It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Here we are in the height of award season, with the Oscars this Sunday, so before you go to your viewing parties where you dress up in your tuxen and your ballgowns (no?), let’s make sure you have a lot of talking points so you can impress everyone with your knowledge, since I bet only some of you have actually seen all the nominated films. Predictions and thoughts about the actual Oscars will come later this week, but right now we have to talk about all the important movies at length. This year’s crop of Important Films are a touch lackluster, with a whole bunch at a solid B level, maybe B+, but nothing that I’m like THIS IS THE GREAT FILM OF ALL TIME! Thinking on that, is there ever a year where the Best Picture-worthy film is actually that much of a standout? Discuss in the comments! In the meantime, clear your schedule, because to quote the man who should be hosting the ceremony Sunday, “Away…we…go!”

A STAR IS BORN
​THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
BLACKkkLANSMAN
BLACK PANTHER
BLINDSPOTTING
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
CRAZY RICH ASIANS
DUMPLIN’
THE FAVOURITE
GREEN BOOK
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
JULIET, NAKED
LIFE ITSELF
MAMMA MIA: HERE WE GO AGAIN!
MARY POPPINS RETURNS
ROMA
SET IT UP
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE
TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE
VICE
​THE WIFE 

A STAR IS BORN

I usually wouldn’t use the ‘a’ to determine where to put a title in alphabetical order but I’m doing it here because this movie is too good to not start this list. Putting it all the way down with the S’s??? The horror. “A Star is Born” is one of the best and most important movies of the year, or at least it was three months ago and should have kept its momentum, so mes babies, we are starting here.

Once upon a time, Bradley Cooper ‘let himself go’ but in a Hollywood way so he was all scruffy and drunk but still the handsomest man to ever pick up a gosh darn gee-tar in Amurka. But man he was drunk. A much beloved country star, he played large arenas full of people who couldn’t wait to hear his surprisingly decent, vocal-coach-deepened voice. One night Bradley, or, to use another first-name-last-name, Jackson, was so drunk that he went to a drag bar, where a very talented girl named Lady Gaga sang a very uncomfortable rendition of “La Vie en Rose” while John Laurens/Philip Schuyler befriended Jackson because famous musicians love making random friends in bars. Gaga’s performance was very awkward because she lies down and crawls on the bar, which is forking disgusting, like SO GROSS do you know what is on that bar, ugh it’s probably so sticky, and none of those men wash their hands after the bathroom and then they eat the peanuts from the shared bowl, ugh I’m gonna gag, but she sounded great and Jackson is like, “whoa. Whoa girl, whoa. Not only are you so brave for laying on this Petri dish of a bar, but you can sang. Ima make you sing this song you just wrote in a PARKING LOT that’s somehow the BEST SONG EVER at my next show in front of thousands of people and you are going to be a big star.” A big star is going to be born, DO YOU GET IT, he said to her in his drunken stupor.

So Jackson has his driver (who he knows because the driver used to work for the CIA and be amaaaazing fighting Arvin Sloane with his friend Jenny Garner who was randomly friends with Jackson even though she ended up forcing him to join witness protection like SO SAD ugh and the driver fell in love but then his love died because her father was obsessed with ancient magical artists like it’s all such an interesting mess but anyway that’s how Jackson found his former-CIA driver like pretty good gig you got going now, catering to an alcoholic I mean dreams don’t last forever I guess) pick Gaga up at her house, where she lives with ANDREW DICE CLAY, and Dice says to the driver DO YOU WANT TO HEAR A NURSERY RHYME and the driver’s like I JUST WANNA PLAY FOOTBALL JERRY, so Gaga, or Allie, because that’s a special enough name for a lead character in a big movie, sure, goes to Jackson’s concert and BELTS HER FORKING FACE OFF about how much she likes swimming or something and if that song doesn’t win ALL the awards this year, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do – I’m gonna bitch and moan like an impotent jerk about it.  

I mean honestly it’s the forking best. Let’s listen to it a dozen times before we move on.

Allie becomes a sensation because everyone at the concert obviously recorded her and Buzzfeed was probably like ‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened at Jackson Maine’s Concert Last Night!’ and all they did was publish someone else’s video footage and yet someone on their staff got paid for it??? and gets to call themselves a journalist and get verified on twitter?? Jackson helps Allie become a huge star by having her tour with him and then she is super hot and record labels want to sign her and she performs on SNL and gets boxed into a weird pop star persona because no one knows what to do with great singers who don’t wear ugly revealing clothes and have pink hair. She quickly gets so famous, like stand on a balcony and see your own face on a billboard famous, but the higher she rises the lower Jackson falls because people function like the scales of justice and he’s still an alcoholic, remember, and he punches his perfectly cast brother Sam Elliot man alive he’s the best ever and they should have used him more. So Jackson tries rehab but it doesn’t really take and while Allie’s star is on the rise, he’s struggling with his addiction and then DAVE CHAPPELLE gives him a talking to and is like ‘Jacks, man, let me see this girl of yours’ and Jackson is like ‘okay I’ll get her’ and Dave Chappelle is like ‘she gon be a real dog!’ and then he’s like ‘oh no she’s fine, oh she fine!’ and then decides to marry Jackson and Allie together which is really what was missing from ‘You’ve Got Mail’, a wedding officiated by Dave Chappelle, but anyway there’s more addiction problems and star birthing and sads and happies and amazing music and even though there is one of the SADDEST scenes of a dog in cinematic history and they should have shown Sam Elliot taking care of the doggo after that just to make all of us feel better about the most important character’s (the dog) fate, I still loved it and cried. Also Bradley directed it too, which is very impressive yay Philly go eagles.

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

I honestly had no intention of including this decent Netflix movie on this list, but the incredibly surprising Oscar nominations it received have changed the situation. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a misleading title for a movie that is actually six different Old West vignettes, with the titular Ballad and star Buster Scruggs only in the first one. And that’s a sad fact, because that’s the best one. The weird dark humor of the Coen brothers is best showcased in that first vignette, with lots of shootouts and lots of uncomfortable silliness. Tim Blake Nelson is at his absolute best as a really amiable silly cowboy who happens to be a ruthless marksman who loves shootin’ up saloons in big time shoot ‘em ups. This opening vignette turns this dusty old genre into a dark comedy that is full of laugh-out-loud and then umm-what moments, exactly what they were going for and what Seth McFarlane couldn’t accomplish.
​
But after Tim Blake’s opening act, the rest of the five fail to live up to his example.  None of the rest is really funny, maybe because everyone and everything else is pretty dreary, whereas TBN had that perfect chipper attitude that lifted the material. The second one starts out promisingly, with Stephen Root dodging James Franco’s (we’re letting him in movies again? cool cool cool less than one year is definitely a long enough time to learn your lesson cool guys) bullets by wearing a suit of cooking pans, but then that story goes nowhere. It’s not suuuper fun to watch people hang from trees trying to keep their horse from moving otherwise they’d go full hang, kinda stressful, kinda stressful. The third story takes the whole shebang into the truly depressing category as we watch Liam Neeson, who is currently Having A Bad Problem With Racism, as he travels from small town to small town with the mean cousin from Harry Potter, the chubby boy who tortures Harry at home but here he’s lost all his baby fat AND all his limbs. Liam shows him off in these cold mountain towns as a great orator, reciting famous works for small crowds who are like ‘wow who knew you could talk so good with no arms or legs, hey, where’s your legs?’ and they share the measly profits and Liam has to feed the boy and it’s all pretty depressing but then it gets MUCH WORSE when Liam gets tired of this act and chooses a potentially more profitable one and since this boy would just be a drain on his resources and he has no ties to him he just straight gets rid of him and you’re like fuuuuuuck why am I watching this? Just remembering this story can make your heart sink as much as that stone Liam used to test the river’s depth before he MURDERED a DISABLED BOY. And you’re like oh I guess they used all the humor up already!

The fourth story is a little happier because it’s Tom Waits, yes that Tom Waits, as a grizzled gold prospector who finds the MOST beautiful place in America, all pristine creeks and green hills and deer and just untouched mountain beauty, and then he destroys it trying to find gold, but you’re like eh you’re Tom Waits, we’ll give you a pass this once. But then after all his hard work some young upstart tries to steal what’s his and you’re like noo and upstart is like yesss and Waits is like I NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS and things go as you’d expect and the earth is destroyed worse now. It’s probably the second best vignette of the six.

The fifth story is forking depressing again because poor Zoe Kazan cannot catch a g-d break, not that you expected her to because she’s on the freaking OREGON TRAIL and you just know either her oxen will die or she’ll get dysentery so you just wait for the bad thing to happen but she’s so sweet that you don’t want anything bad to happen and the Curly to her trail party is cute and likes her even though she looks like a sister wife and you want things to go nicely but they won’t. I mean first of all her brother dies which I guess he had coming because her brother was Jefferson Mays and if you know him you know he dies a lot, especially in Broadway shows where he should have won the Tony, I’m sorry NPH but he should have, because he played 7 or 8 different amazing characters in one musical and they all died by the hand of the guy who took Steven Pasquale’s Tony nom spot like ugh are you serious Steven should have won the Tony maybe but he didn’t even get nominated?? but anyway Zoe’s brother is always amazing and yeah his character sucked in this but like I said, then he dies. And Zoe has to Oregon Trail by herself but with a dog and NOBODY on this trip treats this dog with the dignity and respect he deserves and no one seems to even squee over it? so maybe they all deserved to die.

The last vignette had forking Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson and it was still utter tosh. Were they dead the whole time? do you only get to the afterlife after a long bumpy carriage ride with gross people? does anyone care? no. ​

BLACKKKLANSMAN

Many thanks to Spike Lee for coming through with a movie that’s relevant right now and makes us reflect forlornly without resorting to abject despair in the plot. We get enough of that in real life so it was nice that all the shit that we expected to happen to the nice characters didn’t. We know it absolutely definitely would have been entirely shitty in real life today but it was a surprising treat to enjoy a bit of escapism for a hot second.

BlacKkKlansman, in addition to torturing copy editors (not that we have those anymore), exists on the assumption that white supremacists and the KKK are bad, which is a novel approach to life today, and what’s more it says that not all cops are also white supremacists, which like, wow, wow guys. It was refreshing to live for a few hours in a cinematic world that agreed with this assumption and didn’t try to argue that there were good people on both sides. Racists are bad, especially the racists who want to kill minorities. I know, what a treat.

This film brings us to 1970s Colorado, bell-bottoms and all, back when I guess some cops tried to do good things instead of bad things, and a new hire in the Colorado Springs Police Department is eager to help his town and his country be best. Ron Stallworth, the newest detective, decides to take on the KKK for his first big project, which ya know, balls and everything. Funny thing though, he’s black, which they would frown upon, so his interaction with the local KKK chapter is strictly telephone-based, with Ron doing his best white man voice, lots of sharp r’s and nasal vowels. Adam Driver’s Flip Zimmerman, Not a Real Name, pretends to be Ron in person, going to actual KKK meetings and having to act like he also hates blacks and Jews, when in truth he doesn’t (former) and is one (latter). What fun hijinks will this situation get our friendly neighborhood cops into? What about when David Duke himself decides to pay a visit to Colorado Springs to get away from his redneck dad and his too-tall ginger girlfriend? Will the KKK grand wizard be sorted into Slytherin? Will he realize that Adam Driver doesn’t sound like Ron Stallworth at all? Or will Duke be too distracted thinking about how the ginger girlfriend became a criminal les bean and then the next girlfriend (the princess one) turned out to be a phone sex operator? More like girlfiends, am I right Dave?

I was nervous the entire time watching this movie that things were going to go terribly wrong for our heroes, as you’d expect. I was way more nervous than John David Washington’s Ron appeared to be, probably because he was like ‘my daddy’s Denzel everything’s gonna be cool.’ So he was fine but I was tense, waiting for the Nazi punks to beat up Flip because they see the Jew nose; waiting for the friendly neighborhood klansmen to kill Ron’s girlfriend because she dared, she dared, speak/be in public; waiting for Ron’s coworkers to shoot him because they are cops and he is black. But huzzah, none of that happened and instead of all the bad things I feared, the horrible white man’s car blows up and you’re like YES WHAT OH MAN! and the white lady goes to jail?? I didn’t see that coming and I must say I really enjoyed it. You know if she lived to see today she would have been all over Twitter for calling the cops on a black person shopping at the grocery store for ‘looking suspicious’ but instead of trending as #SupermarketSusie or whatever, she jailed! High five! Spike Lee held that tension so masterfully that you never felt safe enough to relax, and just when you think you can – at the end – he does the gut punch with real news footage of that asshole toilet baby president and the hero Heather Heyer and you realize, oh yeah I can’t relax, ever, until the USA stops with the fascism. But yay good movies! A lot of people think that using real footage of today as the epilogue was too heavy handed and those people are probably the ones who needed to see it. Also I didn’t know this was a true story because I went to public school in America and the only black person the government lets you learn about is Rosa Parks because all she did was speak up to a bus driver who probably didn’t get paid a lot and the U.S. gov hates poor people anyway. ​

BLACK PANTHER

A long long time ago in a country called Africa, a meteorite crashed or maybe aliens dropped off a super important sort of metal to see what the silly humans would do with it, you know, for kids, and African tribes fought over it because everyone loves surprise gifts from space, no reason to fear that and so they were all like fight fight fight but then one wild and crazy guy ate a plant that the new metal affected and he got superhero powers and became the first Black Panther, which is when I realized that this movie isn’t about just one special superhero? there’s more than one Black Panther? and it’s not like a gift from the universe but it’s from eating a plant? I eat plants all the time bitches where are my powers! That’s kind of stupid! Anyone can eat the plant and be a superhero?? Why aren’t they using this to promote Veganuary more? So the first black panther, of many I guess, which just like okay whatever, I guess you’re all special still but not as special, he united all the warring tribes to become the kingdom of Wakanda and they name the special metal vibranium, because it’s what’s used to make those foot-gloves that minimalists love but like I have flat feet so miss me with them, and they use it to advance their society but they hide it all from the rest of the world because they’ve earned their time to be selfish.
 
Fast forward a few thousand years to the ‘90s and we are in Oakland whaaaat is Daveed around? and the latest Black Panther/King of Wakanda visits his brother and another dude and the brother’s kid is watching and the latest BP is like ‘bro, you stealing from us?’ and the brother is like ‘nah man’ and King is like ‘yeah yar bro’ and the friend is like ‘yeah he is king’ and the little boy is watching and you’re like, this is going to come back. But then we finally get to present day and we see Wakanda and it is AWESOME. It’s all shiny and space-age and it looks sooo clean. It’s what estate agents would describe as high-spec. The king from the ‘90s has died so it’s time for his son, T’Challa (a fantastic name to which the only suitable response is ‘holla’ said like Robin de Jesus in ‘In the Heights’), to become king and the next Black Panther because being a superhero is inherited just as bullshit monarchic titles are. So everyone is all excited for the coronation and they get his girlfriend Lupita Nyong’o, who is like a pretty badass spy and seems pretty superheroey in her own right and maybe deserves her own movie about all her badassery, out of a dangerous-looking mission and they tell his little sister who was in the biggest movies of 2018 to get her science all geared up and then his mom comes out and she’s freaking ANGELA BASSETT and everyone’s prettay, prettay excited but ya know still mourning. Oh and Forest Whitaker is the Overseer of the Weird Magic Plant, which I think is simply called the heart-shaped herb, like they don’t have a real name for it, and Forest does an excellent job taking care of the plant and is so good and loyal that he doesn’t even try it for himself to maybe fix that eye or something, he is so trustworthy but honestly let the man try it, he seems so nice.
 
The whole coronation ceremony of the king is on cliffs by the water and it looks so beautiful and it’s all going nicely until you realize THE DUMBEST part of this entire story – that literally anyone can challenge the ruler to the throne BY FIGHTING TO THE DEATH. There’s NO way a society that advanced and with trains that defy gravity would still be deciding who freaking rules the kingdom by a contest of might. I mean inheriting titles is dumb enough nonsense but adding to that a strength contest?? THERE IS NO WAY, nooooo wayyyyy the most advanced scientific society would let their entire future and well-being and everything be put in the hands of whoever is the strongest and most blood-thirsty. Man alive. Or not-alive, as it were.
 
If you get past that, it’s a very fun and awesome movie even though you see Michael B. Jordan come onscreen and you’re sooo excited and you’re all HEY MIKEY B and you’re pumped to see your best good friend but then he’s BAD! And you’re like MIKEY NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! WHY YOU BAD? But he keeps being bad! Even though you yell at the screen and cry because you love him so and you can’t understand why he’s being so bad! Then you find out his name is Killmonger and you’re like, oh, oh okay maybe we’re on a break, and maybe it’s good they didn’t try to name that magic herb too. And the trains, my god the trains, they move so fast with none of that dragon noise that the London tubes create. Elon Musk saw this movie and was like ‘I can do that’ and so he tried to do it but only for Tesla owners who really like dangerously small tunnels and moving super slowly and it sucks that the b.s. he created is the closest thing we have to Wakandan technology. ​

BLINDSPOTTING

One of the biggest shames in cinema history is that Lionsgate bought this movie. They should have let a different studio buy it, one that was actually going to treat it with the respect it deserves. Imagine what Netflix, for example, would have done with this masterpiece, akin to what they’re doing for Roma. A good streaming service wouldn’t need to do what a studio like Lionsgate did, which is assume from the start that a film so arty and ethnic (to use the movie industry’s words) wouldn’t make money, and so they decided not to invest any money in its marketing, dooming it to poor business and low awareness for awards season. It’s a damn shame, because Blindspotting is the movie that people want Green Book to be. People keep pushing and voting for Green Book thinking it’s an important film about race relations and something white people need to see today with all the shit going on, and while it’s a great movie (see below), it is a feel-good racism movie made especially for white people to enjoy and say yayyyy I’m not racist! Blindspotting is the real deal. This is the actual difficult representation of (some aspects of) racism today and it’s brutal and honest and brilliant, and everyone who thinks they are doing a good deed by promoting Green Book’s message should have been promoting this.
 
Blindspotting is the brainchild of Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, who co-wrote and star. Daveed plays Colin, a man who served time in prison and is nearing the end of his year-long probation. You feel with every second in this movie the tension that he must have been drowning in – the expectation that something bad was going to happen to destroy his chance of freedom. He begins the story with just 3 days to get through without incident, 3 days till probation is lifted, but as a black man in Oakland, he is asking for police to fork him over just by existing. It doesn’t help that his best friend, Casal’s Miles, is the most volatile, violent man you’ve ever seen, and that just hanging around Miles is sure to bring unwanted drama Colin’s way. And it doesn’t help that Miles is white, so he’ll probably get away with whatever might go down while parties and police will blame Colin, a black man.
 
Colin seems like a really nice, even-tempered, thoughtful man, so early on you angrily assume he was probably unjustly sent to prison and you get more frustrated at the criminal justice system’s inherent racism. But brilliantly, the movie doesn’t deal in easy extremes for too long. They could have left it with Colin being some amazing guy who was treated wrongly, as some paradigm of good behavior who got dealt an unfair hand, but that would have made it too easy for audiences, especially white audiences, to feel that he deserves better because he’s ‘one of the good ones.’ The real challenge, and the real genius move of the movie, is to ask us to still feel that he deserves better even if he did bad shit. No one is perfect, and as we’ve seen with every bit of news coverage of every black man killed by police, any mistake the victim has ever made will be used to try to justify his murder. This film forces us to confront that racist bias and to still find the system and the fear Colin faces wrong and unfair even after we see that he deserved to go to prison, that he isn’t some perfect nice guy who never did anything wrong. He did do something wrong, he did deserve punishment, but that punishment shouldn’t include being fearful of his life every second that he’s out in the world just because of his skin color. What seems like a semi-straightforward look at racism turns into a complicated and sober portrayal of the lack of freedom that we’ve all helped sow in our society and the inherent bias in our analysis of it.
 
Although I was literally shaking the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s not all nerve-wracking tension. Well it is, but there are funny moments, like when the wonderful Tisha Campbell-Martin yells at Miles to get out of her salon and it turns into a hilarious mini-rant about suspense films. I hope I one day have the opportunity to scream about some ‘M SHAMAL NIGHT NONSENSE.’ There are tiny moments of respite, like seeing Miles’s family (Jasmine Cephas Jones and their adorable son). And more than that, there are brilliant moments that will tear you apart, like one particular moment with Miles’s family that will have you breathless and shaking with fear. And, above all, there are moments of genius like Daveed’s rap as he breaks down in the final scene. I know I raved on and on about ‘Shallow’ in the first review, and I sing that song nonstop in real life, but honestly, the best ‘song’of the year is this spoken word devastation of modern society that Daveed unleashes from the very core of his soul. This movie is on Obama’s list of his faves of the year, so be like Obama and see this and tell everyone you know about how amazing it is. THIS REVIEW ISN’T FUNNY BECAUSE IT’S TRUE.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Bohemian Rhapsody wins the runner-up prize for the award most important to me this season: Movie With The Most Offensive Teeth Prosthetics. The winner, of course, is Felicity Jones with her horrible fake buck teeth to play Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex”, which is a bad title and it’s FORKING OFFENSIVE to have her wear buck teeth to play the g-d queen of the world because RBG doesn’t have buck teeth so it just looks ridiculous like a rabbit instead of a real person who exists and who is responsible for saving the world because NO ONE ELSE WILL and whose teeth no one cares about! Seriously what were they thinking? RBG’s teeth are unremarkable, so to make it the focal point of Felicity’s appearance is just plain WEIRD and RUDE. I want to punch everyone who had a hand in that. There is no good reason for it and everyone involved should be ashamed and I refuse to see that movie because it’s disrespectful to the queen. At least Freddie Mercury’s teeth are important to his story – according to the movie, the extra/big teeth forced extra space in his jaw, which lets him belt those crazy high notes. I’m going to accept this as canon whether or not it’s true because at least it gives a reason for the teeth and otherwise having to stare at Rami Malek looking hella weird for two hours would have been pointless and I cannot accept that I suffered that discomfort for no good reason.
 
Okay I’m done talking about teeth.
 
So Rami Malek, taking a break from hacking everything (p.s. I’m at least a season behind on Mr. Robot so no spoilsies (actually am I going to catch up? I might be over it)), is like I’m gonna be a superstar, so he joins this regular-seeming college band and is like ‘you need me I’m an amazing singer’ and he auditions for them in a parking lot (what’s with all the musical movies this year having critical moments in parking lots? should we forget everything we learned as children and start hanging out in them?) and they’re like, shit, yeah, you are, and we’re like omg he really was. He being, of course, Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen and best Live-Aid performer ever and all around superstar and master belter. But once he was just a lil boy named Farrokh with big bad teeth (okay now I’m done) living in England, trying to get his fam bam to support his dreams of being a rock star (I mean hard sell) but apparently without actually singing for them to prove to them a la Rita Louise Watson and Sheryl Lee Ralph that he could make it, so all he hears from his parents instead is SINGING DOES NOT PAY THE BILLS. SINGING DOES NOT PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE. But he joins that college band with Brian May (Friend to Animals and Haver of Big Hair) and John Deacon (sweet-looking squish nose face) and Roger Taylor (bad kid from Mighty Ducks 2) and they make amazing music pretty quickly and seem to be on the easy road to success. Yay for them!! Is that how easy it is to be a rock star? Why didn’t I do it?
 
But then the worst part of the movie happens: The head of EMI records is played by Mike Myers, and the movie immediately becomes tasteless kitsch. They could have made a movie about Queen and Freddie and called it Bohemian Rhapsody and NOT blatantly mentioned the head-banging scene in Wayne’s World. We all would have been fine. We all would still know and love that scene in Wayne’s World. But instead, they decided to crack through the confines of this film’s universe and try to have a laugh with the audience instead of retaining any semblance of professionalism or gravitas. Was it worth it? Was it worth it to laugh with us? YOU COULDN’T EVEN SEE US. And maybe it would have been fine if it was just that Mike Myers had a small role, and people who thought about it could have been like ‘ohhh that’s kind of clever, because of Wayne’s world,’ but instead of leaving it as something for us to figure out and either ignore or think is cute, they literally have his character say that this is not a song that kids in cars will bang their heads to. Are you KIDDING ME WITH THIS NONSENSE? WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS FUNNY? I CANNOT WITH THIS.
 
If you can get past this utterly cringeworthy casting and scene, then it’s an okay movie because of Rami Malek’s performance. Rami is very moving as Freddie through all his struggles as a gay man with AIDS who couldn’t forking trust ANYONE around him because they were all HORRIBLE people especially that asshole chauffeur from Downton Abbey like GO BACK TO IRELAND YOU JACKWAGON and stop using poor Freddie! Rami spends a lot of his time telling people to stop calling him a Paki boy before he figures out who the important people to keep in his life are, which naturally include his bandmates and his girlfriend-turned-best friend-turned-inheritor-of-his-property Mary Austin played by the person who is now his real girlfriend so that’s weird/cute/mostly weird after seeing this movie. But as much as I love Brian May for being an aforementioned Friend to Animals, he kept this movie from being as good as it could have been because he had editorial control. You cannot make a true, critical film about a real story when the characters in the story have forking editorial control. Just ask The Cher Show. So this movie is kind of like the nice version of everything and it makes the bandmates look hella great, obviously, because THEY HAD CONTROL, and then you realize that Bryan Singer, Pedo and Abuser, is making endless millions from its success and you’re like just gahhhhhhhh. Yes it ended up being a fine movie and it will make you want to watch Queen’s Live Aid performance the way The Disaster Artist made you want to watch The Room (well in a very different way) but it stinks that the success of this means that we will never get a better, truer, realer Freddie Mercury biopic.

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

When did Sookie St. James become one of our best dramatic actresses? She keeps getting better and forcing me to forgive her for how G-D ANNOYING she was when she was supposed to be on bed rest and Luke selflessly volunteered to run the kitchen at the Inn and she wouldn’t leave him alone and she didn’t believe that he strained the sauce twice and overall she was horrible to him and he was such a nice boy. Oh we’re talking about Melissa McCarthy; if you don’t know who Sookie is I feel bad for you, son. In Can You Ever Forgive Me?, she has lost her recent glamorous makeover and is faaaarumpy. Playing real-life biographer Lee Israel and proving that being a semi-well-known writer does not equate to financial/personal/any kind of success, Melissa McCarthy plays caustic like nobody’s biz. Yes she’s a huge beeyotch and yes she’s as depressing as she is (probably) depressed and yes she is rude to everyone around her, but man alive if she isn’t channeling the female version of Larry David at times! You know like when you watch Curb and you’re like ‘jesus Larry is such a jerk…but he’s also right…’ that’s how I felt about Lee at times. A jerk, but right, like when she hilariously yells at her agent (the great ignorant slut Jane Curtin) after pretending to be Nora Ephron (my favorite bit). Who doesn’t love being right!
 
What she isn’t right about is breaking the law, even though hers is a crime with no real victim. I mean I’m not saying I would ever forge documents or commit any sort of crime; I even think more things should be crimes, like smoking a cigarette anywhere near me. But when Lee decides to use her writing talent and wit to channel other, more famous, more deceased writers and sell their ‘original signed personal letters’ to rare book shops and collectors, it seems like the perfect crime. She’s making enough money to pay the rent on her shitty apartment, which is in NYC on 82nd Street but because this was 1991 it probably cost $200 or something infuriating. She can finally pay for medicine for her poor sick cat. (Animal lovers be warned: The cat dies. It is sad. Every movie should come with a warning about the pets.) She nails each individual writer’s voice and creates correspondence between friends that reveals a fun, intriguing bit of their personalities, like having Fanny Brice joke that she owes her newest grandson more inheritance so he can fix the nose she gave him. She’s adding creativity and joy into the world!  These letters bring joy to the shop buyers! And then they bring joy to the collectors who buy them from the bookshop buyers and then they bring joy to the rich people who buy from the collectors who buy from the shops I mean Marie Kondo would be giddy about all this joy. And honestly, if it was never exposed that they were fakes, what’s the harm? It’s like, someone once told me that museums take famous paintings off of display for cleaning or security or whatever reason and replace them with a copy. I don’t know if this is true but if it was, who’s getting hurt? What if they did this with the Mona Lisa and there was a chance I never actually saw the Mona Lisa (although this would be quite extraordinary considering how many times I’ve been dragged to that damn Louvre (someone stole my sunglasses there and I am still upset)). But honestly, what’s the problem if I never know?
 
With Lee’s newfound creative outlet, she opens herself up enough to having a new friend, her first in a pretty long time from the looks of it. Richard E. Grant plays Jack, occasional coke dealer, probable vagrant, forever life of the party, who Lee once met at a stuffy book party when he got so drunk that he peed in the coat closet instead of the toilet, all over all these people’s fur coats. I am with them in deeming this a triumph; furs are disgusting. The friendship they forge while both struggling to sort out their shit is lovely, since they both clearly needed a friend to count on, but worrisome, since bonding amid criminal activity cannot end well. Grant is such a presence in this film, and with such star power, that it is mind-boggling that he’s not a bigger star, and that I know him best from Spiceworld. That’s on the movie industry, not me. I hope that after this he is in everything.
 
Anyway so I guess I was wrong about forging old letters being nbd because people cared that they paid lots of money for things that turned out to be fake so they do what white people tend to do and call the cops to complain about their little problems, and the FBI gets involved, which sucks for Lee but is great for people committing worse crimes, diverting the attention of the federales and all. I found the ending a little twee, when Lee realizes that she needs to improve her life by writing in her own voice, which leads her to write THIS STORY WE’RE WATCHING. That overly tidy wrap-up of the final 5 minutes felt too easy compared with the rest of the supremely efficient and compelling film. It’s kind of what I fear Jane the Virgin will end on, like OH DIP she was writing this! the story we’re watching! Feels like a cop-out. At least here it’s true.
 
But aside from my quibble with the portrayal of actual facts, this film is very fun to watch and it feels like a universal sort of story despite being about such a specific time in one person’s life. Nicole Holefcener’s screenplay moves along with ease and confidence, which is no surprise given that she’s one of the most consistent screenwriters of the old-school fashion and that she wrote this along with Jeff Whitty, Tony winner for Avenue Q. More than being about one sad, pathetic woman’s quest to make a quick buck, Lee’s story is really about two major, entirely discrete issues: 1. Her crippling loneliness, that she plays off as anger and hate towards everyone else, including eventually Jack, her only friend. 2. The difficulties of being a writer, which McCarthy portrays so convincingly. There’s a reason she commits this particular crime instead of finding literally any other way to make money. It’s a way for her to write without a chance of inviting personal critique, to hide behind other voices while still getting to create. And every time someone bought one of her works, it was validating her writing skills in a way that invited absolutely zero criticism. That’s a forking difficult kind of praise to voluntarily end when it doesn’t seem like anyone is getting hurt, and McCarthy made that clear without having to say a word about it. For a film about forgery, it’s impressively accurate. ​

CRAZY RICH ASIANS

HOW FUN WAS THIS MOVIE! This movie was so flinging flanging fun that it made me forget for a lil bit that extreme wealth is patently immoral! I hope the sequels deal with that! Nevertheless, this introduction to the world of the disgustingly rich was bubble gum perfection. Do people in first class really fly like that?? They have full size beds? Is that a real thing? And showers?? I may cry. When I flew to Singapore I sat squeezed in next to a lady who screamed at flight attendants for not having the food she wanted (she didn’t even order a special meal she just wanted DIFFERENT FOOD).
 
So Crazy Rich Asians, probably one of my top 3 most rewatchable movies of the year (I’ve already watched Set It Up four times), is about this adorable Chinese-American gal named Constance Wu who is just the best and the cutest and apparently also the smartest because she is an economics professor even though she looks 20 yet is older than me because even though this is suuuper racist (I’m gonna share it anyway because it’s my favorite) it’s still fact.
 
Okay so Constance – I forget what her name was and have to google, hold please – Rachel! Of course! Rachel is dating this dreamy dreamboat named Nick and they are all in love and stuff but he is hiding the fact that he’s supes famous and supes rich but like so rich that they need a new word for it because rich is not enough to describe the money he is able to throw around. His fam bam is like Bezos level, okay, and he was HIDING it from her. Which like cute for a romcom and for movie drama but not cute in real life, NOT CUTE. If someone I thought I knew and loved sprung that lil tidbit on me I would flip the fork out and be like HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME ABOUT SUCH A HUGE PART OF YOUR LIFE AND YOUR FAMILY AND HOW DARE YOU GUYS AMASS THAT MUCH WEALTH AND NOT USE SO MUCH MORE OF IT TO DO GOOD THINGS DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO CAN’T AFFORD FOOD RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER FROM YOUR TOWNHOUSE IN NYC YOU COULD USE JUST A FRACTION OF YOUR FORTUNE TO SAVE THE GODDAMN WORLD OR AT LEAST ONE HOMELESS PERSON HOW VERY VERY DARE YOU ALSO BUY ME THE POWDER BLUE GOWN RACHEL WEARS TO THE WEDDING GODDAMMIT BECAUSE IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I’d say that. But since it’s a romcom Rachel finds out when she is in the aforementioned first class bed that probably had incredible pillows that you like just sink into, le sigh, so she couldn’t be mad. First of all she was too comfortable to be mad, and secondly where was she gonna go, Economy Plus? Girl she has tasted the good life and she ain’t never going back.
 
I went to Singapore a year ago and had the best time even though I couldn’t bring my spearmint Orbit with me, but I’ve never seen anything like the excess of luxury and wealth and overall gross/amazing overindulgence on display here. It’s fun to watch, yet a real argument for higher taxes for these jabronies. 70% is too low. Every bit of the movie was perfectly created. Amazing new faces to make into huge superstars? Check. Small role for Ken Jeong because he is best in small doses? Check. Casting amazing newcomer Awkwafina in the funniest role? Check. Michelle Yeoh? Crouching tiger hidden check. Amazing clothes? Check. Bachelor and bachelorette parties that are literally my nightmare with all the helicoptering to unknown locations and all the damn bitches being bitches and would have had me calling the cops even though ACAB? Check. I love this forking movie. And I am hoping so g-d hard that the sequels have Rachel being like ‘WAIT, Nick, hold your darn perfect face there just for a second – if you have enough money to waste on an entire synchronized swimming team to perform at our engagement party in a pool hotel without even a hesitation about how wasteful it is, maybe we should use all that cash for better purposes, like literally anything would be better, name something and I guarantee it’s less wasteful than that. Also send that blue gown to the person writing this.’
 
The only other thing about this movie that really bothers me, and I mean really bothers me so much that I FEEL RAGE AND FLAMES, FLAAAMES, ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE, is really a problem I have with the Screen Actors Guild and not so much this movie per se. As you know, the SAG Awards give their big award not to Best Picture but to the Best Ensemble of a movie, so all the main characters get nominated and get to win awards if their movie is the favorite that year. It’s a fun system but they keep the number of cast members relatively low to avoid the nonsense that would be the Best Ensemble Tony Award that people keep floating around but that is another story. Anyway, the list of nominated cast members for this year’s SAGs did NOT include: Rachel’s mother, who had one of the most important and emotional roles; the silly boy cousin who was HILARIOUS and in it a surprising amount; or the friends whose wedding it was – YET, it included Harry Shum, Jr. Like from Glee. Oh, are you saying ‘wait, I don’t remember seeing Harry Shum in this movie…?’ YEAH ME NEITHER. It’s because he WASN’T. He was in a scene after the credits but I had to pee and ALSO this WASN’T A GODDAMN SUPERHERO MOVIE SO WHO KNEW YOU HAD TO STAY FOR THE CREDITS CAN WE STOP INCLUDING PARTS OF MOVIES AFTER THE MOVIE HAS ENDED FUCKING HELL, anyway, Harry was in that 10 second scene in the credits and he DIDN’T SAY A WORD, just looked at Gemma Chan because she is the most beautiful person ever (I get that his role is crucial in the book sequels and obviously they were hinting at how he’ll be a major player in the sequels but that doesn’t affect this one!!!!) and HE GOT A SAG NOMINATION FOR IT. Yes I am actually screaming, it is so unfair to cousin Oliver and Rachel’s mom and the doctor who fucked up Jonah Hill and Emma Stone. See, SAG only lets actors be nominated if their name is listed alone in the opening credits. You know how sometimes you see lesser known names onscreen and they show them two at a time instead of like the bigger names that are shown alone? Well those names that get doubled up don’t get to be nominated because SAG has some forking stupid nonsense rules, and since Harry’s name was shown alone, he got in over people who were actually in the movie. THROW IT ALL OUT AND START OVER, HUMANS. ​

DUMPLIN’

I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to make a child-beauty pageant movie that wasn’t gross and pedo-y and that I actually super enjoyed but that’s what Dumplin’ went ahead and did. I know you’re like ‘why is this movie on this list’ but wait till you see what else is on here. It’s a great Netflix movie, full of heart and nice lessons about acceptance and body positivity and also lots of Dolly Parton. And best of all, it has Jennifer Aniston as a semi-frigid (semifreddo?) bitch mother, as I’m sure Rachel would have ended up being to Emma because, let’s face it, she was still kind of a spoiled brat by the end of the series too. Anyway so Dumplin’ is about this bright sunshiney girl named Willowdean and yes you can tell right away she lives in The South because you cannot say that name without a southern twang. Willowdean has nice friends and a cute love interest but her mother Janiston is a real pill, a former beauty queen whose entire adult life still revolves around the pageant world. She’s the type that finds it a personal affront that the universe gave her a fat daughter who isn’t anything like your typical beauty queen. In an attempt to show her mother and her town what she’s made of – and maybe subconsciously to find a way to bond with her mother – Willowdean decides to enter the pageant, and she inspires other unconventional girls to follow suit, except not really because the others are conventionally attractive (Mila’s little sister?) and/or ready to fall in line with all the pageant expects of them. There’s a lot you need to just accept and not question, including 1) how gross it is to have minors (or anyone really) do beauty pageants, 2) that the ‘local drag queens’ would give a shit about a few teenagers and help them prep, and 3) that Dove Cameron wouldn’t be singing as her talent. (Who the fuck twirls a baton anymore?) But it’s a happy, lovely little movie that I recommend. ​

THE FAVOURITE

Yorgos gonna Yorgos, amiright?? A few years ago, director Yorgos Lanthimos made a bigger name for himself with his critically acclaimed bananas movie ‘The Lobster’ (read my thoughts here nb this was before we learned how to do internal links) after he made even more bananas movies (like Dogtooth and Alps) and has been attracting stellar talent to his ludicrousmas parties ever since because he might produce work that is beyond weird and cray balls but at least he has vision (until Rachel Weisz in The Lobster). With The Favourite, Yorgos took a straightforward period piece about Queen Anne that the lady screenwriter created and he said, hmm, I wanna direct this movie but we MUST MAKE IT WEIRD! So Yorgos found a second screenwriter to help rewrite to nail the wacky dark comical tone he wanted. And thank goodness he did, because who on earth wants another straightforward historical epic? Yorgos’s changes to this film and his making it unique and fun are why The Favourite is straight killing it this awards season while no one saw Mary Queen of Scots. (Noooo one.) He brought back two of his favorites, Olivia Colman and Weisz, and they all went. to. town.
 
The Favourite tells of the court of Queen Anne, who ruled Great Britain after her sister Mary and Mary’s husband William of Orange (William & Mary you know those guys) reigned. William & Mary came to the throne due to the Glorious Revolution which is when English Parliamentarians and general non-Catholics were like overthrow the kiiiing plz, the king being James II, Mary’s (and Anne’s) father, which must have been suuuuuuper awkward at Thanksgiving. The overthrow came about because Jimmy Dos was Catholic and England was like ‘nooo me wants everyone to be prottttestant again I hates when people aren’t protttttestant’ so William & Mary were like make me a college and get us on that throne! and they fought her dad and Anne was just like ‘ok, let’s play cards’ and everything I guess worked out but man alive, what a forked up family. None of this is in the movie; I just recently took the Life in the UK test and spent so much time studying and like what good does it all do me now unless I share the knowledge at random moments.
 
So the movie is about Queen Anne’s turn on the throne and she was a lil bit peanut butter, but she had been through quite a lot in her sad life so it’s understood. Her long-time bestie, Sarah Churchill, has become the Duchess of Marlborough, and her Favourite, because she’s played by Rachel Weisz and ain’t nobody doesn’t love Rachel Weisz. She and Anne (Colman) seem to rully love each other and they have secret sexytimes (le gasp!) and play games where they pretend to be an old married couple. But then little upstart Abigail comes to the castle to work and she weasels her way into the Queen’s purview and quickly becomes Anne’s New Favourite because Abigail is played by Emma Stone and ain’t nobody doesn’t love Emma Stone. Abigail finds out about the sexytimes between Duchess and Queenie and sings ‘anything youuu can do I can do betterrrr’ and goes in for that bizness and starts to supplant Sarah as the Favourite see it’s all about who is the Queen’s Favourite in this and so there’s all this intrigue and backstabbing and I really thought someone would get actually stabbed but Yorgos was restrained this time around.
 
Fun fact, Sarah Churchill/Duchess of Marlborough and little upstart Abigail (not to be confused with little orphan Annie) were real people in the Queen’s life! didn’t know! That wasn’t covered on the test so I thought this was all fiction. But Anne really did have a supes close friendship with Sarah Churchill which really did turn sour due to political schemes and they really did continue their fight through letter-writing and stupid men in politics really did make jokes about Abigail and Anne being les beans. Great stuff!
 
The movie version of this story is quite entertaining, with wonderful performances from all three main ladies and their side men (side pieces), including Nicholas Hoult who I cannot believe is no longer 8. It is absolutely incredible to have a big movie centered around three great female roles, like that isn’t something that happens in movies considered ‘worthy’ so this is hella awesome. Olivia Colman rightly won the Golden Globe for Actress in a Comedy in this, and she is The Favourite (see what I did there) of some prognosticators for the Oscars after also winning at the BAFTAs. As for the film, it’s super weird but fun but good but weird but interesting but weird but fun. The first half is incredibly funny, mostly from nervous laughs but that still counts, with its dark comedy and ridiculous moments. The second half gets more dark and less comedy, which works well for the story but less for my enjoyment. Most of all, it’ll make you wonder why anyone would ever want to be royalty or even close to it, when there’s so much shit going down. Just get out of there, man alive. God and they all smell sooo bad. My favorite thing about this movie actually is that Bryan Safi, host of the Throwing Shade podcast, recommended it to his conservative aunt before he saw it because he assumed it was just a period piece with great actresses and then she saw it and it was full of lesbian sex and I am still laughing with him.

GREEN BOOK

HEY PONZONE WHATTAYA TALKIN BOUT WHY YA BREAKIN MY BALLS? I expected to dislike this movie because I’ve read so many woke think pieces about how BAD and WRONG this movie is because it tells the true story primarily from the perspective of Tony Vallelonga (the white man) and not enough from that of Don Shirley (the black man). And this is true. It’s obviously a movie about palatable racism that makes white people feel good about themselves – so, obviously I loved it, IT WAS MADE FOR ME. Green Book tells the true but sanitized-for-easy-swallowing story of an Italian-American tough guy who got all his vocab straight out of my extended family’s gatherings, and a black concert pianist called Dr. Shirley who is very uptight and super fancy (like sits on a throne and wears intricately embroidered gowns) and eschews all popular notions of what it means to be black in the 1960s. Dr. Shirley is going on a concert tour of The Deep South, and it’s the ‘60s, so he needs a driver who can also take care a tings, ya know, tings dat might go down in the deep south when a black man is walkin round like he’s people, ya know tings. So Tony Vallelonga takes a break from beatin’ people’s faces in at the Copa and from eatin’ his muzzarrell and his riggutt and his veal cutlet parmigian’ with his wife Linda Cardellini who grew up real nice like (I guess her time in the slammer after killing her father sorted her out (“I DIDN’T MEAN TO SHOOT HIM! I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR!”)) and Tony sets off to chauffeur the Doc around the south where obviously They Will Both Learn From Each Other.
 
When down south, they will take their lead from the famous guide for how black people can survive down there, The Negro Motorist Green Book. I guess we are to assume that Doc’s record company used this book to plan all their lodging, because Viggo only opened the book maybe once, when they needed to stop somewhere unplanned. It’s still the right title for this film but you’d think they’d show it being used like at all. Going into the Deep South, full of active racism like beatings rather than the softer racism like how Tony threw out glasses that black workmen in his home drank from, means Tony and Doc are going to run into problems, most of which look like dirty white men with bad teeth who have had too much to drink. You know, the racism we know and accept as racism. And obviously our Tony, who starts the movie as a soft racist, is going to learn from Doc and they’re going to become best friends and racism WILL! BE! SOLVED!
 
In a fun reversal of roles that your Average Whites would expect, Tony is the one who is rough around the edges and needs to work on his elocution, while Doc Shirley is the highly educated and articulate of the pair. And the black man is gonna help the white man act more refined around polite society and the white man will teach the black man to relax and smile more, you look so pretty when you smile. I wonder if the real Doc and Tony had a long conversation where Doc said he actually never ate fried chicken before and Tony forced him to eat KFC! That’s really a scene that happened! Or if Tony, Former Racist, surprised everyone by being totally cool with Doc getting arrested for homosexual activities because he’s “worked in the clubs in New York and seen tings.” Or if Doc made Tony return a rock he stole from a roadside stand because Doc was of such upstanding moral character than even stealing a rock was unacceptable. Obviously this is all super over the top but like I said, Made For White People, so as a white person, I enjoyed the hell out of this while plainly seeing that liberties were taken.
 
While Mahershala Ali was great at pretending he was literally the best pianist I’ve ever seen or heard, I mean wow, the best part of Green Book is Viggo Mortensen’s Italian accent. I haven’t stopped laughing OR wanting all the food he ate, even the dishes that were ‘sawlty.’ I learned more Italian slang than I did living in Italy. I never knew mulignan (“mol-en-yan”), a racist slur, was derived from melanzane, the word for eggplant! I never even knew it was a racist slur! THAT’S RACIST. Every word out of Viggo’s mouth was another point in his Oscar Nom column and if I closed my eyes I would have sworn I was listening to my relatives talk about the bruhshoot. I mean yes I loved this movie because it was made for me, a white person who wants to feel good about herself and be reassured that she’s not racist, but also coming from an Italian-American family? a SOUTH PHILLY one? I had no chance. And even though it is so clearly a feel-good racism tale instead of an honest one, who’s to say it still isn’t worthwhile? It’s nice to have a feel-good story every once in a while! It’s nice to see a white man who was lightly racist become less so! It’s nice to be told that NOT all cops are bad! Escapism! And more than anything, it’s nice to see an Oscar nominee for Best Picture treat Italian cuisine with the respect it deserves. There’s more food shown in this movie, man alive, it made me so hungry that you know what I did literally immediately after I saw this?? I made baked ziti. And next on my to-do list is to fold up an entire pizza and eat it like a taco like Tony did. We all have so much to learn from him. Not about racism, no, not the real life version. But about food! You don’t agree with me?! VAFANAAAAB!

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

If Beale Street Could Talk, it would say DAMN Walter Cruz can’t catch a g-d break! First he’s drugged by an evil private corporation contracted by the government, now he’s falsely accused of a crime and punished for it severely because he’s black and ACAB. JUSTICE FOR WALTER CRUZ. On a related note, this is Stephan James’s moment and we’re all just living in it.
 
Since Beale Street was on Obama’s list of his favorite films this year, I had super high hopes for it. When the Oscar nominations came out I was like NO BEALE STREET FOR BEST PICTURE??? all over social media because I assumed that was a serious snub. I hadn’t even seen the damn thing yet, that’s how much I trust Obama. Now that I’ve seen it, I don’t really think it’s a snub. Beale Street is a nice, meditative movie that will upset you and frustrate you about the structural depths of racism in America, but it feels a little too Message and not enough Story. It’s not that the Message isn’t important – it’s vital – but this specific portrayal of it, of how entrenched racism is in the structures that make all the rules, isn’t given enough of a chance for connection.
 
Beale Street tells the story of two young black lovers in Harlem in the 1970s, Alonzo (Stephan James, new fave) and Tish (KiKi Layne, the tiniest bit lo po), and what happens to them and their families when Alonzo (or Fonny as they call him, which would make sense if his name was Alfonso as I initially assumed but it’s not) is falsely accused of a heinous crime. Tish finds out she’s pregnant after Fonny has already been arrested, and the urgency of the need to clear his name is palpable. But because of the broken system and the general ACABness of the country, there’s nothing anyone, not even their decent white male lawyer, can do about it. Honestly the corrupt shenanigans of the D.A. here made me angry with Kamala, and that’s not something I expected to come out of this film. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this super nice man who makes Julia Roberts laugh go through this horrendous experience that becomes his new life. And that’s kind of all it is. The film starts off wonderfully: the early scene when both families come together is, like gum, perfection, especially because of Regina King and Colman Domingo (surprise treat!!) as Tish’s parents. The scene set a tone for what I thought was the coming mix of excitement and discord and satisfying conflict; I thought if the rest of this movie keeps up this well managed energy, I’m gonna keep ranting about its Best Picture snub. But after that dynamic, explosive scene, the rest of the movie was as static as possible. It became overly meditative and too quiet, and while yes, this showcased the beautiful cinematography and the brilliant score, it also got a lil boring. I wanted more of the dynamic families interacting. It’s amazing to give films room to breathe, but when you have such a depressing subject matter, the silence and lack of forward movement became a little too depressing. I also was bothered that the crime they chose that Fonny would be falsely accused of was rape. They made a point to state that no one thought the woman was lying about being raped, just that she got the wrong man, but with sooo much talk in the world about women lying about it or being mistaken about the details and sooo few who actually do or are, I was like Could We Maybe Not.
 
I expected to love Regina King’s performance, and I did, though there was too little of her. I mostly enjoyed the whole cast though, which had a Blindspotting-like level of treaty surprise with all the nice-to-see faces in tiny roles – Diego Luna with that cute little Nadal-like face as a waiter-friend of Fonny’s, Brian Tyree Henry (why is he always so good?) as a similarly falsely accused friend of Fonny’s, the aforementioned Domingo (erma), Dave Franco as a nice Jew (I saw the closeup on that yarmulke and started writing my angry letter about anti-Semitism to the filmmakers but then he was nice phew), Finn Wittrock as the lawyer. What a cast! What a semi let-down. Barry Jenkins has made another worthy, lovely looking, contemplative movie, but this one failed to fulfill its main story’s potential to become something more compelling and to leave you more moved than simply frustrated.
                ​

JULIET, NAKED

Like I said, I’m writing about every movie I remember seeing this year. Juliet, Naked, based on a book that actually was more annoying than the film, is not a great movie. And yet, it was incredibly enjoyable just because Rose Byrne is so darn good, and Ethan Hawke is perfect as an aging former rock star. They are so nice to watch together that they made this simple, straightforward, entirely uncynical movie pretty pleasant to watch.
 
Juliet, Naked is about Rose Byrne but a version that is living a boring life in an English seaside town with her awful long-term boyfriend played by an unlikable-for-the-first-time-but-he’s-supposed-to-be Chris O’Dowd instead of my main man mmmmmBobby Cannavale. Chris O’Dowd’s character is obsessed, like obbbbsessssseduh, like say it how Tiya Sircar says it on ‘The Good Place’ okay, with this old rock star named Tucker Crowe, so much that he runs the main fan site devoted to him and has pictures and memorabilia all over his and Rose’s house. Rose can do so much better but she has gotten used to her little humdrum life, I guess, and puts up with this jackwagon and just works at a tiny seaside town museum with her sister. Then Chris uncovers an earlier version of Tucker’s most famous song, “Juliet”, but naked, get it, because it was like a raw demo? And Chris writes all over his website about how amazing it is and Rose is pretty annoyed with him so she comments anonymously that she didn’t think it was all that or a bag of chips. She gets an email from someone saying he agrees with her, and that it was nice to see someone on that site thinking clearly or whatever, and this random emailer says that he is Tucker Crowe, and she’s like sure yar, sure, and he’s like I am, yam, and I guess he proves it somehow and so they email each other for a while and they like each other and it’s cute. Chris O’Dowd cheats on Rose with Denise Gough, who is an amazing actress and in it for literally 4 seconds, which is some bullshit on top of the bullshit of Chris cheating on Rose since Rose is so much better than Chris and she should have already left him, ugh. She kicks him out and continues her email correspondence with his favorite rock star.
 
After a while, Tucker says that he is coming to England because one of his estranged kids (rock star life) is having a baby there so they decide to meet and it really is Tucker (Ethan Hawke) except older (like Ethan Hawke) and as soon as they meet he has a heart attack. Luckily, like how it’s best to get hit by an ambulance if you’re gonna get hit by something, Tucker has his heart attack when he’s already in a hospital, going to see his daughter. So he survives, but then we meet all his ex-wives and estranged kids who all came in case he was dying and they wanted to berate him one last time. I’m sure this guy did some pretty terrible things but didn’t they hear, he’s nice now, like Nathaniel, so watching the evil stepsister from Ever After and the rude staffer from Hugh Grant’s 10 Downing Street and all the shitty kids just scream at Ethan, who is incapacitated, was pretty horrible. They all are going to the bad place. Anyway Rose, the only nice person in his life, offers to let him recuperate in her sleepy little town in her house, which is amazing poetic justice for Chris when he finds out. So they spend all this nice time together and they are both nice to each other and everything is just nice, okay? The changes from the book make the movie so much better. I like that it’s more apparent that they get together at the end, and Rose (Annie maybe?) is kind of sucky in the book. Changes approved! The absolute best part of this movie was when Chris was showing some young girl all his Tucker memorabilia and she says “He’s so gorgeous” and Chris responds “thank you”, like people do about their dogs or kids but it’s a million times funnier when it’s a stranger he has no connection to. Loves it! Anyway cute sweet whatever movie. ​

LIFE ITSELF

Honestly if I could sue a movie for intentional infliction of emotional distress, I would and it would be this one. No judge, not even the latest bullshit toilet president appointees, would dismiss it for being frivolous. They set out purposely to make audiences cry like really truly ugly cry and have trouble catching your breath. And that’s just rude, especially when this is an objectively not good movie. So you’re crying like really big fat tears and simultaneously yelling at the screen WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? THIS IS NOT A GOOD STORY! THIS IS MANIPULATIVE AND KIND OF AWFUL.
 
If you can believe it, it starts with one of the funniest openings ever, so the drop into maudlin rubbish is even more upsetting. It begins with SAMUEL L. JACKSON narrating, and he directs the camera “Push in on her for a second. I said PUSH IN ON HER MUFUCKA!” It’s hysterical. Then he says “Will was 35 when he gave up on his unreliable narrator screenplay” – and cuts to Oscar Isaac, usually only in great stuff, writing on his laptop in a café. Cute opening, I thought. He’s writing a screenplay, and we can’t trust him, okay, interesting. We see a few more iterations of Oscar’s (I’m just gonna go with real names because can’t be arsed) screenplay as he tries to tell his story. Between his writing, his memories, and his therapist appointments (Annette Bening as his therapist), we try to piece together what actually happened to him, but there are so many little tidbits flying around that contradict each other. Soon, we figure out that his girlfriend, Olivia Wilde, has left him, and she’s about to have his baby. Horrid woman! We see flashbacks to college and their entire adorable love origin story. He confronts her in a restaurant and asks why she is doing this to him. We see different versions of their last morning together, when they get into stupid fights or when they are being sweet and loving. We see Annette Bening get hit by a bus. We see Will beg Olivia not to leave him. After a good amount of this, we finally are told what really happened – Olivia, not Annette, got hit by a bus and DIED. She didn’t leave him by breaking up with him; she freaking died at 9 months pregnant. THAT IS AWFUL. He has been telling himself the break-up story and talking to empty chairs in restaurants in order to deal with something that is less awful. It’s terribly upsetting. This all comes out during therapy, and we see the real bus accident happen and it’s forking awful and there’s a little Spanish boy on the back of the bus staring at Olivia’s body. Annette reminds Oscar that he has to get through this because the baby survived, he has a daughter he hasn’t met who is now six months old, and then HE KILLS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF ANNETTE BENING. Like how dare you get blood on her she was probably so well pressed.
 
This was like 10 minutes in. Don’t set up the whole unreliable narrator device and then show the whole true story and then DROP the whole unreliable narrator thing after 10 minutes! That could have been the whole movie. But then we get three more completely different movies, until we see at the end that they are not completely different, they are all tied together, which like in theory is nice but ughhhhh it’s soooooo contrived and overemotional and blahh. Do you want to hear the other movies that were in this movie?
 
After Oscar Isaac kills himself, we see Mandy Patinkin, yaaaaas Mandy, who plays Oscar’s father, take custody of the baby. It’s a girl and her name is Dylan because Olivia loved Bob Dylan. Dylan’s life is one tragedy after another, because I guess, like art, life isn’t easy. Her grandmother dies, and then her dog dies, and so she’s left growing up just with her grandfather, who yes is amazing and sweet and the best singer in the world but that’s pretty rough for a little girl. She becomes super rebellious and rude and grungy AND goth AND punk and is angry at the world, which is understandable. On her 21st birthday, she is sitting on a park bench crying and a guy comes up to her and asks if she’s okay.
 
The NEXT movie takes place in Spain! It’s a completely different movie! This giant box of a man falls in love with this nice girl and they get married and have a son and the father works for Antonio Banderas, I know right, Antonio. He’s a good actor in Spanish. He is a super nice boss and offers the guy raises and wants to keep promoting him but the guy, Javier, SUUUCKS. I guess he is too proud to accept any help? But like that’s not pride, it’s literally your job and your boss wants to promote or pay you, I just don’t understand Javier at all. He’s jealous that his family likes Antonio, but why wouldn’t they like someone who is nice to them and gets the kid presents and stuff? Javier is still THE FATHER. Javier decides to take his wife and son to NYC for vacation and they are riding on a city bus and the little boy, Rodrigo, is talking to the bus driver and he’s like 5 years old and cute so the bus driver gets distracted and then THEY HIT OLIVIA WILDE, I SHIT YOU NOT, HE’S THE BOY ON THE BACK OF THE BUS STARING AT HER. uhhhh boyyyyy.
 
When they get back to Spain, Rodrigo obviously needs all kinds of therapy that Antonio Banderas helps them pay for because he’s a nice man, but Javier feels like that’s an affront to his masculinity or something because he is the most fragile male in all of Spain, and he thinks his wife is falling for Antonio (she’s not) and he’s jealous that he can’t help his son like Antonio can and instead of dealing with his absolute bullshit and loving his son, he deserts his family. God he SUCKS. Antonio takes care of the wife and the boy but for some reason the wife still loves Javier and spends the rest of her life longing for him, even though Antonio is nice to her and so much better.
 
Then the boy grows up and goes to college in New York. We see him do well in school and he has a girlfriend who SUCKS kind of like his dad did, like one day they are having brunch and she tells him she’s pregnant and he is SHOOK obviously as you would be in college when in a casual relationship and he says okay I’m here for you &c &c and he is planning their future and what to do and this truly awful girl goes ‘APRIL FOOLS’ and THEY DON’T DO THAT IN RURAL SPAIN, YOU HORRIBLE TWAT and ALSO PSA pranks like that are supposed to be more fun for the mark otherwise you are JUST AN ASSHOLE, so Rodrigo is just like, what, and so upset and they break up which is great and he’s just like going on with his life and then that night he sees a girl crying on a park bench and it is FORKING DYLAN and HE’S THE GUY WHO ASKS IF SHE’S OKAY on her birthday and he is ALSO THE KID WHO SAW HER MOTHER DIE WHILE SHE WAS IN HER WOMB. I mean. Come on.
 
Obviously they fall in love and live happily ever after and you cry violently the entire movie but you also SCREAM AT EVERYONE.

MAMMA MIA: HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Formerly: ‘2 Mamma 4 UR Mia: Mamma Mia 2!’
I don’t think there is any theatre lover who makes fun of Mamma Mia! as much as I do. And yes the exclamation point is part of the official title which yes makes me roll my eyes even though that’s sounds like something I would create. The show is mocked more than any other, and the first movie was similarly ridiculous, especially when they asked people who weren’t good singers to sing. Whenever I talk about jukebox musicals, I will always mention Mamma Mia! And how bad it is.

 But.
Mamma Mia! 2 is THE BEST MOVIE EVERRRRRRR.
 
I watched this amazing nonsense on a plane and it was the happiest flight I’ve ever had. This is a very surprising turn of events, because I expected it to follow its predecessors as something I am eager to revile. No such luck, not even given that it stars someone I thought I hated, Lily James, but it turns out I was probably just mad at her Natasha for not singing in the BBC War & Peace miniseries. She’s great in this! What the fork! You know who else is great in this? CHER! CHER IS IN THIS AND SHE’S WONDERFUL. You know who is NOT great in this? MERYL STREEP, BECAUSE THEY KILLED HER OFF. I can’t believe they killed Meryl and it’s still the BEST MOVIE EVER.
 
2 Mamma 4 UR Mia picks up on Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) after her mother Donna (Meryl) has died for no good reason and left Sophie and Pierce Brosnan (Father #1) to run the hotel and be all sad together, which is so sad because Pierce really loved her, le sigh. Pierce is a really weird name, does no one ever think of that? Did someone say that on the set of Community and that’s why Chevy Chase revealed his true asshole self? Shame. Anyway so Sophie is heading a huge renovation of the hotel and they’re all gearing up for the grand opening. Obviously, Meryl’s best friends, Christine Baranski and Julie Waters, will come for it, as will Father #2 (Colin Firth) and Father #3 (a Skaarsgard). Remember how the first movie is about how Sophie doesn’t know who her father is so they all just decide that all 3 potential sperms will be considered her fathers? I forking hate Mamma Mia.
 
Sophie is having relationship troubles with Dominic Cooper, who she was about to marry in the first installment, so like good thing you guys decided to wait considering you were all of TWENTY and stupid. He’s busy working and she’s busy working and they sing songs about being apart and they sing songs about nonsense because Mamma Mia is about shoehorning in whatever ABBA songs they can and we all accept it and they literally created an entire musical genre that does this and it’s 99% of the time horrendous and yet we still allow it to happen because it’s so goddamn fun like this movie. Sophie is buoyed up by Pierce and Julie and Christine, the latter vulgar and horny as ever, as well as Andy Garcia who is now working at a little Greek hotel since he’s gotta do something after losing $160 million from the Bellagio vault.
 
Interspersed amid all these scenes of getting the hotel ready in the present, we see DONNA’S ORIGIN STORY AND IT IS BRILLIANT. Lily James plays young Meryl Streep, which is fine in this movie but I don’t want people in the industry to get ahead of themselves just yet, like she’s fine and I guess I like her now but let’s hold off on the real-life anointment just yet. We see how Donna came to Greece and decided to stay and, most importantly, how and when she met each of the three men who would later all claim paternity to Sophie. Yes we see the origins of all this biz! And it’s wonderful! I enjoyed all the three young men and Lily’s Young Donna is marvelous. She does well with the random ABBA songs and makes them fun and my god, the juxtaposition of her finding her footing in Greece with Sophie’s renovation and making the hotel hers is DEVASTATING. Yes I was sobbing for most of the movie. On a plane.
 
But the best part, the best best best part, is that they named Andy Garcia’s character Fernando. And why did they do this? Literally JUST so Cher, who plays Donna’s mother/Sophie’s grandmother, can sing the ABBA song Fernando. And you know what? I’m not even mad, because it was AMAZING. CHER IS AMAZING. And Cher singing Fernando is so spectacular that I don’t even care that they created an entire unnecessary character in this story just so she could have someone to sing this song to. I would say I DARE any future jukebox musical to be as good as this one but that makes it seem like I am condoning the making of any more of them. ​

MARY POPPINS RETURNS

Formerly ‘2 Mary 4 UR Poppins’
I may have been more excited for MP2 than any other movie this whole year. Mary Poppins Classic is one of my favorite things OF ALL TIME, so a sequel with Lin-Manuel Miranda and songs by Shaiman & Whitman was like the best news ever for me. But man alive, I am so disappointed and LE SAD. MP2 was pretty boring, so boring that the person I saw it with fell asleep and I didn’t even care. It was 20-30 minutes too long (have we lost editors from journalism AND from moviemaking?). Worst of all, it didn’t have any of the magic that the original had in abundance.
 
Actually no, the worst thing of all is that none of the songs were actually any good. Mary Poppins has some of the best music ever written, so many amazing songs that have become beloved classics for like 100 years. Yet this one had not one that lived up to that standard. And that’s not typical of the songwriters, who wrote some of the best musical theatre song of the modern era, especially, like, all of ‘Hairspray’, which is flawless. Yet they just didn’t deliver here. There were no great songs, not one. The whole thing felt annoying and amateur and it was so sad because MP1 is all about heart and magic and MP2 had no heart and no magic.
 
MP2 takes place when Jane and Michael Banks are all grown up and apparently their magical nanny left them too soon because they’re both kind of bad at adulting. Well Jane is okayyy, she volunteers for social justice issues which is great but she doesn’t have much of a life otherwise. Michael is a real diddadoof, completely falling apart and you just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, like ‘I know your wife died and you have three sad children and it’s A LOT, but you need to get your shit together so your children don’t end up homeless, like that’s all on you buster.’ What happened to that goofy little boy who couldn’t snap? I usually like Ben Whishaw but he was lifeless here. Emily Mortimer’s Jane came off slightly better but still didn’t capture our hearts. And Lin-Manuel, bless him, is trying so hard to give this movie the heart it needs but has such crap to work with that his effort is uncomfortable. The only little flutter in my heart came when the real Jane Banks, Karen Dotrice, had a cameo as a lady asking for directions on Cherry Tree Lane. SHAME.
 
The three new little Banks kids are fine, I guess, but we don’t really care about them. Whereas Jane and Michael were misbehaving (in the English sense; like they weren’t cleaning up enough), these kids are just sad, so the whole point of Mary Poppins returning to help them out is specious. Yes, in the original and here, Mary is really there to help the father get his shit together, but the focus is more on the kids here and it is even more tenuous. Emily Blunt is great, probably the only great part, even though she is darker and meaner than Julie, without enough of a twinkle in her eye. But just the whole thing feels like they didn’t trust the material and kept adding more drama and distraction so maybe audiences wouldn’t notice. And true, they shouldn’t have trusted the material, but instead of throwing bells and whistles at it to distract us, they should have fixed the material. To use the Lin-Manuel connection, I heard him talk once about how an early producer interested in ‘In the Heights’ thought that Nina’s story needed more stakes. He didn’t believe that her doing poorly in college would have been enough of a catastrophe for her to return home feeling like a failure. He suggested that they also make her pregnant. Luckily, Lin knew that this jabronie was wrong and trusted his story and his characters to convey the right level of drama instead of forcing unnecessary extra shit onto them. Well it seems like that producer’s mindset was at play here. Not only is it a story about a family dealing with the loss of their mother, but it’s also about them losing their house?? And about their money being stolen by the bank??? And about an evil head of the bank who is stealing from like, all of London??? And then there’s also a super long cartoon segment where the kids get kidnapped by the cartoon animal versions of the bank guys??? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE??? Cut some of this shit, we do  not need all of it! It’s like they knew they didn’t have a good story and instead of writing one, they just threw in all the ideas everyone in the room had and hoped something would stick.
 
And I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but Step #1 should have been to take a page out of the Mamma Mia 2 handbook and LOSE MERYL STREEP. Her entire role should have been cut, and could have been without affecting the story literally at all. Mary has a Russian cousin who fixes things?? We had to take a trip to her upside-down shop and hear a truly horrendous song about things being upside-down? Save it for Stranger Things, ladies. This whole subplot was a g-d mess. I can’t believe a movie with Meryl and Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury and the new Hermione from the stage version was so boring and lifeless. The only good scene was when Dick Van Dyke came back to save the day, as an old man head of the bank. Seeing him brought the little hint of magic this film requires, and was a reminder that the original is a perfect, timeless movie that we should have just watched instead. 

ROMA

Alfonso Cuaron is a magician, because somehow I enjoyed Roma even though the characters and situations were mainly infuriating. No character was endearing or even very likable, but because it felt so real, it became compelling. In a lesser director’s hands, Roma would have been boring and mediocre. Because this was so heavily inspired by Cuaron’s actual childhood, you could feel his emotional connection, and that made the barely-there story come to life as an interesting study, of characters, of culture, of a super specific time and place (1970s Mexico). One of the most incredible aspects of Roma is that it is a story about women and women’s struggles, and a man made it. It’s a feminist movie and its honesty feels like it came from a woman, so it’s remarkable that Cuaron is behind it. I hope other filmmakers take notes from him.
 
Don’t get me wrong, Roma is not a gripping drama. It needs all of its lengthy running time because it is a slooooow burn to feel interesting. I didn’t care about any of the characters for the vast majority of the film, and I actively disliked most. I guess that’s how real life is? Some of the scenes had me literally screaming at the TV (yay for Oscar nominees on Netflix), like when there is a forking FOREST FIRE and all the rich drunk adults brought their children out to watch and they all just stand there drinking instead of trying to help. What the hell was that all about? I had such agita from that scene and others like it, where you are screaming at the characters for being incredibly stupid. Yes the father sucked but there really was dog shit EVERYWHERE in that driveway! Like what was that about! Clean it up! Or better yet, sometime take that poor dog for a walk! Why do people have dogs that they ignore?
 
And yet, with time, because the story is allowed to simply unfold, it starts to feel epic in its intense, seemingly accurate and realistic depiction of different classes and races in Mexico at this time. The black and white filming and the precise cinematography made each frame feel like a historic photograph. Yalitza Aparicio’s Cleo, a Mixtec housekeeper for a well-to-do Spanish family, doesn’t seem to do much Acting, but like every aspect of this film, her performance is more subtle than showy. She inhabits the role entirely. It’s not about much, but what is there is shown with care and precision. So what is it about?  Cleo gets pregnant by an asshole who refuses to acknowledge her, and she turns to the crayballs wife of her employer for help, who is going through her own relationship struggles. The two women don’t become friends or anything warm and fuzzy, but they can trust the other, at least to understand how hard their lives are. The children love Cleo and she loves them. There’s some surprising violence, devastating sadness, and mostly an honest look at their lives separately and together. Basically it’s what Russell Brand did after Jonah Hill gave him his demo in Forgetting Sarah Marshall – they just carry on living their lives.
 
Really, Roma feels more like a book than a movie. It needs a lot of time to get you invested because, like a book, you need to live with the characters for a little bit before you care about what if anything happens. Filming it in black and white added to that affect, making it more removed from you than other films; it’s not going to reach out and grab you, it’s something you have to invest in to enjoy. Honestly, this is the worst movie to be shown on Netflix, because there is no other movie I saw this year that screams to be enjoyed in a theatre more. I watched at home, yes, but with phones off, lights off, to get as close to a theatrical experience as possible. It needs to be treated with that kind of respect in order for the watching experience to pay off at all. I completely understand why this movie isn’t resonating for a lot of people – like a book, it takes a while to get into it, and it’s not going to be for everyone. But if it clicks for you, it feels special. 

SET IT UP

Some of you may know that my favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail. I don’t know why you’re laughing; it is the BEST MOVIE EVER. When my queen Nora Ephron died, it was a tragic day for everyone who loved her but also for the movie industry, because no one can make a romcom like she can. We’ve had so many lackluster attempts over the past decade, zero of which deserved to even be compared with her classics. Of course, we’ve had more modern romantic movies that have taken the genre in a different direction, some of which are great, but we’ve been missing films in the classic romcom vein that Nora perfected. I know some of you have caught on and are like ‘wait are you actually going there with Set It Up’ and you know what buster, I am. No, I’m not saying that it’s as good as a Nora film or that it is keeping her legacy alive or any of that bullshit, but it’s the closest thing we’ve had in years to being worthy of compared to a Nora romcom of the old-school, classic variety. And you know what, it is FABULOUS.
 
Set It Up is a modern story, but it uses the traditional romcom formula, unencumbered by trying to be anything else. It’s a clean and simple boy meets girl story. Our heroes will meet, not get along but be thrown together by an external issue, and as they spend time together working on the issue, they’ll become friends, and then they’ll fall for each other in the end. This film checks all the boxes in an exuberant and fun way, letting it shine as lovely and entirely pleasant. It mixes the old-school romcom tricks in a way that feels clever and nice and not offensive. It’s just a NICE movie, okay?
 
It’s about how Lea Thompson’s daughter and John Glenn from Hidden Figures are young attractive people working in NYC for hooooorrible bosses, the kind that make them do all kinds of crap that no one should put up with, the kind that have them working past midnight most nights. The two assistants, Harper and Charlie, meet one late night in their skyscraper’s lobby as they scramble to find dinner for their bosses, two highly attractive people who have attained positions of supreme power and wealth without learning how to feed themselves or wear their own damn step-tracking watch. You’re like why don’t you freaking quit, you are both middle class white people who have other options, but their bosses are Lucy Liu and freaking Taye Diggs so you’re like oh dip I wouldn’t quit either yaboyyyyy. So Harper and Charlie meet and Charlie takes the food that Harper ordered for Lucy because Harper didn’t have cash for the delivery guy and like she is in NEW YORK CITY and could just go outside with the credit card she has in hand and buy something, anything, for her boss at the bodega that is surely still open, it’s NYC stuff is OPEN, instead of going back upstairs empty-handed, but she’s too blinded by how adorbbbbs Charlie is. No that’s not true, she doesn’t like him yet, but we do. She’s just tired, I guess.
 
So Charlie and Harper are antagonistic towards each other but in a cute fun way and they decide that their lives would be easier if their awful bosses had someone to distract them from work, like they need to get some. They hatch a plan! They’re going to set up Lucy and Taye with each other and hope that it works even though they know how much they suck. And when they are off gallivanting, Harper and Charlie will be given their lives back! Free time! Friends! Dates! Yankees! So fun!
 
Obviously the more time they spend together working on The Plan, the more they get to know each other and like each other since they are both The Best and it’s just the most fun movie ever. I love the whole supporting cast, even aside from Lucy and Taye who are pitch perfect here. Harper’s best friend and her new fiancé are great, and I love that the friend seems like an actual great friend, not just a plot device. Of course, my favorite thing is that Charlie’s roommate is Pete Davidson, playing a gay man whose version of putting a sock on the door is blasting Third Eye Blind into the hallway. Guys I don’t know why I love Pete Davidson but I really do. I think I identify too much with John Mulaney and since Mulaney feels the need to protect baby Pete I guess I do too. Anyway he’s great in this. And there are fun appearances by Jeff Hiller, who should be a bigger star, and Tituss Burgess, who is THE BEST but didn’t sing in this.
 
Like all great romcoms, Set It Up provides classic phrases and moments as it tells its story, like the whole ‘and yet…’ thing, where you can list all the reasons you can’t stand someone but despite all this, you still love them. But my favorite is the ‘over-dick-around-thing’, which is so true and I’m actually doing it right now. It’s that thing when you are super early for something, so to spend the time before you have to be somewhere you dick around and then you lose track of time and are going to late after all. So accurate! I feel this movie so hard. Anyway I recommend you watch it, I love it so. 

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

I was ready, REH-DEEEEE, to come out of this film screaming about how brilliant it is, the new Get Out, the new Must See Movie about how black people are suffering at the hands of white people still. BUT THEN THEY TURNED PEOPLE INTO HORSES.
 
I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING.
 
Sorry to Bother You starts off well enough, with Lakeith Stanfield (so good always) getting a job as a telemarketer in a very shady company. On the advice of his coworker Danny Glover, Lakeith adopts a White Man voice for his telemarketing, and he immediately has better luck with his sales. (Hilarious, the white man voice is courtesy of David Cross.) The voice pays off and then some, and Lakeith does so well that there’s talk of him getting moved upstairs to the big leagues, with the Power Callers. You think, how big a league can you get in telemarketing? But still, the idea of him doing so well at work because he understands the need to pretend to be white is interesting and I was excited for the movie to explore all that that means, how in order to move ahead at work he had to become a pawn in this awful racist game, how if he wanted to get promoted he had to leave behind his friends and colleagues downstairs and forget all the injustice they suffer at the hands of this company. Interesting stuff!
 
Or it could have been. But then Lakeith goes upstairs, and the movie quickly loses its footing as it becomes, against all ads and promotions, an absurdist piece. Upstairs, the workers make ridiculous money and act like the 1%. Lakeith finds out that they are selling for WorryFree, the giant corporation that is effectively legalized slave labor. Even with this new development, the movie still could have been powerful and have a lot of important things to say, especially about modern corporate behavior and how the giant ones run our lives. The movie’s depiction of this corporation engaging in slave labor out in the open with no one batting an eye could have said so much about what we are allowing to happen today because it’s easier not to fight it, or because we don’t know how, or because we like what’s being sold. Especially when matched with the horrifying heights reality TV reaches in the movie’s universe, all of this could have been a cutting critique of our society, using its altogether wacky approach to vilify what we’ve let happen in our own absurdist times.
 
But then, like I said, they were turn people into horses. I get that it’s all about the reaches of corporate power and ownership over the general populace and all the evil we are allowing day by day, but HOT DAMN, they were turning people into horses. Not exactly what you said on the tin! I’m game for imaginative ways of conveying an important story and using weird humor to do so, but man, it lost me with the horse people. 

