Thoughts on Brigsby Bear

On Hulu this month, I was happy to see they added Brigsby Bear, this 2017 comedy that got very little theatrical release and seemed fairly obscure or under the radar, and I had heard of it but hadn’t seen it. It starred Kyle Mooney, and was a unique premise about a guy named James who got abducted as a baby and raised by a couple in an underground bunker, where he grew up watching a children’s TV show called Brigsby Bear, a fantasy show with a giant bear and wizards and magic, that was in reality created by his captors (Mark Hamill and Jane Addams) as a tool to control and manipulate him. He gets rescued, placed back with his biological family, and though he’s 25 now, he is still very childlike and obsessing with wanting to recreate Brigsby Bear for his own movie, essentially still being emotionally tied to the character because it was the only art connection he had to the world, no other media, and it always made him happy throughout his life.

I really liked this one a lot, it’s both weird and wholesome. Like Kimmy Schmidt, it straddles this line of being upbeat while treading over darker material, where the hero is an optimist who acts very childlike for their adult age, like how Kimmy would still act 14 as an adult because it was when she got abducted and her development was delayed. Similarly, I was unsure at James’ age, thinking he was in his late teens, and was surprised when they said he’s 25 (Mooney was in his thirties at the time). He mostly hangs out with teens, which is a little strange for him being an adult, but I could get that due to his immature development, he connected more with them than people his age. I did like his friendship with Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), an Afro-Latino nerd into sci-fi and horror with AV interests who helps James get into filmmaking to create a Brigsby Bear movie in a lo-fi, homemade kind of way.

I did have issues with how, when he’s returned to his family, they don’t put him into counseling or do any kind of rehabilitative treatment for the trauma he’s going through, rather just assuming he’ll just fit right in with his family, who are strangers to him, forcing family togetherness with a list of “fun” things to do. They only bring in a therapist (Claire Danes) when he needs an intervention, like when he’s obsessed with Brigsby Bear and it leads him into trouble. For a movie that felt grounded in balancing PTSD trauma with a hopeful survivor, it did bother me how clueless his family was being in thinking he’d just snap right back into place as their son as if he was never stolen from them all his life.

I really liked Greg Kinnear in this, as the sympathetic detective who is in a weird place of wanting James to move on, but also wanting to help him where he’s at right now. Kinnear just played him with warmth and likability, and I enjoyed their connection together.

I did have questions as to why the couple abducted James for so long, beyond just wanting a child. The movie glosses over that, as the film is obviously about the survivor and not his captors, but the story doesn’t give a decent explanation for it, like holding him in an underground bunker for so long, though the fake TV show is explained as Hamill’s character had created a Teddy Ruxpin-like toy in the 1980s and had the toys and props for his own propaganda children’s show for his abductee. While it did skip over some of the more worse aspects just to keep the movie a light comedy about using art to follow your dreams and be creative, especially being inspired by childhood nostalgia, I did enjoy the movie, so I’m fine with that.

Thoughts on Peggy Sue Got Married

I hadn’t seen Peggy Sue Got Married, Francis Ford Coppola’s film from 1986, and only loosely knew what it was about (woman in an unhappy marriage time travels back to her high school days), but watched it last month when it came on Hulu, and really liked it a lot. It’s a weird movie that has the nostalgia of a late 1950s teen life (1960, but it might as well still be the 50s), but with this warped dreamlike feeling, and this melancholy and sadness of a middle-aged woman (Kathleen Turner) among her teen friends knowing the future and dreading her future with her high school boyfriend who she would marry into an unfulfilling life. I liked how it feels off-kilter, like if Peggy Sue really is dreaming or if she had time-traveled, and it’s like a teen film but for middle-aged adults.

This happened to come out a year after Back to the Future, with similar themes and setting, and they even dub over Kathleen Turner in one scene to say she’s “come from the future,” when her lips says “back from the future.”

Nicolas Cage, as Peggy Sue’s boyfriend and future husband, makes an inspired choice with his voice in the film, basing it off of Pokey from The Gumby Show, and having this stuffed-up nasal voice which sounds off-putting, but I got used to it. Jim Carrey was fun as Cage’s goofball friend, and I liked seeing Joan Allen in an early role as one of Peggy Sue’s friends. I really liked Barry Miller as the future science genius Richard, he had a lot of sweet sensitivity to his part, and it was cool also seeing Kevin J. O’Connor in an early role as the beatnik poet outsider teen. And it’s a little weird when seeing Sofia Coppola as a kid in acting roles, because she just isn’t an actress, she comes off as stiff onscreen, and clearly found her place as an artist behind the camera, including directing Turner as the Lisbon mother in The Virgin Suicides over a decade later.

Kathleen Turner was great in this, I liked the contrast of her deep husky voice among the “teen” characters to show how much older she is than everyone else, even if they all see her as a teen. I liked her out of place feeling, and her conflicted feelings of not wanting to repeat her marriage while also not wanting to erase her kids from the future. Her emotions at talking to her long-deceased grandparents (especially Maureen O’Sullivan in a cameo) was so touching and real for me.

So I’m glad I watched this, this is a beautiful and melancholy film. I included a video of filmmaker Ti West giving his thoughts, which I concur with.

Thoughts on Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (aka Átame!)

On Criterion in March, I watched Pedro Almodóvar’s 1989 film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (aka Átame!), a dark romantic comedy where Antonio Banderas plays a recently released patient from a mental institution named Ricky, and abducts an actress named Marina (Victoria Abril), holding her hostage in her home because he is obsessed with her, especially after a brief one-night-stand they had a year ago when he had escaped from the institution. It basically takes a horror movie premise of stalking and obsession and plays it up in a darkly comedic way, where it’s likable because the two leads are charismatic and attractive (like how Overboard has a somewhat similar premise but gets a pass because of the great chemistry between the leads), but knowing it’s messed up at the same time, especially when it starts getting into Stockholm Syndrome territory.

I did like this a lot, and I hadn’t seen Almodóvar older films, so it was fun seeing Banderas in an early role, and I like seeing how the warm colors just pop in Almodóvar’s films. I liked the busy environment of the the film shoot where Marina is working, like her sister and best friend Lola (Loles León) who looks out for her, and the eccentric and vibrant director (Francisco Rabal) who’s a paraplegic from a stroke. Rossy de Palma has a small part as a drug dealer who Banderas tries to score from to get morphine for Marina’s toothache, which she needs stronger drugs for because she was an addict and painkillers are too mild for her.

I do like the humor, like him thinking getting softer rope and tape is him being “nice” to her while he’s holding her hostage (there’s a brief scene where he’s buying the tape and mentioning that “his girl” would like it better because it’s softer, the clerk missing the implications), or him trying to woo her by writing out a map of his life via a subway line, to seem more sympathetic as an orphan put through the system, and romanticizing his interest in her instead of as a stalker obsession, especially since she had previously done pornographic films and could attract stalkers like him.

I felt for her during the movie, and kept wanting her to escape, and felt like she mainly fell for him because he’s handsome and charismatic, which felt very surface to me. It still felt like he had a fixation on her because of her looks, and didn’t really get to know her through the film, just seeing what he wants to see. The movie ends with them being happily together, whereas I felt he would still be an abusive and possessive person, now that his obsession and kidnapping had “won” her. So I liked the movie, and liked the chemistry between them, and felt it was a messed-up romance in a somewhat enjoyable way to watch as a movie fantasy.

ETA: on reading IMDB reviews, the general theme of this movie is that it is a satirical farce making fun of marriage and courtship, like exaggerating it to a ridiculous degree, with kidnapping and forcing someone to love you, which does make sense in a more over the top way.

Thoughts on Losing Ground

In March on Criterion, I watched Losing Ground, a 1982 drama by director Kathleen Collins, that had a quiet, slow, and laid-back atmosphere that I really liked. It’s a drama about an opposites-attract married couple, the bookish, restrained professor Sara (Seret Scott) and the loose, casual painter Victor (Bill Gunn). They’ve been married ten years, and going through some strain and clashing in their relationship, as he sees her more for her beauty than seeing her inner self, so they go away to the country for the summer, each finding their own individual paths of joy and enlightenment, but also growing apart as different people.

I liked the slow pace of the film, how it was very much a talky movie, and how early on, the couple do have contrasts that initially work together, as she needs to loosen up and he needs to get more serious. I liked scenes like him teasing her when he’s painting her, or her having conversations with her easygoing but honest mom, or her working on her academic research but learning to have more fun when dancing in an artistic project with friends. Seret Scott was really wonderful in this, playing both the cold nerdy side of Sara and the sexy, happy side when she’s dancing.

Victor was charming, but not really as sympathetic, as he proves to be more immature over the course of the film, like openly flirting with a female neighbor and falling back on his bad philandering habits. But I still liked Bill Gunn’s performance, and knew of his name a little from the cult 1970s Black vampire film Ganja & Hess. He had a long career in television and film, and was friends with James Dean way back in the 1950s.

I didn’t realize that Duane Jones, the hero from Night of the Living Dead, was also in this in a supporting role as a friend and potential lover to Sara.

The writer/director Kathleen Collins, who passed in 1988 of cancer at just 46, was a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. She only directed two films in her lifetime, her daughter working to resurrect her films posthumously, but according to her IMDB bio, she also created a film program at City College of New York, was an editor on Sesame Street, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and was a memorable teacher. I’m happy I checked this film out, it had a chill pace to it that I really enjoyed sitting with.

Thoughts on The Addiction

In February, I went to the Museum of the Moving Image screening of Abel Ferrara’s 1995 film The Addiction, and, not having seen the film since I was a teen and only vaguely remembering it, really enjoyed it a lot. It’s a black and white vampire film where Lili Taylor is a grad student named Kathleen who gets turned into a vampire by a mysterious Annabella Sciorra, and her cyclical existence of binges and painful withdrawals are meant to mirror heroin addiction, especially comparing it to other random people struggling with addiction in the film. Such quotes from Taylor are “We drink to escape the fact we're alcoholics. Existence is the search for relief from our habit, and our habit is the only relief we can find,” and “Dependency is a marvelous thing. It does more for the soul than any formulation of doctoral material.”

I really got into this. I like the shadows and light in the black and white cinematography, the way the light casts across the actors’ faces, or in one scene, light from open window blinds slowly making their way down the wall to Taylor in an attempt at suicide that was beautifully filmed. I liked the mid-90s NYC-centric hip-hop soundtrack, the haunting look of downtown NYC at night, how the film featured future Sopranos cast members (Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Annabella Sciorra), Taylor’s purely physical performance as a woman who is empty inside like a hollow shell but thrives on blood binges to survive, and Christopher Walken in an extended cameo as a longtime proselytizing vampire who has fasted for years and sees Taylor as weak without self-discipline, which doesn’t help when she’s curled up on the floor and clutching her stomach in withdrawal pains. Walken as Peina states “You know how long I've been fasting? Forty years. The last time I shot up, I had a dozen and a half in one night. They fall like flies before the hunger, don't they? You can never get enough, can you? But you learn to control it. You learn, like the Tibetans, to survive on a little.”

I liked the random dark humor in it, like Taylor just attacking a random guy trying to help her or blaming a young and freshly bitten Kathryn Erbe for trusting her.

This is a great and unusual vampire film that felt like its own strange thing, I liked it a lot.

