Hi folks! Here's SOME MORE stuff I watched while recovering from a broken leg!
***
Kinsey
Bill Condon's biopic of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey has been one of my favorite movies since it came out in 2004, yet I've never reviewed it on this blog. I had the pleasure of rewatching this film with my friend and, damn, it still gets me right in the feels.
Alfred Kinsey began his career studying gall wasps. But he soon realized that there was a more important subject students on his campus were ignorant about: sex. He got permission to teach a "marriage class" at Indiana University and then realized that people don't know what is "normal" sexually...and he intended to find out. This led to the eventual publication of the Kinsey reports.
Alfred Kinsey, though not a perfect man, is my hero. He systematically fought ignorance on a grand scale and his contributions to sexology changed the world. Dude was also down to fuck, big time. The movie doesn't shy away from Kinsey's bisexuality and extramarital dalliances. This nerd got his D wet--while encouraging his wife to do the same, I might add--and I think we should all celebrate that. Yeah, sure, the whole "encouraging his employees to fuck each other and wife swap" probably wouldn't fly today, but I always like to see people the early to mid twentieth century getting their fuck on!
With excellent, sensitive performances by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Lithgow, Kinsey is a must watch for all the people out there who know that sex is nothing to be ashamed of and is actually pretty cool.
Grade: A+
***
Black Swan
This was another rewatch for me, and I'm so glad I returned to it. This Darren Aronofsky horror-drama focuses on a tightly wound and sheltered ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), who dreams of playing the lead role in her company's production of Swan Lake. The only problem is that while Nina has no problem portraying the sweet, innocent white swan, Odette, she struggles to play the seductive, conniving black swan, Odile.
Regardless, she gets the part. And it destroys her. Nina is preyed on by the artistic director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel, excellent at playing an absolute scumbag of a man who is also kinda sexy), and she becomes paranoid about losing the part to a dancer new to the company, Lily (Mila Kunis). She is also suffocated by her overbearing mother. Nina begins seeing things that aren't there and it's especially disturbing when those things start happening to her body. Black Swan is rife with body horror that will make you cringe and wince.
The final act is glorious, both in how it's filmed and what it represents. When Nina completes the final act of the ballet, she says "I was perfect." The film is indeed about how perfectionism can and will drive you to utter madness. It's a horror film about the pursuit of beauty and art. Highly recommended.
Grade: A
***
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Yet another rewatch for me. I was in the mood for something sweet and nostalgic, but with a little bit of bite, and Mel Stuart's adaptation of Roald Dahl's book was just the (golden) ticket! It had been a while since I last saw it, but the older I get the more I appreciate the very dry, and kinda mean, British humor in this movie. Gene Wilder was born to play the role of the eccentric, sarcastic Willy Wonka. And I find that I love the audacity of the more "annoying" kids. Charlie Bucket is boring--Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teevee (and Mike's mom, played by the super hilarious Dodo Denney) are the real MVPs here. They might be the "bad eggs" but this movie would be boring as hell without them. (Apologies to Augustus Gloop...from one fatty to another: they did you dirty).
Also...how many people developed sexual fetishes from this movie? Like, it's got inflation, shrinking, splooshing, burping, feeding, humiliation. I guaran-damn-tee it, this movie spawned a generation of kinksters. And, see the Kinsey review above, I think that's a good thing.
Grade: A
***
When Harry Met Sally...
Even though When Harry Met Sally... is a classic, I had never seen it. My friend Alex decided to remedy that and encouraged me to watch it with her when she visited me recently. And boy howdy, am I thankful for that. The Nora Ephron-written romcom is absolutely delightful! I tend to be biased against romcoms. Think of the top 10 most popular romcoms ever...I probably haven't seen half of them and I saw the other half and didn't like them*. To be clear, I'm not against romance in movies, I just don't care for all the tropes one finds in romantic comedies: the meet-cute, the bickering, the Big Misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a conversation, the big romantic gestures, etc.
