Movies Watched The Week of 7/12 - 7/18

Welcome back folks to a new addition of my self indulgent trip into cinema.  We got another hefty motherfucker of a week for you guys, and it’s a doozy.  Not a repeat of genre in sight.  Lot’s of good stuff here of varying degrees.  Got two absolute masterpieces though, so anything else is bound to seem slight next to them.  So sit back and enjoy gang. 

Blue is The Warmest Color (July 12th, 2015)

Director: Abdel Kechiche

Starring: Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux

I have not had the greatest luck finding French cinema that I am fond of.  It’s not for a lack of trying.  I took a French cinema class back at school and only enjoyed 1 or 2 out of a 15 or so film course.  Even since, I haven’t found much outside that I’ve been a fan of.  But with all the hype and love and hullabaloo thrown at the feet of Blue Is The Warmest Color, I felt like I had to see it, if only to see why people freaked the fuck out that it didn’t get nominated for Best Foreign Picture at that years Oscars.  Being 3 hours long though, it took me a while to get the interest up on a day that I had the time to spend 3 hours on a movie.  And that day, was today.  So hold onto your asses, get in touch with that French Cinema professor and tell him that I was pretty much in love with this flick.  Simply put, it was a movie that I connected to and felt a realism to it.  It is a love story with no big histrionics, no big deaths or silly plot twists.  Just one girl growing up and coming into her own, emotionally and sexually.  Adele (Adele) is a young girl in high school who is flirting with romance when she sees Emma (Lea), a striking woman with blue hair that ignites an unknown lust in her for the same sex.  What follows is a years long journey into their relationship and Adele’s maturation, seeing how the relationship isn’t perfect at all except for the sex and how Adele deals with being unmoored for the first time as an adult.  It’s 3 hours long, so it gets into the nitty gritty with these ladies, putting us right into their shoes and see the relationship bloom and falter.  We know these girls and it really makes a difference, because we can see the reasons why they get together and understand it.  This isn’t some typical bullshit where they don’t really mesh despite the scripts insistence on them loving each other.  It’s a movie that’s really just talking, getting to know one another.  But there’s also some insanely explicit sex scenes that will throw off the most untrained eyes.  You can make the argument that the first sex scene is too long, and you kinda wouldn’t be wrong.  But it’s needed to show that for all their personality traits that don’t mix, they share an intense physical connection.  That when the sheen of Adele’s adoration for her fades, Emma doesn’t give Adele what she wants anymore.  But they are blinded by lust, and it leads to some real emotional pain.  And this is all dealt with in a kinda subtle look at class, as Emma comes from a well to do liberal family of artists and Adele comes from a middle class blue collar conservative family.  It’s this massive schism in personality and background and life goals and the like that cause the problems. It’s really quite remarkable, and it’s a hell of an achievement.  I didn’t give it a perfect 10 if only because I feel it coulda been trimmed a smidge, just to heighten the pace.  Maybe only a minute or two off of it coulda helped, but as is it fucking moves.  Having seen it, it isn’t too much of a surprise that I like it because it shares some serious DNA with Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy.  Just a realistic take on love that doesn’t go big.  Blunt, honest, beautiful and tragic, this is a masterpiece.   

Rating: 9.5/10

The Sword In The Stone (July 12th, 2015)
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Starring: Rickie Sorensen, Karl Swenson, Sebastian Cabot, and Junius Matthews

This seemed like it really should be a Disney flick tailor made for me.  It’s a retelling of the King Arthur story, as done by the Mouse House.  And it has a goofy wizard as a character.  But sadly, that is not the case as this is thus far the worst Disney movie I’ve seen.  Note, I haven’t seen them all by a mile and this is still good.  But it feels short and incomplete.  Shockingly so.  For a story about Arthur learning how to be a better person and leader and such before reaching his apparent destiny isn’t a bad idea for a Disney flick.  But what they do isn’t really fitting within that at all, as it’s a few silly scenes that don’t amount to much that leads into an abrupt ending.  It’s like 5 minutes left in the movie when he gets the sword, becomes king, doubts being king and is convinced otherwise by Merlin.  It ends essentially with Merlin promising that it’ll be cool and hinting at the future with the round table and such, that he’ll train him and such.  But it’s kinda unsatisfying as a whole.  Now, the whole may not be perfect but it’s got that old school Disney charm when ole Walt was still alive.  It’s well animated, has some good humor and tunes, and is kinda charming in it’s shabbiness.  It probably would work well for kids as a primer on the King Arthur mythos if they so desire to further look into it.  On it’s own it’s ok and has some problems though.

Rating: 8/10

The Thin Blue Line (July 13th, 2015)
Director: Errol Morris

The Jinx came out of nowhere this year of 2015 and took the world by storm.  An HBO documentary miniseries chronicling the crazy life of Robert Durst, a man who claimed he was the unluckiest man on Earth with all the murder that followed him in life.  And it actually may have made a real life impact, potentially uncovering evidence that may put Durst away for good.  And all of this has a precursor, one of the most important documentaries of all time, The Thin Blue Line.  This looks into the case of a 1976 murder of a policeman after a routine traffic stop and the man convicted of the crime, who may not have done it.  Much like The Jinx, this shows the ways in which the system is fucked.  Or rather how the system can get fucked because people are such pieces of shit who are more concerned with looking good than doing good work.  An innocent man may have been sentenced to death because the politicos didn’t want to try a 16 year old for murder and picked an easier target, and then railroaded the guy to get the case closed.  It’s insane how this falls through the cracks. And much like The Jinx, it reveals some twists at the end that lead to some real world changes.  This lead to the case against the wrongfully convicted man overturned, giving him his freedom. And not only is it a massive piece of work as a story, Morris putting this together like a master, it had real world import in a mans life and in the documentary genre.  Docs weren’t made like this in 1988 and everything since then owes a real debt to this movie.  The way it’s put together to be more cinematic than a verite style and the recreations, it was a real lightning strike in cinema.  It’s reach has extended to this day and it’s import can’t be overstated.  Neither can it’s entertainment value, as it’s a riveting story.  A true masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10

Ant-Man (July 16th, 2015)

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, and Corey Stoll

July has come and with it has come Ant-Man, the second MCU movie of the year, the first after Age of Ultron and the start of the long wait before Captain America: Civil War in April of 2016.  And after such the massive scale of Ultron, the MCU scales down significantly to tell the story of Scott Lang (Rudd) and how he takes over the mantle of Ant-Man.  This isn’t even really an action movie for the most part, it’s a heist flick.  Being a Marvel movie it still has to end with an action scene.  But even that isn’t too crazy.  Just two guys fighting as they change size throughout.  The heist in question is enacted not by Scott Lang, but by Hank Pym (Douglas).  Pym created a particle that allows people to change size drastically.  But he hid it away to stop the military from getting it and destroying the world.  30 years later, his mentee Darren Cross (Stoll) is about to discover it himself when Hank decides Cross’ research has to be destroyed.  So he enlists cat burglar Lang to help break into the lab with the help of the Ant-Man suit.  It’s a decent enough heist movie, with the stakes of the heist clear.  And the way they go about it is unique enough, with the small scale and use of ants.   On the performance side, Rudd is ok as Lang.  He isn’t bad but he really doesn’t have much to do.  His character arc pretty much occurred before the movie starts, where he was a con trying to go straight.  Now he’s going straight and that’s about it.  Douglas is great as the guilt ridden, crotchety Pym.  There’s a scene set in the 80s that de-ages him to that eras look and it’s disturbing how good it is.  Lilly is also good as Hope, Pyms daughter who has alot of issues with her dad and doesn’t like that Lang is using the suit and not her.  She has an arc and it works.  The weakest link is Stoll, not surprising because he’s playing a Marvel villain.  His reasoning for villainy is sort of glossed over, just sort of thrown out quick and not really given any weight.  He feels insulted by Pym not showing him the Ant-Man tech and therefor decides to do it on his own.  But then the end has a line where it seems like he’s supposedly been going mad because he’s been using the particles he created.  Which isn’t really shown at all in the movie.  Hell, he kills a guy relatively quickly in the movie.  That’s kind of a problem with the movie.  It tells us stuff that happened and what we should be feeling, but it doesn’t really land.  I’m not gonna say if Edgar Wright stayed on it would be better, but I can say that the problem of scrambling to make the movie quickly after he left didn’t help things.  It feels a tad rushed, like a first draft.  It’s not as funny as it can be and wants us to think it is, nor is it as thrilling as it wants to be.  And the visuals aren’t bad, but they have no oomph.  It’s a bit of bland direction, different than the dripping with personality Iron Man 3 and Guardians of The Galaxy.  Luckily it’s never bad though, just a bit ragged.  For a movie that is supposed to be focused on this story and not setting up other movies, it has one scene that is just shoehorned in and doesn’t really make much sense that is just set up.  It’s still fun, but it really feels like a missed opportunity.  It isn’t as bad as the first Captain America or Thor, but it doesn’t really hit any highs of the others.  Hopefully Rudd works better in Civil War, having gotten the intro out of the way.  

Rating: 8/10

State of Siege (July 18th, 2015)
Director: Costa Gavras
Starring: Yves Montand, Renato Salvatori, O.E. Hasse, and Jacques Weber

Another French flick this week, Oh My! And it’s not the typical French movie (or typical to me, thanks college).  It’s kind of a docudrama, the kind of movie Paul Greengrass would make today in the vein of United 93 or Captain Phillips.  This flick is set in an unnamed Latin American country in the 1970s, where the CIA has sunk it’s claws into the land.  They want to stop communism and will do anything and let their handpicked politicos do anything to keep them out and their choices in office.  So a group of revolutionaries decides to fight back, and kidnap some in power.  One of whom is a CIA spook, a man involved in the power upheavals and the torture and murder of suspected communists.  When the get him in a room, they try to get him to admit his role in things, all the while the US and the government are out trying to find him.  This isn’t some typical movie, where there’s a ramping up of tension and action scenes to make this blood pumping, or character moments to care for someone so they don’t die.  This is really more a look at two systems at play and how they clash, how they work and fail.  We get to see how cold and vicious the CIA side is, killing without care.  There’s the revolutionaries, who are pretty inept and petty and just as bureaucratic.  In the kidnapping, they accidentally shoot the CIA agent in the arm.  It’s really more a documentary then a narrative with arcs and emotions.  It’s a fairly cynical movie to, as it ends with a big fuck you to the revolutionaries as the game just keeps marching on and people are disposable.  It’s really interesting to watch and really well put together.  The acting is excellent and the visuals are very unflashy but not amateurish.  It’s a really well put together movie and another movie to help rehabilitate my feelings towards French cinema. 

Rating: 9/10

Something Wild (July 18th, 2015)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, and Ray Liotta

It’s honestly ridiculous that Demme would go on to follow up this movie with Silence of The Lambs.  Not because this is a bad movie or that Demme showed some shit skills in it, but it’s so diametrically opposite of this movie that it doesn’t really compute.  This is a light, eccentric little movie that could be argued is the first manic pixie dream girl movie.  Daniels plays a buttoned up white collar man who gets caught up in the antics of Griffith, the manic pixie dream girl.  But she is much crazier than the ones to follow, as she’s a drunk and super whorish and is a criminal.  And for the first half of this movie, it’s just a little romantic comedy with an edge and some eccentric moments, but nothing to crazy.  But then the movie takes a tonal left turn with the intro of Liottas character.  I won’t spoil it, but he adds some real danger to the movie and makes things a little tense.  The cast is all good, with Liotta being the standout.  Demme shows off some real strong visual sensibility, as well as getting good work out of the cast.  But most impressive is his hand at making the tonal shifts feel right and not ridiculous.  There’s nothing too amazing or masterful, but it’s just a slight and entertaining little rom com.

Rating: 8/10






Top Movies

1. The Thin Blue Line
2. Blue Is The Warmest Color
3. State of Siege
4. Ant-Man
5. Something Wild
6. The Sword In The Stone

- Tom Lorenzo