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A Complete Unknown (2024)
Unknowable
The film gets one thing absolutely right: Robert Allen Zimmerman from Duluth Minnesota is truly an unknown, having systematically crafted his persona as unknowable. Also, he is one of the most important songwriters of all time.
Did his heart honestly and humbly lead him to Woody Guthrie's hospital bed, and to the attention and recognition of Pete Seeger and of already famous and important Joan Baez, or did he attach himself to them in order to craftily start at the top, "bursting on the scene already a legend"? Maybe both?
In the film, if you blink, you'll miss the unexplored depth and nature of the relationship between Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. "The unwashed phenomenon, The original vagabond, he strayed into her arms; And there he stayed, Temporarily lost at sea, The Madonna was his for free, Yes, the girl on the half-shell, Could keep him unharmed". Where is all this in the film in all its centrally important nature and depth?
Also glossed over, blink and miss the point, the relationship with "Sylvie Russo" (Elle Fanning) in the movie, standing-in for Dylan's real-life muse and lover Suze Rotolo.
He starts revering Woody, Pete and folk music, and he ends his life-overture, 1961-1965 by completely and irreverently betraying and discarding Pete Seeger and the Newport Folk Festival. Was that Dylan evolving into what he became to our greater culture, or was it a user who had no further use for those who gave him his ascent?
And Chalamet? Did he craft a labor of love, or did he find a subject that would make for a profitable film? Or, both? Unknown.
I started by crying incessantly for the first 10-or-so minutes of the film -even though Pete Seeger, in real life, was not there when Dylan first visited Woody Guthrie, and Woody, in real life, never gave Bob his harmonica. By the end of it, the film felt to me like it is really not at all a film about Bob Dylan but, in fact, about Pete Seeger. Who knew... In my opinion, Edward Norton more than deserves the Oscar for inhabiting Pete Seeger.
It was Pete who discovered and was then betrayed by someone who was in fact on his own, with no direction home, A complete unknown, like a rolling stone...
How does it feel, how does it feel?
Who would have Bob Dylan been had he not written Blowing in The Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin', or Mr. Tambourine Man? Or Highway 61 Revisited?
Last thing before the end credits we are told that Bob Dylan is the only songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he did not attend the ceremony. Why? Out of humility? Maybe because he did not recognize it or care for it? Or to make a point in arrogance and superiority? Perhaps all of the above?
Here (2024)
A Stage
I'm thinking that the criteria of evaluating any work must be relevant to the context of the work. When I learned that Here is a 1-hour 40-minutes film shot from one static angle and one static lens, my first thought was "Theater", with the audience stuck in the auditorium in front of the stage. So, my first question was "why?" Obviously, it would be pointless for the Cinema to emulate the Theater, technically, so it must be something else. Not the "Theater" as in "such stuff as dreams are made of", but the "Stage" as in "the world is a stage".
Watching Here from that angle of context I was not expecting literature in the dialog. I was expecting the real world, flaws an'all kinds of imperfections, the real world, to be set right there in front of me, for me to observe. In that respect, Here delivered and then some.
The gang was all there: Zemeckis, Wright, Hanks and Silvestri, flanked by Bettany and Reilly. The CGI ageing and de-ageing of the actors was incredible and the music beautiful. If there was a message it was no more, or less than that our little life is rounded with a sleep while we, as actors, revel like spirits preparing to melt into thin air.
Both my wife and I loved this movie; we thought it was incredible. We must apologize for our impudence to all the wise folk who are trashing it. What do we know... Still, if one were to set one's compass to appropriate expectations in the context of this brilliant idea Zemeckis had, I don't see how Here can fail to please. It was real people, on that stage. Just like us.
The Return (2024)
Top notch performances
A song comes to mind from the seventies with a chorus that would be good advice to the script writers of The Return:
it goes like this:
You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind,
You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger,
And you don't mess around with Homer's verse.
(OK, the ending of the last line was mine, not in the original song)
There are three stars that hold this movie together: The incomparable Juliette Binoche. The unparalleled Ralph Fiennes. And Homer's immortal story even if we only get to watch the end of that story, at the end of Odysseas' ten-year Odyssey.
Uberto Pasolini, Luchino Visconti's nephew, wrote the screenplay and directed. In messing with the script, he proved unworthy of running into a bottega to buy Homer a pack of Italian cigarettes. He missed the entire point of the Odyssey, the conclusion of which he committed to film. The point of the real Epic Poem is that Ithaca is not the homecoming; Ithaca is the journey. It is what the traveler has collected along the way, the wisdom, the knowledge, the experience of life that make him worthy of returning, of finally arriving at Ithaca. Of going home. According to signor Pasolini, the Odysseas in his film is ridden with guilt, insecurity and sadness. And young Telemachus' relationship with his mom, Penelope, and his dad, Odysseas in this telling, belongs on a Brooklyn analyst's couch.
