Tenet (2020)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia

Have I Seen it Before: What a singularly loaded question. Someone might look back on this review in the years to come and wonder why it was such a chore. The only real theatrical-exclusive major release in the year of the bloody bug, it seemed foolish to go to the theater to experience it on the biggest screen possible. I might have even got it together to go to the Drive-in (kids, ask your parents), but by the time I decided I was over my mixed feelings regarding Interstellar (2014) to try and make the trip, even the Drive-ins had taken to screening movies I didn’t much care for, and could easily take in at home.

So now I watch the movie on my TV at home. It is not the way that Nolan would have intended it, but it is the best way available.

For the record, in case anyone was wondering, I would still like to go to the theater again at least once before I die.

Did I Like It: I suppose it is fitting that, even after viewing the film in its entirety, it’s possible I’m going to eventually have one of two different reactions to the film. On repeat viewings, I may finally be able to follow what at this point is a demonstrably convoluted plot, sort of like my reaction over the years to the first Mission: Impossible (1996). It’s also entirely possible that the film will never come together for me, and I will look up from my final screening of the film and see myself watching it for the first time in reverse.

At least, I think that’s how it works.

And even if the film never fully comes together for me, it’s hard to deny that the normal Nolan trappings have their charm. He works on film, which is unusual enough. He also brings to the screen exotic sights that are nonetheless real. If the man has ever used a green screen, he’s made damn sure to not let the rest of us know.

There is one element of the film I’ve become certain bug me now, and will continue to bug me for all time. I’ve grown pretty disenchanted with switching back and forth on aspect ratios in film. Time was, Nolan would film certain, more epic scenes in IMAX, and by the time it reaches my TV, we just had to cope with the changes in ratio. Here, it feels like he’s switching back and forth from shot to shot. Chris. Buddy. If you want to shoot your movie in IMAX, just shoot the whole thing that way. I have faith that you can overcome the limitations of the technology to shoot a movie through with one kind of format. 

And finally, a plea: Will somebody (Brocollis, one would imagine, or perhaps whichever fly-by-night studio which both owns the rights and will soon go bankrupt) please just let Nolan make a Bond movie? He’s been asking ever-so-politely for years now. If you can take a chance on Sam Mendes twice, I think Nolan’s due.

Batman: Death in the Family (2020)

Director: Brandon Vietti

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Vincent Martella, John Dimaggio, Gary Cole

Have I Seen it Before: No, but I’ve read the comic series. I’ve also felt underwhelmed by many of these DC animated adaptations, so I’m left with a number of questions as I start the movie. The obvious question is will the end of Robin be as violent as it was back in the 80s? Is that even something I want to see? But the other questions I have are far more pressing. Will HBOMax keep the interactive feature advertised (the main thing drawing my attention in the first place)? Will the story continue past the (somewhat Schrödinger-esque) death of Jason Todd and include Iran appointing Joker as their ambassador to the UN? Honestly, that’s the wilder story to tell, giving that character diplomatic immunity.

Did I Like It: Ooh, boy, no. The answer to all of the questions are a resounding no. Not only is the supposed interactive element of the film removed, we are subjected to a short that is apparently just one of the possible endings of the film, and that ending culminates largely in a flashback to the events of Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010). I’ll admit that it might have been too much to hope for the Joker-at-the-UN storyline. I’d even be willing to accept if it the film presented the various endings to me, minus the interactivity. This, however, is not what I wanted when I clicked. The rest of the feature run time is padded out with additional shorts featuring Sgt. Rock (Karl Urban), Adam Strange (Charlie Weber), and possibly others. I’m not sure. I turned off the film somewhere in the middle of the Strange story.

Normally, I wouldn’t even finish a review if I couldn’t finish the film, but I did watch the above titled film, so I’m going through with expressing my disappointment. Actually, disappointment barely begins to cover it. The film on its own merits is a letdown, and the packaging of the film is a disappointment bordering on false advertising. 

When was the last time I saw a Batman movie that didn’t underwhelm? The Dark Knight Returns animated movie? Maybe. It’s probably been since 2008, realistically. Here’s the deal DC: Call me when Keaton is back on duty, not before.

Total Recall (1990)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. But strangely, it feels like my first exposure to the film (and thus, the one that sticks with me the most) is the image of Arnold in a dress getting sucked out through a crack in the Mars colony, which was in every comic book published in 1990 as part of the print campaign (kids, ask your parents) for the NES video game.

Did I Like It: My more effusive reviews tend to answer that question with something that can be boiled down to “Yes, let me me tell you why.” Here, my answer will be something along the line of, “Yes. However...” And I assure you, only some of my reservation stem from the realization that I might have internalized parts of this for certain other projects. That it stealthily influenced me so is more of a mark in its favor, I think.

Yes, I do like this film. However, I’m thinking this is not the best work of anyone involved. Schwarzenegger plays slightly against type as an every man propelled into extraordinary circumstances. The ruse never quite works, as no one’s been able to convince me that the Austrian Oak is not directly descended from the Man of Bronze*. He’s probably the most fully realized version of the movie star that is Arnold in a movie like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). He even improved on the every-man/super-spy dichotomy more in True Lies (1994). 

Verhoeven has flashes of the satirical anarchist that made him one of the greats, but if you think you’re going to get me to forsake RoboCop (1987) in favor of this movie, you’ve got another thing coming.

I don’t think I’m out of line in saying there are other, more robust adaptations of Dick’s work. You’re going to say Blade Runner (1982), but you’re wrong. The correct answer is Minority Report (2002).

Even Jerry Goldsmith has had more memorable scores. Gremlins (1984), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Rudy (1993). Hell, his score is one of the best parts of The Shadow (1994).

So the film is good, but I couldn’t help but want to watch their other, sharper work.

*Why didn’t this man ever play Doc Savage? It seems like one of the supreme missed opportunities in pop culture. He could still play an older Doc... Hell, I would watch the shit out of that movie. Never mind me. Feel free to return to the review proper.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Director: John Madden*

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s surprising to realize I haven’t re-watched this one since starting these reviews nearly 2 1/2 years ago.

Did I Like It: There’s just something about Best Picture winners fro the late 1990s. They age very poorly. I’m mainly looking in your direction, American Beauty (1999). This one, too gets a little bit of derision, but as I’ve already mentioned, it is one of my favorites.

Repackaging the bard as a the prototypical romantic comedy lead works in spades. Doing so gleefully unravels the film from anything resembling historical accuracy, but if you need movies to be historically accurate, I’m beginning to think you don’t get much enjoyment out of life, and that you are perpetually disappointed by your unrealistic expectations of the world. Scenes of the author struggling with his work similarly likely have no basis in reality, but they feel true, which is all we can ask from a film.

Sure, just the mention of Harvey Weinstein makes one’s blood run cold. Also, it’s hard to forget during the film that much of it is centered on a performance from a performer now is now arguably more famous for producing and selling candles which smell like her genitals. On that note, both Paltrow and Affleck do just above Costner-level work to convince us they’re English. It doesn’t help matters. But these are nitpicks—except for the Weinstein part—of a movie that largely holds up and is definitely worth another look.

* No matter how many times I see this movie, I always chuckle as I imagine the famed footballman calling the shots. For the record, I know it is a different John Madden.

Lincoln (2012)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn

Have I Seen it Before: I poured over Team of Rivals in the winter of 2012. This movie claims to be based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin tome (more on that in a bit), and I desperately wanted to get through it before seeing the movie. It was a weird time

Today (if you’ll note the publishing date of this review) that time feels both like it was ages ago and it was just yesterday.

Did I Like It: I think there is only one criticism to level against the movie, and it is a slight sliver of false advertising. Despite the credit given to the Goodwin book, the book is nearly 1000 pages, and the passing of the 13th Amendment—the main thrust of the film’s storyline—takes up an entire paragraph. It isn’t based on the book. As I recently indicated in my review of Selma (2014), film is often a poor substitute for true history. This film is barely based on the book. If you want that real history, go read Team of Rivals, as it is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the last ten years.

Now, that is all to say the film—when judged on the merits of being a film—is quite stellar. It didn’t make it into my list of favorite movies from the 2010s, but that is no sin. The story of passing the amendment gives Lincoln the film character an easily formable arc, while perhaps losing something of a true portrait of Lincoln the man and leader. 

The film is surprising funny at times, and heartbreaking on more than few occasions, just as by all contemporaneous reports, Lincoln himself was. One might be tempted to lampoon the intense focus Daniel Day Lewis brings to his roles, one cannot argue with the results on the screen. While Team of Rivals gives the reader the illusion of having known and worked with Lincoln, this film does give of having been in his presence.

Selma (2014)

Director: Ava DuVernay

Cast: David Oyeowo, Tom Wilkinson, Carmen Ejogo, Oprah Winfrey

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: This one firm complaint I’m going to have will be tied exclusively to the manner in which I watched the film. For Martin Luther King Jr. day, normally my wife engages in a service project with her work, while I inevitably end up at home rewatching Cheers for the 17th time.

This year, with COVID still raging, the service project fell by the wayside, with her and her colleagues instead watching the film...

...screen shared over Zoom. With Gchat chimes. And I thought motion-blurring was the worst possible way to take in a film since the downfall of VHS. I didn’t know how good I had it.

Now that we have that out of the way...

I have a temptation to look down on important history trying to be jammed into the package of a mainstream Hollywood film. It certainly feels like this film has its heart in the right place, with the important story of the 1965 marches on Selma being told by filmmakers who have a vested interest in having the story told. DuVernay also doesn’t feel content to offer a hagiographic vision of King, and instead makes him a snapshot of a real man, and not the smoothed out image that every corporation, soccer mom, and conservative politician suddenly remembers in the middle of January.

But I can’t escape the conclusion I have with many historical films: history can’t truthfully fit inside a movie, even when the filmmaker has the best of intentions. If one wants to spend a few hours inspired about the feelings behind something like the civil rights movement, then there are worse ways to spend one’s time. But if one wants to learn the true history of such things (and one should), one really should read a book.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)

Director: Jesús Salvador Trevino

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jeff Conaway, Patricia Tallman

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. My memory of it is that it was my least favorite of the four TV movies aired by TNT during the last year of the television series.

Did I Like It: Ultimately, I do think that my memory of not thinking much of it holds up under the scrutiny of time and experience.

The TV budget—and the Babylon 5 special effects, which have clearly not aged well—can’t sell the horror. The artifact which tries its damndest to bring a touch of the Lovecraftian to The Last Best Hope For Peace looks more intricate and lovingly created than the swirling CGI sprites that normally passed for the ships and creatures on this show, but I can’t move on from the feeling that it looks like a cut scene from a video game, and not a cut scene from a modern video game, mind you. One from the 1990s. How did we ever think this show was ahead of its time, special effects-wise? The mind boggles.

The story is this weird blip, this huge epic moment that takes place in the middle of the most epic season of the show’s larger storyline. There is no lead-up to it within the context of the show, and it is never mentioned again. It’s especially strange, when one considers that Sheridan (Boxleitner) is dealing with Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX), the organization his wife worked for, and there’s only a perfunctory reference to that fact. It should weigh on him heavily, especially because that history caused him to die and come back from the dead less than a year ago. Wouldn’t that have more of an effect on him?Ultimately, it feels like an episode from the show’s first season, before ti had found its purpose or stride as a novel told over several years.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal

Have I Seen it Before: How would one?

Did I Like It: No review of the film would be complete without spending a moment on its distribution. For a major release, the idea of going simultaneously on streaming and in theaters is certainly unusual. The reasons are well-founded, as are the objections of the movie theater industry.

That all being said, it’s a different animal to watch a movie like this from the couch. In a theater, all that exists is you and the movie, and maybe some popcorn*. You don’t even talk to the people you came with, unless you’re some kind of sociopath. At home, I’m tempted to work on some writing, or thumb through a book or play a game of chess on the phone. At one point I grabbed an orange, peeled it, and then spent several minutes of the runtime debating whether I should get up to throw away the peel.

It’s a different thing. I sure would like it if people got serious about the everything of the current era and the vaccines keep (or truly start) a comin’ so that I might sit in a movie theater once again before I die.

It seems like a lot of my review descend into a similar rant these days. Anyway.

I came to the film a full week after its premiere, and had to work extra hard to not let the somewhat negative word-of-mouth clutter or prejudice my thoughts.

And I think I mostly succeeded.

I hesitate to make some kind of prediction with my first review of 2021, but I think that despite the grumbling, this one will age better than the average superhero film. 

Yes, it doesn’t really feel like a superhero film for much of its runtime. If you cut out all of the scenes were Diana (Gadot) is in full Wonder Woman regalia doing Wonder Woman things, you’d still have a movie that feels about twenty minutes too long. I can see where people feel like they might have been sold a false bill of goods, especially in a year when the last new superhero film we had was Birds of Prey (2020) back in February.

Other parts of it feel like a less-frantic remix of some of the same themes examined in Batman Returns (1992), which would automatically elevate the film’s standing in my view. 

And where that previous film was a fun-house mirror reflection of that earlier film, this film is so quintessentially of its time that it will be hard to completely dismiss in the years to come. The promises of shallow wish-fulfillment by Maxwell Lord (Pascal) will immediately sound familiar, and after all of the time we’ve had, the way Diana unravels those plans feel more satisfying than they have any right to. In a few years, the film may feel quaint, but I’m really looking forward to that. 

* Please, don’t at me with Raisinets. I’m aware of them, and they are not a proper movie snack. I will not be taking questions at this time.

Babylon 5: In The Beginning (1998)

Director: Michael Vejar

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Andreas Katsulas

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. The Babylon 5 movies were an interesting thing. After the series moved to TNT, we got four full fledged-movies aired over the course of the last year of the series. Although, for my money, the story was pretty much told in the first four years, so everything that aired on TNT felt like wheel spinning. And yet, I can’t help but think of both this movie and Babylon 5 - A Call to Arms (1999)—both aired as New Year’s events—as the first movies released in those formative years in my life.

Did I Like It: The movie has a series of less than enviable tasks. First, it launches a new era for the show which, as I mentioned above, were already behind them. It needs to weave together a complex mythology into an exciting story on its own rights. It also needs to bring in a new audience, so as to justify TNT’s enormous expense.

In case you’re wondering, it succeeds mildly in those earlier tasks, while utterly failing as the list goes on. Built out of a mishmash of flashbacks from previous episodes and some new material, the story never gels into a coherent narrative. There are moments where it transcends its restrictions, mainly surrounding the framing device in the future with Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik). Still, the productions collective budget on hair dye in pursuit of convincing everyone the story takes place nearly fifteen years prior to the main storyline must have been staggering.

It does launch a new era for the series, but that new era underlines how, when the Prime Time Entertainment Network was collapsing in on itself and the story rushed to its natural and satisfying conclusion a year ahead of schedule. Babylon 5 has not been the same since the end of the fourth season when we saw humans a million years hence reaching their ultimate destiny.

And, too, it failed to pull in a new audience. Utterly, so, as it would turn out. It had no hope of doing so, as bringing in new people to a show whose story is already done appears to have been a fool’s errand in retrospect. The network quickly gave in to buyer’s remorse, and the future this movie promised was done within a year, and the series relegated to DVD sets for all time within another year.

Spectre (2015)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Does the plot of a Bond movie really matter? If they do, then this one suffers a bit. It tries to ape the “greatest villain reimagined” motif that The Dark Knight (2008) made de rigueur and movies like Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) drove into the ground. The story of the resurgence of Blofeld (Waltz) feels like it has come too late to the party to be anything other than lame. Bond movies are no stranger to feebly chasing after the current moviegoing trends, with equally shaky results. I refer the jury to Moonraker (1979).

Really, truly, the film is actually too late for two separate parties. The Spectre aspects of the Bond mythology had spent decades tied into endless copyright disputes by the time Roger Moore had taken over the tux and martini. Corporate mergers collided with the death of intransigent rights holders so that every possible atom of the Bond property could once again be wielded by EON Productions. Did they try to bring us a new version of Spectre and Blofeld, re-combining the parts we knew into something new? No, they tried to retcon the man and the organization as the mastermind of every event in the Daniel Craig era. The results, as I have said, are still somewhat awkward.

And yet, I may be beyond complaining about Bond movies at this point. Maybe its that No Time To Die feels further and further away the more it is delayed. Maybe I’m just—like Craig—mellowing in my old age. Maybe its that at its core, all I need from a Bond is some gadgets, a couple of set pieces, and a man at the center of it all that exudes such confidence and swagger forging the fantasy that a human could walk the Earth completely divorced from the notions of angst or klutzyness. It’s an enduring—if admittedly toxic—fantasy in machismo. Each of the actors in the role had that ineffable quality, and Craig has had it in spades throughout his tenure, and in great supply here. It can keep a Bond movie afloat, and this one manages.

Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001)

Director: Sharon Maguire

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gemma Jones

Have I Seen it Before: Yes? It’s a favorite of my wife, and we’ve been together for long enough that I would have had to have watched in its entirety, right? And yet, can I be sure?

