Homo Sapiens

2016 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Where did all the people go?

The title of this is a little misleading because there isn't a single gay person in this movie.

I apologize for that. In my head, it seemed a lot funnier.

Haunting and meditative, this is like a record of our world, post our demise. Austrian Nikolaus Geyrhalter presents us with a series of shots that show man-made structures--schools, factories, hospitals, roads, amusement parks, water parks, apartments, etc.--that are all devoid of humans. The camera doesn't move, but there's plenty of movement and life in this seemingly dead world, probably a world that the titular people homo sapiens have somehow destroyed. Birds, water, and wind create this movement, and growth goes on without us, all of our edifices, our tools, and our vehicles existing in dilapidated or withered states like mementos or peculiar trinkets. The imagery is frequently heartbreakingly beautiful and just plain heartbreaking at the same time. There's no score at all, just sounds of nature that exist far beyond our expiration dates. Drips, insects, birds, unidentifiable thumps and thwacks.

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley knew the thwacks would outlive us all.

Scum

1979 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Life for young men at an institution.

This is not a Frederick Wiseman movie.

Appropriately, this narrative doesn't really have a beginning or an end.

Spider-Man: Far from Home

2019 superhero movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Spider-Man wants to enjoy a trip to Europe with his classmates, but saving the world and Avenger stuff keeps getting in the way.

This wastes Jake Gyllenhaal and what could have been an intriguing villain in Mysterio.

This movie has several things working against it. It follows that last Avengers extravaganza movie too closely. It came out less than a year after a far superior Spider-Man movie.

I know exactly the kind of movie this wants to be. It's a mashup of teen comedy, superhero action, and international romping. I just don't think it does any of those things effectively. It's not funny, and the characters are only somewhat likable. The superhero stuff is a mess.

I don't have anything else to say about this movie. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Under the Silver Lake

2019 neo-noir

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Spider-Man tries to unravel a mystery after a girl he wants to have sex with turns up missing.

I don't really know what to say about this movie. I didn't really understand it, but I kind of loved it. I also have come to the realization that I am attracted to Andrew Garfield.

 I can't wait to watch this a second time, but my wife is very suspicious and likely tracking my viewing activity.

The Black Stallion

1979 boy and horse movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A boy is shipwrecked on an island with the titular horse. They become friends and are rescued, and then people want to see how fast the stallion can run. Pretty fast!

I thought I could have just watched Hoyt Axton playing poker on a boat for two hours, but this movie really only gets better from there. I mean, the scene with Mickey Rooney pantomiming the riding of a horse is probably the sexiest thing I've seen in my entire life, and that took place way after Hoyt Axton fell in the ocean, befriended a delightful band of mer-people, and enjoyed sexual encounters with several of them, both male and female.

None of that is shown, by the way, so don't get your hopes up, you pervs.

I love how much of this story is told visually. Well, it's pretty much all of the story. The way the friendship between this boy and this horse develops is just beautiful. The boy and the horse don't even exchange dialogue during these scenes on the island, but Carroll Ballard knows how to use use pictures to tell the story. The scenes on the island, where Ballard uses God's special effects so effectively, are my favorites, but the chaotic chaos of the boat scene, training sequences, and the editing of the horse race finale are all great, too.

The score is by Carmine Coppola, and it's mostly really good. The music works best, ironically, when it's not even used at all. The climactic race scene, as well as all the pre-race stuff, is storytelling without any music.

Cass Ole gives one of the greatest horse performances I've ever seen.

Vengeance Is Mine

1979 Japanese serial killer drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Cops try to apprehend a guy who is running around killing people.

"I will punish those who do wrong. I will repay them. Sometimes their foot will slip. Their day of trouble is near. And their punishment will come quickly." Deuteronomy 32:35

I had to use the International Children's Bible for that verse because the King Jame's Version had too many big words. I spent most of this movie trying to figure out whether "vengeance" is the appropriate word for the title. Ken Ogata, who is terrific in this, plays this main character who has some things from his past he could gripe about--a spineless father, oppressive Catholicism--but there's really nothing here that molds the character into the sociopath he becomes. It seems as if director Shohei Imamura is deliberately keeping motives foggy while telling this guy's story. It's gloopy, but it's gloopy with a purpose.

Maybe there was another period in his life when he had difficulty locating a can opener. Those kinds of things can add up, you know.

