Thanks Roy. My bone-deep antipathy for movie musicals was probably enough to make me give this one a miss anyway. And a musical about drug cartels would have to be absolute, innovative genius to work.
To be fair, the movie does not glorify drug trafficking. It highlights one of its horrors that afflicts the traffickers home countries, not the countries that buy the drugs, so it's good politically in that way, if you're looking to judge a movie by its politics.
Got to see Robert Goulet do "South Pacific" here locally. When he got to the line "This place you come from....this Small Rock..." the house came down. He was battling not to grin as he did it, because, of course, he was in the Small Rock.
Eh. I'm still bummed that no one's making movies like Rohmer's Moral Tales any more...
Anyway.
"...Army goddamn Archerd...": that's one deep cut.
Anyway, a poll of sorts: I had an idea for a T shirt: a big photo of Fake Tubby making one of his faces and above, like a meme, "NOT GOOD!!!". Me, I'd wear it, like, 24/7. But the Mrs says the crackers up here would find it offensive. I say that their brain wiring is so fucked up that they would see it as complimentary. They'd see it as a reminder of Donny criticizing whatever while libs of course would it's him there being reference as "NOT GOOD!!!".
I don’t want to get involved in your marital disagreements so I’ll just say I’m right that the caption should be “oops, I tink I pooped my pants.” Then the yokels would wonder whether you pooped your pants out of fear of the angry Trump face, like Chuck Schumer and all the rest of the mainstream Dems, or if Trump is making that ridiculous face because he’s a poopy little baby.
“justice for sale… corrupted verdicts sold by tabloids-" Hey, I thought this was a movie review! Some place to get away from current events....
"Sirk got over because, under his famous style, he was very rigorous — the dramaturgy was lean, the stakes clear, and the resolutions honestly won"
That's some good ass Sirkian comment !
After the Oscars, you need to apply that filmic big brain of yours to telling us all what you really think about perhaps the greatest of all Hollywood directors not named Welles.
When I finally get around to writing my prize winning play, it's going to open with a maid dusting off Chekov's gun. She knocks it to the floor and it goes off. All the characters come running into the room. After a lot of excited talk, they agree to throw the gun away because if there aren't any guns around no one's going to get shot.
That's just good sense! Since this is modeled on a Chekov play that will be the only time that any of the characters are able to really communicate with each other.
Hey, speaking of that thing: Frank, the right-winger who comments frequently over at Parker Molloy's place, left me a reply on Saturday that Elon Musk was going to buy $40 million in ad time on the Superbowl to expose the "breathtaking fraud and corruption" within USAID.
I don't normally watch the thing, but this year I would have loved watchin' it at Frank's house, as the game clock ticks down to its final seconds and you can watch his eyes as the realization slowly dawns that the right-wing rage-sites that he swears by have lied to him once again.
That realization never comes. Those sites were right about the ad time but yet again the good guys were foiled by nefarious, unseen forces. If you watched his eyes you'd more likely see tears of righteous anger at those evil people trying to destroy our Constitution and the Bible.
Thanks, that was a good essay. Still haven't seen it, though I finally saw Conclave. Why would anyone be anything but a Catholic! Look at all that pomp and skullduggery. As Worriedman notes, that's an incisive comment on Sirk. I'm sad to hear people say "No way" to musicals, and feel that the reason they say that is that they haven't seen much from the Freed unit at MGM. See this clip of Dolores Grey eating the face off of Dina Shore and tell he how whatever it is that musicals are. They weren't always as tuneless and serious as they are now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7k38rIGjxI
I thought Emilia Perez was interesting and hit and miss entertaining. I guess I kinda liked it in a cheesy b-movie kinda way, but certainly did not think it was great. The ending was perfect for that kind of film. The car goes off the cliff... wait for it... wait for it.. kaboom! It bursts into flames!
I bet you saw this coming wherein I drive off a cliff and burst into flames. Wait for it... Wait for it... But speaking of musicals. You know what the best musical of the year was? And perhaps the best film? Joker, Folie aux Deux. I didn't quite know what to make of it on first viewing. It was hard to get past not just the fact that they were singing, but that Joachim Phoenix was singing so badly. But as the movie's themes started to sink in, and the overall story is revealed, it became apparent what the narrative arc was really trying to accomplish, and accomplishing it brilliantly. Will Joker be to Emilia Perez or Anora as Apocalypse Now was to Kramer vs. Kramer? Probably not as the Brutalist exists and is actually nominated, so it would be this year's Apocalypse Now if it doesn't win. But best musical? Joker, most def.
I'd like to see it but my schedule is crowded right now. I mean, I really want to see Hard Truths while it's still in theaters and here I am going "No, I have to see Wicked first." It's a burden!
This was a more interesting movie for me than it was a good, or effective movie.
Apparently the Mexican dialects and idioms are laughably out of place for a film set in Mexico City... including Gomez' performance. She has admitted that her Spanish in the final film needed more work had she been given more time (I understand she speaks Spanish in a "household" Spanish sense, not in a fluent Mexico City way). I don't speak Spanish so I missed all of that, but it's a big sticking point for Spanish and bilingual audiences, especially those from Mexico. I've heard it akin to a French movie company making a film set in New York or CIncinatti and half of the english dialog is spoken in a mix of British and cockney accents with some New England and Louisiana accents thrown in to boot. As mentioned: also weird idioms are thrown in which are apparently wildly out of place in contemporary Mexican Spanish.
Before watching this movie, my wife and I watched the official (Oscar bait) trailer. It was a decent trailer, but it lead off with "From Renegade Auteur Jacques Audiard" (instead of "directed by...") which made my eyes roll so far back into my skull that I pulled a muscle.
Many trans people strongly dislike the movie and the way the trans character is presented and portrayed (not because the trans person had/has terrible violent morals, but for other reasons I will not get into here for brevity's sake. You can read many criticisms of this online, and I can see their points and agree with much of them. At many times the trans angle seems to be used to add an operatic kind of tragedy (???)
I'm not going to go on and on, but this film literally starts with a shot of Mariachi musicians covered with xmas lights on a black background, telling us this takes place in Mexico City. This is so hamfisted that I wonder if the Renegade Auteur was going for a Shakespearean setup a la "In Fair Verona..." (Shakespeare didn't try to get Italian accents or perfect accuracy either). This is a VERY charitable question/assumption/excuse on my part, just wondering if this might have been the case.
Half of this movie feels only semi-real and styled, and operatic. Parts seem very real and gritty. Again, I wonder if the Renegade Auteur was aiming for that. This is hardly a musical. Instead, people start singing at odd points in the film and I kept forgetting the musical angle until the characters started crooning. The songs are terrible by any standard. None are memorable. They're more like talk-singing. The "penis to vagina, vagina to penis, Va-Gi-No-PLASTY!" song comes across like a spoof from SNL. My jaw (figuratively) dropped. It's almost worth seeing just for that part.
It's absurd that after only a few years NONE of her direct family would have suspicions that this woman was the husband/father (she portrays herself as a long lost aunt, which would also raise a hundred questions from any normal mom with two young children.) Again; this seems to lean into the operatic/Shakespearean feel of the film. Renegade Auteur and all that!
There's also a weird jarring detail that I noticed. Saldaña's eyebrows are painted crookedly and asymmetrical in the beginning of this movie. Once she becomes her "true self" by helping the drug lord (I guess) her eyebrows then resemble the normal perfect eyebrows we all expect from Zoe Saldaña. I'm not criticizing anyone's eyebrows, but this was an obvious stylistic choice made by the Auteur who is also a Renegade... and I just don't get it.
I didn't like this movie. I strongly sense that Oscar voters read a Memo that mentioned a trans woman lead actor and just decided to vote for it without watching the movie. This sounds harsh, but I'm not so naive to believe that Oscar winners are all based on pure film making quality.
I do not recommend this movie. But I'll say that I have thought about it a LOT in the weeks following my viewing of it. So maybe check it out just to see the weirdness, the controversy, etc. In some parts, the performances were very, very good. But that's from a guy who doesn't understand Spanish nor can discern dialects.
OK, I'll keep rambling. There is a scene where the trans woman is cuddling/putting her "nephew" (really her son) to bed... and the little child is singing that the aunt "smells like Papa..." This goes an for a long while, and while it's nice to see the same person still having affection for their young son (the acing here is well done), it strongly implies that the "innocent" child can spot the "true" nature of his Aunt... by smelling her? The child mentions the smell of Diet Coke and leather, among other things." So, she really "is" the same person she was pre transitioning?
There's a lot of other aspects of the plot that are really obnoxious. The now trans woman, former Cartel boss puts together a nonprofit helping families of the hundreds of people he murdered find their deceased fathers/brothers/family. She becomes redeemed by this? It's not clear.
Also: why is Zoe Saldaña's character so central? She helps legally and medically facilitate the transitioning of the drug lord in the most secretive way possible. She arranges the drug lord's family to escape in secrecy to Switzerland. That's her entire role in the plot. But it strongly comes across that the film felt it needed an attractive, cis straight character to view all of this through. She doesn't really have a character arc other than getting out of the crappy legal job she had (she was kept down because she was Black, this is told straight-out at the beginning of the film)... and then her eyebrows change to look much nicer.
OK, I am barely telling you to go watch it. It kind of sucks but I've decided to say it's worth seeing. I'd love to hear commenters who speak Spanish give their takes on the language issues in this movie.
The Papa smells thing was cute until the kid started getting so specific, then it was bad workshop poetry.
You remind me that a lot of what's not right about it is the art spooling out beyond the characters' reality -- when the characters are, as they nearly always are, more interesting than the writer.
"penis to vagina, vagina to penis, Va-Gi-No-PLASTY!"
After our 4-year National Nightmare is over and Trump has left the scene, and people have calmed the fuck down about trans folk, who are then allowed to live as they want free of harassment, I have hopes this may be repurposed into a radio jingle.
"Again; this seems to lean into the operatic/Shakespearean feel of the film." Even though there's a lot that's too much in a BAD way, there are a few things that are too much in a GOOD way, and you gotta give it to them.
I'mo skip Roy's review today because I haven't seen the film yet but will watch it soon because it is likely to be the film club's March choice. In place of my usual witty comeback to Roy's work I'm dropping this, my review for the club of one of the Academy nominees in Best Documentary: Sound Track to a Coup D E´tat, which played Wednesday at the Avalon.
The movie covers the years leading to the liberation of Congo in 1960, and the assassination of Congo's leader Patrice Lumumba later the same year. It is a story lathered up with intrigue and infamy. It depicts the infighting among the politicians there, plus the Belgian, American, Russian, Australian and United Nations responses. The film's title refers to the US State Department's simultaneous program recruiting American jazz musicians as 'ambassadors' to African nations for purposes of improving the US credibility there. 'Soft Power' projection.
Before the film started a guy maybe around 40, from the Belgian embassy (I think – anyway from a Belgian office), who had also worked in a diplomatic capacity in the DRC, gave a short presentation about the context.
The film is a bombastic screed – loud, scattered, brutal at times, a little surreal, and probly mostly true. That bombast gets old pretty fast but is unrelenting. Much of the information is presented as text, and I, seated in the back row (it was almost sold out), was not prepared to read the whole movie from that distance. The text is mostly quotes from official documents or statements from various insiders, and has footnotes(!) So sit closer, or bring binoculars.
The central focus is the historical coverage of segments of concerts and off-stage bits with musicians including Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Abbe Lincoln, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and many others. Lincoln and Roach do an outstanding duet – a seering scream of anguish, way beyond what the rest of the music approaches. Those musical segments are alternated with many newsreels and interviews with principal players from the Congo, the UN, Belgium, the Soviet Union (Khrushchev is a star) and the US. Even Malcolm X has a role, and every scene in which he speaks is an absolute treat, thanks to his way with words.
