Carnal Knowledge

1971 sex drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A pair of friends fail to grow as sexual beings.

Whenever Jack Nicholson had to be naked in this movie--and there are frequent chances for his character to shower for whatever reason--he told the crew, "Here comes Big Steve!"

Neither of these characters wind up developing enough to make a marriage work, but this movie is a perfect marriage of great writing and great acting. The dialogue is so clever here, and it's clever in a way where the characters aren't even aware how clever it is. In fact, most of the time, these characters aren't even in on the joke as there are great moments of dramatic irony.

Every actor in this gets a chance to shine, even Carol Kane who doesn't get a single line. Nicholson's at his most ornery and fiery, playing this chauvinist who is probably easier to despise than feel sorry for. This character fits him so well that you might think he's playing some version of himself. He gets to scream the word "cunt" and talk about "tits" a lot, but there are so many layers with this character who on the surface is nothing but surface that it makes his journey, or really a lack of journey, such a rewarding experience.

Big goofy Art Garfunkel is great at pretending his character has dimensions, but it's all a deception. You think you've seen everything you need to see with Garfunkel, and then all of a sudden, the dude's got a mustache and you're blown away. A mustachioed Garfunkel becomes your solitary ice-skating beauty twirling on the ice. He's so sneakily unlikable, both a foil for Nicholson's character and a despicable male at the same time. And just watch him down that drink.

Candice Bergen is an approachable beauty. She's involved in a lovely opening shot, an extended shot where she emerges from the darkness and apparently a Volkswagon and then becomes the victim of Garfunkel's awkwardness. Her best moment is this perfect look she gives nobody in particular when Garfunkel stupidly asks, "What do I do with my other hand?" She's great at playing this character who is between rock-hard Nicholson and Garfunkel and a hard place, and I kind of like how she just disappears from the movie, a character who knows this really isn't her story.

Ann-Magret has the most arousing tan lines I've seen in a while. Her character is a wounded and beautiful animal, and you have to appreciate her as an actress here because she's able to keep up with whatever Nicholson is doing. She and Jack get a sex scene, and it's something else, not because of what you see (which is nothing) but because of their sounds as the camera tracks through the apartment on a hunt for the couple. Post-coital, Nicholson showers, and Ann-Magret shows off her tan lines, and it's like a randy Edward Hopper painting.

I don't know if Mike Nichols is thought of as a visual filmmaker, but this is shot really well. A lot of the time, the characters are half-submerged in these shadows, and there are times, like in that opening extended shot, where the camera moves exquisitely. I also loved this transition with a white screen and then that shot of the ice skater. So perfect, like a dream these two characters can't shake themselves awake from no matter how destructive it is.

This isn't the happiest of movies, but there's definitely some comedic moments. They come as naturally as the performances. You have to love Nicholson's narrated "ball busters" slide show, and his Porky impression that ends it.

Which song is used more in films, by the way--"Beyond the Sea" or "Moonlight Serenade"? You'd know the latter if you heard it.

Great tagline for this one: The United States Supreme Court Has Ruled That "Carnal Knowledge" Is Not Obscene. See It Now! All the best movies from 1971 are nearly obscene, it seems.

First Man

2018 moon movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Neil Armstrong goes to the moon.

Flag lovers get more than a few money shots as the patriotism is surprisingly laid on pretty thickly here. I say surprisingly because there was the hubbub way before the film's release that had the MAGA crowd upset because there wasn't a shot of that flag on the moon, I'm guessing because they wanted to use it as masturbation fodder. America-loving tweeters were ready to burn their copies of La La Land because they'd heard the flag was replaced with all this hippie globalist garbage about an international effort to explore beyond Earth's atmosphere. Indeed, the influence of Armstrong's soundless tap dance on moon dust (because this is a Damien Chazelle movie) is shown in a montage of international broadcasts and interview snippets with people in various places around the world. As a proud libtard, I thought that was a nice touch, and I also liked more brief pandering to the hippie audience with a portrayal of Gil Scott-Heron performing "Whitey on the Moon" and some shots of protesters that might tick off patriots as much as watching the national anthem before an NFL game. Now that I think about it, maybe there is enough here to piss off Americans who really love America. I mean, we didn't actually see a flag planted, did we?

I'll tell you what annoyed me, however. I couldn't care less about the planting of that flag. I'm more troubled that Chazelle didn't show Buzz Aldrin--arguably a more interesting character than Neil Armstrong, by the way, although Second Man probably won't be made any time soon--pooping on the moon. That was what got me into that theater seat. Armstrong might have been the first man to step onto the surface of the moon, but Aldrin, as you might not know but should, was the first man to defecate on the moon. But no, this movie is more concerned showing Armstrong next to a crater with this sentimental gesture to jerk a few tears from the audience than showing what Buzz Aldrin was probably doing at the same time--taking the first lunar dump.

Maybe it'll be a deleted scene on the dvd release? Buzz Aldrin fans can only hope.

Chazelle bounces back and forth between two distinct storylines with the same protagonist. There's the trials and tribulations of Armstrong and his astronaut buddies and their efforts to finally beat the Russians at something. And there's the domestic troubles in the Armstrong household as Neil makes a half-assed attempt to balance work and being a husband and father. I do like that this includes the struggles of being an astronaut's wife as much as the struggles of being an astronaut, but I didn't love how the scenes were filmed. With the space and rocket stuff, you've got a lot of claustrophobic moments and perspective shots where you are forced to look at nothing at all or can't even be sure what you're looking at, and along with a lot of shaky cinematography, you're really placed in Armstrong's astronaut boots. Chazelle shoots the domestic scenes similarly. A lot of the scenes in Armstrong's home look like home video footage shot by somebody who really needed a tripod. I'm sure this was the filmmaker's attempt to match the turbulence of space travel with the turbulence of Armstrong's domestic life, both which whichever-Ryan-this-is stoically works his way through. I just thought it was a little too much and didn't care for the style.

I thought this Ryan (Gosling, I think) and Claire Foy as his wife were both really good in those scenes though. Foy does a lot with her giant eyes to express things that we don't need the character to even say. Gosling gets to cry a couple of times and be stoic most of the time, just like how America likes its astronautic heroes. The other astronaut actors, including Jason Clarke because he has to be in every movie, are fine at acting like tough astronauts, like frightened astronauts, and like astronauts on fire.

Of course, most people watching this movie, unless they're just there to see a flag being planted on the moon, are interested in that space and rocket stuff. It's all pretty great, mostly in how it creates that claustrophobic chaos of space travel. I knew how every single one of these scenes with Armstrong and others in rockets ended, but the cinematography and editing of these sequences managed to have me on the edge of my seat anyway. For the sheer awe-inducing beauty of space travel, I'd still turn to For All Mankind and its real footage, but there were a lot of shots in this that looked like they came straight from that documentary.

It's probably in the quieter moments when this really works. There's music in this movie, but most of the time, I kind of wish the action unfolded sans any score at all. And that's even with the cool use of the theremin. I did really enjoy a musical moment during the trio's trip to the moon after Armstrong passes Aldrin a cassette. But those quiet moments--a first shot of the moon's surface when the Eagle's door is open after it (spoiler alert) lands, a bird flying past the window of a rocket pre-launch, a shot of an astronaut obviously contemplative even though you can't see his face, those footprints, the final shot of the Armstrong couple--are probably more memorable than the more bombastic highlights of Armstrong's trek.

Poor Michael Collins, by the way. The dude's barely mentioned by name in this movie.

Idaho Transfer

1973 science fiction movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Kids are whisked 56 years into the future in an attempt to save humanity from being wiped out by some unnamed catastrophic event.

The second Fonda-directed movie I've seen in the past week, Idaho Transfer is an odd little sci-fi movie. I hesitate to call it a gem because its limitations really get in the way. Fonda doesn't seem all that interested in telling a story that makes much sense, and for the second movie in a row, I had to seek some help afterward in order to even find out what happened. The actors and actresses are mostly non-professionals, and it shows. The movie does have a Carradine in it though. The acting is not good, lines seemingly read with these stilted deliveries, but in a way, it adds to the weird vibe of the whole thing. But I'll tell you what--listening to the two sisters having conversations about all this time-travel stuff and scientific mumbo-jumbo nearly caused me to bail, especially when there were voiceovers over scenes of their driving.

The complete lack of budget was not one of the major problems. Fonda seems to be working with a budget of about 150 dollars, but that also adds to that aforementioned weird vibe. And I actually liked the lone special effect used in this movie--a kind of shaky slow fade used during the "transferring." The setting is mostly this post-apocalyptic desert strewn with lava rocks, and where this really succeeds as a science fiction movie is in Fonda taking advantage of the otherworldly beauty of Craters of the Moon National Park. A large percentage of the movie is shots of characters maneuvering through this landscape, making it like a cross between Gerry and Primer. There are a few gorgeous shots, including one that includes this inexplicable rainbow.

If Fonda and writer Thomas Matthiesen (a guy who has nothing else on his filmography) didn't really succeed in telling a Twilight Zone type of story, you'd want the movie to be strong thematically. It almost gets there, but it's a little thematically muddled unfortunately.

Bruce Langhorn (or Bruce Langehorne as he's credited here) did the score for this one, but there's a lot more synth than in The Hired Hand. It's not bad though.

Hold the Dark

2018 mysterious wolf movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: After wolves allegedly drag off yet another kid somewhere in Alaska, a guy who wrote a book about wolves is summoned to find the animal. Then a bunch of other things happen in sequential order.

Hold the Dark? This movie should have been called Keep the Viewer in the Dark. Wakka wakka!

I don't mind a little or even a lot of mystery in a movie narrative. But Saulnier seems to be working extra hard to really keep me from understanding what was going on here. I really don't think it's laziness on my part this time. I mean, I have trouble understanding some of the Marvel movies, but that's on me because I get bored early and kind of stop paying attention. That didn't happen here. I got bored with this, but I was actively paying attention.

The plot makes very little sense. It's a series of things that happen in sequential order, but looking at anything closely, it's hard to pinpoint exactly why any of it happened. Saulnier, I'm guessing, is being purposely nebulous, probably because it's artsier that way, but it really kept every single character in this thing at a distance. I've got so many questions about why this character did this or why that character went there or what the hell this mask business was all about or where the hell did that come from, but there was very little in this movie that makes me want to put any thought into any of that.

I'm sure there's some connection being made to humanity and the primitive. It's possible that it's all interesting, but when one character tells another that he needs to "let the wolf out a little" or something, I just rolled my eyes. I'm pretty sure these are themes that were already covered in Teen Wolf Too.

Why does everybody whisper in Alaska? Do they not want the dark to be able to hear them? Jennifer Jason Leigh actually would have been perfect in this movie because she's got that whispery acting down. Saulnier must have told his entire cast to pretend they were Jennifer Jason Leigh.

There are some nifty shots of wolves and the Alaskan wilderness. More emphasis on the importance of place might have helped this out a little, but like the plot, that wasn't fully realized. There's shocking bits of violence in this with shocking bits of people being shot off or people being shockingly stabbed a little bit or getting shocking arrows in their shocking bits. Saulnier isn't shy with the bleeding if that's your bag.

Private Life

2018 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A couple in their forties try various ways to get themselves a kid. A step-niece might be the answer!

Here's what is most amazing about this movie--as good as Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti are in this, neophyte Kayli Carter in her first movie comes in and more than holds her own. She really gets beneath the skin of her character and really nails both the confusion and excitement of the character in her particular situation. She's playful and she's scared and she's empathetic and she's sad in just the right amounts.