With a special effects team, the last shot--one reminding us that we aren't dust in the wind after all but instead bones in the air--could have been an all-time great. In addition to that scene, I loved a shot of hanging galoshes, the clean-up after a 4th murder, a shot of Ogata sinking in his seat in a movie theater, an opening cabinet surprise, the first two rough and sloppy murders which show the audience that this character is no professional, and a great shot where the camera follows Ogata down and alley before he abruptly turns around to look directly at the audience.

The Milpitas Monster

1976 monster movie

Rating: 5/20 (Buster: 4/20)

Plot: Something is stealing garbage cans in Milpitas, and when it's discovered that it's a giant winged monster, it's up to some high school students to find a way to stop him.

With a screech like Rodan and an origin similar to Godzilla's foe, the Smog Monster, this titular monster looks pretty silly. It alternates between a cheaply stop-animated and a guy in a suit. While there are certain shots and camera angles that attempt to make it look iconic, the monster's flimsy wings and overall goofy appearance don't help this film's chances.

Neither does the central conflict. The monster, instead of stomping around and destroying things or hurting people, is really just stealing trash cans. Sure, that's the kind of thing that can get tiresome, but it doesn't make this movie monster seem all that menacing.

This entire production was created by high school students. They wrote it, directed it, and starred in it. It could have ended up a whole lot worse, but these kids do set up some cool-looking shots and have the good sense not to take things too seriously here. Of course, the humor doesn't really work at all. Most of it is provided by either the antics of a jerky trio of high school pranksters or the town's drunkard who is called Old George Keister or Stew George. I think he's called "Stew George" anyway. I had to turn subtitles on for this after a while because I couldn't understand about half of what was being said. The subtitles, by the way, didn't help much. There was a lot of [inaudible] in there. Anyway, George is played by "Crazy George" Henderson. It is not a good performance.

Of course, none of the performances are since the cast is made up almost entirely of inhabits of Milpitas. Call it the Milpitas New Wave if you want. The big exception would be the involvement of Paul Frees as the narrator. How did they get him?

Also notable--Ben Burtt handled the sound effects for this. If you don't know Ben Burtt, you are likely familiar with some of the sounds this Oscar-winner has added to popular culture. R2-D2, lightsaber whirrs. He also might be the guy responsible for us hearing the Wilhelm Scream in everything.

There's probably some sort of environmental message here. Maybe the movie is just anti trash can though.

Buster watched this with me and seemed to be digging it. She left with about a half an hour to go though and told me she was rating it a 4/20.

Serenity

2019 ocean noir

Rating: 9/20

Plot: The less time I waste on this movie, the better. If you want a plot synopsis, go look at IMDb or something.

Jason Clarke is quickly becoming a cinematic pet peeve. Here, somebody decided that he should have an unidentifiable accent. His character is also absurdly unlikable, and I can't remember a character I've wanted to see bitten by a shark more than Clarke's character in this. Or a tuna. Or Matthew McConaughey. I didn't even care what bit Jason Clarke in half as long as it happened.

Matthew McConaughey seems to be doing everything he can to sabotage his own career after the heights he reached just a few years ago with those car commercials. It also seems like he's told his agent that he will only take roles that allow him to be near water and show off his naked posterior. He's not terrible here, especially when he's silently prepping for his fishing trips. The movements look practiced and natural as he's preparing bait or whatever. I wish he would have been given opportunities to play a more crazed version of this character. He's subdued and in a little too much control most of the time, and I would have loved to see what Nicolas Cage could have done in this role. McConaughey does let out a Cage-esque primal scream ("Ee-yah!") at one point though. Mostly, he seems a little bored.

It was nice to see that when he dreams about himself, he dreams about himself naked. It's exactly like my Matthew McConaughey dreams.

What starts as a kind of cross between Moby Dick or The People's Sexiest Man Alive and the Sea and sexy ocean noir grows a little more confusing when metaphysical or telepathic elements are introduced. Threads that don't immediately pull together are comical at first, but when everything does come together, it becomes downright nonsensical. It's the kind of film where you might be intrigued the entire time, but afterward, you'll be completely embarrassed that you were intrigued at all.

Monty Python's Life of Brian

1979 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Brian, born a stable or two over from a more famous guy, lives in Roman-occupied Judea with his mother, and his life is turned upside-down after he's mistaken for a messiah.

There's a message amidst the crude nonsense and usual Python irreverence with a bit of blasphemy. Early, this is episodic, using these situational snippets to have fun with life in a spiritually-hungry Roman-occupied Judea. By the end, it's settled on a plot when Brian is mistaken for a messiah, and the bits--the crowd shouting things in unison and the speech impediments of Pontius Pilate and Biggus Dickus--are stretched to the point where it feels like they ran out of ideas and had time to fill. The turning point involves a sandal, the Python boys satirizing the way a person's message, or in this case a lack of message, can be corrupted. Cleese, Idle, Gilliam, Chapman, Jones, and Palin each play a variety of characters, and after more than a decade, they still bounce off each other so well and have terrific chemistry and comedic timing. There are lots of really funny moments, climaxing with glorious irony in the fun musical crucifixion number, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." 

