The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part five (!)

  This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order. Here's a link to the first part.

 My God, you're thinking, where will it all end? I don't know either. My sister in law has left for a dog show in ... I forget where. My wife is leaving tomorrow for a soccer tournament in Utah, and I'll be going back to the library for a final set of videos to get me through my period of isolation. I'll be here through the weekend, when she returns and we head home to Texas. But until then... Let's go to the movies!

 

 

28. All Quiet on the Western Front

Starring Felix Kammerer

Directed by Edward Berger

Released: 2022

 This is the third time Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel has been made into a film. This one was originally shot in German, but is so well dubbed into English that you hardly notice the occasional disconnect between lips and sounds. (It can also be played in French from the same DVD.) 

 The story is pretty straightforward. Paul Bäumer (played by Felix Kammerer) is seventeen years old and is afraid he's going to miss all the excitement of the Great War. It's already been going on for three years. He forges his father's signature so he can enlist in the German army, and ends up with his friends in an infantry unit on the western front. The film chronicles his experiences there: death, destruction, injuries and amputations, glory and barbarism. It's a long film (nearly two and a half hours) so there's plenty of time for Bäumer to be thoroughly disabused of his youthful zeal for the war.

 It's not a pretty movie. Neither is it downright gruesome. It is, as far as is possible without actually sacrificing actors, accurate in its depiction of the horrors of trench warfare, where deadly technology exceeds the capacity of generals to imagine tactical solutions. In the actual event, the two sides lost three million soldiers without significantly moving the lines. The only idea they had was the blunt frontal attack, and they sent their millions of soldiers "over the top" into machine gun fire. (Makes me wonder how the Ukrainians are doing right now in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression, which has degenerated into trench warfare across the eastern part of that country.) 

 Neither is this quite the anti-war film it's often called. It takes social-comment swipes at the luxury enjoyed by the elite, who scramble for canapés while fighting soldiers scramble about in mud and filth, and it draws attention to the unchecked madness of zealots who have too little respect for their subordinates; this is personified by the general who orders his men to attack the French half an hour before the armistice goes into effect. Many are lost in that pointless attack, instigated solely by the general's personal quest for glory. But war itself? That is not a question addressed by this film. It shows war for what it is, but that doesn't mean war isn't sometimes necessary. (Although any student of history has to wonder why this particular war was necessary.)

 The film was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards when it came out in 2022; it won four. The only one of those four that surprises me is the one for Best Original Score, as I found the intermittent and sudden heavy-metal guitar licks anachronistic and distracting (though, to be fair, in other places the music did create a suitable mood for the action on the screen).

29. What If

Starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan

Directed by Michael Dowse

Released: 2013

 This movie, I learned while looking for a poster picture to download for this blog post, was originally called The F Word. The movie-ratings people wouldn't give them a PG-13 rating if they called it that, so they changed it to What If. Because little kids never see the advertising for a movie, I guess. Imagine an eye-roll emoji here.

 The F Word is a more clever title, because the movie is all about being in the friend zone, and "friend" starts with F. Get it? But it implies something else, which also has a relationship to the movie's plot. Isn't that clever?

 Oh, well.

 I found myself thoroughly engaged by this charming little romantic comedy. Wallace, played by Daniel Radcliffe -- seeing him all grown up makes me feel soooo old, but it had to happen -- dumped his girlfriend for cheating on him. It's been over a year but he's still getting over it. He goes to a party hosted by his best friend Allan (played by Adam Driver) and meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan). They hit it off, and when he walks her home, she mentions her boyfriend. What man hasn't been in a similar situation before? What does one do? Wallace chooses to inhabit the Friend Zone ... for a while, at least. Better than not being with her at all.

 Daniel Ratcliffe had years as Harry Potter to learn the craft of acting, and having now seen him in a number of different roles, I think he learned pretty well. While he'll always be the boy with the lightning scar, he manages to inhabit other characters convincingly: you don't feel like you're watching Harry say the lines. 

 

 The bigger surprise in this film is how fully I was interested in Zoe Kazan's portrayal of Chantry. Maybe hers was simply written to be the more interesting character, but I felt drawn more into her dilemma than I did Wallace's. Each has a moronic and lame advisor in the film: Chantry has her airhead sister Dalia, played by Megan Park; Wallace has Allan. Wallace seems to buy into the idiotic advice Allan gives, while Chantry seems appropriately and politely dismissive of her sister's pontificating. Chantry seems to have a better grasp of reality, as though she's actually thought about things. The actress, Kazan, has been in about two dozen films, none of which I've seen all the way through, so this is the first time I've noticed her. And from what I see here, I'll look forward to her future work.

IMPAwards

30. Without Remorse

Starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell and Jodie Turner-Smith

Directed by Stefano Sollima

Released: 2021

 

 Every film that came out in 2020 and 2021, and most that came after that, have a built-in excuse for box office failure, because of the Covid pandemic. This is the type of film that, had that pandemic not happened, my best friend Roland would have dragged me to the theater to see. Well, maybe "dragged" is a little too strong, but we would have seen it, because there's a lot of shooting, and lots of people get killed. But honestly I'd have gone willingly, because the main character, John Clark (played by Michael B. Jordan) is the creation of the late Tom Clancy, and that's as good a guarantor of excitement and tight plots as you're likely to get in a story.

 Well, in this case maybe the plot gets a little loose. This movie is based on a book of the same name that I read maybe thirty years ago and don't remember at all, but as with all of Clancy's works, there's a complex story behind the action. He, as an author, never had to limit himself to 250 pages, but trying to tell that same story with a movie's time limitations means that lots of stuff gets cut. That tends to leave some holes. At least they're not too glaring in this case. 

 The story starts with a raid in a Middle-Eastern war zone to recapture a hostage. Things go a little sideways and the villain, we'll all agree, is the slimy CIA agent Ritter (Jamie Bell). Of course we know that any identifiably evil character at the beginning of an action movie will turn out to not be the problem. But every time we see Ritter, and listen to his oily speech, we think it must actually be him. His despicable character is nicely drawn in the film. At the other end of the honor spectrum -- the higher end -- is Lt Cmdr Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), Clark's CO.

 Long after the opening raid is done, the members of the squad are being killed at their homes in the US. This leads to a retaliatory attack against the instigators, who are in Murmansk, Russia. Greer takes her hand-picked squad there to conduct its operation, and overcomes betrayal and geopolitical posturing to accomplish her mission. It's a happy ending, but not too happy.

 I did see, after watching the film, that it gets poor ratings from both critics and the audience on Rotten Tomatoes. This is why I don't put too much faith in those ratings. I'd give it a good rating, not so much for the film's acting or cinematography or writing or any particular thing; really just as entertainment. If you like action-adventure films, this one will keep your interest to the end.

 

Jason Statham/ Simon West/ Lionsgate/ William Goldman

31. Wild Card

Starring Jason Statham

Directed by Simon West

Released: 2015

 I didn't know the name "Jason Statham" when I selected this movie from the library shelf; I was mainly curious about the names on the jacket that I did recognize: Anne Heche, Sofia Vergara, Jason Alexander and Stanley Tucci. Now that I've seen it, I can say that I think I recognized Sofia Vergara in her one scene near the beginning; I definitely recognized Jason Alexander in his one scene shortly after that; I definitely did not recognize Stanley Tucci, with a full head of hair, in his scenes near the end; and I have no idea which of the many waitresses, dealers and bartenders might have been played by Anne Heche. 

 On the other hand, I found out that I did recognize Jason Statham: he played the "rogue" English spy in the Melissa McCarthy romp, Spy, one of my and my wife's favourite action-adventure send-ups. 

 In this movie, he's Nick Wild, a martial-arts expert whose background is never defined. Wild goes around Las Vegas, slaying dragons, rescuing damsels in distress and earning a grudging living generally by putting small pieces of the world right. Sort of a Jack Reacher type, but without the hitchhiking. The tone of the film is serious, but not too serious. The story is episodic, in that it is two separate stories that kind of overlap at the end.

