Hot Takes On Film

Turning Red (2022 US) It's #FemaleFilmmakerFriday and todays entry is this animated feature from Domee Shi. A 13 year old girl turns into a large red panda when she gets too emotional. In case you are wondering it's about puberty and menstruation. OMG this film created a HooHa in the middle aged dude community. It was clearly not meant for middle aged dudes so seriously just move one. Shi got a lot of grief on different sites for this film. I actually read comments. I know, I know that's never a good idea. TBH it was hind of shocking, how entitled and out of touch certain people are. I read one commenter that gave the film low marks and suggested that "if you want a good coming of age story, watch The Little Prince. It does it better". I'm sure that this person also believes that babies come out of the belly button. Don't take a bath or the baby will drown.  Another person suggested the main character was self centered, annoying and smug so she really shou

 Being the Ricardos (2021 US) This biopic follows the story of Lucy and Desi during a time where Lucy was accused of being a communist. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardman star as Lucy and Desi. When the casting of Kidman was announced fans were not impressed. I was not sold on it but kept on open mind. After all a good actor can become the character and Kidman is a good actress. Well that did not happen. It was Nicole Kidman trying to play Lucille Ball but not doing so hot. Director Aaron Sorkin repeatedly defended the choice. People just were not sold. I did like Bardman's portrayal of Desi.  Like Kidman his resemblance wasn't that close to the real person but he made up for it with voice and physical work. Voice work is so important and when an actor doesn't do the work it shows. JK Simmons was oh so entertaining as William Frawley. Kidman, Bardman and Simmons were nominated in their respective categories but did not win. I enjoyed it but mainly because I enjoy biopics. Fin

 Doctor Zhivago (1965 UK) Its #WTFWednesday and todays entry is this epic film centered around the Russian revolution of the turn of the 19th century. Omar Shariff and Julie Christie star as lovers caught up in the times. By all accounts this is a pretty stunning film. The production design was out of this world and so was the cinematography. It also won an Oscar for the soundtrack. Just the mention of it starts the internal music player in your head. It is that memorable. With all that I turned it off. So why is it in the WTF category? Full disclosure I have a personal history with this film. I was about 10 years old and my parents went to a revival screening of this film. I wanted to go. Even at 10 I loved film. But nooo I wasn't grown up enough for this film. I was so salty over that. Still am. When I turned 18, I rented it just to be a spiteful brat and say it was stupid and glad I didn't go. So I did that. Now that I am older and more mature I watched it again and put away

 The Sixth Sense (1999 US) Haley Joel Osmet and Bruce Willis star in this horror about a boy who can communicate with the dead. Whenever I'm reminded of this film I am also reminded of the meme, with Osmet, "I see stupid people". The horror. This is an incredible film. Being an M. Night Shyamalon film, there is a twist. He sure likes those. It doesnt always work but it sure does here. He made some very clever blocking choices that hide the twist until the big reveal but it is there and honestly you can find the truth if you want. Even if you know it does not take away from the enjoyment of watching this.  Haley Joel Osmet was just fantastic as the boy who was terrified as a parade of ghosts march through his life. I could not even imagine that horror. He was nominated for best supporting actor but lost to Michael Caine in Cider House Rules. Why was he in the supporting actor category? He was the lead. This film was nominated in many categories including Best Picture but l

 Top Gun: Maverick (2022 US) Tom Cruise reprises his role as Maverick in the latest chapter of this franchise. The word I would use to describe this film is satisfying. There are several reasons for that. First is the obvious, nostalgia. Nostalgia is hot right now but TBH it has been for a long time. Remember "Return to Gilligan's Island"? or more recently "Picard"? If done right it can be very satisfying. Returning characters, threads resolved, check check. The script was quite derivative but I feel that was part of the appeal. At one point I thought Maverick was going to say "turn off your sensors and use the force" or "I used to shoot womp rats that size back on Tatooine." That's a callback to another old franchise in an old franchise. Nostalgia stacked on top of more nostalgia. The Russian Doll of post pandemic film. I am not a big fan nostalgia or prequels. The only way to go is geriatric to preschool or Picard to Muppet Babies. I th

  Mad Max Fury Road (2015 AU) George Miller adds another chapter into the Mad Max franchise in this high octane post apocolyptic action film. Charlize Theron stars as a woman escaping from a tyrannical warlord to find her own home. I'm not a fan of post-op films, or many action films or Mad Max for that matter so I was not inclined to go see it. I did watch it one day because I was bored and it was on streaming. See my sci-fi page for why I don't feature post-op films, https://hottakesonfilm.blogspot.com/p/science-fiction-sub-genres.html.  I take issue with the overuse of action in action films. I think it actually slows the pace. I once clocked 20 minutes of a running chase scene with nothing added to the story. In a 90 plus minute film, that's a lot of dead space. When I run into that I usually go get snacks or answer emails or something else because literally nothing happens. I was not fond of the 80's Mad Max. So needless to say when I watched this I was pleasantly

 Ghost (1990 US) A recently deceased man tries to warn his wife of danger with the help of a psychic. This iconic film stars the late great Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. This film has a plethora of iconic moments including the pottery scene which is now a meme. My favorite thing about this movie is the end scene. IMHO it has the most satisfying bad guy ending in the history of film. The demons were brilliant. If you're having a bad day, maybe someone has done something that was totally not cool and need a pick-me-up this scene is like ASMR. Here is the scene  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES3nBGzPUkU. Ghost was nominated in several categories including Best Picture but lost to "Dances With Wolves". It did win in for Best Original Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. He wrote many more scripts after this including Jacobs Ladder and Deep Impact. Goldberg won an Oscar for her role as the psychic. She later said in an interview that producers didn't want he

 Coquette (1929 US) It's #FemaleFilmmakerFriday and todays entry is this pre-code drama about a father who doesnt want his daughter to date a boy from the wrong side of the track. Mary Pickford stars as the daughter who was actually 30 plus years old when this was made. Pickford won a Best actress for this, her first talkie film. She did great. Actors at the time were really struggling with how to act in talkies. Pickford made it work. The others, hmmm, lets just say they tried. Although, Pickford didn't have too much creative control in this film, she was a titan in the industry and one of the founding members of the Academy. Pickford spoke about the transition from silent to talkies as being "very chaotic". So being Pickford she brought people together to help professionals talk to each other and ease the transition. Thus the Oscars were born. I can understand the chaos. The tech came out of nowhere. Audiences wanted it.  The theaters had to be refitted, studios had

 9 to 5 (1980 US) Three female office workers (Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton) kidnap their boss (Dabney Coleman). "Tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition. Yawn and stretch and try to come to life." Face it you sang that when you read that. This Dolly Parton original song was nominated in the Best Song category at the Oscars in 1981. It lost to Fame. Tough year though. "On the Road Again" by Willie Nelson was also in the mix. Parton said in a recent documentary that Fonda was asking her about the status of the song for the film so Parton played the song by scraping her acrylic nails together to create the beat and then sang the intro. Then she demonstrated it. Well shoot, if it didn't sound amazing. Didn't know that acrylic nails are the hot new sound. I just love this film. It was not nominated in any other categories but really should have. In the documentary Fonda talked about how the three bonded before the s

 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979 US, Klingon) Google has the language for this film as English and Klingon. That's how much Star Trek is part of our society. I am loving being able to talk about this first film in the franchise in context of the 1980 Oscars. Not my favorite Star Trek product but it is still Star Trek and I will watch it. After TOS went off the air in 1969 there was quite a movement of people missing the series. Hence the ST conventions were born. Paramount caught wind of this and decided to make a movie. They hired the insanely talented Robert Wise to direct (Westside Story, Andromeda Strain, The Day the Earth Stood Still) Wise was a once in a generation director with a strong SciFi background. Yay! This is gonna be great! The story was by veteran SciFi writer Alan Dean Foster. Double great! Script by newbie Harold Livingston with very little on his resume much less SciFi. Ooooh ummm. Decades later its pretty clear that it didn't hit the mark. I do think th

 Gone With the Wind (1939 US) Its #WTFWednesday and todays entry is this oh so troubled film. 1940 was a very difficult year for the Academy. Its like a bad gift that they cant get rid of no matter how hard they try. Was this epic David O Selznick production so well done? Sure. Was Vivian Leigh delicious as a Plantation Princess caught in the civil war? Sure. Does it all go away the minute you think just a little bit about the racial problems? Absolutely! Once you do you can't unsee it. I could go on for days about how problematic it was. Not only was this picture in the mix but so was Wizard of Oz. With some of the allegations about the treatment of the young Judy Garland both of these films are now almost completely unwatchable. Context is King-Lorca on Star Trek Discovery. That context just paints these films with a poopoo encrusted brush. To make it worse Hattie McDaniel, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Mammie, had to get special permission to attend the awards

 Nightmare Alley (2021 US) A grifter steals a "magic" act and makes money off of it. Based on the novel of the same name from 1946. Guillermo Del Toro writes and directs this Best Picture nominee. It is classified as neo-noir and that would be fair since the 1947 film is solidly noir. I liked it but...I'm a noir fan and prefer the 1947 version. Don't get me wrong the 2021 version is very well shot, the color is lovely. It has the traditional high contrast and deep shadows of noir but I really saw little of the German Expressionism typical of noir. German Expressionism cares little of lovely aesthetic and more about expressing anxiety. The lines are incongruent and misaligned. Where is the order? There is none and that's the point. The lines in this film for the most part were too symmetrical for that and even the color wheel De Toro used was too symmetrical harkening back to Wes Anderson films that are so symmetrical its like ASMR.  Yeah it had contrast but overal

 Wings (1927 US) Silent film following a pilot through WWI. This was just filled with firsts namely the first Oscar for Best Picture. Its pretty neat to watch and see how the movie industry is starting to evolve. This film was pretty expensive for a silent which tended to run like what we refer to as shorts. The general thought was, if we make better silent films audiences will forget about those pesky talkies. They were sooo wrong. But, and that's a big But, its still a stunning piece of history and art. By todays standards its MEH, though. I admit I'm a film purist and just love watching the evolution of film. I just love how pre-code this was. it had a lot going on including nudity and a man and a woman in a bed together. Scandalous. It had several same sex moments including a kiss. Some are saying its the first gay kiss on film and others are saying, "nah man that's just how they rolled back then." It seemed pretty gay kiss to me. Which is not to say its the f

 Promising Young Woman (2020 US) Its #femaleFilmmakerFriday and todays film is from Emerald Fennell. Cool Name.  Cassie lives out her trauma trolling night club  pred ators. There is a lot going on in this film so the logline doesn't really cut it. However, one of the takeaways here is don't mess with Cassie. This film had some neonoir vibes but in style it did not reach that level. I know the trend is to use bright colors to create the contrast for noir style in film. I don't like it. My opinion is that bright colors are too "happy" for noir. However, the color grading was great and production design was fabulous. At it's heart, Promising Young Woman is a revenge story, a very clever revenge story. Fennell should make a vengeance trilogy like Park Chan-Wook. It was really on that level. Young Woman won an Oscar for the writing (Fennell) and was nominated in other categories including Best Picture and Best Director which lost to Nomadland and Chloe Zaou. Fenne

 Jojo Rabbit (2019 US) a lonely boy in WWII Germany discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. Oh and his imaginary friend is Hitler. Written and directed by Taiki Waititi, this dark and biting satire goes there. Waititi refers to it as an anti-hate satire. As I have discussed before, Hollywood is having a hard time putting up new and unique stories. Well if you are like me and would totally be OK with not having another remake or sequel in your lifetime, well here 'ya go. It’s weird and it's different. You get used to it then it gets weirder. Seriously though, the kids imaginary friend is Hitler. What do you expect? The theme is mainly blind allegiance. This poor boy has a lot rattling around in his head that he needs to come to terms with including Hitler. Waititi won the Oscar for the screenplay and now he makes Marvel sequels. Yay for the Oscars. Find it on Hulu or for rent in most streaming.  

 1917 (2019 US) A man must deliver an important message in WWI. I’m usually not a fan of war films unless it has something to say and not just gratuitous violence. I call it war porn. But this one does have something to say. It is the usual “the futility of war”. I mean, that’s a solid something to say but it does get said a lot. This one was a little different though. It’s simple in its message. I’m liking the trend lately of simpler plots. Less is more. Your man has a mission and he intends to deliver that message, at all costs. Boom! Mic drop! There is a Ulyssian vibe in that he has a journey and neither the audience nor the protagonist knows what comes next and sometimes when it does show up you’re not sure what “it” is. Now here’s the biggie for this film, the cinematography. The camera goes on the journey and takes you along with it. Sometimes the camera is just as dumbfounded as you as the protagonist. But here’s the thing: It looks simple but it is not in any way simple. It too

 Judy (2019 US) Renee Zellweger stars as Judy Garland in this biopic of Garland in her later years, warts, drugs and all. Judy, Judy, Judy! My aunts name is Judy and I did that to her. "Auntie Judy, Judy, Judy pass pass pass the green beans green beans green beans". She did not appreciate my joke. Too extra! Extra, was kind of how I felt about Zellweger as Garland. I love biopics and I especially love it when actors "bring it". Zellweger did in fact "bring it" here. She even did the singing. Geez Louise singing is hard enough without having to sound like Judy Garland. Zellweger was rewarded with a Best Actress Oscar for this. Now for the Wizard in the room. The film makes some serious allegations about how the studio (MGM) treated the then under age Garland for that film. I cant confirm if what was in the film (and book) was true. If it is, that's some serious child trafficking BS. Adults should really have known better. I have really been put off of T

 Cabaret (1972 US) Liza Minelli stars as a cabaret performer in 1931 Germany and gets involved in a very interesting love triangle with two guys as Hitler rises. Based on the Broadway musical show and books. Wow! there was so much stuff in this to offend a certain subset of the population, at least in the US. I'm just not sure it would get made today without the outrage machine losing their minds. I would totally go watch it but certainly side eye some dude with a big jacket. Yeah its that nuts here. Anyway, this iconic film was breakout roles for Liza and co star Michael York. This apparently was Liza's first opportunity to sing in a film. She really sounds like her Mama. But what a lot of people don't talk about is her dancing skills. Leslie Caron of An American in Paris got in trouble with the Hays people over a sexy chair dance. She later was aghast and said, "that's ridiculous! What can you do with a chair?" Well Liza showed us what you can do with a chai

 Mank (2021 US) Gary Oldman stars as Herman Mankiewicz and chronicles the process and events as he writes Citizen Kane. Mank more clearly defines the issues that Mank had with Randolph Hearst, brilliantly played by baddy Charles Dance. One of the things I loved about it was the call back to the Deep Focus photography style in Citizen Kane. It was like Christmas for me because they often recreated shots from Kane. Oooooh Ahhhh. This won a lot of Oscars including Cinematography. Its actually really hard to get the old timey look on modern cameras but Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt pulled it off with an 8K digital camera no less. He added a special filter and shot in B&W. He deserved the Oscar. No doubt though, there was a lot of color work in post to match Citizen Kane. Why shoot in 8K and not the incredibly low resolution of 1941? 8K gives you a lot of material to work with in post especially color. Although incredibly bulky to work with it can be very forgiving and allows for m

Citizen Kane (1941 US) Quasi biographical film exploring the life of media tycoon Charles Foster Kane. Kane was loosely based on William Randolph Hearst And Joseph Pulitzer. This film is often at the top of best films ever made lists. There are many things to note here but one of my favorite things is the cinematography. The shots and lighting are just beyond stunning. Greg Toland won for Best Cinematography with his deep focus style. Deep focus being where the foreground, middle ground and background are all in focus. It tends to really open up the shot where the director can add little stuff to inform the audience. This is one of my favorite styles although it can be expensive because you have to fill the space. That's why ultra low budget films shoot in shallow focus where just the foreground is in focus. You don't have to mess around with the background that much. Director Orson Wells really took advantage of deep focus whether it was too show the backgrounds architectural