Swimming to Cambodia

1987 spoken word thing

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Spalding Gray talks about a bunch of shit for about an hour and a half.

Spalding Gray sure could tell a story. Combine that with the kinds of tricks Jonathan Demme played when shooting people like the Talking Heads and Robyn Hitchcock on stage, and you've got something that I think I could have watched for five hours. Gray would have run out of water though, so that wouldn't have worked.

This is like a one-man My Dinner with Andre without a dinner. Or an Andre. Well, there's kind of an Andre.

I thought I had seen this in high school, but I'm not sure now.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

2019 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy tries to reclaim a childhood home in a city that is losing everything that makes it what it is.

The reason I connected with this one so much, I believe, is that I think I love all of the influences of first-time director Joe Talbot, who wrote this movie with star Jimmie Falls. San Francisco is a dream here, the most whimsical parts exposed and the most beautiful light I've seen on my television in a very long time always finding a way to say, "Hey, look at me! I'm light!"

There's a scene very early--one before the house at the center of this plot is even shown--where the two characters are sharing a skateboard because the bus hadn't come. Pedestrians are frozen while they watch them skate past, and I'm not sure what kind of spell I was put under at that point, but I fell in love with those characters instantly. And my love for the pair never waned. Jimmie Falls, a rookie actor, gets a little mopey by the end, but you're always in his corner, even when he's gardening at a middle-aged couple's house without an invitation. Or maybe because of that. And Jonathan Majors played the best friend character so well, well enough that I wanted to jump into my television so that I could be friends with him, too. Majors plays it subdued for most of the film, but when he gets a chance to do something a little bit different, it never feels unnatural for the character. It's just great character building from these two, and I just loved them.

I don't always love the dialogue, and I'm not sure I even loved where the narrative ended up, but the ride along the way, a dreamy and meandering one with all these little haiku-esque snapshots, was such an easy ride to take. Figures on the fringes of this story always kept things lively. My favorite exchange was probably this one:

"I said sixteen. How am I going to eat sixty Twix?"
"I don't know your life."

I laughed a few times, and I teared up a few times along the way as well.

That house was gorgeous, a lovely Victorian that you can't really imagine a drug addict ever living in. Maybe I'm being unfair to drug addicts though. A central theme of this has to do with architecture and place and the connections they have to the soul, and this particular house was like a Holy Grail, a dreamy utopia, a slice of heaven, and three stories of nostalgia. Or four. I don't even know if I figured out how many floors that house had.

I want to mention to score because it might be my favorite of the year. It's from Emile Mosseri, an eclectic mix of instrumentals and popular songs performed by street performers. The tunes perfectly complement the dream that is this movie and the adventure of our hero, a black man living in something that resembles San Francisco.

Matewan

1987 coal miner movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Coal miners considering unionizing upset the owners who send thugs, an act that threatens to start a small war in the titular town.

Either way you go, it seems that you're rooting for Trump supporters. And that's not a good situation for a viewer to be placed in.

Every year, it seems I stumble upon a movie with Will Oldham This is a very young Will Oldham, and that particular voice he has matches his character, a kid with aspirations to be a preacher, well. The cast is good all around though the villains almost seem like they come out of a comic book. My favorite characters are these guys who just emerge from the West Virginian forest whenever they're needed, hopefully not when they're in the middle of making somebody squeal like a pig.

This is shot well, like a Western from the 50's. At times, it looks like it could be a documentary thought these are clearly characters and actors and actresses are clearly playing them. I would have liked to see a little more coal mine action.

What it does best is build the tension well. I don't have much interest in real-life story's of battles between labor unions and rich guys, but this was constructed like a Shakespearean tragedy. You know where it's headed, so you're not surprised when it gets there. Mini-climaxes keep you going along the way.

One movie away from completing a rare "union movie" trifecta. Stay tuned.

The Irishman

2019 superhero movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The life and career of some tough guy who worked closely with Jimmy Hoffa.

I feel as if I was tricked because going in, I thought this was Martin Scorsese's superhero movie, the origin story of some comic character I've never heard of called The Irishman. All I got from this is a story about some guy who eats tons of ice cream, a story that somehow works Don Rickles in.

"You don't know how fast time goes by until you get there." That line hit me. That line made a movie that I wasn't sure was any good at all for the first hour of it's three-and-a-half-hour running time into something great.

I'm not sure how anybody can watch this and not like it. Scorsese's a master, of course, and it's great seeing this cast do their thing at least one more time. De Niro brings this quiet force into his role as the titular character, and Pacino is doing his Pacino thing a bit--which, don't get me wrong, I love--but is also playing a real character with real emotions. And he eats a ton of ice cream. And Joe Pesci. Man, that guy is so good here.