 In one story, Wild helps a friend of his get revenge against a mafioso; in the other, a golden-child tech nerd hires him as a bodyguard. Don't worry too much about the stories, though. They're reasonably coherent and cogent, but they're really just vehicles for the elaborate fight scenes that pop up throughout this film; like songs in a musical, except instead of interrupting the flow of the story, they are the story.

 Ever since Matt Damon's first portrayal of the superspy character Jason Bourne in 2002, movies have focussed on the action hero who is able to instantly see potential weapons in everything around him. Bourne was followed by Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher and Keanu Reeves as John Wick. I think the ability of movies to portray such fight scenes, which tend to move from place to place as the combatants flee and stand, is likely down to a development in camera technology, but no matter. The point here is that, starting with Bourne, action heros were able to beat the crap out of villains with a rolled up magazine and a piece of pastrami. Punching and kicking still happen a lot, but they're kind of livened up by the clever use of props.

 

 Statham's Nick Wild character follows in that vein, and it's as enjoyable a spectacle in this little movie as it is in a big-budget movie. I guess after more than 20 years of this kind of fight scene being produced, the skill in staging it has spread, and director Simon West's staging in this film is, I'd say, a complete success, particularly the fight in the casino (I think it's the next-to-last fight scene in the movie) where Wild vanquishes a number of bad guys as he makes his way from a restaurant counter through the blackjack tables to the roulette wheel before security shows up to put an end to the melee. I couldn't care less about the relationships between Wild and anyone else in the film; neither, it seems, does he. It's not about relationships, really.

 (And BTW, Wild drives a 1969 Ford Torino in this movie; an oddly distinctive car for a character who probably has a lot of people looking for him. Cool, though.)

32. And While We Were Here

Starring Kate Bosworth, Jamie Blackley and Iddo Goldberg

Directed by Kat Coiro

Released: 2012

 

 Leonard, played by Iddo Goldberg, is a viola player. His wife Jane (Kate Bosworth) miscarried a baby and can no longer have children. She seems to define herself by that fact. Leonard takes a temporary position with an orchestra in Naples and brings his wife with him. The movie doesn't say so, but I suspect he thought a change of scenery might do her some good, as she's totally self-absorbed and cold. As they arrive, she has her wallet stolen as they leave the train station. This scene seems to have no particular point except to show that she is ill-equipped to play the tourist in Naples, while Leonard goes about dealing with the tedium of cancelling credit cards and ordering replacements in an anal-retentive businesslike manner.

 Leonard, of course, is there to work. He's very serious about his work, and it's not going especially well, so he's tired and distracted in the evenings as he tries to get it right. Not for nothing is he something of a stick in the mud, and quite reasonably so. If this were real life, he'd have more time for fun stuff after he's learned the music thoroughly and gotten accustomed to the conductor. She, on the other hand, alternates between wanting to tell him all about her aunt's boring stories of living through World War II (she's got hours of audiotapes of these stories, and claims to be working on a book about it) and wanting to tell him next to nothing about her daytime escapades in Italy while Leonard's at work.

 On her first day, she goes sightseeing and meets Caleb (Jamie Blackley), a 19-year-old American who's clearly trying to seduce her from the start. He follows after her like a puppy dog, telling stories of questionable veracity and jokes of the roll-your-eyes variety, all of them involving viola players. She seems pleased by the attention and probably knows why he's doing what he's doing, and doesn't mind. He shows her a little adventure. Maybe she's looking for a fling?

 The next day she and Leonard encounter Caleb, playing International Man of Mystery, while at lunch. Suddenly Jane is doing little things that surprise or even shock her husband. Smoking (presumably a cigarette, but does it matter?), for example. "I smoke sometimes back home. At parties," she says. Leonard seems not to have noticed her doing this. She tells a viola joke, showing derision for her husband in the presence of this young stranger. Leonard chooses not to make a scene over it. When he goes back to work, Jane goes off by herself, and surprise, surprise! Caleb shows up again. He confesses that he couldn't sleep the night before for thinking about her. They start to make out in an alley, but she breaks it off. Having moral qualms, or playing hard to get?

