Isle of Never Here

I'm not feeling it, boys.

April didn't have me watching all that much. I'm grateful for Chris picking two films that got me out to the theater. I'll watch movies on my pocket device with the rest of the zombies, but my heart is in a dark room with expensive popcorn and flickering light.

I enjoyed both films, but I don't know that I have anything terribly insightful to say about either one.

Isle of Dogs is charming and good fun. The past couple of decades have given us a large number of family/children's movies. This one is right up there with the best of them. I find myself wanting to make a list...... maybe later.

You Were Never Really There is not a masterpiece. The flashbacks tarnished it for me. This might just be my pet peeve, but these flashbacks seemed like a cheap way to establish meaning in what was otherwise an expert exercise in playing with action tropes. The little girl at the center of it all also seemed more Macguffin than real person. But. But. The score more often than not won me over. The staging and editing are truly terrific. Throughout most of the film, the violence is seen indirectly, implied, or doesn't happen as expected. This is opposite of Refn's violence-as-orgasmic-release. It is violence as steady disruption of terrible reality, moments of focus that exist as blur. What worked for me, and the reason that I left the film feeling overall positive about it despite my complaints mentioned above, was the bold gamble at the end of the film, a moment of direct, fully revealed violence. That this moment comes with success is a lovely statement, maybe one of the truest revelations of mental illness that I've seen on the screen. All gestures are meaningless. It is a beautiful day. This moment is also a continued subtle commentary on the action hero saved through action, in which all is reconciled and restored. All is not reconciled and restored here. It is broken and fragile and it is riding despair..... and yet Ramsay does not end on the violent moment, but on a quiet moment of hope after. I respect that a lot.

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It's been another slow watching month.

I saw The Apartment on TCM. Eh, it's okay.

I re-watched Dead Poets Society. Eh, it's okay.

I watched some stupid late night shows. I fell asleep to the beginning of a couple of movies.

I watched the first episode of the new Lost in Space and thought it was stupid.

That's it. Lame.

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It's my turn to pick for May.

Here are my two picks:

Gemini
Lu Over the Wall

Probably neither one will make it to Regal, but they're both coming to Cinemapolis. I'm hoping to see them both on the same day as a double feature. These two films are by two of the most exciting directors working today. I don't want to miss them.

Crap Car

I watched Cop Car on March 24th.

Then, I forgot to write about it.

I don't have much to say.

Overall, I think that the movie is stupid, but maybe also close to great.

One single sequence from the movie can demonstrate why I think it is stupid.

The sheriff is burying a body in the middle of nowhere.

The kids start up his car.

But the sheriff does not hear the car start. Maybe I'm too used to driving cars with loud exhausts to understand how quiet vehicles are now. It just seemed weird to me that he wouldn't hear a car start and drive off when he was just over the next hill.

I also disliked the kids cursing.

With a few adjustments, including cleaning up the language, slightly taming the violence (and there isn't much of it; the threat of violence and implied violence is more present than actual violence/gore), and tightening up the logic a bit, I could see this being a noir masterpiece. I kept imagining it shot in b&w by John Alton, starring Robert Mitchum. Bacon is no Mitchum, but he does give me a Mitchum vibe in this.

The kids being kids in a world gone bad is the reason this movie sometimes approaches greatness. I just think that it indulges its vices and falls short.