Train Driver's Diary: Milos Radovic

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-train-drivers-diary/97934.

7/10

Fences: Denzel Washington

One of these days I'm going to have to watch Denzel Washington's Fences a second time. This first time I was too busy being mesmerized by the knock-out performances: Washington as the wounded yet combative Troy Maxson; Viola Davis as the long-suffering Rose Lee Maxson; and so on. The whole movie feels perfectly designed for Oscar-winning performances. But, see, I think I need to watch it again so I can appreciate the style, Washington's use of blocking, and Charlotte Bruus Christensen's understated yet powerful cinematography. Visually the film is incredible, or at least as incredible as a film that takes place almost entirely in a single house can be. When I first heard about this film, it was while I was sitting in NYC's Metrograph where I overheard another critic who had attended an advance screening mention that Washington's performance paled in comparison to James Earl Jones' performance in the original 1987 Broadway run. He was apparently displeased with how once Washington started screaming it became "the Denzel show." Not having seen Jones' original performance, I can't comment on whether or not the critic was right in preferring it. But I do agree that sometimes Washington's performance came near to seeming silly and over-the-top. But it never QUITE got there.

8/10

Passage to Marseille: Michael Curtiz

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/jammin-the-blues-and-some-other-stuff/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Jammin%27%20the%20Blues%20(and%20some%20other%20stuff).

5/10

Jammin' the Blues: Gjon Mili

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10/10

To Be or Not to Be: Alan Johnson

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8/10

To Be or Not to Be: Ernst Lubitsch

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7/10

I Won't Play: Crane Wilbur

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Turner & Hooch: Roger Spottiswoode

Roger Spottiswoode's Turner & Hooch is what happens when the book Save the Cat! writes a screenplay. You can see all of the plot threads coming and when they arrive they do so with an audible clunk. The characters all seem like screenwriting exercises in exaggeration: they all have one or two distinct personality types that dictate everything about them. The film itself is cliché and sorta blasé. Sure, the scene where Hooch dies is heart-breaking, but so is every other scene in movies where dogs die. The best scenes are the ones where Tom Hanks is allowed to be himself. The best part of the movie is this running joke where everybody in town knows him on a first-name basis. The best scene is one where Hanks apparently ad-libs a whole bunch of nonsense towards Hooch during a stake-out. The line about his drool being "industrial lubricant" was legitimately funny.

5/10

Decanted.: Nick Kovacic

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-decanted/97684.

5/10

Hacksaw Ridge: Mel Gibson

I'll give Mel Gibson this: the man sure knows how to make things go BANG and BOOM, doesn't he? The last two-thirds of Hacksaw Ridge, a biopic about Seventh-day Adventist Christian and conscientious objector Desmond Doss who saved dozens of men in the Battle of Okinawa while refusing to handle a weapon, is a masterclass of action filmmaking. Gibson intuitively understands cinematic action: there isn't a shot or edit wasted. Everything is choreographed and purposeful. It also helps that Gibson is one of the few Hollywood directors who doesn't suffer under the illusion that warfare is a manly adventure: it's as close to literal hell on earth as can be imagined. My problem with Hacksaw Ridge is that the first third feels like a Hallmark romantic melodrama as Desmond woos his future wife and develops his religious convictions. Gibson pulls out every single melodramatic and romantic cliché in the book and plays them completely straight. But the last two-thirds are worthy of more than just viewing; they're worthy of study and admiration.

7/10

Une femme coquette: Jean-Luc Godard

It's always fun to see the earliest works of great directors, even if they're barely above the levels of amateur home movies. Based on Guy de Maupassant's short story Le Signe, Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme coquette sees a young woman cheat on her boyfriend because...she wanted to see if she could cheat on her boyfriend. This story is both deliciously French and deliciously existentialist, so it makes a good match for the future Swedish auteur. There truly isn't that much to say about the film other than it exists. There isn't anything really interesting about it formally or artistically. It's just the first attempt of a great filmmaker to make a film. I will give it this, though: it's more coherent than 90% of everything he's made since Weekend (1967).

Lonely Are the Brave: David Miller

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8/10

Roma: Federico Fellini

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-roma/.

6/10

Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson

Oh, how I wish I could have seen Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom in the theaters. Much like The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Moonrise Kingdom sees Anderson flirt with spectacle, something he noticeably avoided in his earliest indie films. Incredibly, much like the ski chase scene in Hotel, the spectacle scenes in Moonrise seem perfect for the movie and don't stand out like a sore thumb amidst his deliberately stagey, old timey aesthetic. If anything, they build and build like the chorus of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde--a one-act opera repeatedly featured in the film. The whole film feels like a fairy tale, or at least a modern day Chester Mystery Plays, the likes of which inspired Noye's Fludde. Everything seems a bit more magical, everything seems to occur in a world where miracles and divine intervention are the order of the day. It's an achingly beautiful film as well as being one of the best fantasy films in recent memory.

8/10

Hidden Figures: Theodore Melfi

If the Academy feels like giving a sympathy Best Picture vote to a black movie this year, it'll probably be to Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures. Not because it's by any means the best black movie of the year. It's because it's the perfect balance of crowd-pleasing mediocrity. It doesn't try anything new, doesn't try to say anything original other than bringing to light the lives of a number of extraordinary black women--a noble feat, indeed, but not one that necessarily breaks any kind of ground. (Although it's worth pointing out that the film does a poor job giving its three lead characters equal screen-time. Poor Janelle Monáe practically gets left by the roadside where she begins the film.) It's the kind of film about overcoming racism that I doubt will make very many white people feel uncomfortable or want to reexamine their own potential prejudices. It's pleasant and enjoyable. And that's okay. But Best Picture material? I don't think so. But I've been proven wrong before.

7/10

Paris Is Burning: Jennie Livingston

Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning could serve as a crash course for every 101 college course on LGBTQ+ intersectionality with regards to race, class, gender, and culture. Though tight in its official purview--the golden age of New York City balls--it's a stunning glance into the birth of fashion, behavior, lingo, dance, and style that would dominate not only LGBTQ+ communities but eventually mainstream culture as well. As a straight while male, I'm obviously the least qualified person on the planet to talk about its merits. But I can say that the film affected me deeply on a human level. Here are groups of marginalized human beings who, in the face of oppression I can't begin to imagine, created authentic families together, created a brand new culture all of their own. I read somewhere that gay culture essentially had to recreate itself from scratch in the wake of the 1980s AIDS crisis. Paris is Burning is a heart-breaking yet soul-uplifting portrait of just some of the people and culture we lost in that inferno.

10/10

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Irwin Allen

You have to love the clever frugality of Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It takes place during a preposterous apocalypse scenario—apparently the Van Allen radiation belt has caught fire, heating the earth to 130+ degrees Fahrenheit…and getting hotter every day. The only way to fix it? Nuke it, of course! And why have expensive visual effects depicting said apocalypse if you can set your movie in an underwater submarine where all the news is depicted through radio broadcasts or newsreel footage projected on tiny TV screens on the control deck? In all seriousness, I do love these cheesy late 50s, early 60s sci-fi movies. But even by their own standards, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a joyless slog. It rambles on with little to no structure other than the central ticking clock spelling doom for the earth when it reaches a certain temperature. Much of the film involves tedious politics among the crewmen and women aboard the submarine. They almost mutiny, then don't, almost mutiny, then don't, almost mutiny, and so on until it's interminable. There aren't even that many eye-popping visual effects. The giant squid is nice, but it's over too soon. The minefield was great, but we spend far too little time in it.

5/10

Desk Set: Walter Lang

Whatta turkey. Walter Lang's Desk Set is unequivocally one of the most boring major Hollywood films I've ever seen from the studio era. Ostensibly a romantic comedy about two old people, an obsessed computer engineer and a gently neurotic telephone reference library clerk (which was apparently a thing that existed in the age before the internet) played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, who fall in love, it wanders around aimlessly for most of its run-time. There are a few great scenes, primarily the ones of Tracy and Hepburn hanging out, giving each other the business, flirting, and trying to intellectually and verbally outdo the other. But the plot goes nowhere until the last 20 minutes when everything happens at once. Even Tracy and Hepburn's legendary chemistry can't save this one.

4/10

Chapter & Verse: Jamal Joseph

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/chapter-verse/.

7/10

Deep in My Heart: Stanley Donen

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5/10

Silver Streak: Arthur Hiller

To be entirely fair, I thought Arthur Hiller's Silver Streak was a buddy movie between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. All of the most famous scenes--especially Pryor teaching Wilder how to "be black" so he can sneak aboard a train guarded by some federal agents--involve the two of them. And indeed, the best scenes in the movie are when the two of them are onscreen together. They have an effortless emotional chemistry, one that allows the other to be human, not just a comedic stereotype. The moment they get together they feel like two real human beings who empathetically care for each other. Too bad they only have 15-20 minutes of screentime together. The rest is devoted to a pedestrian, occasionally confusing mystery plot that climaxes in an admittedly incredible train crash that feels ripped from an action movie. Make no mistake: this is Wilder's movie. And that's kind of the problem. Wilder himself is fine. But his character, sans Pryor's influence, is kinda dry and stale.

5/10

Nevada Smith: Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith is one of the most thematically fascinating of all of Hathaway's Westerns. It charts its protagonist, a half-Indian man named Max Sand, as he charts down the three outlaws responsible for the gruesome torture and murder of his parents. At the beginning, he's a fresh-faced teenager. But as his quest for revenge lengthens, he slowly changes into the very thing he hates most: a murderous outlaw. During a conversation with Jonas Cord, Sr. (Brian Keith), a traveling gunsmith, he learns that to truly hunt these men down, he'll have to become as mean as them, as cruel as them, as merciless as them. The question, then, is whether or not Sand will allow himself to fully transmogrify into a monster. It's a fascinating film, aided by a surprisingly leisurely Picaresque plot: it takes a loose approach to Sand's quest, instead charting different sequences in his life and all the people--usually women--he meets and uses up along the way. The film is done in, however, by the grotesque miscasting of Steve McQueen as Sand. First off, they didn't even bother to make him look young or half Native American (although I guess we should be thankful they didn't put him in brownface). He was a whopping 36 years old when he played the role of a young teenager, and it's frequently painful to see other actors and actresses treat him as such. And McQueen's performance is scattershot: in some scenes he'll be befuddled and naive, in others he'll be wooden and/or coldblooded. And sometimes they'll happen within the space of a single scene.

6/10