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Sunday, February 11, 2024
Review: Pixar's "TURNING RED" is Universal and Unique
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Review: "SALTBURN" is not Salty, nor Does it Burn
Saturday, December 16, 2023
Review: First "CHICKEN RUN" Runs Wild at the End
Monday, September 4, 2023
Review: "THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS" is a Masterpiece
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Review: "INDIANA JONES and the Last Crusade" Stills Feels Like a True Ending
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Review: Entertaining "TRIANGLE OF SADNESS" is Not as Clever or as Sharp As it Thinks It Is
Sunday, April 16, 2023
Review: "PUSS IN BOOTS: The Last Wish" is a Delightful Surprise
Friday, June 24, 2022
Review: "PARALLEL MOTHERS" is Another Almodovar-Cruz Masterpiece
Parallel Mothers (2021)
Original title: Madres paralelas
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Spain; Language: Spanish
Running time: 123 minutes (2 hours, 3 minutes)
MPA – R for some sexuality
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodóvar
PRODUCERS: Augustin Almodóvar and Esther Garcia
CINEMATOGRAPHER: José Luis Alcaine (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Teresa Font
COMPOSER: Alberto Iglesias
Academy Award nominee
DRAMA
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Julieta Serrano, Adelfa Clavo, Carmen Flores, Ainhoa Santamaria, and Rossy de Palma
Madres paralelas is a 2021 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film is also known by its English release title, Parallel Mothers (the title I will use for this review). The film focuses on two mothers who give birth on the same day causing them to bond in unexpected ways.
Parallel Mothers introduces Janis MartÃnez (Penelope Cruz), a highly considered magazine photographer. She does a photo shoot with renowned forensic archaeologist, Arturo (Israel Elejalde). She asks him if his foundation will help excavate a mass grave in her home village, where she believes her great-grandfather and other men from the village were killed and buried during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). After he agrees to review the case with his foundation, Arturo has sexual relations with Janis, who becomes pregnant.
Later, Janis shares a hospital room with Ana Manso (Milena Smit), a teen single mother, and the two end up giving birth at the same time. Janis has a daughter whom she names “Cecilia,” and Ana a daughter she names “Anita.” The women promise to stay in touch, but Janis makes a series of shocking discoveries that will change both their lives.
Parallel Mothers is obviously an acting showcase for Penelope Cruz, who wastes no time exercising her prodigious talents. Cruz won numerous awards and received even more nominations for her performance as Janis Martinez. Writer-director Pedro Almodovar has spent his four-decade career in film making writing wonderful roles for women that result is wonderful films featuring an eclectic group of actresses.
Parallel Mothers' women are united across time by the bonds of motherhood, family, friendship, and loss. They are the speakers for the dead and the nurtures of men, but they also nurture and support and lift-up the other women in their lives. This is the uplift that Janis will provide for Ana, played by actress Milena Smit as a pixie of a girl in need of mothering. Janis and Ana are the solid center and radiant soul of this film about the complications and twists, the pain and the glory, and joy, sadness, and bittersweet nature of being a mother.
The film has a subplot involving the Spanish Civil War, which is the impetus for the Janis and Arturo conceiving a child. The search for the missing graves in her village, a grave that will hold the remains of her great-grandfather and the grandfathers of other women she knows is also part of the film's theme of loss and separation. These men, murdered in the civil war, should ultimately have a decent burial, and Janis and the other women will see to that.
Pedro Almodovar offers a film that is as raw and unflinching as it is beautiful. He draws out performances that are unashamedly naked and vulnerable in their depictions and displays of emotions, in a way American films tend to avoid, even Oscar-bait films. Sometimes Almodovar can be riotous and uproarious, but other times he can be uncannily intimate, as he is here. Sometimes, I feel unworthy of viewing his amazing films, which are so different and so much more daring than what I usually watch. Parallel Mothers is one of 2021's very best films and reveals that the Spanish maestro is, as usual, in top form.
10 of 10
Friday, June 24, 2022
NOTES:
2022 Academy Awards, USA: 2 nominations: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Penelope Cruz) and “Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures-Original Score (Alberto Iglesias)
2022 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Film not in the English Language” (Pedro Almodóvar and Augustin Almodovar)
2022 Golden Globes, USA: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language” (Spain) and Best Original Score – Motion Picture (Alberto Iglesias)
The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Review: "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is Still Fresh and Vibrant
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 38 of 2022 (No. 1850) by Leroy Douresseaux
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
Original title: Mujeres al borde de un ataque de "nervios"
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Spain; Language: Spanish
Running time: 89 minutes (1 hour, 29 minutes)
MPAA – R
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodóvar
PRODUCER: Pedro Almodóvar
CINEMATOGRAPHER: José Luis Alcaine (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: José Salcedo
COMPOSER: Bernardo Bonezzi
Academy Award nominee
DRAMA/COMEDY
Starring: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma, Maria Berranco, Kiti Manver, Guillermo Montesinos, Chus Lampreave, and Fernando Guillen
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios is a 1988 Spanish comedy and drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film is also known by its English release title, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (the title I will use for this review). The film focuses on a television actress who encounters a variety of eccentric characters as she tries to make contact with her lover who recently and abruptly left her.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown introduces television actress, Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura), who was recently dumped by her lover, Ivan (Fernando Guillen). They are both voice actors who dub foreign language films into Spanish, and Ivan's sweet-talking voice is the same one he uses in his work. Pepa knows that Ivan is about to leave on a trip … with another woman. He has even asked Pepa to pack his things in a suitcase that he will pick up later.
However, Pepa just wants to talk to Ivan. She really needs to talk to him, but he seems to be avoiding her. She never catches him at home and leaves messages on his telephone answering machine. He leaves voice messages on her machine, always seeming to call when she is unavailable. Her life is spiraling out of control, especially as an ever increasing number of eccentric characters, some connected to Ivan, start gathering around her. Their lives are apparently spiraling out of control, too.
There is her friend Candela (Maria Berranco), who is afraid of the police because she had a brief sexual encounter with a man who turns out to be a “Shiite terrorist.” He later returned to her, bringing a few terrorists colleagues, and they are planning a terrorist attack. Candela is more afraid of going to jail than having had a sexual relationship with a terrorist.
Ivan's son, Carlos (Antonio Banderas), arrives at Pepa's penthouse, with his snobbish fiancée, Marisa (Rossy de Palma). They are apartment-hunting and are interested in Pepa's place. Pepa meets the feminist and lawyer, Paulina (Kiti Mánver), who has a past with Ivan's family and may be connected to them now. Carlos describes his mother, Lucia (Julieta Serrano), Ivan's previous lover, as “crazy,” and she is apparently out of her mental hospital and on the way to Pepa's for a confrontation. Meanwhile, what is Ivan up to?
The original Spanish title of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios – is evidently not about a “nervous breakdown.” The “ataque de nervois” is more about women showing excessive negative emotions via panic attacks, fainting, and bodily gestures when they get upsetting news or see something that disturbs them. This is about agitation and stress instead of a full breakdown, which actually seems possible with some of the film's characters.
I can see why so many film critics, fans, and audiences were taken with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at the time of its original release. There was nothing like it in U.S. contemporary film at the time. Its costumes, art direction, and set decoration have stylish references to the past and present and hints at the future. If one ignores such things as the types of telephones and answering machines and the operation of the airport, the film does not seem to be set in any particular time, past or present. The decorations in Pepa's penthouse and all the characters clothing are a riot of beautiful colors and color design. However, things like the taxi cab that Pepa frequently uses and its lovable driver (Guillermo Montesinos) add an earthy street-level touch to the film. Even Pepa's menagerie of animals (chickens and rabbits) are a nice addition to the film's oddness
For most of the 1990s, there were rumors of an American remake of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, with Jane Fonda often listed as a potential cast member (as I remember it). I am not surprised that American actresses would be attracted to this kind of film. Even with Pepa as the lead, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown has five supporting female roles with significant speaking parts, to say nothing of a few smaller parts that all actresses to show themselves.
No one female character is like another, and each woman has her own reason for “ataque de nervois.” Pepa and her eccentric friends and acquaintances are a delight, and the actresses make the most of their time on screen. They turn their character types into showy, gaudy, and captivating women, and I wanted more of them. Also, a young Antonio Banderas, as Carlos, deftly fits in with all these females, never dominating the screen, but always complimenting with uncanny skill.
I have seen Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown described as a black comedy. It is too wildly exaggerated to be anything but a farce. For Pedro Almodóvar, it was his calling card that introduced him to a wider audience outside of both Spain and of the devoted international film audience that already knew him. I like it as a comedy, but I am really fascinated by its characters and the actors playing them. The women on the verge of a nervous breakdown are some amazing women indeed, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is an amazing film.
9 of 10
A+
★★★★+ out of 4 stars
NOTES:
1989 Academy Awards, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Foreign Language Film” (Spain)
1990 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Film not in the English Language” (Pedro Almodóvar)
1989 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Foreign Language Film” (Spain)
The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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Thursday, April 28, 2022
Review: Pixar's "LUCA" is a True Disney Instant Classic
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 26 of 2022 (No. 1838) by Leroy Douresseaux
Luca (2021)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – PG for rude humor, language, some thematic elements and brief violence
DIRECTOR: Enrico Casarosa
WRITERS: Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones; from a story by Enrico Casarosa, Jesse Andrews, and Simon Stephenson
PRODUCER: Andrea Warren
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: David Juan Bianchi (D.o.P.) and Kim White (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Catherine Apple and Jason Hudak
COMPOSER: Dan Romer
Academy Award nominee
ANIMATION/FANTASY/ADVENTURE/COMEDY/DRAMA
Starring: (voices) Jacob Tremblay, Jack Dylan Grazer, Emma Berman, Saverio Raimondo, Maya Rudolph, Marco Barricelli, Jim Gaffigan, Peter Sohn, Lorenzo Crisci, Marina Massironi, Gino LaMoica, Sandy Martin, and Sacha Baron Cohen
Luca is a 2021 computer-animated, coming-of-age, fantasy film directed by Enrico Casarosa, produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The film focuses on a two sea monster boys disguised as humans and the human girl they befriend.
Luca opens sometime in the 1950s in and around the Italian Riviera. Below the surface of the waters of the Riviera live a group of sea monsters. Luca Paguro (Jacob Tremblay), a timid young sea monster, herds goatfish below the coast of the small Italian town of Portorosso. Luca is curious about the human world, but his parents, Daniela (Maya Rudolph) and Lorenzo Paguro (Jim Gaffigan), fear that the humans might hunt him for food. Thus, they forbid him from approaching the surface.
One day, Luca meets Alberto Scorfano (Jack Dylan Grazer), a fellow sea monster boy who lives alone above the surface on Isola del Mare. Alberto encourages Luca to venture out of the ocean, showing him that sea monsters turn into humans when their bodies become dry, but return to their true forms when they become wet. Alberto invites Luca to his hideout where the boys connect and dream about owning a Vespa (an Italian luxury brand of scooter) so that they can travel the world.
Venturing into Portorosso as humans, the boys discover that a local children's triathlon, the “Portorosso Cup,” is about to take place. They run afoul of Ercole Visconti (Saverio Raimondo), the local bully and five-time champion of the Portorosso Cup. They also meet a young girl named Giulia Marcovaldo (Emma Berman), the daughter of a fisherman, Massimo Marcovaldo (Marco Barricelli). Giulia has participated in the triathlon, but has never won. Hoping to win the money they need to buy a Vespa, Luca and Alberto form a team with Giulia. Through Giulia, Luca learns that there is so much more to the surface world, but his feelings for her threaten everything, including his plans with Alberto.
I could say that Luca is one of Pixar's most beautiful films, and I will, although that is redundant. Pixar's films always have beautiful visuals, and sometimes they are stunning and a wonder to behold. The film is drenched in the bright colors of the Italian Riviera and reinterprets them as if they were watercolor paintings.
Dear readers, perhaps you are familiar with the animated films of the Japanese master, Hayao Miyazaki. His films are a symphony of wondrous colors and stunning locales, and those films clearly have an influence on Luca on a number of levels, especially in terms of visuals and in the tone of the story. Luca's town of Portorosso may be named in honor of Miyazaki's 1992 animated film, Porco Rosso, which is also set in Italy.
I think the elements that really drive this film, its beauty aside, are the characters and voice performances. The characters are very well developed: their personalities, their goals, and fears. From Alberto's jealousy and fear of loss to Giulia's determination and open-mindedness, the viewer can believe in these characters. Luca is ostensibly a coming-of-age story focusing on Luca. His sense of adventure is overcome by his fear of trying new things, whether it is actually going to the surface world or going to school. In Luca, we see the film's themes of acceptance (accepting others, accepting help, and accepting oneself) and overcoming fear (especially the fear of change). Luca takes on a beautiful journey as we see the evolution of the title character, and as for the coming-of-age angle, this film feels like only the first chapter of Luca's coming of age.
The voice performances make the characters seem like real people. If there were an Oscar for voice performances, Jacob Tremblay as Luca would be worthy of being nominated. Every performance is winning, from major characters to bit players. I am crazy about the performances here.
Dan Romer's beautiful score highlights and accentuates the journey of change and evolution that is Luca, both the film and the character. Luca is one of Pixar's most convincing boy characters, which is quite a feat in a filmography full of wonderfully drawn characters. Speaking of drawn, the character design and art direction and production design are on par with Pixar's best.
I always thought that I would like Luca, and now that I have seen it, I am in love with it. For me, Luca is one of Pixar's best ever films, and it is one of 2021's very best films I recommend it without reservation; everyone should see it.
10 of 10
Thursday, April 28, 2022
NOTES:
2022 Academy Awards, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Animated Feature Film” (Enrico Casarosa and Andrea Warren)
2022 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Animated Feature Film” (Enrico Casarosa and Andrea Warren)
2022 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture-Animated”
2022 Black Reel Awards: 1 win: “Outstanding Voice Performance” (Maya Rudolph)
2022 Image Awards (NAACP): 1 nomination: “Outstanding Animated Motion Picture”
The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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Saturday, March 26, 2022
Review: Hurt and Turner Put All the Heat in "BODY HEAT"
Body Heat (1981)
Running time: 113 minutes (1 hour, 53 minutes)
MPAA – R
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
PRODCUER: Fred T. Gallo
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Richard H. Kline (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Carol Littleton
COMPOSER: John Barry
DRAMA/ROMANCE/CRIME
Starring: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston, Oscar Grace, Mickey Rourke, Kim Zimmer, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders, and Carola McGuinness
Body Heat is a 1981 romance and crime drama written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. The film is set in Florida during a searing heat wave and focuses on a small-town lawyer and a sultry woman who conspire to murder her rich husband.
Body Heat introduces Ned Racine (William Hurt), an inept lawyer who operates out of Okeelanta County, in southern Florida, which is in the middle of a searing heatwave. One night, he chances upon a very attractive woman, who is all alone. Although she initially rebuffs his amorous attempts, she eventually gives in to Ned's advances and identifies herself as Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). She lives in a posh mansion with her mysteriously wealthy husband, Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna). Edmund is usually away on business during the week, so that is when Matty is alone.
Ned and Matty begin a torrid affair. When they can be together, they have lots of sex in the sweltering heat of the night. When Edmund is home on the weekends, Matty longs to be with Ned, as he longs to be with her. If Matty were to divorce her husband, an onerous marital prenuptial agreement would leave her with very little, but she would get half his estate if he died... Matty wishes Edmund was dead, and Ned presents her with a way to get rid of him. Ned believes that he has figured out how to get away with murder, but has he figured out Matty Walker?
William Hurt (1950-2022) recently died after a reported battle with cancer, and I was taken aback. William Hurt was one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1980s when I was first coming of age an a film fan. I have decided to go back and watch some of his films that I'd previously seen and also to watch some for the first time. One of those first time films is Body Heat, which was only the third film in which he'd starred. It is apparently the film that made him a “bankable” Hollywood movie star.
Body Heat is also the film debut of Kathleen Turner. Her physicality and obvious and frank sexuality made her a star of the 1980s. Her adventurousness in choosing movie roles created an eclectic filmography, but Turner's star waned in the 1990s. In Body Heat, however, she is ready to unleash her unique skill set on the world. Matty Walker is Turner's signature work, and bits and pieces of the character and her performance of the character continued to show up in her work in the decades that followed the original release of Body Heat.
Here, in Body Heat, Hurt and Turner are stars ascendant. At first, I wondered if they would have screen chemistry, and from my point of view, they are magnificent together. The fact that they are willing to be naked together so often in this film speaks to their professionalism and also the depth of their skill as actors. Both had performed on stage before they entered the world of Hollywood films, so they had acting experience. That experience was needed in filming what has been described as many explicit sex scenes that were not included in the finished film.
Still, what is left on screen is hot and nasty. Turner and Hurt are so hot together that they damn near burned this film down, which it needs. The truth is that Body Heat is rather tepid. The film is described as a “neo-noir,” a modern version of the classic Hollywood film genre, “Film-Noir.” Outside of the depictions of sex and nudity, Body Heat's story and the execution of its narrative, to me, seem rather tame compared to a film like, for instance, 1950's Gun Crazy, another romantic crime drama about a killer couple. Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, one of the best writer-directors and screen writers of the last five decades, apparently found inspiration for Body Heat in the 1944 Film-Noir classic, Double Indemnity. Well, it's time for me to see that one.
Beside Ned Racine and Matty Walker, I like the other characters in this film. Richard Crenna is really good in a small role as Edmund Walker; he deserved more screen time. Ted Danson's Peter Lowenstein is good, but seems extraneous in this film, and J.A. Preston's Oscar Grace, a police detective, has his best moments in Body Heat's last act. Also, if you ever wondered what Hollywood executives saw in Mickey Rourke that would make him a star, his small but potent turn as Teddy Lewis, an explosives expert and former client of Ned's, reveals the first glimmer of his movie star potential.
Body Heat is not William Hurt's best work, but his quirky takes make Ned Racine an interesting character. Kasdan throws out hints about the general sloppy nature of Ned's skills as an attorney and also his inability to see the big picture. Hurt takes that the rest of the way, creating a Ned Racine that is not savvy enough not to be a fall guy, but too smart not to figure it out eventually. Body Heat is not a crime fiction classic, but it is a classic “erotic thriller.” Hurt and Turner make it so.
7 of 10
B+
Saturday, March 26, 2022
NOTES:
1983 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Most Outstanding Newcomer to Leading Film Roles” (Kathleen Turner)
The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Review: "THE FRENCH DISPATCH" is Ultimate Wes Anderson
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 14 of 2022 (No. 1826) by Leroy Douresseaux
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)
Running time: 107 minutes (1 hour, 47 minutes)
MPA – R for graphic nudity, some sexual references and language
DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
WRITERS: Wes Anderson; from a story by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Hugo Guinness
PRODUCERS: Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson, and Steven Rales
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Yeoman (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Andrew Weisblum
COMPOSER: Alexandre Desplat
COMEDY/DRAMA/ANTHOLOGY with elements of fantasy
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Lea Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Liev Schreiber, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Winston Ait Hellal, and Owen Wilson and Anjelica Huston
The French Dispatch (full title: The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun) is a 2021 comedy-drama and anthology film from writer-director Wes Anderson. The film focuses on the French foreign bureau of a Kansas newspaper and the features magazine it produces.
The French Dispatch introduces Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). When he was a college freshman, he convinces his father, the owner of the newspaper, the “Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun,” to fund his transatlantic trip. Junior would in turn produce a series of travelogue columns, which would be published for local readers in the Evening Sun's magazine supplement “Sunday Picnic.” Arthur, Jr. sets up shop in the (fictional) French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. Over the next decade, young Arthur assembles a team of the best expatriate journalists of the time. In 1925, he transforms the Sunday Picnic into the weekly magazine, “The French Dispatch” (something like The New Yorker).
In 1975, fifty years after he left Kansas, Arthur Howitzer, Jr. dies suddenly of a heart attack. Although it has half a million subscribers in 50 countries, as per his will, The French Dispatch will immediately cease publication following the release of a farewell issue that will feature Arthur's obituary and four articles by magazine's best writers:
In “The Cycling Reporter,” Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) gives a sight-seeing tour. It is “a day in Ennui over the course of 250 years” and demonstrates how much and yet how little has changed in Ennui over time.
In “The Concrete Masterpiece,” J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) delivers a lecture at an art gallery. She details the career of Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), a mentally disturbed artist serving a sentence in the Ennui Prison-Asylum for murder and the two most important people in his lives. The first is Simone (Lea Seydoux), a prison officer who becomes Moses' lover and his muse. Moses paints a portrait of Simone, and that second important person, Julien Cadazio, an art dealer also serving a sentence for tax evasion, is immediately taken by the painting. After buying the painting, Cadazio uses it to turn Moses into an international sensation. However, Moses struggles with inspiration, and his relationship with Simone becomes complicated.
In “Revisions to a Manifesto,” Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) reports on a student protest breaking out in the streets of Ennui, one that soon boils over into the “Chessboard Revolution.” Krementz fails to maintain “journalistic neutrality” when she falls in love with Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet), a college boy who is the self-styled leader of the revolt. She secretly helps him write his manifesto, but Juliette (Lyna Khoudri), a fellow revolutionary who has some feelings for Zeffirelli, is unimpressed with his manifesto – thus, creating a love triangle.
In “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) is the guest of a television talk show host (Liev Schreiber). Wright recounts the story of his attending a private dinner with The Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric) of the Ennui police force. The meal is prepared by the legendary police officer and chef, Lt. Nescaffier (Stephen Park). Nescaffier is the creator of a kind of “haute cuisine” specifically designed to be eaten by police officers while they are working. The dinner is disrupted when the Commissaire's inquisitive and bright son, Gigi (Winston Ait Hellal), is kidnapped and held for ransom by a large gang of criminals, led by a failed musician known as “The Chauffeur” (Edward Norton).
They mourn his death. Now, the staff of The French Dispatch must put together a final issue with these four stories that Arthur Howitzer Jr. touched in some way?
The French Dispatch has been described as a film that is “a love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth century French city.” The film presents four of the magazine's stories of the city. Director Wes Anderson has apparently stated that this film is inspired by his love of the venerable weekly magazine, The New Yorker, and that some of the film's characters and events are based on real-life equivalents from that magazine. During The French Dispatch's closing credits, there is a dedication to several writers and editors, many of whom wrote for The New Yorker.
To that end, The French Dispatch is a movie that celebrates magazine writers, illustrators, and editors and the stories they tell. This film is a love letter to stories of local color and of locales written for magazines. The film demands patience and attention on the part of the audience. The French Dispatch is a hybrid. It is an anthology of four main stories and of a few small chapters, although everything connects in the end. The audience has to follow each of the main stories, paying attention from beginning to the end. That is where the pay off comes.
In fact, each of the main stories seems like one thing in the beginning, but fully develops over the course of the narrative in something different. At the end of each, I realized that the story was about wonderful characters living lives both ordinary and extraordinary. In the extraordinary, Anderson gives us a reason to love what is so ordinary and human about them.
This is brilliant character writing on Anderson's part. His gift is to make not only the lead and supporting characters fascinating, but he also makes even the characters who say little and the extras seem worth knowing – even when the narrative passes them by. To that end, I think Roebuck Wright is the character that ties all the characters and stories together. He is the narrator/writer of “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” the final story. Both his first meeting and final conversation with Bill Murray's Arthur coalesces the film's theme of expatriate writers, and he begins Arthur's obituary, which also brings together the film's shifts in time. It would have been nice to see Wright receive a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his work here, but The French Dispatch did not receive any Oscar nominations.
The film's production values: art direction and production design, costumes, and cinematography all meet the wonderfully inventive and incredibly imaginative standards that audiences have come to expect from Wes Anderson's films. The French Dispatch looks like no film I have ever seen. Even Alexandre Desplat's score sounds like something entirely new in film music. I described Anderson's 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, as Wes Anderson art for Wes Anderson's art sake. The French Dispatch is Wes Anderson high art.
9 of 10
A+
Thursday, March 17, 2022
NOTES:
2022 BAFTA Awards: 3 nominations: “Best Costume Design” (Milena Canonero); “Original Score” (Alexandre Desplat), and “Best Production Design” (Adam Stockhausen and Rena DeAngelo)
2022 Black Reel Awards: 1 nomination: “Outstanding Supporting Actor” (Jeffrey Wright)
2021 Cannes Film Festival: 1 nomination: “Palme d'Or” (Wes Anderson)
2022 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Original Score - Motion Picture” (Alexandre Desplat)
The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.
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Thursday, June 10, 2021
Review: The Fabulous Lightfoot Brothers Carry "Onward"
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 39 of 2021 (No. 1777) by Leroy Douresseaux
Onward (2020)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA – PG for action/peril and some mild thematic elements
DIRECTOR: Dan Scanlon
WRITERS: Dan Scanlon, Keith Bunin, and Jason Headley
PRODUCER: Kori Rae
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Sharon Calahan (D.o.P.) and Adam Habib (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Catherine Apple
COMPOSERS: Jeff Danna and Mycheal Danna
Academy Award nominee
ANIMATION/FANTASY/ADVENTURE/COMEDY/DRAMA
Starring: (voices) Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Kyle Bornheimer, Lena Waithe, Ali Wong, Tracey Ullman, Wilmer Valderrama, George Psarras, and John Ratzenberger
Onward is a 2020 computer-animated, comedy-drama, and fantasy film from director Dan Scanlon and is produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Onward focuses on two elf brothers who embark on a quest to bring their late father back to life for one day.
Onward is set in an urban fantasy world that is inhabited by mythic creatures such as elves, centaurs, and pixies, to name a few. Once upon a time, magic was common place, but over several millennia, technological advances made magic obsolete and largely discarded. The story opens on the sixteenth birthday of an elf boy named Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland), who is shy and struggles with self-confidence. He has an older brother, Barley (Chris Pratt), an enthusiastic role-playing gamer and fanatic about both the history of the world and about magic. The boys live with their mother, Laurel Lightfoot (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a widow.
Laurel's late husband and the boys' father, Wilden Lightfoot (Kyle Bornheimer), died shortly before Ian was born. For Ian's sixteenth birthday, Laurel gives both her boys a gift from Wilden. The gift is a magical wizard staff, a rare Phoenix gem, and a letter describing a magical spell. It is a “visitation spell” that can resurrect Wilden for a single day, and while Ian succeeds in casting the spell, he is unable to finish it. As a result, Ian has summoned the lower half of Wilden's body. Ian and Barley take their father (such as he is) and embark on a quest to complete the spell. However, the brothers' quest is more dangerous than they know. It will take Laurel; her boy friend, Colt Bronco the centaur (Mel Rodriguez); and a legendary figure, The Manticore (Octavia Spencer) to make sure that the brothers' quest to meet their deceased father does not end with them being deceased.
I don't want this review to spoil Onward if you have not yet seen it, dear readers. I can say that one of the film's main themes is that people are often looking hard for something they already have. Another theme is that sometimes we blame people for the mistakes we think they are making when it is really our lack of trust in them that leads to trouble. And of course, the themes of relationships between brothers and of brotherly love dominate this film.
Ian and Barley carry this film, and Onward's off-beat, quest fantasy, role-playing game design and mood/mode keep the film from being just another tale of brotherly love. In fact, the first forty minutes of the film are quite problematic, but once the film gets to the heart of the matter – Ian and Barley's quest and each brother's reason for the quest – Onward comes alive. While Onward is not a Pixar classic, it does make strong use of the Pixar's formula of comedy, adventure, heartwarming relationship drama, and an emphasis on getting to the heart of the story.
I would never waste your time telling your that a Pixar film has magnificent animation, great colors, eye-popping environments, and striking graphics and visuals, in general. I will say, as usual, that the voice performances are good. I really like that Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Laurel and Octavia Spencer as “The Manticore” actually have important roles in both the drama and the action-adventure, and these two fine actress shine in their supporting roles. Is it fate or magic that Tom Holland as Ian and Chris Pratt as Barley have … magical screen chemistry?
If not for the first half of the film, I would call Onward a Pixar classic. As it is, it is still the kind of exceptional film that we expect of Pixar and, except for some missteps, they deliver. And yes, I did find the world of Onward to be a bit odd, even weird, although Jeff Danna and Mycheal Danna's musical score is pitch perfect for this world. Still, one of the highest compliments I can give a film is that by the end of it, I still wanted to watch more. The way that the relationship between Ian and Barley plays out is something worth watching. So I am recommending Onward.
8 of 10
A
Thursday, June 10, 2021
NOTES:
2021 Academy Awards, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Animated Feature Film” (Dan Scanlon and Kori Rae)
2021 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture - Animated”
2021 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Animated Feature Film” (Dan Scanlon and Kori Rae)
The text is copyright © 2021 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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