Change Your Image
fionawebster
Reviews
Mae Martin: SAP (2023)
they're tellin' the stories of our lives
Mae has such a charming stage presence. It takes a while to get used to the fact that she's incoherent. She's scattershot. I enjoy the sparkly bits and shimmering shadows she throws out. However, I found myself shifting into the mindset of being her therapist.
That's a weird sensation for me to have while watching a comedy special, but I have felt it before. Like in Jerrod Carmichael's Rothaniel, in shows by the brilliant Hannah Gadsby, in multiple specials by Mike Birbiglia. I am a psychiatrist-psychotherapist.(big mouthful that, I know) so it's my job and my passion and my vocation to listen to people who have learned how to free associate.
Bottom Line: I Love Mae Martin. Her appearance, her whole personality, her storytelling style.... I'm eatin' it up.
Magnolia (1999)
absolute masterpiece
I'm coming back to write a review nearly a quarter of a century from when I first saw this film. Paul Thomas Anderson is an amazing auteur and this is without a doubt the movie he will be remembered for many years into the future. It is ambitious, riveting, searing, beautiful, and wrenching..
I don't know what to say. There are some beginnings, some possibilitues opening up at the end, but mostly this is about looking back with regret. The universality of surrfering. La comdédie humaine. Children, young adults, older adults, dying,
The only film I can compare it to is Robert Altman's Nashville. But Anderson has put together a much, much better work of art.
And props to Aimee Mann and Fiona Apple for the mussic!
Nope (2022)
Jordan Peeke has a really unique point of view!
NOPE is my favorite Jordan Perle movie so far. I purposely stayed away from spoilers, so I had no idea what was gonna happen. From the very first moment, with the scene of gory disaster on a sitcom set, I was hooked. I really appreciated the way the disparate elements were woven together in a way that challenged the viewer. It has sharp humor, great performances, and amazingly powerful sound design.
Nope reminded me of Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lynch more than the schlocky horror and sci-fi movies the reviewers are comparing it, too. Not that I don't dig schlocky horror: I just think this was a very intelligent flick, with a fascinating message about what happens to us when we seek out the spectacle, when we look at the Gorgon. The little embedded tribute to SNL's great Chris Kattan, who's fallen on hard times due to a debilitating neck injury, was also very satisfying.
Taken (2008)
I'm a woman who loves action & violence, but I did NOT like this flick
OK, so Liam Neeson is hot. He's like Harrison Ford without a sense of humor. Other than the bit of pleasure I took in his laser-focused exigency, this film was boring. Most annoyingly, the few women in the film were very bad actors (yes, even Famke Janssen phoned it in). I went to India alone when I was a 16-year-old girl, so I know hopeless twit behavior and boatloads of clichéd hypermasculinity when I see it. The most unbelievable part of all were the languages. Or lack thereof. Why did almost everyone, including all the foreign (stereotyped) bad guys speak American English? =sigh= I wish I'd rewatched a James Bond flick instead. At least the Bond films have humor and fun music and some badass female roles. Just to give one example, Judy Dench in the Daniel Craig series.
And the ending. OMG the ending was horrendous! This highly traumatized girl whose BFF is dead is supposed to be all fine now and returned to her immature spoiled brat self, like MAGIC , now that Super Daddy has rescued her and flown her back home to sunny California? Give me a break.
On top of all that, the shaky camera work gave me a headache. Need to take some ibuprofen now. Over and out.
Justified (2010)
captures the comically violent, violently comic worldview of Elmore "Dutch" Leonard
Features a devastatingly sexy hero (US Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens) who has peculiar yet admirable principles, plus foibles galore. And a terrific antihero, a foil for the main guy, a silver-tongued & extremely charismatic hillbilly criminal played brilliantly by Walton Goggins, who won a Best Supporting Emmy in this role. I swear, every time Goggins opens his mouth, I am riveted. And Givens's boss, who runs the federal office in Lexington, is also a tour-de-force performance who delivers great humorous lines like, "Raylan, you are truly entertaining. We should sell tickets."
