The Great Movie Conquest of 2022

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - Febuary

Welcome back, one and all, to my latest attempt to justify being enslaved to a million different streaming services. My efforts to watch one new movie a day all year haven't worn me out yet, but we're not even past the first quarter yet.

My first film of the month brought me to Baz Lurhmann's Australia, and it reminded me what a beautifully mysterious animal the feature film is. My writer's brain identified a small handful of technical issues with the film's plotting, but the emotional current of the film took me to a place that was epic, even spiritual. I don't know. When a film cuts straight to the core of your psyche, do setup and payoff even matter anymore? I think this film is fated for repeated viewings over the years as I untangle my response to this film.

One of my favorite films of all time is Billy Wilder's The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. You'd think, then, that learning that the three had collaborated again with Irma La Douce would excite me, but their electric combination just feels like a bolt of lightning that could never strike the same place twice, so I went in feeling apprehensive.

The film itself had Wilder's signature cleverness, and it carried over the plot's absurd twists and turns. Lemmon and MacLaine were at their best. I don't know if this movie could ever supplant The Apartment, but at the same time I don't know if that's a fair expectation or if any film should be evaluated on such terms. Irma La Douce was a lot of fun, and I can be content with that for now.

I think the worst viewing experience goes to Lake Placid. Mind you, I don't think that the film's ambitions were ever that high, but my goodness it's irresponsible to make a film so hostile to human psychology. Don't tell me it's just a creature feature and I shouldn't be thinking about it so hard. Crawl had the same basic human vs crocodile plotline and that one didn't leave my brain feeling like grated cheese.

My apathy toward the state of award show politics, and my frustration with this year's ceremony in particular, hasn't stopped me from wanting to brush up on this year's Oscar nominees. The two that I hit this month were Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog and Lin-Manuel Miranda's tick, tick ... BOOM! Both offerings represent genres or topics I am invested in (toxic masculinity and modern musicals), though neither really gave me what I was looking for. I don't consider that a waste or a failure. We all need to listen to someone who disagrees with us from time to time.

I'm always interested to see the modern film world give westerns a try. Just so, I didn't resonate with some of the assumptions The Power of the Dog made about where toxic masculinity comes from or how to respond to it. Meanwhile, I was elated by the hyper-stylization of Tick, Tick ... BOOM! at least when the film's protagonist didn't feel so self-obsessed. (Just take the piano and be grateful, Jon.) This wasn't my favorite musical offering of the year, yet it somehow was the film that made me most hopeful for the future of the genre. I look forward to reading about how both films do at the ceremony this year.

Speaking of musicals, my one theater visit this month took me to Joe Wright's Cyrano, the review for which I only published yesterday. I'll just say here that the film makes a really good case for period-piece musicals.

Anyways, looking forward ...

The masses have spoken, and March's theme will be movies that my roommates say I need to watch. (What would my professors say if I finally ended up seeing Baby Driver at the behest of my roommates when I put off their own recommendation for years?)

I'm wanting to dedicate April to a specific country to help increase my literacy with international film, but I'm leaving it up to you to decide which country that will be. I've narrowed it down to Japan and France. Cast your votes here.

If I'm being totally honest with myself, this challenge was born mostly out of impatience. I want to be fluent in every kind of movie right now, and if I just consume a bunch of new movies in rapid succession, then I will finally get what I want. But if I look back at the things that have helped me feel secure in my study of film, numbers or scores factored very little into the equation. Realizing I had the capacity to understand a text deeply, that's what gives me peace of mind, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to use this space to process the films I'm seeing.

So I guess the question is ... can a person's expertise have depth and breadth? I'll let you all know in January.

--The Professor

Alright, March, you're next!

Febuary's Harvest:

Australia (2008)

Journey to Italy (1954)

Shark Tale (2004)

Irma La Douce (1963)

I Shot Jesse James (1949)

Abominable (2019)

Prisoners (2013)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Social Dilemma (2020)

Easy A (2010)

An Officer and a Gentlemen (1982)

World War Z (2013)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Lake Placid (1999)

Hollow Man (2000)

The Power of the Dog (2021)

The Bravados (1958)

Designing Woman (1957)

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The Coward (1965)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

tick, tick ... BOOM! (2021)

The House with a Clock in its Walls (2019)

Cyrano (2021)

The King of Kings (1927)

Ride Your Wave (2019)

Comments

Children of a Lesser God: Between Sound and Silence

Loyal readers may remember last month when I talked about Sidney Poitier and Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue and how I casually alluded to the larger framework of disability within film and promised to talk about it one day. Well, this isn’t like with my Disney Princess series where I teased the project for years before finally getting to it. I’m making good on that promise here today. You’re welcome. Now, when I say “disability within film,” that’s a really large slice of the pie. The discussion of disability in Hollywood is a vast and complex field of study. There’s obviously overlap across the broader discussion, but people of different disabilities experience ableism differently, similar to how members of different ethnic identities experience racism differently, and it’s a machine that has to be dismantled on multiple fronts. But with this piece, I’m not so interested in airing all the ways the industry has let down members of these communities. Today, I’d mostly li

The Power of the Dog Doesn't (want to) Understand Toxic Masculinity: A Deconstruction and History of the "Toxic Cowboy"

I want to start this piece by recounting my very first experience watching John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers . The film sees John Wayne playing Ethan Edwards, rugged cowboy who embarks on a years-long quest to recover his young niece, Debbie, after she is kidnapped by a band of Comanche Indians, who also murder her entire family. Ethan is joined on this adventure by Debbie’s adopted older brother, Martin, played by Jeffrey Hunter. Ethan does not welcome Martin’s presence on this mission and even tries to leave him behind at the start, and he will continue to menace Martin as they travail the desert. Part of this is because Ethan does not consider Martin to be Debbie’s real family, and he also resents Martin’s Native American lineage. But most of his animosity stems from the fact that he simply sees Martin as weak. He does not seem like the kind of guy who can hold his own on the wild frontier. But through their time together, Ethan does come to quietly

Are We in Another Golden Age of Musicals?

In early 2017, Variety ran a piece titled “ Will Musicals See a ‘La La Land’ Boost ?” alongside said movie’s victory lap around the box office and critics at large. Justin Paul, who wrote the music for La La Land alongside his partner, Benj Pasek, was optimistic about the doors his movie was opening: “I have to believe that other studios, other producers, would only be encouraged by the impact of ‘La La Land,’ both critically and at the box office.” Their agent, Richard Kraft, shared a similar sentiment. “I think people are growing tired of snark and skepticism and pessimism. [La La Land] hit the zeitgeist for smart and unapologetic optimism. Even in times of strife and conflict, people still fall in love and follow dreams.” These are the kinds of statements that don’t go unnoticed by a musical nerd who chose to write his semesterly report on Meet Me in St. Louis when all his fellow film students wrote on Woody Allen. Classical musicals had always just been that gateway into c

REVIEW: The Wild Robot

I think I must have known that Chris Sanders had another movie on deck, but I guess I had forgotten it was coming out so soon. For whatever reason, when I saw his name at the end of the credits for The Wild Robot , out this weekend, I was caught off guard ... and then realized that it actually explained a lot. The basic premise felt broadly reminiscent of Lilo & Stitch , and there was at least one sequence that definitely recalled How to Train Your Dragon , both of which Sanders co-directed with Dean Deblois (executive producer on this film). With his latest offering for Dreamworks, Sanders cements his position as a titan in the world of animation. The movie sees ROZ, a shipwrecked robot stranded on an island completely untouched by humans. One would think that such an Eden would be bereft of the squabbles that humans seem so happy to create, but the animals of the island revile this new intruder and put up every fence they have. The only thing on this rock that doesn'

American Beauty is Bad for your Soul

The 1990s was a relatively stable period of time in American history. We weren’t scared of the communists or the nuclear bomb, and social unrest for the most part took the decade off. The white-picket fence ideal was as accessible as it had ever been for most Americans. Domesticity was commonplace, mundane even, and we had time to think about things like the superficiality of modern living. It's in an environment like this that a movie like Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty can not only be made but also find overwhelming success. In 1999 this film was praised for its bold and honest insight into American suburban life. The Detroit News Film Critic called this film “a rare and felicitous movie that brings together a writer, director and company perfectly matched in intelligence and sense of purpose” and Variety hailed it as “a real American original.” The film premiered to only a select number of screens, but upon its smashing success was upgraded to

My Crush on Sarah Connor is Hard to Explain

I had an experience this last fall when I was working at a residential treatment facility for boys with behavioral issues. My boys had been dying all week to watch Black Widow. These boys very seldom got to watch new movies while they were with us except for special field trips or when on home visits, and this movie had only just become available on Disney+. The staff all agreed to let them have a special viewing as a reward for their deep cleaning leading up to Parents' Weekend. I was really proud of my boys for their enthusiasm. I took it as a token of their evolving social awareness that they were as excited for a female-led superhero pic as they had been for Falcon and the Winter Soldier. My boys were becoming little feminists, or so I thought. Imagine my disappointment when we finally watched the film and they spent the entire runtime catcalling Natasha and her sister. An entire film dedicated to a powerful heroine moving heaven and earth to liberate others like her, and

REVIEW: Cyrano

The modern push for the movie musical tends to favor a modern sound--songs with undertones of rap or rock. It must have taken director Joe Wright a special kind of tenacity, then, to throw his heart and soul into a musical project (itself a bold undertaking) that surrenders to pure classicalism with his new film Cyrano . Whatever his thought process, it's hard to argue with the results. With its heavenly design, vulnerable performances, and gorgeous musical numbers, the last musical offering of 2021 (or perhaps the first of 2022) is endlessly enchanting. Cyrano de Bergerac's small stature makes him easy prey for the scorn and ridicule of the high-class Victorian society, but there has yet to be a foe that he could not disarm with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. The person who could ever truly reject him is Roxanne, his childhood friend for whom he harbors love of the most romantic variety. Too afraid to court Roxanne himself, he chooses to use the handsome but t

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to ponder out loud what the purpose of a good film is. But film critics new and old don’t need much

Bright Young Women: The Legacy of Ariel and The Little Mermaid

I had an experience one summer at a church youth camp that I reflect on quite a bit. We were participating in a “Family Feud” style game between companies, and the question was on favorite Disney movies as voted on by participants in our camp. (No one asked for my input on this question. Yes, this still burns me.) I think the top spot was either for Tangled or The Lion King , but what struck me was that when someone proposed the answer of “The Little Mermaid,” the score revealed that not a single participant had listed it as their favorite Disney film. On the one hand, this doesn’t really surprise me. In all my years of Disney fandom, I’ve observed that The Little Mermaid occupies this this very particular space in pop culture: The Little Mermaid is in a lot of people’s top 5s, but very few people identify it as their absolute favorite Disney film. This film’s immediate successors in the Disney lineup (usually The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast ) are the most li

REVIEW: The Lost City

Your reasons for browsing a movie like "The Lost City" probably aren't so different from mine. Me? I just wanted to see Daniel Radcliffe back in the mainstream world. You may have wanted to relish Sandra Bullock or Channing Tatum making their rounds in the spotlight, or, just as likely, wanted to see them together. Maybe word of Brad Pitt's extended cameo did it for you. Whoever caught your attention, it was certainly one of the A-listers because a film like this doesn't have a lot to offer outside its movie star parade. And yet, I can't say I don't like the film. Loretta Sage is a best-selling writer in the field of romance-adventure struggling to remind herself why she does what she does. Her latest writing block is a product of 1. her grieving the recent death of her husband and 2. her growing insecurity over the prestige of her career. Maybe eloquent prose is wasted on an audience that will read anything with Channing Tatum's exposed bosom on the

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog