Three more days of school.
Movies
A really watchable little indie, mostly because Aubrey Plaza is great in this. I don't think I've seen her try to be this straightforwardly naturalistic before, and it turns out that she's really good at it! The rest of the film is competent enough not to get in her way, and the writing, though a little telegraphed, ratchets the tension up enough that it's engaging as a thriller as well as a character piece. The ending was kind of deflating, though; while I'm not sure what the movie should have built to, it sure felt like it was building to something a little less by-the-book than that. Grade: B
The rare anthology film where every segment is a hit. The second one, in which, basically, some students find out that their professor's award-winning novel has some sexy parts, is clearly the best to me, and the way it just keeps unfolding and subverting itself and finding new shades of humanity in this scenario left my jaw on the floor. The other two segments are good, too, and they each have moments of profound lucidity that left me similarly bowled over, though those moments come basically one apiece for the segments rather than more or less the whole time for Part Two. Anyway, I think I need to go back and seek out everything that Ryusuke Hamaguchi has done, because between this and Drive My Car, he's creating a literary-minded cinema that I don't see anywhere else these days. Really scratches an itch for me. Grade: A-
I assume I'm like most people in that I saw TÁR and then decided to work back through Todd Field's other movies. This doesn't have the impish ambiguity of that film, and on the whole, it's kind of shockingly straightforward when using TÁR as the reference point. It's mostly just a very classy, very well-done version of the mythical "movies for adults" that are increasingly hard to find at the cinema. It's kind of an Ordinary People for the 21st century, but if Ordinary People turned into a Paul Schrader movie in its final act. As such, it's notable how willing to punch you in the gut this movie is. It seems stupid to worry about spoiling a 20+ year-old movie, but I don't want to spoil what the central tragedy of the film ends up being, because the sick feeling I got by being surprised by it is surely what Field was going for. Well, he got it, and it's kind of spectacular. Every time the movie feels like it's settling into a groove that's less interesting, it'll do another sucker punch with that same nauseating effect. It happens 3 or 4 times. Movie magic. Grade: B+
Not particularly interesting as a film in and of itself, and it never really tries to be—this is very clearly a cash-in on a craze. The animation is fine, the voices are kinda weird, and the story is rote—sounds like a video-game-tie-in anime to me! As a piece of Mario media history, though, it's kind of intriguing. I was expecting something much further afield of what we now recognize as Mario canon, given that only the first two Super Mario Bros. games (and by that I mean: SMB and what we in the U.S. call The Lost Levels) had come out at this point, neither of which feel very in-touch with the characterizations that would become more formalized with Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) and Super Mario Bros. 3—e.g. Luigi being the gawky loser (though there are a few artifacts of those games being the basis of this, like Luigi's color scheme and the low-key disturbing factoid from the original SMB manual about the subjects of the Mushroom Kingdom being turned into the blocks in the game). But at the same time, there are some very weird narrative choices here, like Mario and Luigi playing a video game and then getting sucked through the TV into the Mushroom Kingdom, or the fact that Mario and Luigi have a pet dog that ends up being an enchanted prince (and Peach's fiancé!). Tracking the fossil record of the evolution of the Super Mario mythos is basically the only thing this movie is worthwhile for, though. Otherwise, a snooze. Grade: C-
A boring, confused, confusing, clearly compromised adaptation of a book I've never read. If you want to hear more thoughts on this, check out Episode 434 of the Cinematary podcast, where some friends and I attempt to find something to say about this movie. Grade: C-
No comments:
Post a Comment