Hi There! I’m randomly writing a blog post here on my website because I am currently locked out out my actual blog site, gregswords.wordpresss.com, and I cannot get a human being to help me to fix the issue. So I’ve decided to just post my thoughts here for the time being. Hopefully this is a temporary thing.
Anyway, it’s been 5 years since I’ve written a blog post, and the world seems to be falling apart….so it seemed like a good time to write a kinda sorta Oscar movie review blog post.
In the past I’ve written mostly about movies, in particular Oscar movies. This year I’m not doing that, for a few reasons.
First, and most importantly, is that I’ve only seen two of them: The Brutalist and Dune: Part Two.
Second is that I just don’t really care this year. With everything happening around the world, the winner of Best Picture at the Oscars just doesn’t seem to interest me.
Third, I’m not going to see most of these movies any time soon. Here are some reasons why:
Anora – I still haven’t seen many of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, which was shot entirely on an iPhone; I’ve wanted to see it for years. (However, when I first wrote this, I had forgotten that I had seen The Florida Project, and loved it.) While I know Anora’s been screening on 35mm around Boston, which is really cool, I’d like to see some of his earlier stuff first, so I’m holding out on seeing it.
A Complete Unknown – Though I love Bob Dylan, I’m just really not interested in seeing a biopic about him right now.
Emilia Perez – I’ve heard a lot of mixed things about this one, and I’m not really interested in seeing what appears to be a mediocre movie that’s getting a lot of buzz for political reasons. It’s giving off vibes of Crash (absolute crap) and Green Book (which I heard was absolute crap).
Wicked – I’ve never read the book, nor for that matter have I read any of the Wizard of Oz books, nor have I seen the musical Wicked. At this time I really have no interest in jumping in and weighing in with an opinion on this.
Nickel Boys – This is the one that’s causing me the most anguish: I REALLY want to see this. I’m hearing nothing but good things about it. However, I would really like to read the novel first, and I have not yet had the chance to read either of Colson Whitehead’s very famous novels, The Underground Railroad or Nickel Boys. And because these are contemporary novels, I really think it’s important to hear his voice on the page. So I’m stuck: Nickel Boys is the one film here that I really want to see, but I feel I can’t because I want to read the novel first, and before that I want to read his earlier novel The Underground Railroad…I’m really conflicted about this whole thing.
That leaves The Substance and Conclave (both seem cool, and I’ll probably check them out) and I’m Still Here (it seems interesting, though I’m not sure if it’s a story I’m interested in right now).
As for the two I have seen:
While watching Dune: Part Two, I fell asleep in a crowded theater and woke up with a start halfway through. My problem with Dune isn’t the movies: they’re stunningly beautiful gems directed by Denis Villeneuve, who cares so much about the aesthetics of his movies that he once said his dream is to film beautiful vistas with no dialogue.
My problem with Dune is that I just don’t like Dune. I read the original book and by the end I despised every character in the book. When you can’t get behind the original creation of the book, I don’t really think you can get into the movies. They’re visually stunning, but I don’t care about them.
Which leaves the only one of these that I watched and stayed awake for: The Brutalist.
So, The Brutalist: I feel like I have a lot to say about this movie. While I’m not sure if I loved it, I did enjoy it, and I find thinking about it interesting…though I’m not sure if it’s for the reasons the film-makers would want. But still…it’s interesting, so that’s saying something.
Here are some positive things about The Brutalist:
-First, despite being a MASSIVE movie (the only word that I feel accurately describes this +3.5 hour beast), Brady Corbet and his team made it for under $10 million. This might be getting too film nerdy…but, WOW. This movie feels like it was made for over $100 million…just the feat of making something so huge in scope, for so low of a price, is something that should be commended.
-Second, Intermission! When Oppenheimer hit the theatres last year, clocking in at over 3 hours, I saw it with a buddy at a theatre and was vocally complaining about the fact that there was no intermission. I’ve been complaining about this for years. When a movie is over 3 hours, why is there no intermission??? Before you say anything, did you know that back in the old days, every movie that was over three hours had an intermission? If you see a play that was over 3 hours, do you think it would be normal not to have an intermission? I teach a three hour class at the school where I work…would it be normal not to have a break for that?
At some point along the way, many years ago, for whatever hairbrained reason someone gave, they stopped putting intermissions into movies completely. And it’s made watching a 3 hour movie in the theatre a perilous journey in which one can only hope that they don’t have to run out to pee.
So, thank you Brady Corbet, for finally, FINALLY bringing back the movie intermission!
-Third, it was enjoyable! If there’s one thing I want to do when I go to the movies, it’s to have an enjoyable time. Now, there are a lot of different types of enjoyable movies: slow moving art pieces that grab you at the end, fast-paced action movies with car chases, scary movies that people scream at. I’m not sure where I would categorize The Brutalist: if anything, it really falls into no category, and of course that’s likely what Corbet wanted. But it was enjoyable in the sense that I was never bored, I never got sleepy, and I was constantly interested in what was happening. And, more than anything else, I was laughing. This movie, to me, was very funny: I wasn’ sure why it was funny, or why I was laughing, but in a way this movie just danced around the often morbid characters on the screen and what was happening. It was darkness mixed with light, and for a movie that I could only describe as ‘massive’, it had a surprisingly light side to it.
So….how do I really feel about this movie? That’s where I become less sure of myself.
In all honesty, I think I’m actually not sure about how I feel about this movie.
Yes, it was massive. Yes, it was striking. Yes, it was enjoyable. Yes, it was deep and mysterious. Yes, it was funny.
But did I understand what I watched? Did I feel like the dots were connected cohesively, like the story that was put together held up? Unfortunately, for me, the answer is no.
When I left the theatre, I was sort of feeling buzzed in a weird way, and I was like “What the hell did I just watch?” And it had been a fun and entertaining experience. But unlike other movies, for example several movies by the Coen Brothers or David Lynch, which keep me thinking for days, I wasn’t really curious about this movie. It just sort of felt like what it was: a 3.5 hour romp through a bizarro world of people living their lives, and that was it. It didn’t make sense, but for me, there wasn’t that interesting aspect that made me want to think about it: it was almost like being on a roller-coaster, and then immediately leaving the theme park and forgetting about it as you drive home.
Is the Brutalist going to win some Oscars? I would imagine it will. Will it win Best Picture? It certainly could…but I actually find it, for all of its massiveness, to be somewhat forgettable. If it does win, I think it would be more due to the lack of quality from the other films.
Other final thoughts on the Brutalist: I actually heard this mentioned on a radio show discussing movies, but I’ll mention it here: though this movie has been described by many as being about the Holocaust, that is very much a misnomer, in my opinion. Yes, the main character is a Hungarian architect who has escaped the Holocaust…but it is virtually never mentioned nor touched upon in the movie. While certainly the characters’ in this movie have been affected by what they lived through, to call it a movie about the Holocaust does an injustice to any movie that is actually about this subject.
Another negative thing about this movie is that it has come out that A.I. was used to enhance the Hungarian accents used by Adrien Brody and other actors in this movie. Though I think Brody did a fine job playing his role, and strongly feel that he and any other actor that used this technology should not be eligible for an Oscar for their roles.
And one more note that I’ll make: I saw this movie at the Somerville Theatre, one of the theatres in the Boston area that have 70mm film projectors (for anyone who doesn’t know…70mm prints are giant and extremely high quality film prints that require special projectors to be shown. They were sort of a fad in the 1950s and 1960s, and then were largely forgotten…until in recent years they’ve been making a comeback. And now directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Christopher Nolan make all of their stuff available on it [as well as the standard digital releases, and sometimes the more accessible 35mm film version as well]).
The reason I bring this up is that when I was putzing around the lobby before the film began, I happened upon some posters on a table. They were free for anyone who was seeing the Brutalist to take home with them. Strangely, they were very large and almost entirely blank: and at the bottom they said ‘The Brutalist’ and ‘Presented at the Somerville Theatre.’ Which sort of surprised me: why were almost entirely blank posters being given out, and were specifically for this theatre? So I asked the guy sitting at the ticket booth, and he got a little bit snarky and was like “Not everyone does 70mm, we’re one of the only ones, so that’s why they made the poster.” And I was like, “Sure, fine, I don’t care that much.” But it felt to me like it was similar to the movie: very large, mostly blank, and largely self-indulgent
Other things…..
Why I HATE HATE HATE HATE The Wild Robot:
Okay, so another big movie that has been getting a lot of buzz this year is The Wild Robot. It’s probably gonna win some animated Oscars: it’s high quality and people are eating it up.
But I saw this movie during the summer, and while I won’t argue with the quality, I HATED THIS MOVIE AND EVERYTHING THAT IT STANDS FOR.
The Wild Robot is rated very highly: it’s currently 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and when I saw it in the summer it was 98%. This was one reason I checked it out: I hadn’t heard anything about it, but if something is rated in the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m almost always gonna love it (or at least like it a lot).
But pretty much from the get-go, The Wild Robot rubbed me in the wrong way.
The movie starts on the shore of a remote island: a box washes up against the rocks, and a robot falls out of it. It becomes clear very quickly that this robot was programmed to be a helper program, but instead of being taken out of a box by someone in their living room, it’s unleashed into the wild and rugged world of a rocky shore on an island. It is beat up and battered by the elements and the animals, who of course are disturbed by this new being, but the robot continues to try to prevail.
It becomes clear as the movie moves along that this place is an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean where no people live…but many animals call it home. And the animals, for the most part, hate this new intruder. And they essentially try to kill it.
During this process the robot accidentally crushes a nest of goose eggs and kills all of them, except one. And then she protects this baby goose from a sly fox, and becomes it’s mother. And of course the themes of not belonging, of love and caring, and all of that other good stuff, run through everything.
Eventually the animals realize that they were wrong about this wild robot, that she actually belongs with them in this wild place, despite the fact that she washed up there from a shipwreck. And of course eventually ‘evil’ robots come to retrieve this rogue wild robot, and of course the animals work together to fight off these ‘evil corporate’ robots.
WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. How anyone can watch this movie in this day and age, when invasive species have completely destroyed entire ecosystems, ESPECIALLY ON ISLANDS, and not feel a pit in their stomach, is beyond me. I was completely mortified by the fact that this robot crushed these bird eggs: one of the most heartbreaking REAL stories that I heard in the last few years was when someone operating a drone in California accidentally scared thousands of nesting birds and led to thousands of eggs being crushed. And the population of that bird species has not recovered it (I have not looked up the details of this story, not because I’m lazy, but because it is so depressing and enraging to me that I simply don’t want to read the details right now).
Besides this callous disregard for the environmental impact that our creations have caused the world, there is something that I find to be even more insidious about this movie: that in my opinion, it is propaganda for not only robots, but also A.I. in general. The animals rightfully didn’t want this intruder on their island, and they tried to get rid of her. But eventually they realize that, hey, actually, she’s wild just like us! She’s a wild robot! And she’s here where she belongs…with us.
It reminds me of everything that the GIANT COMPANIES are pushing on us now: hey, we know these robots can be a little weird, and maybe you think you don’t need one, but actually, they belong in your living room, with you, helping you. Trust us…they can think just like us, better in fact. They’re here to help us…not to hurt us. You’ll find soon enough…they belong here with you.
There was one scene in this that movie bothered me more than any other…when a giant storm struck the island, the robot built a shelter, and then eventually all of the animals fit into her shelter. And she essentially saved ALL of the animals. So apparently, THIS F**KING ROBOT KNOWS HOW TO SURVIVE ON THIS ISLAND BETTER THAN THE ANIMALS THAT HAVE ALWAYS LIVED THERE?!?! Spare me…I HATE THIS MOVIE PASSIONATELY. Apparently most people don’t feel how I do, but I truly can’t stomach it.
Other thoughts…
Another animated movie I saw in the summer was Transformers One, of the Transformers franchise. And it was great! It was a fun origin story and it had a great voice cast.
At the time I hadn’t heard anything about it, and was wondering why it wasn’t getting any buzz..but apparently it did decent in making its money back. So I guess it wasn’t ignored in the way that I thought it was.
I don’t have much else to say about…except that it was fun.
Two Other New Films I Saw This Year:
Though it came out in 2023, I saw Gozilla Minus One this past year…and it completely blew me away. It was without question THE BEST movie I saw all year. It was a serious movie that was about the horrors of a war, but it was also a beautiful movie with a heart, and it was also an amazingly fun film that paid homage to many classic films, such as Jurassic Park and Jaws, in really spectacular ways. This movie is a precious gem that should be enjoyed by all.
And the other film was a new kung fu movie from Hong Kong – Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. Though this movie was very violent (being a kung fu movie), it also had a beautiful message and was a joy to watch.
Both of these movies were much deeper than they let on, and were simply phenomenal.
Anyway, it’s about time for me go, but one more thing! Last year I watched EVERY SINGLE MOVIE up for Best Picture, but I didn’t write anything about them at all. So right now, I’d like to write a little bit about all of them. Here goes:
My Thoughts on the 2023 Oscar Movies… A Year Late!
Maestro – Boring. Snooze. Didn’t finish it.
The Holdovers – Nice, but nothing more than nice…it shouldn’t have been on this list. But bonus points for being filmed in Boston!
Poor Things – Very weird, very awesome, very fun…but very weird. Too weird for this award.
Barbie – OMG, brilliant! Have I told you how much I loved this movie?! But, yeah…I just don’t think the Academy could ever stomach making this Best Picture.
Past Lives – A lovely little film that never really had a chance, but was beautiful to watch.
Anatomy of a Fall – Dazzling. Thrilling. Fascinating. There was nothing I didn’t love about this movie. And on top of everything else, it got me to watch Anatomy of a Murder, the 1959 movie that served as an inspiration, and also quite possibly the BEST COURTROOM MOVIE EVER MADE. But anyway, back to Anatomy of a Fall…it was fantastic, but it never felt like an Oscar movie to me, whatever that means.
American Fiction – ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. I’m not sure why, but it never really seemed to be in contention…but it should have been.
Killers of the Flower Moon – This movie was very good and very important, but it was also very heavy and very long. It was heartbreaking and powerful, but at the end of the day, despite its powerful and important message, it couldn’t keep up its energy through its length.
Oppenheimer – The Winner. Big, powerful, booming, all seen on 70mm (if you are lucky enough to live near a theatre with a 70mm projector).
Zone of Interest – In my opinion, the REAL Best Picture. This movie got surprisingly little traction leading up to the Oscars: everyone talked about Oppenheimer, and how there was no question it was Best Picture, and that seemed to be the general consensus. But Zone of Interest BLEW ME AWAY. I don’t know if I’ve ever, EVER seen a movie so haunting. It haunted me for days. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And even now, over a year later, I think about it. I can’t say the same for the movie that won.
That’s it.
If you want to see my actual blog, where I’ve written off and on since 2006, and where I am currently locked out of, check out gregswords.wordpress.com.
Til Next Time,
Greg