Author: Ga2so

Suspense.

One hundred eleven years old. Eleven minutes long. Totally holds up. Some really clever shots. Director Lois Weber is the first known American female film maker. Watch it! It’s on YouTube.

Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

You have no idea how much of the music of the 1970s was made by half a dozen guys. Come for the story, stay for the Donald Fagen “interview.”

The End

Oh, how I wanted to to like this. A two and a half hour post-apocalyptic musical set in a huge underground bunker, with a cast that includes Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton, could be a magical thing. It has flashes of greatness, but most of it doesn’t work.

Even if you accept the empty story (pretty much everyone’s character is “generic archetype of a person who did a never-fully-disclosed Bad Thing”) and the not-particularly-memorable songs performed by people with varying levels of singing ability, you’ll get thrown right out of the reality of the movie when a man clearly in his thirties seems to be playing a teenager.

I can only pick one of the movie graphics I made as the featured image, but if you actually read this you get to see the other two as well.

My European Surrealist Cinema Festival apparently continues with a Czech comedy about two women react to realizing the world is bad by tricking men into buying them food before abandoning the men on trains. They also eat pickles from a big jar, steal money from a woman making coffee in a bathroom, and wear outfits made of newspaper and wire while they clean. Y’know, typical movie stuff. On a scale of one to five, I give this a deep yellow teakettle.

Currently fighting with Robot Dreams for my favorite animated movie of the year. Yeah, Robot Dreams is technically from last year, but it wasn’t released in Los Angeles until January 2024 so it counts. Flow often looks like it was rendered on a low-powered gaming machine from 2010, but the graphics are never distracting (and often beautiful). The animals look and act like real animals… mostly. They somehow know how to steer a boat, and they do manage some higher social skills, but Cat was still very much a cat.

No dialogue, minimal music, lots of dreamy floating and mysterious landscapes. Enthralling.

Wait- this is a musical?

I kid. I’m kidding. I am a kidder.

The first half hour really dragged for me, to the point that I wasn’t sure I’d make it through all two and a half hours… and I sat through Megalopolis, so that’s saying something. But I got in tune (accidental puns are the best puns) with the film after that, and by the end I was feeling what humans call “emotions.” Great casting all around, but Michelle Yeoh is not what I’d call a strong singer. But honestly, not many people could keep up with Cynthia Eviro and Ariana Grande.

In conclusion, here is that ska cover of Wicked Game you requested.

Fun fact: I’ve never seen the first Smile, but for some reason this movie called to me. It’s amazing how much this horror movie leans into being a musical. The lead character is a pop singer, and there are several convincing full performances of songs with backup dancers and sets.

It’s also easy to believe that a musician with a history of addiction and bad behavior would have a hard time convincing her family and associates that their crazy behavior was coming from something other than drug abuse.

Also: The whole time I was watching I kept thinking of this:

Bonus Movie Frustration!

There’s a documentary called No Other Land, recorded before the October 7 attacks, that deals with Palestinians in a small village living under Israeli control. It’s been getting amazing reviews, but it doesn’t have a distribution deal so it’s very hard to find and watch. I went to a screening tonight, and I was confused; the subtitles didn’t seem to connect to the actions on screen. About ten minutes into the film, the lights came up and they announced that they were going to try and fix the titles. When they finally restarted the film, there was no sound. At one point you could see the volume control appear and get turned up all the way, and the audience laughed. Not a great thing to happen to a serious film. Eventually they cancelled the showing and issued vouchers. Bummer.

Originally I planned to go to a showing of Hundreds of Beavers tonight. When that fell through, I sorted my Letterboxd watchlist by length to find a shorter film and chose Daisies. Less than a minute into the credits I realized I wasn’t up for a 1960’s surrealist art film, and switched to Attack the Block, the story of lower class London teenagers simultaneously fighting off an alien invasion, the police, and a drug dealer.

I keep saying “these aren’t the kinds of movies I normally like,” then watching them and liking them. I think I may have been lying to myself about what I like.

Also: John Boyega is made of charisma.

I don’t really remember exactly what I thought of this when it came out, but I’m sure my sophisticated fourteen year old brain thought “this lacks the subtlety and nuance of The Empire Strikes Back- it’s leaning too hard into the fantasy action tropes that Star wars so deftly homages.” Except I probably condensed that to “this is dumb.”

I watched it last night, and my main thought was “OH YEAH! THIS IS RAD!” Sure, I could expand on that and talk about the wholehearted embrace of serial archetypes, the intricate costume and set design, and of course the roaring score by Queen, but I’m old enough to know my original response is the most honest.

And every shot of blessed Brian Blessed is pure gold.

If you’ve got an hour and a quarter and want to see an old boxer have a brutal fight while being betrayed by nearly everyone, this is the movie for you! Lots of snappy dialogue, tons of deep sharp shadows, a story that starts at miserable and goes down from there- classic film noir stuff.