messy and flawed but so admirable. the week-by-week release kinda made the ultimate reveals a little anticlimactic after so many weeks of theorizing. and the climax got a little too zack-synder-bloated-CGI, a little too unfocused, and a little too wtf with a couple character resolutions.
but the sitcom parodies made me laugh, and everything involving vision made me cry, so there you go.
a little opaque in its production methods--i'm wondering how out of a thousand boys this documentary happened to follow most of the prominent players, for instance--but no less impactful because of this. a subtly scathing, pessimistic indictment of politics and an incredible portrait of some brave boys.
so maddening. the world is still full of characters like the judge in this film, the kind of person who says 'how dare you accuse me of prejudice' but is so zealously trusting of systems that cruelty and oppression barely register in his mind; his smug closing statement is the kind of thing we still hear too often today from those on the supposed 'right' side of history.
great performances, great lingering shots that made my heart hurt. full of…
This is the kind of movie that doesn’t really grab you the whole time (even though Frances mcdormand can slay with one glance at the camera) and in fact makes you a little restless halfway through because it’s kinda slow and mundane (even though the documentary-style monogues are quite touching), and then when the credits roll you’re just sitting there, unable to move, feeling the rest of your life unfurling in front of you like one long, sun-dappled road through the desert.
Unrelated: I am so hyped for Marvel’s The Eternals.
solid hitchcock noir, with great camera angles and shadow work. cute kids too! i guess the whole waltz bit--with unexplained dance footage--would have made more sense to the contemporary audience who knew the melody was called the 'merry widow'? now it's just confusing but adds a fun level of surrealism.
Pretty sure I didn’t know who Billy Crystal was last time I saw this (it’s been a while), so it was a pleasant surprise to see him even as his character maybe verged toward the anti-Semitic?
I was also more heavily invested in the evolution of Fred Savage’s character than I remember ever being as a child. Glad you like kissing now, kid.
bold exploration of motherhood and womanhood in america, with a bizarre handful of jokes about mexican people shoved in the middle there.
Three hours long but ZIPS along because it’s full of straight BANGERS. The love story is a little hard to believe but not actually because young Chris Plummer is HOT and endlessly charming. And on this rewatch, the first in a long time, it was very clear that that dude was a NAZI the WHOLE time! C’mon Liesl! Anyway RIP to one of the GOATs Christopher Plummer, kudos as ALWAYS to Rogers and Hammerstein (my dad was convinced for years that “Edelweiss” was a real Austrian folk song), and finally, long live dame Julie. Thank you.
He lost me with the cat stuff but made up for it with the Jesus, masturbation, kale, and ice cream stuff. Maron did a good set tonight.
fragmented and cinematic version of a very stage-y, monologue-filled show. chadwick is great, and i think i loved viola just as much. so tense and hard to watch but very human despite the exaggerated nature of it all. also lol that final scene--so dark.