Actually, if I'm being honest, I think I was just having too much fun between watching baseball and watching movies to take a writing break.
Yes, my health has improved with each day, and in fact, I'm going to try to work today. I say "try" because my boss has already told me to work as long as I can and then stop. Since I can control exactly how much I work -- I have no meetings today that I'm aware of, and no one usually calls me -- I can probably work a full day as long as it's sort of a slack day.
But no matter what happens, I will probably continue my isolation in the garage for at least a day or two longer. My wife has a big thing she has to do on Sunday and needs to keep testing negative until then, even if I have probably now passed the point where I'm still contagious.
I've chosen the poster for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which I am reviewing, as a good way to encapsulate the eight movies I've watched in the past two days, three of which were new to me and five of which were revisits. It has indeed felt a bit like spinning the wheel to see what comes up next, even though there has been a clear reason behind more than half the movies I chose. Hamaguchi's follow-up to Drive My Car -- which was actually released before that movie in most parts of the world -- is an anthology of three 40-minute stories, and indeed, that's a good metaphor for any film festival, whether it's one of a person's own choosing or one that has been thrust upon that person by illness.
I won't go on at length about these films but I will give you a little taste of my thoughts on all eight.
All the Avatar I ever needed
For the number of times I have tagged Avatar on this blog -- this is now the 11th time overall, making it one of my most tagged movies -- you'd think I'd have seen the movie more than once.
But no, Tuesday afternoon's viewing of the James Cameron magnum opus -- my second straight day leading off with a Cameron movie -- was the first time I'd gone back to it since I saw it on one of the world's largest IMAX screens in Sydney in December of 2009. Australia wasn't my country of residence then, but rather, a travel destination.
And it confirmed that I only needed to see it that one time, plus do not need the half-dozen sequels it sounds like they are planning to make.
It made a good contrast with Titanic, which kicked off the festival. Even at 30 minutes longer than Avatar, Titanic breezed by in comparison. The things I expected to do for Titanic -- pause it for breaks, only half-watch while I did other things on my computer -- were the things I did for Avatar instead. I guess that's the difference between caring about the characters and the story and not caring about those things.
Avatar still looked cool, but with 12+ years more of digital innovation since then, it no longer seems like a unicorn. Fantasy worlds are credibly conjured for us all the time now, so much so that they have left us feeling blase.
I reckon I missed the immersiveness of the 3D, which was certainly a big part of the positive things I took away from the movie the first time. Left with altogether too much time to think about only its story, you're not left with all that much.
One funny thing I did want to point out. I started watching Avatar on my work computer, with my personal computer serving as my distraction from the movie. (I did have my attention on most of it, for those thinking I didn't get it a proper chance.) Weirdly, the on-screen subtitles -- as in, embedded into the movie -- were not in English. I couldn't say for sure what language they were, but my best guess was Dutch. It didn't matter all that much because a) it's never too hard to figure out what the Na'vi are saying in the context of what's occurring on screen, b) it's interesting to have it feel additionally foreign, as a non-speaker would, and c) who cares anyway. But I did find it funny.
Halfway through, I had to switch which computer was playing which role, and now, for some reason, the subtitles corrected themselves to English. No idea what the difference is between Disney+ on those two computers, and a little light googling got me nowhere so I just moved on.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi is here to stay
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was first introduced to me when a film podcaster I listen to, Scott Tobias, placed it in his top ten of last year, even though it seems as though many/most other critics didn't see it. Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's other 2021 movie, was his #1, but Wheel came in somewhere around a very respectable #6.
Even though it's an hour shorter than Car, I was still viewing it as something of a chore to tackle while sick. But I made a commitment to review it in time for its Australian release date, which is today, long before I knew I would get COVID. And my screener was only good until Saturday anyway, so I'd have to watch it at some point while I still called these garage walls my home.
Well, the nice thing about Hamaguchi movies is that they are straightforward. Not emotionally, mind you -- the emotions in a Hamaguchi movie are perplexing even though always truthful -- but in terms of story, he's not hard to follow. You could argue that just reading subtitles while sick is something that takes too much effort, but I obviously don't think that as I have now done it three times in this festival, including Kin-dza-dza on Monday and one you are about to read about in a minute.
And damn if this guy doesn't have a unique perspective on the human heart and all the unexpected ways it will react to any stimulus out there.
Because I've got a review going up today -- look to the right within the next few hours if you want to see it -- I won't go on too much more about the movie here. But let's just say that it's a worthy companion to Drive My Car. Like that movie, it increases in emotional intensity as it goes -- not in this case because a single narrative is becoming more and more touching, but because the three narratives are organized in a sequence to accomplish the same thing.
Especially since his own work has been in a little bit of decline, Hirokazu Kore-eda is going to have to make some room for Hamaguchi among my favorite working Japanese filmmakers.
Tucker and Dale vs. COVID
Eli Craig's Tucker and Dale vs. Evil was my first attempt to use laughter as the best medicine. It was my third time overall watching the horror comedy, first since 2013.
I still appreciated the movie that cracked my top ten of the year it was released, but let's just say there were not any belly laughs forthcoming -- probably just as well as they could have led to coughing fits.
I don't suppose you generally do laugh very hard on subsequent viewings of comedies, though you are definitely supposed to get that knowing dopey grin that takes the place of laughter when that element of surprise is gone. I didn't have that as much, though I did still chuckle over some of the absurd deaths of the college kids trying to attack the titular hicks that they think are attacking them.
Because I've still got five more of these to go, I'll just keep going.
Exploring the elephant in the room for gay people
Because Tuesday was also time for another documentary alternate Tuesday -- I've been watching a documentary every two weeks since last August -- I had lined up Baraka, the spiritual sequel to Koyaanisqatsi, for a viewing to finish off the night. Or thought I had. Turns out it's not streaming on any of my services, nor even rentable via iTunes -- which doesn't matter anyway since iTunes rentals don't play on my projector.
So instead I went for a movie whose existence I had only just been reminded of while browsing through my streaming service Stan earlier that day: Do I Sound Gay?
The movie is exactly what the title would suggest. It explores the little-discussed -- among polite company anyway -- phenomenon of the "gay voice," which identifies male gays to heterosexuals and other gay people just by the inflections of their voice. The filmmaker, David Thorpe, has decided he loathes his own "gay voice," and while studying the history of this and interviewing gay icons such as George Takei and David Sedaris, he also undergoes speech therapy to try to sound more straight.
As you would expect, the film is oozing with self-loathing -- the very sort of self-loathing that has prevented many homosexuals from acknowledging their sexuality to the world in the first place. Fortunately, that doesn't make it downbeat either. Thorpe has fun with the topic while also going in depth with his research, all while bringing the thing in at only 80-some minutes. An absolute must watch for people who enjoy documentaries that focus on something specific that is actually important and provocative -- not something specific like which chicken is the best chicken at the chicken show.
My most unconventional #1 movie?
I started off bright and early Wednesday morning, the first day when I didn't have a baseball or basketball game dictating my early morning viewing. So at a little after 7, I was already watching Toni Erdmann with my eggs, toast and coffee.
As you will recall, I'm rewatching my #1 movies in 2022 with the aim toward ranking them at the end of the year. I'd been spacing them out at about two-week intervals, but watched my #1 of 2016 only two days after my #1 of 1997 (Titanic). Since Toni Erdmann is another long one, I decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity of being a captive audience in my garage and not trying to squeeze in all two hours and 40 minutes one night before bed. Besides, if I get a bit ahead on my pace, I can take three weeks off in July and August when I'm in America.
As with Titanic, I thought I might kind of half-watch this, since it would be my third time overall and I probably didn't need to catch every moment. As it turned out, as with Titanic, I wanted to catch every moment. I care about Ines and Winifred the way I care about Jack and Rose, and the way I don't care about Jake Sully.
Even as I was really enjoying the movie -- more than on my second viewing, I think -- it occurred to me how unusual it is for a person who is usually a believer in the three-act structure and other narrative conventions of particular genres. This is a comedy -- for the most part -- and yet it runs closer to three hours than two. And I suppose that it is a collection of set pieces perhaps more than a straight narrative, maybe it's own Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy within one movie. That doesn't prevent it from building in emotional power until that big hug at the end, which gets me every time.
The other screenwriting rule Toni Erdmann breaks is the one that says that every scene must clearly contribute to the thrust of the story. There should be no fat you can lift out. Maren Ade's film arguably has quite a lot of fat -- the hotel tryst between Ines and Tim, for example -- but it all sort of contributes to our overall perspective of the characters. Maybe then this is not fat, because maybe Toni Erdmann is the sort of story for which the idea of narrative fat is a non-starter. And maybe that's why I like it so much.
Metal turds
I decided I didn't want to fully fall behind on 2022 movies, so I watched the most recent higher-profile Netflix movie I hadn't seen, Metal Lords.
Because it stars teenagers who are into heavy metal, I imagined it would skew too much on the kiddie side of things, with the metal theme being fairly quaint and more an aspirational element for younger viewers.
Nope. This thing is laden with profanity throughout. As just one example, the band's name is Skullfucker.
Glad I didn't start watching with my younger son when he made a mummy-approved visit just before I was planning to start watching.
It's also laden with bad filmmaking and overall lameness. I didn't like the actors, the story is all over the place, and the conclusions it reaches are pretty specious.
On to the next one.
Too many times down the same Road
If having seen Avatar only once qualified as mildly surprising, it's probably much more surprising that I'd only seen Mad Max: Fury Road once. It's something I'd been meaning to correct for some time now, but it was never "the right night." A random number generator ensured that this would finally be the right night, as it beat out two other choices, which may come up as this festival continues, it if does: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Sin City, which would be the second time for both of those as well.
The reason I'd seen it only once is more similar to the reason I'd see Avatar only once than I'd like to admit. I liked it, but not nearly as much as most people seemed to.
Like Avatar, it's really cool to look at it and I'm really impressed by the achievement. Don't get it twisted -- this is a better movie than Avatar.
But like Avatar, the story doesn't really do it for me, and I can trace that back to one fatal narrative decision: Having gotten to an end point they were expecting to reach and not found it there, the characters just turn back around and go back the way they came. This makes the series of vehicle chases through the desert seem even more monotonous than they already seemed.
If you don't find this narrative choice to be a problem for you, let me put it to you this way. What if Dorothy and company got to Oz, and instead of clicking her heels to get back to Kansas, she had to reverse her order through the gauntlet of challenges she'd faced along the yellow brick road? Would that be satisfying?
It would not be, and this is one of the reasons -- in addition to some bad dialogue -- why Mad Max: Fury Road is not nearly as satisfying as it should be.
And also, you know what? I don't care that much about either Max or Furiosa.
There, I said it.
(Don't stress, it still gets four stars from me just for degree of difficulty.)
Re-watching something old
The final "obligation" of these past two days was to re-watch something older. I watch favorite movies from the last 30 years all the time, but it seems a lot more rare that I dig back older than that.
So I purposefully set out to find something on my Kanopy account that would qualify, and Herk Harvey's cult classic from 1962, Carnival of Souls, was the winner. (Its 77-minute running time helped that decision.)
Carnival of Souls beat out Wild Strawberries, The Great Dictator and The Wages of Fear for the honor, the latter largely because it's more than twice the length. This search gave me some targets for future options in the festival, except watching Carnival of Souls expended my April credits on Kanopy -- which I think is the first time that has ever happened.
Well, I was really happy with this choice.
I first watched this low-budget horror in 2013 when I was doing my Flickchart Road Trip series on the Flickchart blog, watching one movie set in each of the 50 states. This was the option for Utah and it lined right up with Halloween.
Well, it really stuck with me and I enjoyed the hell out of watching it last night. It's super creepy and the central performance by Candace Hilligoss is indelible. She's just got such an interesting face.
And since my own credits are expended after writing about eight movies, I'll stop there.
Although I'm working today, I plan to start watching movies again after the end of the workday, though I will certainly decrease by at least one movie per day -- and possibly two, depending on length.
And one day, I will actually leave this garage for reasons other than slinking out for urgent food, toilet and personal hygiene needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment