MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 5 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Argylle

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Action, Comedy, Spy

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cena, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose

Matthew Vaughn plays with spies once again with this new meta spy flick where Bryce Dallas Howard is the author of a spy book series who is swept up in an actual spy ring. It's like The Lost City, but with more stabbing and plot twists. Vaughn is probably the person having the most fun here, because he indulges in these hyperactive action fantasies that he clearly loves so much. It works in spurts. The fantasy Argylle scenes with Henry Cavill are like a loving homage to the campy Roger Moore era James Bond escapism. When things bleed into the real world, it gets trickier, as the movie is indecisive whether it's grounded in reality or going for something even hammier. Vaughn leans more into the latter as the film goes on, for which the film's aloof flamboyance wins light charisma points, but it also feels like he's getting carried away. If one enjoys the Kingsman movies (particularly the second one), Argylle is a pleasant diversion (and also a step up from the King's Man prequel). For many others, it might prove to be too much.

Fitting In

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Director: Molly McGlynn

Starring: Maddie Ziegler, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Djouliet Amara, Emily Hampshire

This indie dramedy sees a teenage girl who finds out she was born without a uterus. Afterward she spirals through trying to figure out what this means for herself as she aspires to be a normal, sexually-active teenager. It's an interesting story derived from a glossed over condition, and thrust upon someone who discovers an abnormality about herself and finds peace with it. Writer/director Molly McGlynn (who herself was diagnosed with MRKH syndrome) uses it to tell a story of self-acceptance, and she weaves a lovely tale of identity through it. Sometimes she tends to overplay her hand, going big when something slighter would probably hit harder, but her assurance to anyone watching that there is beauty in being different is something admirable.

Scrambled

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: Leah McKendrick

Starring: Leah McKendrick, Ego Nwodim, Andrew Santino, Adam Rodreguez, Laura Cerón, Clancy Brown

This weekend has been jackpot for indie movies about women's vaginas, so if that's your niche, get ready for a double feature. Those who take the plunge will also want to check out this flick written, directed, and starring Leah McKendrick as a woman who decides to freeze her eggs after a breakup, just in case she meets Mr. Right late in life. It's a simple premise that could potentially be squeezed dry early if McKendrick didn't find a through-line for it, but she chooses to work it as a story of regret and the promise that hope can still bloom out of it even when you feel like you missed your best chance. She's engaging and funny throughout the film, and her colorful interactions with her friends, family, and lovers blossom the theme around a small story about ovulation. While it doesn't do anything of a seismic scale, the movie's glowing beacon of sisterhood assurance is something that will be appreciated by its targeted audience.

Art Attack

The Zone of Interest

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best Picture, Best Director - Jonathan Glazer, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Sound

Genre: Drama

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Starring: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller

It's so easy to just make a movie where Indiana Jones punches Nazis. It's much harder to make a movie where Nazis are humanized. In our culture, we're so used to seeing Nazis as the evil-doers, who do the bad deeds because what they stood for and are as close to true evil as we've ever seen grace this earth. Finding humanity in people who specialized in the inhumane is a tough task, because any storyteller would have to be at war with their own empathy. Normally, the fallback on any sort of movie that has Nazis portrayed as the main characters would have the plot center around a crisis of conscience, like one might have seen with Schindler's List. The Zone of Interest chooses not to do that. The film is a slice-of-life drama centering on characters who casually commit genocide. The movie isn't about what they do, but the mundane way in which they go about it. As demonized as this group is, the reality is that they were people. They had friends, family, children, and responsibilities, and with the evil they did, there were spoils to be shared and revelled in. The film centers on the family of a high-ranking Nazis who live next to a consecration camp, as they go about their daily life, often with the sounds of horror coming over the walls. The imagery of how they casually ignore it is somehow as harrowing as even the most graphic of Holocaust depictions you'll ever see, because watching this group of people who seem normal while all lacking that basic sense of compassion is very much disturbing. It's also compounded by the way they discuss their business openly in front of their enslaved Jewish help, and underlined by their casual cruelty to them. The filmmaking of the film is interesting, with cinematography that mimics a "fly on a wall" just glimpsing their everyday function. I admit some of the more bombastic artistic choices probably dragged the movie down a bit for me, but it's one of the most fascinating films about the Holocaust ever made.

Oscar's Trash Can

The Eternal Memory

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best Documentary

Genre: Documentary

Director: Maite Alberdi

Starring: Augusto Góngora, Paulina Urritia

Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2014, and this film documents his relationship with his wife, actress Paulina Urritia, during his declining years. There isn't a huge narrative string driving The Eternal Memory, as we see Góngora's condition shift over the course of it. What we also see is his anchor, his beloved wife, who is constantly holding his hand and guiding him through his worst days. Films like this can weigh heavily on the trying drama of the illness, though The Eternal Memory instead focuses on the love between two people, one who is very ill and the other showing how much she cares by just being there for him. While his condition does worsen over the course of the film, the film doesn't dwell on it, because his condition isn't the point. The tenderness in which he is loved during the inevitable, and the love he gives back, carries the weight of the movie. Góngora passed away last year, after the movie debuted. Because of that, the film never acknowledges his death, which is just as well. The movie instead leaves us with the image of him, looking past his confusion, and telling his wife how beautiful she is and how he wishes to spend the rest of his life with her. From everything shown in the movie, it's easy to see why and understand that he did.

Rustin

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best Actor - Colman Domingo

Genre: Drama

Director: George C. Wolfe

Starring: Colman Domingo, Aml Ameen, Chris Rock, Jeffery Wright, Audra McDonald

This year's Oscar race has been good to a handful of underrated African American performers, primarily two that I've appreciated for quite some time who both got nominated for Best Actor: Jeffrey Wright and Colman Domingo. My hopes are that Wright will take home the trophy for his excellent performance in American Fiction (though he also has a small role in this film), but I'll be perfectly happy if Domingo sneaks it out from under him (or the Academy can just be boring and give it to Cillian Murphy). Domingo plays civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, as it primarily chronicles the events of him organizing the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. There has been a fair share of films made about the civil rights movements of the period, and a lot of them are very good. They tend to fall back on similar tones and styles, though. Rustin has several benefits in its favor, including focusing on a member who was more behind the scenes than most. It's also more rhythmicly pleasing than a lot of historical dramas, telling its story with a very jazzy flow that pairs with Rustin's rhetoric. It's not a stirring watch, like many films of its type, but it has this interesting double underline of the civil rights ideology of acceptance in that it's primarily about Rustin's trials of being accepted within his own movement, as he was also a gay man, as well. The quest to be acknowledged for your contributions in the face of dismissal fuels a lot of this film's fire, and it's a excellent showcase for Domingo's talent.

Society of the Snow

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated: Best International Feature Film, Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: J.A. Bayona

Starring: Enzo Vogrincic, Matias Recalt, Agustin Pardella, Tomas Wolf

Yet another film based upon the 1972 plane crash in the Andes, which also includes Survive! (from The Batwoman and Santa Claus director Rene Cardona Jr) and Alive (from Frank Marshall), Society of the Snow tells of the people who survived the incident and what they had to do to get out alive (which, yes, included cannibalism). I haven't delved into the other films based on this story, but there seems to be the consensus that Society of the Snow was the best one, and I can believe it. Director J.A. Bayona uses his personal style to craft a film that is every bit as biting and as harrowing as the story would lead one to believe, making the film a tough watch for the feint of heart. It doesn't pull punches and holds nothing back, with a brutal honesty of the tramatic experience of this tale. It's a harsh movie about harsh conditions, and the will to survive when the entire world has collapsed on top of you. It's hard to picture anybody watching this movie more than once, but it's also hard to picture anybody bothering with the other dramatizations when one this good exists.

Oscar Nominees

20 Days in Mariupol (N/A)

The ABCs of Book Banning (N/A)

The After (N/A)

American Fiction ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

American Symphany (N/A)

Anatomy of a Fall ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Barber of Little Rock (N/A)

Barbie ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Bobi Wine: The People's President (N/A)

The Boy and the Heron ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

El Conde (N/A)