Most of all, though, the whole show is infused with the wonderfully funny doofus bad guys and stunning dialogue of my favorite crime writer of all time, Elmore "Dutch" Leonard (who was executive producer). Several filmmakers have tried to put Leonard's worldview on the screen, and perhaps the movie GET SHORTY came close, but this show... take it from someone who's read all the Leonard novels at least four times: it's the real deal.
UHF (1989)
hilarious, sweet, 1980s nostaligia
This movie has Weird Al Yankovic written all over it, and who doesn't like Weird Al? It's not as brilliant as PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, but it has a lot of the same sensibility. Also owes a lot to SCTV, with parodies of movie trailers & commercials. Michael Richards is nonstop hilariously watchable as a janitor who's also an unlikely TV star. Great goofy daytime talk show parody with lines like "lesbian Nazi hookers abducted by UFOs and forced into weight loss programs.". Ignore the negative çritics' reviews, and just watch it! You'll laugh your ass off... Especially funny for older folks like me who remember not just the '80s but the early '60s era of TV, but it would make a great kids' movie for 2021, too, because it's completely free of sex or profanity, and has lots of laughs that people of any age will enjoy.
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017)
everything Andy, everything Jim, everything all of us
I found this documentary very moving. I found MAN ON THE MOON very moving, and Andy Kaufman's comedy, and his life's arc, very moving.
I've always noticed how Jim Carrey's whole career has explored this same theme: what happens when we put on a mask to try to please other people? At what point does the mask become who we are? At what point do we try to "step through the door" and be the real person underneath? Is there in fact a real person underneath, separate from the mask? Is there such a thing as free will in our putting on those masks? What difference does it make, when all is said and done? When Andy Kaufman led a whole audience outside the theatre to get them milk & cookies, when he read the whole of _The Great Gatsby_ for 20 hours straight to an increasingly exhausted audience 'til only a few remained listening, I felt that was the real Andy: he wasn't just doing subversive comedy, he was also exposing his inner self. There was no distinction between the two.
As for Jim Carrey, from his earliest TV performances, to DUMB AND DUMBER, ACE VENTURA, THE MASK... it became explicit in ETERNAL SUNSHINE and THE TRUMAN SHOW, but the performance art aspect of his work, the commentary on how you have to be someone else in order to be loved, was bubbling under the surface all along. I've always noticed that vulnerable, lonely, self-questioning side peeking through the funny man. When I heard that Jim went through a lot of physical pain inside the makeup for THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS, I thought, "How sad. Why does he put himself through this, for a movie that isn't all that great, isn't necessary?" But then I thought, "That's who Jim Carrey is: he's stuck trying to please everyone, when all he really wants to be is himself. Or does he? Is who he is as himself (whoever that is) ever going to be enough for him?" And then I asked myself, "Doesn't that happen to each of us?" You don't have to be a comedian or an actor to find yourself trapped playing roles you took on so early in childhood that you never had much choice about them, then spending the rest of your life trying to break free of those roles, only to discover that the line between your "true" self and the role is more blurry than you thought.
I find it disturbing that some reviewers object to Carrey having a beard when he's speaking in the here & now, that they call him "a hippie." What's wrong with a beard? Why reduce naked philosophical musings, from someone who'd never lay claim to great wisdom, to a dismissive label like "hippie"? Don't we all BS about the meaning of life?
And how creepy it is that the studio didn't want this behind-the-scenes footage to be released because they didn't want, in Carrey's words, "for me to look like an a**hole." First off, what difference does it make if someone doing a method performance looks like an a**hole? Isn't that true of all method performances in which the actor doesn't break character? (And why did people find Kaufman's Tony Clifton persona, or his wrestling persona, so annoying? It was performance art!) Second, why does a studio care so much about who an actor is as a human being? Does Carrey look like an a**hole now, in a beard, referencing Eckhart Tolle? I thought that business of studios controlling every aspect of how an actor comes across when they're off set was quite a few decades in the past. Apparently not.
Yes, this movie is a superb addition to the body of commentary we have about Andy Kaufman and what he means to us. It's extra sweet to see Kaufman's real family appreciating what Carrey did. It connects, as well, with other documentaries--e.g., AMY, SENNA, GONZO--about famous people who get trapped in what people need from them. But I encourage those of you who've never seen this side of Jim Carrey before to go back to his comedic work and look at it in the light of these questions. Even if you just want to see this movie because you're an Andy Kaufman fan, watch Carrey closely: yes, he's being Andy or Tony Clifton, but also he's peeking through the mask, as he's always been peeking through the masks. We're ALL wearing paper bags with eye cutouts on our heads.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
plays with the history, to zero point; plus, no ending!
