The Great Movie Conquest of 2022: March

For this month's installment, I reached out to something like ten or so roommates I lived with over the course of three or four years. You can thank them for finally making me watch Baby Driver.

Despite everyone in my TMA 391 class abounding in love over Baby Driver, I wasn't expecting it to do much for me. Heist movies aren't really my niche, and I don't love Ansel Elgort. The sum total of my knowledge of the film pre-viewing was Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James (?), driving, and a "really dope soundtrack." I guess the blank slate gave the film a lot of room to grow because I really enjoyed the film. I just want to know where they got the idea for "Baby" as a character. So much to unpack there.

Initially, I thought that About Time trapped itself in a premise with no tension since the entire film is about a guy who can press rewind on any given episode of his life, but I was grateful the story found a way to give his actions some weight, and it ended up taking me to a very profound place.

Knowing what I do about Werner Herzog, it's no surprise to me that he would be so fascinated by someone like Timothy Treadwell and make him the subject of one of his projects. I had a complex reaction to Grizzly Man that I've tried articulating a good half dozen times in this piece, to no success. I'll have to give it a try some other time.

Of the two reviews that I put out this month, only one of them was a theater experience, and I resent that very much. Turning Red was such a welcome addition to the Pixar canon, I've already gone back to give it a second viewing. The Lost City, meanwhile, was nothing to journal about, but I guess it filled a need.

I actually ended up seeing most of the nominees for this year's Oscars. (I've still only seen like two of the BP nominees from last year, and I only caught those in the last few months.) The two that I hit this month were Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley and Sian Heder's CODA. The former I thought was well-made, but not particularly to my taste, even with Bradley Cooper. I mostly like Del Toro when he's making monsters --like actual monsters, not just metaphorical ones.

CODA, meanwhile, was arguably the best item I've hit while doing this challenge. The film punched some really strong emotions without going for easy hits. I wasn't even counting on it taking home the big trophy on Sunday, but I was not complaining. I'm really excited to see what all the attention this movie is receiving will do for Apple TV+ as a service.

As I was reaching out to my old roommates for suggestions, they would sometimes preface their lists with, "I don't really know movies," or "you're the film guy, don't know what I can offer here." This was, of course, a non-issue. They had a plentitude of good suggestions.

But it did get me thinking about why we give more intellectual weight to certain kinds of films--why we might think that our favorite films don't "have a lot to offer." In my experience, when someone expresses this opinion, or one like it, they're usually admitting that they feel insecure about their tastes being too mainstream.

Without getting into an essay's worth of pontificating on the arbitrary divide between "high art" and popular entertainment, it's worth acknowledging here that intelligent discussion isn't limited to films in the criterion collection. The alchemy between the language of film and the complexity of the human heart is available across any range of film. Even a "brainless action pic" like the Clash of the Titans remake can elicit a complex response from me that will gestate over the span of several years. I always advocate for seeking out films that aren't in your comfort zone, but that's not as straightforward as devaluing superhero movies.

Looking forward, the votes are in for April, and I will be focusing on films from Japan for the upcoming month. (Will this be the day I finally see Seven Samurai?) Thanks to everyone who shared their voice.

Then in May I will be anchoring my viewing on a specific actor. I've narrowed the options down to the two handsomest devils in old Hollywood, James Stewart and Cary Grant. You can cast your votes here.

This is all just one really long way to say ... we are one quarter of the way through the year. Congrats.

--The Professor

Time to Move Ooooooon to April

March's Harvest:

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Guest in the House (1944)

About Time (2013)

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)

Hell's Kitchen (1939)

Sunday in the Park with George (1986)

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies (2014)

Diner (1982)

Brute Force (1947)

The Green Mile (1999)

Turning Red (2022)

Baby Driver (2017)

Moby Dick (1956)

Empire of the Sun (1987)

Monos (2019)

Vertical Limit (2000)

The More the Merrier (1943)

My Führer (2007)

CODA (2021)

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Grizzly Man (2005)

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

The Lost City (2022)

Man of La Mancha (1972)

Peter Pan (1924)

Free Guy (2021)

Chronicle (2012)

Shane (1953)

Comments

We're Back! a Dinosaur's Story - Getting Lost in the "Last Frontier of Imagination"

Last month, Variety ran a piece observing, “Hollywood Can’t Survive Without Animation. So Why Won’t the Industry Respect It?” by Clayton Davis, who reported , “In the nearly five decades that domestic grosses have been tracked, an animated film has finished the year as the No. 1 release just seven times, beginning with Disney’s 'Aladdin' in 1992. Now the medium is having an unprecedented run, with 'Inside Out 2' and 'Zootopia 2' topping the last two calendar years (a first for animated movies to lead the box office for two consecutive years) and the latter becoming the highest-grossing animated film ever domestically. 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' is leading 2026 so far and is the only film to cross $1 billion. Setting aside the 2020 and 2021 pandemic seasons, which emptied theaters of family films, animated features have made up about 20% of the year’s 10 top-grossing releases over the past decade. And yet, the artists who make these movies have rarely...

REVIEW: The Rivals of Amziah King

The first note I made for this film is that I knew a bunch of cowboys growing up. But I regretfully did not know any who were just so willing to burst into song. I thought then that I knew what I was getting into with this movie. But I could not anticipate what this story would try to feed me. The movie sees Amziah King, a good-natured beekeeper, smalltown musician, and all-around good dude, sorting through some business deals as he happens to reunite with his former foster-daughter, Kateri. Crossing paths again allows them to mutually rediscover what they gave to each other as two people who lifted each other up. But when King's entire stock is stolen at the worst possible moment, Kateri gets to step-up and defend what is theirs. Amziah King is McConaughey at his most endearing. His ability to put the viewer at ease is the film's greatest trick. I've heard some buzz about this being his best performance ever. I'd...

REVIEW: The End of Oak Street

There's something vaguely Spielberg about The End of Oak Street , and I don't really even mean the dinosaurs, which look quite a bit different from the CG masterworks of the seminal '93 film. The Platts are a conventional American family living in 1980s suburbia who are caught in a bizarre time anomaly that sends their entire neighborhood back to the prehistoric age. What follows plays like a more visceral rendition of '95 Jumanji . There's a very PG13 level of blood onscreen. But most of the anxiety derives from just how unceremoniously the dinosaurs are seen snacking on the neighbors. Without ever feeling like it's trying to outsmart the audience, the film drives home the idea that, yeah, if your street was sucked into a wormhole, the dinos would get you too--and probably without even needing to try hard. Among many other things, the movie is a masterclass in filmmaking tension. Amidst a stampede of gigantic fang...

REVIEW: Star Wars - The Mandalorian and Grogu

I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture. But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit. And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....

REVIEW: COYOTE VS. ACME

The secret weapon of The Looney Tunes has always been their natural eloquence with meta-textuality. Seriously. Go rewatch "Duck Amuck." It's high art. That trick isn't really new here in a landscape where "self-awareness" is just generally baked into the fabric of most millennial media. But Coyote vs Acme nonetheless feels cut from a very different cloth. I don't even know if that's from anything extra this film does so much as what it doesn't do. This movie never feels like it's trying to prove how much smarter it is than the audience. It doesn't feel smug or self-promoting. Like, it takes a different kind of self-awareness to look at how many times a certain Wile E. Coyote has tried to get his hands around a certain speeding bird and ask if maybe the poor guy, who has literally tried everything under the sun, has just had the odds stacked against him. It takes a certain kind of movie to decide that this dude just needs so...

Do You Hear the People Sing?: "Les Miserables" and the Untrained Singer

Perhaps no film genre is as neglected in the 21 st century as the musical. With rare exception, the o nly offerings we get are the occasional Disney film, the occasional remake of a Disney film, and adaptations of Broadway stage shows. When we are graced with a proper musical film, the demand is high among musical fans for optimum musical performance, and when a musical film doesn’t deliver this, these fans are unforgiving. From the moment talking was introduced in cinema, the musical film has been a gathering place where vocal demigods assemble in kaleidoscopic dance numbers in a whirl of cinematic ecstasy too fantastical for this world. What motivation, then, could Tom Hooper possibly have for tethering this landmark of modern musical fandom in grounded, dirty reality? This movie’s claim to fame is the use of completely live-singing, detailed in this featurette, something no previous movie musical had attempted to...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Do Clementine and Joel Stay Together or Not?

Maybe. The answer is maybe. Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. Though nations have long warred over this matter, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Min d. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that. What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either ...

Finding Nemo: The Thing About Film Criticism ...

Film is a mysterious thing. It triggers emotional responses in the audience that are as surprising as they are all-encompassing. As a medium, film is capable of painting stunning vistas that feel like they could only come to life behind the silver screen, but many of the most arresting displays on film arise from scenes that are familiar, perhaps even mundanely so. It’s an artform built on rules and guidelines–young film students are probably familiar with principles like the rule of thirds or the Kuleshov effect–but someone tell me the rule that explains why a line like “We’ll always have Paris,” just levels you. There are parts of the film discussion that cannot be anticipated by a formula or a rulebook, and for that we should be grateful. Arrival (2016) But the thing about film–and especially film criticism–is that film critics are not soothsayers. Their means of divining the artis...

Hating Disney Princesses Has Never Been Feminist pt. 1

Because the consumption of art, even in a capitalist society, is such a personal experience, it can be difficult to quantify exactly how an individual interprets and internalizes the films they are participating in. We filter our artistic interpretations through our own personal biases and viewpoints, and this can sometimes lead to a person or groups assigning a reading to a work that the author did not design and may not even accurately reflect the nature of the work they are interacting with (e.g. the alt-right seeing Mel Brooks’ The Producers as somehow affirming their disregard for political correctness when the film is very much lampooning bigotry and Nazis specifically). We often learn as much or more about a culture by the way they react to a piece of media as we do from the media itself. Anyways, you know where this is going. Let’s talk about Disney Princesses. Pinning down exactly when Disney Princesses entered the picture is a hard thi...

Notoriously Human: Alicia and the "Strongfemalecharacter"

The further I dive into classical Hollywood, the more taken I am by all its fascinating contradictions. This wasn't, I'll acknowledge, a period in American history which we think of as being kind toward women or recognizing their autonomy. The Mark of Zorro (1920) I think the collective point of reference most people have for women in old movies is the sort of hero's trophy who waits around for the guy to swoop in and carry her out of the mess she has made for herself, and that image has some basis in how Hollywood itself behaved. But film history covers a lot more than just that one type. The Hays Code prohibited illicit sexual material on film, among other things, and was in effect until the early 1960s. Because sexual content was greatly monitored and regulated, female characters weren’t really objectified--at lea...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog