Stuff I watched in...August, 2023

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Based on the non-fiction book by Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline shows what can happen when a group of people with little to lose and just enough self-righteousness are pushed to the brink. Eight young people come together in Texas to collaborate on building bombs to blow up an unguarded section of an oil pipeline with the goal of 1) spiking oil prices and 2) sending a message to the powers that be. They have no interest in hurting anyone with this bomb; they simply want to take radical action to fight back against the capitalist systems that propel climate destruction forward. This is a very timely movie and it captures the desperation many people feel about climate change.

The film delves into the background of all eight people so that we understand their motivations. Every character is fully three-dimensional, even if their reasons for participating in a project that could get them arrested or killed seem a little foolish. We understand how they got to this point, as well as the connections between them. We are invested in their success at building a bomb and blowing up property--the movie presents them as doing the right thing, but it does not turn them into superheroes who are morally pure. In fact, I wish the movie had spent a little more time dwelling on how their actions will bring real harm not just to the corporate fat cats, but to the average Joe trying to survive. It touches on this dilemma but then moves right past it.

While watching How to Blow Up a Pipeline, I felt acutely aware of how short I fall of true radicalism, which is almost certainly a good thing for me personally. However, the movie can't help but inspire me to look into ways I can help fight climate change. It's a problem that is so enormous, so global, that it feels like anything you do will have no impact, so why bother? To be honest, I still mostly feel that way...but How to Blow Up a Pipeline is really good fodder for inspiration, passion, and curiosity. Highly recommended.

Grade: A- 

***

Cruising

Directed by the recently deceased William Friedkin, Cruising is a thriller starring Al Pacino as a heterosexual undercover cop who dives into the world of gay leather and BDSM in 1980 New York City to find a serial killer. I first heard about this film in the documentary The Celluloid Closet, which presents it as a homophobic film. However, a lot of gay people seem to love it! I think it's a gritty, sexual movie that is iconic to the people who, you know, actually have gay sex, and gross to the hets. I watched it and was pleasantly surprised to discover that given the time period during which the movie was filmed, it's actually pretty respectful (or at least not too judgy) of gay S&M subculture. The hets are the ones who judge. 

Cruising captures a very specific time and place: this is a pre-AIDS New York City with adult bookstores, people getting straight-up fisted in bars, people doing poppers left and right. This is not the Disney-ified New York City of Rudy Giuliani. This is some nasty, dirty shit and I am here for it! Despite being a straight guy, Al Pacino's character, Steve Burns, dives right into this world, doing poppers and letting men tie him up in cheap motel rooms. But the killer, who preys on gay men who happen to look a lot like Al Pacino, eludes him. 

Cruising is definitely a tad "problematic" as the kids say, specifically when it comes to the killer's motivations. But for a movie about gay S&M that came out 43 years ago, I'd say it does a pretty fucking good job of not making gay men in general and gay men into leather specifically into freaks. Hell, there are even some trans women who get hassled by the cops and they are treated as actual human beings by the movie! So yeah, I totally recommend this iconic film!

Grade: B+

***

From Dusk Till Dawn

Given how much I love Quentin Tarantino's work, I am surprised it took me this long to watch From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by QT and directed by Robert Rodriguez. If you haven't seen this 1996 film, stop reading now and go watch it. I'll wait...

Ok, so if you're still reading, you know that the big twist of this movie is that it starts off as a crime thriller and turns into a vampire movie halfway through. Brothers Seth and Richie Gecko (a baby George Clooney and an appropriately creepy, foot-obsessed Quentin Tarantino) are on the run from the law. They force a family of three at gunpoint to drive them over the Mexican border in the family's RV and head out to a bar called The Titty Twister to meet up with a guy who will provide sanctuary for the fugitives. The family consists of ex-pastor Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel), daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) and son Scott (Ernest Liu). 

But once they're at the Titty Twister, shit hits the fan when all the people who work there--the bartenders, the bouncers, the strippers, the band, etc--turn into very weird-looking vampires and try to kill everyone. The Fuller family, the Gecko brothers, and a couple other patrons of the bar, Frost (Fred Williamson) and Sex Machine (a wonderful Tom Savini), have to team up to fight back. With Jacob's knowledge from his years as a pastor, they have tactics to kill the vamps if they can all learn to work together.

From Dusk Till Dawn is a hoot. I love how half the movie has QT's signature smart, funny dialogue while the other half of the movie is just constant vampire puns ("I really...suck!"). Also, the film is surprisingly spiritual. Jacob (Keitel is great, as he always is) has to reconnect with his faith under extreme duress to protect his children. The reason he lost his faith in the first place is because his wife died in a senseless accident. Can he forgive God in order to fight off the vampires from Hell? That was a subplot I didn't expect.