Hahn and Giamatti really are good. The latter even gets a shot at some physical comedy, and he nails it, most obviously in an early scene that involves some pornographic material. Hahn's terrific, doing all sorts of subtle things with her face and body language to define this character. Really, the pair do a great job creating a single character--a married couple who are part of the same team but not really together. I'm not sure how much rehearsal went into working on their body language in the scenes they're in together, but they paint this picture of this couple who probably aren't as hopeful as they want to believe they are and do a terrible job of hiding their frustration.

Oh, and you know who else can really act? Molly Shannon! A spin-off movie where we get to explore that character a little more wouldn't be a terrible idea.

This is one of Netflix's better film offerings. Tamara Jenkins, whose only other two films are Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages for some reason, wrote and directed this, and like those other two movies, she's created these characters in difficult situations. There's some humor because there has to be. One needs humor in order to wade through the absurdity. There are also all these clever little touches. So many shots look ironically pre- or post-coital.

And that ending! It reminded me of the ending of another 2018 movie, but I wouldn't want to mention which one for fear of spoiling this movie or that one. I like endings that are bound to piss off a large percentage of the viewing population, and this one has the potential to do that.

This reminds me of good Woody Allen, and if that's the sort of drama with light comedic touches that appeals to you or if you like Jenkins other two movies (seriously--only two?), then you should check this out.

Maleficent

2014 twisted fairy tale

Rating: 9/20

Plot: It's Sleeping Beauty but from the perspective of the villainess.

I've been trying to do some research to find out whether Angelina Jolie's cheekbones were CGI or not.

Look, I don't want to make this entire review about whether or not I'd have sex with Maleficent or not, but there are some things I have to get out of the way. First, would Diaval have be there? You almost assume he would, and even if he's not, I'd be spending the whole time wondering if this shadow or that mouse or that candlestick is a peeping shapeshifter. I'm just not comfortable with the idea of somebody being in the room and watching me while I disappoint Angelina Jolie.

Second, wings or no wings? Likely, wings of that size would get in the way or at least limit the number of positions that could happen. I'm fine with Maleficent-on-top although seeing those wings would be intimidating. Any reverse-cowgirl situation could result in a concussion or a mouth full of oily feathers.

Third, would the James Newton Howard score have to be involved? I've gone limp just thinking about it.

Actually, it's entirely possible that I'm now impotent because of the fairies in this movie--Dimbleweed, Thistlebong, and Snottybits. They're played by Imelda Staunton, who should have been able to find something better to do with her time; Juno Temple, who should have been able to find something better to do with her time; and Lesley Manville, who should have been able to find something better to do with her time. Thinking of them in their small-fairy form, it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to get an erection again. R.I.P., true love, and R.I.P., Shane's boner.

What do you think a fairy would smell like? Most, I think, would guess that a fairy would smell pleasant, but I'm thinking it's the complete opposite, something like a mix of dead flowers and stale pixie dust and turtle ass and those candy circus peanut things. What do you think Angelina Jolie smells like, and is that different than how Maleficent would smell?

Sex in the air might be an option, but I'm going to be honest with you--as my wife could tell you, I barely know what I'm doing on a flat surface. How does one get leverage when having sexual intercourse while floating in the air? I don't like my chances up there.

Also, I assume that sex with Maleficent would have to occur in the world created by these Disney animators. Sure, it's an imaginative explosion of fairy tale foliage, gnarled castles and cliffs, and strange creatures, but I thought it was pretty ugly, production values not too far off from what you'd expect to see from that fairy tale drama that was on television. What was that called? Grimm? The initial novelty of seeing the character fly or the backgrounds wore off very quickly. CGI-enhanced sets looked strangely flat and lifeless.

Jolie is about perfect for this role, but she's got very little to work with. The script does almost none of the lifting in the creation of this character. It's all costuming and cheekbones. Most of the performers look a little lost in this thing, like they're having trouble connecting with other characters or the world they exist in. My guess is that a lot of them weren't used to acting in front of green screens.

[Questionable content has been removed here.]

I'm going to go look for Maleficent erotic fan fiction now.

Shaft

1971 blaxploitation classic

Rating: 12/20

Plot: The titular private eye is hired by a gangster to find his kidnapped daughter.

What's it say about me that my favorite part of this movie is a stuttering newsstand guy?

Richard Roundtree was in the Samuel L. Jackson remake of Shaft from 2000, and I just noticed that there's going to be a sequel to that supposedly coming out next year. I really like him here. This was his first role, and he comes on the scene as a presence. Half of what makes this movie worth watching at all is the attitude that he brings to the character.

Am I allowed to say that I don't think the score for this is all that good?

The Hired Hand

1971 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After trouncing around the country with a buddy, a man decides to return home to his wife and daughter. She allows him to stick around as a hired hand.

If nothing else, this Peter Fonda Western preaches "bros before hos." This one's got complex characters created in very simple ways. The filmmaking, with its slow dissolves and languid pace, almost seems lazy. These characters--especially Fonda's and that character's wife played by Verna Bloom--have all kinds of unexplored dimensions. Instead of fleshing them out with needless flashbacks or exposition, the characters are just allowed to exist in this time and in this conflict. Fonda and Bloom are good, and it's always fun to see Warren Oates.

I like the easygoing stylistic touches of this one. There are some really beautiful shots and all those slow dissolves, but the real star might be the soundtrack by Bruce Langhorne, Dylan's inspiration for "Mr. Tambourine Man." It's so pretty, just stunningly beautiful, and it fits the pace of the narrative perfectly.

My favorite moments include a death scene in which a young buck convulses and moans, "Mother!" I also liked a messenger's giggle.

It's funny to see how drastically different this Peter Fonda film is compared to his Easy Rider cohort Dennis Hopper's from the same year.

Funeral Parade of Roses

1969 flower movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Transvestites do their thing in Japan.

There's a narrative loosely based on Oedipus Rex in this mishmash of avant-garde tomfoolery, documentary-like interviews, and cinema verite; unfortunately, I had trouble finding it. Maybe I'm not as familiar with Oedipus Rex as I thought I was or am confusing it with something else.

This is the second Toshio Matsumoto film I've seen recently, and according to IMdB, that means I've seen half of his feature films. This is much different than Shura (Demons). It's definitely a lot more playful. There are title cards, sped-up slapstick sequences, sex scenes with this demented carousel music, talking bubbles, the use of still photography, those documentary-style interviews, some fly-on-the-wall footage of these transvestites playing strip balancing games or dancing, and an out-of-sequence story used to paint a picture of these particular people at this particular time. There's almost no subjectivity. I know Matsumoto's got a story in this, but it's less interested in telling that story than just showcasing these characters and their lifestyle. It's a pretty wild counterculture trip, one shaded by Godard and psychedelia but existing as this crazy beast of a film all by itself.

The performers were mostly non-actors, it seems. The main character Eddie was played by somebody named Pita who was a teenager at the time. Pita would go on to appear in a Zatoichi movie and Kurosawa's Ran. Though I suspect he wasn't playing a character much different than himself, I thought he really seemed like a natural here.

Allegedly, this influenced Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, but I'm having as much trouble seeing that as I did figuring out what was going on with the plot. Surely it's not just the sped-up slapstick parts. Clockwork might be considered fairly wild, but it's definitely a lot more carefully planned than anything that is going on here.

Indecent Desires

1968 outsider porn

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A loner finds a doll in the trash, and combined with a magic ring, he's able to use it like some sort of weird sexual voodoo doll.

Message for my wife if she ever reads this: Yes, I did watch this on a porn streaming site, but I had no choice. This is one of the "certified weird" movies on a site that I like (366 Weird Movies, a site that celebrates "the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!"), and I'm trying to watch all 366 movies on the list. This was the only way I could watch this movie.

Watching Indecent Desires, you'd erroneously guess that the perv responsible A) was a man and B) had a high-heel fetish. Well, the writer/director of this Wood-esque soft porn weirdo fantasy was actually a woman named Doris Wishman. She directed it as Louis Silverman and wrote it as Dawn Whitman, and that's something because can you find another case where an artist used two pseudonyms with the same project? How about two pseudonyms that end with the same three letters as the real name?

She might have a high-heel fetish though, or maybe she's just making this for men with that particular fetish. There are a grand total of two female characters in this movie, and both of them are frequently seen walking around their homes or apartments completely naked except for high heels. So that's something. Anybody actually looking for pornographic material on this porn streaming site I used will likely be very disappointed as there's barely any sex at all. Instead, you get a low-budget movie that barely tops the 70-minute mark that might not have enough ideas for a 10-minute short. The black and white and the sound that was obviously dubbed in later gave this a Beast of Yucca Flats vibe. That's probably a boner-kill on its own, so unless you've got a Tor Johnson and high-heel fetish, this likely isn't going to do much for you.

Sharon Kent played the victim of the creepy loner played by Michael Alaimo, a character made even creepier by not having a single line of dialogue in the entire movie. Kent looks great walking around naked in high heels, and she gets one moment to shine when she has to pretend she's being whipped as Alaimo takes a belt to the doll. Wishman/Silverman/Whitman didn't need special effects there because Kent did a good enough job jerking around. Surprisingly, there was one special effect used when the creepy loner saw Ann and her coworker for the first time and the doll is clumsily superimposed over it.

Michael Alaimo seems like the type of actor who would only be in this one movie, but he has quite a few film and television roles. That includes playing a doctor in Space Jam. So good for that guy.

I'm intrigued by Whitman/Silverman/Wishman and would like to see more of her work. Hopefully, my wife won't check my history.

Le Bonheur

1965 colorful film

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A married father of two meets another lady with whom he'd like to sleep and does exactly that.

Sunflowers and Mozart, and my God, what else does a person even need? The colors in this are the most beautiful colors I've seen in a movie recently. Some of these are colors that I'm not sure actually exist though I can't know for sure because I've never been in the French countryside. Colors that seem impossible! Ones that were obviously invented by a higher power just so Agnes Varda could use them in her movie. And she sure knows how to use them! There's a pan across a lake to the happily married couple sitting under a tree, and the background looks like Monet painted it. It's stunning.

Varda also shows off with some flirtation in a cafe. Man, the husband in this movie sure has game. Those lines about ten arms and apple orchards would make any woman swoon, I think. This ends with a montage showing a happy family again (and no, that's not a spoiler), and visually, this shows a woman at the height of her directing powers.

A smarter writer/cinephile would dive into a feminist critique of this, but I'm not that writer/cinephile and won't even bother.

Bad Times at the El Royale

2018 mysterious thriller

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Six people and one desk clerk converge on the El Royale, a tacky motel on the California/Nevada line.

On the one hand, you have to credit writer/director Drew Goddard for making something cohesive out of these divergent characters and their individual narratives that led them to this same place and time. Almost embarrassingly Tarantino-esque with its non-chronological structure, too-cool period characters, loudly hipster soundtrack choices, and even chapter titles, the narrative deceives you into thinking it's better than it actually is. The film's entertaining from beginning to end with twists and turns that keep you guessing, but when you look back on just how empty it all is, you're left a bit cold. I mean, really, what does this add up to? The only things I learned from these characters' shenanigans is that I might have a thing for Dakota Johnson and definitely have a thing for Chris Hemsworth's torso.

Torso aside, Hemsworth's appearance was where this really started to go downhill. Perhaps with this many mini-plots colliding into one gigantic mess of secrets and violence, it was bound to collapse on itself. When Hemsworth gets to the titular motel, things get very silly and more than a little mean. There's one diversion into flashback territories during the lengthy chunk of film that Hemsworth is doing his thing, and that was easily my least favorite part of the movie. That might be because Dakota Johnson was not walking around as much though.

But for you male Fifty Shades fans, I can tell you that she might have been tied up at one point. You perverts.