It's been an eclectic decade for Scorsese. I mean, this movie is nothing at all like the meditative Silence, though they're both deliberately paced. And Silence is almost like an antithesis to its predecessor, The Wolf of Wall Street. Before that was a freakin' kids movie! And before that was the spooky surrealism of Shutter Island. Those are five completely different movies. This might be my third or fourth favorite of those actually. I guess I'd have to think about that more.

I hit the pause button while watching this and gave myself an intermission so that I could use the restroom, get a drink, and find my cat. And maybe get some ice cream.

The Belly of an Architect

1987 Greenaway movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An American architect putting together some sort of exhibition for an Italian architect deals with stomach issues and a possible nervous breakdown whilst in Rome. Or some other city in Italy. Don't quote me on the Rome thing.

I believe I read this was an attempt by Peter Greenaway to make something a little more mainstream, but the random appearance of a character who goes around chiseling the noses off a statue makes that seem unlikely. This has your typical Greenaway aesthetics--great cinematography (Sacha Vierny), careful symmetry, lots of references or imagery having to do with the human body, a score that sounds like it was composed by Michael Nyman, in this case not a score by Michael Nyman. Brian Dennehy gets a chance to both shine and show off the titular belly as the lead, likely chosen because he's the American actor who came to mind first in a stream-of-conscious word-association game when Peter Greenaway said "rotunda" to his casting director. Dennehy's always great, and he's great here in a role that puts him in nearly every scene.

As always, Greenaway proves he's a whole lot smarter than me and that I shouldn't be allowed to watch his movies anyway. Sorry, films. Greenaway would probably call them films, maybe with a capital F. They're Films. Allusions to Sir Isaac Newton and WWII history may have gone a little over my head though I was clever enough to realize that the final shot makes a connection to one of those. Of course, somebody who has trouble understanding The Goofy Movie might have been able to make that connection.

My wife isn't home right now, and I miss her and am not in the best of moods. Forgive me for this poor writing.

This is also a clever ploy to get anybody Googling "Peter Greenaway" and "The Goofy Movie" to my blog. You probably saw right through that one though.

The Dead

1987 James Joyce adaptation

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Following a fancy party, a wife reveals to her husband that she might be in love with a dead boy who's getting a little snow on him.

Apologies for that poster up there. I might not care anymore.

Apologies for not caring anymore, too.

Not much plot in this one really, aside from "a wife reveals to her husband that she might be in love with a dead boy who's getting a little snow on him," a plot synopsis that either further proves I don't care or is somehow really clever. This is based on James Joyce's probably best-known short story, but I haven't read that since college and was probably not mature enough back then to fully appreciate it. I'm a lot nearer to having snow covering my grade now than I was then assuming time keeps working like it's supposed to, and while I didn't find this engaging from beginning to end--who wants to watch this kind of party anyhow?--the last fifteen minutes hammers home something profound. 

Red Sorghum

1987 love story

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A woman marries a leper, almost immediately becomes a widow, and takes control of a wine distillery. She develops a complicated relationship with one of the men who carried her sedan and helped save her from bandits.

This yadda-yadda-yaddas over so many details, but it gives us the shot of a guy peeing in wine jugs because he's mad at the world, so I can't really complain. It's a beautiful story, one drenched in reds, and it's also a completely unpredictable story. I don't feel like I knew where this one was headed at any point. It flows like a dark folk tale, one soaked in urine and wine and tickled by sorghum stalks.

This was Zhang Yimou's first film, and it sure is a good one.

OK, I have to go to bed now. Good night.

The Black Hole

1979 sci-fi movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A crew stumbles upon a giant ship perched next to a black hole, and when they explore the ship, they find a crazy bearded guy and a bunch of robots.

"It's about time people learned about their failures and my successes."

There's a moment when Maximilian Schell, who very well might be giving it his all as the crazed scientist and space explorer, points at the titular black hole, looks in that directions, appears to notice that he's not pointing in the right spot, and moves his arm in order to point in the right spot.

This is Disney's first PG movie, and that's probably because of a pair of "damns" that Ernest Borgnine spits out. Borgnine sure was in some dopey movies at this stage of his career, wasn't he? This was my second Robert Forster movie of the week, and Anthony Perkins is also in this thing along with the voices of Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens. I guess Slim Pickens voicing a robot is the least of this movie's concerns.

The effects are charmingly dated, but it's really hard to believe this movie with its Disney budget came after A New Hope. I like the way that black hole looks, and I like this nightmarish hellscape that is produced at the end. Along with a bunch of robot deaths, a really dark explanation for why those robots even exist, and that sci-fi vision of hell, it's easy to understand why this earned that PG rating. I did enjoy how the black hole itself looked, a gorgeous swirling bit of cartoon psychedelia always lurking outside the ship's windows.

John Barry scored this thing, and although some of the music is really good, it's way too much at times, especially during the action scenes. I think he was trying to out-Williams John Williams.

Frozen II

2019 animated sequel

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 18/20; Abbey: 12/20; Emma: 12/20; Buster: 19.5/20)

Plot: Anna, Elsa, the snowman, the guy, and the reindeer venture out of the kingdom to save a mystical forest or something.

Though I appreciate how weird this sometimes got and the hippie themes that emerge by the time this wraps up, I really had no interest in spending time with these characters or their stupid songs again. Frozen II almost convinced me that it was pretty good at the end, but then I thought about how predictable it was, how tired the storytelling was, and how bland this collection of characters were and didn't fall for it. None of the humor works, the songs were all pretty bland, and subplots about the snowman's maturity (which, I'll admit, does fit in thematically with the big climate change message) or the reindeer's owner (I want to say his name is Sven, but that might be the reindeer's name) seemed like filler. I figured there would be lots of new characters in order to sell more toys just in time for Christmas, but that wasn't really the case unless kids are dying to find a fire iguana, a water horse, or a giant rock man under their tree.

Another sequel was previewed--Trolls 2. I almost committed seppuku by the end of the preview, but I didn't want to ruin a movie for my family with a disembowelment again.

Dust in the Wind

1987 love story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Film adaptation of that Kansas song.

No, it's not a film adaptation of that Kansas song.

What a lovely opening shot this has, everything dark but for the approaching end of a tunnel. Our lovers are on a train. We catch them mid-journey and, as it turns out, mid-relationship. Maybe it's the windblown dust in the title, but I figured this would not end happily ever after, but just like in real life, there's something beautiful about tragedy, too. This has the rhythm of a poem you found scribbled on yellowed paper in your attic.

I don't know much about Hou Hsiao-hsien, and I think I've only seen one of his other films--The Assassin from a few years ago. I'm not surprised by the visuals here or the patience with the storytelling. His skill is in taking mundane moments and making them powerful, forcing the audience to take an interest in every little thing that happens whether it seems interesting or not.

There's a lot of references to movies in this--probably even with that opener, which visually looks like a slow-motion reverse of the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon where the darkness envelopes the screen except for a shrinking circle. You know what I'm talking about? No? I probably don't either.

Eastern Condors

1987 action film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Chinese American criminals are recruited to go to Vietnam to blow up a bunch of weapons before they fall into the wrong hands.

Sammo Hung directed this thing, and while there's barely a story and an almost complete lack of character development, fans of action films will likely love the insane action sequences and stunt work. There are shootouts, stabbings, kicks to the head, and explosions. The big baddie winds up being a scrawny, perpetually giggling kung-fu master with a fan.

Sammo Hung helped sing the movie's theme song.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Story

2019 movie sequel to a television show

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: Jesse drives away from the chaos that ended the Breaking Bad series and attempts to take steps to start a new life.

As others have said, this is completely unnecessary, but I'm not going to complain about getting to spend a little more time with these characters, some in flashbacks and some in the story's timeline. Jesse Plemons is good enough to want to punch, it's always great seeing Larry Hankin, and Robert Forster gets one more chance to shine, but this is Aaron Paul's movie. And Paul is spectacular here, really much better than I remember him being in the original series although he did grow on me as an actor as the series progressed and his character matured a little.

Despite scrunched into a 2-hour running time, this maintains a similar deliberate pace and showcases Vince Gilligan's habit of putting cameras in strange places and is therefore not a departure at all from the style of the original series. Gilligan is a storyteller who knows how to create these impossibly tense moments and is so good at using visuals and sound to create memorable moments. It's a lot of unpredictable fun even if it doesn't exactly reveal new things about the characters of this world or add much to the series' resolution.

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

1987 Japanese documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A Japanese veteran of WWII tries to uncover the truth about some suspicious deaths that occurred in New Guinea.

I watched half of this in an uncomfortable chair and the other half on a more comfortable couch.

It's hard not to appreciate this ornery Kenzo Okuzaki fellow even if you question some of his methods in his relentless pursuit of the truth. You just know that he's eventually going to be arrested for his shenanigans. Filmmaker Kazuo Hara just lets these sequences play out, Okuzaki, engaging in verbal abuse or sometimes physical abuse with various people, and it creates some dramatic tension. Okuzaki crosses lines because he feels like he's justified, but you always wonder when he's going to cross yet another line. It puts you on the edge of your seat throughout.

This is a really engaging documentary with a universal pursuit at the center of it that makes it as inspiring as it is sickening.

Near Dark

1987 vampire movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Some vampire junk.

Despite the vampires, this was one of the 1987 movies I was most excited to see. The modern Western mixed with vampire horror was intriguing. After an early scene where Jenny Wright eats an ice cream cone had my hopes up, but the infantile dialogue and devolution into a dumb 80's action movie ruined this one.  A Tangerine Dream score and Bill Paxton's nutso performance couldn't save things.

I don't believe I've ever seen a Kathryn Bigelow movie that I really liked.

Return to Oz

1985 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Dorothy, after being institutionalized and scheduled for shock therapy, finds herself in Oz once again, this time with a chicken instead of a dog. She has to collect some friends to save Oz from some mean rock man.

It's unclear to me how anybody at Disney could watch this and think it was appropriate for anybody. Kids' entertainment from the 80s was a little darker, I suppose, with your Labyrinths and Dark Crystals and heart-removal scenes in Indiana Jones movies. Disney had some dark material, too, with The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective. So disregard what I wrote up there. This is for children, and it's one of those things that explains why the turn of the century ended up the way it did.

I mean, we start with Dorothy (a confusedly younger Dorothy than the one from 1939) being sent off for shock therapy.

Anyway, here are some observations/questions:

1) This Toto--a different Toto from the original film, I assume--really hams it up early, and I'm guessing that was why he was replaced by a chicken.

2) "All the animals in Oz could talk." Nyuh-uh, Dorothy! Your memory's failing you after 46 years apparently. Those flying monkeys didn't talk. Toto didn't talk.

3) Speaking of the flying monkeys, they're nowhere to be seen, replaced by the equally horrifying "Wheelers." Fluorescent new-wave punks, these dudes roller-skating around on all fours are so 1980s. I wish I would have tried to skate around the local rink on all fours when I was a kid because it would have been fucking hot. This was right around my roller-skating heyday, too.

4) Dorothy asks, "Where are all the Munchkins?" and that was my thought exactly! We finally get a bit of Munchkin action at the very end of the movie, but the rest of the movie was disappointingly Munchkinless.

5) Scarecrow is played by an actor named Justin Case.  I bet somebody said something like "Hey, Justin Case, just in case your acting career doesn't work out, you should get yourself a business degree."

6) I really like the special effects used to animate the rocks or, later on, the mean rock man. It reminds me a little bit of the computer-animated face stuff in Tron. Once rocks start watching Dorothy and her chicken, it looks like the rocks are animated using claymation, but I can't confirm that because I am lazy and don't want to.

7) The talking chicken irritated me. Along with the early appearance of a "lunch pail tree," it seemed like the Disney people were trying a little too hard to make this whimsical.

8) "Will you please check my head for signs of spoiling?"

9) Tik-Tok operates a little like a BattleBot. It's unclear to me why a robot needs to blink. Michael Sundin must be the little person inside Tik-Tok while none other than Tim "Admiral Ackbar" Rose voices him. Actually, I just looked it up. There's another guy (Sean Barrett) who is credited as the voice of Tik-Tok. Why did it take three people to play one robot?

10) I thought I recognized the voice of Gump, the moose-headed creature they build and ride on, but IMDb tells me Lyle Conway only had one other credit.

11) Another new friend--the pumpkinheaded guy. "What is this? A man or a melon?" Jack Pumpkinhead was his name. Of course, because what else could it be? Jack's got mommy issues, but I loved his shirt.

12) The princess with interchangeable heads who wants to harvest Dorothy's head? Yikes, she's menacing. Mombi isn't quite the icon that the Wicked Witch in the original is, but then again, the Wicked Witch only had one head.

13) Rock Man (Ok, Nome King) has a moment where he reveals a shocking fashion choice, and I have to admit, it made me laugh out loud. And I don't laugh!

14) I loved a trippy psychedelic fall into a mountain, and that Deadly Desert? Yikes.

15) The egg miracle seemed a little random, but I guess all miracles are like that.

All things considered, I really enjoyed this. I don't remember if I saw it as a kid or not. I thought I had memories of watching it when I lived in Terre Haute, but the movie didn't even exist at that time. It must have been another movie with a pumpkin-headed guy.