I definitely recommend this movie if you're a fan of irreverent comedy-horror. It's also a fairly safe movie for horror-babies. The special effects are straight-up goofy, which makes the film more comedic than scary.

Grade: A-

***

Red, White & Royal Blue

Based on what I gather is a far superior book by Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue is a safe, perfectly fine gay romantic comedy. While you might not want to watch it with Grandma, it's probably safe to watch with your 16 year old kid sister. There are sex scenes, but they are--sadly--in good taste. Almost too good of taste. When people fuck in a movie, they should make you believe it. That said, perhaps one measure of acceptance of LGBTQ relationships is if they make movies about said relationships that are just as boring and tasteful as movies about straight relationships.

The plot concerns Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine), the fictional spare to the British throne, and Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez), the son of Ellen Claremont, the first female President of the United States. These two young men are forced into each others' company for various political events even though they can't stand each other. Henry thinks Alex is an annoying clown and Alex thinks Henry is an elitist snob.

So, obviously, they fall in love. 

One nice thing about RW&RB is that they don't spend too long on the "we hate each other" part, and pretty much get right to the "flirting wildly over text" part. I really struggle with romcoms for various reasons, one of which is that romantic conflict makes upsets me. Like, I'll watch a movie where cannibals eat a live baby, but if someone makes their romantic partner cry, I can't take it. Welcome to the world of anxious attachment!

However, this movie is way too long. It's two hours long and could easily have been 90-100 minutes. Especially since Alex and Henry get past the initial "ick" very quickly. It felt a bit draggy in the second half. RW&RB is very cute and pleasant. There really isn't that undeniable heat I like to see in romantic movies, but I feel that, sadly, it's par for the course for romcoms to not have a lot of heat. Please, I'm begging you: name me a romantic comedy (not just a romantic movie, but a romcom specifically) where the leads look like they want to eat each other's faces off. PLEASE. I want to give this genre a chance, but all I'm finding are boring, trope-filled movies that are the equivalent of a dry peck on the lips. RW&RB is a smidge more interesting since the fact that the lovers are both male and in the public spotlight adds an element of angst and vulnerability that most romcoms don't have. But at the end of the day, that peck is still pretty dry.

Grade: B-

In the French Style

Movie: Passages

(spoiler warning for the entire review)

If you read this blog regularly, you'll notice that I have an aversion to "kids' movies", which means I'm probably missing out on some great films. I'm just not interested in movies that have a G or PG rating, except for maybe the occasional nostalgia watch.

Now, a movie like Passages, which is about a gay man who cheats on his husband with a woman, leading to the upheaval of their relationship, which originally had an NC-17 rating before the director argued it down to an R. Well, that's a movie I want to watch. A movie for adults.

Passages is a very French movie, which means that it has a lot of sex and a lot of people being mean to each other. Directed by Ira Sachs, the film stars Franz Rogowski as Tomas, a movie director married to Martin (Ben Whishaw). The film gets right into it when Tomas, feeling rejected by Martin after wrapping up a shoot, goes home with Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos) and sleeps with her. He then proceeds to straight up tell Martin. The audience picks up that Martin and Tomas already have problems that predate Agathe--but it's not entirely clear what those problems are. It seems that Tomas is craving the excitement of new relationships while Martin is comfortable in a routine. 

To me, it became clear very quickly that Tomas is not as sympathetic as one might suspect. He is incredibly needy--going back and forth between Agathe and Martin for validation and attention while not giving either of them much in return. I thought Passages was going to be about a man discovering he is bisexual or a couple transforming into a throuple...well, it's actually about a guy with a personality disorder blowing up his life. 

Rogowski is excellent at playing a weaselly, unlikable guy. It's not JUST that he cheats on his hubby...he also gets his partner pregnant and then acts like an asshole to her understandably concerned parents. But perhaps the worst sin he commits is getting up Martin's hopes about raising the kid together, knowing that Martin has always wanted kids, and then failing to tell him when Agathe (again, understandably) has an abortion. 

Ben Whishaw is good in everything he's in, but he's especially wonderful at playing the wounded Martin. At first, you see him as this grumpy, rigid guy. But it becomes obvious that he's been partner to a selfish man and when he finally cuts Tomas off, saying, "I want my life back and I don't want you in it." I felt like cheering. 

Adele Exarchopoulos has perhaps the most difficult job in the movie: playing a woman who would sleep with a married, gay man but still retaining the audience's sympathy. She's not an innocent here, and it's hard to understand her motivations. But Passages is one of those movies where the fact that people make bad choices is what makes the movie so real. Because people DO make bad choices, especially in the heat of the moment.

Passages is a sad, French, extremely sexually explicit (seriously, there is one scene that was...*fans self*) movie. I enjoyed it, but I guess it was a bit of a bummer. I wanted it to be more about the exploration of sexual fluidity and the expansion of relationship bonds, but it was about some asshole who needs therapy instead of getting laid. That said, if you like movies about complicated adults, this is one for you!

Grade: B

Explosive Genius

Movies: Oppenheimer

The very first thing I want to say about Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated film about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is that it is loud as fuck. It's loud during the parts that are supposed to be loud, but it's also loud when people are having conversations, to the point where not only could you not hear the dialogue, it also seemed borderline comedic. Imagine two men yelling at each other while the swelling film score drowns them out. It's like "did someone fuck up?"

Apparently, this is just a Chris Nolan thing and he doesn't care. I remember seeing Interstellar, which had the exact same problem. Leaving the film, my friend said "the person who did the sound mixing for this movie should win the Razzie". Frankly, I find this annoying as hell. It's fine to have a loud soundtrack, but when your audience is straining to hear and you, the director, know this is an issue and don't care, it's arrogant and disrespectful to your audience. 

I mean, maybe this is Nolan's way of getting people to see his movies more than once because I'm already looking forward to being able to rewatch Oppenheimer at home with subtitles. So there you go. Even though it was ear-blastingly loud, it was also a good movie and I want to watch it again. I also think subtitles would help me understand all the science talk a little better. 

Oppenheimer is an epic film and some are calling it Christopher Nolan's "masterpiece". It certainly feels like a masterpiece, but I'm not fully convinced it actually is. I was impressed with the acting, which is excellent across the board. There were certain scenes that were truly outstanding, such as when they actually test the bomb for the first time. But the movie is also needlessly long and convoluted. Nolan aims to get a lot of information across in this movie. We learn about Oppenheimer's school years, his introduction to the Communist Party by his brother, his teaching years, his relationship with his wife and his lovers, him being recruited to oversee the Manhattan Project, his regret after he realizes that a fucking bomb will be used to kill people, his fall from grace due to the manipulations of Lewis Strauss, and Lewis Strauss's fall from grace. That's a lot. The movie is based on a book titled American Prometheus and damn if Nolan didn't try to film everything in the book.

But what's more is that there are multiple timelines in the movie and the events are not linear. So we're constantly jumping back and forth in time. And for a three hour movie, Oppenheimer is extraordinarily fast-paced. There are very few scenes that are just allowed to breathe. So when you pair a fast-paced film packed with a million details taking place on a non-linear timeline and you also can't fucking hear half the dialogue...it almost feels like it was intended to be confusing. It feels, as the expression goes, that it was trying to muddy the waters to make them appear deep.

That said, it's still a very interesting film. I guess if I knew more about the Manhattan Project I would have enjoyed it more. The cinematography is stunning. The acting, as I mentioned, is incredibly strong, especially Cillian Murphy as the titular "Opp" and Robert Downey Jr. as Oppenheimer's betrayer, Lewis Strauss. The other thing I'll say about this movie, which isn't really a shock, is that it's a very masculine, white movie. There are two significant roles for women in the film: the hectoring, alcoholic wife (Emily Blunt, wasted in a thankless and one-dimensional role) and the suicidal lover (Florence Pugh, who also deserves better). Both of these women are fully defined by their relationship to Oppenheimer. 

And then, let's be real, the movie doesn't REALLY let us think too hard about what Oppenheimer's genius wrought. We don't see the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We don't see the aftermath. All we get is Oppenheimer's tortured soul. I mean, I get it. The movie is titled Oppenheimer. The film tries to make the point that if we didn't build the bomb, someone else would. Which is true...but the introspection stops about where you'd expect. Which is fine. History happened how it happened. We Americans like to think we're the good guys. And hell, maybe we're just as "good" or bad as anyone else in this crazy world. But I think the movie plays more at appearing nuanced than actually being nuanced. Which seems to be par for the course for Christopher Nolan. He's very much a "both sides" type of director. He's not radical. And giving space for Oppenheimer to regret his involvement is about as radical as this movie could possibly get.

So. Barbenheimer. I saw Barbie and it didn't quite live up to what I wanted it to be. I saw Oppenheimer and it didn't quite live up to what I wanted it to be. So maybe this issue is that I'm going into these movies with expectations that are too damn high. 