I thought everybody was good here. Bridges didn't grumble and mumble his way through this like he's done in movies the last few years, and he does some sneaky things to bring some depth to his character. Like almost all of the rest of these characters, he's pretty unlikable, but Bridges manages to make this priest of his somebody you can almost root for. Cynthia Erivo is not an actress I know, but I thought she was great here. And she's got a set of pipes that she shows off in a couple of great scenes, one featuring a metronome which, if you know me at all, you know I always enjoy seeing in movies. Jon Hamm, sometimes with a ridiculous fake accent, and Lewis Pullman with the perfect mixture of innocence and something very very dark, are also very good. Oh, and Nick Offerman is also kind of in this.

This has enough style and some great cinematography that makes it worth watching even if it doesn't work as a whole. The pieces make it worth watching, maybe even a second time. As a fan of kitsch and tackiness, I enjoyed the look of the El Royale. Seems like I've been seeing jukeboxes a lot in movies. I liked how a few of the scenes were shown from multiple viewpoints because it added texture to something that we'd already seen. The overlapping storylines worked, and I enjoyed some of the dark humor. And there was one perfectly choreographed and executed extended shot that I really loved.

What I didn't love: a mystery that remains a mystery, like Marsellus Wallace's briefcase. It just made this seem that much more like a Tarantino rip.

I'm really not sure about my feelings about this movie. Part of me thinks that it's better than I think it is, but part of me thinks it's worse. Parts of it will stick in my mind for a while, and parts of it kind of irritated me.

The Sisters Brothers

2018 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular bounty-hunting duo chase down a guy for their boss, Rutger Hauer.

This darkly comic Western appeared on my "Most Anticipated Films" list earlier in the year, mostly because of the team-up of Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly. If you just close your eyes and imagine the kind of rapport these two would have, you'd probably come up with something very similar to what these two have together. They clash beautifully here, and without the use of any words, because words are for sissies in the Wild West, the feelings between these brothers is clear. Thankfully, this isn't as overtly comedic as I'd been led to believe, and the two actor's comedic timing and delivery work perfectly.

Like a lot of Westerns, this has a lot to do with changing times and shifting ideals. There's a clash between the kind of macho brand of shoot-first-ask-questions-later that was probably rampant in this neck of the woods in 1851 and all this newfangled science craziness with its chemistry and its climate change nonsense. That's interesting by itself, but Phoenix's character also seems to have a problem with language. There are several moments in this where Charlie Sisters seems agitated by the words that Jake Gyllenhaal's character uses.

These characters manage to be simple and complex at the same time. They're on a literal journey, but it also winds up being a metaphorical one as well. I don't know how I feel about where the pair end up in this movie, but the individual episodes that get them there sure are entertaining to watch.

Flower

2017 dark comedy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A troubled teenager explores a money-making scheme with a pair of friends and works on her bowling as she deals with emotions from having a father in prison and a potential step-father and step-brother, the latter who she forms an emotional bond with.

This Zoey Deutch has the potential to be something special, and she does more with this character and this movie than either actually deserve. I didn't like where this started, didn't like where this went, and didn't like where it ended, but I really liked Deutch, an actress who seems to be channeling something from the more angsty 1990s.

I watched this because Tim Heidecker is in it, but his part could have been played by anybody. Adam Scott is also in this, and I'm still not sure what to think about that guy. Part of me likes him because he seems willing to take some risky acting gigs. But it really seems like he plays the exact same character in everything he's in.

My favorite part involved some Cocoa Puffs product placement.

I'm having a tough time understanding what the point of Flower is.

Mind Game

2004 cartoon

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A loser with a crush on a girl gets a second chance at life and love after outsmarting a fish-faced god. A whale is involved.

I'm not sure I've seen anything else like this movie, and that's worth something. Ever-shifting animation styles keep this thing interesting throughout, even when the characters Pinocchio themselves and end up in a single setting for a large chunk of movie. My favorite bit has to do with an ornery God whose visage shifts rapidly enough to give the staunchest atheist a headache.

With a narrative that reminded me a little of Gilliam at his wildest and the chaotic and unpredictable style swings, fans of adventurous animation should seek this out immediately.

This was the first movie I watched in October that wasn't from 1971 or 2018.