Tag: movie review

*BPN23 The Banshees of Inisherin

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At first viewing, The Banshees of Inisherin seems like a simple concept; on an island off the coast of Ireland, a spat develops between life-long pals when one man announces he doesn’t care to be friends with the other anymore. When the question, “Will you be coming to the pub?” is met with silence, an uneasy Pádraic (Colin Farrell) tries to figure out what he has done to offend his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson). The dialogue starts to resemble a Beckett play as the question is asked,

“Have you been rowing? Maybe he doesn’t like you anymore.”
“I don’t think we’ve been rowing.”
“It does sound like you’ve been rowing.”

As the very confused Pádraic tries to figure out what he has done to cause this schism, his ex-friend Colm gets more distraught every day and starts to threaten that he will cut off his own finger if Pádraic doesn’t stop talking to him. The film is filled with wonderful characters who each have an opinion about who is to blame for this friendship gone astray. 

But as this dark comedy progresses, it becomes more complex as the Irish Civil war rages across the water and the reasons for the war and what the two sides are fighting about becomes murky. Colm becomes more unhinged and actually starts mutilating his own hand; eventually his bizarre amputations lead to another tragedy that is unbearable for Pádraic, and the battle between the two of them drags on, as does the war across the water.

It doesn’t exactly sound like a comedy, but the movie is very funny (right up until ANOTHER untimely donkey demise—really, what is going on with Hollywood and these poor asses?) The performances are all terrific, and the Irish accents make every line entertaining. My favorite of the movie is, “Daddy will kill us if we wake him after he’s been wanking.” Fecking awesome.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Three and Half Kernels; the half off is because of the donkey.

Categories: FlicksThatYouShouldPick, FlicksThatHaveADick (see above quote)

*BPN23 Triangle of Sadness

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The most important thing I learned from this movie is that the Triangle of Sadness is a real thing. It is the area between your eyebrows and the top of the nose bridge, where all your stress and worry show up as deep wrinkles and emphasize negative facial expressions. During this film, my triangle developed dislike grooves within hate indentations and my negative facial expression turned into one that was infuriated and pissed off. I’m going to need Botox after watching this movie.

The film has been described as “a satirical black comedy”; I would say it’s a combination rip off of Below Deck meets Bridesmaids meets Castaway, with a touch of The White Lotus sprinkled over everything and a garnish of Parasite. I suggest you see all those other shows/films instead of watching this.

I’m not going to waste time going into any more detail, because there are nine other nominees that are a far better choice to watch than this film. I will let you know there is an extended vomit sequence in the middle of the film that starts to resemble the Mr. Creosote puke scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. That one was disgusting but funny; the one in Triangle of Sadness is just gross and goes on waaaaay too long. flicksthatmakemesick is not amused.

I cannot believe that Ruben Ostend got the fifth Best Director nomination—it should have gone to Sarah Polley for Women Talking.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Zero Kernels. The last time I hated a movie this much was another Best Picture nominee from 2022—Don’t Look Up. I will repeat what I said then: not only does this film not get a single, unpopped piece of corn, but the original  popcorn bucket is still upside down on the sticky floor of a theater with a greasy coating of fake butter topping, where rats will find it and lick up the yellow, viscous goo and it will get stuck to the roof of their mouths and they will never get rid of the taste. 

Also: I cannot believe there are TWO Best Picture nominees that have donkeys meeting untimely deaths. SMH.

Categories: FlicksThatYouShouldSkip, FlicksThatHaveADick (the director)

*BPN23 Elvis

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It’s hard to imagine a more perfect combination than Baz Luhrmann, Las Vegas, drugs, a rampant gyrating pelvis and Elvis. All the elements for the typical flashy excess of the director’s films are in place, and for much of the film, Elvis’s dizzy ascent from simple country boy to the King of Rock’n’Roll is punctuated by swirling camera work, eye-popping candy colors and a heady mix of blues, gospel and country music that shows all the different influences on the singer. Every part of his life is presented at a breakneck pace, and Austin Butler shines as Elvis Presley, exuding a smoldering sexuality that seems confounding to him before he realizes how to use it.

It must have seemed like a good idea to have the film narrated by Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s manager for his entire career. The Colonel started out in carnivals and his showy style as a huckster influenced Elvis’s career trajectory; Parker’s gambling addiction also kept the singer constantly working to the point of exhaustion. But the idea of having an unrecognizable Tom Hanks play Tom Parker in a fat suit with a bizarre accent was a distraction that I could not overlook. In profile, he looked a lot like The Penguin; all he needed was a monocle and a cigarette holder and he could have taken over for Burgess Meredith in the original Batman series. The accent was supposed to be Dutch, but every once in a while, Woody the Cowboy would come through and it took me out of the picture completely.

Austin Butler is nominated for Best Actor and has won the Golden Globe and a number of these awards in the past few weeks. I thought he was terrific in the first half of the film, but had trouble pulling off the aging, heavier singer in decline. I’m also not certain if this is a performance as much as an excellent impression. I think the Academy should come up with a new category where people are nominated separately for Best Performance of an Actual Person. Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland, Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn . . . there are quite a few winners who were able to capture the essence of someone very well known. But should this count against someone who is creating a character from scratch? Someone get Hollywood on the phone! I know they will want to hear from me!

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth gives this film Three Kernels. The dueling fat suits of Tom Hanks and Austin Butler in the last third of the extremely long film were a disappointment to me.

*BPN23 TÁR

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Most of my classical music education comes from Bugs Bunny cartoons, so I was a bit apprehensive about Tár. Would my lack of knowledge about orchestras and musical prodigies mar my enjoyment of this film about the brilliant conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic who was accused of sexual harassment and eventually cancelled by the culture where she was worshiped and adored? Should I do my research and try to find out about the career of this insanely talented woman who was so admired by her musical colleagues but was cast out when she abused her power? Should I google Lydia Tár to see if she looked like Cate Blanchett?

The answer to these questions are: No, No and You Are a Dummy.

Having little to no education about the world of classical music did not affect my enjoyment of the film at all. It probably enhanced it, because I had no reason to doubt whether any of the facts about the genius of Tár were true. On the other hand, I watched the movie with a friend who is very knowledgeable about the subject, and she had a far more difficult time suspending her belief about some of the people mentioned and facts presented as real.

The concept of separating the behavior of the artist from the art itself is a question that has been debated more and more often as various icons of film and theater are routinely exposed for sexual misconduct that was ignored in the past because they were so famous. Most of these formerly admired artists have been men, so it was very interesting to see the reversal as Lydia Tár proved that power can corrupt regardless of gender.

As for the final question, Lydia Tár does not look like Cate Blanchett because she does not exist (clarification: Cate Blanchett is real. Lydia Tár is not). I think I can be excused for having a moment where I thought she was actually alive because there is a whole Twitter persona built around a fake Lydia Tár who has been actively tweeting. Even Leonard Bernstein’s estate got in on the joke (in the film, he was supposed to have been her mentor); the family confirmed that Lydia had been a teenage prodigy when she studied with Lenny.

How can you believe anything when Leonard Bernstein’s children lie to you?!

On February 28, the fake @LydiaTarReal urged Chicagoans to vote in the mayoral election. We have entered the multiverse again, and it is whack, although the music is very beautiful.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Three and a Half Kernels. Ridiculous online hijinks aside, I loved this movie. Cate Blanchett was marvelous and the ending was so bizarre that it almost fits into the whole weird fake Lydia thing that developed on Twitter.

Category: FlicksThatYouShouldPick

P.S. As a graphic designer, I would like to compliment the designer who made this poster. It is absolutely gorgeous and communicates everything you need to know about the movie. This Lydia Tár is REAL.

*BPN23 The Fablemans

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I knew enough not to expect aliens or dinosaurs from Stephen Spielberg’s biopic, but I was hoping there might be at least a shark or a Devil’s Tower made of mashed potatoes. The Fablemans takes the director’s own life story and makes it his most personal film yet, although his earlier works such as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind have always drawn on elements of his background for plot points. Spielberg had this to say about the movie he was writing and directing:

“I started seriously thinking, if I had to make one movie I haven’t made yet, something that I really want to do on a very personally atomic level, what would that be? And there was only one story I really wanted to tell . . . which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings?”

He had a lot of interesting background material, from his obsession with filming train crashes and trying to create feature length films with a Super8 camera in order to win a Boy Scout badge. His mother (Michele Williams) is quirky and dramatic and supports his love of filmmaking—she urges him to pursue his passion; while his father (Paul Dano) is the complete opposite and feels his son’s hobby need to be left behind so that he can focus on school and the future. His father works on the first computers being developed by IBM, and the family home it littered with broken television sets that he plans on repairing. It’s a nice touch, and apparently the production design was meticulously researched so that the family home and all the props and details were exact replicas of where the actual Spielbergs lived.

I’m a huge fan of Spielberg’s movies and was greatly anticipating this one, yet this depiction of his childhood and broken family was a big letdown for me. It seemed almost too ordinary, with the complicated, artistic mother and the silent dad who stands by the wayside and watches her have an affair with his best friend. The movie felt like it was two separate films; the first half with young Sammy as the family moved around and he explored his love of film was engaging and had some fine moments. But once Sammy has moved to California and become a teenager, it felt like it suddenly it turned into American Graffiti with cliché moments of school bullies and first love. There is one scene where Judd Hirsch as his Great Uncle Boris comes for a funeral and berates the young man about what you must sacrifice for art even though it may not be what his family wants. Hirsch chews up the scenery and expounds on his theories, but the scene feels over the top in comparison to the rest of the movie. 

I didn’t feel any of the glow I usually get from one of Spielberg’s movies until the very last scene; Sammy is allowed to meet director John Ford in his office (a quick, wonderful performance by David Lynch), and Ford lectures him on why the horizon location can make or break a film. It’s only when the line is at the bottom of the shot that it gets interesting. As Sammy walks away from the meeting, the final medium shot of the film has a nifty camera adjustment where it breaks the fourth wall and moves the horizon line down. That final moment made the film for me—I wish the rest of the movie had made the same adjustment.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Two Kernels. Maybe wait until June when the next Indiana Jones film comes out.

Category: FlicksThatDidn’tClick

*BPN23 Everything Everywhere All at Once

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I do not know how to write this review.

There is a lot to discuss about Everything Everywhere All at Once, but if I try to describe this film, it will come out as a garbled stream of references that will make no sense at all when taken out of context. They also make no sense when taken in context or when watched in the movie, but here are a few of them anyway: ChapStick snacking, dueling dildos, manipulative raccoons, hot dog fingers, stick-on googly eyes and an Everything bagel that may represent much more than a delicious carb.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an apt title for a movie that combines time jumping, Kung Fu and the IRS. It feels like it jumped right through the wall of the multiplex into the theater where Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is playing, although the Marvel multiverses tend to be shinier with lots of sharp edges. (The multiverse is real, right? Because how else could there possibly be this many movies made lately about how life feels like we are splintering into tiny pieces and longing for a way to connect the dots, or to each other?) The various sites in EEAaO look like Mad Max:Thunderdome merged with the stuff ET built out of Eliot’s closet, which is pretty much what I suspect the future will look like, only with more rain.

The film is described as a science fiction comedy, but this is no Buckaroo Banzai. The real life segments of Michele Yeoh’s character Evelyn are so depressing that one can understand why her mind starts to splinter and the jumping into other versions of herself seem so appealing. She becomes a Kung-Fu expert, an opera diva and a movie star. In one of the funniest segments, she verse-jumps into the persona of a Benihana type cook, working along side another chef who has a raccoon under his toque that is manipulating his movements in a vaguely familiar way. You can’t help but wonder if the producers will be sued by Disney or if the internet will simply write another musical about it. There is also the aforementioned Everything bagel that is a black hole-ish type of metaphor that represents nihilism or depression or is a stand-in for the title of the film. Hard to be sure.

The cast is wonderful, full of actors who are vaguely familiar but will make you face palm when you realize who they are. Michele Yeoh has been famous and amazing since western audiences first saw her in Tomorrow Never Dies and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; I knew I had seen Stephanie Hsu somewhere but it took me a minute to place her as Joel’s new flame, Mai, in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Jamie Lee Curtis is almost unrecognizable in a performance that is so lacking in vanity that she has become the face of the IRS to me now if I ever get audited. But the actor who totally stumped me was Ke Huy Quan, until I finally remembered him as the kid guide Short Round in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom! And Data in The Goonies! The guy has a sterling resume.

That the film’s ultimate message comes out clearly in the midst of all this chaos is quite an achievement. It verse-jumps through your emotions as quickly as Evelyn does personas. I found myself thinking that the words to describe this are similar to life as we have experienced it the past few years; unsteady, fractured, unexpectedly funny, terrifying, and as confusing as an IRS audit. Maybe we just need to stick some googly eyes on the scary parts and simply keeping holding on to each other.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film the score of One Perfect Popped Corn. This is the first movie that has received this ranking in the new flicksthatmakemesick system, and I will fight anyone who wants to try to talk me out of it. I found this film to be transcendent and have not stopped thinking about it since I saw it. Other people who have offered their opinions of “Yeah, I thought it was pretty good, too, but not really life-changing” are incorrect.

Categories: flicksthatyoushouldpick, FlicksThatHaveADick (two, actually, in latex)

Spider-Man: No Way Home

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(This review is going to give away so many previously unknown secrets about the movie that it will be like Charlotte wove SPOILER into her web. Proceed accordingly.)

To prepare for this event, I watched seven of the previous nine Spider-Man films the weekend before I saw the new one. A good critic will do the work necessary to research a movie, gathering all the background information that will inform what they are about to see so their review will be accurate, well-thought out and aware of the history that brought the film to this exact place in the franchise. Plus, I am currently crushing hard on Andrew Garfield and wanted to see him in the Spidey suit again.

I’ve often wondered how critics can review Marvel films if they hate this genre of movie. That won’t be a problem here, as I have seen 26 of the total 27 films, including WandaVision and Loki on Disney+. (I have not watched HawkEye yet, because seriously, what is a guy with a bow and arrow doing in the Avengers?)

Marvel apparently wasn’t worried that combining all the villains and Spideys from all the Spider-Man movies might confuse people, and after bringing in over a billion dollars, it appears they were correct. It helps to have seen the earlier films just to keep track of the bad guys, but no one really cares once the three Peter Parkers show up. The first half of the movie is Dr. Strange opening a portal with a defective spell that frees all the bad guys from the first seven movies. I felt this was somewhat out of character for Stephen Strange to botch this whole escape from the multiverse, which is essentially a network of parallel universes that don’t usually overlap but has been corrupted by the time stones and . . . you know what, never mind. If you don’t know what the multiverse is, you are not the demographic for this movie.

It’s when the wrong Peter Parker steps through the golden portal that the movie really snares you in its web. I have seen YouTube videos of audiences leaping to their feet and screaming when the mask came off to reveal Andrew Garfield in the tight red suit instead of Tom Holland, who is the most recent Spider-Man. When the OG Spidey Tobey Maguire shows up, too, the director could have simply thrown away the script and let these guys just riff on great power and responsibility. The chemistry between the three actors is off the charts, and although there are also a lot of things exploding and getting zapped, the real electricity is between Peters One, Two and Three. 

This movie has made too much money for Marvel not to capitalize on this trio and figure out a way to bring them all back, but they had better hurry. Tobey Maguire is forty-six years old and that suit is not going to fit for much longer.

As a nod to the previous mission statement that formed flicksthatmakemesick, I was a tad worried that all that swinging from various tall buildings multiplied by three might bring back triple nausea, but rest assured that the camera work (or the CGI—I don’t believe there is a GoPro strapped to a stuntman’s head as he jumps off the Chrysler building) is as steady as Peter’s conviction that he is just a good guy helping out around the neighborhood and not a somehow invincible superhero who never seems to get hurt no matter how many times he is thrown through concrete.

Fun Fact Number One: if you made it all the way to the end, of course you know enough to stay in your seat for the extra scenes. The first one features Venom and a bartender who looked very familiar, but I couldn’t place him, until someone whispered, “Football is life!” Will Dani Rojas be joining the MCU?!

Fun Fact Number Two: all three Spider-Man actors have fallen in love with their leading ladies and dated long after the movies wrapped. Tobey Maguire/Kirsten Dunst, Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone, and Tom Holland/Zendaya. The first two couples broke up. Sorry, Tom.

The Popcorn Kernels of Truth give this film Three Kernels. It is clever and fun and makes your spirits soar as high as you can shoot your web. Plus, Andrew Garfield.

Categories: FlicksThatYouShouldPick, FlicksIWantTolick

Men in Black 3

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According to the movies, there are many ways to travel through time. The first that comes to mind is your standard DeLorean ride with a variety of fuels such as plutonium or garbage. You can fly backwards and reverse the rotation of the planet, swish around in a hot tub with a topless Megan Draper or try to find an actual phone booth occupied by either Keanu Reeves or Dr. Who. If the film has some configuration of H.G. Wells in it, he’ll build his own time machine, but if you’re kind of lazy and can’t be bothered to explain how it’s done, just sit on a curb in Paris around midnight and you’ll end up hanging out with Gertrude Stein. I wish Ernest Hemingway had punched Woody Allen when he got back to 1920. Continue reading “Men in Black 3” →

Part I: Friends with Kids/Jeff Who Lives at Home

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It’s tough to surprise an audience these days. Trailers supply most of the plot for upcoming films, and with the internet constantly buzzing and the thirst for information as powerful as a dog’s after chasing the Comcast installer that you’ve been waiting for from 10am to 2pm, the smallest details are ruthlessly bounced from site to site and tossed to the greedy public as if they were the raw meat meant for the ravenous dog that appeared at the beginning of this tortured metaphor. Continue reading “Part I: Friends with Kids/Jeff Who Lives at Home” →

50/50

On By CBroquet1 Comment

Tragedy is pretty cut and dry. It’s easy enough to agree that some things that happen in life will make you cry, although everyone has different weep thresholds. It may take cataclysmic natural disasters to squeeze a tear out of you, while just hearing Sarah McLachlan’s Angel on the radio makes me sob uncontrollably (those poor dogs!). But comedy is a bit more subjective. What I laugh at might confuse you; what you find hilarious would probably puzzle me and possibly make me want to move my chair a little further away. Continue reading “50/50” →