I caught Don’t Look Up at the Alamo Drafthouse last week, and if anything 2.5 stars is generous. Social satire is tricky, because it needs to be absurd while still having characters behave in a fundamentally believable way. I didn’t believe 90% of what the characters in Don’t Look Up did. Do I believe that some people would live in denial? Sure. Do I believe that literally no one would take this seriously, including the New York Times? No.
It felt less like a coherent movie and more like McKay’s frustration about covid and climate change devolving into a rant. I get it, I’m frustrated about those things too, but watching this movie was a bit too much like that one friend’s Facebook profile that is nothing but angry political links, memes, and commentary.
On a more positive note, can we talk about how wonderful Nightmare Alley was?
I really want to check out the original. There were some character motivations that seemed a bit murky (why did things end like that for Pete?) that might be clearer in an alternate version. Sad to say the weakest part of the movie for me was Bradley Cooper, who could have fleshed out Stanton a bit more IMO.
That said, how wonderful to see del Toro move from Victoriana into Art Deco! (With just enough Crimson Peak nods to placate hard core stans) And god bless Cate Blanchett for having so much fun with what could have been a very one note noir femme fatale. And Willem Defoe for eating off of Cooper's plate during the geek monologue. And Toni Collette for never not digging all the way in on a complicated woman.
I might have been too sympathetic to DON'T LOOK UP because I found myself sympathetic to its sense of frustration and agreeing with what it's trying to say. (Plus that running gag Jennifer Lawrence dwelling on the general charging her for snacks got me every time. Comedy. McKay has some experience there!)
The unexpected flip of the pristine, almost cozy carnival setting transitioning into off-kilter and menacing Art Deco splendor in the second half struck me as the biggest stylistic coup of del Toro's career to date.
How Pete dies is EXTREMELY important in the original, because it affect Stan greatly for reasons I won’t divulge. And what was missing for me in Nightmare Alley is that it isn’t *enough* like Crimson Peak, which is so unhinged and my favorite GDT. I wanted some of that oomph.
Speaking of Alamo Drafthouse, that's where I caught LICORICE PIZZA ... in glorious 70mm. Unfortunately I'm now done with movies in theaters again until this Omicron surge is past. I went so far as to get a refund for the tickets I bought a month ago for a brunch screening of THE APARTMENT on New Year's Day, though that one hurt.
I really enjoyed LICORICE PIZZA, especially that truck scene, but did anyone else feel like PTA was deliberately trying to evoke TAXI DRIVER with that campaign thread? Glad that was a bit of a red herring.
I did not really get TAXI DRIVER vibes from it, and didn’t see it as a red herring so much as another piece of episodic puzzle for Alana, who’s trying to find some new, meaningful avenue to direct her life down.
That episode was definitely an important attempt by Alana to change her life, but I felt that Anderson also deployed some parts of that episode as a way to create certain expectations in the viewer that would distract from where it was really going. A little misdirection and sleight-of-hand.
Oh, I definitely got TAXI DRIVER vibes from that stretch, especially since I didn't know who Joel Wachs was at the time. But I interviewed him yesterday for GQ. He's real and a delightful interview. He also said the main difference between the movie and his real life is he never really had a boyfriend in this period.
What a great slate of reviews to end the year on! Unfortunately, each star for Licorice Pizza is a searing reminder that cinemas here in Quebec have been shuttered indefinitely (absolutely ghoulish of the new variant to ascend around the release of a new PTA). Keeping hope alive that cases will be under control by the time Drive My Car arrives on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
I've been tuned out of Adam McKay features since The Big Short, which I found too self-important for my taste (this is too harsh, but I remember it as the celeb Imagine video but for dumbing down 2008?), sounds like not much has changed... I'm curious how it would play now, taste for this sort of thing has shifted a lot since 2015.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you both Keith and Scott!
I'm with you on The Big Short. One of the things that I thought Michael Lewis's book did better was to point out that these guys weren't just smart, but also lucky in their timing. The old economics saw is that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent- there were probably other people with the same insight who went broke before their bets could pay off.
Actually, it's the thing that bothered me the most about the movie adaptation: McKay clearly wanted to make a movie with hiss worthy villains and virtuous heroes, but the truth is much murkier. It's a much longer, more boring story about banking regulations being slowly rolled back over 50 years, and short sighted Wall Streeters who are paid millions to be short sighted and not think about potential consequences.
Interesting, I haven't read the book, but I suspect some things just aren't meant to be adapted. That said, I'm not sure a story about short sellers necessarily has to be more boring - The Wolf of Wall Street delivers that sort of perspective (although it doesn't go into laborious detail) and I find it exhilarating!
I dug the humor and general vibe of RESURRECTIONS--the whole first hour rips--but once the plot revved up and the action got going it lost me a bit in the chaos. I'm not sure it goes anywhere this franchise hasn't gone before, and the specific developments it trots out struck me as kind of shrug-worthy. Likewise the action set pieces, which (at first blush) didn't even rise to the fluidity and distinctiveness of the APU battles in REVOLUTIONS, much less RELOADED's highway chase or the groundbreaking stuff in the first film. But I respect the effort enough (plus I'm confident I missed quite a bit) to take another stab at it in January.
