2019 Media Round-up: Movies

[sabotabby]

This is going to be really short because it was the kind of year where I barely saw any movies. Which sucks, given what I do for a living. And most of the ones I saw weren't good enough to talk about. Here are the ones that were.

El Camino: This movie really didn't need to exist. It is 100% fanservice. The ending to Breaking Bad was perfect. We didn't need a movie sequel, as such.

So? It was more Jesse. It was two more hours of Breaking Bad, beautiful cinematography of Albuquerque, witty dialogue, dark humour, and things going horribly, horribly wrong. I loved every second of it. It didn't need to happen but I was glad it happened and the fact that something is not, strictly speaking, necessary, does not stop it from being good.

Deadwood the Movie: This, conversely, did need to happen, because I have waited a fucking decade for the end of my favourite TV show of all time. (Yes, most of the characters are historical figures. Yes, you can look up what happened to them. No, it doesn't matter, because the historical Calamity Jane is not the fictionalized Calamity Jane, and Joanie wasn't a real person, so Wikipedia is not going to tell me that they lived happily ever after.) 

The movie isn't perfect—there are a lot of flashbacks that I found quite unnecessary, as no one is going to watch this movie without having seen the show first, and I felt that they interrupted the narrative flow—but it's a fitting resolution to the story. And it had me in tears, both because it was just so awesome to revisit that world again, but because the primary plot, Al Swearengen's slow, poetic reckoning with mortality, comes out of writer David Milch's Alzheimer's diagnosis. This is, presumably, one of the last things he'll write, and it's absolutely gorgeous. 

Us: I am still kind of making sense of Us. It's not a straightforward allegory like Get Out was; it implies politics rather than outright stating them. It's creepy and atmospheric and Lupita Nyong'o is brilliant in it. I saw the twist coming a mile away, but I don't think that affected how disturbed I was by the whole thing.

Jojo Rabbit: One of the few movies I cared enough about to see in theatres because it is everyone's moral obligation to ensure that Taika Waititi makes lots of money and continues to get his weird ideas greenlit. This was the movie Life Is Beautiful didn't have the balls to be. It's also something that resonated deeply with me, as I see more and more young people seduced into fascist ideology. It's a story about how ordinary people can be warped into hatred, but critically, it offers a pathway out of that hatred, even though it comes at a terrible cost.

I'll probably see one or two other movies before the year is out—Christmas break being one of those times that I can actually go out and see films—so lemme know if you see anything good.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I reallllly want to see Jojo Rabbit, and I have it on good authority that though the trailers look high-albedo the heart of Knives Out's excellent story is actually a woman of color.

[sabotabby]

The trailers for Knives Out made it look complete shit, but everyone is raving about it, so...maybe?

[sara]

I've been thinking about it. I'm mad about the new Star Wars being, apparently, so much flashy lights that Herself and I will have to skip it.

[sabotabby]

It makes me not want to see it. I don't have a seizure disorder or anything like that, but I get migraines, and flashy lights have been known to exacerbate that.

Also, I can't think of many instances where it's necessary to inflict physical pain on your audience for storytelling purposes.

[moon_custafer]

I saw that Disney had put out seizure-trigger warnings, and mentioned it to Andrew, who tends to be very photo-sensitive, but we went anyway and I don’t think he had any trouble (I don’t even recall noticing which scene had the flashy bits), so while YMMV, there’s one data-point for “might be ok to watch.” As for the movie itself, I liked it more than I thought I would from the nay-sayings. And Wedge Antilles has a tiny cameo towards the end.

[dewline]

A number of my friends are singing its praises, so it's on my "want to see" list. The Good Liar will likely be first because Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen, and because it's now in the discount theatres like Rainbow and Cinestarz so the ticket price will now be more comfortable to bear.

[sabotabby]

Oooh! I do love both of them.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, I had no interest in it until I started seeing good reviews from folks I trust. I mean, I'd still rather watch Daniel Craig and Chris Evans making out behind the scenes, but until I find that footage I might go see the movie.

But first Jojo Rabbit. Definitely.

[ironed_orchid]

Jojo Rabbit doesn't open here until after Christmas, but I am totally going to see it.

[ironed_orchid]

I really wanted to see Us, but prefer to watch most horror on a smaller screen.

[sabotabby]

Fair.

When I say it's scary, I mean it's at the borderline of what I can handle, which is a much lower threshold than most of my friends. I went with horror aficionados and they didn't find it that scary.

The one big reason to see it in theatres, besides that Jordan Peele is also on my list of directors who need to be given all the money and have every project greenlit, is that Lupita Nyong'o is so very gorgeous and Peele is one of the few directors who seems to know how to light dark-skinned Black people in low light. The colour palette in the film in general is incredibly well done.

[mistersmearcase]

Are you going to go and WTF-watch Cats?? (My sister went and....liked it. She is much more of a liker than I am.)

If it's playing anywhere there and if Almodovar is your bag, Pain and Glory is really great after a sorta clunky start.

[sabotabby]

I am dying to WTF-watch Cats! I have vague plans to see it when I'm back in town, so hopefully all the snark won't get used up by the time I do.

Almodovar is my bag; I didn't even click to see where that was playing because I assumed by the title that it was a sports movie, lol.

[moon_custafer]

And it had me in tears, both because it was just so awesome to revisit that world again, but because the primary plot, Al Swearengen's slow, poetic reckoning with mortality, comes out of writer David Milch's Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Oh, man. I still need to see this. I loved that show, especially for Doc and Jewel. I began writing fanfic because the second and third seasons did not have enough scenes with those two; but I think my best one for that fandom was a vignette in which a delirious Al, some twenty years later, converses with Doc’s ghost (the end of S3 having left Doc with TB and an uncertain future – I see he’s back for the movie, so apparently he went in remission.)

[sabotabby]

Yeah, Doc's TB goes away for absolutely no good reason at all beyond that we love the character and he'd be dead IRL. Maybe it was just a bad cough?

[moon_custafer]

I mean, people did sometimes recover. If I understand it correctly, TB was, or is, pretty much endemic in humans— most of us have immune systems able to keep it at bay, but anyone weakened by other things was vulnerable— improving overall health could sometimes knock the disease back down again.

[sabotabby]

Interesting! So the "go to a sanatorium and take in the sea air" approach actually would work?

[moon_custafer]

I’m neither a doctor nor a real historian, but yeah, for many people it apparently did*. I suspect TB may have been one of those things where there were enough variables (different patients, different variable, maybe different strains of the disease) that in the pre-antibiotic era it was hard to track which methods would reliably work.

* Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I which got made into a movie, which then spawned the “Ma & Pa Kettle” series, also did a book about her time recuperating in a sanatorium. She called it The Plague and I: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062672254/the-plague-and-i/

[moon_custafer]

Well and also I'm sure half the point of TB sanatoriums was also to limit the spread by quarantining patients until they either recovered or died.