But the performances by Binoche and Fiennes are amazing. Mesmerizing. They save the day, the journey and the movie. When you have these two to tell a story, you don't need editing shots together to tell the story; you just point a standard lens to either actor's face and roll the film (or digital, whatever). Their facial muscles and their eyes tell the story in all its depth. Pasolini's direction must be given some credit for the performances, salvaging him from the Hades his screenplay condemns him to.
It was shot on location on the Greek island of Corfu and the Peloponnese, also some locations in Italy. The real Ithaca is a small island next to and east of the island of Cephalonia right between Corfu and the Peloponnese, so why not shoot "Ithaca", well... in Ithaca? They were right there. Almost. So close.
The cinematography is great, if only too wintery and gloomy to convey Greece, and its spirit, ancient or modern. Thankfully, at least there were olive trees. And I very much doubt that ancient Greeks lived in black Bedouin tents. Odysseas palace in the movie is reminiscent of a medieval fortress. Any set designer worth one's ambition in construction costs would know that the Trojan War took place probably in the 13th century BCE, the end of the Minoan period, so Odysseas' palace should look more like Knossos Palace and less like the prison of Edmond Dantes.
Yes, I know, it's an adaptation. OK, I'll chill. I'll just take away the rare performances that make the two protagonists look and feel like you are watching Penelope and Odysseas rather than Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.
Les Misérables (1998)
For a loaf of bread
Victor Hugo's masterpiece that defined French culture and politics in the 19th century is respectfully presented in this Bille August retelling with Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean and Geoffrey Rush as Javert. Claire Danes is a very well-cast adult Cosette. Cinematography and editing do justice to the subject matter.
It's hard to overstate the place Victor Hugo holds in the Pantheon of French literature, and world literature at that, with works such as Les Miserables and also The Count of Monte Cristo, dealing always with social injustice, tragedy, and redemption.
This production does not provide an experience of cinematic creativity and art, but the perfect casting of Neeson and Rush and their strong performances do justice to the book, allowing its literary art and creativity to shine on the screen.
Has anybody noticed that the imdb Plot Summary states that the events take place "in the midst of the French Revolution"? Oh, dear, no, no, No! Les Miserables is set in the 1832 uprising in Paris against King Louis-Philippe. Not in the 1789 French Revolution against King Louis XVI. Has nobody noticed this bit of misinformation, to change it in the Summary? In Les Miserables it all started when Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread. Maybe the writer of the Plot Summary thought it was cake?
The Day of the Jackal (2024)
The Jackal is a perfection-driven assassin and so is the Series
Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal directed by Fred Zimerman in 1973 and starring Edward Fox as The Jackal was one of the big movies of my youth that I watched again and again. Eddie Redmayne nails The Jackal in this 2024 outing. Redmayne is an absolutely perfect choice for the perfection-driven cool-as-a-cucumber yet vulnerable English assassin for hire. Eddie gives 100% and is more than a worthy successor to Edward Fox for the part. He holds up the part entirely on his own, the character, the determination, the stiff upper lip of the assassin who looks too unassumingly "small" to be so utterly dangerous and effective.
There is a scene where the Jackal test-fires his specially made rifle using a watermelon for a target, like a human head. That entire scene has been filmed in this 2024 version with camera angles, acting, editing to be identical to the equivalent scene in the 1973 film. A masterful homage to Zimerman and Fox, I think.
The plot is different and the expansion of the landscape inevitable as we've gone from a 142-min. Feature film to a 446-min. 10-part series, but everything seems to belong to the plot and it does not feel stretched for time. I enjoyed both the updated story and the invention that the Jackal has a family and a history in the British Army. Everything new in the plot adds to building a more human, deeper and complex character for the anti-hero.
The cop after the Jackal was played low-key by, walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick, Michael Lonsdale in the original classic. Now, the cop after Redmayne is Lashana Lynch. Many have complained that her presence, as an actor of whatever range and acting abilities, ruined the series for them. I choose to look at that as the person who everyone thinks does not belong in her job, yet surprises everyone by being far more competent and intelligent than she was given credit for. Or you can just say Lynch was totally miscast. Your call. I mean... who yagona cast? Colin Firth? Helen Mirren? Angel Coulby? Lashana Lynch is indeed an unlikely choice and maybe that's the point. OK by me.
I'm writing this before watching the season finale but already can't wait for the Second Season. The very existence of a second season tells me that the Season 1 finale won't end the way the 1973 film did.
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Walk under the ladder and grab that black cat off the fake moon stage!
Fly me to the moon is a rom-com, emphasis on "com". The comedy part is served by our laughing at Channing Tatum's refrigerator with a head stiff body and Scarlett Johansson's sixties beauty queen con-artist falling in love with each other in an odd couple template while they are trying to get Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to take a giant leap to the moon, and get the American TV audiences interested, for the ratings and the bucks from Congress.
If you think that's all the laughs there are, you 'd be wrong. There's more. The movie also walks the tightrope of laughing its head off at the conspiracy theory that the Moon landings were faked. Woody Harrelson does the honors as the deep and dark cigarette-smoking-man from the X Files without a cigarette. The plot suggests that the faked landings theory is just laughable, first by stating it, plain and simple, that "dozens of thousands of people involved could never keep that big a secret", and then demonstrating how impossible it would have been to film it as a fake, with everything that could go wrong in the filming, a black cat on the moon for one thing. And there were six moon landings with multiple dozens of thousands of people needing to never breathe a word of it.
I had fun watching it but I had a couple of nagging reservations if not objections. Firstly, after Ed Harris' 1995 performance as Gene Kranz (Flight Director for Apollo 11, 13, 15 and 17), seeing Channing Tatum in the role is kind of an insult to both Gene Kranz and Ed Harris. Second, Why feed more cookies to the fake moon landings nuts? (sorry, sir, ma'am, only one thumbs down is allowed in an imdb review. You must get several usernames to give me several thumbs down).
Greg Berlanti took a very serious, solemn, historic finest hour and used it for laughs. If you're OK with that, I am, and you will enjoy a couple of hours of carefree entertainment plus popcorn with extra butter. It's worth it!
Blitz (2024)
Oliver Twist goes Blitz
In this outing of Steve McQueen's talent, the Bombings of London by the Germans in September 1940 is only a backdrop, a stage for a Dickensian telling of a multiracial family story. Each part is beautifully and expertly shown, yes it's a great film, very well done, and walking away after the end credits I was not sure what I watched. The story and feel of the Blitz? The story of a boy searching for his mother through German bombs in a journey eerily reminiscent of Oliver Twist, including a Fagin type? Or, The story of a boy of an English mother and Caribbean father who experiences racism?
McQueen gave us a film that is all three-in-one. Masterfully done, if only too ambitious. Somewhere between the lines I lost the thread of which of the three stories I am to prioritize. Perhaps that is exactly the point. Not confusion, but plurality -just like real life.
I lived for years in London, only 30 years after the events in the film and East-Londoners seemed to me accurately depicted in the film, both the racists and those who did not care about skin color.
I have read reviews here that complain about "preaching" against racism, in the film. Well, back in 1980 I met one of my idols, French Director Claude Lelouch, who told me the duty of an artist and a filmmaker is to not let people forget what war is. I suppose we mustn't forget what racism is either, so I will not join the camp of critics who complain about McQueen's message.
The acting is top tier, especially by first timer Elliott Hefferman as George.
Most of the CGI is well done if, at times, a little too video-game-ish. Especially the scene of the German bomb chasing us all the way down while we are skydiving on our backs looking up at it a few feet above us, made me feel like Wile E. Coyote searching for my Acme Parachute.
It's a film worth watching, with a bottle of Sam Smith's if you know what that is and you can find it, but I would be remiss if I didn't admit I was hoping my emotions meter would move, and it didn't. Well maybe it did once or twice but the needle didn't reach anywhere near the red.
Yellowstone: Desire Is All You Need (2024)
Suicide or murder
Was it suicide or murder? Sheridan committed suicide by letting Costner walk away and murder the show. It's a crime scene.
Sheridan rose too high, too fast with three shows and lost steam. He should get a couple of the ranch hands to fix his gaskets.
As well as the opening scenes of the episode were written, acted, and shot, we the audience know we were not watching John Dutton's death but Kevin Costner's departure. Real life had junked the illusion we loved.
The rest of the final season is predictable. Prove it was not suicide, and punish the murderers at the Train Station, perhaps. What else could Sheridan possibly do? Maybe he'll surprise us.
Civil War (2024)
The Passing of the torch
Obviously we can't exclude the possibility that several reviews of this movie about an imaginary Civil War might, directly or indirectly be influenced by where the reviewer stands in our current civil cold war.