Zombie 2

1979 zombie sequel that isn't a sequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: When her father's boat is found without any father on it, a woman travels to a Caribbean island to find him. She finds zombies instead!

Called Zombie 2 by those nutty Italians to capitalize on the success of Dawn of the Dead, this movie has nothing in common with Romero's classic with the exception of lots of shambling. Following an intriguing opening shot with a gun pointed directed at the camera, a shot that would have had the effect of making me believe I was watching this while held at gunpoint or something even though I willingly selected it, this shuffles along from plot point to plot point to get to the absurdly over-the-top shots of gore. Zombies, when they don't look like children's papier-mache that were left in the sun too long, gobble up intestines, bite through jugulars, and have balls of worms where their eyeballs should go.

Speaking of eyeballs, there's a very graphic eye injury in this movie. With graphic eyeball wounds in John Wick and Brightburn and now this, this is becoming the summer of the eyeball for me.

The film's best sequence starts with some nearly-nude scuba diving before shifting to a scene where a zombie fights a shark. I don't believe George Romero ever showed us anything like that!

Yesterday

2019 musical fantasy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Following an accident, a struggling musician realizes that he lives in a world where the Beatles have never existed. He decides to take advantage of this by "writing" their songs.

It's unclear how somebody can get in an accident that causes everybody else in the world to have amnesia. I don't need the fantasy explained to me exactly, but it would have helped if this was a little less mysterious. This is a case where the premise is better than the movie, that premise winding up under-explored.

This leans very heavily on the charm and talents of Himesh Patel who nails every subdued performance (like when he performs "Yesterday" for a small group of friends) and the big concert moments in front of thousands. He also has a good rapport with Lily James.

This movie has a whole lot of Ed Sheeran and Kate McKinnon. Maybe the former is a bigger deal than I'm aware of. This almost seems like an Ed Sheeran vanity project, a movie that lets the world know that if it wasn't for the Beatles, Ed Sheeran would be the greatest songwriter who ever strummed a guitar. I can't name a single Ed Sheeran song, so maybe I'm missing out. McKinnon is a huge distraction, a character who is absurdly comic. She's there to help form a theme about the music industry, but it's heavyhanded and a little too obvious.

This has some fine moments, but is mostly generic when it should be magical. Part of the problem might be that the film's audience doesn't forget the Beatles and their songs existed. Though those songs have had fifty years to become classics, I don't know if they'd have the same impact if they were introduced to the world in 2019. The dramatic irony forces us to think about what we would do if we were in the character's situation, but the movie is a little too fluffy to really give any of it emotional depth. I rarely felt what I think I was supposed to feel. I just thought, "Heh, what a cute premise."

Midsommar

2019 romantic comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A couple tries to save their relationship by traveling to a remote commune in Sweden with some friends. It goes great!

I've never experienced a break-up after a lengthy relationship, mostly because I knocked up the first woman who showed any interest in me and got married to somebody who is also too lazy to ever get a divorce. Therefore, I'm not entirely sure I connect with everything going on in this rom-com. Or maybe, more accurately, it's an unromantic comedy, a brand-new Ari Aster genre. Last year's Hereditary was a straight horror movie mixed in with family drama and all this pagan stuff. I expected this to be more of the same, a horror movie borrowing bits from The Wicker Man and other 70's moody, stylish horror classics.

It's not really a horror movie. It's too bright to be a horror movie, almost all of the scenes taking place under a relentless sun. There are things happening to the characters or things the characters witness that are deeply unsettling, and if you think about the movie from certain characters' perspectives, it definitely seems like they're in the middle of a horror movie. As with his first feature, Aster shows off this gift for creating this almost unbearable tension. He's so patient getting the characters from Point A to Point Crazytown, setting this pace that forces the audience to absorb all these details and develop all these questions. Midsommar burns slowly, a candle that lets out this funky but still beautiful fragrance, but then by the end, you notice that it's caught your face on fire.

Contributing to that pace are all these slowly unfurling extended shots filled with all this complicated choreography, sometimes involving animals. Aster and company built this commune from the ground up, and the odd-angled structures give this an almost expressionistic look. Inside those structures are these gorgeous paintings, and the whole thing just looks like a labor of love, all this mythological detail packed into nearly every square inch of wall in these buildings. The camera moves inside and around these structures in these extended shots, and it's just the kind of thing a guy like me eats up. Breathtaking. Music also contributes, a haunting score by somebody calling himself The Haxan Cloak. It all blends in this quietly psychedelic swirl, the sheer length of the thing (nearly 2 hours and 30 minutes!), the strange visuals, and stranger goings-on disorienting the viewer almost as much as it must have disoriented the unfortunate characters who are really trapped in this place.

Yes, this is a movie about a devastating break-up, the commune and its customs and ceremonies representing the rituals a couple in a collapsing relationship might undergo. However, I want to reiterate that the movie is very funny. It's a sneaky kind of funny, one where an audience in a theater might laugh just because it releases some tension a bit. But a lot of the times, I'm not sure how the actors and actresses playing the members of this community keep a straight face. They're good, but Florence Pugh is terrific. It's one of those performances where you think another actress could have played the part, but nobody could have done it quite like Pugh did. She's great!

Not everything adds up in this, and I'm not sure it would even after a rewatch or two. I'm curious about the following:

1) A female scream heard three times from multiple perspectives--I don't believe it was ever explained.
2) The significance of an early drug trip
3) The symbolism of the oracle's deformity
4) Why one character who winds up spending time with some chickens meets the particular graphic end he meets
5) The significance of grief in this movie
6) A bear--why?

Hair

1979 hippie musical

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A guy's joining the army, but once he reaches New York, some singing hippies get in the way.

Currently, I'm researching the year 1979 in film. I saw this was available to stream; discovered that it was the next movie Milos Forman directed after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one of my personal favorites; and remembering seeing it in high school and thinking it was something special.

It's not. It doesn't quite work as a musical, it doesn't work as a narrative, and it doesn't work as any sort of belated counterculture statement. It's a mess of a musical, and there's nothing about the story or the characters that makes them feel authentic or interesting. I'm fairly sure that I'm supposed to side with the hippie characters in this, but I was never given a reason to. Maybe that's just the old-man part of me talking. You know, the only part of me. I didn't buy the fragments of romance this halfheartedly developed, a sketchy love-triangular conflict didn't work, and any internal conflict with the main character is never fully realized. Of course, any problems with the Claude Hooper Bukowski character might be the result of John Savage having only 1 and 1/2 facial expressions.

The songs really aren't that effective. And there's a barrage of songs! They all kind of blend in with one another so that at times, I'm not sure if I'm hearing something that's a throwback to an earlier scene or something that just sounds the same as something I've heard before because writers Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni, and James Rado don't have much versatility. I probably shouldn't blame MacDermot because the music isn't the issue. Rado and Ragni were the lyricists, and those just sound like words that have just been thrown together. I can imagine song-writing sessions working like this:

Rado: "Hey, I'm working on that drug song. I'm just going to look in the encyclopedia and write down all the drugs that I find in there."
Ragni: "Good idea! For that song they'll do while on horseback, I'm going to just string together a bunch of words, too."
Rado: "Like sodomy?"
Ragni: "Exactly! I'm going to start with that one! Thanks, Ragni!"
Rado: "You're welcome, buddy. But I'm Rado. You're Ragni."

Here are the lyrics, in case you think I'm exaggerating:

"Sodomy
Fellatio
Cunnilingus
Pederasty

Father, why do these words sound so nasty?

Masturbation
Can be fun
Join the holy orgy
Kama Sutra
Everyone!"

That could have been written by a kid who got his hands on his parents' dirty magnetic poetry kit! And pederasty? Really, Hair?

The performance pieces, largely lip synched, do have an infectious energy, and scenes in Washington D.C. and Central Park have an impressive amount of extras. Also--there's a brief shot during a song about "Electric Blues" with this guy playing a keytar that spits out fire. I needed more of that guy! And that guy should have a guitar-off with that flaming-guitar guy from Fury Road.

I'm curious about what this wants to say about race. There's interracial relationships, and a whole song about black boys and white boys being pretty or something like that. What's the angle there, Hair?

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot

2019 old-man action movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: See the title.

Spoiler alert: Don't read the title of this movie before you see it or you'll know everything that happens. Well, not everything, I guess, because there's a wacky surprise in there somewhere.

Sam Elliott's character tells somebody that his actions in World War II were "Nothing like the comic book you want it to be." When you start a movie called The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, you have certain expectations. I expected this to be pretty goofy and at least a little bit of fun, but writer/director Robert D. Krzykowski had other ideas and establishes a very quiet and very serious tone early. Mostly, that's maintained, enhanced by a big, often irritating score. This is a movie that has something to say about heroism and how heroes are often forced to live with a curse. It doesn't establish exactly what that curse is--peaking early, living with regret, realizing that your life's highlight isn't nearly as significant as you were led to believe it would be--but when we meet Elliott's character, he's an old, tired, cursed man just living out the rest of his days with his dog and his memories, the latter which he'd probably rather not get into. It's like he's got an albatross around his neck, but instead of being doomed to relate his story to everybody he meets like Coleridge's mariner, he is just doomed to remember it at all. Slow zooms, static shots where the character isn't doing much of anything or just staring at himself in the mirror, and lots of stops and starts where Elliott's character almost does something and then doesn't do it at all add to this kind of languidity.

This might not match your expectations based on the title, but Elliott's performance is probably exactly what you'd expect it to be. And that saves the movie from being a complete waste. He does spend a lot of time looking in mirrors, even remarking on a "mirror clock" at a barber shop at one point. There's one moment that stylistically doesn't fit in with anything that comes before it, a moment when he gets to choose weapons from an arsenal. He picks a gun, a scope, and a knife, and then there's a quick zoom, the kind of thing that would have fit in with something like those Machete movies and the kind of thing I would have guessed this was going for. He also sniffs Bigfoot's poop and has a conversation with an owl.

Please don't think my disappointment has anything to do with my expectations not being met. In better hands, a movie with this tone and these themes could have been very good. Here, the pacing is just off, the story often moving as slowly as a Texan's drawl. There are moments that drag--Elliott getting a shave that seems to last fifteen minutes or a conversation about hot cocoa and marshmallows that I never thought would end. Flashbacks show a pair of stories from Elliott's character's past--the assassination alluded to in the first half of the title and a love story with a teacher. When the former's big moment finally arrives, there's a cool-looking weapon, but the death itself doesn't have the resonance that it should. I suppose that's part of the point though. The relationship with the teacher is something that could have been dropped entirely without losing any character development or any emotional impact. I looked over a plot synopsis on Wikipedia because I thought I missed something at one point, and that love story isn't even mentioned at all. That's how important that is, I guess.

Once this gets to the big climactic fight with the cryptid, the action is ludicrous enough that Krzykowski probably should have just figured out a way to have it take place off-screen. The tone drastically changes at this point, too. I think the turning point might have been that conversation with the owl. Things get really silly, including some sick-sounding bone cracks and unexpected vomit, but Bigfoot looks very cheap. When Elliott kills him, there's supposed to be an emotional impact there, too, but I definitely wasn't feeling it.

I'd rather not discuss anything that happens after that. I wouldn't want to spoil the stupid surprise, and just thinking about the last ten minutes of this movie irritates me.

This is a movie that lacks personality and is only recommended for fans of Sam Elliott's mustache.

Late Night

2019 comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: An out-of-touch late night talk show host is given one final year before she's replaced. A female joining the all-male writing staff just might be the spark needed to save the show!

The movie doesn't earn its emotional payoffs just like the characters don't really earn what ends up happening to them. This feels a little half constructed, and the characters don't feel fully formed. A lot of the peripheral characters seem to have wandered into this one from another comedy about a similar subject matter and spend the entire movie trying to get a feel for what's going on. The acting's fine, but nobody's required to do all that much. I did like John Lithgow in this one, but he was really more of a prop than anything else.

I really wanted to like Emma Thompson's crabby talk show host character, and early on, the misanthropic bite in her lines is amusing. Thompson's hitting all her marks, but again, the character just isn't very good. There's really not enough of an arc. Thompson's performance is good enough to help the audience realize that she's learned from mistakes, but nothing that comes after those revelations really convinces you that she's really changed.

There's also no real evidence that these people are funny. Jokes or gags on the show or ones volleyed about in the writer's room aren't funny at all. Of course, that's part of the point early on because the show is struggling. But when changes are being made and the show is supposedly picking up momentum, the jokes and gags still aren't funny. It's the same when Thompson's character is doing a stand-up comedy routine. She initially bombs, the club's audience almost absurdly silent. Then, she starts getting some hearty chuckles and eventually some guffaws and a standing ovation, but I couldn't see much difference between the quality of the first part of the act and the rest of it.

Late Night really ticked me off in its final moments with a camera sweep through the writer's room and the studio. It had about as much emotional depth as a commercial for lawn furniture, and I was almost more embarrassed for Mindy Kaling here than I was because of her involvement in The Wrinkle in Time.