Thoughts on Belle

At the Museum of the Moving Image, I enjoyed watching the 2021 anime film Belle, directed by Mamoru Hosada. It was a gorgeous film that looked beautiful on the big screen, using a lot of CGI technology to give the film a larger, 3-D look, as a lot of the film takes place in an online virtual community where people use avatars to either hide behind or enhance their hidden strengths.

The film centers on a shy schoolgirl named Suzu, who deals with a lot of anxiety and social awkwardness, and feeling distant from her father ever since her mother died trying to save a drowning child, and getting Internet hate for it. She loves music, but has withdrawn from it since it was her mother who taught her how to sing and create music. Suzu is introduced to the virtual community of U by her techie friend Hiro, and Hiro creates a pop star avatar for Suzu, highlighting her talented singing voice behind a flowing pink-haired Disney princess-looking star named Belle, who quickly blows up in popularity on the app, with contentious debate from fans and haters alike. As Hiro points out, talented favorites usually have small cult communities of fandom, while bigger stars have more mixed reaction and controversy.

The movie expands more to not just be about a shy girl learning to express herself, but is a funny reflection of Internet comments and videos fighting each other on fan theories on Belle’s true identity, as well as the identity of “the Dragon,” a beast who eliminated avatars in martial arts battles and crashes into other virtual worlds, and comes off as an angry bruised beast, being hunted by Thundercats-looking superheroes, but Belle is drawn to him and his pain. Then the film starts a recreation of Beauty and the Beast in the app, lifting influences from the Disney version and the Cocteau version, and it blends together well with the mix of fantasy as a shield for people’s realities, and gets more absorbing to watch.

Some of the funniest moments in the film were simply teens in the real world having crushes on each other and being terrified to talk to one another. The animators would have just a frozen still of a character with a gaping mouth or hiding their face while beet-red, and just hold on that image for a few seconds like time froze for them, and it was absolutely hilarious, especially if they stay frozen while others are reacting.

Another great moment was when Suzu is trying to reverse a rumor going around (“He held her hand - it’s going viral!”) by texting the more reasonable and influential girls in the class to set things straight, and flipping her peers like they are virtual coins.

I’m not a big anime fan, and am out of the loop of most anime series, but I do see one-off movies like this sometimes, and really adore them. This was a really beautiful, funny, and thoughtful film to watch, I’m happy I saw it.

Thoughts on Titane

On Hulu, I watched Titane, Julia Ducournau's 2021 film and her follow-up to her cannibal film Raw. I generally liked it, going into it cold and going along with the weird turns the film took. I felt the first half is a lot more loud and busy and more like an exploitation film, and the second half is a lot slower and feels more like a family drama about grief and loss. I don’t think the two genres really went together, as it had a weird tonal shift, but I did like that the film didn’t hold back in its emotional and physical rawness.

Alexia (Agathe Rouselle) is a dancer/car model in the South of France who survived a car accident as a kid, had a titanium plate put into her head, and develops an erotic fixation on cars. She’s a serial killer who stabs people with knitting needles, and is on the run, and, in the second half of the film, ends up in a situation under false pretenses, and the film takes a slower turn from the bloodiness and synth music stings into something more sad and emotional. There’s a lot more unusual details, but I don’t want to give away too much.

I preferred Raw more, I liked the dark comedy with the bloody cannibal stuff and expressive colors in a giallo kind of way, and felt more connected to that story, as it’s about a shy young woman in veterinary school who goes from being a vegetarian to craving raw flesh, undergoing a huge transformation as a person coming of age. Whereas this one felt a little more remote because Alexia essentially feels empty, and doesn’t seem to have much purpose in her life beyond mere survival. She obviously has mental health issues, and seems like a sociopath or psychopath, whichever one. So it’s more like watching her from a distance rather than really understanding what’s going on with her emotionally.

I’m not as into the hype as this being one of the best films of last year, but it’s very good, and stands out as being weird and naked and unique. I’m glad I finally got to see it when it hit Hulu.