 The next day she feels differently, and tracks Caleb down for a roll in the hay. Caleb is planning to go off to Tibet with some people he just met, and asks Jane to go with. She never says, one way or the other, but a day or so after that, she tells her husband she's leaving him, because he doesn't see her. Leonard, frustrated by her vague accusatory insinuations and admission of infidelity, gives her her return train ticket to London and says Go do what you have to do and meet at the station when it's time to go home. Instead, when he's waiting for their train, she catches one going the opposite direction.

 

 I chose this movie from the shelf because it promised the beauty of the Amalfi coast. The film moves at the pace of the tides in that place. And the scenery, while occasionally beautiful, is rarely seen.

 There are, I'm sure, a lot of women who have difficulties dealing with the problems life hands them. Not all of them blame their husbands, and not all of them insist on the kind of mindreading necessary to discern whether they expect help or hands-off. Leonard is better off, I'm sure, with her in Tibet. I'd have been better off if I'd picked a different movie.

The Third Annual Havasu Film Festival, part four

  This is a continuation of the previous post. I recommend you read them all in order. Here's a link to the first part.

 

 

 You may notice that my second raid on the library was centered on the "G" shelf.

 

22. Goon

Starring Sean William Scott

Directed by Michael Dowse

Released: 2011

 After watching more than twenty movies in this third annual film festival, I was beginning to despair of my ability to pick really crappy titles from the library shelf. Everything we've seen has been mediocre or better, and one or two have even been excellent. Until now.

 Goon is a really, really bad movie. It's billed as a comedy, but it's not even as funny as the conspicuously un-funny television series Bear. I remember being told once long ago, when I was a student, that tragedy to the Ancient Greeks was when somebody died, and comedy was everything else. By that standard, Goon is a comedy. (So, by the way, is Bear, not that it matters here. Or anywhere.) 

 

 At one point I thought that I had zoned out for a few seconds, and had to run the movie back. Turns out I'd missed probably ten minutes of the thing. In an ordinary movie, where there's a story to tell, ten minutes would make a difference. It made none here. Nothing that happened in that ten minutes near the beginning was necessary for comprehending the stupefying jumble that was to come.

 There are no laughs in this pathetic film, unless you get a kick out of seeing blood dribble onto the ice. The premise -- Doug, a guy who can't ice skate, becomes a minor-league hockey star because he can beat up other players -- is a farce, while the farce intended in the fight scenes is so haplessly done that it falls by the way unnoticed. The budding relationship between the inept Doug (Sean William Scott) and his crush Eva (played with some competence by Alison Pill) wallows in the who-cares zone, and when she throws off her often-absent boyfriend in favour of Doug, his reaction is a meaningless masochistic visit to the ex. His relationship with his family consists of two scenes that depend almost entirely on Jewish character tropes rather than skill, talent or insight. (Eugene Levy played Doug's father and is probably embarrassed to have done so. But this was three years before the debut of Schitt's Creek, so at least he did something useful with the money.) And Doug's relationship with his teammates seems to be on a timer, switching on and off for no reason beyond the time of day.

 

 Doug's best friend (played by Jay Baruchel) is apparently meant to provide comic relief (have to wonder why that would be thought necessary, in a comedy) but his only tools to accomplish that are scatological and vulgar. (Baruchel is also credited as a producer and screenwriter, so clearly the breadth of his lack of talent is in keeping with his poor judgment in hiring himself to play the best friend.)

 If the writers, producers and directors of this movie had focused on any one of those relationships, and carried through an exposition of how that one relationship matters, and changes, or changes Doug, then there would have been the bare bones of a film worth watching. They would still need someone who could write five- and six-letter words, and if they insisted on having a comedy maybe they could hire somebody to write some jokes into it. But they tried to do everything, and so did nothing. Less than nothing.

23. The Good House

Starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline

Directed by Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky

Released: 2021

 In the earliest scenes of this film I was dreading having to sit through it. Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver) talks to the camera in slow, clipped tones that sound like she's trying to communicate complex ideas to a third-grader. But eventually she gets over it and speaks more or less normally, and I'm grateful that, although her family has been in Massachusetts since the 1600s, Hildy has no discernible local accent. She speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent, like Sigourney Weaver. She sounds normal and odd pronunciations don't distract from the content of her speech. She can pronounce an "R". (There's actually only one character in the film that has that peculiar New England sound, and she has mercifully few lines.)

 The story is this: Hildy Good has been successful in real estate, a top agent in the state. But things have gone a little bit wrong lately. Her husband left her for another man. (That happens so often in the movies these days.) Her family and friends staged an intervention because of her drinking. (She denies it's a problem, but went to rehab just to shut them all up.) Her employee Wendy Heatherton quit and stole all her clients, and Hildy is now in competition with that smug, odious bitch (well-played by Kathryn Erbe). Hildy is on a downward slide, and it's subtly related to her manner of speaking. 

 Suddenly, though, things are looking up. Business takes a turn for the better, then another success follows on success. It looks like everything's coming up roses for her, and she even renews an old romantic relationship with Frank Getchell (Kevin Kline), a local entrepreneur and -- she says, though it's hard to credit -- the richest man in town. And at the moment of her greatest success everything falls apart.

 I only knew Sigourney Weaver's work from the science-fiction send-up Galaxy Quest, and to be honest I sometimes confuse her with Andie McDowell. Kevin Kline I knew only from A Fish Called Wanda, which I barely remember, and a movie poster in a friend's guest bathroom. (I know I saw the movie it advertises, In & Out, but don't recall it either.) To me these people were just names. I may not remember Kline's performance as Frank from this film, but I'm pretty sure that I will remember Weaver's portrayal of Hildy. Having briefly looked over the list of Best Actress nominees for the year, I'm honestly surprised not to find her included there. I'll put it down to studio politics involving the production companies behind this film.

24. The Good Catholic

Starrig Zachary Spicer, Wrenn Schmidt, John C. McGinley and Danny Glover

Directed by Paul Shoulberg

Released: 2017

 The male stars of this film are priests at a Catholic church in a medium-sized midwestern town. The bishop has decided the church will be open on Friday nights until the wee hours, the better to reach an underserved demographic, You can probably imagine how well that works. Father Daniel (Spicer) is in the confessional, saying his rosary and fighting off sleep, when he finally gets a visitor: an odd-seeming young woman named Jane (played by Schmidt), who says she's dying and wants to talk to him about her own funeral arrangements. She leaves in something of a huff when Father Daniel can't answer her questions about pallbearers or something. But she's back the following Friday night, and we learn that she's a singer in a coffee shop. She invites Father Daniel to come to her show, and when he does it forms the basis for a budding friendship between the handsome young priest-with-doubts and the eccentric and cock-sure young woman. You can assume the outlines of the conflict, but only to a point. Watching their relationship develop or fail is the interesting part of this movie. The performances are good, especially John McGinley's portrayal of the Franciscan priest Father Ollie, who can amuse and irk at the same time. Spicer's portrayal of Father Daniel is well-measured, though the script requires a barely-plausible resolution of his self-reflection.

 But as a reasonably astute (lapsed) Catholic I feel insulted by this movie. First by Jane's casually snide disrespect for a priest's training and position (I can barely stomach his willingness to go along with her role-playing during her second "confession"). And second, by the words Paul Shoulberg, as screenwriter as well as director, put in Father Victor's mouth during a climactic scene over dinner in the rectory. I won't go into the details here, to avoid spoiling the movie for anyone who might later watch it. Suffice it to say that words can have more than one distinct meaning, and it is insulting to the audience, the character and the accomplished actor to conflate those meanings to make a specious point. If anything brings this film down below the level of mediocrity it is this fatuously glib and facile speech by Glover's character. (There's also a point at which Father Victor tells Father Daniel that priests don't have a special line to God. Why, then, do we need priests at all? Might as well make do with ministers and preachers.)

25. Goodbye Christopher Robin

Starring Domnhall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Will Tillston, Kelly McDonald and Alex Lawther

Directed by Simon Curtis

Released: 2017

 I don't know how much of the story told in this biographical film is true. It is the story of the first child to be exploited by his parents for wealth and fame, the first to have his life ruined by them for their own sakes. If the tale told is true, Christopher Robin's father, A.A. Milne, was oblivious to what he was doing to his boy, while the mother, Daphne Milne, was happy to do it and would have kept on. I had always heard that the real Christopher Milne wanted nothing to do with the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and this film certainly explains why that might be so.

