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The Wild Robot (2024)
I Should Have Brought Tissues
Gawd, this movie.
I don't know when I'm going to learn that I need to start bringing tissues with me to the movies, especially if the movie is animated.
I'm a father of two teenage boys, and ever since becoming a parent, movies hit me differently. But they've been hitting me especially hard lately, as the idea of my children leaving me to join the world of adults stops feeling like an abstract concept and more like an inevitable reality.
I was restless through some of this film, which lacks that special quality that some of the best Pixar movies have and which makes them equally enjoyable for both kids and adults. But then there were other moments in this movie that left me on the floor in a quivering puddle, pretty much all of them the parts where the "mom" robot is teaching her "child" goose how to leave her. Being a parent is one of the most bittersweet things imaginable, and this movie captures that feeling that maybe anyone can appreciate, but which I have to believe every single parent can relate to -- that feeling that with every exciting milestone your child hits, you're at the same time saying goodbye to something you'll never have again in quite the same way.
Grade: A-
Conclave (2024)
And Then There Was One
"Conclave" is like Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" if that murder mystery were set in the Vatican and, instead of each character getting picked off one by one, each one was deemed unworthy of being the Pope.
"Conclave" proves what us cynical gen-Xers already knew, which is that everything in the world is corrupt and sketch as hell. The Catholic Church wants us all to believe that the Pope is chosen by God. In reality, the Pope is chosen through a wonky system of voting, in which Cardinals form into factions, sling mud, run smear campaigns, and bicker endlessly until someone gets enough votes through process of elimination. If that sounds a lot like the American political system (or maybe any political system anywhere), it should, because "Conclave" is clearly using the election of a Pope as a microcosm for the national electoral process.
This is a wickedly entertaining thriller, with a score that imbues every scene with tension even when nothing especially suspenseful seems to be happening. It's also a master class of acting, with folks like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini all doing their thing. The screenplay is at times a bit too on the nose -- during the course of the movie, we're treated to conversations about the liberal/conservative divide, using fear of Muslims as a scare tactic to manipulate emotions, cancel culture, and homophobia, and that's just a sampling. It can sometimes feel like the movie is ticking items off a hot topic checklist. But it's so well made that it easily overcomes its less than subtle writing.
Why does every movie about the Catholic Church feel like a horror movie to me, even when it's not a horror movie?
Grade: A.
Indochine (1992)
Man This Movie Is Long
Whoo boy, this movie is loooong.
Part "A Passage to India," part "Miss Saigon," part "The Killing Fields," "Indochine" is an epic about the icy daughter (Catherine Deneuve) of a rubber plantation owner who falls for a much younger French soldier and then watches her adopted daughter fall in love with the same soldier and run off with him. Along the way the daughter becomes a fugitive after killing a man (long story), has a baby, and then gives up the baby to her adopted mother so that it can have a better life. Good grief, that's a lot of melodrama to pack into a movie, and does this movie ever lay it on thick. I actually laughed out loud at how histrionic some of the scenes were, and it's all lathered in a bombastic score that won't quit.
The film looks beautiful though, I'll give it that. The visuals are what kept me watching, because the story felt like a meandering mess. Deneuve received the only Oscar nomination of her career for this film, but hers isn't an especially strong performance. She was well cast because of her naturally icy demeanor, but the ice never melts, which means I never really cared about this woman or how her story ends. And anyway she falls out of the movie for huge sections. By the time the film is over, it doesn't really even feel like it's about her anymore.
Winner of the 1992 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Grade: B.
Babettes gæstebud (1987)
Too Treacly for My Taste
I've only seen two of the films nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars of 1987, "Babette's Feast" and "Au Revoir Les Enfants." That the Danish film won over Louis Malle's entry is surprising because Malle's film is so much better, but also isn't surprising because it tracks with the Academy's history of preferring lightweight over weightier fare when it comes to this category. "Babette's Feast" is like "Cinema Paradiso" and "Life Is Beautiful" -- foreign films for people who don't like foreign films.
I agree with the conclusion reached in "Babette's Feast," that rigid adherence to an austere set of beliefs means people miss out on many of the joys life has to offer, and that denying oneself pleasure because of some vague principle is pointless. But the film this message is packaged in is just a bit too treacly for my taste. I'm also not a foodie, and I've never come close to having the kind of spiritual experience from a meal that people are always having in movies like this, so that also might have been part of the problem.
But I won't begrudge this film its Oscar win because I have Danish friends, have been to Denmark twice, and overall just really like Danish people.
Grade: B.
Anora (2024)
A Film Made By Its Ending
Some films are completely made by their last scenes, and "Anora" is one of them.
For the entire movie, we've watched Anora, a sex worker who falls into a whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch, convince the world and herself that she's tough as nails. She holds her own against the heavies who the oligarch sends to "contain" the situation, that situation being a Vegas marriage between his son and this American girl that he wants to force them to annul. She stands up to the son's god-awful mother and gives her a dressing down in a Vegas chapel. She even kicks the crap out of a work colleague, a fellow dancer at the strip club who delights in seeing Anora brought down a peg. And then, in the film's final moments, we see all of that bravura fall away and Anora turn into a sobbing little girl when a character offers her a taste of genuine human kindness and affection. The moment took my breath away and turned me into a sobbing mess myself. It's the kind of ending that makes you want to go back immediately and watch the movie again to see how your impressions of everything leading up to that ending might change.
Sean Baker makes one small miracle of a movie after another. The man just cannot stumble as far as I'm concerned. Like all of his movies, "Anora" chooses to focus on a character who, let's be honest, many if not most of us would dismiss in real life as trashy and someone to distance ourselves from, and then he lets us spend time with them and see how our feelings about them change as they become less of a collection of obnoxious character traits and more of a fully fleshed out person with a complicated interior life. Mikey Madison gives an astonishing performance in the title role, and I hope this movie isn't too small and out of the mainstream to get her some serious awards attention at year's end.
Grade: A.
Le dernier métro (1980)
Theater of War
This Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film of 1980 finds Catherine Deneuve as owner of a theater in Paris during the Nazi occupation during WWII, trying to keep the lights on while she hides her husband, a Jew, in the theater's basement.
The best parts of the movie are those that show the workings of the theater itself and the way the people involved with it circumvented restrictions imposed on them by the Germans. A love story between Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, a hot new actor in the theater troupe, is much less successful and never feels convincing.
Francois Truffaut directs with a light touch, and caps the film with a delightfully whimsical and meta tone that I wish had been applied to the whole movie.
Grade: B+
Beach Red (1967)
Grandfather to "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line"
Some may be surprised to find that in 1967 actor-turned-director Cornel Wilde crafted a WWII combat film that serves as a mashup of "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line."
The opening scene, the storming of a beach in the South Pacific, evokes the first twenty minutes of Spielberg's film, complete with guys puking over the side of the boat. And the fact that we hear the internal monologues spinning through these soldiers' heads throughout the film brings to mind Terence Malick. The war violence is far tamer and less graphic than anything in "Saving Private Ryan," yet it's pretty graphic for a movie from the 1960s. The whole thing felt a little ahead of its time, like Wilde was trying to push the envelope of what a war movie could be.
But, sadly, it doesn't work. The film is almost nothing but non-stop kinetic action, yet it's strangely inert and dull. The flashbacks inserted here and there to tell us something about the men we're following don't turn them into full-bodied characters, so there's little to feel invested in. The whole thing is really pretty boring.
"Beach Red" snagged an Oscar nomination for film editing, which probably is its best asset. Editor Frank P. Keller makes some striking choices, like juxtaposing quick shots of a cockroach getting squashed with shots of a young soldier about to head into battle, suggesting the disposability of both. It's touches like that that make this film artier than your average war movie (another thing that evokes Malick) and made me wish it was better.
Grade: C-
Kuolleet lehdet (2023)
A Finnish Rom Com
"Fallen Leaves" is Aki Kaurismäki's version of a Finnish rom com. If you've seen any Finnish movies, and especially any by this director, you will know to set your expectations for romming and comming accordingly.
This is a diverting enough movie, though for a movie no longer than it is I felt restless by the time it was over. Its biggest failing is that it wastes the talents of its leading lady, Alma Poysti. She plays a more compelling character than her quiet and reserved demeanor might at first glance give her credit for, but the movie doesn't explore her inner life. I wanted to learn more about her than the movie was willing to tell me.
Finland apparently has the happiest people on Earth according to some set of measurable standards, but you wouldn't know it from the movies that come from there.
Grade: B+
The Naked Prey (1965)
Cornel Wilde in His Skivvies
Yes, the white men (or more accurately, a white man) on safari at the beginning of this action thriller offend an African tribe they come across, but even at that the brutal and violent reprisal of the tribe is so extreme and so dripping in stereotypes of the African savage that it makes this film a hard watch from a 21st Century lens. If you are the kind of person who needs all of your movies, no matter when made, to adhere to the societal codes of today, you will not make it through this.
But if you can get past the part where the tribe roasts one man alive, lets another get bitten to death by snakes, etc. And get on to the meat of the movie, which is watching Cornel Wilde run for his life through the African plains while a band of tribesmen hunt him down, you might have some fun. The title sets expectations the film does not meet; Cornel Wilde is not naked -- if you look closely you'll see the flesh-colored shorts they've got him outfitted in. But he's mostly naked, so I can offer you that. The film is light on plot and dialogue and is almost exclusively action scenes. This might sound exciting, but in reality it's not really, or at least not consistently. It gets a little tedious watching Wilde hide in bushes and trees for the length of a feature film, and the abrupt ending feels unsatisfying. I had the same problem, to a much greater extent, with another Wilde-directed film I watched recently, "Beach Red." Wilde picked compelling subjects but had trouble as a director keeping them from being dramatically inert.
"The Naked Prey" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story and Screenplay in 1966.
Grade: B.
Suna no onna (1964)
Enigmatic and Unsettling
An enigmatic and unsettling film about an entomologist who becomes the fly when he's trapped in a metaphorical web in the middle of a desert with a mysterious lone woman.
"Woman in the Dunes" is one of those movies that will be about whatever the viewer brings to it. You can watch it literally, though I wouldn't recommend it, or you can see in it an allegory for the human condition and the constant struggle for survival against oppressive and indifferent forces. You can find a little bit of everything in this film, where story is secondary to visual and sensory detail.
This is a movie that could be used like a personality test. Are you an optimist or a pessimist, and how does that impact how you read the film's ending?
"Woman in the Dunes" was a Best Foreign Language Film nominee at the 1964 Oscars, and then the following year Hiroshi Teshigahara was nominated for Best Director. He should easily have won, but there was no way he was going to against juggernauts "The Sound of Music" and "Doctor Zhivago."
Grade: A.
Toys in the Attic (1963)
Sisterly Love Taken a Bit Too Far
Geraldine Page adds another notch to her kook character bedpost in this bit of Southern claptrap that also stars Dean Martin and Wendy Hiller.
Dean is the baby brother who both spinster sisters dither over. Both are worried about the vices that keep him embroiled in money troubles and neither are thrilled with the cute young thing he introduces to them as his new bride. But Geraldine's resistance to Dean's new found happiness goes to a whole other level, and because this is Southern Gothic territory, it has to hint at incestuous tendencies.
Geraldine dithers and flutters and acts up a storm in her mannered way and is as mesmerizing as ever. British actress Wendy Hiller pulls off an American accent very convincingly but has no choice but to fade into the background. And Gene Tierney gets a small but memorable role as an imperious society lady.
I saw this film on TCM, and though the opening credits were formatted to showcase the film's widescreen Cinemascope photography, for some reason the rest of it was cropped to have a square aspect ratio. The framing didn't seem to suffer too much for it, but I would have preferred to see it as it was originally intended.
Bill Thomas snagged a puzzling Oscar nomination for the film's black and white costume design.
Grade: B-
Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray (1962)
Unconventional Love Story That Stops Just Shy of Being Ick
A damaged soldier and a little orphan girl strike up a relationship when he pretends to be her dad so he can spend every Sunday with her outside of the orphanage where she lives.
The two characters develop a romance of sorts, one that bumps up uncomfortably close to the boundaries of appropriateness but which never quite crosses the line over into ick. This is mostly because of the sensitive direction, writing, and acting of everyone involved, but it's also something baked into the premise itself. These people, not really through anything they've done, have been thrust into situations that exist outside of the normal conventions, and they're both desperate for a human connection they're not getting from anyone else in their lives, so rules don't resonate with them the way they might with others.
But rules, of course, do exist for others if not them, and it's the protagonists' perceived breaking of them that leads the film to its tragic conclusion. The ending is depressing as hell, but also bracing in its way. The heartache in this movie feels justly earned.
"Sundays and Cybele" won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1962, and then went on to earn nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Scoring Adaptation the following year.
Grade: A.
Zielona granica (2023)
Multiple Perspectives on Refugee Crisis
Movies like "Green Border" are tricky. If you're watching it in the first place, you likely already have some awareness of and empathy for the plight of refugees and migrants who are being demonized around the world. If you need to be convinced that they are deserving of empathy, you're probably not ever going to watch this movie. So the onslaught of suffering we are subjected to feels like punishment, like we're being lectured on something we already believe.
