peteg's blog

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

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The big pile of Oscar noms sucked me in at long last: surely there must be something to it! But no, it's heavily referential — obviously The Matrix but more Interstellar drowned in Marvel Cinematic Universe aesthetic — and only amounts to timeworn gesticulations at the importance of the nuclear American family (however that is constructed).

A. O. Scott: more references and a thumbs-up.

Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

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More Samantha Morton completism. She's fetchingly expressive here as the mute muse to lead Sean Penn's blustery but self-aware most-excellent depression-era jazz guitarist Emmet Ray. Both got Oscar noms, and she made me wonder if she wasn't a century late for the silent era. It's a straightforward semi-crooked biopic of that fictional jazz guitarist. Directed by Woody Allen and therefore highly dependent on a tolerance for his schtick, particularly his repetition humour. James Urbaniak, Uma Thurman, Anthony LaPaglia support.

Roger Ebert: three-and-a-half stars: "... I am reminded of a pet cemetery marker in Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven, which reads: 'I knew love. I knew this dog.'" Janet Maslin. Stephanie Zacharek.

Two for Joy (2018)

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Samantha Morton completism. A listless, somewhat gentle (except for the climactic part) trip to the beach where traumatic events put the family's earlier traumatic events into some kind of perspective. Billie Piper tries to inject some chaos. It reminded me of the Fassbender-in-Essex Fishtank. Not enough is asked of Morton.

Peter Bradshaw. Prompted by an interview at the Guardian with Danny Leigh.

Cookie's Fortune (1999)

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Altman completism. It strikes me now that he was something of a David Lynch of the south. This one is a ramble around Holly Springs, Mississippi. Pity the town where Liv Tyler is the only piece of tail, and her only suitors are Chris O'Donnell (Robin!) and Lyle Lovett. Patricia Neal is unrecognizable as the titular character.

Roger Ebert: four stars and a lot of love. Janet Maslin.

Alvin Purple (1973)

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Prompted by Luke Buckmaster's rewatch in 2014. An early-1970s Ozploitation sex farce, and even shallower than that suggests as it's a real bitza — there are sex-crazed schoolgirls and neighbours (Jacki Weaver gets her kit off, as do many others), waterbeds, varieties of shysterism, a court case, some random observations about psychology as a profession and a science, and a somewhat mystifying final car chase and skydive (!) that brings the central character to a nunnery. Only in Melbourne! I've never been persuaded by Graeme Blundell as an actor (let alone a sex object or a mock sex object); he did OK in Don's Party by channeling his inner (natural?) ineptitude. There is the odd moment when he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself however. Peter Cummins (the father in Storm Boy) has a minor role as a reactionary taxi driver.

More details than you ever wanted to know at Ozmovies.

Deepti Kapoor: Age of Vice. (2023)

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Kindle. A bum steer from Dwight Garner; he's trending to more miss than hit. Marketed as India's answer to The Godfather — and what a marketing effort it's been! — and so soon after the age of anger.

This book is long, its referents are exhaustively exhausting, the author's execution and continuity patchy. Let's not mention the dialogue, the overuse of brands and (my favourite) the overly specific pharmacopoeia. Is this Shantaram in world-class (so much world class) Delhi? Not really; it's more Trishna wanting to be Breaking Bad. The inert, touristic set piece on a deserted beach in Goa put me in mind of Ben Affleck, bloated and broken on the shore, powers dissipating, with shades of (dominant) grey. There are way too many confessions — more than your average no-I-expect-you-to-die! James Bond — and it attempts subtlety with a Star Wars I-am-your-father-Luke sotto voce. Basically if you've ever met a trope you'll meet it again here.

Goodreads. Oh no, she intends to write two more. The rating there has slid as the masses have filed in with their opinions. The White Tiger? Could be. Literary? Nope. Would Puzo be concerned? Not at all.

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

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A strangely airless American horror/satanism period piece set at wintry West Point in the Hudson Valley in New York State in the 1830s (reminiscent of The Crucible and so forth). The stellar cast — Christian Bale in the lead, Timothy Spall, Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Gillian Anderson, and I did enjoy Robert Duvall's professor of esoteric literature and Harry Melling's Edgar Allan Poe — just can't achieve liftoff.

Jeannette Catsoulis: contrary to her, I don't think there's anything supernatural in this. Glenn Kenny: contrary to him, I don't think the final movement redeemed anything. This is not one of Bale's finer outings.

White Noise (2022)

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In two sittings as I didn't get it. I haven't read Don DeLillo's book and am now unlikely to. I'm sympathetic to Greta Gerwig's writer/director schtick (Little Women, Lady Bird, etc.) and her acting here is OK. I wasn't so sure about Adam Driver. Gerwig's main squeeze Noah Baumbach adapted the material and directed; it's lush but pointless.

A. O. Scott. The "mock profundity" is tedious.

Nashville (1975)

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One of Altman's classics. Keith Carradine got an Oscar for his song.

Roger Ebert: four stars at the time and another four stars in 2000 as a "great movie". Vincent Canby.

The Menu (2022)

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Somewhat prompted by Jason Di Rosso's interview with director Mark Mylod a while back. He wasn't enthused. Escort Anya Taylor-Joy is supposed to take it to exclusive chef / cult leader Ralph Fiennes but there's only so much that bug-eyes can do. As car thieves everywhere I go know, the only solution is to set it all on fire. John Leguizamo struggles with cringey spinelessness. Nicholas Hoult, what was the point. And so on.

Jeannette Catsoulis got right into it.

Ned Beauman: Venomous Lumpsucker. (2022)

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Kindle. Sometimes you just want to read something with a plot, some characters, a little pace and verve, maybe even a point of view. You'd even settle for some magpie storytelling where vast foraging, cracked perspectives and too many zingers make it easy to forgive the shortcomings.

I feel a bit bad re-reading what I said about Beauman's Madness is Better than Defeat: it was better than all that. Here he returns after a few too many years with a marginally saner take on green capitalism, specifically extinction credits. Amongst the many random jags are: short squeezes (GameStop is name checked), intelligent animals (initially provoking an oh no, but deftly deployed: the lady is looking for a species with sufficient intelligence to consciously take revenge on the humans who are wiping them out), game theory for fish (these lumpsuckers supposedly engage in retribution based on some risk assessment), Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, seasteading (canonically pilloried back in 2016 by Hermicity: "We now have the technology to live completely alone. Hermit cities powered by DAOs on the Ethereum blockchain." / "Solar powered drones delivering soylent to hermits, ran as a DAO on the Ethereum blockchain!"), BREXIT (the U.K. is now the Hermit Kingdom), a very dodgy take on the preservation of information (as a physical principle) and consciousness simulation on whatever (cf Permutation City).

Does it cohere? No it does not. Does that matter? Not at all. And isn't it time he got a movie deal? This is at least as good as any of the recent James Bond plots.

Goodreads. Wai Chee Dimock spoilt it at the New York Times. And so on.

Much later: this got Beauman the Arthur C. Clarke award for 2023.

The Assistant (2019)

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Di Rosso interviewed Australian writer/director Kitty Green a while back; I caught an excerpt he recycled recently. Apparently the first of the #metoo movies, this is a day in the life of Julia Garner, assistant to a never-shown, often-heard Weinstein-like boss. She's shown to be a bit naive, not only for expecting HR to address her concerns but also by copping the hospital passes of her fellow assistants (two blokes). The whole show looked entirely horrible to me, especially the undercurrent of everyone just doing what they have to to get ahead in the movie industry.

Jeannette Catsoulis made it a critic's pick at the time. It was one of Dana Stevens's best for 2020.