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Rock · 2/08/2025 10:11 pm

I am too, although I wouldn’t be too upset if The Brutalist won (although I suspect the internet will be unbearable if that happens). The only other nominee I’ve seen is Dune Part II, which is good but not better than those two. Haven’t seen the other nominees, won’t bother with most of them.

Jinnistan · 2/08/2025 10:37 pm

Rock wrote:
I am too, although I wouldn’t be too upset if The Brutalist won (although I suspect the internet will be unbearable if that happens). The only other nominee I’ve seen is Dune Part II, which is good but not better than those two. Haven’t seen the other nominees, won’t bother with most of them.

That's about where I am. I haven't found a copy of Brutalist yet, though. Like I said in my review, Anora is good, but hardly best of the year. Of the rest, I'd like to check out Nickel Boys, and maybe Conclave or I'm Still Here.

Since we're here, rather than the awards thread, I'll go ahead and say that the backlash against Emilia Perez has been something. I don't just mean those dug-up tweets either (that seems more like the kind of calculated smear described by those PR people in the Baldoni/Lively fracas), but the surprising distancing from some people in both the Q+ and Hispanic communities who apparently see it as "inauthentic" and exploitative. I have no deep information on the matter, and haven't seen the film, but it's tempting me to see it just to get a grasp on it. (No grope jokes, please.)

Rock · 2/08/2025 11:16 pm

Tbh the response to the tweets at least feels like people engaging with something they've seen.

On BlueSky a lot of negative response to the movie seems driven by a) a cishet male director and b) the movie not presenting the "right" kind of queer narrative. But a lot of people describing it like a hate crime seemed to have done so without actually seeing the movie. The actual negative reviews I've read from Letterboxd mutuals, including some trans people, seem to at least be engaging with the actual movie.

Jinnistan · 2/18/2025 6:21 pm

For a film where the main character is named after a mythical siren, the fact of her objectification is a purely surface level read, although, unfortunately, this appears to be the common take among the critical reactions. Paolo Sorrentino's gaze is certainly male (although gorgeously shot by femme Daria D'Antonio), but, like his previous odes to feminine reverence, like The Great Beauty and The Hand of God, it is classically romantic rather than toxic. It's striking how many of the film's, mostly poor, reviews are focused on its objectification while ignoring that this aspect - established immediately at the film's outset, not only right in its mythically alluded title but also in a slow-motion homage to the opening of Welles' F For Fake - is the tragic fulcrum of the story, seeing how, like a siren, this objectification negatively affects the men in Parthenope's life - and even a number of women and poor gay John Cheevers as well (played by a sublimely sodden Gary Oldman) - but most importantly how it is the tragic arc in Pathenope herself. These reviews ignore the fact that the course of the story involves her attempts to escape such objectification, to assert and define herself on her own substantive terms, to foster her personal sense of intellectual (as an anthropologist) and emotional (as an artist) forms of beauty. Such criticisms of her being too "cryptic" do not fare very well when combined with more scoldish observations about her "chain-smoking" or her "states of undress", all of which says more about the critics than anything on screen.

Maybe it's simply that, as with Inarritu's Bardo for a couple of years ago, which was also inflicted with charges of "self-indulgence" and lazy, back-handed Fellini comparisons, these kinds of sumptuously shot surrealist and unabashedly sexual dream-fantasies are not in fashion at the moment. Maybe if Parthenope had only been a sex worker instead, irony of ironies.

8.5/10

Jinnistan · 2/19/2025 5:13 pm

Cat-and-mouse horror that very quickly gets sinister when a couple of young Morman missionaries (Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East) are summoned by a mysterious but seemingly erudite English man (Hugh Grant) who might just be interested in joining their church. Or he might just be a lonely eccentric looking for a theological discussion with some bright young students. Or he might be completely full of shit with creepier ulterior motives. And, let's face it, there's not too much suspense on which option we're looking at, so instead the considerable suspense is at the service of figuring out which way out of this scenario is going to be most painless.

The script is much sharper than many modern horror films, especially ones which exploit religious themes as its basis. Refreshingly, this film proves to be more intelligent and respectful for its theological underpinnings, and avoids typical culture war condescension. But on the other hand, especially by the third act, the crucial line is over "whether you're playing chess or checkers", because neither Grant's mastermind nor the script are quite as clever as they'd like to be, and we start to see the limitations of the imaginative premise set in, and even a resort to the kind of tried-and-true gross-out gags common in lesser horror films of late. Still, I'll take the half-full glass and admire Grant's creepy curdling charm and the strength of the young actresses, who are both quite good, but a special mention for Thatcher who proves to be a true revelation here, even providing over the final credits a Dylan number in a lovely Chan Marshall-esque coo. (Much better than Tim Chalamet, btw.)

8/10

The good thing going for this film is a solid premise - a juror begins to realize that he might actually have perpetrated the crime on trial - which provides for a potentially very intriguing noir. Unfortunately, noir is not a genre in director Clint Eastwood's wheelhouse. So instead we get a pedestrain procedural with all of the hallmarks of modern Eastwood's brand of blandness - a trite and cliche-ridden script, the most lazy and by-the-book camera choices imaginable, and performances which look like first rehearsal run-throughs with every character playing their most obvious signifiers on their sleeves. Worse than that, we also get about a half-dozen lame-ass 12 Angry Men reenactments which veer between plagiarism and parody. All adding up to an ethically incoherent soap opera, and the fact that it also looks and feels like any random crime drama on prime time broadcast television certainly doesn't help much.

5/10

Excellent thriller and novel take on the well-worn serial killer trope. Here, we have our killer already on trial, and the drama revoles around two true-crime "groupies", for lack of a better term. One is a young scruffy rural ragamuffin who has bussed into the city (Montreal), and who has a somewhat naive, even cultish and dogmatic belief in the killer's innocence. The other is quiter, colder, an enigmatic fashion model with a more mysterious, but apprently morbid, interest in the case. During the day-to-day proceedings, the two strike up a common affection, with the older, wiser model taking the younger naif under her wing, but without showing her hand concerning her thoughts on the case.

In contrast with the typical courtroom procedural (ala Juror #2), it's worth comparing the far more imaginative and less orthodox camerawork here, set in a less typical modernist all-white courtroom, and featuring one nearly 12 minute unbroken shot near the beginning of the film, covering each sides' opening arguments, based on a sly use of tracking and zoom-work, but managing to cover all of the necessary dramatic bases. This is one example of the film's bold cinematography, and Pascal Plante, directing only his third film, establishes a firm command of his frame, as well as tone and ambient atmosphere. (Which includes a chilling minimalist score from his brother Dominique Plante.)

Anything else from this point falls into spoiler territory, but the film effectively maintains its dreadful sense of shadowy evil, including its "dark web" and surveillance motifs, and from the relationship of the two leads, we see disturbing shades of the obsessive, psychological fascination with true-crime narratives, from cultish devotion to morbid curiosity and even more vicariously violent motives, and suggesting a more vague impulse bordering on a more spiritual compulsion for justice. Strongly recommended.

8.5/10

Rock · 2/19/2025 7:30 pm

The movie has a definite Blumhouse vibe, but I really liked Sophie Thatcher in Companion.

Jinnistan · 2/21/2025 5:42 pm

Rock wrote:
The movie has a definite Blumhouse vibe, but I really liked Sophie Thatcher in Companion.

I admit that the "What if M3gan was a sex doll?" conceit didn't excite me, but this definitely helps.

Rock · 2/21/2025 6:10 pm

Jinnistan wrote:
Rock wrote:
The movie has a definite Blumhouse vibe, but I really liked Sophie Thatcher in Companion.
I admit that the "What if M3gan was a sex doll?" conceit didn't excite me, but this definitely helps.

I found it a bit less pre-made for memes than M3gan, but Thatcher is easily the best thing about it.

