I really liked the 2019 documentary Halston, about the famed designer. I’m not into high fashion, but I like looking at the archival footage of NYC in the 70’s and 80’s, admiring the glamorous dresses, and getting into the corporate drama of Halston getting booted out from his own company. I especially liked the interviews with Liza Minnelli (who always sounded like she was about to burst into song) and Elsa Peretti’s jaded coolness in her 1990 interview.
The part that wasn’t necessary was Tavi Gevinson as the fictional narrator. It was fine as an opening framing device, but whenever the film cut back to her, it felt jarring and out of place, and felt very unimportant in comparison with all the other interviews and archival footage.
Overall, it was a very interesting documentary about a highly influential designer who had a very intriguing public persona that was at both charismatic yet remote.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Thoughts on River's Edge
I watched River’s Edge, a 1986 dark teen drama, and really liked it a lot. It starred Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, and Ione Skye as teens whose friend kills his girlfriend, and they are shook up and don’t know how to handle it. It also had Joshua Miller as Reeves’ delinquent brother and Dennis Hopper as the town recluse who had done a similar crime in his past.
The film had a strong heavy metal vibe, between the music, the beat-up denim outfits, and the working-class kids from wayward homes who were basically taking care of themselves. It had this rough edge that I liked, and a lot of fantastic, heartfelt performances. Reeves brought a lot of quiet sensitivity to his role, while Skye had this sweet innocence despite being kind of wild, she just came off as a little lost. Hopper brought a lot of tragic sadness to his role, and Miller was great as a little shitty kid with no direction in life other than towards destruction. And Daniel Roebuck as the teen killer did great in frustrating me with his misogyny and self-justifications for killing his girlfriend because she was “talking shit,” and especially disturbing in how he said after he killed her, he felt so alive.
Glover brought a lot of tight-coiled energy to his character, and delivered a strange high inflection to his lines, combined with a California dude accent, it often just sounded off-kilter to me in comparison to the other teens’ more lowkey vibe.
The whole film just felt heavy and sad, especially as the teens just dig themselves in deeper and unknowingly become accomplices in the crime while sorting out their feelings. The whole story just comes off as tragic, and the film had a lot of heart that I respected.
The film had a strong heavy metal vibe, between the music, the beat-up denim outfits, and the working-class kids from wayward homes who were basically taking care of themselves. It had this rough edge that I liked, and a lot of fantastic, heartfelt performances. Reeves brought a lot of quiet sensitivity to his role, while Skye had this sweet innocence despite being kind of wild, she just came off as a little lost. Hopper brought a lot of tragic sadness to his role, and Miller was great as a little shitty kid with no direction in life other than towards destruction. And Daniel Roebuck as the teen killer did great in frustrating me with his misogyny and self-justifications for killing his girlfriend because she was “talking shit,” and especially disturbing in how he said after he killed her, he felt so alive.
Glover brought a lot of tight-coiled energy to his character, and delivered a strange high inflection to his lines, combined with a California dude accent, it often just sounded off-kilter to me in comparison to the other teens’ more lowkey vibe.
The whole film just felt heavy and sad, especially as the teens just dig themselves in deeper and unknowingly become accomplices in the crime while sorting out their feelings. The whole story just comes off as tragic, and the film had a lot of heart that I respected.
Thoughts on See You Yesterday and The Wandering Earth
I watched two sci-fi movies on Netflix recently: See You Yesterday and The Wandering Earth.
I really liked See You Yesterday, for being a good time travel movie with a feeling of futility in its commentary on police brutality, and the positive support in portraying two black teen nerds in the STEM field. The basic plot is that two teens, CJ and Sebastian, develop a time travel machine with Ghostbusters-like proton packs, and they go back in time a day early to save CJ’s brother from getting shot and killed by the police. CJ keeps going back several times whenever the timeline doesn’t work due to the limited ten-minute window into the past, and it is a sad and painful look at not only everyday dangers that POC face with police violence and racism, but also that the timelines don’t ensure happy and safe presents, and the ending still gives a feeling of a desperate drive to fix things for the future.
Besides that, I did like the performances of the two main kids, as they were very believable and charming cute nerds, and there’s a fun cameo by Michael J. Fox as their schoolteacher, along with references to Octavia Butler’s Kindred (about a black heroine time-traveling), Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and, as quoted from the AV Club, “Sebastian and his friends peruse a copy of Kwanza Osajyefo’s comic Black, which explores a world where only black people are genetically able to acquire superpowers.” So I would recommend this, but I agree with critics that, for all the fun nerd stuff with the time travel creation, there’s still a sense of melancholy in the film being about the realities of POC and police brutality.
The Wandering Earth is a Chinese sci-fi blockbuster that was a huge hit last year, and is based on a short story by The Three Body Problem author Liu Cixin. I had read the first book in the TBP trilogy, which is mostly physics and hard sci-fi about the Chinese space agency communicating with an alien civilization and the effects of it, and I assumed from the film’s plot description (The sun is dying, and Earth propels itself to another solar system, and survivors live in underground cities), that it would be along the lines of Sunshine or Snowpiercer, like a thoughtful, smart sci-fi film. Nope. It played out more like Armageddon, with overdramatized soap opera acting, cheesy one-liners, goofy comic reliefs, and ridiculous plots about Earth being sucked into Jupiter’s gravitational pull and being on the brink of destruction, with a lot of hero moments of people either sacrificing themselves or pulling off impossible plans to save everyone against a countdown. It was fine to watch as a cheesy popcorn movie, just not the cerebral kind of sci-fi film I thought I’d be getting.
I really liked See You Yesterday, for being a good time travel movie with a feeling of futility in its commentary on police brutality, and the positive support in portraying two black teen nerds in the STEM field. The basic plot is that two teens, CJ and Sebastian, develop a time travel machine with Ghostbusters-like proton packs, and they go back in time a day early to save CJ’s brother from getting shot and killed by the police. CJ keeps going back several times whenever the timeline doesn’t work due to the limited ten-minute window into the past, and it is a sad and painful look at not only everyday dangers that POC face with police violence and racism, but also that the timelines don’t ensure happy and safe presents, and the ending still gives a feeling of a desperate drive to fix things for the future.
Besides that, I did like the performances of the two main kids, as they were very believable and charming cute nerds, and there’s a fun cameo by Michael J. Fox as their schoolteacher, along with references to Octavia Butler’s Kindred (about a black heroine time-traveling), Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and, as quoted from the AV Club, “Sebastian and his friends peruse a copy of Kwanza Osajyefo’s comic Black, which explores a world where only black people are genetically able to acquire superpowers.” So I would recommend this, but I agree with critics that, for all the fun nerd stuff with the time travel creation, there’s still a sense of melancholy in the film being about the realities of POC and police brutality.
The Wandering Earth is a Chinese sci-fi blockbuster that was a huge hit last year, and is based on a short story by The Three Body Problem author Liu Cixin. I had read the first book in the TBP trilogy, which is mostly physics and hard sci-fi about the Chinese space agency communicating with an alien civilization and the effects of it, and I assumed from the film’s plot description (The sun is dying, and Earth propels itself to another solar system, and survivors live in underground cities), that it would be along the lines of Sunshine or Snowpiercer, like a thoughtful, smart sci-fi film. Nope. It played out more like Armageddon, with overdramatized soap opera acting, cheesy one-liners, goofy comic reliefs, and ridiculous plots about Earth being sucked into Jupiter’s gravitational pull and being on the brink of destruction, with a lot of hero moments of people either sacrificing themselves or pulling off impossible plans to save everyone against a countdown. It was fine to watch as a cheesy popcorn movie, just not the cerebral kind of sci-fi film I thought I’d be getting.
Thoughts On The Dead Don't Die
I thought The Dead Don’t Die was just ok, this 2019 zombie comedy ensemble film by Jim Jarmusch. It has a great cast of actors from Jim Jarmusch movies, but there’s this flat level of energy that runs throughout the film that made it feel less exciting than I thought it would be. I had expected more levity, and it felt more dry to me, with some on the nose socio-political commentary about fracking, Trump, addiction to technology, etc. I’ve seen several Jarmusch movies, so I wasn’t going in cold, I know he generally has a dry, quiet sense of humor. I just felt this movie could’ve used a little more life in it, pardon the joke.
I did like some fun and quirky aspects. Iggy Pop as a zombie (the movie has him specifically stop in front of the camera during his intro just so we get a good look at him), Tom Waits as a hermit in the woods who just views the zombie action from a distance; Caleb Landry Jones looking like a cross between stoner Macaulay Culkin and Herman Hermann, the one-armed army surplus guy from The Simpsons; Rosie Perez’ newscaster character name being “Posie Juarez”; the near-mistake I felt like I caught of Selena Gomez opening her eyes when she’s supposed to be dead; the running joke of mentioning the film’s theme song as a commentary on product placement, like “buy the soundtrack after the movie!”; and the brief Scrooged reunion of Bill Murray and Carol Kane, which had me making jokes in my head about her being the Ghost of Christmas Present back to haunt him.
So it’s just ok, not as exciting as the trailer showed, but just fine for a lowkey indie take on zombie movies.
I did like some fun and quirky aspects. Iggy Pop as a zombie (the movie has him specifically stop in front of the camera during his intro just so we get a good look at him), Tom Waits as a hermit in the woods who just views the zombie action from a distance; Caleb Landry Jones looking like a cross between stoner Macaulay Culkin and Herman Hermann, the one-armed army surplus guy from The Simpsons; Rosie Perez’ newscaster character name being “Posie Juarez”; the near-mistake I felt like I caught of Selena Gomez opening her eyes when she’s supposed to be dead; the running joke of mentioning the film’s theme song as a commentary on product placement, like “buy the soundtrack after the movie!”; and the brief Scrooged reunion of Bill Murray and Carol Kane, which had me making jokes in my head about her being the Ghost of Christmas Present back to haunt him.
So it’s just ok, not as exciting as the trailer showed, but just fine for a lowkey indie take on zombie movies.
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