What classics did you watch this week? (1/4-1/10)
Please tell us what classics you saw last week. Modern films are welcome, as well.
I gotta apologize to some bitches. I'm forever changed by what I've seen here.
'71 (Yann Demange, 2014) - An intense little British war thriller. Jack O'Connell stars as a newbie British soldier deployed to the mean streets of Belfast. On his first mission, to quell a riot, he is separated from his regiment along with one other soldier. That soldier is immediately executed, and O'Connell is on the run. The film introduces a lot of other characters, and it gets confusing (believe me, it's confusing for the characters, too), but it's basically a chase movie and it's very well done. 8/10. yes.
Darkness on the Edge of Town (Patrick Ryan, 2014) - Cruddy Irish revenge thriller. Emma Elizan Regan is a teenage sharpshooter looking for revenge for her murdered sister. Aided by her best friend Emma Willis, they're trying to find out what happened. The film is well shot, but the story is downright stupid and poorly written. The editing is also really bad. I watched this mostly because I thought it was a Western, which it is most certainly not. 3/10. no.
Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz, 2014) - So close, yet so far... This Austrian horror film has a good setup and a lot of creepiness. A mother returns home with a bandaged face after plastic surgery. Her twin sons immediately sense that something is wrong, that this woman is not their mother. The problem is, two minutes into the movie, I'm thinking, "Oh, they're not going to go with the obvious twist, are they?" For most of the movie it seems like, no, they are going to avoid it. But then, about five minutes before the end, they're like, "Ha! Fooled you! I bet you forgot you figured it out two minutes in!" And I'm like, "No, I remember. I was just hoping you had something better up your sleeve." All in all, it's hardly a bad movie, but I was disappointed that they went the obvious route. 6/10. mixed.
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman, 2015) - Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a Brit living in America. An expert on customer service, he is to deliver a speech in Cincinnati. His life, and perhaps his reality (hey, it's a Charlie Kaufman film!) are falling apart around him, and he is depressed with the mundanity surrounding him. In particular, every human being sounds exactly the same to him (and are all voiced by Tom Noonan). While spending the night at a fancy hotel, he runs into the one person in the world who is different: Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Shy and scarred (literally), she idolizes Stone, a fan of his book. The two end up spending the night together. First and foremost, I must say that the animation here is outstanding. The expressions of the characters in particular are fantastic. The film as a whole is, well, quite interesting, as you might expect from Kaufman. I'm not quite sure that, in the end, it has all that much depth. To me, the whole point seems to be simply that Michael Stone is a gigantic prick (thankfully the film doesn't end with this irredeemable loser). I also feel like the film is at its worst when Kaufman gets too Kaufmenesque, like Stone coming to realize that, oh my God, he's actually a puppet! It's a fine achievement, and I liked it a lot. I wish I kind of liked it a bit more, though. 8/10. yes.
Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler, 2015) - Disappointing. Its biggest flaw is that it's incredibly lethargic - this is a fairly straightforward Western and there's absolutely no reason that it lasted two and a quarter hours. Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox and Patrick Wilson are tracking a tribe of canniabalistic, troglodyte Indians who have kidnapped Wilson's wife and a couple of others from a small Western town. Russell is best in show by far. Between this and The Hateful Eight, Westerns really seem to be in his wheelhouse, particularly if he grows some impressive facial hair. The other three stars are mostly weak (Lili Simmons, who plays the wife, is decent). The other great part of the film are the monstrous troglodytes, who are legitimately freaky. The dialogue is often bad and the direction is often poor. The whole climax lands with a thud, and it ends abruptly. Despite its flaws, I thought it had some worth and I certainly don't regret watching it. 6/10. mixed.
Chi-Raq (Spike Lee, 2015) - Probably the most Spike Lee-y Spike Lee film since Bamboozled. Like that film, this one's a gigantic mess. Unlike that one, eh, I don't think this worked in any way. It resurrects Aristophanes' Lysistrata. The women (led by Lysistrata, played by Teyonah Parris) decide to stop the gang violence on the streets of Chicago by denying their men sex. The plot was silly in ancient Greece, and it's silly here. There are a lot of good scenes, but some bad ones, too, and none of it really adds up to anything. Nick Cannon plays Lysistrata's boyfriend (a rapper called Chi-Raq) and Wesley Snipes his rival. The film also co-stars Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, Dave Chappelle and, weirdly, John Cusack. 6/10. mixed.
