Happy Awards Season!
I admit that when the first round of nominees came out a few weeks ago for the Indie Spirit Awards I was feeling like I was already behind on this year’s movies. (Getting married and moving halfway across the country will take some time out of your movie watching I guess.) But this week brought the Golden Globes (whom I guess we are provisionally forgiving for now) and Critics Choice noms, and I’m still feeling overwhelmed by my list of things to see, but now in an exciting, “oooo so many movies to see” sort of way. Here’s what I’ve gotten to so far:
Fire Island
I went into this thinking it was going to be a fun rom-com with a lot of very funny people, and it was! And it’s also a pretty spot on modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice! I forgot to take notes on it, because I watched it the weekend of one of my wedding showers and I was very tired, but it is emotional without ever getting too heavy for its form and it has rewatch every summer potential for sure.
Bros
Unless you think that sex between two (or more) men is inherently subversive (and I know that a lot of people do) this is a perfectly passable, at times even lovely, rom-com. Which is to say, I liked it, I laughed a bunch, and I don’t have a lot more to say about it. (The monologue on the Provincetown beach and the whole scene that follows is clearly something writer/star/fellow Northwestern alum Billy Eichner has wanted to create for a long time, and I was genuinely moved by it.)
My only quibbles:
- More Guy Branum!
- If you are going to film the IFC Center Marquee than you should not be allowed to imply that its interior is a run of the mill multiplex – that is a sacred space!
- Was the joke that Brad Paisley made him think of Garth Brooks or does Eichner truly not know that they are different men?
Catherine Called Birdy
Based on how formative this book was for me as a child this adaptation was going to have to be a nightmare for me to dislike it, but I was pleasantly surprised by much not-a-nightmare it was. Lena Dunham, for all the million things she may be/say/tweet, knows how to tell a story of an unruly, privileged girl, and the ways the privilege can mask the patriarchal limits placed on the girlhood until its time to pay the piper (or be paid for your to your father as the case may be.)
Sorry, did I get too deep too fast? This movie is great, it’s fun and Bella Ramsey is delightful in the title role, and doesn’t flinch away from the heartbreak of it all either. Also, though I’m not sure how the slowed-down-“medieval” versions of pop songs choice works throughout the movie the use of “Kids in America” – a nod to Clueless (another perfect adaptation about privileged, caged girls) – is fantastic.
Also, please cast Billie Piper and Andrew Scott in everything for ever.
The Banshees of Inisherin
As a longtime fan of Colin Farrell and stories about isolated Irish people, I was primed to love this and I I did. It’s Martin McDonagh at his finest, (word play, profanity, emotional weight that comes out nowhere and hits you in the face). Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are as excellent as expected, but I was almost in awe of how good Barry Keoghan is in this.
We don’t have a lot of art that addresses the idea of friend breakups, and this movie in all its darkness and melodrama captures the absurdity the unexpected end of a close friendship can leave in its wake. Colin Farrell’s face twisted in sad confusion is maybe the best image of a dumped person I’ve ever seen on film. What is he supposed to do with himself?
A wonderful mix of showcase monologues and quiet moments, and a great performance by a donkey. So far, my top movie of the year!
She Said
As a movie, this is a competently made newspaper drama (a sub-genre I tend to like, but understand when others describe as boring), but given its cast (Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan – both of whom I revere) and its subject matter (Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor‘s Harvey Weinstein reporting) it was finely calibrated to make me cry from the very first moment.
I admit that, other than the original New York Times piece, I’ve consumed most of the Weinstein story through Ronan Farrow’s lens (which – Catch & Kill – highly recommend the audio book), but I appreciated how this view emphasized Kantor & Twohey’s unique assets and limitations as women taking on a patriarchic monster and system; and the ways that this calling intersected with the day to day struggles and joys of motherhood and marriage. Also, I found the multiple scenes of women crying together, depicted not as weakness but solidarity. (Did this just strike me because I kept wiping my eyes? Maybe.)
Anyway, let us all have the righteous anger of Carey Mulligan telling a man to fuck off and the softness of Zoe Kazan answering a phone.
Oh, and fuck Harvey Weinstein.
The African Desperate
Sometimes the fun of watching the Indie Spirit nominees is the experience of getting to the end of a film and genuinely not being where what you just watched.
This is a riff on The Odyssey (I think) based at an MFA program filled equal parts with pretension, earnestness, and psychedlic drug use. It’s anchored by a lovely, quiet performance by Diamond Stingily – if she had gone one note bigger it would have delved into camp – and is filled with lovely, inventive touches (a highlight for me was the note-perfect demo). It’s definitely a weird one, but I hope we get to see what debut director Martine Syms does next, because I know at least that it won’t be boring.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Ugh. I wanted to like this so much. Ryan Coogler managed with the original Black Panther to work within the Marvel machine to make a genuinely thrilling piece of art. There’s a lot to like in theory in this follow up, but there’s also just a lot in it. And I don’t just mean that it’s too long – though it is. There are also too many plots, and too many people, and not enough time to explain fully why and who or even what is happening.
The parts that are about grief are moving, though I left feeling like at time it felt more like an exercise for the artists to process the loss of Chadwick Boseman than a fully thought through story of the loss of Black Panther.
The underwater Mayan adjacent civilization stuff, that I assume was meant to be the main focus before Boseman’s death, felt underdeveloped and strange. (Side note in this Avatar year – why are metaphorical Indigenous Americans coded blue? Why are these two hold-outs against colonization wasting all their energy on battling each other instead of their shared oppressors? (And also, why was under the sea so gray and flat looking?)
The Fabelmans
I’m a sucker for a love letter to cinema, and knew going in that Steven Spielberg‘s turn making a move about the saving power of movies was gonna get me – and this did. A beautiful nostalgia piece that is also a wonderful portrait of a child coming to the realization that his parents are people, and things are both more complicated and more obvious than a child could know.
If we still gave cameo Best Supporting Actor Oscars, my vote would be for Judd Hirsch yelling about the heartbreaking art of being a lion tamer. (As it stands, that’s Barry Keoghan’s Oscar as far as I’m concerned so far.)
Michelle Williams and Paul Dano remain, as ever, masters of expression.
Aftersun
A meditation on memory that feels like the main character Sophie (played mostly as a child by Frankie Corio and in brief flash-forwards by Celia Rowlson-Hall)’s attempt to reconstruct her father from her child mind. There’s a sense of dread or foreboding that hangs over this whole thing, that at times felt like too much, but it never took a turn to the truly traumatic. Paul Mescal continues to be quietly brilliant in everything I’ve ever seen him do. Particularly loved the scenes of his dancing that clearly became indelible for his daughter (also reminiscent of Armie Hammer’s moves in Call Me By Your Name.) Melancholy, yet at times subtly funny, filled with images that I think will stick with me for a long time. (The cut between Mescal’s face and the not quite developed Polaroid!)
Emergency
There’s a lot to like in this Indie Spirit nominee expanded from director Carey Williams‘s Sundance short of the same name, and most of it comes from how charming all the actors are. But the cast’s chemistry made me wish that this was just an end of college party comedy, as it’s set up to be int he first 15 minutes.
The whole, titular emergency (an unconscious white girl is discovered in the living room of the Black and Latino roommates, whom they both want to help and are put in obvious danger by) derails any hope of a carefree night. This abrupt shift in tone is the point, I’m sure, but I wanted fun for these characters (including the white girls who are either incapacitated objects or hysterically panicking racist caricatures.)
Look, I think “why didn’t you make this other movie instead” is one of the laziest form of critique, so I’ll just say that this a bit heavy handed, uneven in tone, but genuinely funny and emotional at key moments. In short, it’s full of potential, and I can’t wait to see these actors in different contexts.
* FYI for those few who care I will not be watching: Bodies Bodies Bodies, Bones and All, Holy Emy, Pearl, Something In the Dirt, The Menu because they look scary and Blonde because Marilyn Monroe deserves better.
I Get a Bit Obsessive 