Hot Takes On Film

Raging Bull (1980 US) Robert DeNiro stars as boxer Jake LaMotta. This Biopic from Martin Scorsese tells the story of a man and his brother (Joe Pesci) who have no idea what to do with their emotions. It works for them for a bit until it doesn't. Scorsese is a smart guy and the film is an in depth study of what we now call toxic masculinity. The film had an awful lot to say about the subject and Scorsese literally pulls no punches. Unfortunately, graduates of the school of "you missed the fucking point" have used the film as a how to manual. Criterion is saying stylistically this film was informed by film noir. To that I say sometimes. It was too uneven to label it a Noir throwback. Black and white does not make film noir. Remember that kids. The film was nominated for best picture and lost to Ordinary People, the film not actual ordinary people. Robert DeNiro won Best Actor. That was pretty spot on as DeNiro really dives into Assholeness and he convinces you to not like h...

 Avatar (2009 US) Yes the first James Cameron epic film was nominated for best picture. A cartoonishly evil corporation wants to exploit the resources of an inhabited moon in violation of the Prime Directive. Sigourney Weaver and some other dude stands in their way. I have to say to any corporation if you want to be crappy don't ever hire Sigourney Weaver. I do hope the board fired the CEO that made such a dumbass mistake. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed this film and saw it in theaters when it came out. But Damn Sam it was clunky. The technology that allowed Cameron to create the characters was bloody awesome and being new it was like being hit with a wave of Mountain Dew. Over a decade later and countless films using the same technology now its like your cat knocked over your glass of Mountain Dew. Dammit not again. There is a reason that Grogu in The Mandalorian is a puppet. Using practical effects for characters like Grogu is very popular. For Example my son hates the C...

  Get Out (2017 US) A young black man visits his white girlfriends family. Secrets! So many Secrets. Jordon Peele won an Oscar for the script and the film was nominated in multiple categories including Best Picture. It lost to The Shape of Water a film about sexy fish. I'm a big fan of Jordon Peele's work including his TV skit show Key and Peele (I know you read that as "shit show" you stinker). I love his approach to black cinema and so did audiences who rewarded the film with a very profitable theatrical run. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya who was nominated for best actor. He lost to Gary Oldman for his Winston Churchill portrayal. At least Kaluuya was in the right category this time  (see my Judas and the black messiah post). The film also had LaKeith Stanfield who later played Judas to Kaluuyas Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. I cant say that The Academy made the right choices in their winner picks but I will say this that the film really resonated with...

Shoplifters (2018 JP) A Family living in poverty relies on shoplifting to survive. This is one of my favorite films. I find it hard to speak about though because its kinda hard not to give everything away. But I will say this; Its a drama that talks about this family's unusual bond, in a good way not the #ShitMyEyesAreBurning kind of way. Writer/Director  Hirokazu Kore-Eda takes so much care in telling this story and does a great job of adding layer after layer on the characters. At the end I really felt these characters were real and empathized with them. That's good storytelling. Production design was so unique but also added layers of information on this family. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language film but lost to Roma which was also a stunning film with similar themes. Find it on Amazon or for rent on most streaming. Please Like Share and Subscribe.  

  It came from Beneath the Sea (1955 US). Like I said earlier I’m a big Ray Harryhausen fan. I just love stop motion. So much so that I made a short film stop motion. This film is all about the # Kaiju and Harryhausen’s work and tbh there isn’t much else going for it. Harryhausen was just so good at what he did that it was enough to carry a film and propel it into legendary status. There is a theory floating about that his work resonates so much now because it was painstakingly hand crafted and not computerized. Yeah there were flaws but it was human flaws. Harryhausen talked about creating this beast. It only had six appendages instead of eight because eight was just too much to animate. He was doing the work one day and got a phone call. When he returned he forgot where he was and had to start all over again. Nowadays there is tech to help the animator but even then that happened to me several times. I stopped answering my phone. I have the Harryhausen box set which is awesome b...

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021 US) This Best Picture nominee tells the story of Black Panther Fred Hampton. One of my favorite actors Daniel Kaluuya stars as Hampton. I first took notice of Kaluuya's work on the Black Mirror Netflix show. He is so intuitive and these characters just jump out of him with what seems like such little effort. In interviews he comes across as distant and unengaged until he gets a question and then you get this incredibly thoughtful answer from seemingly nowhere. He won best supporting actor at the Oscars that year. Why "supporting" when he plays the main character? I have no goddamn clue. But he won? Dominique Fishback played his wife Deborah Johnson. Fishback played opposite Samuel L Jackson in the limited series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Jackson was well impressed by her. She came to work with binders and he felt the need to keep up with her. Now, Jackson is not a subtle guy and tends to steal the scene but Fishback was right there w...

 Birdman (2014 US) Michael Keaton stars as an aging actor struggling to find relevance after years of playing a superhero named Birdman. Hmm I feel like this sounds kinda familiar. This picture really cleaned up at the Oscars and for good reason. To be clear the script was written by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, before it was cast. Keaton apparently questioned whether Inarritu was making fun of him with the script. Wouldn't' you have loved to be a fly on the wall there. Inarritu denied that was the case and Keaton was cast. uhhh Huh. sure. we will go with that. Director Inarritu originally wanted the whole film to be one long take because "real life does not have edits". Sir...sir.. I can personally assure you life is way more fun with edits. I have the life edit app and love it. You should try it. Get the R rated version though its way more fun. Although, the last update had a glitch and I got stuck in an edit doing dishes. Not fun. Anyway, cooler heads prevailed and...