more films this wouldn't make my list, but this was, just a boring chore to get through. There is a way to do this, to take, just focus on the action and actual events of a war-like situation and just be enthralled by the chaos of the details; I think the best example is Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down", that's a great movie about a battle. But, like, you really gotta know, as a filmmaker, how to tell a visual story, and I think Hanks, is not the kind of writer who can tell that. He can tell the intricate details of how something happened, but make a documentary about that. I would rather watch Tom Hanks, telling me about the Battle of the Atlantic, than watch this movie he wrote and acted in, about the Battle of the Atlantic, and that's why it's on the list.
Number 7:
Okay, you know the term "Jump the Shark". It's from television, from this episode of "Happy Days", where Fonzie jumps a shark.
Yeah, that. The term comes from that and it's means the point in which a TV show, or really, any media franchise, per se, stops being good, and go so far bad, that it will never be as good as the show was before again. And yes, that episode, and that moment, it's- it's terrible. It's hilariously terrible, but-um, here's the thing, the myth is that, "Happy Days", not only was never good again, but that everybody stopped watching after that episode, and that's not remotely true at all. That was the premiere episode,- well, Part 3, of the premiere episode of Season 5 of "Happy Days, and it fell from Season 4, where it was the #1 show in the country with a 31.5 ratings share all the way to the #2 show in the country, with a 31.4 ratings share. It was still huge for another year, and the show lasted six more seasons after this, and was usually in the top 20. So, no, Fonzie jumping the shark, did not jump the shark for "Happy Days".
In fact, I'd argue the episode that should've for all intensive, been the show's "Jump the Shark" moment, occured later that season, the 22nd episode of that season in fact, "My Favorite Orkan". In which, this show, "Happy Days", which was a realistic-albeit-nostalgia-ladened sitcom about teenagers' white middle class upbringing in the 1950s, had an episode, where an alien visited.
This show had an alien in it,- and it wasn't the first show to do that either, by the way, not even close believe it or not, and it should've been the moment the show should've jumped the shark,- the term should be, "Brings in an alien", that should be what we call "Jumping the Shark."
Anyway, if you know the rest of the story, you know that miraculously, that insane, stupid idea worked,- they got lucky 'cause it turned out that some strange being called a "Robin Williams" existed, but that's the idea that really should not work, and it usually doesn't.
7. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Okay, maybe I'm being a little, ridiculous here, I don't think bringing an alien into "Shaun the Sheep", is as bad and nonsensical an idea as it is for other properties, but- eh, really, this was the direction they needed to go in for their second feature? And I liked the first "Shaun the Sheep" movie,- but it's just not what I want out of Shaun the Sheep. But, I didn't like it when they introduced aliens on "Mister Ed" either. (Shrugs [Yeah, that happened; I told you "Happy Days" wasn't the first with that dumb idea.])
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Looking over my review of the first "Shaun the Sheep" movie, it seems like I was actually fairly excited about it originally. That said, I haven't thought too much about it since, and really wasn't sure what to expect coming into, "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon". Mostly, I just kinda liked the real back-to-basics approach that Aardman Animation was doing with Shaun the Sheep. It's been said of their Wallace & Gromit franchise that Gromit never speaks but has all the best lines, and that's true enough, and nobody ever has any actual lines in "Shaun the Sheep" stories, just some occasional bleats and grunts and grumbles. On the one hand, I do enjoy that about the best of Aardman Animations' work, but eh, it can also just be the kind of thing you need to be in the right mood for. But, they also have to have the right sense of whimsy and "Farmageddon," almost has enough of it, but ehh....
In my aforementioned "Shaun the Sheep Movie" review, I compared the film positively, if tongue-in-cheekly to "Babe: Pig in the City", which, for the record is an underrated film. But, yeah, the Sheep and their Farmer, eh, The Farmer (John Sparkes) had to navigate their ways back out of the big city and to their home at the Mossy Bottom Farms. (Also, the Farmer had amnesia and became an in-demand hairstylist, it was a bit weird.) This film, well, their not hiding their inspirations, the big one being "E.T.:..." but basically it's a sci-fi film, with the premise, "What if Shaun (Justin Fletcher) and the rest of the sheep, come across an alien?" In this case, a small female alien Lu-La (Amelia Vitale) who basically looks more like a rabbit with some occasional alien abilities, particularly involving his ears in a Snorks-like manner. While the Sheep struggle to figure out how to get Lu-La home, and enjoy his company, The Farmer also has them working on building an Armageddon-themed theme park on the farm. I like the sequences of the sheep sitting on the beam having lunch and some of those peculiarities, those things feel right for this.
And I'm not necessarily against science-fiction elements entering the world of Aardman; my favorite "Wallace & Gromit" short is "A Grand Day Out", where they literally travel to the Moon in order to find some cheese. But, those were also characters who were seeking out strange oddities and adventures. Shaun the Sheep, I feel is more interesting when it just sticks to the farm, and only just reluctantly at-best ends up having to go on more elaborate adventures. Like, the Farmer getting amnesia and going into town and having to get him back, that's a good way to push them off the farm. But an alien coming in, I kinda think this time, they were a little too eager to go outside the farm quirks. I get that it's a movie, but, eh.... It felt like it was being bigger just to be bigger as well.
I don't know, I guess this is more of a mixed review to me, but I wasn't particularly enthralled with Shaun the Sheep this time. Maybe if I was in a better mood, perhaps, but eh, this felt like a step back the more I thought about it. Before I really got the relationship and friendship between the Sheep and the Farmer, and this time, it seemed like they were too desperate to bring in another character for us to care about instead and just for this film only, presumably. It felt like I was cheated. Perhaps if the alien stuff was a side character that only casually invaded the Sheep's world, and they were as frustrated with him as the town was and not try to go for the winking heartwarming stuff.... Eh, it just wasn't a great natural fit for me. I might be being a little hard on it, but I think they could've done better.
Yeah, this one just-, I wanted to like this film, but it just fell completely flat. This was basically that arbitrary animated sequel and they didn't know exactly what to do with it. Honestly, it made me less interested in this franchise, as a whole, and I wasn't the biggest superfan to begin with.
Number 6:
Oh Christ, this motherfucker!
6. Hillbilly Elegy
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
So, I was taught forks in ninth grade. I forget what the name of the class was, it was when I was at a magnet program that, honestly sucked, at least at the time it sucked, I hear it's run better now, but the class, kinda was an intro and a catch-all class for general knowledge and career path indicators; it's the class that you took those career tests in, those tests that determine your skillset and what kinds of possible future careers you'd be good for based on those results. Anyway, I do actually remember a lot from this class curiously and one of things we were taught was the rules about forks and spoons, and fancy dinners such as they were. Always go left to right from the outside in with your forks, always eat meat with a knife and fork, fish, you can eat with only a fork however, and if you're still not sure, always just use whatever utensil the head of the table is eating with, because very often, whoever is actually in that seat, might be just as unknowing and unaware as you are, but he is the one that's big and powerful enough that nobody will tell him no. I'd make an obvious Trump joke here, but the person who wrote the book that "Hillbilly Elegy" is based on, JD Vance, is currently a Republican Senatorial candidate who got Trump's endorsement, so apparently he eventually learned that one, and perhaps maybe we should abandon that rule. Anyway, that's one stressful opening on "Hillbilly Elegy" for our main character, JD (Gabriel Basso) as he's trying to get an interview out of Law School, hopefully a good-paying internship of some kind, learning from his girlfriend Usha (Frieda Pinto) over the phone, what fork to eat with, before returning to some, distressingly frustrating elitist questions from the table about his background.
"Hillbilly Elegy" was described as one of the books that help explain how someone like Trump could've won in 2016.... (Shrugs) I can kinda see that, like, it is kinda embarrassing to think about how somebody can hear of someone being from Kentucky and immediately ask them if they worked on the coal mines. It's also annoying to hear an old Mamaw (Glenn Close) correct her grandson by saying, they're called "Indians, not Native Americans, like the Cleveland Indians," and yes, it took me so long to get to this movie that the Indians, did indeed change their names because of how racist and insensitive "Indians" was as a name. (And it was and is racist and derogatory, always was, you can look that one up.) The movie itself, well, it's been pretty heavily panned. Glenn Close, pulled off an extreme rare feat with this film, getting both an Oscar nomination, and a Razzie nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Worst Supporting Actress respectively, for the same performance. She lost both awards, but while the movie was heavily panned in general, it was polarizing. There are some who thought the movie, which is based on Vance's own youth, fell into some poverty tropes and stereotypes, some decried the film as "Poverty Porn" in fact, while some others were fairly effected by it, and found the movie quite inspiring and powerful, and a love letter to both his family history, but to an often-overlooked and shunned part of the country.
Ehh, where am I standing on this? Well, I'm mostly caught in-between. I don't think the movie is "poverty porn" or anything, but I also don't think it's that good either.
I haven't read the book to double-check what's been changed or altered and/or how, but director Ron Howard, who also got a Razzies nomination for the film, I imagine probably improved the material. It wouldn't be the first time, Ron Howard is a very underrated director, in general, and one of his better skills, is taking material that's not particularly of quality on the page and turning them into some surprisingly quality films. The big one that most will point to is "The Da Vinci Code" and it's subsequent sequels, which, yeah, is pretty cheesy to read, but I actually like the two of those movies I've seen, as absurd as they were. From what I can tell in this case, the main thing he added was a narrative, 'cause the book is far more anecdotal than this film is, with many of his personal stories being used as arguments to help defend or showcase his political views and give explanation for why much of the Rust Belt has shifted from recent years from Democrat to Republican. Some of these observances I think are interesting, if not valid, although I'd to love to argue some of them, but in terms of a narrative, the movie, kinda has to form one, and it's tricky.
Basically, the whole film takes place with a ticking clock to an interview, and the rest is told in flashback to JD's youth (Owen Asztalos). In the current time, around 2011, he's gone back to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio to collect his mother Bev (Amy Adams) a heroin junkie who's fallen off the wagon again, after years of bad choices and usually bad men that primarily came about mostly after her grandfather Papaw (Bo Hopkins) died. His sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) has been married to her boyfriend, basically since high school, and has been struggling to deal with her life and kids, while also keeping an eye on their mother and JD's left, first for the Marines, and then for Law School at Yale. The movie jumps a lot in time and narrative, and keeping track of everything after this or within the timeline, basically becomes moot after a while. You do get to see all the major events, but we don't see them necessarily in a particular order, which I can't say is a terrible move here, believe it or not, but it's not really well setup.
That's the other thing, the movie sets us up with the geography of the area, how JD loves the Summers in the Kentucky Appalachia with his Grandma more than his homelife in- well, it's not really a big city, but if you prefer the Appalachia, than I guess it is. Eventually, he does move in with his grandmother, after Bev first begins to struggle and her addictions and messy relationship start really effecting their lives. Mamaw isn't particularly saintly either, we learn, but what really brings this down from somewhat compelling as a narrative to something less compelling is, oddly, how little the geography matters.
The movie is elegiac about the Appalachia in a sense that the narrator says it's where he grew up and is therefore some place that's apart of him, but the area and his problems, actually have very little to do with each other. His mother's a junkie who goes from man-to-man, his grandparents are old nags who struggle in their old age, his sister's in love, and his father's absent,- honestly, what the hell does that have to do with the hillbilly culture that you couldn't find in the big cities? I know people in rural, urban and suburban environments with basically the same problems growing up; it's not even necessarily a class issue, or even a cultural issue with that area necessarily. His family's fucked up, I'll give him that, and I will admit that I think it's a bit of an accomplishment getting to be as successful as he has after growing up like that, but there's nothing particularly compelling about it that makes me convinced that it was that unique. Maybe it's supposed to not be unique, but-, no, I don't see too many grandmothers light their loved ones on fire for being drunk, so I don't think that's it.
And frankly, I didn't think his early memories of being a kid in Appalachia were that good either; he's reminiscing about how his family inspired him after he got bullied by neighborhood kids, like what-the-fuck, why is that a positive to you?!
There is a good idea, somewhere here, in fact I think I do know where it is, and they missed a really sharp storytelling idea here; I won't give it away, but this could've easily been a road movie and that would've solved a lot of it's problems, for both the narrative interest, and for the characters themselves. The movie doesn't take that direction, I get the direction it did take, but it is short-sighted. The whole movie is kind of a short-sighted mess; it's a whole film about how great the area where this kid grew up is, and then the climax is, him leaving it...- that's not how these movies usually go. It's almost like he's trying to justify it to himself that this is where he belongs because this is where he came from..., and I just have severe doubts about this. I mean, there's another running theme of the movie where the kid is interested in politics, and that's from him constantly being thwarted in his attempts to watch the news, like "Meet the Press", which...- like, okay, I was a '90s kids, around the era as him, and I did watch the news very intensely more than most, especially at around that time, 'cause the late '90s, early 2000s, well, it's hard to remember now, but there a lot going on in Washington, but it never comes off as something he would have genuine interest in through any of other actions; it feels much more like something that might've been true, but I suspect he probably also watched "The Disney Afternoon" a lot, and that just didn't make it into the film.
"Hillbilly Elegy" is well-acted, and probably does improve the material given, but I don't think it does it enough. It's more interesting to reflect on afterwards than it is to watch, and it can be irksome at times. I don't think it's terrible either, and- eh, I guess some of the makeup is kinda Award-worthy, and sure, Glenn Close and even Amy Adams, in an underwritten, tricky role are good, but it's a lot less passionate and inspirational than I believe it's filmmakers think it is. And while it does indeed, see a lot of the problems with the area and the ways of life, it doesn't look at them and try to come up with better solutions; it just looks at them with awe in how unfortunate and sad it really is. In many ways I could easily make an argument that I should really be much more frustrated with it than I am, but I guess I'm lenient 'cause I'm somewhat impressed that the movie isn't as bad as it could've been. It could've also been a lot better though.
Yeah, why wasn't this a straight up road movie? It's right there, him and his wife travelling by car from Connecticut to Appalachia, to get his mother, and he tells his story along the way. Yeah, maybe I gave Ron Howard too much credit for a good adaptation. And, if that wasn't clear before, I don't remotely consider JD Vance to be an authority on anything, but especially Appalachia. I've heard people from the area pissed about how he portrayed them as well, and I don't really blame them. This isn't a good depiction of this area, this is a story of a guy's perspective of somebody who spent a few summers here. It's like if I wrote a book about my summers on the Jersey Shore and depicted it as though it was my entire upbringing. It's a shallow story from a shallow person, and it's a damn shame that talented people got caught up in this. Also, you could've just asked the people at the table about the forks, I'm sure they wouldn't have been as condescending as you made them out to be, if you just were your honest self, you prick. I'll bet money you did learn that in school, you just didn't pay attention that day.
Number 5
Oh, I'm gonna really get shit for this one. Um, okay....
The 2020 Oscars, as I mentioned in my Best List, were mostly uneventful, except for the fact they took place during the pandemic. They didn't match my lists, but I found them mostly harmless outside of some of the production choices that Steven Soderbergh made, but within film circles, there was one major exception, the Best Documentary category.
"My Octopus Teacher" is not on my list.
I did think about it; even though I actually gave the film a mildly positive review at the time though, and while I definitely don't think it should've won, I actually do get why it won this year. Hear me out: if you looked back at the recent Documentary award winners and nominees at that time, where, they weren't necessarily honoring the best films, but the best cinematic films. To me, the biggest example of this was "Free Solo" winning a couple years earlier; I like the film okay, but I believe it won because everybody was so impressed with how they got those mountain climbing shots. Remember, cameras, only really recently were small and good enough to get shots like that, so, I think it won just on that, and I think "My Octopus Teacher" fits that award narrative. It won because the footage of the octopus under the water, was spectacular. The narrative they created out of it, in hindsight especially, was kinda, what-the-fuck, but if you were picking the best looking documentary, than, yeah, that was the winner, and that is apart of filmmaking, so, I can't hate on it like I should. I was certainly impressed with the footage; you rarely see underwater footage that nice.
So,-, why am I bringing the Oscars up here.... You see, I think they got a category more wrong than that, and I don't think most people agree with me on this one.
Yeah, I don't get this one.
5. Another Round
I've had people try to explain this to me, and I get that Director Thomas Vinterberg, was going through a lot of personal stuff, but-, I'm sorry, as somebody who doesn't generally drink, it is not remotely fun around people who do, and I certainly think it's worst when then start pontificating on how their drinking is better than other drinking.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Okay, so I-eh, I don't drink much, at all. Except for the fact that I'm a writer, this is otherwise not a shocking revelation to most. It's not that I'm straight-edged, in fact I've spent much of my life around people who drink, and other mood-altering substances, let's say. Some of it I was aware, most of it, I was probably blissfully unaware of, 'til much later in life. (Hell, there are friends of mine, to this day, who are trying to configure ways into getting me to-eh, [finger quotes] "loosen myself up", if you will....) Honestly, I don't have a particular issue with it on paper, but I generally have not had great experiences hanging around too many chemically-altered people. (At least, none when I'm aware that they're altered.) I've often been the one in the room who's not drinking, and let me just say, it's not a terribly fun place to be, but I still think I prefer it to joining the crowd and drinking alongside them. Frankly, I would hate to act like the way I've seen some do when they're under the influence, and I genuinely feel a lot of concern for those who do partake.
I'm not trying to be a buzzkill here btw, if you're fine with it, then fine have a drink, have some fun, be safe, don't break any laws, have a designated driver, etc. etc. etc., but I just- it's just not for me. So-eh, those feelings though, that I've gotten when I'm the only one who's not drinking; that's a lot of what I felt while watching "Another Round", a strange, supposedly uplifting dark comedy from Dogme 95 director Thomas Vinterberg. Now, I'll confess that I'm not overly proficient in Vinterberg; I liked a couple movies of his I've seen, 'The Hunt" and "Submarino", but I can't say I was hugely effected by them. I know "The Celebration" is generally considered his best film; I haven't gotten to that one yet. There's a lot of Dogme 95 that I haven't gotten to, but this movie feels a bit like how that movement was probably created. A couple friends had a few drinks, and instead of deciding to artificially rediscover neorealism, they, decide to keep drinking.
Okay, it's a little more complex then that, but not much honestly. Basically, there's four high school teachers, that basically decide to concoct a social experiment on themselves. Over a dinner, they decide that, they've struggle a bit with their midlife crises lately, and hypothesized that it's because they're not drinking enough. Specifically, they're testing the Skarderud Theory that the human mind and body is better at a blood-alcohol or BAC level of 0.05%, is the ideal BAC to have while going through life; I suppose? Honestly, it just feels like alcoholics searching for an excuse to keep drinking. Strangely though, it actually works. The character Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) a bored history teacher actually has some inspired teaching moments and even has things pick up with his wife Annika (Marie Bonnevie). Eventually the other friends join in and they also have good moments at their respective teaching jobs and life. Tommy (Thomas Bo Larson) has a decent job coaching kids soccer, although he has to maneuver his way through an awkward encounter involving a water bottle that actually got a slight chuckle out of me. Lars Ranthe as Peter and Magnus Milang as Nikolaj also have some good scenes here as well. In fact, the acting in this movie is really amazing all the way through.
This actually makes the movie a little difficult for me to judge; 'cause I don't really want to pan this film too much. The premise is disturbing and hokey, and really feels like Vinterberg is trying to show what his nights out with Lars Von Trier probably were when they wrote up those stupid rules in the mid-'90s. And ultimately, the movie does show that drinking and staying a little drunk all the time, is ultimately not good, although I'm certain some idiot's biggest takeaway from the film is to don't drink anything with absinthe in it. (Which, should've just been a given, but oh well...) And I'm not really against movies about a bunch of guys drinking; in my mind I kept thinking back to Claire Denis's "35 Shots of Rum", and that movie has basically a half-hour scenes where four characters are just getting drunk and having a good time at a bar, and I don't remember much else about it, but I loved that movie. It's arguably Denis's best, so why does that work there, but the drinking in this movie, is just disturbing. Well, drinking on a night out and getting to know each other is a lot more intoxicating an experience then a bunch of middle-age longtime friends trying to recapture a bit of their past spark for one. That's probably a reason why I didn't like "At World's End" either. Still, though, all the arguments I can make for why these characters are essentially drunk pricks, I can probably make for Alexander Payne's masterpiece "Sideways", and that's one of my all-time favorite films, and that's just two friends drinking. They're also experiencing life and they're on a pre-wedding trip... I think that's what ultimately annoying me about "Another Round"; it's just four old men using this scientific theory as an excuse to try to drink their way through life, and they're not even like doing anything with it. They're not changing much, they don't want things to change, they just want to find something better, and they're searching for it in the bottom of a flask hidden in the school gym's utility room. Like, even if this was realistic, I still don't want to hang around these people who are trying to become functioning alcoholics.
I'm told the movie is supposed to be life-affirming but honestly, I don't see how, and hell it ends up destroying and ending one character's life, so even that thing is tainted ultimately. There's a little bit about the differences between binge drinking when you're in high school and when you're an adult, the movie even opens with teenagers performing in an organized traditional drinking challenge ritual that, is incredibly stupid. I guess the contrast is that the teenagers are stupidly trying to have fun and be drunk while the adults are taking a more thoughtful, scientific approach to it, and therefore are smarter?! I don't get this movie. Maybe I had to have drank a lot more in my youth, or now to fully understand it, and you know, there is probably something to be said about the fact that I made a choice to bypass the traditional sewing of my youthful oats, but in most aspects, I also don't feel any regret for that decision, and you know what, I can definitely think of movies that have made me wish I had more life experiences as a youth, or at least enjoyed the ones I had more then I did. This can be done romantically and well, not even that, just something more compelling somehow...; there's a good movie in here, somewhere, but ultimately, I didn't see it, and in my mind, I shouldn't have to be chemically-altered to enjoy or understand a piece of art.
I know people really found something profound in this film, at the time, I don't know if people still consider it as enchanting, but I didn't like it at the time, and I really don't like it now. I was really perplexed and confounded by this movie. This is probably the Worst Foreign Language Feature Oscar winner since like, "The Counterfeiters" or something. Nah, actually this film is worst, maybe worst since like ehh, "Belle Epoque", maybe. I wonder if people just enjoyed this film 'cause they were all stuck-at-home drinking at the time. I did not want to hang around these people. There's ideas here, I get wanting to numb your pain, and I get wanting to curb your vices in order to still enjoy them, but not be controlled by them, but this movie is "Faulty Drinking Logic: The Movie" and frankly it just reminded me why I don't like being around when people are drinking, even when they're not drinking a lot, they're still more annoying than they think they are. There's so many better drinking films, there's many better fun drinking films, I don't understand why people found this one so inspirational and heartwarming.
Number 4:
I don't think the rest of my list will be that controversial, but..., eh, maybe some people liked this one.... (Shrugs) I don't get it.
4. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
I mean, it's- it's got a laugh or two, I'm probably being a little mean here, but- god this movie felt pointless.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I love Will Ferrell, truly I do, but I do wonder if sometimes, he picks a target that's a little too ripe for satire. I haven't kept up with every single one of his films over the years, I usually enjoy them when I do, and even if I don't, I usually think he's the best part of them. Come to think about it, it's actually been quite a while since he made and starred in a regular Will Ferrell comedy, probably since "Get Hard" which I didn't get around to watching, but the first movie of his I remember skipping because the reviews were lukewarm and the premise just didn't seem compelling was "Blades of Glory". (Shrugs) I mean, I do like some of his sports and competition-inspired comedies, "Talladega Nights..." for instance, I think mostly holds up, but "Blades of Glory" was about figure skating, and figure skating, while, it is a sport I love believe it or not, it's basically, just self-parody at that point. Like,- even if it was funny, the figure skating world is already outlandish and flamboyant to the point of absurd, obnoxious camp spectacle; making fun of it is like, well, passe. It's just a ridiculously easy target, and frankly it's almost not worth the time. (I also just utterly despised "Napoleon Dynamite" and I guess I didn't really want to see Jon Heder in a lead role again. That was probably an overreaction)
Anyway, that's kinda what I think about Eurovision as well, and I think Ferrell knows that. For those unfamiliar, Eurovision is this infamously campy song contest in Europe where every country submits a representative to participate and, half the countries don't want the burden of hosting the next year, which, for some reason is the big prize, so they purposefully send the worst submissions and everybody has this really campy, gaudy performances...- There's actually a few people who became famous from this, Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias, most notably ABBA with their song "Waterloo", and their performance is shown in the beginning of the film, where we see a young Icelandic kid, Lars, (Ferrell) who's inspired by their performance to one day perform and win Eurovision. Unfortunately, he's Icelandic, a country that's never won Eurovision, probably because they never submitted Bjork, but also, he's not particularly great, and his hometown town of Husavik, doesn't particularly think highly of them or their performance. Oh yeah, their performance, he's apart of a duo with Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), his longtime best friend, and eh, possible half-sibling...- it's weird, 'cause they are attracted to each other,...- apparently something kept Lars's disappointing father (Pierce Brosnan) and Sigrit's mother, Helka (Elin Petersdottir) from being together as kids...- it's weird.
They're the local group that perform cover songs at everybody's weddings and at the local pub. They're not great, and nobody wants to hear their original songs that they're writing for Eurovision, but they want to keep going, and eventually, through a bizarre series of circumstances, they end up at Eurovision where their friendship and music are put to the test, especially as both of them become attracted to other competitors, Sigrid to the Russian singer, Alexander (Dan Stevens) and Lars with the Greek contestant Mita (Melissanthi Mahut).
This is a weird one, and I- don't really know how to judge this one, but my gut instinct is that, this is one of Ferrell's weaker efforts. Eurovision is one of those things that's really hard to make a satire of, partially because it is so self-satirizing, so Ferrell, kinda tried to split the difference and made something that's both a jab at it, but also make something genuine and show his appreciation for the contest. I guess there are films that can split that difference, Christopher Guest's movies were pretty good at it, especially "Best In Show", but here, what you end up with is a weird mix bag. It's an international cast, and while we have an American and a Canadian playing two Icelandics, we kinda skirt around the issues of making fun of other cultures, by essentially having most of Europe itself in on the joke. It kinda tames the comedy though, and that's when suddenly, when they do dip into bizarre stereotypes, like how Icelandics still believe in elves, it seems even more bizarre and off-putting. (Although they did mention briefly how Iceland did in fact, upend it's entire government after the Great Recession, so, what a weird little blip of accuracy to bring in. I-eh, I have no idea where they're getting the elves thing though.)
The movie got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, which does work as a climax to the film, and yeah, thank goodness it is a decent song, 'cause if it wasn't, it really would've brought the film down a lot more. As it is, it feels like a disjointed mess of a film that knows it wanted to do a comedy about Eurovision, but didn't exactly know where to take it. Like, there's a subplot where one of their rivals in Iceland is a ghost that haunts them, played by Demi Lovato of all people, and the movie even admits that she's kind of a useless ghost. Like, that's a funny scene in of itself, but you still kinda wonder why they needed it. I guess it kinda works like some of Will Ferrell's other tropes in similar movies that he's making light of with his deconstruction approach to comedy, but this time it just feels so disjointed.... Is "Eurovision" good? I don't know after watching this movie, and I feel like I should have an answer. I think it's mostly a love letter to "Eurovision" and- (Shrugs) I don't know; I've never had a particular thought one way or another about Eurovision, so... I don't know, it doesn't effect me. This what you get for trying to have something both ways, you don't get any personal emotion from the audience either way, and even in a comedy, you need to have a rooting interest in the main characters, and I just didn't. Honestly, I think I'd rather just watch a documentary on an actual "Eurovision" then this movie even with an occasional good laugh or two here and there.
Yeah, I apparently don't care, what the popular comedies are sometimes, for all I know, they might be making a second or third sequel to this film or something, but- I don't understand. Is this film if you don't know the context of Eurovision? I think it would just be a confusing mess, and if you are familiar with the context of Eurovision, than,-, like, wouldn't you like, not need context to this, 'cause Eurovision, is just, like ridiculous enough to begin with? I don't know if this is the worst Will Ferrell comedy but it's the most pointless one in a while.
Number 3:
Okay, the rest of this list is not gonna raise eyebrows or be interesting. In fact, if you've heard of any of these films, I would legit be a little shocked. I'm not entirely sure how they all ended up on my radar, but they did, and I wish they hadn't. And honestly, they're not even interesting enough for me to be, like, worried about bringing them up, that maybe people will seek them out to see how bad they are, well, maybe my number one is, but mostly, they're just obscure films that, frankly I think wouldn't make a lot of other worst lists 'cause they're not interesting enough to remember. I'm kinda just saying that now to warn people. This shows how I can be really lousy at this sometimes, 'cause if I really wanted to be controversial and make a point, I'd probably "Another Round" or "Tenet" as my number one worst, but ehh. I'm ranking the films the best I can, as true to me- sometimes I hate a really interesting film, but-eh, this isn't a year where I can do that. So, eh,- my number three worst is a film called "Alice".
3. Alice
That alone, might be one of the reasons I'm ranking this so high, there's actually a lot of films called "Alice". I think it took me a while to realize I was watching the right movie called "Alice". Anyway, it was movie called "Alice", directed by first-time feature director Josephine Mackerras, and it's a story about a suddenly single mother who turns to prostitution after her husband leaves her and her children suddenly, and in serious debt. A good premise, but something ended up off here, and I don't know, it just annoyed me more and more, both when it strayed from it's most interesting dramatic aspects, and then when it did get to them, they still bumbled through them.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Okay, before I get into anything regarding this film, can we please stop naming movies "Alice". Or for that matter, all media, can we just stop with "Alice". I can think of like five movies named "Alice" off the top of my head, and that's not counting the TV show, and not counting titles that have the word "Alice" in them, including ones that also have the word "Wonderland" in them, and that's not counting books et. al. Just- if you have to name a piece of media after the main female protagonist, please pick another name. As somebody who keeps track of every film he's ever seen, including an alphabetized list, this is getting annoying.
(Deep sigh)
Anyway, how about this movie called "Alice"? Well, it starts out interesting enough.... It's the debut feature film from director Josephine Mackerras, an Australian director who curiously is making a film in France and in French, she tells the story of Alice (Emilie Piponnier) a young loving housewife who finds out that her husband Francois (Martin Swabbey) has left her and her son Jules (Jules Milo Levy Mackerras) and taken all of her money in their accounts, and they're overdue on everything, including a year late on payments for their home, and she needs to get a lot of money, really fast. I won't go into how exactly she ends up becoming a high-end prostitute in order to make the payments, but she ends up becoming a prostitute, and actually it's not a terrible transition. At first, it gets stupid later but, originally I was intrigued.
I mean, I once heard a tale from a former Parisian pimp that in France, Paris in particular, it's not that uncommon or even unaccepted for women in financial straights to occasionally work as a prostitute temporarily. (Believe it or not, that pimp was James Lipton btw; look it up....) I mean, there's plenty of movies about young women turning to prostitution for one reason or another, so I was hoping this would be a good one. I couldn't think of any particular good film about a single mother turning to prostitution before. (Well, I can but those were late-night Skinimax movies, so I'm not counting them.) This is an interesting premise, and when the movie confronts that premise, it confronts it well. When it doesn't deal with it well, it falls into some pretty questionable cliches.
For instance, the one main friend she has, Lisa (Chloe Boreham), which in of itself, is a cliche, but they don't do much with her. She helps guide Alice through the process of becoming a high-end prostitute, tricks and practices of the trade, but...- well, apparently Mackerras did interview a lot of prostitutes for research for this role, and you kinda get the sense that she was trying to condense a lot of different prostitute narratives into this one character. Oddly, the effect is that it makes her far less interesting then she would on paper.
Also, the johns actually, for the most part, aren't that compelling either. Thinking back to some of the best films on this topic, they usually use these scenes for progressive certain ideas and themes and personal narratives. "Belle de Jour" comes to mind, or even some stuff that's more exploitative like "Student Services" the scenes reflect the state of mind of the character. These scenes, well, the first one's kinda funny, but then they kinda just, feel like time-wasting scenes. There's not too many of them, and I get that there's a way to consider these scenes being uninteresting as also being apart of the narrative as well, that she just gets used to them, but then there's the fact that half-way through the film, the husband returns....
Yeah, I kinda wish he didn't. For one thing, his excuse is just stupid. Now, they do find a way to keep him around reasonably, sort of, by having him watch his son when she has to go to work; there was a great scene where she's got a last-second appointment call, but can't find anybody to watch Jules. That stuff was interesting; what wasn't interesting is seeing her past return and frankly we're not even empathetic to the guy to care about him. Again, I'm sure this is more realistic then it should be, but I wasn't looking for that. I wanted to see Alice strive on her own, managing to pull off being a single parent and working to repay all her husband's damage and return to something resembling normal. Maybe if this film was longer or paced better, or just didn't fall into that trap of a trope too early. By the end of the movie, there's only one obvious way the film could end, that would make me relatively happy, and I'm just waiting for it to happen.
I think intentions were good here, but "Alice" just kept moving downhill for me, and by the end of the movie I'm thinking about better movies. This was a missed opportunity; there's plenty of potential for a great story here, or a great character piece at least, but it doesn't reach that level. This is a script that could've used, one or two less rewrites through the three-act structure machine. This movie could've been really interesting if it stuck to the places where the drama was the most compelling...- Forget that she's becoming a prostitute thing, think of movies like "An Unmarried Woman", or other stories about a woman having to force herself to grow up and learn to survive on their own after their husband leaves them high and dry; like, she kinda understood a little to focus on that, and when she did I liked the movie, but I thought it just went the route of least resistance at the end. I thought about recommending it anyway, but there's better movies with all these elements out there and this movie didn't provide enough different for me to really back.
Looking back, my review feels a little more ennui, perhaps because this was a film that got a certain amount of acclaim, and I think I was trying to justify what others saw in it. I think I even gave this film, like two or three watches, trying to figure out the appeal,- I hate to use the excuse that their are better movies like this as a reason to pan a movie, but like, there just are a lot of better movies like this. And this movie, could've been as good as those films, and giving me some different perspective. I like the idea of this movie, a single mom going into prostitution, I'm sure that's a premise that's been made into a good movie before. I thought, she overdid the research, and maybe, tried to take as much info from sex workers that she interviewed for this project and put it into the film, but-, it's like she had a narrative and then did the research, but like, still forced this narrative structure of a story that she had into this film, and the two stories didn't necessarily go together, and she couldn't either, find a new narrative, or mix these two ideas better. This is one of those movies, where you're like, "How did this not work, and then, the more you think about how it doesn't work, the more it annoys you that it didn't work. Like, I don't really care if "Eurovision" didn't work on me, this one though, this should've been a little movie I would've championed and I guess in this instance, I consider that worst.
Number 2:
Oh Christ, another movie with a generic-ass title,- ugh! I'll give my number one this, I wouldn't forget what it was called, at least it had that for it. People, come up with interesting and/or unique titles for your films, if at all possible! Or you'll end up with a movie title like, "Beats".