Did I Like It: It is difficult to dislike a movie like this. Zellweger is far more convincing and charming as the quintessential British everywoman than she has any right to be. Firth is at the purest point of his Firthyness muttering his way through every interaction. It was probably desperately needed for Grant to occasionally no longer be portrayed as a lovable handsome man, when in reality he is far more believable as—to bother a term—complete and utter wanker.

But let’s get to my Big Thought for this movie. For my money, Bridget Jones’ Diary is the Rocky IV (1985) of romantic comedies.

Wait. Don’t go. Let me finish.

While both the boxing movie and the romantic comedy are certainly prone to the montage to help their stories, let me ask you a question. Were one to take the montages out of either movie and let their stories play out not with characters looking wistful or forthright on their own, but instead with scenes where the characters actually interact and speak with each other (or at all), how long would the film actually end up running?

My guess is about 45 minutes.

I’m not even sure that’s a problem, necessarily. I’m a sucker for a silent movies, and I’m sure whichever conglomerate go to press the soundtrack album for those films made a mint. I just can’t help but wonder if ultimately there just wasn’t enough movie there, thus the padding. There are worse crimes for a movie, one supposes.

I didn’t expect at the outset of this review that it would double as review for both Bridget Jones Diary and Rocky IV, but here we are. The temptation to now re-watch Rocky IV and just republish the review is almost too much to bear.

Psycho (1960)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin

Have I Seen it Before: Please... Is it weird that I view this movie as cinematic comfort food? I’m reasonably sure Hitchcock didn’t mean it to be so.

Did I Like It: I don’t think there’s enough written—except by me—about how Psycho is, at it’s core, the greatest B movie ever produced. The budget is nearly non-existent, especially in relation to Hitchcock’s immediately preceding production, North By Northwest (1959). The biggest star in the movie (and one hopes this isn’t exactly a spoiler) is killed before the plot truly gets running.

And that plot is, objectively, a muddled mess. In any other circumstances, a story that begins about a woman (Leigh) making a run for it with thousands of dollars of her employers money, only to veer wildly into the events after her sudden murder.

In another time, and another place, and most importantly, with another filmmaker at the helm, the film would have become a salacious, forgettable thriller that would have dropped off the face of the earth the instant drive-in movie theaters became all but extinct.

But we’re talking about Hitchcock here. In his hands, it single-handedly launches the slasher genre, inspiring an army of lesser sequels, homages, and echoes. The plot that shouldn’t work is a pure mis-direction fueled magic trick. We trust Hitch to tell us a story of the woman on the run, and after everything changes, we can never feel settled for the rest of the picture, or for any movie ever again. 

Or, maybe, it has nothing to do with trust. Hitchcock works on a level few, if any of us, can fathom. This film is arguably his most famous, and he makes the whole thing seem effortless. It is a marvel to watch each and every time I have spun it in my Blu Ray player.

Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

Director: Richard Compton

Cast: Michael O’Hare, Tamlyn Tomita, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Although I think I only did so long after the final season of the series aired.

Did I Like It: There’s a couple of things one must reckon with on a re-watch of the 1990s television sci-fi epic, Babylon 5. It’s given a lot of credit for telling a fully serialized genre story on television at a time when that was resolutely not done. Granted, you would have to ignore contemporary shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* to think of it as uniquely ahead of its time. One can’t help but admire the ability of the show to tell its full story, given the fact that the cast—especially with the main cast—was in constant flux and the loose network that aired/syndicated it folded during the fourth season.

But really, the special effects do not age well. At all. They’re almost unwatchable now, especially in the early going, where most explosions have all of the physics and nuance of a hastily produced Atari 2600 cartridge.

And that problem hangs pretty heavy over even this, the special edition of the pilot for the series. Nothing looks right, including ships, sets, and makeup for various aliens. There are only the faintest glimmer of the larger story which brought be back week after week later on in the series. Every series is going to have to shake off a little bit of jitters during a first episode (“Encounter at Farpoint”, I’m looking in your direction), so this ninety minute spell spent on the Last Best Hope For Peace isn’t the kind of experience that will pull you into the five-year saga. The season that follows has its moments, but I had to be firmly in the second season in my current rewatch of the show before I felt engrossed in the proceedings.

*Controversy lasts to this day as to whether Paramount pilfered writer J. Michael Straczynski’s pitch for the series to create their own tale of a space station in the middle of a massive intra-galactic war. Some say it’s just an instance of parallel development, although I don’t have a hard time at all imagining the executives at Paramount urging the Trek powers-that-be to follow that basic logline in order to bring to series a product that would undercut the possibility of another Space Opera franchise.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I know...

Did I Like It: Any criticism of a Kubrick movie has a certain limitation right out of the gate. There is likely no greater director from an aesthetic point of view. Even if someone has the gall to dismiss any of his movies as boring—a critique often leveled at 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—no one can say his movies look bad. This film is no exception. His pure photographer’s eye is incapable of being distracted from his intended purpose. If you haven’t gotten around to see any of his films—as I had with this one—and profess to love cinema, then you probably better fill out the gaps in your experience.

But there are a few things that strike me about the film as it proceeds.

Normally, I would be very dim on a film which spends as much time on a first act that doesn’t really serve the story later on, but once again Kubrick’s artistry is such that I’d be willing to give him a break on almost anything. You can swing your arms and hit films that depict the insanity and absurdity of war, but few are willing to drive home how foolish something like basic training can become.

I was surprised by how much popular music Kubrick used in the film, as I would have assumed it would be filed to the brim with classical selections. Then again, if Kubrick simply duplicated his choice from 2001 and A Clockwork Orange (1971), that wouldn’t be worth his time or mine.

I’m also struck by a phenomenon unique to his films, and its a thought that flies in the face of how I’ve viewed his films in the past, especially 2001. He shoots in an aspect ratio that would actually maintain—more than any other films from the era—the experience as much as possible when viewed on televisions before the ubiquity of widescreen sets. There is no need to Pan and Scan his films. It’s staggering that he could both work to create an experience that simply must be experienced on the largest screen possible and could be viewed on a crappy VHS copy without having any of the frame summarily lopped off.

The Godfather: Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola

Have I Seen it Before: It just came out, so no... But then again, how different can it be from The Godfather, Part III (1990)?

Did I Like It: I approach this with the same uncertainty that I approached the multiple cuts of Apocalypse Now (1979), especially since the original films in both cases are ones I have certainly seen before, but don’t know as well as I do, say, the other Godfather films. 

Do I rewatch the original cut first so I’m more aware of the contrast, or do I watch the film on its own?

I opted for the latter, and I think I’ve come to a conclusion that yes, this new cut is an improvement, but only in the ending. 

That’s not dismissing the qualities of this new version. The ending of the original film was likely my biggest problem with the original film. The often flailing main story of the film concludes, and we cut to Michael Corleone (Pacino) as an old man, living in Sicily. And then he dies. Just tacked on there, completely divorced from the movie that preceded it. 

In this new version, we do see Old Man Michael, but it cuts away before he dies, with a final title indicated that he would live for a while, and never be able to forget how he sold his soul and got the exact opposite of everything he wanted. It’s an even more tragic ending than what was offered, even if it means that the film is about many things, but the death of Michael Corleone is not one of them.

The rest of the film is ultimately just the same as its progenitor. The plot is fine, but Sofia Coppola—who would be the first to admit she had not ambition or desire to become an actor—is the weak link in the chain. The ultimate question becomes, do I recommend this new film? If you have never seen any version of the third Godfather film, then I would recommend this version over the original cut. If you are a fan of the series, then it’s worth a viewing, although now I have the movie twice on Blu Ray, when once would have done. If you’re familiar with the original, and interested to see how much the film has changed, I’ve done the hard work for you.  Don’t buy the hype that the beginning is all that different—it isn’t. Just stop your Blu Ray of the original cut before Michael keels over, and you’ll get the idea.

Manhunter (1986)

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: William Petersen, Tom Noonan, Dennis Farina, Brian Cox

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. For years it was a curiosity: the Hannibal Lecter movie without Anthony Hopkins. However, I think I may have only come around to it after Hopkins last turn at the role, in Red Dragon (2002).

I had intended to wait to revisit this film until COVID got a little bit better and I could share it with a friend who is a confirmed Hannibal-phile (I think they prefer to be called Fannibals), but had never seen the film. COVID still rages, and I am right on the cusp of finally catching up on my to-watch DVDs... Something had to give. Sorry, pal... I’m totally fine to watch the movie again when we’re all on the other side of this. Damn virus...

Did I Like It: Many people love this film deeply, prizing it above The Silence of the Lambs (1991). There’s a lot to love about the movie, but I ultimately think that its strengths are tied to the source material. Even Brett Ratner couldn’t screw up this story. The loose adaptation in the recent TV series is some of the best television of the last ten years. This movie has the happiest, for lack of a better term, ending of all three adaptations, and that is just part of where it suffers relative to the other versions.

Here, though, I think the worst of Mann’s instincts got the better of him. The film is so aggressively fashionable and stylized that the film has no life outside of the 1980s. From the production design all through the music choices (“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” anyone?) the film eschews any of the gothic trappings of the source material and is content to be just another serial killer movie with a dopey title.

Tom Noonan’s performance as Francis Dollarhyde doesn’t bring out the twisted, horrible sympathy of the character, and is just another aloof ‘80s weirdo in a movie filled to the brim with them. William Petersen’s attempt at a Will Graham is simply too histrionic in his meditations to be believable. Brian Cox, however, does bring a pugnacious irritation to Lecter (Lecktor in this film, for reasons passing any understanding) that only hints to the horrors at his core. It’s the most reserved version of the character, and the only thing to recommend it over others, not to take anything away from Hopkins or Mikkelsen.

Logan (2017)

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant

Have I Seen it Before: Mystifyingly, only once during its theatrical run. Here, I finally cracked open my blu-ray and experience the black-and-white cut, which has only improved the film. You really should only watch it that way from now on, in case you were wondering.

Did I Like It: When the X-Men movies started now... checks calendar...Oh, Christ...twenty years ago, I think we all agreed that the efforts* of Bryan Singer produced the best possible version of an X-Men movie. It downplayed the more impenetrable space opera elements and tried to take the more human elements of those stories and actually making a film out of them. Was the effort completely successful? No. Did the series proceed to vary wildly in quality and embrace those elements only fans would care about? Yes.

But, here? First of all, the trailer for the film may very well be one of the greatest trailers ever produced, but that’s hardly a fair yardstick by which to judge any feature. Plenty of absolutely forgettable films have managed to spark some kind of imagination from the ad department. 

This film—the real, full meal of it—may not be the greatest thing ever, but is so lovingly crafted that I will have a truly difficult time coming up with any complaints about it. Stripping the characters of much of their strength, they are left to feel their way through the proceedings, and it is immediately clear that, best, they will only be marginally successful in their last mission to find some kind of peace. Any time a filmmaker can tell a tragic tale and still leave us with some shade of hope, that is a truly special thing, and the presence of the Marvel vanity card at the beginning of the proceedings should barely be mentioned.

That being said, it isn’t without its faults (I said it would be difficult to complaint, not impossible). As a native of Oklahoma, I don’t remember the mountains off in the distance, but it’s hard to view a film that only kind of has an awareness of one of its locations too harshly. That being said, too many times, a post-modern example of a genre can’t help but make their homage explicit. This movie has Shane (1953) oozing out of the scars left by its adamantium claws. One can feel that kinship, and it is no less powerful if one didn’t have any awareness of that previous film, or the western genre in general. Having the characters watch and then quote from the movie feels like a distraction. What is otherwise a visceral cinematic experience become briefly a movie about people watching movies, which isn’t nearly as fun.

*Is “effort” even the right word when it comes to the films of Bryan Singer? It’s only in the full light of day that we realize he was very nearly fired from almost every movie he helmed after Apt Pupil (1998). That knowledge probably makes X2: X-Men United (2003), with its near mutiny from the cast easier to watch now.

Gosford Park (2001)

Director: Robert Altman

Cast:Eileen Atkins, Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Charles Dance

Have I Seen it Before: I have the strongest memory of going to see it during its theatrical run. Based on its date of release, I can only be about ten percent sure about whom I was with when I saw it, and memories of the film itself are even thinner. I remember being pretty thoroughly bored with the film at the time, and I’m pretty sure my date and I got pretty bored with each other shortly thereafter.

I only picked up a used copy of the DVD after thoroughly. enjoying Downton Abbey and remembering the author of that show, Julian Fellowes, wrote the screenplay here.

Several years later, I have yet to even finish that series* (or its later follow-up film), and so the DVD lingered in my pile of to-be-opened discs.

Did I Like It: It’s only after watching the film in its entirety now that I come to the conclusion that I may have walked out of the film, because I remembered hardly any of it. It’s entirely possible I saw some other film way back when.

Oh, well. I’m all for a film eschewing a traditional plot, especially if there is a cleverness in its construction, or an undeniable wit in the dialogue. What always bums me out is when a film tries to rise above those constraints, offer up a depiction of life as it might very well have been at the time, but then tries to force a plot into the proceedings. While it’s clear that Downton Abbey owes a lot to this movie, that series always had a story that moved things a long. This film is about nothing for fully half of its runtime, and then takes a sudden turn into a murder mystery that... ultimately doesn’t matter?

It actually makes me want to skip any of those parts of Downton that missed. Good job, movie.

*I’m not even entirely sure why I stopped watching Abbey. It might have been similar to why I stopped watching Friday Night Lights, in that I always wanted to have new episodes to watch, or it may have been because there’s so much to watch, only so many hours inthe waking day, and the strange desire to re-watch other things.

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cast: Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, Pupella Maggio

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Following along the recent trend of my reviews, this had been a DVD sitting on my to-be-opened pile of discs for a while, although not as long as some others. Why resist watching this one for so long? When I grabbed it, the clerk at Vintage Stock said the film made him cry, and I’m automatically a little leery of films primes for emotional manipulation.

Yes, I know I’m broken. Yes, I am in therapy. Thank you for your concern.

Did I Like It: It didn’t bring me to tears, but there’s certainly a beauty to the film that cannot be denied.

But I was probably going to say that about any movie centering on the mystical joy taking place within movie theaters. Hell, I got wistful during Matinee (1993) to the point where I feel a little odd turning that into a bit of a confession.

I’ve spent much of the last several years mourning the movie theaters which served as the cathedrals of my own youth. As time has passed since those blog entries, even more movie theaters have closed, running headlong into this year, when some movie theaters live on, but it is unsafe to go to them.

Thus, I felt somewhere in my sternum the moment both early on, when the Paradiso ignites in a torrent of lite nitrate film, and even more so after the movie house finally fell to the ravages of time and indifference. The notion that people no longer wanted to go to the movie theater anymore as entertainment was easier to find at home also felt more prescient than I would have given the film credit for on first blush.

It’s also sort of life affirming that the film takes the direction it eventually does. I was so concerned as Di Vita (Perrin, as an adult) returned to his old stomping grounds. I thought he might try to rescue and run the Paradiso again, but he doesn’t. I thought he might try to reunite with his old lover Elena (Agnese Nano), but he doesn’t. Apparently, the film originally existed in a much longer cut wherein he does reunite with Elena.

Had I watched the longer cut, I feel like something would not have sat well with me about the film. But, to the film’s credit, I actually do have some interest in watching that longer version, and if all you want from a movie is more of it when the end credits roll, that’s about all you need to know.

City Lights (1931)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers, Florence Lee

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, although it’s not in the pantheon of my most beloved Chaplin films, many was the airings on TCM that I couldn’t resist. I had purchased the Criterion Blu Ray of the film over five years ago, telling myself that I would get around to opening it when things quieted down a bit.

Now we know that’s probably never going to happen, so why not just start watching some of these movies.

Did I Like It: It doesn’t have the conceptual brilliance of a The Great Dictator (1940) or better yet, Modern Times (1936). It comes later in his career, when the energy and confidence on display in The Kid (1921) or The Gold Rush (1925). Chaplin alleged prized it as his favorite of his own films, and it may be that position within the Venn diagram of his output that accounts for it.

Ultimately, this film is weighed down a bit by the same phenomenon as most of Chaplin’s feature work. It always feels like Chaplin was more suited to working in shorts, but all through his career was forced into boxes by technology or economics he wouldn’t have gone along with of his own volition. This was the last pure-silent film Chaplin made*, while everyone else had moved on to staging every stiff chamber play as something resembling a movie**. Also, when the market for shorts dried up, Chaplin’s features have always had an episodic quality to them, as if they were actually a sequence of four to six shorts loosely woven together. Even after this period—when Chaplin too surrendered to the forces of progress and started speaking—he was more interested in producing a series of set pieces than letting a story unfold of its own volition. 

And yet, none of those nitpicks mean anything when you see Chaplin’s slapstick unfurling. Some may prefer Buster Keaton or—God forbid—the Three Stooges, but for my money there’s no single comedian who can make one marvel, feel, and laugh with as much equal measure. There’s no such thing as a bad Chaplin movie.

*Modern Times is largely silent, but has some synced dialogue, more as a matter of commentary than anything else.

**By way of confession: I may be the last person on the face of the Earth who is not completely convinced adding synchronized dialogue to motion pictures was actually a good idea.