 A.A. Milne (Domnhall Gleeson) was a playwright, successfully, before World War I. He returned from the war traumatized by the experience, and moved his family to the country in hope of finding peace of mind. Daphne (Margot Robbie) was a selfish airhead -- today she would be an influencer -- who yearned for the fashionable life. She is made to say more crude, crass, insensitive things than seem possible for real life. I've said such things myself, but at least I recognize, usually immediately, that they are boorish; she has no such awareness, and her husband's quiet futile attempts to shut her up seem not to register in her consciousness. 

 

 Left alone in the country for a time, Milne and his son begin to explore the woods around their home, and we see the basis for the famous stories begin to form. When the tales are published, everybody wants a piece of little Christopher Robin, and his parents are happy to oblige for the right price. It's only when the nanny (Kelly McDonald) quits after a particularly vicious interview with the boy's parents that Milne and his wife become aware of just how much they were requiring of their little boy. By then, it's too late for the child, and his life thereafter is a particularly British version of Hell.

  

26. Selma

Starring David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, and Carmen Ejogo

Directed by Ava DuVernay

Released: 2014

 For those of us who were alive and watching television in the 1960s, there are few voices as recognizable as that of Dr Martin Luther King, jr. Indeed, I would imagine that even younger Americans have heard portions of his "I Have a Dream" speech, given at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, played with some frequency during their lives; it is that famous, and that important to our national story. 

 David Oyelowo doesn't do an imitation of Dr King's voice. What he does instead is to use the same cadence of speaking, the identifiable Black-Preacher intonations and rhythms, and the same elegance of word and thought, to become Dr King. The skill required to do that has ready comparisons in this film, as the actors portraying President Johnson and Alabama Governor Wallace make do with thick Southern accents to inhabit their characters. But Tom Wilkinson neither looks nor sounds like LBJ, who had a Texas accent, not a Southern one. Tim Roth as Governor Wallace gets a little closer as the governor, but he has the advantage of playing a less-familiar actual person with a more easily recognized accent.

 This film covers a short portion of the Civil Rights Movement. The March on Washington is in the past; the immediate goal of the movement is voting rights: federal legislation to stop states like Alabama from all the underhanded chicanery and overt injustices practices against black people for a hundred years to keep them from the rights of citizenship: the poll taxes, the tests, the circular restrictions on voting. The Johnson administration is sympathetic to the cause but has other priorities, and urges Dr King to drop his push for voting rights for a time. Dr King has other ideas, and in the end public outrage at the treatment of protestors in Selma force the President's hand. 

 As with any two-hour movie, the reality it depicts is trimmed and edited to fit in the time allowed. Still, if my own understanding of that time in history is accurate (and who's to say it is or isn't?), this movie presents a fair synopsis of the debates of the era, not just between the Movement and the Administration but also within the Movement. And even if it's not accurate, or fair, it's still a good story well told, and it's something every American of the 21st Century should have some understanding of. 

27. Next Goal Wins

Starring Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley and Kaimana

Directed by Taika Waititi

Released: 2023

 

 I expected a round-ball version of the famous Cool Runnings, a film about athletes who succeed where no one believed they could. That's pretty much what I got.

 

 The national soccer team of American Samoa went from humiliation to humiliation for years, including the worst World Cup Qualifying match loss in history, in 2001. Eventually the territory's Football Federation hired a somewhat well-known coach, Thomas Rongen, who had been fired as head coach of the United States' team and didn't want to be without a job. He came in just a few weeks before qualifying for the 2014 World Cup and tried to whip the raw American Samoa team into some kind of shape. This film chronicles the results of those few weeks.

 Soccer fans will recognize what Rongen was up against. Human beings will recognize the importance to the players, the team, and the nation of the results of his work. Movie fans will get some catharsis and at least a few laughs out of this delightful little film.