But I would offer the suggestion that this movie uses current affairs and fears to examine a broader subject: the passing of the torch, from the evolution of generations that caused this civil war to a new generation that wil rebuild in more ways than one. From the old guard, seasoned and tired war photographer Kirsten Dunst to the new guard, young upstart Cailee Spaeny.
The fighting scenes are not as hard to watch as Private Ryan's Normandy sequence but it feels harder because they happen in America and in Washington DC.
The production values and direction are excellent. Character development is where it should be if one considers the characters also metaphorical, not just those of the particular people.
I say, we should have opportunities to look at our "today" lest we forget to think about our "tomorrow", and this movie is in my opinion a worthy contestant for this job.
Constellation (2024)
Quantum whatsamacallit and be done with it.
It could have been so good... Between quantum entanglement, multiple universes... yin and yang timeline possibilities... wow, this could have been a great series (that's why I waited till the end to write this).
Never a good sign when in the last episode the audience starts wondering how the writers and editors will untangle the tangled web they weaved in the increasingly shorter time remaining before the final end credits. The producer(s) and writer(s) just didn't have it. Their vehicle exploded on launch like a pre-Mercury NASA rocket, but they didn't tell us 'till after we had watched all 8 hours...
I even didn't mind the whiff of horror genre; I found it cute, so long as it led to something. It didn't lead to anything that an adult and thinking audience, even a scientifically knowledgeable audience could accept as deserving of their investment in hours of their lives.
Great production values, great ISS, good northern Sweden feel... Good acting, good actors... The few explanations given in the final minutes were lame and incomplete. The last second just makes you angry at the producers and endangers the structural integrity of your TV screen depending on heavy objects within your reach.
Masters of the Air (2024)
Deadly Skies, accurately shown
I waited until I watched the last episode before adding my review, in an attempt to be ..."helpful". Masters of the Air should not be compared to band of Brothers or to The Pacific as each of the three series has completely different historical context and dynamics. Band of Brothers follows the entirety of the US involvement in WWII-Europe from training to D-Day to the Eagle's Nest through the eyes and relationships of one group. The Pacific theater was entirely different with no single group going together form beginning to end. And the war over Europe involved thousands and thousands of crews, flying a time-span limited 25 missions unless they were killed or bailed out into POW land before they reached #25. It is a mistake to compare the three series.
The difference between experiencing the war as a bomber crew or as paratroopers on the ground, is huge. When Dick Winters is warned that walking into Baston they'll be surrounded, he replies "we're paratroopers; we' re supposed to be surrounded". But the bomber air crews had no experience of the concept of ground war. They could not see the enemy in front of them, live. They could not experience their victories or defeats, they could not advance and take territory. They sat in a flying tube and dropped bombs from altitude, and shot at planes visible to them for one or two seconds as they approached at 350 mph to kill them. If the crews were very, very lucky they made it into the group of the few who survived.
The experience of the series is true to that simple fact: you just know that you fly, you die, or you are a POW, or you survive to do it again. It does not make for getting attached to crews and group dynamics, and that is what they audience missed. But the audience got the accurate truth of flying bombers.
Kudos to the series for dedicating almost half the running time to the POW's. Those boys deserved it and they were given their dues by the producers and writers of Masters of the Air.
Kudos to the series for including the Tuskegee Airmen! No telling of the late 1944 and 1945 war over Europe would be complete, or accurate, without the inclusion of our black pilots with the red tails. The best.
But, disappointment that there was no mention that the Tuskegee Airmen were reputed to have never lost a single bomber to enemy fire, and it took decades of frantic searching by certain researchers after 1945 to finally find that they did in fact loose a few bombers. Just a very few.
Also, disappointment that the writers did not invest the three minutes or less of episode time it would have taken to mention and to show that the Tuskegee Airmen shot down the first German Me 262 jet fighters of the war.
Kudos for mentioning the truth of the 1943 The Great Escape (1963) in Stalag Luft 3.
Kudos for the extremely well done and simply realistic portrayal of life aboard B17's during a mission.
Shame about totally and unrealistically underplaying the involvement, skill and heroism of the RAF and its Lancasters. Even before the RAF bombing runs, it was the RAF who served a major blow to Goering's Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, with its Spitfires and Hurricanes two years before the Americans arrived. And it's all well to praise the mighty P-51, but let's not forget that it arrived only after Spitfires had patrolled the skies for almost 4 years.
I repeat myself that it would be a mistake to compare Masters of the Air, The Pacific and Band of Brothers between them. And it would be a mistake to watch with the expectation of entertainment and "action", or one continuous storyline between crews. This is History, and, after all nine episodes, my opinion is that it was produced and photographed and acted very well, very accurately and constituted a respectful salute to the real crews it portrayed, lest we forget.
Prometheus (2012)
Discovering the meaning of "Duh", or not
Color me ignorant but I had no idea what Prometheus the movie was when it popped up on my radar as a space movie to watch, 12 years after it was released. I did know that Prometheus was the Greek mythical person who gave the gift of fire to humanity and was punished for it by the gods, so I said, all right, this might be interesting.
As the titles came up at the very beginning I saw Ridley Scott's name, so I said, wow! This will be good.
Towards the end, and especially in the last couple of minutes I was sure this thing was very connected to Alien, the original Alien which I had watched in its premier in London while I was in Film School, many, many years ago. And then it struck me. This was Alien's prequel, or pre-prequel.
So what lies between Riddley Scott's name in the opening titles and the last scene, a couple of Earth-hours later? The most unbelievably underdeveloped story line, dialog and characters, glossed over by an amazingly good production. A complete waste of space. It's like being served a can of tuna fish and a can opener in a luxurious restaurant.
Absence of Malice (1981)
Signed by Sydney Pollack
Fifteen of the best minutes on a movie reel ever, is timestamps 1:33' to 1:48' in Pollack's Absence of Malice. I sometimes watch those 15 minutes at the end of a long day. It's the "...this ...what the hell is this? ...this inquiry", conducted by Wilford Brimley's Assistant Attorney General for the Organized Crime division of the United States Department of Justice, James J. Wells. In the room among others are Paul Newman, Sally Field and Bob Balaban.
I don't know why I keep watching those 15 minutes but hardly ever re-watch any other footage from this movie. All of it is a good, interesting, well-timed movie, but after you know what happens in so many important moments in the film, re-watching seems redundant, for this movie. That inquiry, though, priceless! It's probably everyone's daydream, to have an inquiry like this, conducted by Wilford Brimley, in their lives, and, in it, be Paul Newman's Michael Gallagher.
Mellinda Dillon gives an excellent performance, Paul Newman is the perfect stoic and innocent figure with relatives in organized crime, Bob Balaban is compelling as the a-hole with power and Sally Field does her job badly as a journalist, and must live with it in the end.
It's a good movie. No popcorn but possibly hot dogs and a beer.
The First Lady (2022)
Michelle Obama is MIA
A great idea very well executed but sank by the choice of Viola Davis as Michelle Obama. The problems with casting Ms. Davis are so many and glaring, her age, stature, expressions and of course the lip thing.
Anderson does a great job as Eleanor, even if she looks nothing like Mrs. Roosevelt and the Mrs. Thatcher accent from The Crown was a puzzling choice of delivery.
Michelle Pfeiffer who "becomes" Betty Ford onscreen, through flawless acting steels the show and saves it. Frankly, this could have been a 4-episode show about Betty Ford with the timeline kept linear.
This is a high values production, great script, well-produced. An excellent show that could have benefited greatly with somebody else as Michelle Obama.
The Crown: Sleep, Dearie Sleep (2023)
A love letter to History
History is, of course felt in the eye of the beholder. A last chapter can close an era but can also hint at the future and the past beyond any particular era. The last scenes of The Crown succeed in establishing a new high bar for how to embed all that in our hearts and minds.
The choice of showing the older Queen, Imelda Staunton, converse with her younger selves, Olivia Colman and Claire Foy is a beautiful device by which to add further depth to her character. Each one of us, a monarch included, consists of all the people we've each been, evolving through our lives.
The last scene with Prince Philip and the Queen discussing their funerals and their place in life, and death, is insightfully done.
But the scene, set in 2005, where the Queen walks past her own future coffin, laid out in the Cathedral, which only she can see, and then from behind the coffin she sees her 1945 young 19-year-old self in her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform is a showstopper, and a heart stopper that brings a tear to the eye. Then the young Princess, in uniform, gives a military salute to the 80-year-old Queen and then smiles at her with approval. That was a brilliant decision by Peter Morgan.
Then, the Queen walks away from us, the full length of the 17 years to come, to the exit of the Cathedral, into the light, with the door closing behind her.
The last scenes of this six-season series are, I think, a perfect testament to the soul of the entire series and of the British Crown, and it will be seen again and again by those who rewatch parts or snippets of it in the future. Well done.
In your beloved Balmoral, to the sound of the Highland Pipes, Sleep, Dearie Sleep.