There are also interviews with assassins...!
For me, the newsreels and interviews are the beating heart of the film, and all make for interesting viewing. If your worldview includes some sense of US politics in the 50's, plus a feeling of world-changing upheavals moving into the 60's, you'll want to see the players on their stages, and hear their voices.
Including the live presentation before the film, the program was around 2 hours and 40 minutes. Too long, yes, but I would not want to have missed any of those newsreels. Now that I have seen it, I probly would not watch it again, but I'm glad I did.
Sound Track to a Coup D E´tat, Johan Grimonprez 2024
Apparently enough people didn't like this movie that some of them already made a parody of it. I haven't had time to watch that yet, but here's a link to "Johannes Sacreblu".
I've been reading about this movie for a while, and the cumulative effect is that it sounds like movie Cats. I'm glad such a complex thing exists to so clearly document what an insane time and culture we live in, but I really don't want to see it.
Johnny was a forward scout for the US Army in and around 1969-1970 in the Highlands of Vietnam - if you don't know what the Vietnamese Highlands are and who the Montagnards then do your research.
He and a dozen or so US Army scouts were with a hundred and fifty or so Montagnard troops near the Cambodian border when they came under assault from a full, reinforced battalion of NVA regulars after having set up a night time perimeter.
Johnny and the unit were overrun - their perimeter was guarded by USA Marine Corp and Army Unit artillery, but that can only do so much.
Johnny spent the night killing people. Murdering anyone he didn't know or recognize and if you didn't have a white face he probably didn't recognize you. Johnny ran out of 5.56 ammo, ran out of .45 ACP for his pistol and resorted to using as jungle machete and a k-bar for the rest of the night, murdering everyone who was in his face unless he recognized them personally.
Johnny fell asleep exhausted and woke up under the hot Vietnamese sun wondering why he couldn't move - it's because all of the blood of the men he'd killed overnight had caked into his ACU and he was too weak to bust out of it.
I'm here to tell you fuckers people are gonna die. Don't mean to spoil the good times.
I'm not really a very nice person and I don't really have that much in common with most folks on this site, other than an antipathy and a complete and fully deadly intent towards the fascists taking over our country.
Semper Fi motherfuckers. We'll be seeing how things are in the next 4 years. I'm diving.
I'm saying all this shit because the USA is being overrun, and your frontline troops, the 'democrats' are cowering in their holes and hoping they live through the night.
It's your dead democrat bodies they'll be pulling over themselves to live another cowardly day.
FML and the pieces of fucking dastardly and cowardly shit that run this country, both republican and democrat.
To see my life and country reduced to this? What do you think I would do to counter it. And what would you do?
Thanks Roy. My bone-deep antipathy for movie musicals was probably enough to make me give this one a miss anyway. And a musical about drug cartels would have to be absolute, innovative genius to work.
Yeah, glorification of drug trafficking is only OK when White Americans do it.
Sacklers: The Musical!
To be fair, the movie does not glorify drug trafficking. It highlights one of its horrors that afflicts the traffickers home countries, not the countries that buy the drugs, so it's good politically in that way, if you're looking to judge a movie by its politics.
It's only BARELY a musical. Read my longer review in this thread. It's a weird-ass movie and it does not deserve Best Picture nomination.
I feel ya, but The Sound Of Music, South Pacific, The Wizard of Oz....good stuff.
Got to see Robert Goulet do "South Pacific" here locally. When he got to the line "This place you come from....this Small Rock..." the house came down. He was battling not to grin as he did it, because, of course, he was in the Small Rock.
I thought it was because he'd smoked a small rock.
As the song goes: Don't worry, smoke crack!
Eh. I'm still bummed that no one's making movies like Rohmer's Moral Tales any more...
Anyway.
"...Army goddamn Archerd...": that's one deep cut.
Anyway, a poll of sorts: I had an idea for a T shirt: a big photo of Fake Tubby making one of his faces and above, like a meme, "NOT GOOD!!!". Me, I'd wear it, like, 24/7. But the Mrs says the crackers up here would find it offensive. I say that their brain wiring is so fucked up that they would see it as complimentary. They'd see it as a reminder of Donny criticizing whatever while libs of course would it's him there being reference as "NOT GOOD!!!".
So who's correct, me or the Mrs?
I don’t want to get involved in your marital disagreements so I’ll just say I’m right that the caption should be “oops, I tink I pooped my pants.” Then the yokels would wonder whether you pooped your pants out of fear of the angry Trump face, like Chuck Schumer and all the rest of the mainstream Dems, or if Trump is making that ridiculous face because he’s a poopy little baby.
That’s brilliant.
And I’m decrepit enough for it to work!
“justice for sale… corrupted verdicts sold by tabloids-" Hey, I thought this was a movie review! Some place to get away from current events....
"Sirk got over because, under his famous style, he was very rigorous — the dramaturgy was lean, the stakes clear, and the resolutions honestly won"
That's some good ass Sirkian comment !
After the Oscars, you need to apply that filmic big brain of yours to telling us all what you really think about perhaps the greatest of all Hollywood directors not named Welles.
When I finally get around to writing my prize winning play, it's going to open with a maid dusting off Chekov's gun. She knocks it to the floor and it goes off. All the characters come running into the room. After a lot of excited talk, they agree to throw the gun away because if there aren't any guns around no one's going to get shot.
That's just good sense! Since this is modeled on a Chekov play that will be the only time that any of the characters are able to really communicate with each other.
"I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats."
it was better than Cats.
You should make that bar at least at ground level not under Six Cold Feet of Ground
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og01T5McsFU
NOTHING IS BETTER THAN CATS.
Yes, Magnificent Obsession, the Sirkiest of the Sirks.
The Tarnished Angels and Written on the Wind.
In both films,
Dorothy Malone was magnificent. Great performances by Rock Hudson and Robert Stack.
Fuck you, Harrison Butker, you loser!! Oh, I thought this was a Super Bowl post.
OK, doesn’t sound like a movie I’d watch. That probably means it will win an Emmy.
Somebody said last night that Serena Williams was on the field longer than Harrison Butker and I am dying laughing.
Hey, speaking of that thing: Frank, the right-winger who comments frequently over at Parker Molloy's place, left me a reply on Saturday that Elon Musk was going to buy $40 million in ad time on the Superbowl to expose the "breathtaking fraud and corruption" within USAID.
I don't normally watch the thing, but this year I would have loved watchin' it at Frank's house, as the game clock ticks down to its final seconds and you can watch his eyes as the realization slowly dawns that the right-wing rage-sites that he swears by have lied to him once again.
That realization never comes. Those sites were right about the ad time but yet again the good guys were foiled by nefarious, unseen forces. If you watched his eyes you'd more likely see tears of righteous anger at those evil people trying to destroy our Constitution and the Bible.
I was PROMISED! [shakes fist at clouds]
Yes - he'll declare that the Deep State took the ad down.
Thanks, that was a good essay. Still haven't seen it, though I finally saw Conclave. Why would anyone be anything but a Catholic! Look at all that pomp and skullduggery. As Worriedman notes, that's an incisive comment on Sirk. I'm sad to hear people say "No way" to musicals, and feel that the reason they say that is that they haven't seen much from the Freed unit at MGM. See this clip of Dolores Grey eating the face off of Dina Shore and tell he how whatever it is that musicals are. They weren't always as tuneless and serious as they are now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7k38rIGjxI
Why would anyone be anything but a Catholioc?
Not wanting to get raped by priests that were moved from one diocese to another without the new diocese being informed of the reason why?
Admittedly the down side
Clifton Webb and Marlon Brando COMBINED!
Thanks a lot but no thanks!
How can you lose with the Great Gildersleeve?
Actually, different fella—Harold Peary was “Gildie,” this is Frank Somebody, famous from film and tv
This sounds unwatchable. Were you strapped in a Clockwork Orange chair?