Even though When Harry Met Sally... has some of these tropes (the bickering, for one), something about it felt fundamentally different. I think it's because Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Bill Crystal) are...nice people. Billy Crystal's Harry Burns in particular is just the perfect man. He's not an adonis. He's not a billionaire. He's not a rocket scientist. He's just a kind, funny man. Who apologizes. There's a scene where he upsets Sally and he says "Hey...I'm sorry." I fully expected him to say "Hey...I know you're mad, but you know I'm right." or something like that. But just a simple apology. It was so powerful.
Basically, we're watching two people who are innately good slowly realize what they already know: that they are right for each other. Sure, there is miscommunication and arguing, but never anything nasty that makes us hate one of them. I liked this movie because this is how love should be: nothing grandiose, nothing super intense...just a slow burn that keeps you warm through many nights. That's REAL love.
I told Alex "this feels like a Woody Allen movie, but not written and directed by, you know, a child rapist." Indeed, it has all the fast and funny one-liners of an Allen movie, along with that beautiful Autumn in New York vibe, but you know, it doesn't have an undercurrent of contempt for women. And Billy Crystal is 100000x more fuckable than Woody Allen.
So thank you Alex, for getting my stubborn ass to watch this comedy with a lovely and true romance at the center. Sometimes getting out of my movie comfort zone is a good thing!
*exceptions include all screwball romantic comedies from the 30s and 40s--those are all great.
Grade: A-
***
I Know What You Did Last Summer
This is actually another movie I watched with Alex and I think we both agree it was ridiculous. Props to Alex for drifting out of *her* movie comfort zone to watch this teen slasher film.
Four graduating high school seniors are driving home from a beach drinking/sexing session when they hit a pedestrian on the road. Even though the guy driving, Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.), is sober, everyone else has been drinking, especially the guy who owns the car, Barry (Ryan Phillippe). Although Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) wants to call the police, Barry convinces everyone, including his girlfriend, Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), to move the body to another location, dump it in the ocean, and make it look like a drowning.
A year later, Julie returns home college and receives a letter that says "I know what you did last summer". She begins freaking out, and contacts the other three. Barry thinks the author of the note is Max (Johnny Galecki, pre-Big Bang Theory!), a nerdy dude who has the hots for Julie. But later, Max is found dead.
One-by-one, strange and threatening things begin happening to the group: Helen wakes up to find a chunk of her hair sheared off. Barry is chased and nearly killed by a stranger. Julie find Max's corpse in the trunk of her car. I'm not going to go much deeper in the plot, but basically, Julie and Ray do research to track down the killer. It's a straightforward slasher film, and not a very good or memorable one in my opinion. The acting is...meh. This is the late 90s, so everyone is an archetype: Julie is the brainy good girl (brunette), Helen is the beauty pageant queen (blonde), Ray is the nice guy jock (brunette), and Barry is the mean guy jock (blonde). Not exactly a lot of nuance here.
I can't say I recommend I Know What You Did Last Summer. It's not awful, and if you love VERY 90s movies, you'll probably get a kick out of the clothing and nostalgia, but if you skip it you won't be missing out on much.
Grade: C
***
The Found Footage Phenomenon
This is a documentary about the history of food footage horror films. Tracing the origin of the genre back to mondo films and Cannibal Holocaust, the film works its way up to present day and movies set entirely on computer screens (like Host and Unfriended). It spends plenty of time exploring the greatest hits of the genre, including The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.
Overall, the documentary is fine but not exactly mind-blowing. It did make a point that I hadn't considered before: violence in found footage films is sometimes considered "worse" or "more extreme" than if the same exact thing were shown in a regular horror film. I think that's true because with found footage, there's less artifice and more of a sense of the audience's complicity. Like, we know it's fake but there's part of our brain that still thinks it's real and if it's real, why are we choosing to watch it?
The Found Footage Phenomenon can be found streaming of Shudder. It's fine, but nothing to write home about.
Grade: C+
No comments:
Post a Comment