I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore: Macon Blair

Poor little film. I don't think Macon Blair's I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore will ever escape the shadow of David Lynch. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the film seems to mimic Lynch's work, particularly his masterpiece Blue Velvet (1986)--both films feature out-of-their-element protagonists involving themselves in sinister crime investigations, thereby plunging themselves headlong into the seedy criminal underbelly of Everytown, USA. There's even a psycho bad guy in both--Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth and Devon Graye's Christian. But I smell more than a bit of the Coen Brothers in this film, too. The absurdist humor, the theological undertones (no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Graye's character is named "Christian"), and the paroxysms of sudden, gruesome violence. It's strange: these disparate elements don't really make sense forced together. But it's that not-making-sense that makes the film make sense. Do you follow me?

7/10

Don't Bother to Knock: Roy Ward Baker

Man, all I wanted was something light before I went to bed. Turns out Roy Ward Baker's Don't Bother to Knock is a complex, superbly acted noir tragedy featuring none other than Marilyn Monroe as a suicidally insane ex-mental patient moonlighting as a babysitter in a lavish hotel. Freaking what? I've never seen Monroe do a role like this before. Complex ones, deep ones, dramatic ones...sure! But I've never seen her actually be crazy. And she's not half bad. Sometimes her trembling voice seems to channel none other than Jacqueline Kennedy, and at those times she starts to slip over into the realm of camp. Thankfully there are a number of other great actors and actresses pinch-hitting for her: Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, and Elisha Cook Jr., just to name a few. It's always a treat to find such ensemble casts in films that fell to the wayside of film history. I think I need to revisit this one when I'm not half asleep. It was quite good.

7/10

Death Race 2050: G.J. Echternkamp

At first I hated everything about G.J. Echternkamp's Death Race 2050: the Hunger Games costumes, the political commentary that went stale during the Bush years, the copious amount of CGI gore and explosions. But as it went on, I became impressed by...*gasp*...the writing, of all things. In particular, I love the relationship between Frankenstein (Manu Bennett) and his observer Annie Sullivan (Marci Miller). Also, Folake Olowofoyeku as Minerva Jefferson? She damn near stole the whole film. And as the film continued, some of the gags got funnier and funnier.

"Stay at the 3 Season Hotel! The 3 Seasons! Because winter is a myth!"

Also, that Bechdel's Bar gag was worth watching the whole film. Death Race 2050 could have really benefited from more practical effects, but at least the cars were real. And to be honest, the whole thing was enjoyable stupid. But not too stupid. It was the right kind of stupid...for the most part, at least.

6/10

Drifter: Chris von Hoffmann

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/drifter-manages-to-take-all-the-fun-out-of-post-apocalyptic-cannibals/.

2/10

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

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).

10/10

To Be or Not to Be: Alan Johnson

To read this review, go to: http://moviemezzanine.com/to-be-or-not-to-be-essay/?utm_content=bufferb99a1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

8/10

To Be or Not to Be: Ernst Lubitsch

To read this review, go to: http://moviemezzanine.com/to-be-or-not-to-be-essay/?utm_content=bufferb99a1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

7/10

I Won't Play: Crane Wilbur

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).

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

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/kirk-douglas-characters/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=B-Roll:%20Lonely%20Are%20The%20Brave%20(Cowboys).

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

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/deep-in-my-heart/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Deep%20in%20my%20Heart%20is%20Donen%20Done%20Right.%20And%20Wrong.

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

Paddington: Paul King

Of all the things I’d imagined I’d think while watching Paul King’s Paddington (2014), one of the last things would be “that’s the most delicious orange I’ve ever seen in my life.” In one of the opening scenes, the eponymous talking bear pulls a fresh orange apart right in front of the screen and the juices spray across the screen and dribble to the ground. It was one of the best combinations of what I assume were CGI (the bear) and practical effects (the orange). The whole film is like that: seamless. CGI has rarely looked so crisp and lively; CGI characters have rarely interacted with their environments so perfectly. The film is also a pitch-perfect combination of age-appropriate humor and drama. There are many sequences made of up nothing but Paddington trying (and failing) to navigate modern life that feel inspired by classical slapstick and silent comedy. It’s such a lovely, happy, pleasant film. Although I wish that the film didn’t resort to a villain to provide pathos. I wish it could have just been a sequence of silly things happening to a silly bear.

8/10

Carmen Comes Home: Keisuke Kinoshita

My, but the post-war American censors are strong with this one, aren't they? Keisuke Kinoshita's Carmen Comes Home is an undeniably confused yet gentle comedy about a young woman who returns to her rural home town after running away to Tokyo and becoming a stripper. She returns with a friend who also happens to be a stripper. The two girls go about their village in their most outrageous outfits, deliberately provoking as many people as possible. When they get ostracized for their behavior, they decide the only logical conclusion is that, in order to win over the townspeople, they must do a nude striptease for the whole village. Old world morals are challenged here with Carmen's family agonizing over her decision. But finally, they decide to let her do it for reasons that don't quite make sense. Because it's her right? Because her stripping is actually art? But the general gist of the film seems to be that cultural modernity can be good: the girls donate much of their stripping earnings to their family which then uses it to pay off their debts and invest in a new school. The film ends with both sides vindicated: the modern strippers return to Tokyo feeling proud of themselves, the traditional village goes back to being...traditional...and none the worse for wear. In other news, apparently this was the first Japanese film to be made in color. And boy, you can tell they were proud of that. The film is brimming with long takes that emphasize negative space; people are constantly dwarfed by the countryside and mountains. There's a gorgeous sequence where Carmen and her friend walk through a verdant forest and the camera dollies along with them, not cutting or looking away. It's beautiful in a blasé pastoral sense: Kinoshita doesn't really do anything with the setting other than use it as a setting.

6/10

A Patch of Fog: Michael Lennox

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/movie-review-patch-fog/.

5/10

Dave Made a Maze: Bill Watterson

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/slamdance-17-movie-review-dave-made-a-maze/95716.

7/10

Spy Hard: Rick Friedberg

Whatta stinker. Rick Friedberg's Spy Hard feels like a film made entirely of the scrap pieces of footage found on The Naked Gun's editing floor. Apparently it was the first film written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. First off, I had no idea they were making movies back in the mid 1990s. Second, you can really see the degradation of the spoof humor that made Leslie Nielsen so popular: repeated punchlines, randomness for the sake of randomness, and referential humor that feels woefully dated. The worst example was a random scene where somebody dressed like Michael Jackson gets their hair caught on fire. He yells "not again" and jumps out a window. Okay...There was one good part of Spy Hard: 'Weird Al' Yankovic's amazing opening theme song. Too bad he couldn't write and star in the whole movie...

3/10

To Catch a Thief: Alfred Hitchcock

[Revisit Review]

Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief is pure popcorn fluff in the best way imaginable. Beautiful people doing wonderful things in luscious locations aided by one of the smartest, snappiest, memorable, and clever screenplays of the era. Hitchcock's visual prowess was at its height here; you could practically watch it with the sound turned off. But why would you want to? You'd miss all the incredible dialogue!

8/10

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy: Kelly Makin

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to watch Kelly Makin's Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy without watching the original television sketch comedy show. Or familiarizing myself with its actors, reoccurring characters, and popular segments. Or looking up what the film is actually about. Yeah...I probably could have done this screening a bit better. But when push comes to shove, I did like the film. I thought it was funny, clever, and occasionally bitterly cynical (that whole "you can't truly be happy without sadness" morale really stinks of the Clinton years, doesn't it?). My favorite bit was the ongoing side-plot about the closeted gay father who comes out of the closest. Do I think it's a good film? Well, without familiarity with the show, no. But it's still good for a few laughs.

5/10

Little Men: Ira Sachs

So, my takeaway from Ira Sachs' Little Men is that gentrification is alright as long as the white people forcing the non-white people out of their homes feel really, really, really, really, really bad about it. Alright, I'm being facetious: Little Men is fine. It's got great performances all around--especially from Michael Barbieri--and there's a gentle, truthful eye for adolescent behavior. Yeah, the two boys might be little bastards for the silent treatment they give their parents, but they still seem like humans and not conveyor belt Hollywood children. My problem is that Little Men is the kind of film that attempts to view mankind as through a microscope--not judging their actions, just observing. The whole point is that everybody is selfish, everybody has the capacity to hurt others. But yeah, no. I don't buy into the film's attempts at morale ambiguity. There's a clear bad guy here: Brian Jardine (Greg Kinnear). This middle-aged man would rather chase his acting pipe dreams than actually quit, get a real job, support his family, and not evict a poor immigrant family living in their building. Yeah, life's unfair. Get over it. Get a real job. Don't go ruining other people's lives, throw up your hands, and say "ah...life's so callous, ain't it?"

Ass.

6/10

Hotel Coolgardie: Pete Gleeson

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/film/slamdance-17-movie-review-hotel-coolgardie/95602.

8/10

Withdrawn: Adrian Murray

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/slamdance-17-withdrawn/95594.

8/10

Kuro: Joji Koyama, Tujiko Noriko

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/95590/slamdance-17-movie-review-kuro/.

9/10

The Long Riders: Walter Hill

For a daguerreotype, Walter Hill's The Long Riders sure is nifty. But as a movie, it's quite lacking. All of the characters move and are blocked like wax statues. What's worse, they don't introduce any of the characters--quite a sin for a film whose raison d'être involves the casting of several groups of real-life brothers to play the members of James-Younger gang. What's the point of such meticulous casting if we can't tell any of the characters apart from each other? (All except for David Carradine--you can always tell it's David Carradine.) I did appreciate how they morphed the story of Jesse James into one of familial vengeance, sort of a Hatfield/McCoy relationship between the James-Younger gang and the murderous Pinkertons who came to arrest/kill them. But much of the drama is drained of its lifeblood by its own solemnity. However, the film comes to vibrant life during action scenes. A knife fight between David Carradine and an Indian in a saloon was one of the most visceral of its kind I've ever seen. And, holy sh!t, the doomed Northfield, Minnesota raid may be one of the best movie shootouts of all time. I mean that 100% honestly. It's probably because it feels like it was guest directed by Sam Peckinpah. And no, that's not an exaggeration. I was going to give this film a 5/10, but that gun fight raised it a point.

6/10

F****** Bunnies: Teemu Niukkanen

For a film with exactly two jokes, Teemu Niukkanen's new short F****** Bunnies isn't half bad. The first joke makes up the entire film: a group of polygamous, Satan-worshipping sex maniacs move next door to a respectable Finnish couple. The Satan worshipers are led by Maki, an invariably polite patriarch who could be mistaken for Ned Flanders if not for the face paint. Of course, they end up teaching the straight-laced Finnish couple how to be kind and accepting. We've all seen variations of this joke before. But it's still done well enough to make us not care. The second joke is a punchline regarding Maki's insatiable appetite for carrots. It's admittedly a bit of a dud.

Suck It Up: Jordan Canning

Full disclosure: I'm not giving Jordan Canning's Suck It Up a rating because I watched a work-print that hadn't been completely polished yet in terms of coloring and audio tracks/levels. But even if I had seen the completed version, I doubt I would have liked it. It's a mean film about mean, unlikable people. It follows two young women--a self-destructing alcoholic, the other a young professional--who retreat to a rural cabin to get over their combined grief over the loss of a young man who was, respectively, their brother and lover. It's an interesting set-up: one's a woman who can't accept love, the other is one who can't really express love. But both try to help each other. But they spend the entire film being horrific and nasty towards each other. There's one scene about two-thirds of the way through that would have ended the friendship between any two actual human beings: the alcoholic tricks the professional into drinking lemonade laced with MDMA a mere thirty minutes before a life-changing job interview. Again, if this film had been about actual human beings, it would have ended right there, the professional driving away and cutting the alcoholic out of her life. But no, this is a film about forgiveness, so after literally fighting each other (and falling into a mud-wrestling ring in the process because this movie hates you) they make up all cheerful and happily. Bullsh!t. I don't believe their friendship. I don't believe their reconciliation. I don't believe any of it.

Peshmerga: Bernard-Henri Lévy

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2017/01/peshmerga-2016-new-york-jewish-film_16.html.

5/10

The Night of the Generals: Anatole Litvak

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/the-night-of-the-generals/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=The%20Night%20of%20the%20Generals%20May%20Be%20Bloated,%20But%20Still%20Effective.

7/10

The Son of Joseph: Eugène Green

To read this, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-son-of-joseph/95144.

6/10

Neck and Neck: Shaun Clark

I can say with complete, unhesitating certainty that I have never in my life seen a Shakespearean adaptation quite like Shaun Clark's Neck and Neck. Boiling down the Bard's classic tragedy Othello to its barest components, the film tells the central story in about 5 minutes. Using expressive animation, title cards, and brief real-life footage of a human mouth, the film makes the Moor's internal anxieties external in a colorful, shocking phantasm. It sounds simple. But its effect is anything but.

Autohead: Rohit Mittal

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/netflix-hidden-gem-92-autohead/.

8/10

Happiness: Todd Solondz

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Todd Solondz's Happiness first premiered at Cannes. I wonder what it was like. Were they shocked by something so nihilistic and uncomfortable that even today it seems like the most cringe-inducing movie ever made? Or did they hate it simply because it dealt frankly with issues like pedophilia? Yeesh...and I thought Solondz's Wiener-Dog (2016) was a tough sit. But I think this remains his most challenging and devastating film. Solondz's menagerie of human grotesques--child molesters, murderers, sadomasochistic perverts--all seem vividly realized and, perhaps most disturbing of all, sympathetic. The most unlikable characters in the film are, respectively, a wife-beater who entraps one of the main characters with an affair, and one of that woman's sisters who wishes she had been raped as a children so her writing could have more authenticity. I'm especially curious with this last one: she seems the progenitor of the self-satisfied and snooty film students in Wiener-Dog. I love how Solondz's biggest beef seems to be with other artists. Not that I blame him. Did you see some of the films that got passed off as great this past New York Film Festival?

9/10

The Parent Trap: David Swift

My, but isn't David Swift's The Parent Trap about 50 gallons of pure, gooey sap? It's about as harmless and inoffensive a family comedy as can be. That's not necessarily a sin, but what kills me about the film is that it's so poorly paced that the proceedings get bogged down in the sugary swamp. At over two hours long, it feels about 30 minutes too long. (How odd, considering that Nancy Meyers' 1998 remake with Lindsay Lohan was exactly as long, but for some reason I remember it feeling a lot shorter. And I watched that film a lot when I was a kid.) Hayley Mills is fine, but after a while her aw-shucks persona becomes overbearing. She had that habit a lot of child actors from the time period had: they talked and behaved like miniaturized adults, not children. No matter how comforting I find the aesthetic of 50s and 60s Disney family films--I think it has something to do with the bright, pastel colors and ubiquitous flat lighting--this film was just a snooze. By the way, did anybody else notice that the scene where Mills plays the guitar was one of the most hilariously faked I-can-totally-play-guitar scenes ever? She doesn't even make chords! She just strums an open guitar and different chords come out!

5/10

The Ardennes: Robin Pront

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-ardennes/94530.

7/10

Bee Movie: Simon J. Smith, Steve Hickner

Watching Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner's Bee Movie was like an out-of-body experience. It was like watching a movie made up entirely of the kind of stupid jokes middle schoolers make with each other while on a sugar high while at a school dance. It's nothing but stupid puns, preposterous world-building, and horrific misuses of terrific actors. (Oh John Goodman...you didn't deserve that...) It doesn't help that Jerry Seinfeld plays a twentysomething bee while being obviously in his early fifties. It would be like getting Sean Connery to voice over a schoolboy. And yet, the film is compulsively watchable, much in the same way that a car pile-up is. You just can't believe that what you're watching is real.

4/10

Extraordinary Tales: Raul Garcia

Raul Garcia's Extraordinary Tales is two things: a passion project and an animated anthology film of five different Edgar Allan Poe stories. As the former, it succeeds brilliantly. There isn't a frame in the whole film that isn't drenched with a deep, whole-hearted love of the subject matter and its creator. But as the latter, it's so-so. There's really no way to properly talk about it without discussing all five parts. So...here we go:

1) The Fall of the House of Usher, as narrated by Christopher Lee. Delicious and atmospheric. But I'm not sure if the art style fit.

2) The Tell-Tale Heart, as narrated by Bela Lugosi. This is easily the best section, partly because it re-purposes a badly degraded audio recording of Lugosi, partly because of the jaw-dropping art inspired by Alberto Breccia. Absolutely stunning.

3) The Facts in the Cast of M. Valdemar, as narrated by Julian Sands. I had never heard of this story before. But thanks to this wonderful segment, aided by old school pulp comic book art, I think I may have to read it immediately.

4) The Pit and the Pendulum, as narrated by Guillermo Del Toro. I wish this was an audiobook: Del Toro is pitch-perfect for the role, the bland 3D CGI feels phoned in.

5) The Masque of the Red Death, as narrated by...nobody. It's mostly silent although Roger Corman makes a guest voice appearance as Prince Prospero. The dark, painterly artistic style is luscious, but I fear that people unfamiliar with the story will understand what's going on.

I could take or leave the narrative segments in-between each story where the ghost of Poe in raven form, voiced by Stephen Hughes, converses with an anthropomorphization of Death.

6/10