Multiplex Madness
Emilia Pérez
⭐️⭐️
Oscars Nominated: Best Picture, Best Director - Jacques Audiard, Best Actress - Karla Sofia Gascón, Best Supporting Actress - Zoe Saldaña, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature Film, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song - "El Mal", Best Original Song - "Mi Camino"
Genre: Musical, Drama, Thriller
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Karla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, Édgar Ramirez
My patience paid off. I could have watched this movie at any point in the last four months, but if I were to do that, Netflix wins. The intense awards buzz even at streaming drop time made me thing there was going there was likely to be a theatrical screening of this movie at some point, but it's been very closed off in my neck-of-the-woods so I had to play the waiting game. With the movie's powerhouse thirteen nominations, including Best Picture, meant that my theaters annual Best Picture nominee screenings probably had a high chance of playing it, I just had to play the waiting game. And they did. A single showtime at a point of day where I'm normally sound asleep.
This movie better be worth it.
Narrator: It was not.
Emilia Pérez is an unconventional musical about a drug cartel boss who flees his past life with a sex-change operation, reinventing herself as a trans woman who starts a nonprofit organization to help the families of her former cartel victims. Early on, I was kind of digging what this movie was throwing down, with its gritty crime drama presentation through head-banging dance choreography. The film started to lose its grip on me as it started to do musical cues of people just sitting in place, followed by a garish and tacky number performed by doctors about gender surgery. After that, it just never picked up and pulled me back in, getting somewhat bold in spurts while getting lazier with its storytelling. The film has no flow to it. It meanders about, forgetting it's a musical production for periods before burping out a song whenever it builds up enough gas. To be fair, there are a number of musical sequences that are absolute fire (the Original Song nominees are easily the film's highlights) but they interchange with sequences that are just rhythmic mumbling, whispering, and yelling. There's no way around it, while Emilia Pérez is certainly trying to be a different kind of musical, it is, in general, a not very good musical.
I will give the movie some points in craftsmanship. The movie certainly looks like it was hard to make, and it seems to have hit award season momentum based on the fact that filmmakers are more likely to identify the difficulty in filmmaking techniques than any other audience member (as all the hustlers say, "Game recognizes game"). But if I'm sitting here as an audience member thinking to myself that the effort in areas that are more important to me are being neglected, then that hard work doesn't matter. The film is plotless noise, a presentation of abrasive dance without actually crafting a story that hits as hard as its choreography. The movie seems to think it did, with an brash ending full of emotional outbursts that is abrupt and conclusive of nothing. When I left the theater, I felt like I had watched a pole dance by someone who was screaming during the entire performance and did a backflip off the stage, breaking her own neck as a finale.
If the Academy wanted to nominate an unconventional queer/trans allegory film, I Saw the TV Glow was right there and was a far more interesting and artistically successful film. That's probably the thing that hurts the most, honestly.
The Monkey
⭐️⭐️1/2
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Director: Osgood Perkins
Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O'Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott, Elijah Wood
Osgood Perkins' follow-up to last year's minor masterpiece Longlegs seems to be his attempt at cutting loose and getting silly. He chooses to adapt a Stephen King story about a wind-up toy monkey, and, like all stories about wind-up toy monkeys, every time you wind up your toy monkey, someone dies. All movies about wind-up toy monkeys are about this, including TV movie The Devil's Gift, which was re-edited into MST3K fan favorite Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders.
The film's main character is played by Theo James, who has trauma due to his history with a toy monkey that seemingly kills everyone around him, only to watch people die once again many years later, coming to the conclusion that someone found the monkey. The movie is light on plot, desiring only to be setpieces of bloody splatstick, sometimes through complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions that would make a Final Destination movie proud. The movie alternates back and forth between audacious black comedy and weird for the sake of weird. The film struggles with the balancing it, but it's more amusing than not. The film is squarely focused on comedic carnage, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's really good at gory setpieces, but when it slows down to settle in with the characters, it feels tired, making a viewer antsy to get back to people spontaneously combusting. I had hoped that the movie could keep its level of fun consistent, and if it had done that, I'd be singing its praises right now, but the experience I got was a handful of shock laughs mixed with casual boredom.
The Unbreakable Boy
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Drama
Director: Jon Gunn
Starring: Zachary Levi, Meghann Fahy, Jacob Laval, Drew Powell, Patricia Heaton
I'm pretty sure I could break this boy if you gave me five minutes with him. I learned a thing or two in the CIA, including some off-the-books stuff. I promise you, he'll talk.
Zachary Levi and Meghann Fahy play parents to an autistic child who also has osteognesis imperfecta, which makes his bones easily breakable. Throughout the film we watch their stress levels rise in maintaining a safe home for him while their son creates the positive outlook that is missing from their lives. But the long-story-short is that this movie is about parents who have a child with lots of problems and it just makes them tired. The movie feels less about the pressures of raising an autistic child and more about people who pity themselves for having an autistic child. That's certainly an approach. It's not a good approach, but the filmmakers commit to it, whether they realize it or not. I think they have convinced themselves that they have made a movie about parents who have been burnt out on adulting relearning life joy from their child, but when you start working in substance abuse, mental health, and suicidal tendencies, the movie gets lost on how to tell this story. These are issues that are a lot more serious than the movie should be working with if the movie's final moral is going to be "Just be happy."
Also, Zachary Levi has an imaginary friend in this movie, which is certainly one of the most curious creative decisions I've seen in a movie in quite some time. I don't know what it was supposed to mean, but it was a choice, let me tell you.
To give the movie a little bit of slack, its portrayal of autistic children doesn't ring inauthentic. Having been around autistic children, I did identify a lot of scenarios that were familiar. The movie doesn't feel like it's about autism, though. It feels like it's about how autism makes other people's lives miserable. The movie clearly thinks it's the opposite, and thinks it's quite heartwarming in doing it. Maybe it's best if we let the movie live within its delusion. It doesn't seem to be hurting anyone.
Art Attack
No Other Land
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Oscars Nominated: Best Documentary Feature Film
Genre: Documentary
Director: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Starring: Basel Adra
It's time for a hot-button topic, just what we always wanted! This one comes in the form of a documentary based on the tensions between Isreal and Palestine. Not the tensions that you're thinking of, because most of the documented events happened before the tragic events of October 7th, 2023. This documentary is about Isreali military occupation in Masafer Yatta, leveling the homes of Palestinian citizens to make way for military training ground. Most of the documentary comes from footage shot by activist Basel Adra, shooting footage to release to the outside world with both a phone and a small camera, which the Isreali soldiers don't take too kindly to. It's a disturbing look at people whose lives are being trampled without reason. That lack of reason holds me back a little bit, because there do seem to be pieces missing from the story. It feels like the movie is missing a real exploration of the Israeli POV, and that's not me pulling a "both sides" card, that's me desiring more context for what is going on. The film feels like a little glimpse at the off-center of a larger picture, which is fair, because it focuses on people rather than government. I just strived to learn more from it. What I did see were people losing everything in an instant with no control over it, at the mercy of a government sending soldiers to push people out of their way. It's overall a tale of large-scale bullying, and it's hard not to be outraged.
Oscar's Trash Can
Memoir of a Snail
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Oscars Nominated: Best Animated Feature Film
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Adam Elliot
Starring: Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Eric Bana
Life's a bitch and this meloncholy black comedy is here to hammer that point home, showcasing a young girl relating her down-on-her-luck life story to her pet snail after the death of her last paternal figure. The film is an allegorical tail of depression and self-isolation, both through the lens of self-pity and a criticism of it. It's a soft, understanding film that cohabitates with a blunt harshness, as if you were being life-coached by Nicolas Cage playing both good cop and bad cop in the same room, while in an room created by someone who watches nothing but Tim Burton movies. Artistry and passion fuel this film, which I fully support. My interest wanes in it as it goes because watching this movie is like spending the day with a depressed cousin that just wants to spend the afternoon poking roadkill with a stick. There might have been just enough interest fuel in the tank for a half-hour short of this, asking me to sit down for ninety minutes is probably more commitment than I can offer. I'm happy that Memoir of a Snail got this out of its system, but I'm going to move on to something that doesn't make me feel like I'm in rainboots that are stuck in the mud.
Sugarcane
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Oscars Nominated: Best Documentary Feature Film
Genre: Documentary
Director: Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie
Starring: Willie Sellars, Charlene Belleau, Whitney Spearing, Ed Archie NoiseCat, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Kyé7e, Jean William, Rosalin Sam, Rick Gilbert, Anna Gilbert, Larry Emile, Martina Pierre, Laird Archie, Wesley Jackson, Cecilia Paul
Last year's Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone produced this documentary on a subject that I imagine is very personal to her, which chronicles the uncovering of the obscene treatment of Native American children who were collected into Christian schools where children were abused, mistreated, and even died by the neglect of priests and teachers. The reality is comparible to the true-event-based story from Best Picture nominee Nickel Boys, though Sugarcane is a harder watch based on the fact that it isn't a dramatization. The documentary is not a work of deep-diving history with talking heads, but rather a soft following of survivors of the schools as more information about what happened to them is released to the public. This is a sad documentary. And when I mean sad, I mean sad, as in emotionally devastating. It's focuses on people who are confronted with their trauma after many decades, and watching them react to it. It's rough, because they each have a haunted look in the back of their eyes. I like more history and detail in my documentaries, but as a personal study of humans who have survived the worst of humanity, Sugarcane is effective.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Companion ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A Complete Unknown ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dog Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heart Eyes ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Love Hurts ⭐️⭐️
Mufasa: The Lion King ⭐️⭐️1/2
Paddington in Peru ⭐️⭐️⭐️
New To Digital
Companion ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Dog Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mufasa: The Lion King ⭐️⭐️1/2
Valiant One ⭐️
New To Physical
Nosferatu ⭐️⭐️⭐️
September 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Weekend in Taipei ⭐️⭐️
Oscar Nominations
A Lien ⭐️⭐️1/2
Alien: Romulus ⭐️⭐️1/2
Anora ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2Anuja ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Apprentice ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beautiful Men ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Better Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Black Box Diaries ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Brutalist ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Complete Unknown ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Conclave ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Death by Numbers (N/A)
A Different Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dune Part Two ⭐️⭐️1/2
Elton John: Never Too Late (N/A)
Emilia Pérez ⭐️⭐️
Flow ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Gladiator II ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I Am Ready, Warden ⭐⭐⭐1/2
I'm Not a Robot ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I'm Still Here ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Incident ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Inside Out 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the Shadow of the Cypress ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Last Ranger ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Magic Candies ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Maria ⭐️⭐️
Memoir of a Snail ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nickel Boys ⭐️⭐️⭐️
No Other Land ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Nosferatu ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Only Girl in the Orchestra ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Porcelain War (N/A)
A Real Pain ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Seed of the Sacred Fig ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
September 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sing Sing ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Six Triple Eight ⭐️⭐️
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (N/A)
The Substance ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Sugarcane ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Wander to Wonder ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Wild Robot ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Yuck! ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Coming Soon!