Oppenheimer (2023)
Chain reaction
We finally watched Oppenheimer with my wife. We could have done so for a few days but she begged to wait until she had readied herself psychologically to endure Christopher Nolan's unrelenting Wall of Sound and plethora of travelling back and forth in time. I guess anyone who ever made it in Hollywood never shied away from having a personal signature. Like, for example, an unrelenting Wall of Sound at a level much higher than the level of the sound of dialog that we are supposed to hear in order for us to understand what the characters are saying, and a plethora of cuts travelling back and forth in time to test our ability to know where in time and at which point in the storyline we find ourselves in, loud bang-bang-boom after loud bang-bang-boom. At least in this outing he helped us with Black & White for the present vs. Color for all of the several points in the past.
After watching it I feel a bit like J. Robert Oppenheimer myself, at the point in his life when he was trying to convince the world that the H Bomb was bad. I stand the same chances of convincing the world that their golden boy, Christopher, is wearing the King's new clothes.
If you straighten out the timeline a bit, add a tiny bit more information about the science at Los Alamos, and slide down the constant-music sound level by 70%, with the dialog level up by some 20%, the movie is not half-bad. In fact, it is quite good.
Casting was really good and Matt Damon as General Groves was one of the very few actors who did stand a chance standing next to Paul Newman's General Groves, from Fat Man and Little Boy (1989). Emily Blunt worried me throughout the movie because her part, as Oppie's wife, was, I thought, very badly written, but she made-up for it in her scene testifying towards the end of the movie. Cillian Murphy was an excellent, excellent Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr.'s Lewis Strauss delivered the perfect tragic figure of a mediocre man turned pathetic lunatic by his hatred of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
I really don't understand how Nolan's choice of standing out from the pack by torturing the ears and brains of his audience has caused said audience such Stockholm Syndrome. It's not personal, dear Christopher; it's only business, and how you duped so many to give it to you. And I only speak as an older man with an excellent stereo system and sensitive hearing.
Given the choice of re-watching the story of the Manhattan project, I, myself, would opt for Fat Man and Little Boy (1989). But don't let me stop you :-) Go ahead. Watch Nolan's Oppenheimer and praise it. Praising Nolan makes one sound cool. "Intelligent filmmaking", some call it. I am not cool by any stretch of the imagination.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
A Haunting in the Cinematography Department
I 've been trying to figure out what's wrong with the Haunting. A perfect cast delivered on target. Good script of a good book, well-timed. I could go on singing the praises of a movie that nevertheless left me disappointed.
So, what was wrong with it? Ultra-wide-angle lenses and camera movement. Elementary, mon cher Hercule.
Cinematography went over the top trying to impress and failed. Too much effort. Let the Panavision Ultra Panatar Lenses do their job, don't feed them steroids. Don't have monsieur Hercule move around with a camera attached to his chest, or belt, or wherever it was attached. It looks like a selfie on drugs.
Not that the smartphone generation noticed. But Kenneth and Haris Zambarloukos should have.
At times, nausea-city. At times sad, if you are a photographer in your golden years which means you were around when David was photographing Peter in the desert.
Golda (2023)
Seriously?
In 1982, A Woman Called Golda featured Ingrid Bergman as Golda Meir. Surprisingly, Ingrid Bergman was nowhere to be seen in that TV movie as it was Golda Meir herself who showed-up in every scene. In 2023, Helen Mirren was tasked with the portrayal of the Mother of Israel and even though filming has been over for some time now I bet Dame Helen must still be seething at the Director, the Writer and the Cinematographer, to the extent, perhaps, of asking herself what possessed her to accept the part, well as she did under the circumstances.
Plus... this movie is about the Yom Kippur war in the Fall of 1973. Nobody in their right mind would think this movie could even pretend to be about Golda Meir and her decades of contribution to the birth of Israel, from the 1920ies to her passing in 1978. It should be called The Yom Kippur War and not Golda.
Other than that, why is Moshe Dayan portrayed as Frankenstein's monster (from Young Frankenstein, 1974, at that, not even the originals)? Was he really a hysterical lunatic or have the filmmakers taken some poetic license?
The angles, lenses and lighting, at times are reminiscent of efforts by film school dropouts. Cinematography is supposed to tell a story. Not, as was done here, attempt to impress by visual weirdness at the absence of any ability to tell a story. One example that is now regrettably etched in my memory is the vertical looking down shot of Golda in her bed smoking, with the smoke she blows from her mouth rising and augmenting like a nuclear mushroom to envelop the camera lens. Woah! Art! Important point being made! Please spare me.
One laughable/infuriating moment is when Golda is shown in the beginning of the movie getting off an airliner that does not exist. A747 Jumbo with one instead of two engine pilons on each wing, each holding two small side-by-side turbines like those of the B-52 bomber. That imaginary design plane was constructed as a movie prop and still sits in some airfield in England. It was used in at least one James Bond movie. Golda towards the end of the movie, watches coffins coming out of that plane, parked on the same spot but this time at night. Hilarious.
Thankfully we had watched A Woman Called Golda (1982) in September, in anticipation of Golda (2023). That was wise on our part, my wife confirms.
I won't bother with further specifics except to lament that we can't expect any better from filmmakers who either have no clue about History or intentionally shelve it.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
WTF
The first 21 minutes is a video game about WWII Nazis hauling archeological treasure for the Fuhrer. They were hoping for the lance that drew Jesus' blood on the cross, but they got a fake instead of the real one, yet, they had no idea that another of the artifacts in their possession could find holes in time and do the time travel thing. It's the Antikythera mechanism! An AI de-aged-for-1945 Indy keeps the breakneck pace of the video game going.
The next 25 minutes are also a video game gone awry, that's trying to bring the funny, but Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins would find nothing funny in this mess.
The minutes roll on relentlessly and, now, we are chasing the Antikythera mechanism. The real one was discovered in 1901-2 in a Roman shipwreck 130 feet underwater near the island of Antikythera estimated at approximately 70-130 Before Common Era, and all of it was found in one lump -and nobody knows when it was constructed or by whom. The movie artifact is supposed to be a perfectly preserved half part of the mechanism, constructed by ancient mathematician Archimedes in 260 BCE, discovered in 1905 at 130 and at 260 feet, with the Indy-travel-map showing our heroes searching off Athens instead of at the real discovery location... Indy must find the other half of the machine but a Nazi wants to travel back to 1939, change history and have Nazi Germany win WWII. Indy has a Greek diver friend with a boat off Athens but his friend with a boat off Athens turns out to be Spanish. And, the Aegean Sea is referred to as an ocean.
They find the thing in an underwater cave full of eels instead of the usual snakes, fly through time in a Nazi plane, land in 260 BCE instead of 1939 CE, they meet Archimedes during a Roman siege of Syracuse speak perfect modern Greek to him, he responds in perfect modern Greek, Indy wants to stay but his goddaughter punches him unconscious and flies him back to Manhattan, circa 1969 where Marion stops the divorce proceedings and brings the groceries.
Are there any questions as to why Steven did not direct this one?
I was 23 when I saw Raiders. I'm 65 now. If I live another 23 years to 88 it will be a nice book ends for a life lived with Indy. I have too much respect for what Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas brought to us with Indy's adventures so I can't bring myself to cry out WTF about this last Indy we'll ever see... (but, hey... WTF)
The Blacklist: Raymond Reddington (No. 00): Good Night (2023)
Best Mom
The question, finally answered.
Red calls Agnes, one last time and gives her good advice on how to deal with a boy she likes. Agnes says "Thank you for being such a mom...".
"yeah... I guess I just can't help it..." responds Raymond Reddington.
Any questions? Watch Season 8, Episode 21, again, carefully this time. Thirty-five minutes into the episode.
Just one of the many hints over the years.
Raymond Reddington could not possibly be taken, by the FBI, his enemies, life, or death Himself. He chose the most amazingly brave, yet truly natural and fitting way to end the chapter that ended all chapters. I cannot imagine a more fitting way for him to say Goodnight.
So, what's on TV now?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Broken Circle (2023)
Not Trek
I loved the return to TOS standards and principles in Season 1. This first Episode of Season 2 brought tears of despair to my eyes.
So, the show starts with Pike getting out of town to go to an important something or other at the edge of Federation space, which, in a shuttle, will take him two and a half days. The Delta quadrant is 80 years away at top warp, but a shuttle can make the edge of the Alpha quadrant in two and a half days, see?
Then, Spock steals the Enterprise, just like Picard and Riker stole the Titan a few months ago, 100 years in the future.
They arrive at a planet that looks quite a bit like Avatar's Pandora moon and the action is an ...homage to Star Wars, I suppose. Keep those explosions coming and keep the kids interested. You gotta love how when a space ship is hit it goes "down" nose first like a ship at sea. And all this fire in space... where des it find the oxygen?
The dialog is so 21st century street slang, it's entertaining.
The Klingons would have Warf foaming at the mouth and our favorite Vulcan has emotional issues.
Carol Kane was laughing a lot, but I think she was laughing at the show rather than whatever the character was supposed to be laughing at.
Why are these guys today trying to reimagine Star Trek as something that it isn't?
The only reason to watch this episode is after the end of it and before the end credits, for the beautiful dedication to Nichelle Nichols.
The Blacklist: The Morgana Logistics Corporation (No. 167) (2023)
Still need an answer
The ten seasons of the Blacklist have provided a decent escape for around 22 evenings a year, in a TV show that is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the term, but not bad either. How will it end on the July 13, 2023 final double episode?
The Morgana Logistics Corporation episode on June 8, 2023 has confirmed that not only Red is winding down and closing-up everything to do with his professional life of crime and his life's work, but he is doing so by offering himself as a blacklister for the Task Force to go after without them knowing the crime organization(s) they are taking down is actually his this time, not one of an enemy or competitor of his.
But the real answer The Blacklist owes to its viewers of ten years is the one it's always been: Who is Red? Elizabeth Keen's departure from the show two seasons ago threw a monkey wrench into the narrative that was leading to that answer. The showrunners may have hoped that the last two seasons changed direction enough for the viewers to have forgotten that question. But we haven't.
If Red disappears, retires, dies or whatever without answering the question of who and what Elizabeth Keen was to him, and who is he, where did he come from? Not revealing why did he do anything and all that he did in the first eight seasons will be a great disappointment if not an insult to the viewers.
Who was Red to Elisabeth Keene? Who was Elizabeth Keen for Red? That's the only reason I am watching the last episodes and I fear we will not get that answer. I don't know that the showrunners have even come up with an answer!
Star Trek: Picard: The Last Generation (2023)
Tears of joy
Season 3's first 4-or so-episodes had me in tears of despair but they righted this ship, and by episode 9 I was young again, roaming the galaxy with my favorite crew in the Galaxy class Enterprise D.
Episode 10, The Last Generation (of the Borg) left me in tears of joy. Well done, Terry Matalas! We now know what the Enterprise G looks like and who is in command for what absolutely needs to become the next Star Trek series.
The "D" crew, together again, evolved, wiser, beautiful together in well-earned retirement at a poker table. Data finally got his greatest wish only to discover... well...
You thought Q died? How linear of you! Plus there's a young Picard to continue as the defendant in the Trial of Humanity.
But what's Guinan's Ten Forward Bar in LA without Guinan? Where was Whoopi? Where was Janeway for that matter?
And ...wait. Didn't Borg Queen Agnes request provisional membership to the Federation in Season 2's finale, for the Borg to stand the Guardians at the Gate watching out for the new "unclear" threat? What happened to that? Plot Black Hole? Different Borg faction? Alice Krige's Season 3 Queen though was phenomenally evil, even Shakespearean.
Fan Service requires fans. And something worthy of fans need not break the formula, or forget what got the fans in the first place, therefore even calling the wonderful last episodes "fan service" is kinda dumb imho. I'm a fan and I loved it!
The Son (2022)
Despair
Whether or not this is about behavior, due to some degree of mental illness, both parents and step-mother, especially the father, seem completely out of touch with their son's very real and obvious psychiatric and emotional problems to the degree of appearing themselves part of the problem, if not even the trigger of the escalation.
But I am not sure what the movie was telling us? Somewhere between script, direction and editing the whole thing got either diluted to indecisiveness of message, or confusion about the moral we were supposed to walk away with.
Even the actors seemed confused as to how they were supposed to deliver their parts.
It could be argued that real life is like that, but I've had 64 years of it and I would disagree.
The kid had real psychiatric issues and he was even explaining them to his parents, who were competitive go-getters by nature and they seemed to be in total denial of their son's reality.
I think the movie was a good idea badly executed.
Star Trek: Picard: No Win Scenario (2023)
Prepare to gimme a break: Engage!
Dear Cinematographer, Mr. Crescenzo G. P. Notarile, sir, respectfully: What the (!) is going on with the light? Can YOU see anything when you view what you've done? How is it possible that everybody on post-production was OK with what they were seeing on their monitors? Or, what they were not seeing to be more accurate.
Is this cinematography a joke? Do you hear anyone laughing? You have another 6 episodes to air. Quick, push them through a software that increases brightness, seeing you cannot fire Mr. Crescenzo G. P. Notarile to shoot it all again with an actual cinematographer.
As for Episode 4 itself, somewhere between heavy action, and scenes languishing down memory lane and scenes that take their leisurely time to do some philosophical self-exploration, let's all remember, in case we are ever called to be starship captains, that when you have to divert all power from everywhere to life support to gain a few more hours of breathing, you must still, nevertheless, supply power to the Holodeck in case anyone wants to reconnect with family members they didn't know they had.