Oppenheimer is a good movie and worth watching again. But there's a better movie underneath all the confusion and noise.

Grade: B+

Talk to the Hand

Movie: Talk to Me

Talk to Me, a horror film directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, who were popular YouTubers before making their feature-length directorial debut, is one of the most punishing movies I've seen in a while. It's both terrifying and emotionally devastating. There is one particular scene that is one of the most brutal I've seen. In other words: alllllll the trigger warnings. But I loved it!

Set in Australia, Talk to Me follows Mia (Sophie Wilde in a hopefully star-making turn), a teenager grieving the death of her mother. When the movie opens, it's been two years since her mother died by taking too many sleeping pills. Mia believes that her death was an accident. Mia also ignores her father's attempts to connect with her...yet she desperately craves connection. In an early scene, she goes to her friend Jade's house (Alexandra Jensen) and tries to hang out, but Jade is glued to her phone, more focused on chatting with her boyfriend than paying attention to Mia.

Yeah, I know there are a lot of horror movies about grief. Talk to Me is part of that genre, but it really leans heavily into the isolation that grief causes and I think it makes some very canny points about how teenagers in particular grieve: they want to connect with friends, and (sometimes) reject connection from adults. So Mia is left in this limbo where she is very lonely and edging closer to destructive behavior.

Well, destructive behavior finds her in the form of an occult party game. Two other teens, Hayley (a magnificent, bullying Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio), have come into possession of an embalmed hand that supposedly belonged to a psychic who could commune with the dead. There's a little ritual you do, involving lighting a candle, grasping the hand, and saying "talk to me" and a dead person will appear, holding your hand. I love that the movie just presents this as reality, full stop. There really is no ambiguity here: these teens are fuckin' talking to dead people! 

What's more, you can say "I let you in", and the soul of the ghoul will enter you and be able to talk to people in the room. And let me just say: dead people are real dickheads. I mean, these guys are assholes. Each of them seems to relish humiliating people in the room, as they know things that the living don't know.

The game can only go on for 90 seconds or "they'll want to stay" as Hayley smirkingly puts it. These dumbass teens looking for a thrill are having a great time...the hand is clearly a metaphor for drugs, which kind of fits in with the whole isolation piece. Mia is captivated by a game that makes her feel something after such a long time of feeling numbness and grief. 

Things go wrong when Jade's younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird, excellent here), wants to play. Jade forbids 14 year old Riley from playing, but when she leaves the room, Mia allows Riley to take a turn. When Riley ends up channeling the spirit of Mia's dead mother, the game goes on longer than 90 seconds, since Mia is desperate to talk to mom...and then it all goes to literal hell.

At a certain point, Riley becomes possessed with...something. And whatever possesses him makes him do awful things to his body that the other kids try to stop. This was a scene that made people in my theatre flip the goddamn fuck out. I'm genuinely surprised that no one left the movie. I mean, I was thrilled. I don't think I've watched a scene that left such an impression on me since the cliff-diving scene in Midsommar. But man, was it brutal. 

Riley is taken the the hospital. The cops are called. Mia is officially persona non grata to Jade and Jade's mother (the lovely Miranda Otto) who (rightly) blame her for allowing Riley to play. But Mia has bigger fish to fry. In the chaos, she stole the hand...and goes on a journey to contact her mother again. But whoever--or whatever--she is contacting...is it actually her mother? Or is it an interloper from the netherworld trying to gain entry? 

Talk to Me is filled with brutal and terrifying imagery. It uses no jump scares because it doesn't have to. And it fits the truest definition of horror that I can think of: when good people are punished. It's one thing to see bad people get killed or punished in a horror movie. We can easily say they deserved it. But it's another thing when it's an innocent, like Riley, or a less-innocent, but still needy, grieving teen like Mia. Mia makes some terrible choices in Talk to Me...but she's supposed to be like 17 years old! And her mom died! This is a girl who needs care and understanding. But instead, she reaches out to the abyss...and the abyss grabs her hand and won't let go. It's genuinely tragic.

Horror junkies will love Talk to Me. The slick visuals and excellent sound make the film feel polished and elegant. The acting is perfect. Also, the movie is only 90 minutes long (and, honestly, could have been longer and I wouldn't have minded). People not into horror--stay away! Go see Barbie instead! This isn't me being condescending, it's me giving folks a fair warning that Talk to Me goes to a dark, dark place. Make sure you're in the right headspace if you watch it.

Grade: A