2. Beats
Yeah, I saw two different movies called "Beats" within a couple months time period; neither were particularly memorable, so I still had to look up which one I really hated and which one was just, decent. This one from music video and tv director Chris Robinson, and just a side note on that,- I feel like most music video directors these days who become movie directors, seem to basically still just movies about music and often starring musicians, and like "Beats" they seem to be very generic and uninteresting and usually badly acted. How did that happen, used to be the people who started in music videos were they new experimentalists who would move onto feature films and have a strange new perspective on movies? Where have all the Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry's gone? Hell, I might be happy with a new-age Hype Williams protege at this point. (Do the VMAs even give out a Best Director award anymore?) Anyway, "Beats" is on here 'cause it's every other cliche of this story all rolled into one boring, forgettable mess.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
You know, I've seen so many of these any-, well, honestly I gotta ask my musicians friends this one, 'cause, well,... just-, is everyone who works in the music industry, just somebody who gets screwed over for discovering a talent?
Maybe this is just me, 'cause I come from film, granted, basically that's the same outskirts that these characters in music discovery movies seem to live in, but still,- it seems like you can be an artist, you can be a producer, you can be a mogul, a right-hand man of a mogul of some kind, or-eh, you can be the guy who spots the talent. On the one hand, basically the guy who, brings in the mark that the rest of the crew is gonna steal from, which is bad in of itself, but like, how is there only like, the one option to screw the talent spotter guy? Film doesn't just have a lot more avenues of entry, but it also has a lot more mixing and blending of skills for entry. Hell, that liaison role between producers and executives with artists, that's a whole industry in of itself in Hollywood. Several in fact, if you ever watch "Entourage" you can see how agenting and managing are differing roles and require different skillsets and education levels, even licensing. But, it seems like anybody can bring an artist off the street and bring them a producer or executive, and then, sign the artist, and then cut the manager out completely, and you know what, I don't know why. How do they get away with that? Why force him out, just buy him out if you don't want him, but even still, doesn't he play an instrument? He obviously knows music enough to find you the unknown what you want? How do you know you can't find some other job for the guy, that might be useful and beneficial to you? Sure, he's a leach too, but the guy could recognize somebody who's talented...-
I know I'm being a little reductive here, but it does seem that way with nearly every film, both real life music bio one and especially so with original stories like "Beats", a story about a school security guard in inner-city Chicago, Romelo Reese (Anthony Anderson) who apparently was a big shot record producer, until he got broke, (So, not as big a shot, I guess) and his main artist, Tone (Tyre Green), who discovers a troubled young man, Khalil (August Everage) who's apparently really talented at mixing beats, but is paralyzed by his sister Kari's (Megan Sousa) sudden killing, who he often still imagines seeing, while stuck at home as he's afraid to go outside, even to high school. His mother also feels it's too unsafe for him to go out into the streets, and yeah, this is modern-day Chicago, there is something going on. So, there's two stories, one is Romelo trying to get back into the music game on August's coattails, trying to get old "friends" and "producers" to look at him, but also just getting comfortable around August enough to want to create and mix and frankly just,- just to go out into the world. His mother, Carla (Uzo Aduba) is also frightened and overprotective of her kid, although it's not like they don't have good reason.
Okay, now is the point where I'm not gonna review or describe the movie anymore, 'cause, I'm not entirely certain I watched the right movie. See, this is one of two movies called "Beats" that came out in 2019,- actually this only screened at Slamdance in 2019, it didn't get a release, theatrical or otherwise until 2020, but there is another called "Beats" that came out in 2019, and I suspect now that that was the movie I was supposed to watch. This is very frustrating and annoying, 'cause this has happened to me, TWICE, within the same review period! If you scroll down to my review of "Revenge" I tell a completely different story of having trouble finding the exact movie I wanted to see, because "Revenge" is so generic a title that streaming sites and avenues kept confusing the film I was looking for, with completely different recent movies, also called "Revenge"!
Now "Beats" is a little weirder of a title, so I'll let this anomaly slide and try to watch the other movie later, but naming a movie "Revenge" is just stupid and lazy, and also annoying; especially for search engines. Like, half of literature is basically a narrative based around revenge; how the hell am I supposed to differentiate one from another?!
As to this movie called "Beats", it's got a couple good ideas and sequences that make it stand out a bit from some other movies like this I've seen, and some good performances; I especially want to single out Ashley Jackson playing Niyah, a girl that August has a crush on and she has a really good speech scene, where she in a prom dress calling out August on his bullshit outside his house, but honestly, this isn't different, unique or good enough for me to recommend outright. It might be decent if you stumble upon it on cable one afternoon, or on Netflix I guess; it's streams on there, but it's nothing special. Mostly I just want to tell filmmakers or all kinds, including writers and producers especially: DO NOT GIVE ME ANY MORE GENERIC MOVIE TITLES OF MOVIES! Seriously, TRY HARDER to be original and stand out! If you're gonna give a movie such a generic one-word title, you better be damn sure that the movie is so good and so distinctive that the movie not only can't possibly be named anything else, but the word itself has to be so thoroughly intertwined with the text of the film that it absolutely has to called that word, 'cause nothing else would make sense.
I did watch that other "Beats" movie eventually, and yeah, "Revenge", is another. "Alice" is another. I'm so sick of these generic titles. Is "Beats" #2 bad, eh, it probably isn't but it's stuck between these multiple films and points that the movie's trying to make and it really get them together well, ultimately. Honestly, if this movie was titled, "Mixes" I might've given it more of a pass. It still wouldn't be good, it's still too much of a mess, and a lot of music industry stuff is tiring and generic- like, I know the music industry is full of hucksters and conmen who pray on the musicians and artists but, man, I wish there was a better way of telling it. At least, when it's done in a biopic, I can usually concede it being how it is, but in a movie like this, I would've stuck to more of the story of the teenager able to just find his way out of trauma through music through the help of the people around him story, and y'know, not worry so much of the gangster politics of the music industry.
Alright, let's end this. (Sigh) Number 1:
Like I said before, the title of my number one film, is memorable. Eye-catching. It's interesting. You might see this title, on a library shelf or on a streaming service scroll and stop and look at it and maybe even press play. I can see that happening. Unfortunately, it is the most interesting thing about this film. Frankly, for a title this interesting, one of the reasons I'm ranking it number one, is that, I wish it was more interestingly bad. That's why I'm not crazy about this list,- these worst films, for the most part, they're not even so bad and offensive it's worth talking about, even this film! I mean, can you imagine the many kinds of movies, that you can make, with a title like, "Shithouse"!
1. Shithouse (aka S#!%house)
No, seriously, that's the title. "Shithouse". Here, there's a trailer, I can prove it.
See, it's a real movie, somehow. It's,- it's not a good one. It's just a less-than-mediocre post-mumblecore college romance film. It's a first attempt bumble from a young talented actor-director named Cooper Raiff and it looks like he's made more films since and done better, so I hope this is just his throwaway first feature that somebody will look back on later and see the beginnings of a talented career out of it, but for me, it was just a shallow look at college ennui romance that maybe wanted to be a second-tier Richard Linklater film but came off more like a fourth-tier Zach Braff film.
MY ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Y'know, I would've thought that a movie called "Shithouse" would've at the very least, been more interesting at least. Not necessarily good, but interesting.
Don't be jarred by the movie's title, the title refers to a colloquial name of one of the frat houses in the college in the film, and even then, it's not like "Animal House" or anything like that. It's just a college romance story. It's not even like, a romance between like, a frat brother and a sorority chick or anything,- honestly, I think the title was just the most obvious one that would grab attention. The movie itself is apparently inspired by Cooper Raiff's student short film that got the attention of Jay Duplass of The Duplass Brothers, who helped him produce this longer extended version of that short, "Madeline and Cooper". I've seen the short, it's actually a way better look an college ennui romance and frustration then this film tries to be; it even has a cute insert from Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" to really get that mindset put into your mind, and more importantly, it actually focuses on both characters equally, and more poetically. Honestly, I'd rather be reviewing that film....
"Shithouse" stars Raiff as he reluctantly hooks up with his dorm's RA Maggie (Dylan Gelula) and the two of them have one of those "Before Sunrise"-type nights, assuming a star-filled romantic night around Vienna, and a drunken dorm excursion at the end of a drunken stumble around Occidental College are the same thing. Actually, is it a cute little romance, or at least a start of one, and it does kinda go somewhere later on, when they get into their argument at the end, after he believes the date meant something and she tries to play it off as a one-night thing that didn't mean anything, but honestly, I kept wondering, what exactly did this thing get to.
Basically, it boils down to, what exactly entails a "college experience" and how supposedly Cooper is still halfway in his mind, still at home with his family, which we see in phone calls he makes to his mother (Amy Landecker, who, other then a cameo by Duplass are the only real established stars in this films), and this is in conflict with Maggie who has been sleeping around, even on boyfriends since high school and has a bit of a troubled homelife. Arguably her best relationship is with her pet turtle, who just died.
Honestly, I think the movie, just wasn't a good adaptation to a feature film, 'cause frankly, I vastly preferred the original short film. I don't think it's a great short, but it's more narrow in focus, and I'm more willing to overlooked the parts that I don't care about, like the obnoxious drunk stand-up wannabe roommate Sam (Logan Miller). Instead, the movie keeps trying to find so much other stuff to put in to extend it's runtime that, ultimately I didn't care much for either of these two leads. It has that feeling of the post-mumblecore romance, but if you actually go back and watch those movies, they were way more complex in the nature of the romances they documented. The Duplass Brothers knew how to create characters and put them in conflicting situations that showed off the best and worst aspects of them, and by comparison, "Shithouse" is just way too typical and boring. It focuses too much on the Cooper character, not nearly showcasing the possible motivations and emotions in Maggie until the end, goes for the easy happy ending as well, but frankly, I'm just not rooting for them, like, at all. Like a lot of bad indies, it's a 40-minute concept that I like, that doesn't work with an extra hour and forty minutes added. The movie's been titled differently elsewhere, most notably, "Freshman Year" in the UK, but I don't think the title would help much here. "Shithouse" will grab your attention; it's probably one of the most attention-grabbing disappointing titles since "Dirty Dancing", but mostly it just felt like blasé, and it made me want to track down old episodes of "Undeclared" which, honestly I don't even think I liked that cult show, but I'll bet 2-1 odds they probably have an episode that's just this, but done better.
I hope Cooper Raiff doesn't give up or anything, this is his debut student film and he's gotten the attention of Mark Duplass, who's definitely one of those people who's attention you want to grab, so hopefully his next project will be more feature-length and compelling, and he learns how to take a story and push it towards his strengths. This movie could've been better if he knew what to add on, and what to drop off, and knew what his strengths were as a filmmaker and focused on them. He clearly is talented, but this is a misstep first feature. To that I say, eh, welcome to the club, Cooper; you'll do better next time.
I wasn't kidding when I said the short was better, it's called "Madeline & Cooper" you might be able to find it on a streaming site somewhere, I recommend that more. This film-, it's not offensively bad. I didn't watch enough films or seek out the very, very worst, just to fill this list, so like, I'm not pissed at this movie or anything. It's the worst 'cause it's on the bottom of my list, but it is a movie that's about a decent 20 minute short that's stretch to an extra hour and a half and it feels longer than that. And there's just other more interesting versions of this kind of story. And the titular "Shithouse" wasn't that interesting either. I know fraternities can look fun in some movies, but y'know, fraternities aren't usually a good thing to begin with, and the ones that really should be on double secret probation are also not really that good, and I don't think one needs a "typical college experience" while they're in college, either. I wish somebody just told this kid, "Man, the party shit is overrated, have fun, talk to cool people, have a one-night stand or two, but it's a freshman year, just look around 'til you find your major and then try to cherish the people around you with similar interests and goals. You got a whole life ahead of you, college isn't everything, take advantage of the good parts and be happy that you don't have to be an adult yet for a few more years. And fuck fraternities, even the good ones suck and the Shithouse is not a good one, so fuck them."
Anyway, that's my list. 2020 is done. With any luck, I'll be done with this decade before the '40s come around.
Oh, I'm not doing Dishonorable Mentions, this year, wasn't interesting enough to have a bunch of those. Sorry.
