In the meantime, don't forget my pair of "Favorites of 2019" posts. You can find the movie one here and the music one here.
Movies
There was probably never going to be a good way to adapt the all-time-terrible Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway smash Cats (and please, can this movie be the moment when everyone collectively wakes up and realizes that it was never good? That's right, not even "Memory"), but this is definitely one of the worse ways to even attempt to turn that musical into a movie, starting with the choice to superimpose actors faces over CG cat-human hybrid bodies but continuing on down the line to every single filmmaking choice including just the basic shot composition and blocking (which obscures 90% of the CG choreography 90% of the time). Still, I'd be lying if I joined in with the chorus of people calling this the worst movie of 2019—or even if I just said I didn't like it. The worst movies are either ideologically toxic or boring, and Cats is neither. Especially in this age of hyper-cautious movie studios, it's a rare treat to get a movie that goes so disastrously awry at every single turn as this one, and I had a terrific time with it. I can't quite rate it highly enough that I might trick someone into thinking that I recommend this movie on its own terms (half of the theater walked out before the film's halfway point, leaving just me and my friends to have a collective freak out), but, like, as a movie working against itself at every turn on its own sui generis rubric, this is great. Grade: C+
I've not watched a ton of post-'70s Robert Altman movies, so my main associations with the man are primarily American, primarily counterculturally informed. So it was interesting to see a movie of his so far out of that milieu: i.e. one that takes place in the intensely buttoned-up, intensely stratified world of early 20th century Great Britain. The verdict is that it's about 70% shaggy Altman-esque ensemble observational drama, about 30% murder mystery that kind of pays off all the kind of aimless observational drama in the preceding hour-plus. The buildup to the murder feels far too long, but then again, once that plot jumps in, it racks the movie into crystal-clear focus on the ugliest, saddest implications of the class tensions that have been waltzing in front of the camera the whole time. I like that. Grade: B
As always with Kiarostami and his movies, there's a lot to unpack with The Wind Will Carry Us. My initial takeaway is that this is basically like Kiarostami's take on the whole Hallmark original movie thing where the city slicker goes to the quaint small town and learns to renounce their city-slicking ways and appreciate the slow, personalized pace of the small-time life—in fact, Kiarostami finds the correct way to frame this story, which hinges on the tense interplay between the urban exploitation of rural "quaintness" and the interlocking systems of contemporary life that affect us all. It's a gorgeously shot, strikingly funny movie that's of course a lot more complicated than what I've described, more of a dense modern text of potent symbols and richly evocative scenes than anything like the moralizing narrative I've just framed it as, and I've barely scratched the surface of it myself. But this is a good one, for sure. Grade: A-
I'm 100% here for the Philip Glass score and Thelma Shoomaker editing, but I'm maybe only 50% here for the Martin Scorsese direction and Melissa Mathison screenplay. The music is stunning throughout, and there are some edits here (especially in the final, highly impressionist final fifteen minutes or so) that are just jaw-dropping in their beauty. As for Scorsese/Mathison, Kundun is the first feature for both of them that is outside a Western, Christian milieu, and both the screenplay and the direction have a stuffiness about them that feels like the sort of careful reverence you might use when approaching a tradition you are not a part of. It's stuffy and robs the material of anything like the more incisive moments of either artist's typical work, and it kind of makes me wonder how suitable either one was for this project in the first place (ditto with the choice to have everybody speak in English—come on, Scorsese, even your bud Schrader had his "Asian" film in the regionally appropriate language!). For Scorsese in particular, his beatific stance toward the Dalai Lama is basically the opposite of the thorny complexity he affords his Christian protagonists and even Jesus Christ Himself, and while I completely understand why an outsider wouldn't want to imbue complexity onto a religious/political tradition not their own, it really makes some of Scorsese's work here feel like a noble failure. But that music! Those edits! Grade: B-
The last new-to-me movie I watched in 2019 (though I did rewatch Frances Ha with my wife sometime later in the evening). Anyway, it's a lot of fun. I've never seen a Bruce Lee movie before, and this seemed like an alright introduction. It was basically a Bond movie, which means that it has the boring stretches and tedious archetypes that usually plague Bond movies, but Bruce Lee kicking and punching his way through the baddies is way more fun than, like, Sean Connery sleeping his way through a small army of women. Also, I like that Bruce Lee's character is just named Lee. Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment