With the Oscars coming up next month, I am trying to catch up on as many of the movies that have been nominated as possible. The vast majority of them are ones that I had not seen previously. And there are some like Hamnet that I want to see, but are not available yet on any of the streaming services to which I subscribe. Some like Marty Supreme I've already reviewed
As I've been catching up, I've come to realize why I haven't seen many of these nominated films:
Most of them are terrible.
Once again the Academy has decided not to listen to the general audiences and instead have decided to push down our throats what they think is high art. Granted, this year was not a great year for movies in general. But I think you could do a heck of a lot better than most of films nominated here.
Instead of doing a full review for each, I decided to do a mini-review.
As the weeks go on and I am able to see more of the nominated films, I may do a second follow-up post to this. But for now, here are my mini-reviews
One Battle After Another
This is a horrible movie. It is so morally illiterate that I don't quite know if it understands basic right from wrong. Teyana Taylor plays Perfidia Beverly Hills, a terrorist who begins the movie by assaulting (both physically and in a sense sexually) Col Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Perfidia is a horrible person who threatens anyone who disagrees with her politics, including pro-lifers, with death and violence. And when she is caught she sells out all her old comrades and exits the country and the movie for Mexico. This would be interesting if she wasn't clearly set up to be some kind of hero. She leaves behind her husband Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and her child who grows up to be played by Chase Infiniti. The rest of the movie centers around Lockjaw trying to track down and kill Perfidia's daughter and Bob trying to find her and keep her safe.
You can tell the script was written at a time when the it seemed like the culture was swinging in one direction, but it shifted into the opposite. So much of its radical politics fall flat because the film expects you to instantly accept the rightness of Perfidia's goals. DiCaprio, Inifiniti, and Benicio Del Toro give fine performances, but that is almost all the movie has to offer. Sean Penn keep winning awards for his Lockjaw, but the performance is so cartoonishly flat that I cannot understand why. The writing is also so singularly one-dimensional. When you watch the evil cabal who runs the country greet each other with "Merry Christmas" you will wonder if this is an Airplane! -style parody. The directing by Paul Thomas Anderson is fairly competent, but that is about it.
Frankenstein
I have to admit that this movie was pretty good. There is no real need to go into a plot summary, as the story of Frankenstein has been told to death. The real draw of this film are the amazing visuals by Guillermo del Toro and the performances by Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth. Isaac is always dependable as an actor and he brings a wild, genius-lunatic vibe to his work. But the real standout is Elordi. His star is on the rise and you can understand with his performance as the Creature. He is able to capture that difficult mixture of innocence and menace so that even at his worst, you can still feel horrible sympathy for him.
If you enjoy the Frankenstein story, this is worth checking out.
Train Dreams
This movie has been called "Terrance Malick"-esque. And that is accurate, but that is not a good thing.
Train Dreams is one of the most beautifully shot movies I've seen this year. It is also meandering and boring. The film wants to act more as a mediation of life than as a plot-driven narative, and that is the film-maker's prerogative. If you don't care about the plot, then don't expect me to either.
The performances are good and there is one truly haunting scene where a Chinese rail worker (Alfred Hsing) is coldly and senselessly murdered. That scene stayed with me in a bad way for days afterwards. In that sense, the filmmaking was effective. Joel Edgerton is great in a performance that is mostly understated but occasionally explosive. But as we wander through his life, I kept waiting for the end.
Sinners
I remember seeing this movie years ago when it was called From Dusk Till Dawn. It has essentially the same plot with the same twist: a pair of outlaw brothers along with everyone in a debauched establishment are attacked by vampires.
Writer/Director Ryan Coogler wants to use the the vampires as a metaphor for racism and for the most part it works. The performances are good and Coogler directs the sequences very well. But he wasn't misleading when he called the movie Sinners. This is one of the most sexually explicit movies I have seen in a while that at the same time did not have any nudity (at least that I saw). I found there was an ugliness to the wanton fornication that made it difficult for me to connect to the characters.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
This movie is an exercise in agony. Rose Byrne plays Linda, a woman who is raising her willful child while her life is falling apart. Everything seems to go wrong and she appears to be getting the blame for everything while receiving no real help from anyone. To make things worse, Linda is a selfish, loathsome person herself.
If this movie was sponsored by Planned Parenthood, I would not be surprised. It makes motherhood look like an absolute nightmare. For almost the entire movie, you never see her daughter's face. The child is a monster who is slowly sucking the life out of Linda. At one point Linda tells her therapist about an earlier abortion she had and then she says, "Maybe I aborted the wrong child."
Honestly the only thing I can commend this movie for his Byrne's performance. She adds layers this horrid person while drawing you in to sympathize with her pain; not an easy thing to do with a character like this.
Weapons
I give credit to this movie for being original and scary. It has a great premise: in the middle of the night an entire class of children (except one) run out of their house into the night and disappear. Writer/Director Zach Cregger does a good job of given dimension to characters that could otherwise be flat. And I think his sequences are visually interesting and at times very scary.
The performances are also generally good. Amy Madigan has a nomination as the movie's villain and I think it is deserved. Julia Garner and Josh Brolin also turn in some good performances.
The movie loses me though in the pacing. In an effort to give you deeper insight into the characters, the movie plays around with the timeline in a way that slows everything down to a crawl. If you took 30 minutes out of this movie, it would sail.
Blue Moon
This movie feels like it should be a play. Perhaps the low budget made it feel that way, nevertheless I don't think film was the right medium for this. Ethan Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the former writing partner to Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott). The movie takes place on the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein's smash hit Oklahoma! and Hart realizes that not only is his partnership with Rodgers essentially over but that he has been surpassed by Hammerstein.
Hart is so condescending, he feels like every failed artist who instists that the audience is wrong and not himself. He sneers down on everyone, which makes him even more pathetic as he wastes away in the corner drinking himself to death. Rather than seeing a tortured artist, I could only see an unrepentent narcisisst who could not find joy in his talent and the happiness that he could bring to the world. Hawke is great in the role, but the movie feels like a slog to get through.
Thoughts?
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