Category: Uncategorized

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Growing up, I never really felt like a girl. No, I didn’t skip from toddler to womanhood. I am just a dude. But still, I don’t know what it feels like to be a girl.

I never found someones diary and betrayed their trust by reading about their deepest and darkest secrets. Except for Anne Frank, but apparently she was cool with it since she was dead and all.

Thankfully, I have movies that tell me what it means to be a girl. And I also now have The Diary of a Teenage Girl, so I can get those few years of middle and high school. That is definitely the years I understood girls the least, given my friendship and dating record.

What? Oh this is getting too personal. Sorry, I confused a prestigious movie reviewing website for a Live Journal again. Ahem.

Mic
Now let me put the rest of my secrets on audio. No one can get to them then.

Minnie (Bel Powley) just had sex for the first time and she is only fifteen. Whoa. This is already getting too personal for me.

She has been wanting to explore her sexuality for awhile, but she is sort of shy, not the best looking girl and lacking confidence in her breasts. But she had sex finally after seducing Monroe (Alexander SkarsgĂ„rd). For those who can read actor names in the parenthesis, you will realize that he is not a high school aged boy, he is a super adult. That is because he happens to be the boyfriend of Charlotte (Kristen Wiig), Minnie’s mom. Oh boy. That’s a rape.

Except they get super into each other. Like. A lot. And I do mean into each other. This ups Minnie’s confidence to walk down her school’s halls and know she can take on the world.

But again. This relationship is not appropriate and bad. He is manipulating her. Or fuck. Is she manipulating him? No, that’d be crazy…

Also starring Abby Wait as Minnie’s younger sister, Miranda Bailey as Minnie’s friend, and Christopher Meloni as Minnie’s father.

Touch
If you look closely, you will see this picture is very inappropriate.

I have never felt so much like a teenage girl in my life before. That should be apparent given the introduction. Powley did such a fascinating job as the lead. Powley herself is 23 years old at this point, but she was a teenage girl before and frankly looks very young. So along with acting the shit out of being an actual teenager, it made me feel quite uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to look up Powley’s age.

The film was rated R for a variety of reasons, including GRAPHIC NUDITY, but surprisingly no actual male dick. The only penises you see are drawn/animated. Lot of boobs though. And a lot of very uncomfortable sex. Sex sex sex.

Moving on. The rest of the film, outside of the awkward teenager ness and great acting from Powley, was also good. The supporting cast felt realistic, the plot felt realistic. It was all just about a girl finding herself. There a quite a few films that fit into this genre, but this feels like it should go directly to the top tier.

This film happens to be up for several Spirit awards, including Best Actress and Best First Feature, meaning the director hadn’t done a film before this one. Pretty crazy to think about. Marielle Heller, not only directed for the first time, but also wrote the screenplay, which is also her first. It clearly takes a woman to really understand all the weirdness it takes to be a woman.

4 out of 4.

The Lady In The Van

Now, I am not trying to be sexist here. But let’s think about The Lady In The Van. Is it creepy? Maybe a bit. I imagine a cat lady, even though if you live in a van, you probably don’t want cats in there as well. That’d be poopy.

But if this was titled The Man In The Van, most likely it would be some sort of scary horror film. Lady is intriguing. What is she doing in the van? Man is sketchy. What is he doing in the van? He should stop it immediately regardless!

I guess I should be thankful this is about a lady. Early year horror films are janky, but dramas early in the year might not be.

Overall, this babble is brought to you by: Genders. Men are scary, yo.

Brit
How British in this movie you may be asking? Well…

Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith) is just a really old lady, and she needs help. Sure, she lives in a van, but she is self employed selling pencils and notes on the street. Not a beggar, no sir. People wouldn’t take too kindly to that. This is 1970’s England, and it is perfect! She parks her van in a nice suburb area. Where the people are relatively well off and in that range where they will help her out and let her use the water closet, to make themselves feel like they are doing good in the world. And Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) just moved in.

Alan is a writer of plays and, of course, mildly successful. He has finally moved away from his Mam (Gwen Taylor), who might need to be put in a home herself soon. He is our narrator as well, and he describes that he has two halves. The one who writes, and the one who lives. Sure enough, he befriends this lady in the van, who has lived an apparently long and complicated life. He already writes a lot about old ladies, thanks to inspiration from his Mam, and he has to figure out if he wants to write about Miss Shepherd as well, or just experience her like a normal person would.

Miss Shepherd is also very secretive about parts of her life. She hates it when anyone plays music and will rant wildly if it occurs. She is being blackmailed by a cop (Jim Broadbent) for maybe killing a person. Yeah, that is important.

Guess how long this old lady stays on the street/ in his driveway? Guess! Over a decade, that is the only hint I will give.

We have a lot of neighbors who are in the story, played by Frances de la Tour, Roger Allam, and Deborah Findlay. There were also quite a bit of cameos. People who I thought were way too famous to be in this movie for one line or one small scene and never seen again. They include Dominic Cooper, Sam Spruell, James Corden, and Russell Tovey.

Sneak
And this is the lady sneaking out from behind her van.

It turns out all the people who had small cameos in this movie were there for a reason. And no, it wasn’t because James Corden is a douchebag who only gets 1 line in British films and doesn’t deserve a Late Night talk show program. The director, Nicholas Hytner, also directed The History Boys about 9 years ago. It was his last film and all of these random famous people cameos came from that film. The more you know!

Also, this movie is technically a 2015 film, despite getting released in America so late. So it was up for all the fancy awards and it was nominated for…one golden globe! It was also nominated for some British awards, as expected, given it has Maggie Smith in it, who is basically the British Meryl Streep. They love nominating these ladies.

Speaking of Smith, she was fantastic in this role. I have never seen her so old or decrepit. I was getting worried about Smith herself, given how pale and old she looked. Thankfully I remembered that make up departments in a movie were a thing and she doesn’t actually look like she is one step away from death. But damn do they pull it off in this movie. She is funny and naggy and cantankerous. Everything you’d hope for in a movie old lady, but not in someone you actually know.

The rest of the movie leaves something to be desired. Jennings plays an incredibly closeted British man well, but as a narrator and co-lead he is never really exciting enough. He is basically playing the audience half the time, just watching things happen around him, due to his timidness (or Britishness, really). The split personality thing was confusing for the most part, never really enjoyed how they had that play out. It was made weirder at the ending when they tried to explain it a bit more in the conclusion, too. The many other characters give an occasional smile, but don’t do a lot outside of show up once in awhile to be nosy.

Overall, you can probably watch this for Smith as she gives a wonderful eccentric performance. But this is not something you would want to watch ever again.

2 out of 4.

Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom

Oooh, something about Ukraine. In Ukrainian!

I didn’t know what to expect about Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom. If I had to guess, maybe about how Russia was fucking it over? Technically, that happens all the time, so it wasn’t so specific. But I meant when Russia came and took Crimea from Ukraine, like, last year or whenever.

But no! It takes before that!

You see, Ukraine has a lot of problems since its independence in 1991. But damn it, they were a free country. They just had some kinks to work out. Their eventual goal would be to join the EU, which is why in 2013 they voted in a President Viktor Yanukovych. He ran on a campaign to get them into the EU.

Unfortunately, the President in November of 2013 refused to sign the agreements that he promised. Partially due to Russia, who was laying down some harsh trade restrictions against Ukraine, because Russia is a dick. Either way, public opinion on him quickly turned. That night, hundreds of college aged Ukrainians in Kiev went to the Maidan Nezalezhnosti central square. They peacefully protested and demanded that the government sign the agreements and start them on their journey to join the EU.

And then the police got involved. Most notably the Berkut, which is like the police special forces there who work for the government. They attacked the peaceful protesters because the President told them to, which really caused everything to escalate.

OnFire
I assume you remember the documentary had fire in the title?

From there, the protest moved to a cathedral where they could block the gates from the police and seek sanctuary. Word got out of the protests and more came. Food was donated, clothes, medical supplies. Doctors donated their time to help those hurt. And then they went back to the square.

Needless to say, the police kept trying to fuck things up. The same night UK/US delegates came to Ukraine to try and find a peaceful resolution, the Berkut launched a late night sneak attack to wipe everyone out of the area, which now had barricades and a lot of set up.

And of course, eventually the protesters fought back. They marched peacefully to the Parliament, and of course were fucked over, which started an almost war between the two sides. The protesters weren’t just college students by now. They were kids. They were old people. They were average blue collar workers. There were just a shit ton of police/Berkut and hired Thugs to try and fight the spirit out of the protesters.

Needless to say, I won’t describe it any more, but the protest lasted almost 100 days, with a lot of violence, death, and hopelessness. This documentary has footage throughout their protest, taken and compiled to show the story of how some youths decided to hold a revolution. After all, these kids were born in a free Ukraine, and they refused to let their freedom go.

The documentary is not for the faint of heart. There is a shit ton of footage of police brutality, people getting critically injured, and I am guessing I saw people get killed as well. It was so powerful and hard to look away. Which is good, since it was subtitled, and looking away would be detrimental to your viewing experience.

After this, I only have one more documentary that was nominated for Best Doc, but as of now, this is my favorite documentary of 2015 and I sure hope it wins.

4 out of 4.

Hail, Caesar!

Fuck yes. I am hyped. I am beyond hyped. I am too hyped.

I am hyped because I am excited to see Hail, Caesar!, potentially the first great movie of the year. We are out of January, and things can start to look up, if only for a little bit.

But hold the fucking phone. Two years ago, on the first Friday of February 2014, a different movie came out that I was super hyped for. That was The Monuments Men. I assume everyone knows that The Monuments Men ended up being one of the most disappointing films of that year, given that it had such an excellent cast and potential, but it was entirely squandered.

And George Clooney starred in both of them. Arguably there is more talent behind the scenes this time, but he has let me down before almost two years to the day.

So I am going in a bit timid. Excited, hoping for the best, but weary nonetheless.

Cloon
BUT CLOONEY IS THE GREATEST ACTOR OF ALL TIME.

In the 1950’s, Hollywood was a rough place. It was chaotic. There was no CGI. The sets were big and the egos were bigger. Heck, people were talking and singing in movies now. In color. Everything is splashy and outlandish.

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a man who loves his wife and kids and is a devout Catholic. But he is a hard ass and he knows what needs to be done. He is one of the heads of Capitol studios, the biggest studio in Hollywood, and he is a fixer. He works long hours, looks at the film dailies, and make sure everything goes according to plan. That means makes sure the actors are where they are, finding replacements, protecting the image of everyone working there from a potential disaster. He is a one man wrecking crew, but like, the opposite of wrecking, because he saves everything.

So when Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) goes missing from his set of Hail, Caesar!, a giant historic epoch of a Roman general who met Jesus before he was crucified and became a believer, Mannix was on the case.

Mannix will also have to deal with a western actor being forced into serious drama (Alden Ehrenreich), the acclaimed director who cannot stand it (Ralph Fiennes), a singing swimming starlet whom is pregnant but unmarried (Scarlet Johansson), gossip columnists (Tilda Swinton), and maybe leaving this job behind for a similar, better paying, easier job in the tech industry. He doesn’t have to worry about Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) though, he’s perfect.

Also featuring Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Veronica Osorio, and Alison Pill. They all basically have only one scene. But Heather Goldenhersh has a bunch, still minor.

Mermaid
Every good film has a mermaid in it.

Oh you Coen brothers. You sly devils. I originally watched the trailer for Hail, Caesar! assuming it would be a period peace film. I love Ancient Rome things, and I would love it if they decided to put their hats into that ring. But it wasn’t about ancient Rome, it was about Hollywood and many film genres of the 1950’s. They decided to go meta with it, allowing multiple story lines and themes, providing a bit of satire along the way.

Well, I still hope in the future they give me a movie about Ancient Rome with George Clooney in it. I will be wait. Thankfully, Hail, Caesar! was a great movie to watch to help pass the time.

H,C! was hilarious. It really had my funny knee in stitches. I might be getting some of that terminology wrong, but I giggled quite hard many a time. In particular, I loved the religious round table, the scenes between Ehrenreich and Fiennes, and the song and dance numbers. Ehrenreich killed it in this film, despite still being relatively unknown. He has the same sort of vocal twang he had in Beautiful Creatures that made me so happy, so I was glad to hear it again.

Brolin did a nice job of carrying the film, although his character felt like a lot of his previous roles. Clooney and Tatum were also swell.

What can I say? The Coen brothers are a great team. They know how to write together and direct together. They consistently put out high quality entertainment, even though not everything is a guaranteed hit, you know there is a good chance it will at least still be zany.

4 out of 4.

45 Years

Surprisingly this year I am far more caught up on Oscar nominated films than the years prior. Of the major categories, I am only missing two films, Trumbo and of course 45 Years for Best Actor and Best Actress.

Best Actress and Supporting Actress are almost always weaker categories for me. And so, damn it, I swore I would see 45 Years before Trumbo. The only sad part about that is thanks to release dates, my review of 45 Years will still come out after Trumbo, but I did see 45 Years first!

I am a bit excited about 45 Years because I only ever heard of it when it was announced as a nominee! I love surprises! Except for surprise parties. No one likes those.

Think
Surprise love letters are also frowned upon.

45 Years is about three people, but only two of which have a person playing them.

Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband, Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) have been married a long time. Specifically, 45 years! They have no kids and mostly live by themselves in a loving marriage. They planned on having a big party for their 40th Anniversary, but a surgery came up and wrecked their plans. So instead they are going all out for 45. After all, they don’t know if they can make it to the next milestone

But then Geoff received some news. They discovered Katya’s body. Katya was Geoff’s girlfriend before Kate and she died 50 years ago. It involved mountain climbing and she fell off into a river or mountain or something. It was very tragic, but her body has finally been found and it is perfectly preserved.

That is weird and strange. It has been so long and it was so tragic, but Geoff has mostly forgotten about her. Obviously Kate never knew her, but she really doesn’t want to know her either. This is the week before their big party and they should be taking it easy and planning. But now Geoff wants to go and see the body for closure, at his age despite his health.

And that is only the first problem that comes up. Kate is noticing a change in her relationship and Geoff’s behavior over this knowledge, one that makes her feel like second fiddle despite their many many years together.

Time for awkward old people talk.

Talk
Shit, is he friend zoning her?!

Movies about old people are weird for me. I am still a relatively young adult male and so I haven’t necessarily had enough adult experiences to relate to everything. The passing of family and loved ones, for instance, is one thankfully I have yet to experience.

This one is still a bit different. This is about a death before a marriage occurred. Before the couple even met. And something that normally wouldn’t come up again so much later in life, but a missing body brings it to the for front. It is a unique occurrence and one that rarely anyone would ever experience

Thankfully, the two actors here do a phenomenal job together conveying years of anguish and loss over these events, almost entirely through their facial expressions and tone of voice. This isn’t a dialogue heavy film. It is a strict drama and it is slow (painfully at times).

If you want to see 45 Years, you will want to see it for its great, subtle and realistic acting. But as I just mentioned, it is slow and I question how much of some of the middle parts ended up being relevant to the plot. I can’t just watch a movie of people being old and sad. I do need changes to occur and plot to develop a bit more than what ends up happening.

The final scenes in the anniversary party are good though. Some long scenes of just straight up speeches and acting and it stays incredibly sad. Not a film I would ever want to watch again. But still sad and if it wasn’t such a stacked year for Best Actors, Courtenay probably would have been nominated too.

3 out of 4.

The Finest Hours

I am pining (Pine-ing, if you will) for a conspiracy here, so hold on to your butts, let’s see what I can do.

Chris Pine is a weird guy. He does a lot of weird movies. Did you see Stretch? You should go see Stretch. At the same time he is a bit of a Hollywood pretty boy, so Disney wanted to get him in some of his movies.

They got him a small role as a Prince to make him feel important in Into The Woods, offering him the lead roles in future movies. Which brings us to The Finest Hours. I guess I am teasing a bit, because, I won’t get to the point of this intro until after the second picture.

Pine Face
Chris Pine-spiracy.

This is one of those Disney true story period dramas that they do quite often, and half the time in Sports. So they picked a 1950’s Ship Disaster, where two large Oil Tankers near Massachustes were ripped in half during the same storm. And during this same storm, the local Coast Guards had to attempt to save the lives of as many people as possible.

Our hero is 23 or 24 year old Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), a guy who grew up in a small town near Cape Cod and who has been sailing most of his life. So he joined the Coast Guard to save lives. There was a big storm the year prior where he was unable to do that and it has haunted him. So it comes to no surprise that he is willing to risk his life to go out into a bigger storm to do it again. His commanding officer (Eric Bana) isn’t from the area and is inept, meaning that he shouldn’t have sent out anyone due to the waves and the shifting bar. But then we wouldn’t have a movie.

Webber and his crew (Ben Foster, Kyle Gallner, John Magaro) take a small 32 foot boat to find the half of an oil tanker that is apparently a few miles off the shore. They don’t have an exact location, it is night time, and of course en route they also lose radio communication and their compass.

Meanwhile, on the ship itself, it is a giant vessel, in half, floating throughout the big waves. The crew consists entirely of workers, with the captain and “real leaders” being on the other half and totally dead. The de facto leader goes to Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) a quiet type who runs the bottom of the boat. I am sure there is a real name there. He has to stop the crew from trying to mutiny and turn on each other, while also have them attempt the possible: to steer half of the ship to a shoal or a beach somewhere so they can maybe get rescued. They do this with the constant flooding and fear their engine/power will go out, which means no lights on their boat and no whistle to call for help.

The crew is made up of over 30 men, including Graham McTavish, Michael Raymond-James, Abraham Benrubi, Josh Stewart, John Ortiz and Keiynan Lonsdale.

Also featuring Holliday Grainger as Webber’s new fiance to give us that love interest and pseudo Interstellar moment, and Matthew Maher, aka the Holy Bartender from Dogma, with a sizable role as angry tow truck driver.

Crew
And dozens of extras who only grunt and scream and work. Dozens!

Back to the beginning. Disney wanted to woo Chris Pine because they wanted him to be a superhero in the Marvel movies. It makes sense. He is a big actor, in Star Trek and all. So they offered him a gritty-ish historical film to woo him hardcore and play to his interests. But Pine was sleeping around. Pine is now signed on to play a role in the Wonder Woman! Sure actors have played both sides of the field, but not since it has gotten to its current big status. So, thinking that Pine has made his decision, they decided to make The Finest Hours not as great as it should have been. They don’t care about a flop. They have Star Wars money.

For a film with a lot of issues, I feel I need to mention to best parts first. Casey Affleck was wonderful in this movie. His character was unique and had a consistent personality and was a great watch. Well done Affleck! McTavish also did a good job of grizzled pseudo-assistant.

The rest of the film? Well, first of all, it probably should have had permanent subtitles throughout. We have accents all over the place, so many characters require a bit of a stretch to figure out their words. Add on a loud angry storm, with people trying to yell things, and shit. Half the movie feels almost inaudible.

The next sense that is betrayed have to be your eyes. The entire film is mostly ugly on the color scale. It is grey, dark grey, and occasionally white, but usually grey white also. An already dark movie is made worse with 3D, adding to the overall darkness. And yes, as you might have fussed, the 3D adds absolutely nothing to the film, making it an unnecessary hindrance. Every single wave looks fake, so it is hard to really get drawn into any of the tension. I spent good chunks figuring out where the green screens were and how much of the water was actually real.

Romance
I don’t think anyone is real in this picture.

As for the actual plot itself, the romance, despite real, feels incredibly shoe horned. They realized they made a very man focused film, so only one woman, a fiance, has any real screen time and has to do everything as a result. We have to see her be strong and do things that were unheard of at the time for women. Showing great women is movies is a good trend, but not if it is badly done and at the detriment of the film. Not every film has to have it.

These scenes just made the rescue more drawn out every time they cut away from the two groups. And the intro of the movie is entirely about their romance, which also feels overly long, while also not allowing the audience to feel emotionally connected to either of them.

As a final moment of disappointment, a big advertising/selling point of this film is that there were 32 survivors on the boat and the rescue boat was small with only room for 12. They made it seem like there would be a nice moral/ethical dilemma once the boat was found. In reality, it was entirely ignored and the issue was solved by just fitting everyone on the boat quite easily. More great potential suspense floundered.

The true story of The Finest Hours is great. It could have been a very inspirational tale. But it was filled with cheese and shoddily made, giving what feels like a half-assed feel good film.

1 out of 4.

Kung Fu Panda 3

Animated films can take a long time to make. It takes years to get all of the CGI right, and pretty. It does not take a lot of time to record dialogue, or figure out the plot (Unless you are The Good Dinosaur). But all the technical work making sure every frame is wonderful and all the characters are as you had hoped. Years and hundreds of people at work.

Technically it only takes years if you care about the final product. That is why we had Planes and Planes: Fire & Rescue less than a year apart. The animators didn’t care.

There was a five year gap between Kung Fu Panda 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3. And you know that is not because the voice actors were too busy for lines. Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011 was the prettiest film of all the CGI movies. Prettier than Rango and Puss In Boots. If they wanted to not just recipricate the second movie but surpass it, you can bet your ass it would take them years of work.

I am rambling. All I am trying to say is I expect this film to shit rainbows and make my eyes bleed in wonder. A sweet villain would also be delightful.

Kai
Creepy and promising! Me likey.

As we know from the end of 2, there is a secret panda village somewhere and Po (Jack Black) doesn’t know about it. He won’t care about it until a mysterious panda, Li (Bryan Cranston) shows up to the valley. He is looking for his lost son. Could it be?! Yes, yes it could be.

Great news! Now Po can show his dad all the cool dragon warrior stuff, and make his Foster Dad, Mr. Ping (James Hong) feel incredibly sad and jealous. Also Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) plans on retiring so he can focus on himself and find his Chi to do even better Kung Fu, leaving Po in charge of training the five (Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Jackie Chan). But he can’t teach.

Even worse? Well, Kai (J.K. Simmons) has escaped from the Spirit Realm! Who? He used to be a friend of Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) 500 years ago, even saved his life! But he got jealous of Oogway when he was taught to harness Chi from the mystical Panda village and wanted the power for his own, so he had to be put down in a jealous fury. Well, he eventually figured out how to steal Chi in the spirit realm, defeating all former masters and now he is back to the real world to defeat any and all would be challengers.

Jeez. Now Po has to learn Chi to defeat Kai. But it took Oogway 30 years! And Shifu can’t! Time for Po to go to his homeland. To determine how he can be the most Panda he can be, to learn what he has been missing all his life. To really become the Dragon Warrior.

Also featuring Kate Hudson as a ribbon dancing Panda.

Armor
And of course this rhino panda bird metal hybrid warrior! Don’t forget about him!

This part of the review is actually really hard to write. How many times can I say how beautiful this movie is? I don’t want to look in a thesaurus but I believe everything I say about the CGI and art style will just sound repetitive. Gorgeous, detailed, beautiful, wonderful and wunderbar, eye orgasmic. The best part that this Kung Fu movie is animated is they can show amazing fight scenes and nothing gets lost to blur or shaky camera. We can see every punch and kick. Every fantastic movement. And it is awe inspiring. Just like the previous films, the entire thing isn’t just CGI, they have other art styles to show within back stories which give it more traditional feels.

Fuck its so pretty.

Okay. Sorry. I will stop.

Kung Fu Panda 3 is sadly not perfect. A lot of the early film is wasted. Part of the charm of sequels for action films like this is that we don’t have to waste our time with origin stories. But this film has us sit through Po being bad at teaching, then he is has to do the long Panda training. The Panda training in particular, discovering his family and friends, just takes so much time and makes me lose interest in Po. The twists that show up during the village are also quite obvious, so we don’t even get the benefit of a nice shock.

The villain is awesome, although we don’t get to see enough of him doing bad things. The spirit realm was awesome and allowed the film to add more magical components to the franchise. Making “Chi” the big new thing feels a bit strange. I think KFP2 added that he needed Inner Peace and the Chi concept just feels like the same thing again. I don’t want each film to be Po learning something bigger to defeat a new threat. That isn’t original. Although I don’t know if there will be any more films after this one, given the ending.

Oh well. Pretty franchise. Pretty good. Not perfect.

3 out of 4.

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Seriously though. What Happened, Miss Simone?

You used to be there, now you aren’t! That is why Maya Angelou asked this question in a poem.

Honestly though, before this documentary, I don’t think I ever heard of Nina Simone. The only reason I decided to watch this one was because it was one of the few documentaries nominated that I had not already seen. And a Netflix original at that. I honestly swore I was done with these sorts of documentaries for 2015.

You know the type. Musical biographical documentaries. 2015 was full of them, and I think there was a three or four week span on this website where the documentary in question was about a famous celebrity or musician. I am sick of them.

Nina Simone was black and a classically trained pianist. She was trained by two rich white women who took a fancy on her, despite the quite segregated times. She also began to sing over music eventually, despite that not being true to her training. And hey, then she played jazz. She had a soulful voice and America fell in love with her. She was in fact the first black pianist to play at Carnegie Hall, one of her life long dreams.

And then things started to change.

Simone
Her hair grew as expansive as her talent!

What Happened, Miss Simone? is of course a documentary about her life. It lets us know about the birth of her daughter, spousal abuse, over working, switching from Jazz to political/protest music, her super involvement in the Civil Rights, her leaving of America, more abuse, and the end of her life with music and touring. A pretty broad spectrum. If it was a real movie about her life, then it would probably only be about 1 random year of her life during the civil rights instead of all this other stuff!

There were some good moments sure. When the abuse and political songs started. We had interviews from her daughter and could hear stories of Simone hanging out with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and more. It was also interwoven through live performances of some of her songs, back in the day. We are talking old school video recordings. They were neat.

If I had any real issues with the documentary, it just took me a long time to get into it. The early parts of her life and first 20-30 minutes seemed to drag for me. The other strange point is that the documentary did a good job of highlighting all the struggles in her life. All the bad things that happened to her and her depression. But, given the title and how they worded it, including letting her abuser talk in the documentary, it seemed to just make her a giant victim in the whole documentary.

I think it should have done a better job of celebrating her life and showing how strong she was to get through things. Instead it focused on her weak times not her strong times. Maybe that makes a more intriguing story, but to me it doesn’t do a lot of justice to someone who was actually really important for the civil rights.

I guess I am surprised this documentary was chosen as a nominee over a few many others I have seen this year. Oh well, on to the next one!

2 out of 4.

Trumbo

Trumbo! The great white buffalo! Of the main acting awards, this is the final film I needed to see to complete the categories.

I missed it when it came out in November, because, I dunno, I was busy or something. I didn’t care to see it. I figured it wouldn’t get nominated, no matter how much I like Bryan Cranston.

But hey, he did get nominated for best actor. And with a mustache! It is basically what Johnny Depp was doing with Mortdecai. That is the movie in 2015 he wanted to win Best Actor for right? I can’t think of any other film.

Erm. Trumbo! True story! Communists! Time to party! Red Party.

Bribe
That’s a communist joke and damn it, that is probably a communist dress too.

Back to Trumbo, or Dalton Trumbo (Cranston) as everyone everywhere calls him. He lives a good life. He is one of the most successful writers in Hollywood. He has contracts with movie studios to write exclusively for them, meaning that his family can live a nice life. That is of course his wife (Diane Lane), main daughter (eventually Elle Fanning) and two other kids who we don’t care about.

But he has a secret. A very vocal secret. He cares about the rights of the workers. Any workers technically, but specifically the Hollywood workers who don’t make money and should make more instead of the Hollywood fat cats. He is a…a…a…COMMUNIST. And there are a bunch of them too. This is now the late 40s and people are starting to get afraid of the Commies, thanks to the Russians and the coldness of their threats. So they try and round up all the communists in Hollywood and KILL THEM! No, not kill them, but black list them. Refuse to let them work in movies ever again. After all, if they are writing their movies, they could be putting subliminal communist things into mainstream America and fuck us from the inside! That would be terrifying.

And Trumbo is about how this man and his friends decided to try and fight for their first amendment rights. And to work despite the blacklist through aliases, friends, or by boldly ignoring the threats of others. Guess how many Oscars Trumbo won while black listed? Three. He was basically penning the “Fuck The Police” song well before the boys in Straight Outta Compton.

And of course we have more people in this movie: John Goodman and Stephen Root are brothers who make a shit ton of B movies. David James Elliott plays JOHN WAYNE. Louis C.K. is a fellow writer commie, Alan Tudyk is a fellow writer, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is a prison man, and Helen Mirren and Michael Stuhlbarg fuck some shit up.

Press
It is rumored that Cranston was able to grow out the ‘Stashe in just 3 minutes.

Despite my wildly successful movie watching lifestyle, I am super behind on almost everything before 1990. I only barely have the 80’s covered, and everything before that is pitiful. So if I can watch a modern movie telling me about movies back in the day, I consider it a win. I have never seen Roman Holiday or The Brave One, but you bet your ass I have seen Spartacus. Getting to hear behind the scenes stories of how these films were written and what they had to do to hide Trumbo’s name was fascinating. It is probably the sexiest thing I have ever heard of when talking about 1950’s Hollywood writers.

Cranston gave a pretty good performance. I am not willing to call it incredible. I saw a lot of Cranston that I have seen in other roles, and I never really saw someone other than himself. I didn’t feel like he ever fully transformed into the man he was playing, not even when he was sitting in the bathtub. I can say it was my least favorite of the Best Actor nominee performances, and would probably rather someone like Steve Carell or Mark Ruffalo from Infinitely Polar Bear.

C.K. and Lane both did excellent jobs with their supporting characters, although Lane wasn’t given a lot to work with.

Story wise, again, there were a lot of interesting moments, but I will say I got confused a few times at a lot of the extra characters, who they were supposed to be, whose side people were on, and just why they were relevant. There are a lot of extra characters here with important roles, too many to list and name, and yeah. I can’t remember most of them. Thankfully it was only small bits of confusion and I could still easily grasp the main points of the story.

3 out of 4.

Mojave

Shit. Did you know Mojave was the name of a desert? I think I dd,, but I had only heard it pronounced out loud before and never written.

So instead of pronouncing this as Mo-Ha-Ve as it actually is, I had to tell people I was going to see Mo-Jayve. No one knew what I was talking about, but thankfully it was so stupid that no one could even call me out on it due to their own confusion.

And uhh, unfortunately that is all my pre-story for this film. I knew absolutely nothing about this movie going in, not even the actors involves, so no cool trivia here!

Table
The table once was used in a real room!

Thomas (Garrett Hudlund) was famous since he was 19. He lives in Hollywood, people know him. He is all up in that entertainment industry. And he doesn’t like where his life is at. His wife and daughter have moved to London and he is alone to wallow in his pity. He decides to head to the Mojave desert and maybe, you know, kill himself. After wandering a bit and setting up a camp, a stranger comes up to his camp seeing his fire. Jack (Oscar Isaac) is a weird dude. Talking about Satan and Jesus and talking about books. He is the type of guy that looks like he is up to no good, and maybe he is going to kill him. So Thomas attacks first and gets away.

During their adult hide and seek desert game, Thomas shoots a man coming into his cave and it turns out to be a police officer, not Jack. But Jack sees this happen. He knows what Thomas has done and he plans to use it against him. Especially when Jack finds out that Thomas is famous.

Thomas heads back to LA, not sure of what he should do. He doesn’t feel like he should turn himself in, for obvious reasons. He doesn’t think Jack will do so either, since he is pretty sure Jack killed a few people, so he doesn’t want to deal with the cops.

But Jack instead wants to just kill Thomas. Thomas got away from him earlier and he is a bad guy living in Hollywood pretending he didn’t kill a cop. Who is the sociopath now?!

Also with Mark Wahlberg as a coked up Producer and Walton Goggins as Thomas’ agent.

Gun
#NotAllCops deserve gun shots from cave men.

Mojave starts off slightly confusing and pretentious, and doesn’t change a lot along the way. I was confused after the first desert scenes. I thought I was suddenly watching flashbacks, no idea where the narrative was going when Thomas got back to LA. It all didn’t seem to matter to the actual plot, and instead was just there to give Wahlberg something silly to do.

No offense to Hedlund, but he is about as charismatic as a potato. He is played off as the lone wolf type. The character in an RPG group who wants to think he is cool for being dark and mysterious but ends up being a dick stealing from the loot bowl. That can be good, if given enough story and characterization, but it sort of just feels lazy on the writers part for him. He is sad because depression basically. And while there doesn’t need to be a reason for depression, for a film it would at least give us something to latch onto for him to hope for his survival.

They put all their effort into making Jack the cool character. A well written sociopath always helps a movie. Always. Isaac does a great job of unnerving the viewer while almost putting them on ease that maybe he isn’t the bad guy after all. If you are going to watch Mojave, watch it for Isaac and nothing else.

Goggins is wasted in this film, and Wahlberg presumably did it as a favor for William Monahan, the writer/director who also wrote The Departed. This is not The Departed. This is a slow film that has a few redeeming qualities, but is no where close to being as high as they wanted it to be.

2 out of 4.