Night Owls (Charles Hood, 2015) - A riff on The Apartment that takes place over one night at a single location. Adam Pally goes home with Rose Salazar for a one night stand. As Pally's on the way out the door, he finds a piece of mail sitting on the counter and realizes he's actually at his boss's house. He goes back to confront Salazar and finds that she's attempted to overdose on sleeping pills. He idolizes his boss, a famous college football coach, and wants to prevent a scandal, so with the help of a co-worker (Rob Huebel) and a doctor Huebel knows (Tony Hale), he brings her back to consciousness and is forced to stay with her all night so she doesn't fall back asleep. They then have a long conversation. The film is fairly predictable, but the two leads are both good. Pally is, of course, the reason I watched this. I love him on Happy Endings. He's funny here, and he does well with the dramatic scenes, too. Salazar reminds me a lot of Aubrey Plaza. In the end, the film doesn't amount to much. It doesn't feel like there's really enough material to stretch it out to 90 minutes. It's totally not bad, though. 6/10. mixed.
The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015) - Some of the best cinema of the year, but it goes on for too long and starts crumbling by the end. It's a simple revenge flick mixed with a survivalist tale. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a frontiersman with a half Indian son who has been hired to guide a group of trappers. After suffering an attack by Indians, DiCaprio is mauled by a bear. Unable to travel further, two men, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter, along with DiCaprio's son, stay behind to care for him until he dies, as they assume he will. Hardy doesn't really feel like it, though, so at the first opportunity he murders the son, tells Poulter (who didn't witness the murder) that the Indians are nearby, and buries DiCaprio in a shallow grave, still alive. DiCaprio eventually digs his way out and goes after Hardy to get his sweet, sweet revenge. The film is at its best when its in its you-are-there, in-the-actors'-faces phase, making you feel like part of the action. Its at its worst when it goes into flashbacks and DiCaprio's highly symbolic dreams. The final act is pretty silly, too. Domhnall Gleeson, who has really earned a vacation at this point, also co-stars. 8/10. yes.
Slow Learners (Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce, 2015) - This film starts as a perfectly decent indie romcom, but somewhere in the middle it loses its way and becomes pretty terrible. For the second night in a row, I chose a movie based solely on Adam Pally's presence. He is, as always, quite good. His partner in crime here is Sarah Burns. I like Burns (mostly from the show Enlightened), but she and her character are mostly what's wrong with this film. She starts off quite well, but over the course of the film she becomes an insufferable jerk. The plot involves these two as dorky losers who work together at a high school. When summer starts, they decide they have to become cool to find love. They are both successful, but Burns becomes insanely jealous of Pally and goes crazy. Much of the problem is with the script, but Burns plays it all quite terribly and loudly. We know these two will end up together, but I spent half the film hoping like Hell Pally would realize Burns is a total psycho and keep his distance. The film has some good scenes and a few nice laughs, mostly in its first half. The strongest scenes involve Gil Ozeri and Bobby Moynihan as two nerdy brothers who are in a book club with Pally. I'd love to see a movie about these two. 4/10. no.
Slow West (John Maclean, 2015) - A nice, small Western, but I'm afraid it didn't work for me. This is mostly because I didn't like the two leads, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of either. Smit-McPhee is traveling to meet up with his girlfriend (Caren Pistorius, whom I wouldn't mind seeing again), unaware that she has a bounty on her head. A more experienced traveler (Fassbender) offers to be his guide, secretly hoping to collect that bounty. Ben Mendelsohn also co-stars as a former partner of Fassbender's who's also looking to collect the bounty. Besides disliking the leads, I just felt there was something a little phony about it. I would also admit to watching it distractedly, as it never really caught my interest. 6/10. mixed.
I gotta apologize to some bitches. I'm forever changed by what I've seen here.