RE Licorice Pizza -- I think the film has more of a narrative arc than people give it credit for. Throughout the story, Alana feels like Gary lowers her social cred, so keeps looking for higher and higher status men and careers to make her feel valuable. Gary counters this by trying to raise his own status through his antics and business ventures. When Alana finds out how Benny Safdie's fear of losing face ruins a relationship with someone he loves, Alana realizes that she's essentially doing the same thing. Gary sees this for himself when Alana's missing from the pinball palace's opening night. And that's what makes the climax such a beautiful thing.
I just saw Licorice Pizza for the second time...and Alana is definitely 28 years old, not 25, and it is her looming countdown to 30 that motivates most of her choices in the film. When Gary first asks her age, Alana has a slight hesitation before saying, "...25." On a second viewing, it is clear that she is making this number up. Soon after, at home with her family, she goes off on a tirade about how her sisters think she is going nowhere even though she's almost 30, which really means Alana fears she is going nowhere when she's almost 30. Later, when Jon Peters asks her age, she answers, "28" before remembering her fiction and correcting, "I mean 25." The first time I saw this, I almost thought I had misheard the line, but accidentally adding three years to one's age is not a mistake human beings make. So we have a woman pushing 30 who is desperately trying to find a future for herself, who finds that future in a not-old-enough 15-year-old, so pushes against that by trying to find other futures: through a successful and old-enough (but not Jewish enough) actor; through acting and an older actor; through volunteer work, etc. I know from experience that being 28 is very different than 25, when you can still be screwing around. But by 30, you are supposed to have your life together, to be an adult, so by 28 you are actively trying to make that happen. For Alana, in the end, the gravitational pull to Gary, and his many truly positive qualities (which are vividly highlighted by her harrowing dinner with Wachs - who has a thousand good intentions and zero honesty - and his boyfriend), is too strong to resist. Although I truly enjoyed this film, and it is in my top 10 of the year, I have deep misgivings about the choice of Gary's age. Couldn't he have been 17 and very little have been altered? 15 is just SO young, and 13 years at that age is SUCH a huge age difference. I'm not sure what the film is saying about it, and I'm also not sure what it is saying that almost every review I've read lists Alana's age as 25 and ignores the implications of her actual age.
I caught Don’t Look Up at the Alamo Drafthouse last week, and if anything 2.5 stars is generous. Social satire is tricky, because it needs to be absurd while still having characters behave in a fundamentally believable way. I didn’t believe 90% of what the characters in Don’t Look Up did. Do I believe that some people would live in denial? Sure. Do I believe that literally no one would take this seriously, including the New York Times? No.
It felt less like a coherent movie and more like McKay’s frustration about covid and climate change devolving into a rant. I get it, I’m frustrated about those things too, but watching this movie was a bit too much like that one friend’s Facebook profile that is nothing but angry political links, memes, and commentary.
On a more positive note, can we talk about how wonderful Nightmare Alley was?
Yes, let’s talk. Keith was more persuaded by it than I was, but it’s quite beautiful. I think seeing the original right before affected me.
I really want to check out the original. There were some character motivations that seemed a bit murky (why did things end like that for Pete?) that might be clearer in an alternate version. Sad to say the weakest part of the movie for me was Bradley Cooper, who could have fleshed out Stanton a bit more IMO.
That said, how wonderful to see del Toro move from Victoriana into Art Deco! (With just enough Crimson Peak nods to placate hard core stans) And god bless Cate Blanchett for having so much fun with what could have been a very one note noir femme fatale. And Willem Defoe for eating off of Cooper's plate during the geek monologue. And Toni Collette for never not digging all the way in on a complicated woman.
I might have been too sympathetic to DON'T LOOK UP because I found myself sympathetic to its sense of frustration and agreeing with what it's trying to say. (Plus that running gag Jennifer Lawrence dwelling on the general charging her for snacks got me every time. Comedy. McKay has some experience there!)
Credit where it’s due: the snacks gag was great. And Chalamet’s lapsed Christian skateboard bro knowing exactly how to land a group prayer.
The unexpected flip of the pristine, almost cozy carnival setting transitioning into off-kilter and menacing Art Deco splendor in the second half struck me as the biggest stylistic coup of del Toro's career to date.
How Pete dies is EXTREMELY important in the original, because it affect Stan greatly for reasons I won’t divulge. And what was missing for me in Nightmare Alley is that it isn’t *enough* like Crimson Peak, which is so unhinged and my favorite GDT. I wanted some of that oomph.
Speaking of Alamo Drafthouse, that's where I caught LICORICE PIZZA ... in glorious 70mm. Unfortunately I'm now done with movies in theaters again until this Omicron surge is past. I went so far as to get a refund for the tickets I bought a month ago for a brunch screening of THE APARTMENT on New Year's Day, though that one hurt.
I really enjoyed LICORICE PIZZA, especially that truck scene, but did anyone else feel like PTA was deliberately trying to evoke TAXI DRIVER with that campaign thread? Glad that was a bit of a red herring.
I did not really get TAXI DRIVER vibes from it, and didn’t see it as a red herring so much as another piece of episodic puzzle for Alana, who’s trying to find some new, meaningful avenue to direct her life down.
That episode was definitely an important attempt by Alana to change her life, but I felt that Anderson also deployed some parts of that episode as a way to create certain expectations in the viewer that would distract from where it was really going. A little misdirection and sleight-of-hand.
Oh, I definitely got TAXI DRIVER vibes from that stretch, especially since I didn't know who Joel Wachs was at the time. But I interviewed him yesterday for GQ. He's real and a delightful interview. He also said the main difference between the movie and his real life is he never really had a boyfriend in this period.
I did not know he was real! Now that I've done a little googling, I'm really looking forward to this interview. He sounds like quite a person.
What a great slate of reviews to end the year on! Unfortunately, each star for Licorice Pizza is a searing reminder that cinemas here in Quebec have been shuttered indefinitely (absolutely ghoulish of the new variant to ascend around the release of a new PTA). Keeping hope alive that cases will be under control by the time Drive My Car arrives on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
I've been tuned out of Adam McKay features since The Big Short, which I found too self-important for my taste (this is too harsh, but I remember it as the celeb Imagine video but for dumbing down 2008?), sounds like not much has changed... I'm curious how it would play now, taste for this sort of thing has shifted a lot since 2015.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you both Keith and Scott!
I'm with you on The Big Short. One of the things that I thought Michael Lewis's book did better was to point out that these guys weren't just smart, but also lucky in their timing. The old economics saw is that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent- there were probably other people with the same insight who went broke before their bets could pay off.
Actually, it's the thing that bothered me the most about the movie adaptation: McKay clearly wanted to make a movie with hiss worthy villains and virtuous heroes, but the truth is much murkier. It's a much longer, more boring story about banking regulations being slowly rolled back over 50 years, and short sighted Wall Streeters who are paid millions to be short sighted and not think about potential consequences.
Interesting, I haven't read the book, but I suspect some things just aren't meant to be adapted. That said, I'm not sure a story about short sellers necessarily has to be more boring - The Wolf of Wall Street delivers that sort of perspective (although it doesn't go into laborious detail) and I find it exhilarating!
I dug the humor and general vibe of RESURRECTIONS--the whole first hour rips--but once the plot revved up and the action got going it lost me a bit in the chaos. I'm not sure it goes anywhere this franchise hasn't gone before, and the specific developments it trots out struck me as kind of shrug-worthy. Likewise the action set pieces, which (at first blush) didn't even rise to the fluidity and distinctiveness of the APU battles in REVOLUTIONS, much less RELOADED's highway chase or the groundbreaking stuff in the first film. But I respect the effort enough (plus I'm confident I missed quite a bit) to take another stab at it in January.
RE Licorice Pizza -- I think the film has more of a narrative arc than people give it credit for. Throughout the story, Alana feels like Gary lowers her social cred, so keeps looking for higher and higher status men and careers to make her feel valuable. Gary counters this by trying to raise his own status through his antics and business ventures. When Alana finds out how Benny Safdie's fear of losing face ruins a relationship with someone he loves, Alana realizes that she's essentially doing the same thing. Gary sees this for himself when Alana's missing from the pinball palace's opening night. And that's what makes the climax such a beautiful thing.
I just saw Licorice Pizza for the second time...and Alana is definitely 28 years old, not 25, and it is her looming countdown to 30 that motivates most of her choices in the film. When Gary first asks her age, Alana has a slight hesitation before saying, "...25." On a second viewing, it is clear that she is making this number up. Soon after, at home with her family, she goes off on a tirade about how her sisters think she is going nowhere even though she's almost 30, which really means Alana fears she is going nowhere when she's almost 30. Later, when Jon Peters asks her age, she answers, "28" before remembering her fiction and correcting, "I mean 25." The first time I saw this, I almost thought I had misheard the line, but accidentally adding three years to one's age is not a mistake human beings make. So we have a woman pushing 30 who is desperately trying to find a future for herself, who finds that future in a not-old-enough 15-year-old, so pushes against that by trying to find other futures: through a successful and old-enough (but not Jewish enough) actor; through acting and an older actor; through volunteer work, etc. I know from experience that being 28 is very different than 25, when you can still be screwing around. But by 30, you are supposed to have your life together, to be an adult, so by 28 you are actively trying to make that happen. For Alana, in the end, the gravitational pull to Gary, and his many truly positive qualities (which are vividly highlighted by her harrowing dinner with Wachs - who has a thousand good intentions and zero honesty - and his boyfriend), is too strong to resist. Although I truly enjoyed this film, and it is in my top 10 of the year, I have deep misgivings about the choice of Gary's age. Couldn't he have been 17 and very little have been altered? 15 is just SO young, and 13 years at that age is SUCH a huge age difference. I'm not sure what the film is saying about it, and I'm also not sure what it is saying that almost every review I've read lists Alana's age as 25 and ignores the implications of her actual age.