If anyone has noticed, Netflix has tried to boost a modest 70s catalog - The Conversation, Chinatown, The Gambler, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, California Split.  Maybe a few others.  Great films, but I've seen all of these.  So I went back and watched the original Death Wish, which I haven't seen in, I dunno, 30 years?  Maybe.  I've never been a big fan of the series, but I thought, hey, maybe it's like Rocky or First Blood, maybe there's a purity to the first one that's been eroded from my memory by the subsequently cartoonish sequels.

Nope.  What a piece of shit this movie is.  I once said that Michael Winner might have been the single worst director to work in the 70s studio films, and I still think it's a compelling case.  I've seen more interesting framing from a Bill Bixby-directed episode of Mannix.  And that's not to put Bixby down, but to say that there's a reason, in budget and schedule, why films were supposed to have a higher quality than television, and Death Wish, aside from its graphic violence and nudity, still ultimately looks like television.  The editing is atrocious, no tone, no rhythm.  Just a carelessness, a disregard permeates the proceedings.  It denies any of the ambiguities of Dirty Harry or French Connection.  The cynicism is clear in the fact that Bronson's family trauma is treated as a statistic, but the very first anonymous hood he shoots gets front page newspaper coverage and Vincent Gardenia's all-hands-on-deck attention, echoed today with those who claim that criminals have more rights than victims.  It's just such a trashy piece of exploitation.  What a waste of Jeff Goldblum's ass.
 

The cunundrum of the year, but at least its complications make it more fascinating than so many other films.  The primary criticism of the film is its duplicity, but this isn't really entirely the fault of the filmmakers.  Appreciation goes both to Greta Gerwig for writing a clever (but silly) consumerist satire and to Margot Robbie whose production company was committed to protecting Gerwig's vision from being watered down.  At least most of the time.  This is the delicate balancing act that the film attempts, and succeeds in substance, but eventually its reception has defaulted into the corporate materialism that it's critiquing.  One might say that such a compromise was a necessity, and we should be thankful for how much subversion Gerwig was able to manage in the final product.  All I'm saying is that the film is, basically, product.

The precedent here seems to be last decade's Lego Movie which presented an almost identical dilemma.  The film, at its core, is an advertisment, an extended product placement, however shrewd the production was to hire filmmakers who could slide some delicious and self-contradictory satire into the mix, denouncing the conforming values of consumerism and venerating the virtue of individual self-worth that's not dependent on materialist acquisition.  The film managed a neat trick even if, ultimately, that message was self-negated by the obvious and inevitable fact that children were still being trained to view the products that they buy as being necessarily and inherently self-enriching, the subtle building blocks of a consumerist worldview where one's worth is inextricable from one's wealth and shopping power.  It wasn't that long, after all, before people were singing the film's ultra-satircal theme song, "Everything is Awesome" (representing homogenous - "mass" - conformity - "marketing" and lack of depth), non-ironically.

Barbie has a similar problem, and, at best, I could probably sweep most of that problem away by saying that it has more to do with elements of the film outside of the film itself - such as how voraciously Mattel cross-marketed the film or how much of the audience failed to see the iconoclastic nature of the film and continues to confuse the dehumanized Brand with the film's humanizing message.  Although it's unavoidable to point out that these inconsistencies are sometimes evident in the film itself.  The opening sequence is a glaring example.  Again, the film is ultimately about deconstructing Barbie as an "icon" (which is basically synonymous in this sense with "brand"), because an icon is an impersonal object.  The goal is for Barbie to become more human.  The goal for Barbieland is to become more human, and not the shallow, superficially pleasant facade that we see in the film's beginning.  The film's central conflict is in the characters' realization that they are objects, which they then reject.  So, in this context, the opening sequence (as amusing as it is as homage) only seems to reinforce the banality of the Barbie brand, in literally monolithic form.

And I also wasn't convinced with the film's attempt at revisioning the Barbie creator, Ruth Handler, although it seems thematically necessary.  Ferrara's Gloria had already given the defining message of the film, but let's hear it supported from the source.  But, as a matter of biography, I don't buy it.  Handler's Barbie construction was, essentially, a model of superficial and commercial femininity.  This ideal 'debutante' with impossible (not perfect) proportions, with simple and abiding affectation, with ambitions in terms of social status and wealth accumulation, but seemingly no inner or emotional life.  Yes, Barbie was conceived exactly to be an object of desire, as a model of presumably what little girls' aspirations should be, and these revisions to make it seem as if this wasn't toxic from the outset are fooling themselves.  Barbie has always been a celebration of shallow glamour.  And I applaud Greta Gerwig for attempting to critique exactly this in her movie, by showing Barbie herself, and the rest of Barbieland's denizens, rejecting their roles as avatars of aesthetic commodification.  And I'm not going to hold it against the film simply because Mattel, with all of their corporate sponsers, and some of the less comprehending of the audience, has chosen to ignore this central revelation in the film and continue to proceed as if femininity is something that can be branded and commodified.

7.5/10
 

Rock wrote:

JJ U need to watch Split Image (Kotcheff, 1982)

I guess Anatomy of a Fall will have to wait another night.

Sounds about right.

Yeah, I thought you would appreciate prime James Woods so figured I’d recommend it if you hadn’t seen it.

Last edited by Rock (2/01/2024 8:11 pm)

Not sure what I was scared of.  Maybe it's that fashionably cynical spite that gets inserted into so many of these modern Euro-dramas (ie, Saltburn, as a glaring example).  I sat through this exceptionally written complex and compassionate human drama hoping that it wouldn't try to pull one of those last minute stabs.  No, it's just a genuinely human motion picture, and it's the kind of film that makes me ashamed for ever taking these Barbieheimer bastards seriously.

9/10






I got the Charlie Kaufman hook in my cheek, but don't let it fool you.  This is still the same old saccharine Dreamworks product.  Any child with such a precocious neurosis deserves better than this maudlin manipulation.

4/10
 

JJ u need to watch A Place Beyond Shame

(Actually you probably don't. But Seka is her usual charming self in it.)
 

This film has largely been cancelled, having disappeared after a short festival run and receiving no distribution and sitting at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Ostensibly, it's because the movie is supposed to be terrible, but it's more clear that the problem is due to director Roman Polanski, as well as a couple of other cancelable names (John Cleese, Mickey Rourke).  As evidence, note how there were several attempts to pull the film from festivals even before anyone had seen it.

The film isn't that bad.  Co-written by Jerzy Skolimowski, it is another in the recent line of class parodies, a microcosmic hotel on the New Year Eve of the millenium, where the obscenely wealthy act out in all manner of grotesque and indulgent ways.  As such, I did find it to be more consistently amusing than something like Triangle of Sadness, and without wearing the pedantic and contrived capitalist messaging on its obvious sleeve.  Just let the vulgar elite do what they do and trust the audience to figure it out.  (spoiler: they're awful people)

Mickey Rourke is particularly delightful, and there's fine support from the continental cast - Oliver Masucci and Fortunato Celino heading up the hapless but miraculously competent hotel management; Fanny Ardent, Luca Barbareschi and Joaquim de Almeida as various shades of vain Eurotrash; Sydne Rome leading up a pack of rabid plastic surgery disasters.  If anything, John Cleese is the weak spot here, being reduced to a bad accent and "Bernie"-level slapstick.  The film may not be everyone's spoon of caviar, either too gross or not being offensive enough, but whatever it is isn't unwatchable.  Critics calling it Polanski's worst movie probably need (or deserve) to revisit Pirates.

7.5/10
 

Maybe we can admit that Polanski didn't make "worst" films.  Despite his "worst" decisions.

I've been dragging a little ass on the final three films I haven't seen among the nominees this year.  But to be honest, I really want to see all of them, not simply because they're nominated (I don't usually feel compelled to watch every nominated film every year) but because I'm interested in each of them.  The Oscars themselves are more like a deadline that acts as a motivating structure.  I got two weeks.

Whatever.  Look.  It has the scale and visual splendor.

Let me point out three things: 

1) the Spacing Guild - where is it?  Why remove it?  It's just weird, all I'm saying.  I know, you didn't want to have to compete with Lynch's smoking vagina kombucha whatever, OK, you could have represented the Guild however you wanted.  To simply remove the entity entirely from the narrative eliminates the fact that there's a residing authority above and beyond the Emperor, which not only robs the political dimension of the story but also undermines the whole focus of why the "spice" is such a valuable resource to begin with.  I thought it was odd not to have mentioned all of this in Part One, but now I see it's not going to factor in at all.

2) No "weirding way".  Alright, so maybe these modern young'uns don't appreciate these kinds of quasi-supernatural aural-magnetic force controls.  Suit yourselfs, Marvel Cunts.  I don't see why this pretty much essential arsenal in the Freman canon needed to be completely omitted.

3) No Alia.  This is less forgivable.  And since it was used more as a celebrity teaser (via Anya Taylor-Joy) it's actually actively offensive.  Paul's sister, played by Alicia Witt in the Lynch film, is completely removed here save for a single dream sequence, which serves nothing but to compress the timeline from years to a matter of months and maybe so Paul himself can have the duty of uncermoniously offing the Baron instead.  It's just stupid and makes no sense when you've already given yourself six hours of screen time to tell the fucking story.

After all of that, why should I even bother going into how rewritten Chani is here, to play the nagging counterweight, or the fact that they also eliminated their first child Leto, because god forbid they fucked.  Anyway, who cares.  Gee didn't it all blow up real big.

And lest I forget.  I've tried to be nice about this.  Timothy Chalamet is a bullshit actor.  I've given him at least half a dozen films by now.  Maybe he has his place in certain roles.  He doesn't have any of the depth, presence, intensity or charisma for Paul Atreides or anything to compel me to watch him on-screen.  And when he jack-rabbits from lethargic indifference to hysterical rage on-screen it only accentuates the lack of range in-between.  And it makes me more sympathetic to why they wanted to place more of the dramatic weight on Zendaya's Chani instead, however much it deviated from the book.

But what a master with those lenses.

7/10