I thought I might bail on this movie at about the 30-minute mark. That first half hour is misery porn about a Syrian family trying to make its way across the Belarus/Poland border and the inhumanity they face. I felt for them, but didn't want to watch a movie that was just going to throw in my face misery that I already feel bad about. But veteran director Agnieska Holland had something more varied in mind for this film, and the perspective switches multiple times to show events from the perspective of a Polish border guard, a group of activists trying to help the refugees, and a psychotherapist who turns her outrage into action and joins the cause.
"Green Border" is a well made movie, and it's pretty engrossing. But there's something a little too narratively slick about it. I've seen documentaries about the refugee crisis, and though it tries, this movie doesn't capture the visceral, life or death desperation of those films. Maybe it's not fair to ask it to, but it's hard to feel completely satisfied by this movie's fictional version of what's happening in the world when the real thing is being documented and made available. If this had been my first exposure to the refugee crisis, I might have found it to be more searing than I did. And there's something a little naive about it too. It's very simple in its ideology. All of the refugees and anyone on their side is good, anyone working against the refugees is bad, and there's no nuance or attempt to address the complicated social impact of large masses of people entering countries without the resources to support them. In this movie's version, if we all just open our borders and welcome whoever wants to come in, we'll all live together in a utopian society and won't that be wonderful. But that's not the way the world works. I'm one of the first to wish it did, but I'm more realistic than that. I wish this movie had been more realistic about it too.
But all that aside, it is still a very effective movie, and I found myself more enraged than depressed by it. I'm afraid I might be one of the ineffectual liberals criticized in the movie, people who feel bad about what's happening but don't actually do anything about it. To be fair to myself, I'm not sure exactly what it is I'm supposed to be doing, but still, movies like this make me want to just go out in the world and help someone, anyone, so I guess this film serves a valuable purpose in that regard.
Grade: A.
A Different Man (2024)
Overstays Its Welcome
Kudos to Sebastian Stan for committing 100% to a deeply flawed character living through a very complex situation, and for giving an intensely physical performance.
I wish I could say I liked the movie more than I did. It's a compelling premise and gets even more so once the actor Adam Pearson makes his appearance (Pearson also gives a wonderful performance, by the way). But I felt every minute of this film. It's not long, but it feels like it is. It overstayed its welcome for me by a good fifteen minutes or so.
But I liked the central question the movie asks of its main character -- where's the line between being unfairly held back by societal constructs because of our disadvantages vs. Voluntarily opting in to being a victim? Stan's character does some pretty reprehensible things by the time the movie is over, but your heart can't help but go out to the guy.
Grade: B.
My Old Ass (2024)
Where Was Aubrey Plaza?
Ok, I feel totally snowed.
I liked "My Old Ass" well enough, and there were a couple of sweet moments that had me teary eyed. But I went to this film largely because of my like of Aubrey Plaza, only to find that she is barely in this movie. She seriously might have...I don't know....ten minutes?....of screen time, so I guess if you're also a fan, just be aware that you won't get much of her in this movie.
Otherwise, this is a gentle rumination on the bittersweet passage of time (as one character says, the fact that time passes so quickly is both the best and worst thing about it) and the lessons we learn as we get older. We talk a lot about what we would say to our younger selves if we were able, and what mistakes we would help ourselves avoid making if we could. But this movie suggests that maybe we should get out of our own way and let ourselves feel all there is to feel, even the bad stuff.
Grade: A-
Emma. (2020)
Adequate Adaptation
This umpteenth version of the famous Jane Austen story is serviceable and perfectly enjoyable, though it doesn't really bring much that's new to the telling or completely justify the need for yet another adaptation. It mostly distinguishes itself from other versions by inexplicably putting a period at the end of its title.
Any "Emma" (or "Emma." for that matter) sinks or swims based on the qualities of its titular actress. Anya Taylor Joy is......fine?......but I don't really care for her as an actress, so I had trouble warming to her Emma, which is crucial to the story working. Emma is a pain in the ass, but you have to like her. My dislike of Taylor Joy is my problem that not everyone else will have, so if you like her, you might like this movie much more than I did.
The film looks handsome in that way period films based on Jane Austen books usually do. It predictably received an Oscar nomination for its costume design (has any Austen adaptation ever not been nominated in that category?) and another for its makeup and hairstyling, which consists mostly of giving all the men whiskers.