First off, I think that most of the reviewers here, especially those who've given negative reviews, have entirely missed the point. They fault the movie for being slow, for example: movies of that era were much slower-paced. They fault the DiCaprio character for being unlikeable: he's supposed to be both pity-inducing and unlikeable. They say there's no plot, no suspense: there's a good plot having to do with the friendship between the two men, and there's LOTS of suspense, if you know your history. From the moment we see the Cielo Drive road sign, my heart was in my throat, and it stayed that way, all the way through.
You see, I'm in my late '60s, so I was well-aware of what was going on in 1969. I'm also a big Tarantino fan, so when I heard this movie is his love letter to the Hollywood of the 1960s, I was very excited. After all, if anyone could make a love letter to that period, it's Tarantino. We've known for decades that he's immersed in 1960s movies, music, culture, all of it. When I heard that he had messed with the history, I thought, "Well, that's OK. It's alternative history, or historical fiction--whatever." After that, I avoided spoilers, because I didn't want to know exactly HOW the movie would alter the events of the Manson murders.
Given that, I very much like the movie all the way up until the ending (or, as I will explain, the lack thereof). I love the scene with the actor playing Sharon Tate watching the real Sharon Tate in "The Wrecking Crew." I love the many, many accurate period details. The art direction, production design, cinematography are spot-on. The bit with the DiCaprio character on set and muffing his lines, then being furious with himself, was poignant & funny. Indeed, a lot about the two TV series that DiCaprio has been in is funny. And the Spahn ranch scene is convincingly creepy as hell.
The only thing I found truly lame is the Bruce Lee character. Why even put Bruce Lee in the movie, if you can't find a more accomplished actor (fighter) to portray him? That scene serves to establish what a good fighter Pitt's character is, but what an insult to Bruce Lee!
So let me get to the climax and ending. First, the fact that just by chance, the DiCaprio character briefly drives off the murderers, such that they change their minds about whom to murder, is a fascinating twist on the real events. Their reasoning for why they change their minds is also intriguing: "This actor represents a culture that raised us on images of murder, so let's murder him." Hmm, I thought. Hippies who started out with peace & love values but whose minds were twisted by a cult leader might well think that way. Then, the fact that the likeable & physically powerful Brad Pitt character, with the help of his likeable & well-trained dog, is able (even while laughing & high on acid) to thwart their murderous intentions, is also an intriguing twist. The scene with DiCaprio & his flamethrower is silly & unnecessary, but so what--I didn't mind that. Tarantino's allowed to be silly.
What I find unforgiveable, and why I'm giving the movie such a low rating, is either or both of two things:
(1) There is no proper ending, especially no followthrough on the DiCaprio-Pitt relationship. Pitt is wheeled off in an ambulance, DiCaprio's invited in next door by Sebring & Tate, and that's IT?!! I could barely believe my eyes that there was no more movie. DiCaprio says to Pitt in Italy that their relationship is over, they're supposed to have one final drunken blowout together, they do have the blowout, then Pitt saves DiCaprio's life and his wife's life, and... pffft, no more story?! I was fully expecting there to be one more scene, like in the hospital the next day. Either DiCaprio still plans to end the friendship, or he changes his mind in light of what just so dramatically happened, or he's so shallow he still doesn't change his mind, or maybe Pitt dies, or SOMETHING. It seems like a real cheat in storytelling to deprive us of a followup scene between the two of them. But even a scene without Pitt, where DiCaprio is just partying on with Tate, Sebring, & crew like nothing had happened, would've given us some sort of ending, some sort of footnote to how soulless DiCaprio has been all along. Instead, he just walks through the gate, and bam! movie's over.
(2) One of the rules of alternative history is that you're supposed to give the reader/viewer some sense of how the world might or might not have been changed, if critical events had been different. Or at least some emotional shift in their understanding of those events. Now, the Manson murders were, of course, not the only thing that brought the end of the 1960s counterculture hopes & dreams. Obviously the assassinations of Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King, Altamount, the deaths of Hendrix & Joplin, etc., were also very important. But the Manson murders DID have a huge influence on Hollywood society and the future of movie making. Read Sam Wasson's well-researched _The Big Goodbye_ if you don't know what I'm talking about. I credit Tarentino with knowing about the impact of those murders. So I really resent his not putting in any emotional payoff, or shift in emotional tone, or SOMETHING, to reflect how things might have been different--or else might not have been different after all--to indicate that he knows, and the older viewer surely knows, that he's made a consequential choice there. Even a cynical nothing-would-have-been-different ending would have been better than no ending at all.
I say "either or both" of those things, because if EITHER the fictional story OR the alternative history story OR both, had delivered an ending, I would've been plenty satisfied. Instead, I was left feeling like my emotions had been toyed with, to no point. Any story that just stops in mid-flow, that doesn't deliver an ending, is really annoying to me. So for me, as a longtime Tarantino fan and someone knowledgeable about 1969, this movie is a HUGE misfire. It's not just disappointing: it's downright infuriating.
RuPaul's Drag Race (2009)
66-yr-old married hetero woman & rare TV watcher ADORES this show!
Let me state this first: I mostly DETEST reality TV. I think it's demeaning to the hapless wannabees who participate, and degrading to our society. (Witness our abysmal 45th president!) But I do have an outsider's curiosity about fashion, so I enjoyed the first few seasons of Project Runway. I watched one season of America's Top Model and was appalled by how stupid the models were, how unfunny the show was. That was it for me--heck, I hardly ever watch late-night talk shows. All the same, I'd been impressed with Ru Paul from a couple of his early TV appearances, so I checked out his Drag Race. Man oh man did I get addicted quickly! I started at the beginning and am watching the 7th season now. Unless it really jumps the shark, I plan to stick with it all the way through.
What makes the show is Ru Paul himself: he's quite intelligent, creative, educated about culture, funny as hell, warm-hearted, self-mocking, spiritual (I've seen a couple of his lectures)--and refreshingly humble, given his undeniable beauty/glamour/fashion-sense and meteoric rise to fame. Oddly for me, usually a cringer at puns, I even like his ample use of wordplay, because he whips out his puns at top speed, with impeccable comic timing, drawing on a wide range of references. His repartee with the other judges (all sweet human beings, with the marked exception of the weirdly bitter, inconsistent & nasty Michelle Visage) also shows off his lightning wit. And when he's listening attentively to an especially inarticulate/ignorant queen in the workroom, he's hilarious in how he gives them a very flat, "huh" facial expression that cuts them dead in a way that's brutally honest, not at all mean-spirited. Even when he (rarely) loses his temper, it's well-controlled and justifiable.
Because of who Ru Paul is as a person, the tone he consistently strikes, this show is about so much more than drag queens or LGBTQ+ people. It's about competition, showmanship, fashion and (exaggerated) femininity, for sure, but it's also about family, friendship, culture, self-actualization, body positivity, and love.
I guess the only thing that puts me off a bit about the show is that more often than not I've never heard of his celebrity judges. But then, I am a 66-yr-old who's watched little TV. So that doesn't even knock down my rating by one star. Oh, and there is some bullying among the queens that the viewer has to put up with--but I suppose that counts as "snarky" humor these days: they are adults, after all.
Red White & Blue (2010)
a horror tour-de-force, delightfully gritty & realistic
I'n a longtime horror fan. I like my horror movies intense, bloody & down-to-earth. If they're too slick, if everything from the story & pace & acting, to the editing & sound production, slots together too perfectly, I will admire the film, but not be moved by it. I started watching "Red, White & Blue" thinking it was a "psychological suspense thriller," because that's what Netflix told me it was. Much to my delight, it's a flat-out (non-supernatural) horror movie that satisfies my taste. It's also a multifaceted revenge tragedy—a study of how one initial act of violence (the rape of 4-yr-old girl) spins out a world of suffering, which leads to many unfocused acts of revenge, one of which eventually triggers a much more pointed episode of revenge, which in turn triggers a veritable *rampage* of revenge—so well-acted & so engaging, it practically bores a hole in your brain.