I thought Emilia Perez was interesting and hit and miss entertaining. I guess I kinda liked it in a cheesy b-movie kinda way, but certainly did not think it was great. The ending was perfect for that kind of film. The car goes off the cliff... wait for it... wait for it.. kaboom! It bursts into flames!
I bet you saw this coming wherein I drive off a cliff and burst into flames. Wait for it... Wait for it... But speaking of musicals. You know what the best musical of the year was? And perhaps the best film? Joker, Folie aux Deux. I didn't quite know what to make of it on first viewing. It was hard to get past not just the fact that they were singing, but that Joachim Phoenix was singing so badly. But as the movie's themes started to sink in, and the overall story is revealed, it became apparent what the narrative arc was really trying to accomplish, and accomplishing it brilliantly. Will Joker be to Emilia Perez or Anora as Apocalypse Now was to Kramer vs. Kramer? Probably not as the Brutalist exists and is actually nominated, so it would be this year's Apocalypse Now if it doesn't win. But best musical? Joker, most def.
I'd like to see it but my schedule is crowded right now. I mean, I really want to see Hard Truths while it's still in theaters and here I am going "No, I have to see Wicked first." It's a burden!
I’m not at all confident you would like it. Maybe, maybe not.
Uh... gettin' a real "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" vibe offa this one. No thanks.
Roy: Then one of the mob boss's henchmen takes an umbrella and...
Me: An umbrella, you say? No thanks.
Roy: This gritty neo-noir crime drama is set in Cherbourg...
Me: Cherbourg, you say?
This was a more interesting movie for me than it was a good, or effective movie.
Apparently the Mexican dialects and idioms are laughably out of place for a film set in Mexico City... including Gomez' performance. She has admitted that her Spanish in the final film needed more work had she been given more time (I understand she speaks Spanish in a "household" Spanish sense, not in a fluent Mexico City way). I don't speak Spanish so I missed all of that, but it's a big sticking point for Spanish and bilingual audiences, especially those from Mexico. I've heard it akin to a French movie company making a film set in New York or CIncinatti and half of the english dialog is spoken in a mix of British and cockney accents with some New England and Louisiana accents thrown in to boot. As mentioned: also weird idioms are thrown in which are apparently wildly out of place in contemporary Mexican Spanish.
Before watching this movie, my wife and I watched the official (Oscar bait) trailer. It was a decent trailer, but it lead off with "From Renegade Auteur Jacques Audiard" (instead of "directed by...") which made my eyes roll so far back into my skull that I pulled a muscle.
Many trans people strongly dislike the movie and the way the trans character is presented and portrayed (not because the trans person had/has terrible violent morals, but for other reasons I will not get into here for brevity's sake. You can read many criticisms of this online, and I can see their points and agree with much of them. At many times the trans angle seems to be used to add an operatic kind of tragedy (???)
I'm not going to go on and on, but this film literally starts with a shot of Mariachi musicians covered with xmas lights on a black background, telling us this takes place in Mexico City. This is so hamfisted that I wonder if the Renegade Auteur was going for a Shakespearean setup a la "In Fair Verona..." (Shakespeare didn't try to get Italian accents or perfect accuracy either). This is a VERY charitable question/assumption/excuse on my part, just wondering if this might have been the case.
Half of this movie feels only semi-real and styled, and operatic. Parts seem very real and gritty. Again, I wonder if the Renegade Auteur was aiming for that. This is hardly a musical. Instead, people start singing at odd points in the film and I kept forgetting the musical angle until the characters started crooning. The songs are terrible by any standard. None are memorable. They're more like talk-singing. The "penis to vagina, vagina to penis, Va-Gi-No-PLASTY!" song comes across like a spoof from SNL. My jaw (figuratively) dropped. It's almost worth seeing just for that part.
It's absurd that after only a few years NONE of her direct family would have suspicions that this woman was the husband/father (she portrays herself as a long lost aunt, which would also raise a hundred questions from any normal mom with two young children.) Again; this seems to lean into the operatic/Shakespearean feel of the film. Renegade Auteur and all that!
There's also a weird jarring detail that I noticed. Saldaña's eyebrows are painted crookedly and asymmetrical in the beginning of this movie. Once she becomes her "true self" by helping the drug lord (I guess) her eyebrows then resemble the normal perfect eyebrows we all expect from Zoe Saldaña. I'm not criticizing anyone's eyebrows, but this was an obvious stylistic choice made by the Auteur who is also a Renegade... and I just don't get it.
I didn't like this movie. I strongly sense that Oscar voters read a Memo that mentioned a trans woman lead actor and just decided to vote for it without watching the movie. This sounds harsh, but I'm not so naive to believe that Oscar winners are all based on pure film making quality.
I do not recommend this movie. But I'll say that I have thought about it a LOT in the weeks following my viewing of it. So maybe check it out just to see the weirdness, the controversy, etc. In some parts, the performances were very, very good. But that's from a guy who doesn't understand Spanish nor can discern dialects.
SPOILER: Of course there's a tragic ending.
OK, I'll keep rambling. There is a scene where the trans woman is cuddling/putting her "nephew" (really her son) to bed... and the little child is singing that the aunt "smells like Papa..." This goes an for a long while, and while it's nice to see the same person still having affection for their young son (the acing here is well done), it strongly implies that the "innocent" child can spot the "true" nature of his Aunt... by smelling her? The child mentions the smell of Diet Coke and leather, among other things." So, she really "is" the same person she was pre transitioning?
There's a lot of other aspects of the plot that are really obnoxious. The now trans woman, former Cartel boss puts together a nonprofit helping families of the hundreds of people he murdered find their deceased fathers/brothers/family. She becomes redeemed by this? It's not clear.
Also: why is Zoe Saldaña's character so central? She helps legally and medically facilitate the transitioning of the drug lord in the most secretive way possible. She arranges the drug lord's family to escape in secrecy to Switzerland. That's her entire role in the plot. But it strongly comes across that the film felt it needed an attractive, cis straight character to view all of this through. She doesn't really have a character arc other than getting out of the crappy legal job she had (she was kept down because she was Black, this is told straight-out at the beginning of the film)... and then her eyebrows change to look much nicer.
OK, I am barely telling you to go watch it. It kind of sucks but I've decided to say it's worth seeing. I'd love to hear commenters who speak Spanish give their takes on the language issues in this movie.
"It strongly comes across that the film felt it needed an attractive, cis straight character to view all of this through."
Ah, the Cis Savior thing.
The Papa smells thing was cute until the kid started getting so specific, then it was bad workshop poetry.
You remind me that a lot of what's not right about it is the art spooling out beyond the characters' reality -- when the characters are, as they nearly always are, more interesting than the writer.
"penis to vagina, vagina to penis, Va-Gi-No-PLASTY!"
After our 4-year National Nightmare is over and Trump has left the scene, and people have calmed the fuck down about trans folk, who are then allowed to live as they want free of harassment, I have hopes this may be repurposed into a radio jingle.
"Again; this seems to lean into the operatic/Shakespearean feel of the film." Even though there's a lot that's too much in a BAD way, there are a few things that are too much in a GOOD way, and you gotta give it to them.
Sheesh, Boss. I get left out of Fun Fridays mostly, and I got zero input on this. Political satire, stat!
I'mo skip Roy's review today because I haven't seen the film yet but will watch it soon because it is likely to be the film club's March choice. In place of my usual witty comeback to Roy's work I'm dropping this, my review for the club of one of the Academy nominees in Best Documentary: Sound Track to a Coup D E´tat, which played Wednesday at the Avalon.
The movie covers the years leading to the liberation of Congo in 1960, and the assassination of Congo's leader Patrice Lumumba later the same year. It is a story lathered up with intrigue and infamy. It depicts the infighting among the politicians there, plus the Belgian, American, Russian, Australian and United Nations responses. The film's title refers to the US State Department's simultaneous program recruiting American jazz musicians as 'ambassadors' to African nations for purposes of improving the US credibility there. 'Soft Power' projection.
Before the film started a guy maybe around 40, from the Belgian embassy (I think – anyway from a Belgian office), who had also worked in a diplomatic capacity in the DRC, gave a short presentation about the context.
The film is a bombastic screed – loud, scattered, brutal at times, a little surreal, and probly mostly true. That bombast gets old pretty fast but is unrelenting. Much of the information is presented as text, and I, seated in the back row (it was almost sold out), was not prepared to read the whole movie from that distance. The text is mostly quotes from official documents or statements from various insiders, and has footnotes(!) So sit closer, or bring binoculars.
The central focus is the historical coverage of segments of concerts and off-stage bits with musicians including Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Abbe Lincoln, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and many others. Lincoln and Roach do an outstanding duet – a seering scream of anguish, way beyond what the rest of the music approaches. Those musical segments are alternated with many newsreels and interviews with principal players from the Congo, the UN, Belgium, the Soviet Union (Khrushchev is a star) and the US. Even Malcolm X has a role, and every scene in which he speaks is an absolute treat, thanks to his way with words.
There are also interviews with assassins...!
For me, the newsreels and interviews are the beating heart of the film, and all make for interesting viewing. If your worldview includes some sense of US politics in the 50's, plus a feeling of world-changing upheavals moving into the 60's, you'll want to see the players on their stages, and hear their voices.
Including the live presentation before the film, the program was around 2 hours and 40 minutes. Too long, yes, but I would not want to have missed any of those newsreels. Now that I have seen it, I probly would not watch it again, but I'm glad I did.
Sound Track to a Coup D E´tat, Johan Grimonprez 2024
WANT
Apparently enough people didn't like this movie that some of them already made a parody of it. I haven't had time to watch that yet, but here's a link to "Johannes Sacreblu".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLT4v3mkrvk
I'm saving that. I see that it's cheesy with fake mustaches. Good!
I've been reading about this movie for a while, and the cumulative effect is that it sounds like movie Cats. I'm glad such a complex thing exists to so clearly document what an insane time and culture we live in, but I really don't want to see it.
Hi Roy, let me tell ya a story about "Johnny".
Johnny was a forward scout for the US Army in and around 1969-1970 in the Highlands of Vietnam - if you don't know what the Vietnamese Highlands are and who the Montagnards then do your research.
He and a dozen or so US Army scouts were with a hundred and fifty or so Montagnard troops near the Cambodian border when they came under assault from a full, reinforced battalion of NVA regulars after having set up a night time perimeter.
Johnny and the unit were overrun - their perimeter was guarded by USA Marine Corp and Army Unit artillery, but that can only do so much.
Johnny spent the night killing people. Murdering anyone he didn't know or recognize and if you didn't have a white face he probably didn't recognize you. Johnny ran out of 5.56 ammo, ran out of .45 ACP for his pistol and resorted to using as jungle machete and a k-bar for the rest of the night, murdering everyone who was in his face unless he recognized them personally.
Johnny fell asleep exhausted and woke up under the hot Vietnamese sun wondering why he couldn't move - it's because all of the blood of the men he'd killed overnight had caked into his ACU and he was too weak to bust out of it.
I'm here to tell you fuckers people are gonna die. Don't mean to spoil the good times.
I'm not really a very nice person and I don't really have that much in common with most folks on this site, other than an antipathy and a complete and fully deadly intent towards the fascists taking over our country.
Semper Fi motherfuckers. We'll be seeing how things are in the next 4 years. I'm diving.
I'm saying all this shit because the USA is being overrun, and your frontline troops, the 'democrats' are cowering in their holes and hoping they live through the night.
It's your dead democrat bodies they'll be pulling over themselves to live another cowardly day.
FML and the pieces of fucking dastardly and cowardly shit that run this country, both republican and democrat.
To see my life and country reduced to this? What do you think I would do to counter it. And what would you do?
Fuck this shit.