Really "Clueless" and Alicia Silverstone set the bar against which all screen versions of "Emma" will be judged by me, and no other has yet come close.
Grade: B+
The Alamo (1960)
About What You'd Expect from John Wayne
About what you'd expect as a passion project from someone like John Wayne.
Not terrible, but far from really good, the movie is way too long and talky. It could have been a brisk 90-minute action film, but Wayne clearly wanted it to stink of prestige, which worked, because it got itself nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But let's face it -- we all know how the Oscars work, and the love shown for this movie was more likely a nod to Wayne and what he'd done for the industry rather than any passion for the film itself.
And how the heck did Chill Wills get nominated for his performance in this? I could write a book about the number of head-scratching Oscar nominations that have gone to various actors over the years. It's not like Wills is bad, it's just that he's barely in the movie and doesn't play a remotely important role or have much of anything except comic relief to offer when he is.
The only Oscar "The Alamo" actually won was for Sound Recording, though it was nominated for cinematography, editing, scoring, and song in addition to its nods for Wills and Best Picture.
Grade: B-
The Bikeriders (2023)
Scorsese Lite
Not sure I ever felt fully vested in this film about bike culture that felt like something Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola would have made in the 1970s, only better.
In fact, the movie's narrative arc feels reminiscent of "The Godfather" in its portrayal of a criminal yet weirdly principled group of men -- more club than gang -- giving way to an outright criminal and not at all principled way of taking care of business -- total gang. And to top off the comparison, we have Tom Hardy doing his best Marlon Brando impersonation, though uncharacteristically for Hardy, he mostly fades into the background.
The MVP of the movie, and the most compelling reason for watching it, is Jodie Comer and her ridiculously adorable accent. She's the heart and soul of the movie, and you can feel the whole thing just begging to let her be the focus, but there's too much macho posturing to get through to ever let that happen.
I mostly just don't care that much about bike culture, and while a better movie maybe could have made me, this isn't that movie. But there's enough here -- Comer's performance, a terrific soundtrack, a gritty period vibe -- to make it worth watching.
Grade: B.
The Hanging Tree (1959)
Eerie Western
A unique and rather eerie western that finds Gary Cooper playing a doctor in a small gold mining town trying to live a life of decency in a culture of mob rule.
One of the things that makes "The Hanging Tree" different from other, more rosy screen versions of the American West is the tone of barely suppressed violence that runs through the film. These townspeople have a tree they use specifically for the purpose of hanging people, for god's sake, and it's like they're just itching for an excuse to use it. I think this movie struck me because that's what America feels like right now in this moment in time -- a place where everyone is angry and on edge and just looking for the slightest excuse to lose it.
Cooper and Maria Schell are really good in this movie, and Karl Malden is loathsome.
The title song, which I love, was nominated for an Oscar.
Grade: A.
The Sheepman (1958)
Strikes a Tricky Balance
"The Sheepman" manages to strike a tricky balance between western comedy and western suspense film. Glenn Ford coasts on oodles of screen charisma to play the film's protagonist, and he has a lot of chemistry with Shirley MacLaine, though she doesn't have a whole lot to do. Leslie Nielsen is fun as the villain, and though we know Ford is probably going to win the day, there is genuine suspense in finding out how he's going to do it.
"The Sheepman" was nominated in the category of Best Original Story and Screenplay at the 1958 Academy Awards.
Glenn Ford had never been one of my go-to actors, but in recent years, after seeing more of his films, I'm starting to grow a real fondness for him.
Grade: B+
The Brave One (1956)
Kind of a Dopey Movie
This kind of dopey movie is like one of those family-friendly live action Disney movies from the 1960s. There's certainly an audience for it, but I'm not it.
The biggest appeal this movie had for me was the curiosity factor in seeing the movie that consternated Hollywood in 1956 when Dalton Trumbo won an Oscar for its motion picture story under the pseudonym Robert Rich and no one had any clue who that was. I don't really even understand that particular award category -- I don't know how anyone could differentiate a movie's original story from its screenplay, or what a motion picture story even is. Apparently the Academy decided it couldn't either, because this film also has the distinction of being the last one to win that award. The following year the motion picture story and original screenplay categories would be merged into one award.
"The Brave One" brought bargain basement studio King Bros. Two additional Oscar noms, for its editing and sound recording. Despite being released by a low-budget studio, the film had some heavy hitters in its credits, like cinematographer Jack Cardiff and composer Victor Young.
And can I also say that I already hated the idea of bullfighting and this movie made me hate it even more. I would totally root for the bull.
Grade: B-
The Country Girl (1954)
Showcase for Bing Crosby
Grace Kelly won the Best Actress Oscar for this movie, but it's Bing Crosby who made the biggest impression on me.
Crosby plays an alcoholic actor who's been hired to star in a new Broadway show. The movie chronicles his crisis of confidence and the lure of the bottle while the man who's staked his success on him, played by William Holden, hopes that he can hold himself together, and his beleaguered wife tries to decide whether she wants to stick by him or bail. It's not surprisingly kind of a downer, and late in the movie it veers into unengaging melodrama as the story tries to foist a love story on us that doesn't feel like it belongs. But it's worth it to see Crosby doing really fine dramatic work playing against type.
The first scene featuring Crosby is one where he is auditioning for Holden and a skeptical producer of the show. He performs a number that he had performed in a show earlier in his career. Crosby is absolutely magnetic. Watching this scene, it's easy to see that intangible thing called star power that made him such an enduring and endearing entertainer.
And while I don't begrudge Kelly her Oscar, if they were going to give her one, they should have given it to her for "Rear Window," released in the same year.
"The Country Girl" scored big at the 1954 Oscars, nominated for seven awards and winning two. Director George Seaton won the Best Screenplay award in addition to Kelly's Best Actress win. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Seaton again), Best Actor (Crosby) Best B&W Art Direction, and Best B&W Cinematography.
Grade: A-
Víctimas del pecado (1951)
A Woman Scorned
I saw "Victims of Sin" as part of the annual Noir City festival at Chicago's Music Box Theater. TCM's Eddie Muller was on hand to introduce the film, and he spent a good while talking about the magnetism of the film's star, Ninon Sevilla. And boy was he not kidding. She is a dynamo in this film, a hard-edged noirish tale about a nightclub performer who takes an abandoned baby under her protection and spends the rest of the film protecting it and herself from a thuggish gangster.
This film has some content that an American film would never have gotten away with, and there are a few moments in it so rousing that the audience I saw it with burst into cheers and applause. There are a lot of musical moments in the film, quite a few showcasing Sevilla's talents as dancer. But even in the non-musical moments, there's something about this movie that feels like a musical. It moves like one, as if a choreographer had a hand in blocking out all of the scenes.
It's not a long film, but yet I did feel like it overstayed its welcome by a hair. The end teeters into the kind of melodrama that for me gets tiring pretty quickly. But that's a small complaint -- mostly this film is a blast.
Grade: A.
The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023)
Quick and Dirty Thriller
This quick and dirty little crime thriller has a sensational first act, bringing together a bunch of characters in a middle-of-nowhere diner being held hostage by a couple of bank robbers on the lam. It's really suspenseful, but it's also really playful, and I was pleased that the film opted for fun rather than grimness. The second half of the movie, which takes place after things in the diner have come to a head, deflates a bit. It's like the story climaxes too quickly but then has to stick around for a while longer just to meet the requirements of a feature length running time. I wonder how this would have done as a short film.
But flaws aside, it's still a fiendishly entertaining movie. It doesn't really have much of a point, which is fine by me.
And it's got a kick-ass soundtrack.
Grade: A-
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Grossest Movie of the Year?
The last 20 minutes or so of "Love Lies Bleeding" goes off the rails in the most delightfully bonkers way. Even more to its credit, it gets funny. It wasn't until the last few scenes with Ed Harris that I realized I was supposed to be laughing at his haircut. And I thought, "was I supposed to be finding this movie funny the whole time?"
If I had, I would have liked this movie much more. But everything leading up to that last goofy little bit abused my goodwill too much for my opinion of it to rebound. God almighty this has to be the grossest movie that has yet or will yet come out this year. It's full of gross people doing gross things. Everyone looks like they would smell terrible and have bad breath. It's set somewhere in New Mexico I guess, or at least that's where it was filmed, but wherever it is it's a horror show goon parade of everything that's most terrible about America. It's the kind of place people fly over to get somewhere better. The actors try, especially Kristen Stewart, but the director is so determined to turn us off that no one really had a chance to make much of this surly, grumpy weirdo fest.
And I have never seen a bigger collection of unacceptable haircuts in my life. It was almost like a contest to see who could look most ridiculous.
Grade: C-