One brilliant thing about this flick is that all of this takes place in a central Texas setting which is as real as the sun is hot. I'm a Texan, so I should know. Don't you hate movies that start out telling you they're located in a specific geographic locale, then some aspects of the setting—the character's accents, for example, or the license plates on cars, or a city skyline—are broadcasted so loud & clear you get sick of 'em, but many other, more telling, aspects—like the architecture of the houses or the sounds of the birds or the kinds of trees, even—are all wrong? It distracts you from your immersion in the story! This movie is just the opposite: we see a hint here, a hint there, of where the events are unfolding, but unless you recognize specific streets & buildings of one lowdown area of Austin—I didn't, because I don't know Austin that well—the fact that you're in Texas seeps rather gradually into your awareness. Even the fact that one character has an obvious tattoo of the state's outline only means that *he's* a Texan. But by the end, when a big Texas flag flapping gently in the wind in someone's front yard prompts you into a reverie about what the title of the movie signifies, you are so grounded in place, it deeply underscores the gritty, down-to-earth flavor of the whole flick. That also contributes to how the story's tragedy, while ramifying out to include dozens, even hundreds, of people, feels as tightly concentrated as a watch spring.
I must warn you that the real story you're watching—as opposed to the mere events—will also take a while to seep into your awareness. And that this can be kind of annoying. At first I thought that the film was lagging because our initial point-of-view character wasn't being very well acted. But once you understand why the character is like that, you'll appreciate the subtlety that Amanda Fuller brings to the role. Same goes for Eric Senter's character, who comes across as such an irritating dweeb he's hard to look at—and then you get *his* story.
Noah Taylor's character, on the other hand, is so fascinating from the get-go, you won't be able to take your eyes off him. He just about pops off the screen, that's how intensely he burns.
After all was said and done, I appreciated, in retrospect, the way the way the movie starts out so slow as to be almost meandering, then starts to pick up speed, accelerates some more, and then quite suddenly slams into the rampage I referred to earlier. But still, for all of the violence in Act 3, the story is never hyper: it steadily remains in the real world, where there are always occasional downshifts in a sequence of events.
The only thing I didn't like about the flick was the fingernails-on-blackboard piano music that's supposed to heighten the splatter at the end: they should've stuck with the rock-n-roll used earlier.
"Red, White & Blue" even has a denouement. How often does *that* happen? The kind of denouement that lets the flames of intense emotion die down, even lets the embers cool, before the screen goes black and the credits roll.
Simon Rumley is definitely no amateur. I'm going to be watching his next flick, that's for sure. I hope it's horror!
Un oso rojo (2002)
the Bear has manly grace & style
Julio Chavez as the Red Bear is a less neurotic Tony Soprano. He's not a mob man, nor does he have a "family" to run, but he is a family man every bit as much as he is a killer.
In fact, other than the brief shootout that shows us why the Bear did a stretch of time right after his daughter's first birthday, the first hour and fifteen minutes of the movie are an intense, moving family drama involving four characters, all brilliantly acted: the Bear, his daughter, her mother, and the weak-willed loser the daughter and her mother now live with.
I could go on about how deftly the film portrays all these inhabitants of a seedy but still charming part of Buenos Aires—people barely getting by, people mostly on the wrong side of the law—but this story is squarely centered on the Bear. Again like Tony Soprano, he has a solid physical presence in every scene—a manly grace and style—even when he's doing something as simple as drinking a glass of beer or smoking his ever-present cigarette. He is dignified, never rushed, as he moves through his world, and yet he reacts with lightning swiftness when threatened or attacked. This is not a man to mess with, that's for sure.
This is not a thriller: it's an emotionally rewarding tale about family and violent crime. It's so perfectly structured, not only will you admire every scene as it unfolds, but in the end you will draw a deep breath of satisfaction at how well they all work together to tell the story. And the music, including the stirring national anthem of Argentina, is gorgeous! Even a children's story about how flamingos got their red legs seems to resonate with this tale of blood relationships—and blood money.
Last but not least, the final shootout is an instant classic: I watched it three times, that's how cool it is.
Don't miss this flick.