Jinnistan · 2/21/2025 6:28 pm

Looks like there's still some untapped gems from the '70s. This small-budget picture got hit with an 'X', and immediately flopped, and I don't think it was available for many years and subsequently forgotten. This was the debut film from writer-director John Byrum, who was a more accomplished writer than director, and who would go on to make a couple of admirable disappointments, Heart Beat and the Bill Murray co-written Razor's Edge, which have a lot of ambition but only adequate technical skill. The film is also the one that Richard Dreyfuss shot directly between Jaws and Close Encounters, at the height of his young enthusiasm, even though it proved that he wasn't about to sell a picture on his own without a name like 'Spielberg' or 'Neil SImon' attached. All of this suggested to me that this might have earned its obscurity, and it's been noted that this is another of those '70s films which is obsessed with '30s nostalgia and this was right in the middle of a box office period which saw several other '30s-set flops with even higher profile actors (Nichols' The Fortune with Beatty and Nicholson; Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon with Reynolds and O'Neal; Donen's Lucky Lady with Reynolds and Hackman; and the Byrum-scripted Harry and Walter Go to New York with Caan, Caine, Gould and Diane Keaton.)

So it's a pleasant surprise that Inserts is a much better film than its reputation, or that poorly conceived poster above, would indicate. Dreyfuss, despite not even being 30 at the time, plays a washed up silent film director, once touted for his genius, now drunk, agoraphobic and reduced to making stag films in the foyer of his shambling L.A. mansion after he refused to compromise his art for "the talkies". The film plays like a one-act play production, set in real-time and on this single location, switching occasionally from one far side of the foyer, where Drefuss plays piano and copiously drinks, to the other side where a makeshift bed sits under gaffer lighting and a camera. The muse of this stag film is a junkie played by Veronica Cartwright, and the mob-adjacent financier by Bob Hoskins. The film is fine for this early duration, but really picks up steam as Hoskins' "doll", Jessica Harper, replaces Cartwright in order to shoot "inserts" (the double-entendre title) given her similar physique. It's during this section of the film - with Dreyfuss and Harper alone together, and as she slowly seduces and subsequently unravels his ego, libido, insecurites and delusions of power - where it is most evident that we're watching an exceptional picture, and most likely exactly why it was not anything the 1976 American audience wanted to see. It would be easy to imagine such a psychodrama in the hands of someone like a Polanski or a Louis Malle, but whatever Byrum's amateur faults as a director doesn't diminish the strength of his writing or of these two revealing performances.

8/10

crumbsroom · 2/21/2025 11:01 pm

Grand Theft Hamlet is immediately on my short list of greatest movies ever made about art and what it is and the role it plays in our lives.

crumbsroom · 2/22/2025 12:01 pm

I also liked Saturday Night quite a bit. Not as a document about Saturday Night Live history, because it's obviously extremely bad at this, but I just liked the feel of it roaming around those backstage hallways, catching little moments, some canonized in biographies, others completely invented, and, yeah, some that are kind of stupid and annoying. But just as an ode to ambition and creating something against the grain that is going to shake up all the squares, it has its charms. I essentially enjoyed it on a very basic level of watching all of these eccentrics and malcontents pushed together into this one moment where we don't really know anything else about them outside of the fact that they've all ended up here, in this one place, about to make history.

Jinnistan · 2/23/2025 4:21 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
I also liked Saturday Night quite a bit. Not as a document about Saturday Night Live history, because it's obviously extremely bad at this, but I just liked the feel of it roaming around those backstage hallways, catching little moments, some canonized in biographies, others completely invented, and, yeah, some that are kind of stupid and annoying. But just as an ode to ambition and creating something against the grain that is going to shake up all the squares, it has its charms. I essentially enjoyed it on a very basic level of watching all of these eccentrics and malcontents pushed together into this one moment where we don't really know anything else about them outside of the fact that they've all ended up here, in this one place, about to make history.

Too bad I'm such a stickler against unnecessary fictions (I still don't understand what the conceptual point of having Alan Zweibel picked up directly out of a comedy club, like, 10 minutes before show time), but if we could agree on something, I think the cast was generally impressive.

Rock · 2/23/2025 8:31 pm

JJ, you seen The Monkey yet?

Jinnistan · 2/23/2025 11:12 pm

Rock wrote:
JJ, you seen The Monkey yet?

Not yet, but I saw your review.

Speaking of which, on the subject of the source material, I prefer Stephen King's short story work, and Skeleton Crew is worth checking out for more than just that story. Also has "The Mist". The best though are probably unfilmmable.

Jinnistan · 3/01/2025 9:06 pm

The Brutalist lands as something of a sibling to another ambitious and literary epic of the year about an uncompromising architect devoted to bold poetic aesthetics in the face of cold commercial interests who don't understand or appreciate these priorities but quietly resent them, which would obviously be Megalopolis. Brutalist adds themes of antisemitic persecution - unlike Caesar, The Brutalist's Laszlo Toth is not an elite scion, but a perpetual outsider, making his exploitation and sense of exclusion much more palpable. (And it should probably be noted that I'm more than a little convinced that his namesake refers to another aesthetic architect, the Egyptian god Thoth.)

Whether which film is better? The Brutalist is certainly more confident and handsome. Secure in factual mid-20th century history, it requires fewer leaps of plausibility than Megalopolis' alternate 21st century. And although Coppola's montage sequences are individually more transcendent, The Brutalist is more consistent in its luscious cinematography, establishing and maintaining its tone and geometric motifs in composition while recalling the finest work of New Hollywood realism and austerity. And maybe it helps that Brutalist is also a lot more sober and less given to Coppola's wilder fancies.

The performances are uniformly excellent as well. The old joke that Adrien Brody won the Oscar simply because he has a built-in pitiful face should be put to rest here. Guy Pearce, an long underrated actor possibly due to some unwise (or at best unlucky) career choices, is pungent as a creature of avarice and envy. Felicity Jones, as a doting, no-nonsense wife and mother. And Alessandro Nivola, another quiet character workhorse (American Hustle, Most Violent Year, You Were Never Really Here, Amsterdam) as the assimulated cousin in a brief introductory role.

The soundtrack is also exceptional, and even the ubiquitous piano track is tolerable for resembling something more like Music For Airports than the typical tear-jerking sentimentality. I appreciate that the epilogue, set in 1980, adjusts the score to a more electronic, Euro-disco sound, and that the song over the final credits, "One For You, One For Me", echoes the classic diktat from Steven Soderburgh about the negotiation between art and commerce.

9/10

Jinnistan · 3/16/2025 9:21 am

Errol Morris was at least wise enough to stick the key term right in the film's title, but this is only after allowing Tom O' Neill a generous amount of screen time to establish his gross (as in, over-simplified and yet still over-complicated) suggestions, including lots of flashy graphics about "mind control", which is ostensibly the central allegation being made here. But "control" happens to be the opposite of "chaos", and here lies the fundamental flaw in O'Neill's fanciful theories regarding Charles Manson, the CIA and MK-Ultra. In fact, O'Neill finally reveals his ruse at the very end, "I'm very honest about not knowing". No he's not. Because if he was, he wouldn't be leaning so hard on what he admits are his beliefs that Manson was a Manchurian Candidate of MK-Ultra programming, and his Family's murder spree was in service of the CIA's Operation CHAOS. A responsible journalist, especially one who's spent 20 years without discovering anything beyond circumstantial evidence, would not be touting these loose threads so confidently. But let's just agree that it's clear that O'Neill clearly does not know, and, much as he accuses Vincent Bugliosi, maybe he might be fluffling up his evidence to sell a book?

For his part, Morris is skeptical, but most of this skepticism comes at the end of the film, some might say too little too late. It's interesting that, being a Netflix production, how this might comport to the recent revelation that Netflix is deliberately designing their entertainment for peripheral viewing, and I'm afraid that anyone viewing this without complete attention may not register Morris' concluding skepicism, while absorbing all of the preceeding, and misleading, flashy graphics.

MK-Ultra remains a compelling narrative, especially in conspiracy circles, and, make no mistake, it remains one of the glaring atrocities of America's national security state. The frequent misunderstanding is that this program was ever successful at achieveing either "mind control", a "truth serum" or a Manchurian Candidate-style "programmed assassin". As comprehensively illustrated in the 1985 book, Acid Dreams, by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting journalists, Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, these objectives were overwhelming failures. Specifically concerning LSD, perhaps the most powerful psychedeic compound with many profound psychological effects, the drug only proved effective as a chaos agent, again the opposite of mind control, precisely because the effects were considered so unpredictable, the opposite of programmed. So, before the substance began to be doled out for academic research in the early '60s, the primary planned use by the CIA included either dosing foreign heads in public situations - such as prior to giving a speech - or determining methods for mass intoxication - water supply or aerosol-based infusions - to cause mass confusion and hysteria, the opposite of obedient behavioral control. Not mind control, but psychological torture. And as such, the true heir of MK-Ultra is not Haight-Ashbury or the Counterculture, but the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques of the 21st century.

O'Neill has a fatal misunderstanding of these effects of LSD, and it distorts his presumptions throughout the film. Morris seems to at least humorously oblige by featuring fragments of the 1962 Manchurian Candidate film at various points. O'Neill at one point describes this "absolute personality shift" caused by the chemical, as a means of explaining the utter loss of agency among Manson's acolytes. O'Neill fails to take into account any prior psychological vulnerabilities or susceptibilities which may exist among these runaway homeless teenagers, who might just have a pre-existing motivation to finding a leader, a guru, who will confer on them "the truth", which would invariably involve the social currency of the time, ie sex and drugs. Ignores that, like so many attracted to cults, they may have wanted to be psychologically dominated. O'Neill similarly seems to ignore any prior behavioral profile of Manson himself outside of this MK-Ultra narrative, like the fact of his violently erratic outburts (a criminal tendency documented from his prison days long before he ever took LSD), his own messiah-narcissism complex feeding his need to manipulate, his own deeply held racial paranoia (concerning his obsession with race war), his own vicious and petty resentments against the wealthy Hollywood radical chic whom he felt had betrayed him and which he duly targeted for his murderous brutality. In terms of general cult psychology, O'Neill also doesn't recognize that various other cultish leaders - such as L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Keith Raniere - tend to seem entirely unremarkable to outsiders, yet command a magnetism and manipulative hold on their followers which seems otherwise irrational. Hence O'Neill can only comprehend the Manson Family's allegience to Charlie as the result of the influence of LSD and LSD alone. It is through this logic in which he presents MK-Ultra as the only plausibly essential explanation for Manson's power.

Or maybe the most adequate of all of O'Neill's examples in showing his misinformed, almost supernatural, understanding of LSD and MK-Ultra, he references a well-known CIA figure, "Jolly" West, a true monster of that program. Although O'Neill "can't put Manson and West in the same room", he nonetheless maintains a relationship between the two. As an example of MK-Ultra "mind control", he cites the story about how West, after a consultation with Jack Ruby before the latter was set to testify before the Warren Commission, declared Ruby to be "psychotic" and unable to testify. This story should, of course, be terrifying on its own merits, but, again, a psychotic breakdown is less about "mind control" than "mind incapacitation", which shouldn't be confused with each other. After Morris finally presents his skeptical judgment on MK-Ultra, that it was not successful at mind control or producing programmed assassins ("I somehow don't think so"), O'Neill again cites Jolly West, saying that in one CIA document, West claimed to have induced "false memories" using the MK-Ultra techniques, including LSD and hypnosis. "If true", Morris helpfully adds. O'Neill blubbers along, "He could have been lying" - (Possibly!!!) - "but he kept getting financed by the CIA" - (OH!!! Well, they would never reward a liar, would they?). And all that aside, "false memory" hardly needs to involve either MK-Ultra, the CIA or LSD to be handily accomplished.

O'Neill specifies that the Manson operation involved "programmed assassins". That's a loaded term, but it necessitates a couple of prerequisites. First, a program has to involve a deliberate design by definition, meaning that these assassinations must have been carried out at the behest of, presumably, the CIA. "Assassins" furthermore implies a political motive to these murders. In order to satisfy the presumptions behind this term, we have to dismiss the seeming randomness of these murders. They would need to serve a purpose, greater than Manson's own personal grievances. O'Neill's attempt at this is to suggest that maybe The State wanted to send a message of terror to exactly this wealthy Hollywood radical chic that this is the result of their patronage for anti-war/Black Power/civil rights factions. Morris here is flatly unimpressed, "It's hard for me to believe that this is being orchestrated by the federal government", to which O'Neill spins in his chair, "I would never go that far as to say it's 'orchestrated'. Orchestrated sounds like it's planned...." Right, like some kind of programmed assassination? O'Neill is not being honest here, because he was quite clearly just now suggesting exactly that Manson's murders happened to align with the FBI/CIA's desire to scare celebrities off of supporting these social causes.

All of this bullshit is good enough for Joe Rogan, and O'Neill has become a minor celebrity in those Rogan-adjacent conspiracy spheres since he dropped his book in 2019. I wish Morris would have maybe pushed back a little harder, sooner, than he did in this documentary. There are some more intriguing questions regarding Manson's possible connections to more local law authorities, and questions whether he was being "handled", or acting as an informant on various criminal factions of the Counterculture, maybe drug and gun-running, possibly on more politically radical elements, and I'd dare say most definitely on the private habits of the same Hollywood party-crowd (Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher, the general Laurel and Topanga Canyon scene) which at least temporarily had welcomed him and his Family during that prolonged period of '68-'69 before Charlie burned his last bridges with that community.

This is all why the "control/chaos" dynamic is so fascinating in the context of conspiracy theory. One could say that the very enterprise of the conspiracy theory is to try and impose a narrative of control onto the chaotic contingency of restless history. But this is a naive, even juvenile understanding of the world. Reading through the history of the CIA, in particular, and all of their schemes and best laid plans, what we find is not some kind of precisely impervious State with omnipotent agency and agility, but rather a flailing, wild briar brush of schizophrenic instincts, stuffed with "rogue" weasels with selfish agendas who feed on the prospect of angling advantage to cover their own pocket-ponds of greed and power. Conspiracists too often maintain the childish delusion that all control comes from the top.

7/10

Jinnistan · 3/17/2025 7:26 pm

It's odd to see so many of this film's reviews refer to things like "twists" and "originality". It has very little of either, and even the glib description, "Ex Machina meets Her", suggests something much deeper than this. No, instead, it's best to view this film as a bit of a goof, something on the lighter side of Black Mirror, and it's apt that the actor who clearly isn't taking any of this seriously, Rupert Friend as a cartoonishly sleazy Russian, is a highlight, however brief. Jack Quaid (Dennis Jr. basically) is suitably insufferable as the suitor of the titular femme-bot, and I would go so far as to admit admiration if he were to reveal that his performance was based in a deep study of Andrew Prine, learning the rare and awful technique of being completely unsympathetic in the wimpiest way imaginable. But for all of the trouble, this film really only has going for it the soft strength of Sophie Thatcher as said bot, the only character in the film really worth caring about, and that's through her performance much more than the script.

(I also saw where some critic tried to coin the "robot girlfriend" genre, starting with Metropolis, and, strictly legally speaking, I feel that this is pretty solid ground for keyboard confiscation.)

7/10

Rock · 3/18/2025 5:07 pm

Yeah, not a great movie, but a lot better than it could have been, and Thatcher is good in it.

Jinnistan · 3/18/2025 5:24 pm

Rock wrote:
Yeah, not a great movie, but a lot better than it could have been, and Thatcher is good in it.

It's all about Sophie Thatcher.

But I think it could have been a really quality comedy had it just leaned into that.

Jinnistan · 3/31/2025 7:40 pm

Speaking of some quality comedies....