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE

Formerly ‘Spider-Man Too: 2 Many Spider-Men’
I have to admit that I haven’t seen this one yet. I know it’s great but it was never playing at a good time, just never. But it’s on this list so that I can share what I imagine it’s about:

Spider-Man we’re at it again! This time with 50% more Spider-Men!!! ​

TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE

People are like RULL obsessed with this Netflix movie based on a beloved YA novel but like, it was just okay. There are a few things that kept me from enjoying it as much as anyone would have imagined. First, the lead actress is a little lifeless. I never saw any emotion in her face. But obviously I don’t know anything because she’s a huge star now, cool guys, cool. What is acting anyway? But the real problem I had with this movie is that the villain – the little sister – DOES NOT GET PUNISHED! The sister who betrayed the laws of privacy and ethics and just overall good person-being NEVER gets punished, which is absolutely bullshit. A human being goes into your private things and mails letters that were never supposed to be mailed? To a random assortment of boys from over the years? THE HORROR. This girl should BE IN JAIL. Instead, when she finally admits that she is responsible for all this b.s., she gets a hug or something stupid. JAIL.
 
The only good thing about this movie is that Mark Ruffalo’s son is adorable and I’m happy that this introduced the world to him, but otherwise, meh. This is honestly the least I’ve ever had to say about a movie. About anything, really. DISAPPOINT.

VICE

Never in the history of cinema has a film so destroyed all the good it accomplished by having such an atrocious, offensively bad (and just plain offensive) ending. Not even the crazy ending of the James Franco North Korea movie, you know when they didn’t know how to end it and Seth Rogen ends up losing his fingers????, ended as badly as this. And it was so offensively bad, this ending, that I can’t think about the rest of the movie and Adam McKay’s work without the bullshit part tainting the rest because it shows what kind of man he is and what he thinks of his audience and like FORK YOU IN YOUR FORKING FACE, MAN.
 
Okay first we can talk about the rest of the movie. If you are prone to headaches or seizures, you cannot see this movie. This joint is JUMPIN’, I mean from a simple frame of interior White House it’ll go BANG FLASH to the Twin Towers falling and then interior Dick Cheney’s home and then BANG FLASH bombing in Afghanistan and it’s just like notttt worth it to have an epileptic fit induced from this movie. If you can get through all the bangin and flashin, the first two hours of Vice are actually pretty good, if good is defined as something that makes you die inside as you remember what is happening to the country and the world because of what these assholes onscreen did. The movie would have you believe that Dick is responsible for the nonsense happening today, because he put the ability to disregard checks and balances and any rational reading of the Constitution on the table. I don’t disagree. Doing a pretty literal impression of Dick is Christian Bale, befatsuited and talking/heavy breathing out the side of his mouth like some kind of Pedo Batman. This Dick, like the real one, is a malevolent force hell bent on destruction of whatever needs to be destroyed so long as he has power. When a young Dick, fresh off from two DUIs yet somehow landing a White House internship spot because straight white man, latches on to Steve Carrell’s Donald Rumsfeld and the two of them LAUGH (that word looks so wrong…omg how do you spell laugh that’s right, right? So weird guys) at the impending bombing of Cambodia because they are in the inner zone of power, you wonder why the international community hasn’t prosecuted these boneheads for war crimes yet or really what the fork karma is waiting for. Same for when he gives the go-ahead for all kinds of torture, or when he has a legal team devoted solely to arguing the unitary executive theory, or when he decides as soon as he’s brought into the safe room during 9/11 that this is a good opportunity and excuse for bombing Iraq, even though they had nothing to do with it, as the few smart people in the room mention but then shut up about because everyone is scared of the man who was actually president. What the hell, Condie! You gonna say anything?? Ugh it was very frustrating to relive all of this. The supporting cast makes it pretty interesting, especially Sam Rockwell (the man is a genius) as W, doing an interpretation and not just a flat-out impression. I enjoyed Amy Adams as Lynne, because Amy Adams is always amazing, but her Fox News hairstyles made me physically ill. Just like real life Lynne Cheney does! And their forking daughter Liz! What a fucker! I like Lily Rabe but dammit Liz SUCKS. Only decent person in the family seemed to be Mary, maybe because I love Alison Pill. It seemed nice when the family accepted her being gay but then of course the family that believes in nothing but power would quickly change their mind and their allegiance on that issue. What a BUNCH OF FUCKERS.
 
Thank goodness McKay used some of his talent for humor to make parts of this movie funny, because otherwise being told for hours how Cheney is a true monster would get old. I never thought seeing someone have repeated heart attacks would be so hilarious but it’s HILARIOUS, it just keeps happening to him! How is he still alive? What kind of deal with the devil did this fucker make? My favorite part of the movie, when I actually cackled, is after maybe barely an hour when he is approached by W. about being his VP, and the narrator says he decided not to, and he lived the rest of his life quietly in his mansion in the woods and fished and became a grandfather to many and stuff, and then THE CREDITS ROLL before the narrator says he was kidding. I loved that move. I also kind of dug the narrator, who seems like a random guy and you’re like did they just want Jesse Plemons in this for no reason? Is he the caliber of celebrity now where he is filling the role that Margot Robbie and Anthony Bourdain (RIP) played in The Big Short, just random celebs explaining shit? I thought it was weird but fine at first, but then when Jesse’s connection to Dick is revealed I was like WELL PLAYED, MCKAY. Even though it led to the most obvious ploy of the movie, when we see way too long shots of Dick’s heart surgery to show us his diseased heart. McKay didn’t need to hold the camera on his empty chest cavity during heart surgery to show us that he’s heartless like a goddamn monster (it was kind of on the nose, Adam).
 
This is super random but I noticed one detail during the movie that really, whoever was in charge of that tiny prop detail should be commended. At home in his bathroom, Dick uses Listerine while Lynne is talking to him. And it’s not just any Listerine – it’s the weird brassy yellow one, the OLD MAN kind. The kind that isn’t minty or anything just like yellow and it’s only for old men, I believe. It is PERFECT.
 
And then two things ruined the whole party, ADAM. One, the ending. Two, the FORKING SECOND ENDING. LISTEN TO ME, MOVIE PEOPLE: If you are not making a superhero movie that is part of a larger franchise where people expect little teasers about the next one to come in a post-credits scene, then FORKING STOP MAKING POST-CREDITS SCENES. My god ESPECIALLY if there is no sequel of any sort and you just don’t know how to quit while you’re ahead, ADAM. JESUS. Okay so the first ending has Dick break the fourth wall by talking to the audience about how he can feel our wrath directed at him but he dares us to admit that if he didn’t do all the shit he did then we’d be swimming in terrorism, how the actions we think are evil are really what saved us. First, the whole talking to the audience thing in order to defend himself was entirely inconsistent with the vibe of the rest of the movie. The whole gist was that Dick and Don and all their shithead bros didn’t believe in anything, just power. They made that very clear, like literally stating that out loud. So what kind of contradictory ending has Dick stating that he did things he believed in?? Adam were you watching your own movie? It made me extra mad because the arguments Dick was using to ‘prove’ to us that he was on the right side of events were NOT GOOD ARGUMENTS. In The Inheritance, the epic two-part play, there’s one scene where the republican billionaire is defending his support of the GOP, and it’s infuriating, but it is dramatically effective because he uses actually good arguments (the few there are), so while you disagree with him, he’s making it harder to just call him a stupid jackass because based on what he’s saying, he’s not. That’s good writing and provocative drama. Here, Dick is saying the STUPIDEST, most easily disproved arguments ever – you didn’t stop terrorism man, and your random focus on Zarqawi CREATED ISIS – so without even a second thought you’re like umm no, you’re a stupid jackass, NEXT. Doesn’t work Adam!!!
 
Then the second ending destroys the whole thing. In this post-credits fiasco, we return to a focus group we met earlier in the film. Before, they were saying how climate change sounds better than global warming, and how the war on terror seemed like a good idea. But now, the focus group was asked questions about Vice. About the movie we just saw and FORKING THOUGHT WAS OVER, ADAM. One man, dressed so we assume he’s a republican, complains that it was full of darn liberal bias!! Stupid fake news media! And then another man, a democrat looking sumbitch, explains that it was actually balanced. And then the republican calls him a libtard. I shit you not. And then they fight. And while they are fighting, the camera moves to two young women – two millennialsssss – who speak with vocal fry (how fucking dare they, AM I RIGHT ADAM, is that what you wanted us to think??) about how they wanted to see the new Fast & Furious movie.
 
I mean.
 
I am screaming.
 
What the hell, Adam? The rest of the movie shows Dick and his cronies as despicable monsters, but then you flip the script at the end to mock the American public, your audience? Did you want us to walk away from this thinking that everything was our fault, not just the fault of the men who created the mess? Was your message that there’s good and bad people ON BOTH SIDES, ADAM?? Do you remember who last said that bullshit and what that was about, ADAM? And what about making fun of the girls, huh? Is it because millennials are the worrrrst, ADAM? Because that bullshit is TIRED. Were you saying that people weren’t paying enough attention to the government’s actions during this time, that they dared seek enjoyment from entertainment? Are you mad that people went to see silly movies during the Bush administration instead of protesting 24/7? Silly movies like, oh I don’t know, ANCHORMAN and STEPBROTHERS??? What is your FUCKING POINT, ADAM?
 
Seriously fork off with these post-credits scenes. I DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM EVER AGAIN, YOU HEAR ME STUDIOS?? DO YOU HEAR ME??? 

THE WIFE

Glenn Close, muhfuckas. Glenn Close is one of the greatest actresses of our time. In The Wife, she plays A Wife, and she has very little to say and very little to do and yet she makes a forking MEAL out of every scene. This movie is a masterclass in how to act with your goddamn face and Glenn is GIVING US EVERYTHING. Her performance is one for the history books and hopefully the jabronies alive today (that’s right that’s all of us) will give her the respect she deserves forking finally.
 
The Wife, based on the Meg Wolitzer novel but I didn’t know that until the end credits like literally had no idea and I thought I was well read but I guess I’m behind on my modern lit, takes the idea of ‘behind every great man stands a great woman’ and forking runs with it. Glenn is married to Jonathan Pryce, who has had a long career as a celebrated author after leaving musical theatre because he realized that a white Welshman playing a Vietnamese man was something he should distance himself from. Jonathan plays Joe Castleman, and you know since I’m bothering to use the character names that this was a movie I enjoyed. Glenn is His Wife, Joan Castleman, and it opens with the two of them asleep in the darkness and the whole beginning is a little too Amour, because it’s two old people and lots of mouth noises. But then the phone rings, even though we see that the alarm clock reads 6:20am and you’re like well someone better have died otherwise the person calling is going to get WRECKED for waking me up, yes even when watching a movie I am ready to take up arms against anyone who dared ruin the sleep of my character friends, you READY?? Luckily Joe and Joan and I are no longer angry or concerned when the caller happens to be the Nobel Prize committee, calling to congratulate Joe on winning the one for Literature and confirming that the people who vote for things and decide things aren’t the smartest ones out there because if they were they would have known how TIME ZONES WORK.
 
Joe is thrilled, of course, because his work has just attained the highest praise possible, but Joan is less so. She seems sort of bothered by the whole thing, and extra bothered that Joe keeps brushing off their son, who has given him a short story of his for critique. Why is Joan not thrilled? They’re getting a free fancy trip to Stockholm! I guess old people don’t necessarily love traveling especially to cold locales but don’t they also get a million dollars? I learned that from Friends. Be happy! Money please!
 
As they travel to Stockholm and participate in all the preliminary celebrations et al., the present day scenes are intercut with flashbacks to how Joe and Joan met. In true to form fashion for Joe’s amalgamation in my head canon as Most White Men, he was Joan’s professor in college and he was married with a kid yet openly flirted and then some with his student. Ughhhhh. Joan was a promising writer, and she seemed ready and able to take the literary world by storm. But then, ya know, it was the 1960s and no publishing house would take on a female writer. Women who write?! Are you crazy! Geddafuckouttaheeeere! But they would publish men, especially a Jewish man because Jews were ‘so hot right now’ at one pub, and so Joe became the household name in the literary world and a huge success, while Joan apparently stopped writing.
 
Or did sheeeee? I’m sure those of you who are astute and/or who try to figure out movies’ twists before you’re supposed to (ughhh you’re probably the kind of person who figured out the initial twist on The Good Place instead of JUST ENJOYING IT LIKE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO AND THEN BEING BLOWN AWAY BY THE MOST GENIUS BRILLIANT AMAZING TV SHOW EVER) had at least an inkling about what the truth behind their marriage was all about even before surprise guest Christian Slater did. Even so, it’s still a marvelous little mystery portrayed so precisely and well with all the flashbacks and with all of Glenn’s facial expressions, each one telling more nuanced stories than most movies can. And to top it all off, we learned what goes on when you win a Nobel Prize! Lots of bullshirt, apparently! Do they really wake you up in the early morn with a Swedish milkmaid candle brigade??? They just let themselves into your hotel room and all these blonde girls forking sing you awake while holding candles?? There’s no part of this I want so nobody forking NEAR me at any point better win this shit. 

***

Okay folks, now that I’ve used up literally all the words in the English language and some I made up, it’s your turn to chime in!

The post All the Movies You Need to Know this Awards Season appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.

Like most everything in our world right now, the Emmy Awards are trash. I don’t know what the voters have been smoking, probably weed with Elon since they are also mostly rich white men who can get away with it, but their annual nonsense is upon us again. The problem with the Emmys is that voters take too long to catch up to what is actually good, and when they do, it’s too late and the thing is no longer the best but they’re too lazy and proud of themselves to change their voting habits for another four years. They get stuck in ruts, they have old-fashioned taste, and most of all they don’t actually watch everything so they JUST DON’T KNOW. Honestly make me an Emmy voter, I know what’s up, and I’m going to share with you what should be winning this worthless award that I care so much about on Monday night. 

First of all, putting the nominees aside, let’s talk about the trashiness of this year’s actual ceremony. Wait there are two aspects of trash (trashspects?) about the ceremony! First of this first of all, the hosts are two regular old straight guys. Yep, in a world where Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are still alive and working and I bet happy to join forces and demolish all memory of prior award show hosting, this year’s Emmys – this year, the year of MeToo – is going with two bros. BRO, WTF? What about all the amazing female comedians in the game right now that need exposure more than the hosts of Weekend Update do? What about someone like Tiffany Haddish, who has a movie coming out right now? What about any of the women from Ghostbusters? What about any of the women Louis CK yackled in front of instead of yet another couple of dudes with viewpoints that are questionable at best and downright disgusting (like defending aforementioned yackler Louis CK) in truth? YAWN SLASH RAGE.

Second of the first of all, these forking awards are on a MONDAY this year, instead of a Sunday. To quote one of the most snubbed should-be-nominees on our list, WHAT….MAN….DID THIS. Sunday is award show day. Sunday is the day you can spend sleeping in to prepare yourself for the excitement and the stress, making theme foods (my initial plan was: (veggie) shrampies with white chocolate sauce, clam chowder, frozen yogurt (can you tell what show I’m going to be talking about the most yet?)), and getting your tweeting fingers ready. More importantly, Sunday is the day I could have watched this forking show! Readers probably know I live in London, but I’m writing this from the USA. When I booked this visit, I was looking at dates and remembered thinking, ‘oh that weekend is the Emmys! I’ll fly back to London Monday night then so I can watch them on Sunday night with my family! What an auspicious turn of events! I get to watch live for the first time in years instead of cobbling together shitty youtube videos that random people took of their own TVs!’ But NOOOOOOPE. Now instead of getting to live tweet I’m going to have to stick to day-after tweeting, which NO ONE cares about but I’m STILL going to do OBVIOUSLY because my takes are hot. 

The show I’m going to be talking most about

Speaking of schedule changes that I did not approve of, the Creative Arts Emmys, which are usually the Saturday night before the Sunday telecast, were LAST WEEK. You’re killing me Smalls!! As you may know, the Creative Arts Emmys are the ones that most of the public don’t care about, sadly: the technical awards (lighting, cinematography, makeup, editing, sound), the reality TV ones (RuPaul all day), and artsy ones (choreography, music), and whatever else isn’t Best Comedy, Drama, Actor, and Actress, pretty much. There are two things I want to complain heavily about from the Creatives, and it’s not about who won – it’s about who wasn’t nominated. (That’s what all of this is really going to be about, naturally.) 

First: The most infuriating abomination of a category this year is Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, which means Best Song. And not to belittle any of the nominees, but they’re bullshit compared to literally any song from ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’, the CW’s musical dramedy about mental illness. It is one of the greatest shows ever to exist, and 80% of that is because of the songs. Each episode has 2-3 original songs that brilliantly evoke musical theatre standards, pop genres, and/or famous bands. The songs are written by Adam Schlesinger, who you may know either as the guy from Fountains of Wayne or as the guy who wrote the one-hit-wonder’s hit song from ‘That Thing You Do!’ If you have any doubt in my opinion that his Crazy Ex songs should be the pictures next to the dictionary definition of Emmy-winning songs if audio could be captured as pictures, then just think for a second about how movie producers were like ‘hey we are making a movie that ENTIRELY REVOLVES around a song being so great that it catapults all the action forward and we need you to just like, go write that song and have it all be believable’ AND HE DID. 

Here are the nominees:

1. (WINNER) SNL: “Come Back Barack” – a very funny song and great moment on the show but not better than the actual best topical song of the year, “Let’s Generalize About Men“. I dare you to watch this and not squeal with glee at every moment.
2. Big Mouth: “Am I Gay?” Again, fun song on an absolutely incredible show, but not better than the HILARIOUS and perfect ABBA-inspired “The First Penis I Saw“! 
3. A Christmas Story Live: “In the Market for a Miracle” Haven’t Pasek & Paul won enough in literally like a 15 month span?? CHILL BOYS. Also, if we’re talking Christmas miracles, what about “Maybe She’s Not Such a Heinous Bitch After All”?? I mean hello, talk about perfectly capturing an era of music. 
4. The Good Fight: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” I’m not even going to talk about how RUDE it is to nominate a song from the drama about lawyers and not the MUSICAL COMEDY about lawyers, but I’ll say what about the Fosse-inspired “Strip Away My Conscience”?? I mean, you wanna talk clever writing, talk about what they rhymed with ‘luridness’ and still got approval from the censors. Man alive. 
5. Steve Martin & Martin Short’s special: “The Buddy Song” JFC. I love these guys so much but puh lease. How about the Gene Kelly-evoking “Head in the Clouds”? This song is considered one of the WEAKEST of the season and listen to how great it is. 
6. If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast: “Just Getting Started” I don’t know what this documentary?? is, but how about the amazing song “End of the Movie”? ​They actually got JOSH GROBAN to sing a song! And it was incredible! Man alive if this category were a table full of glasses I would knock it over. ​

Also, I was a little sad that Kelli O’Hara, my queen, lost for Actress in a Web Series (even though I didn’t watch it, she wasn’t singing right?), as did her co-nominee Megan Amram, who is becoming another one of my queens for her work on my favorite show (The Good Place). But they lost to Christina Pickles! Who is amazing! I’m just going to pretend she won for her work as Judy Gellar, especially when she tells Monica and Ross that “that was a lot of information to receive in 30 seconds” and then tells Rachel “no, you weren’t supposed to put beef in the trifle.” So we’re okay. Kelli’s going to win the Olivier this year though, right??

Let’s get to tonight’s nominees already. 

OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES

1. Atlanta (FX)
2. Barry (HBO)
3. Black-ish (ABC)
4. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
5. GLOW (Netflix)
6. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)
7. Silicon Valley (HBO)
8. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

EIGHT? FORKING EIGHT NOMINEES and they still don’t get it right??? Ughhhhh. I haven’t finished ‘Atlanta’ so I can’t comment. I know it is genius but from what I’ve seen it is a drama. ‘Barry’ was great but was also FORKING HARROWING and made me terrified and anxious more than it made me laugh. And that ending?? And it’s a comedy? Fuck no! But it is great. GLOW I really like but it’s not best of the year! A few of the episodes this season were stellar but it took a while to get going. This is one of the shows that got really lucky with voters deciding to adopt it as one of its faves and nominating it across categories at every event even though it’s not the best. Maisel is the one show on this list that is actually outstanding, perfect in almost every way (the almost courtesy of the Jane Lynch storyline) and deserves to win. It is THE BEST. Maisel is absolutely pitch perfect from the writing to the music to the performances. And it has Tony Shalhoub! SHALHOUB! ‘Silicon Valley’ is an example of the voters’ rut they like to get stuck in, and more than that they should have gotten a year off after the TJ Miller bullshit. Now, as for our pal Kimmy. You know I am a long-term Kimmy Schmidt apologist. Despite its pitfalls, its had some of the funniest lines, and it introduced classic characters to us, mainly Kimmy and the unmatched Titus. I’ve even tried to excuse the Jane Krakowski storylines because of her incredible quips. But this season was NOT. GOOD. I honestly can’t believe it got nominated. Aside from the one part where a guy introduced himself to Kimmy and said “Hi I’m whatever” and she responded “Not me, I’m Kimmy”, nothing was really great about it. Give Titus and the writers a backdated Emmy for his viral interview scene in season 1, and get rid of this nonsense.

Now what should be up there? ‘Maisel’ should be fighting neck and neck with the most brilliant, hilarious, and surprisingly sincere comedy in existence, “The Good Place”. I honestly cannot get over how wonderful this show is. Every inch of the writing, the production (those special effects, my god), and the acting is across the board magnificent. It has an extremely clever premise that keeps getting twisted and turned onto itself, with storylines you just seem to get a handle on blowing up with equal chance of im- or exploding. And they’ve made a generation of tv-watchers interested in moral philosophy and being better people. It’s also beloved by critics. I love this show so much. Its absence is kind of hilarious, proving yet again that awards mean nothing. 

Also, ‘Crazy Ex Girlfriend’ should be on this list. Its latest season was riveting, dark, and risky. They took chances that no other show would take, and kept a story, one that could have gone out of control, together with a steady hand. 

And what about ‘Brooklyn 99’, after how much it was in the news after being cancelled (and picked up again)?? We love that damn show! I mean even my beloved ‘Jane the Virgin’ is better than some of the stuff on this list. And ‘Big Mouth’ in its debut season was flawless! Where is that? Ugh Emmy voters. Also, enough with these expanded categories. It’s clearly not helping to refuse to narrow it down, so keep it to 5. I hate treating this like participation trophies. When the best of the year aren’t competing, the winner isn’t really going to be the best, is it. When Federer or Serena decline to play in a slam it’s not like the eventual winner is the best if they didn’t play the best. ​
​

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

1. The Americans (FX)
2. The Crown (Netflix)
3. Game of Thrones (HBO)
4. The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
5. Stranger Things (Netflix)
6. This Is Us (NBC)
7. Westworld (HBO)

Ugh miss me with these extra long nominee lists, guys. It’s such nonsense. Nominations are supposed to mean something, not just be a slapdash list of all the shows an old man could remember at that given moment. 
I’m so tired, like sooo tired, of ‘Game of Thrones’. Is it really still on? Still treating women like objects and what not? Hates it. I did love this season of ‘Stranger Things’, but not in like an ’emmy-winning’ way. They’re all FINE, I guess, but if anything but ‘The Americans’, in its perfect final season’, sweeps tonight, it’ll be wrong. ‘The Americans’ played the long game over 6 seasons, drawing subtle, nuanced storylines with outstanding performances and writing that came together in its depressing, unavoidable, great ending. It should absolutely win. 

PERFORMANCES
I don’t have time to go into every category of acting nominees; I got a plane to catch. But I’ll say a few things. Ted Danson MUST win for TGP. He is American’s national treasure for a reason. If you thought his laugh in Season 1 episode 13 was iconic, wait till you see his relieved “Oh you guys!” from this season. I could cry just thinking about that and about when he solved the trolley problem. Tell me any of the other nominees deserve to win. I’ll wait. And then I’ll tell you why you’re wrong. 

As for lead actress in a comedy, it doesn’t even really matter. Rachel Brosnahan on ‘Maisel’ is the clear best option, and even if a properly done category should probably win. But all her competitors should be different. This hundo p should have been Rachel for ‘Maisel’, Kristen Bell for ‘The Good Place’ (absolute BRILLIANCE), Rachel Bloom for ‘Crazy Ex Girlfriend’ (if you aren’t jumping up and down in agreement, you haven’t watched her), Tracee Ellis Ross for ‘black-ish’ I guess, and Gina Rodriguez for ‘Jane the Virgin’. No matter what you think about that show, how telenovela it is (ps it’s a telenovela), Gina is sensational. And yeah, that’s five. FIVE NOMINEES PEOPLE. IN EVERY AWARD SHOW, IN EVERY CATEGORY. DO IT. 

As for lead actors in drama, if anyone but Philip and Elizabeth, our beloved Russian spies, win, it’s wrong. WRONG. 

What else is wrong? 

Supporting actress, comedy: How D’Arcy Carden wasn’t nominated for ‘The Good Place’, I’ll never know. She’s a critical darling, like everything about that show, and created an entire KIND Of character. I also would have voted in Donna Lee Champlin for ‘Crazy Ex’. She’s remarkable. I don’t even want to talk about how many people are in this category (too many) and how many make no sense. But lets please give it to Alex Borstein for being incredible on ‘Maisel’. 

Supporting actor, drama: Does a category that doesn’t include Noah Emmerich in ‘The Americans’ even count? No, no it doesn’t. Stanny Beems will always have a place in viewers’ hearts, and no one else on this list can come close to what he did. 

Ok I am going to stop ranting about awards that DO NOT MATTER and finish taking this out of my suitcase (it’s too heavy (as always)). Watch tonight and let me know your thoughts in the comments; I’ll be on a plane so keep me informed. And if you haven’t watched the shows on this list that I’ve said are amazing, what are you waiting for???

The post Emmy Awards 2018: What You Need to Know Before this Garbage appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.

What is this, 2015? Because I don’t have strong feelings about any of these movies being crowned Best Picture of the Year! To paraphrase Tracy Jordan, I guess I’m a horse because I’m about to do some naysaying. Sure, some of the below were fantastic but not “erma p this better win the Oscar it blew me away!” levels of Mr. Foxness. None of them were my “Dear Evan Hansen” of the year, is what I’m saying, if we look at this year’s Tony race for a hot minute for comparison’s sake. That show was objectively ahead of the other shows on Br’dway this year and deserves to win loads of awards. There was no movie equivalent this season. “La La Land” is kind of like “The Great Comet” in that it is the spectacle that is most impressive (and both have great music but “LLL” has real heart and emotion throughout, and while I am obsessed with Comet, I can’t say the same really). And I j’adored a few others, but, like I said, not ‘Best Picture of the Year’ j’adoring. Which is why I said at the beginning that this year reminds me of that difficult year when it was between “Birdman” and “Boyhood”, one movie I RILLS didn’t enjoy and one that was good but not amazing. On the other hand, some of these movies were bad. You’ll see that one in particular was so bad and offensive that the fact that it was up for – and won some – awards makes me cast doubt upon the entire industry and all of its output.

I’ll admit now, I didn’t get to see all the movies in contention this year; the UK got some really late or played some only at bad times in bad locations. They really need someone to fix their booking systems! The biggest contenders I missed out on are “Hell or High Water” and “Moana”, the latter of which I will see ASAP I am sure (ed. note after the fact: i now know Moana by heart omg), the former I know is supposed to be wonderful but I could not care less about more white men in dusty locales doing crime or being cowboys or saying heehaw or whatever. Sawweees! Anyway, the below are the movies I saw in the last few months that are up for awards or should have been. The next post will be about my predictions for the Oscars.

I feel like it should go without saying but HELLA SPOILERS BELOW. 

20TH CENTURY WOMEN
ARRIVAL
BRIDGET JONES’S BABY
CAFE SOCIETY
COLLATERAL BEAUTY
FENCES
HACKSAW RIDGE
HIDDEN FIGURES
JACKIE
KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS
LA LA LAND
LION
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
MOONLIGHT
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS
​SECRET LIFE OF PETS
SULLY​

20TH CENTURY WOMEN

​ I figured I would enjoy this movie, but I did not think I would be so impressed. Writer/director Mike Mills, after his success semi-biographing his father’s story in “Beginners” (with Christopher Plummer), now semi-biographs his mother’s story in “20th Century Women” with Annette Bening. It’s the story of a single mother and her teenage son in Southern California in the 1970s, and how they deal with his growth into a real person amid issues of family dynamics, the growing women’s movement, and the changing political world in general pre-Reagan. Annette brilliantly plays Dorothea, a chain-smoking super-Californian liberal (in most ways) who hysterically nails down the type of parenting we would expect from a stereotypical SoCal mother. For example, in flashbacks to her son Jamie’s earlier childhood, we see him repeatedly try to get out of school by writing fake notes from his mother. When the school brings Dorothea and Jamie in for a meeting, expecting the mother to discipline her son, she instead lies for her son and tells the principal that Jamie had been “volunteering for the Sandinistas”. When pressed in other scenarios (a lot of him getting out of school) to admonish her son’s behavior, she instead turns on whoever is in charge and compels them to answer unanswerable questions like well if this is what he needs for his development who are you to hinder that. That’s a really rough paraphrase of situations I have long since forgotten but you get the idea. She is hilarious while making you question whether she is a really good mother or a really bad mother. She is both, and she is neither.

To ensure that Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) grows into a decent man, Dorothea enlists the help of her tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and Jamie’s close friend Julie (Elle Fanning) to help steer him. They ask, well don’t you need a man to raise a man? Dorothea thinks on it and responds, “Well no…I don’t think so” in a line that I think makes the women in every audience applaud. So Abbie teaches Jamie about feminism and the punk scene, taking him out partying at night with people like at least 10 years older than him. He also learns to provide moral support at her doctor’s appointments; she is in remission from cervical cancer. To me, that was the most effective aspect of ensuring he wouldn’t be a total dick, in hand with the way-beyond-his-years treatises on the feminist movement that Abbie had him read. And they dissect The Raincoats, which is cool because members of The Raincoats were sitting near me when I saw it. Abbie also is responsible for probably the most notorious scene in the movie – when Dorothea has a big dinner party and Abbie talks about how ridiculous it is for men, and women, to be scared of discussion about menstruation. So she makes everyone shout ‘menstruation’ a few times so they stop being uncomfortable with it. After my screening of the movie, there was a Q&A with Annette Bening and she made the audience do this. She is a queen.

Julie, on the other hand, has a more complicated relationship with Jamie. Jamie’s in love with her, as 15-year-old boys usually are with their 17-year-old female friends. Julie’s love for him is solely in friendship. She has already had so many (too many) awful sexual relationships with other boys, and so she treasures having a decent male in her life that actually cares about her and she doesn’t want to ruin it. It’s hard for both of them to understand, especially as Julie pushes the boundaries of what would be considered friendship, but Elle does a great job conveying how damaged and complex Julie is.

All of the characters in the movie are interesting, even Billy Crudup’s laid back tenant William. The film’s main focus seems to be making them layered, intractable at times and admirable at others. It’s really surprising that a man is responsible for it. Nothing is straightforward about the women, but it’s all real. Dorothea seems super liberal and presents herself as a free spirit, maybe a hippie, but then she is opposed to feminism as a movement, which is very hard to understand, since she is clearly living as a feminist. But she also seems to be holding onto a fading way of life, and maybe it’s a way for her to avoid change. Her big sprawling old house, home to her, Jamie, Abbie, and William, is forever unfinished and under construction, and maybe with the world changing so drastically politically too, there was just so much she could admit she didn’t have a handle on. Julie, the daughter of a psychologist, tries to analyze everyone in her life and tends to use that knowledge to obviously make herself seem wise beyond her years, but it really shows how little she is in tune with herself. And Abbie seems incredibly tough, considering what she has been through, and strong in her feminist ideals, but struggles in trying to reconcile that with her fear that having children, something she can’t do, is the best or most important part of being female. And Jamie maybe is the most complicated of all, or at least in the most notoriously hard part of growing up. At times he is a poster child for not having children, and at other times he seems like he may indeed be one of the good ones. He makes a lot of bad decisions but nothing that out of the ordinary for teenagers. And Lucas brings a warmth to his immaturity that it makes you want him to turn out okay and have faith that he does.

Although there is no big dramatic plot, the film never loses your attention or interest in what the characters are going through. It successfully makes this group of people feel genuine and reflective of society. And the cinematography is precise and perfect for the time period. Everything looks like it’s covered with a thin layer of dust from driving around in nonstop sunshine and dry weather and cigarettes. It all has that feel of slightly burnt edges. And the script is as engaging as it gets, with witty dialogue that’s honest and smart without calling attention to it. Annette’s portrayal of Dorothea really is fantastic. She is so subtle and controlled, making the smallest of lines incredible with her reading. It’s a shame she wasn’t nominated and that this movie didn’t get more attention. 

​

ARRIVAL

 After seeing it twice, I feel like Arrival is the most benign movie ever made about aliens. There are no big explosions (there’s a medium one, but just the one) or gunfights or hard military men with shaved heads yelling about how we’re gonna git em and git em good. No Will Smith. And the aliens aren’t here to take over our planet or torture us psychologically or whatever they do in Shyamalan films. Their purpose – the discovery of which is the main goal of the movie, despite all the male characters forgetting that because of testosterone – is actually kind of nice, so they are pretty nice, and everything is just so nice for a movie about aliens.

Amy Adams plays a leading linguist who is hired by the government to communicate with aliens that have landed in 12 different regions of the globe. The aliens haven’t done anything yet, besides park their (super undetectable long thin floaty) arcs/arks (it works both ways! curves and ships! and so the balance shifts) in locations that don’t seem to follow any pattern or reasoning. Amy’s job is to figure out how to communicate with our visitors and find out if they’re here for violence or for friendship – mostly, find out if they are a good squid or a bad squid. Unfortunately, despite her physicist mission partner Jeremy Renner being a pretty good squid, the government officials and military men in charge are (as usual) bad squids, who keep pestering Amy about how she isn’t moving fast enough in TRYING TO LEARN AN ALIEN LANGUAGE. It’s not like it’s the sixth romance language or something you morons. It’s literally ink spills and wailing. The government/military being stupid is typical of these movies, when intelligence and patience struggle to triumph over their hurried might-is-right tendencies, but it quickly gets annoying, and then exasperating. The intensity of ignorance of those in charge may be indeed grounded in reality, but since this movie isn’t (yet) maybe we could have gone a little lighter with that touch. The Serious Man man didn’t need to be such a d-bag. Even d-bags would realize it takes time to learn to talk to GIANT SQUIDS THAT COMMUNICATE BY WAILING AND THROWING INK, and, more importantly, might sometimes defer to the expert who is actually working with said giant squids.

Aside from those annoying men, though, this movie was very well done. Amy Adams, all serene and composed, might not be the first person you think of when you think squid aliens (not to be confused with Hep aliens) and science fiction films, but her quiet and kind of timid disposition really worked for me here. Her character never seemed weak, especially given the tragedy we see her suffer in the prologue, just kind of like she tries to take up less space among the bombastic and ultimately less intelligent men. So they underestimate her, and they don’t suspect that she could not only discover the incredible but also have the gumption to handle things in her own way, without stupid military interference. Mostly, she doesn’t seem like she could be powerful and then she is stronger than all of them, but with her mind, which is way cooler.

The film was a lot more engaging and moving than I expected, mostly because it focused on communication instead of the usual explosions and gunfire you get with typical alien movies. In that regard, it felt a lot more sophisticated than I would have predicted. I also really enjoyed the surprise time bend-y premise that was completely unexpected (and should remain unspoiled) but yet seems perfectly obvious because all good sci-fi movies mess with time. On that note, the first time I saw this movie, I thought it was fine but a little drab. Somehow, the second time I saw it, I was seriously impressed by its sophistication and its subtle illumination of the time matters. So, the moral is see it twice, and be nice to aliens.

​

BRIDGET JONES’S BABY

Oh you don’t know why this is on here? Well this enjoyable romp (first time I’ve described anything as a romp, I think, and I’ll stand behind it) was in the top half (at least!) of movies that were released last year, quality-wise. And to come back from ‘The Edge of Reason’ so successfully truly deserves accolades. I finally watched this on an airplane, and to love it on an airplane means it must have been really spectacular.

We return to Bridge’s cheeky London life (I do not find life here so cheeky but I am not as fun or as dumb as she is) more than a decade since we last saw her et al. in the horrible aforementioned sequel to the fantastic original movie. And we find her – alone. No longer with Mark Darcy! In fact, Mark Darcy is MARRIED to someone else. I literally gasped. On an airplane! Through some well-placed flashbacks, we see how life with Mark was during the intervening years, and how things came to an end. To sum up, he was a dick. A real grade A, uptight, unreasonable, insensitive, cold, unsupportive jock strap in a bag o’ dicks. Whereas, when they first began their romance, he would make his adorable amused smile at Bridge’s antics, one that seemed to say ‘Oh Bridge! You are quite silly now aren’t you”, in the important core years of their relationship he seemed always exasperated. Like, dude, just breathe and unclench! It’s good to have someone in your life who isn’t serious 100% of the time. Will help with your frown lines! Anyway so Darcy was always frowning and setting up camp in his mahogany and tweed bag o’ dicks and Bridget was trying to make him smile and of course her joie de vivre made him furious and he expressed his clear and understandable self-loathing as annoyance with the nice lady in his life that he should have been thanking every day for putting up with his impotent bullshit and that kind of relationship cannot be sustained so they fell apart. He married a nondescript “lady” while Bridget soared through the ranks to become a successful television producer. I adore that Bridget is kind of responsible for the new trend of women in pop culture who have shittastic love lives but who kick serious ass in their professional lives – like Mindy Kaling in “The Mindy Project” (great gyno), and Lorelai Gilmore from “Gilmore Girls” (great innkeeper and business lady), and Rebecca Bunch on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (legit nuts in all areas but a fantastic Ivied attorney).

Bridget goes to a kind of Coachella event which is literally my nightmare so to be forced to look upon it while on one of my flying nightmares was a lot for me to handle without screaming but I took some deep breaths and got through it. She meets a super hot and super nice and just perfect seeming man played by Patrick Dempsey, who I do not believe for one second would be at such an event for smelly people. They have a one-night stand in a tent, or at least Bridget assumes that’s what it is because a) hot man & b) that’s what they do that’s what they do, but Patrick (I don’t remember his name he’s prob just playing himself it’s all good) isn’t like that and really likes her! You expect that at some point in the movie a bad quality about him would come to light and show her how amazing Darcy was, but he just keeps getting cooler and more awesome seeming. Unforch, Bridget and a newly divorced Darcy reconnect soon after (or before it’s hard to keep a timeline when you’re getting interrupted for captain announcements) at an English countryside wedding which, having myself been to such a wedding, did not feature nearly enough fascinators. Bridget soon realizes that she is le preggers and doesn’t know if it is Darcy’s or Dempsey’s and, more importantly, doesn’t know who she’d rather have a child with. IT’S DEMPSEY, BRIDGE, IT’S DEMPSEY, not the dick that took 15 years of your life and treated you like gum stuck to his shoe. But of course it was always going to be Darcy because I guess most of the fans would have revolted? But I am pretty representative of the fan base and I would have chosen Dempsey. He was so nice. Mr Darcy is kind of a real dick. Dempsey, on the other hand, had zero negative character traits. Seriously the worst thing about him was that he turned out to be a famous billionaire. And not the dickish kind, but the kind that does a lot to help the world and give to charity and stuff. But the fandom would have erupted if Bridge didn’t end up with Darcy. Oh well, as long as Bridget’s three best friends are still around, we good.

​

CAFE SOCIETY

Ew perv.

​

COLLATERAL BEAUTY

By far the most unfairly maligned movie of not only this season but of the past several years, “Collateral Beauty” had really lovely things to say and did an often lovely job of saying them, but those great moments and attempts at beauty got bogged down by amateur scriptwriting and poor editing. This, coupled with the complete lack of cynicism – to the point where it was just pure unfiltered emotion without edge, made it easy to see why critics jumped at the chance to claw this film apart – because most of them (us? hush!) are sad witchy hunchbacks who can’t get past the all-consuming melancholy that comes with writing about something they’d unsuccessfully tried to be a part of. Also they have no real joy so they forcibly enjoy a generic herd mentality that leads them all to praise one movie and annihilate another for no good reason other than that they’re all doing it. And while there is plenty to criticize in “Collateral Beauty”, it wasn’t any more than in most films on this list, yet it had more heart and attempted to show more emotion that most others.

Will Smith played an advertising executive who is obsessed with dominoes, which people try to argue is a game but as far as I have ever seen is just a way to make short-lived motion art with smooth legos. I would have enjoyed a movie that had people debating how on earth knocking over blocks in patterns can be a game played with more than one person. Will (let’s call him Will) constructs impressive domino setups instead of literally doing anything else, be it working or sleeping or eating or speaking to people who are standing right next to him and talking to him, because his 5- or 6-year-old daughter has died tragically. It’s really sad, obviously. But when a year or two passes and he continues to exist in this barely functioning catatonic state, still without speaking, his three business partners decide to force him into therapy and medical care in order for their long-time friend to get a new lease on a life that accounts for his broken heart. Oh wait! That is what non-psychotic caring people would do! Oopsy! Instead of doing literally anything else, the three business partners/supposed friends/former infatuation junkies – Kate Winslet, Ed Norton, and Michael Pena (my computer won’t make the squiggly ‘n’ I AM SORRY I DO NOT MEAN ANY DISRESPECT MICHAEL) – decide to hire a private investigator to catch Will being all cuckoo banana puffs pants so they can use that evidence to force him out of the company, leaving them to sell it and make some needed moolah or at least stop him from using his kookoopantsness to drive big clients to competitors, as was happening. Seems like you should have incorporated your business in a sensible way in the first place that might have allowed for doing things that are in the best interest of the company/shareholders without resorting to such ridiculous efforts but hey that’s your business!

So old lady private investigator – who I enjoyed; they are usually leathery wizened men – like on her first day on the job breaks into a U.S. postal service mailbox, and doesn’t get caught or go to prison because America is totes into breaking all kinds of law now and disrespecting government agencies is a sign of patriotism. OLPI (old lady private investigator) retrieves three letters that Will put in the mailbox moments ago – letters to Love, Death, and Time, in which he yells at each of them for failing him and his family and causing such unwarranted pain. (LIFE IS PAIN HIGHNESS.) Well for Love he just said like ‘goodbye, we’re done’ which is le sad! So the Three Morons (Kate, Ed, and Michael) decide to hire actors to portray the Three, um, Entities? of Love, Death, and Time and having them interact with Will in broad daylight so they can film him talking to the actors but then edit out the actors so it looks like Will is just talking to himself and being completely off his rocker. GREAT PLAN, corporate executives! Great plan.

Ed Norton tells Keira Knightley to play Love cuz she pretty, Jacob Lattimore plays Time because he’s young and tough, and Helen Mirren plays Death because she old like for the earth. They have hesitations about using their craft to destroy a man’s life when it has already been destroyed by such tragedy but then Ed says he will finance their off-off-off-Br’dway play so they are down. They each approach Will like twice in public and tell him oh I am Love/Time/Death and you wrote that awfully mean letter to me and I have something to say about it! Will is not as crazy as they think he is because he’s sane enough to initially be like, trick please, who put you up to this? But they have the letters he wrote, and he didn’t get the memo about how it’s cool now to bust open mailboxes and commit postal felonies. Even more convincingly, OLPI sets it up so that no one nearby acknowledges the actors, forcing Will to question whether maybe they are really the entities. Like, Time visits Will in his office, and then Kate Winslet walks in to ask him a question and pretends not to see the Time actor, which I mean I would be sold too because I wouldn’t suspect Kate Winslet of messing with me so hard. My favorite instance is when Helen Mirren is talking to Will on the sidewalk and OLPI walks by with a little child who she instructed to say, “Grandma why is that man talking to himself??” in Will’s earshot. So yeah I’d prob buy it too. He doesn’t necessarily believe them, but he is super freaked out, shook as the kids say nowadays, to such an extent that he tries going to a meetup group for bereaved parents run by Naomie Harris, who is really nice and lovely here and not like her character in “Moonlight”.

Each of the Three Morons works with one of the Three Actors/Entities on reviewing their interactions with Will and discussing what would work best next. Norton takes charge with Keira’s Love because he is a dawg. Keira’s first interaction with Will is her being all upset because he just wrote ‘goodbye’ and she is like ‘you can’t just say peace I’m done with you to meeee’ and he’s like ‘um I thought you were love, not stage 5 clinginess beeyotch’ well I am paraphrasing this part but that’s how I remember it so that’s how it’ll be. Keira starts therapizing Ed along the way, as he is having serious difficulties being an absent father to a spoilt little New York girl who doesn’t care that he got her Hamilton tickets instead of ever actually being a father to her because she already saw it. (You know how I feel about pop culture using Hamilton references as a way to try to get cheap laughs and/or make connections to the world. Lazy, cheap, amateur attempts at piggybacking off genius and it needs to stop.) Jacob’s Time realizes that Kate wants a baby but her eggs are drying up because she is past 40, or maybe he just guesses that that’s true because sexism, but anyway it is true and he tries to help her realize that she isn’t out of time yet on that front. Michael Pesquigglyna unfortunately has had his cancer come back, and Helen Mirren tries to get him to tell his family and get his affairs in order since it looks like he won’t be beating it this time. Around this time is when I was like OH SHIT. OHH SHIT. THEY ARE REALLY DOING THEIR ENTITY JOBS BUT FOR THE MORONS MAYBE THEY ARE NOT JOBS BUT REAL! Keira was actually helping Ed realize what love is and what it entails, and Helen was helping Michael cope with death, and Jacob was helping Kate deal with timeeee and it was so subtle and I was like HELL YEAH THIS IS AMAAAAZING. I like realizing things before you’re supposed to! Ivy league educaysh! I loved the twist with Naomie Harris; I really did not see that coming until Will went in her house and I was like, hey how did you know where she lived stalker! I cried a good deal when I realized he wasn’t a stalker.

There are two aspects I’m still meh about. One is the fact that the actors were paid even though they weren’t actors. Like, Kate Winslet gave Time/Jacob what, $20,000 in CASH in an envelope? Where did that money go, Time?! Does it go to the angel fund for new fluffier clouds? Are they even ghosts or just spirits and what is the difference? How is it okay to take so much money from the people you’re supposed to be helping! Ahhhh so much cashhh does he even need food? So that is bothering me. Next, the big scene where they explain what on earth the title means. Helen in the flashback is comforting Naomie Harris in the hospital, and she says that it’s comforting to focus not on death but on the beauty that comes with death – the collateral beauty. Like when tragedy happens and people act selflessly or lovingly and bestow kindness in the emptiness that the tragedy caused. Ummm hard pass. I guess it’s kind of like today when we say all this truly awful stuff is happening to our country and people’s lives are being destroyed but it helps to ‘look for the helpers’, all the decent people who come out to try to help? I guess it’s kind of like that? But like I rather we just had a different president. And I don’t think that people who are grieving the loss of a child are going to feel better if you’re like ‘but the nurses brought you balloonsss so nice!’

Despite all its flaws – and there were many; I am not excusing that Daniel-Palladino-level-no-nobody-is-allowed-to-edit-my-script-it-is-fine-how-it-is type of dialogue (which, by the way, was just as bad in the acclaimed “Hidden Figures”) – it really affected me with how raw its emotional development was. We are not used to seeing such unfiltered emotions presented as is, in any form, and that really was lovely. And it was an interesting premise. Sure it wasn’t executed that well, and it should have and easily could have been better, but it was not nearly as bad as all the reviewers wanted it to be. 

​

FENCES

I had really high hopes for this movie version of the play, even though the last August Wilson joint I saw was really disappointing. But I knew that “Fences” had destroyed (in a good way) Broadway back in 2010, and with the same cast – Denzel Washington and Viola Davis as married couple Troy and Rose. I didn’t get to see that production of the play so this movie version is a huge treat, considering it is basically a video of a play. It is obvious that it’s based on a play, both from the incredible amount of talking and from the lack of movement and action, but despite feeling stuck in one spot I still thought it was directed very well by Denzel. His solid directing doesn’t even compare to his acting, though, and he gives the best performance by a man person all year. I have never been so impressed by Denzel (well maybe in “Remember the Titans” that shit was the bomb) or maybe any actor onscreen, no joke. If he loses to Casey Affleck’s drowsy whimpering it will seriously be a crime.

Fences tells the story of Troy and Rose, a poor hardworking couple in 1950s Pittsburgh, trying to get through life’s bullshit with smiling faces and love, at least at the beginning. Troy collects garbage with his best friend Bono, and not the Bono saying stupid shit about Mike Pence right now but that super lovable actor Stephen Henderson, and even though I cannot ever remember all the things I know him from, I’m always happy to see him. He is wonderful in his super talky scenes with Denzel as they literally talk and talk and talk about their entire lives and everything they’ve already talked about for years with each other but they like to talk and talk about it all the time and share a bottle of gin while they stand in Troy’s little backyard. Denzel’s interaction with Viola feels so lived in and natural, and yes it’s because they already played these roles on Br’dway but also because they are phenomenal actors. Despite the first act being talkier than an episode of Gilmore Girls, it was like being in the middle of a masterclass of acting and character building. I sat there in awe.

We learn a lot about the characters from their interactions with their kids. Troy has an older son named Lyons from a previous relationship, and he comes by mostly to borrow money but he seems decent enough. He’s a musician and Troy never goes to hear him play because he thinks he should get a real job. We realize little by little that Troy is kind of a terrible and mean man. Lyons is only it in a bit but you can easily see how hurt he is when his father refuses to ever go to his jazz club. Maybe if Emma Stone went. Troy and Rose have a teenage son, Cory, with whom Troy is equally cold. Cory is a promising high school football player who has caught the eye of college recruiters, but Troy refuses to let him play. Troy was a professional baseball player, which he reminds you of frequently because he has a baseball hanging on a rope from a tree and he picks up his bat every now and then to hit it. But Troy’s dreams of translating his success as the best in the Negro Leagues to success in the Major Leagues were dashed because he aged out, although he believes it was because of his race, which is probably part of it. Because his bright future was ruined by the racism in sports, according to him at least, he forbids his son from entering that world as well and meeting similar guaranteed failure. No matter that his son is being recruited by colleges and could get a scholarship for FREE EDUCATION, no, Troy is too bitter and obstinate to see how amazing that would be for Cory. This makes me really mad. And Rose is a 1950s housewife, and though she doesn’t seem to bite her tongue, she won’t fight her husband’s word.

Troy’s relationship with his brother Gabriel helps flesh out his character more. Gabriel suffered a head injury in World War II and now is mentally impaired, with a general joviality that gets interrupted by frustrated bursts of anger. He is harassed by local kids because local kids in any locale are pieces of garbage, but he sells his fruit and plays his horn all around town every day. Gabriel’s injury netted him a paltry sum of money from the army, which Troy used to buy the house where 99% of the action occurs. We’re told Troy feels guilty about that but I don’t really think he does. He is a bastard of a person. Gabriel, btw, is played by Mykelti Williamson, who played Bubba in “Forrest Gump”, so he is the go-to actor for characters who are kind of slow and simple but also really warm and easy to root for? I’m going to stop before I get too offensive.

So the more people we see Troy interact with, the more he is revealed, at least to me, to be yet another entry into the big ol’ bag o’ dicks. He doesn’t show any warmth to his sons, and when Cory calls him out on this, asking why he never liked him, Denzel hopefully wins an Oscar with his devastating response about how it’s not his job to like his son, it’s his job to provide for him and get up and go to work every day so his son has a roof over his head and food on the table. It’s a really powerful exchange and even though Troy’s not necessarily wrong he is still being a total dick. At least he’s loving to Rose, right? He and Viola are adorable together! Well but then he gets caught having an affair with a local woman, and he has to confess to Rose not because he knows that’s the right thing to do, but because this other woman, Alberta, is pregnant with his baby. Ohhhh lordy lord, Troy. Thankfully, Viola finally lets loose with all that strength we knew she had deep down and admonishes Troy for taking her for granted and treating her so terribly when she has given him so many good years. Troy, being the bastard that he is, doesn’t apologize or ask for forgiveness – no, instead he tries to explain himself by saying how it made him happy to have sex with another woman who laughed at his really bad jokes. Duuude. Rose is standing there like what in the world are you seriously not apologizing and Troy just keeps digging and digging the hole he’s standing in, saying stupid stuff like how it’s his life and he wanted to have some good old-fashioned cheatin’ fun. Rose erupts and yells that it’s her life too, that she gave up so much to make their life together and he doesn’t appreciate that, obviously. So this is the part in the movie where Viola really cries and gets all snotty and drippy, as she does in all her projects because Viola’s snot is one of the top five actors working today, along with Meryl Streep and Viola Davis the human. She and it are amazing. I think my favorite vegan cheese in the UK, Violife, is named after her because Viola gives me liiiiife. I was so loving Rose in this scene, saying what needed to be said to Troy. It was so satisfying. They really are incredible actors.

Although Troy proved more and more to be possibly off his rocker, his final scene when he screams to the Reaper again to just try taking him was frightening and strong. I really thought he died right there, swinging his bat at his hanging ball and screaming at death (not Helen Mirren). So I am conflicted about this actual ending, because I think it would have been a much more powerful ending if it had indeed ending there, with lightning flashing and Troy screaming at death. Instead, we flash forward six years to Troy’s funeral and get to see how the family is getting on without him physically but with the marks he made on them still apparent. I wouldn’t think this coda was necessary except for the final shot, where Gabriel is pathetically playing his horn to St. Peter to open the gates for his brother and the sun breaks through. I mean, yes, that is pretty cheesy if you wanna be a jerk about it but oh my goodness how I cried. I think even though it’s less powerful to have such codas in general (it’s better to veer away from the ‘where are they now!’ b.s. with fictional characters), I approve of it here because of how moving that end was. “Fences” was pretty much what I expected, a really solid play-like production of an acting vehicle for two of the best working actors. One question – August Wilson is nominated for adapting the screenplay. He died 11 years ago. Not so much a question I guess as just I want to recognize this hard-working ghost.

​

HACKSAW RIDGE

I wasn’t planning on not seeing this, but then a few things kept poking at my brain and convincing me that I am better off not seeing it, despite liking Andrew Garfield: a) it really hit me that Mel Gibson directed it, b) I have to pay for movies over here, and c) I remembered that I’m a big advocate of voting with your dollar. So if I am voting with my dollars (pounddollars) based on what movies I see, then I am not going to contribute to Mel’s success. (Also why I won’t pay for McConaughey movies anymore.) (ALSO, I am not advocating watching movies illegally. Don’t do that. Just wait for them to be on TV or Netflix for the whole no-paying thing.) (DO NOT PIRATE STUFF.) (EVER!) (RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAW.) 
​

HIDDEN FIGURES

This is probably the most surprising movie of the year, success-wise – if you are a racist and/or a misogynist. Out-of-touch studio heads have been saying for years (forever?) that women and women of color in particular are not the audiences they gear their products towards because they don’t go to the movies enough to make it worth it or some other white male nonsense. Well we better be getting a whole lot more interesting and diverse content now that this movie about black women has grossed more money than all the other Best Picture Nominees – even “La La Land”. I’m so excited about the success and acclaim this film has been receiving. And who could have guessed that the cast would win the top prize at the SAG Awards for Best Ensemble?! That was a shock and I’m so happy for the amazing cast. I want this movie to make so much more money and disprove all the stupid theories about movie audiences.

However.

It’s not a good enough movie to be nominated for Best Picture.

“Hidden Figures” is a really enjoyable movie, with great acting and actors, and overall I’d say it is solid and good. Great? No. Oscar-worthy, no. I liked it, but it was a made-for-TV movie, with its amateur direction and overall feel. I could easily have seen it on ABC Family back when ABC Family existed. The TV movie dialogue and script and direction were a disservice to the women who deserved to have their story told in a more adept and professional way. I honestly think that the studio and/or production team did not think it would do as well as it did, and so they treated it like a throwaway project that wouldn’t make any money or stick around more than a few weeks. If they had any faith in this story, I think we would have gotten a much more skilled and clever film.

Still, it was very enjoyable, with these fantastic actors and this incredible story of black women fighting every manner of adversity to help bring the first American astronauts to the moon. So few people actually know this story so it’s wonderful that these women and their contribution to NASA are finally getting their due. Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer are amazing as always, badass and strong and willful. It is a shame that Octavia is the one nominated and not Taraji in the more crowded lead actress category. Taraji is flames. Surprisingly, but not surprisingly because apparently there is nothing she can’t do including being the most beautiful person ever, singer Janelle Monae really acquitted herself well here. She was also great in “Moonlight”. She is an unfair human. Kevin Costner also does a great job of being a decent white man who doesn’t really get how privileged he is until someone lays it out for him very clearly. The scene between him and Taraji, when she has her breakdown about her bathroom being so far away, was the most powerful part of the movie and led to the second best part of the movie, when Costner destroys the segregating signs. But like you could kind of tell a white guy directed it, because Costner’s awesome efforts are really framed as heroic instead of just the decent and moral thing to do. You don’t get a hero’s greeting for evincing the bare minimum of human decency.

The amazing cast also included Mahershala Ali, whom I absolutely adore, but he should have been cut. The whole romance storyline felt unnecessary, almost like an apology to any conservatives in the audience for daring to have a movie about women being scientists, like a ‘don’t worry they still really only want a good man! here’s the romance storyline that all stories about women need even when said stories are about scientists working at NASA and you’d rather have more science stuff happening instead!’ It was a slap in the face almost. Movies about men can have it just be their professional lives but professional women still need a romance subplot. Grahhh. The movie should have been 100% Taraji doing math. Well the one part of the romance storyline I enjoyed was when Mahershala proposed at the dinner table and Taraji cried and her youngest daughter says, “Mama, are you sad?” it was adorable.

But still, this movie should have been entirely the three women doing sick math. I could have watched two whole hours of Taraji standing on that ladder at the blackboard while all the pale white men looked on in disbelief and deference. Suck it, Jim Parsons! Give one of your Emmys to Steve Carell! 

​

JACKIE

I was just saying last year how Natalie Portman needs a really great, artsy comeback vehicle after her slump post-Black Swan slash taking time out to have a family and what not. Whoever signed her up for that Janie’s Got a Gun movie or whatever the crap that was really should be punished, maybe with having to watch that film. So to have her come back to the world of acclaim by playing Jackie Kennedy right at the JFK assassination seemed like a fantastic opportunity for her, and like we would be treated with a movie for the ages.

This movie sucks.
​
I couldn’t even finish watching it, but I highly doubt the end could change my mind unless there was like a Bollywood musical number or if they worked in the Lee Harvey Oswald character from Sondheim’s “Assassins” to form a trippy diatribe about how it’s all connected and stuff I don’t know, we know how this story ends. Natalie did a really good job doing Jackie Kennedy’s voice and mannerisms? I guess? But this movie was torture. I can’t even say anything more. It was SO BORING OH MY GOD. I can’t even talk about what happened because nothing happened. He got shot, she tried to deal with it, she gives an interview later in life and talks about it but like nothing is said and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I ‘m out.

​

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

This was a surprise! I think we saw this film on a whim over the summer and were blown away by how great it was. Way too scary for children, but great. It tells the story of Kubo, a little Japanese boy who lives in a mountain with his sick (in the head?) mother. He goes into the village every day to make money by telling intricate, exciting stories with origami, which he magically manipulates when he plays his guitar. It’s very cool although no one is like, hey kid, how do you have magic? Kubo is ordered by his mother to never stay out after dark, or her evil spirit sisters and her father, The Moon King, will take his remaining eye (they stole his other eye at birth, I think because he was half human and they don’t like that). Of course, him being a kid, he stays out after dark one day and the evil relatives come after him. His mother saves him by sending him to a far off land that really feels like a different realm, sort of, where his monkey charm comes to life. The monkey and Kubo embark on a series of adventures to try to find his deceased warrior-father’s armor. These adventure are legit, and terrifying, and like I said, not for children. I thought the giant skeleton that they had to stab in the head was bad enough but when the sisters attack the boat and the monkey? Jesus h! The story was incredibly moving, when Kubo conquers the evil spirits by restringing his guitar with things that legit made me cry (I can’t believe this is the movie I’m not going to spoil but you know what, I have standards).

The only flaw in this is that, for a movie about Japanese folklore and culture, I think every voice actor and member of the production team was white, except for George Takei who REALLY should have been used more because he is the best. I guess that’s how racist Hollywood studio heads get to make ‘exotic’ movies about other cultures while still employing almost all white actors – to make it animated so they get away with it. Oh wait, they do that for live-action movies too! Nevermind! 

​

LA LA LAND

No one told me that this movie would render the viewer a complete sobbing nonfunctioning mess for hours after it ended. Why did no one tell me this.

I had high hopes for “La La Land”. Like really really high. I didn’t see it until February, once I’d already been exposed to months and months of HYPEEE so much hype, once it had already started sweeping pre-Oscars awards. And I added all my own hype to it, all my excitement about how it was a musical, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling again, by Damien Chazelle whose “Whiplash” is still the best edited movie I’ve ever seen, &c. I was too pumped but also aware that it probably wouldn’t live up to the sky-high bar that was set. Also it copied its promotional art/poster from “An American in Paris”, the musical that opened on Broadway a few years ago, letting me eagerly give it an early knock in the con column. I was so conflicted. I wanted to love it because hey musical, but I kind of wanted it to not live up to the hype so I could righteously bemoan the lack of love for “Moonlight” and “Lion” this season.

But then it started, and as you know it starts with that musical number. That enormous, heart-pumping, soul-buoying opener that takes over a huge section of the Los Angeles freeway during a traffic jam that sees all the drivers get out of their cars and start dancing and jumping and singing. And I smiled so hard the entire six minutes and was like oh okay I get it this is amazing. I felt like I do in the theatre when a musical I’m doubtful of opens with a perfectly executed opening number and I am so relieved and impressed and elated all at once that it makes me cry tears of joy. This came pretty close to that feeling. I adored that it was all non-famous people in this scene, no stars, just talented fresh faces flipping over cars and dancing on the freeway and singing this adorable song about how it’s always sunny in Los Angeles. Or, at least, that is what the song seemed to be about. I learned later that, despite my bellyaching above about how the sobfest of an ending came without any semblance of a warning, it turns out that this joyful opening song told us straight out what was going to happen: “Cause maybe in that sleepy town, he’ll sit one day, the lights are down, he’ll see my face and think of how he used to know me.” They told us right at the start that we were going to see a more dramatic and sadder version of Hugh Grant watching Anna Scott on the big screen thinking hey she’s somebody that I used to knowww somebodayyyy.

But until we get to that point, it’s a jolly good time. Emma Stone is in prime Emma Stone form – I mean she does always seem to play the same version of herself but when we get opportunities for her to show off her trademark goofy adorableness, like the part at the pool party where she requests the song “I Ran” and acts like Ryan Gosling is singing it to her, it’s worth it. She was hilarious in that scene, even if it felt almost out of place like it had been lifted straight from the cutting room floor of “Easy A”. Ryan Gosling was surprisingly great and funny and charming despite 99% of the time wearing his trademark I’m-slightly-amused-and-also-kind-of-surprised face. He’s not a singer like you’d expect in a musical, but his voice felt honest and full of emotion and it was really moving. I like that he didn’t have a booming musical theatre voice. I think he should be getting all the acclaim this season over Emma, or at least more than he is getting. Well he did win a Golden Globe but I mean those are nonsense. The chemistry between these two actors could be the strongest in popular duos today. They are our modern day fill in the blanks of a chemistrous acting couple. They’re like our Kathy Selden and Don Lockwood. (I almost said Draper.) I love them together. And that’s a big part of why the “500 Days of Summer”-style Expectations-vs-Reality ending (although this usage was 500 times more emotional and poignant than in “Summer”, which is saying a lot because that scene was devastating) was such a gut punch. I was hiccuppy crying and I really didn’t expect that! But Ryan’s (I honestly don’t remember their character names because it seems like they play themselves and I’m okay with it) fantasy of what their version of life together should have looked like was so, so well done that I can’t fault it for happening. I’m still upset about it but it made the story real. And maybe I would have enjoyed it more if the movie stuck to being as fantastical as its opening number was, but grounding the ending in reality and having the characters reflect the kinds of sorrows that normal people experience is what really made it shine as a film and not a cone of cotton candy or such. So I will one day get over the fact that I didn’t get to smile the entire time.

The real stunning part of this film is indeed the music. There aren’t as many actual musical numbers in it as I would have wanted or as you’d guess for something billed as a musical, maybe 4-5? But the score underpinning every scene is meticulous, and it illustrates well what’s happening emotionally and mentally for our characters. Chazelle really is a master at using music to tell his story, and Justin Horwitz’s score as manipulated by Chazelle is probably the best part of this movie. It’s a perfect match of music directed impeccably to tell the story. And the songs apart from the instrumental score are wonderful, too. City of Stars, the one that will win the Oscar, is probably my least favorite actually, but that’s just default because they are all so good. And of course they are, because they were written by one of my favorite composer teams, Pasek and Paul, who wrote two of my favorite musical theatre scores (Dogfight and Dear Evan Hansen) PLUS one of my favorite songs from Smash. I miss Smash. When Ryan plays the Emma melody again at the end, I about lost it. Of course that is what he would play at that moment, but it was just so well done and I really appreciated how well the music was used throughout the film. I would be listening to the score all day long if Lionsgate hadn’t sent a record. (No it’s really cool that they sent a record – and a record player (baller) – but I couldn’t pack that to my luggage.)

Overall, I think it was a great movie. Despite how sick it made my tumnus to have both high hopes and low expectations simultaneously, I really enjoyed it and get why people, especially people in the business (see e.g. their fawning over “The Artist” and “Argo”), are fawning over it. I also understand how people, especially in this political climate, are furious that this lilywhite movie could be crowned Best Picture. I agree that this movie should have been more diverse and shouldn’t have pinned all its excuses on the casting of our boyfriend John Legend. That’s definitely a problem. But it’s still a great movie and I’m super eager to rewatch “La La Land” when it’s on TV in the future, although I don’t know if I would, or could, watch the ending. Although the ending might be the best part. Maybe I’ll watch it in reverse?

​

LION

I cry a lot. A lot a lot, said in the fake English accent of Hallie Parker pretending to be Annie James. Theatre, movies, television, hell I have cried at multiple episodes of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (Santino Fontana is an incredible actor and I did not appreciate him before.) But I haven’t cried so much and so hard as I did during “Lion”, since, well, I don’t know when. It was like the first time I saw “The Color Purple” revival PLUS when I saw the “Spring Awakening” DeafWest revival. Okay maybe not that much (that DeafWest revival was INSANELY AMAZING) (also I think those crying levels compounded onto each other would have literally made me disintegrate) but “Lion” was so heartbreaking and moving that I don’t know how it’s not regulated as a dangerous substance by the little government we have left.

“Lion” tells the story of the cutest little Indian boy you have ever seen in your entire life like really you cannot believe how cute he is and that he’s a real person on the same planet as you because how can that be if you are just a normal person and you’re on the same planet as the cutest little boy that has ever existed but then you remember that dogs exist and dogs are amazing and usually the cutest ever wittles you’ve ever seen so because there are dogs on this planet too you can kind of accept that this world could also have Sunny Pawar in it. Sunny plays Saroo, the cutest wittle who lives in a tiny village in India with his mother, his older brother Guddu, and his sister. They are really poor and I am guessing would be considered untouchables. Guddu and Saroo steal coal from passing trains to sell for food for their family, and when Guddu tells Saroo he plans to go away for a few days to work on a bigger job, Saroo begs to come with him. He tells him he’s strong enough and flexes for his brother but he’s like a baby and it’s so cute so Guddu, against better judgment, agrees to take him along. You know this is not going to go well, although you probably already knew that because this is based on a true story. So as expected, they get separated, and Saroo somehow ends up stuck on a train for days and days that crosses all of India and ends up thousands of miles away in Calcutta. He has no idea how to get back home, and he doesn’t even know the real name of his town or his mother’s name. And his mother doesn’t read the newspapers that eventually place ads about his predicament. And, they speak a different language in this part of the country. He is screwed. Although he does have the cutest voice you could ever imagine, like the cutest since Boo in “Monsters Inc.”, previously my favorite movie child of all time even though she is animated, his speaking is pointless since no one understands him. Poor wittle. Saroo tries to find his way alone in this scary place, fleeing from police and running away from sickos who pretend to be nice to him but have ulterior motives, on and on until finally he is placed in an orphanage. He continues to plea for people to help him find his family, but they convince him that it’s impossible, that they’ve tried everything. And so he gets adopted by Nicole Kidman and a cross between Jamie Lannister and Steve Irwin, and goes to live a completely different life in Tasmania, even though he knows his mother and brother are worried sick about him.

Sunny Pawar grows up to be Dev Patel, a decently adjusted man who is studying in Melbourne. In school, he meets the most useless part of the movie, Rooney Mara, and they date and have relaysh drama and it’s so unnecessary, but they needed a white woman in the film who wasn’t already past the age of Hollywood acceptability to help sell it. The most infuriating part of this whole shebang is not that a young kid would make a bad decision and bring his even littler brother on an ill-fated journey but that the studio thought it was okay to put Rooney Mara on the movie’s posters. She is in it a small amount, and she could have been completely cut out. But because she is white and young and attractive, she is given equal billing in the public eye as Dev Patel is. And Sunny is not on the promotional materials. I am very angry about this. Whose idea was it, huh? WAS IT HARVEY’S? In my mind I am the one who defaced these posters in the tube stations.

But anyway, man-sized Saroo decides he needs to find his family, and he turns to Google Earth at his friends’ suggestion. This movie then becomes a commercial for Google Earth but it’s okay. Saroo becomes completely consumed with his online searches, which take him literally throughout all of India so it takes months and months and months of obsessive research. Luckily Nikki K approves of his search for his family and he gets a new surge of energy from her support. When things start to click into place for Saroo and his journey back (his journey to the past? shh) happens, it’s all too much to handle and you turn into a pile of Viola-style snot. And then your situation gets worse and worse as the story unfolds and you just fall apart and stop breathing while hiccupily shouting “GUDDU!!! NOOOOOO!” and trying to tell yourself ‘it’s just a movie it’s just a movie’ for a split second before remembering oh shit no it’s not, this is a truth. And then they start showing you flashbacks to Sunny-as-Saroo’s childhood with Guddu and you are just like ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? And it’s all so sad and so good and then just when you think you have regained your ability to see and breathe and maybe you think you will make it through this film after all without vomiting, they show footage of the REAL Saroo and both his families and then they tell you what his name meant because you have forgotten to wonder about why the movie was called Lion while you were hyperventilating for the past hour and then you just turn into an Alex Mack-style puddle of silver liquid that used to be human form because now you are just tears the end best movie of the year possibly ever. 

​

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

I kind of wish this movie had been about Jessie Spano trying to get a birthday cake made and she kept having to hide her attempts by saying ‘yes our club is by the sea it is by the sea’ or whatever. Am I the only person who remembers really random bits from “Saved by the Bell”? Even though that old TV show is the hardest POS to rewatch as a non-child who has a slightly better capacity for discerning quality, I would rather talk about SBTB for hours and maybe even be forced to watch the Tory years (what the hell was that where were Kelly and Jessie why was this just an extra year of high school with a random different classmate was this a trial season for a bizarro version of their world I am still really angry about it why not just have a whole season of Leah Remini and her beach club or Kelly’s random uncle who owned a hotel in Hawaii I want more information about that guy how did he live) than think about this incredibly shockingly overrated boring movie for another minute.

Casey Affleck plays a man who sighs a lot and is just a full-on grumperpuss and you’re like, hey, am I supposed to like you, or hate you, or be totally ambivalent about you, and if it’s the latter which I suspect it is, why am I watching a movie about you, am I supposed to care or am I supposed to look at my phone the whole time for more interesting material? Casey then sighs and you’re like, oh it’s the latter. Casey plays a man who has suffered a great deal of tragedy in his life, like too much for any non-awful person to ever be dealt. And it’s horrifyingly awful and sad and unfair that life can give anyone this much tragedy. You’d think they could spin a better story out of that kind of material. Instead, you understand why he is such a grumper and why he can’t abide by social mores or at least act like a decent person to his nephew, but you don’t really care? It’s hard to make this character, who has suffered so much, seem like such a dick, but they succeed at it. Casey’s performance is being lauded as the best of the year, but to me it seemed like he is getting a lot of acclaim for sighing audibly like he is practicing Ujjayi breath in his Brooklyn Heights yoga class before he was able to grab his morning coffee at the shop where Ichabod the barista handpicks each bean before brewing.

Lucas Hedges, as his nephew dealing with stuff no teenager should have to deal with, does a great job nailing that teenage angst while seeming vulnerable despite his hard edges. I am glad he recovered from being shanked with lefty scissors. Despite his being a typical unlikable teenager, you really feel for his predicament, that he has no one now except this uncle who can’t move on with his life even when his nephew needs him. And you can’t really fault Casey’s character for not being able to take care of him, once you know his backstory. And that backstory is a doozy. But even so, the overall impression of this story is not like, ‘wow this really gets the human condition’ but more ‘oh, that really sucks for them. for all of them. everyone. it really sucks.” Who wants that to be the takeaway of a movie?!

Although it seems like there is a lot here that I am finding fault with, it felt like the faintest whisper of a movie. All of the dialogue, I think, is captured in the 2 minute trailers, so if you want to ‘see’ the movie without having to actually see it, watch the trailer at 20x slower speed and you will get the gist. It’s like, a sentence, then silence and visuals, then another sentence. So, the movie wasn’t actively bad because there was no real action happening. It was passive, and boring in that way. What really struck me and stuck out as the most actively bad part of the movie is the music. I have never really noticed a movie’s score except when it’s used well to augment the emotions of the scenes, but in those times it is supposed to enhance and not overpower. The music here was so bad that it took me out of the movie. The songs used had lyrics and melodies that did not fit at all and it was jarring, so much so that I was focusing on the terrible music and not the lackluster movie. Were you trying to distract me from noticing how boringly nothing the movie was?

It’s too bad that the movie was 90% Casey because the supporting cast was excellent. Kyle Chandler as his brother was wonderful and warm and even in his tiny scenes seemed like he would have been a great person. Their friend George is played by a really solid C. J Wilson, who doesn’t have any reason to be as good to them as he is. I always enjoy seeing Christina from “You’ve Got Mail” and wondering if she really did have to move to Brooklyn after the bookstore closed or if she was already priced out of it. And Michelle Williams as his ex-wife had a few scenes but she’s always good. Literally the only thing I liked about this movie was that Michelle Williams’s character was named Randi. There has never ever ever in all the pop culture I have seen been a character named Randi or Randy that wasn’t ugly, dirty, a cowboy, a dirty fat cowboy, old, gross, a bitch, a bastard, a butcher a baker a candlestick maker &c. What I’m saying is it was nice to see someone pretty with my name. 

​

MOONLIGHT

I was really obsessed with the bluish-purple coloring of the ads for “Moonlight” and how well it evoked the original play and the mood of the film. It’s too bad that “La La Land” had that opening scene because the cinematography in “Moonlight” really captured that mood and was glorious in setting the intended ambience. I know it is weird to start my discussion of this movie with how the posters looked but this is the most daunting film of the year for me to try to analyze so I’m easing my way in. I watched the whole thing with a laser focus and wide eyes, just completely consumed with how brilliant every shot and every decision was, and how subtly it evoked all kinds of emotions. I have nothing interesting to say about this one because it was just good.

“Moonlight” tells a story in three acts about a boy named Chiron. In mythology, Chiron was a centaur who looked different from the others and who had a sort of foster father in Apollo. This isn’t very important but it shows how much subtle detail was in the film. This Chiron, a young black boy in a bad neighborhood in Miami, is meek and tiny, so they call him Little, which is the name of the first act, about his childhood. He spends his afternoons running from school to avoid the bullies who chase him on his way home. That home is a hell of a place, with his abusive crack-addicted mother played by Naomie Harris who is just on crack all the time and yells at him like it’s his fault that her shit is a mess. This poor tiny kid. He finds comfort with an adult named Juan, played by our fave Mahershala Ali, who seems to have his shit together and care about Chiron, but he’s a big-time drug dealer so like it’s not perfect. He and his girlfriend, Janelle Monae being all talented and unfair yet again, feed Chiron often and let him sleep in their nice house whenever he needs to get away from his broken and overwhelming home. So it seems really nice that he has these seemingly sane adults making sure he’s okay and teaching him to be more comfortable in his skin – but then you remember that Juan is the one selling the drugs to Chiron’s mother.  So, not the best example or father figure. A fantastically distressing scene between the two adults heightens this tension. But like everything in this movie, it’s still composed and restrained. It says so much about how limited this kid’s choices are through no fault of his own, and how low his chance of making it out of this claustrophobically circular world is.

In the second act, called Chiron, we see Chiron as a teenager, still struggling with bullies in school because teenage boys in high school my god they are mean, apparently. The bullies who torment Chiron really should be in jail. And he’s still pretty scrawny. His mother is worse, not only addicted severely but also prostituting herself and stealing the money that Janelle gives to Chiron once she gets her weekly royalty checks for Tightrope best song ever. (So both Janelle and Mahershala were in both “Moonlight” and “Hidden Figures”, and both were nominated for Best Picture. That is cool.) Juan has died, probably because he was a big-time drug dealer who always had a gun on him for fighting other drug dealers and that kind of situation doesn’t exactly scream longevity. Janelle still takes care of Chiron though, which is nice, and gives him the comforting advice that he needs from a mother. Chiron also has his friend Kevin from childhood, although his feelings for him now veer towards amorous. One night, they do some dirty bidness on a beach, which is directed really well, considering how awkward it is for everyone. But the very next morning at school, the worst bully forces Kevin to beat the shit out of Chiron, who refuses to stay down, making Kevin understand the full weight of what he’s doing. The most satisfying thing probably of any movie ever is when Chiron comes into school the following day and breaks a chair over the bully’s head. Oh my god it was so good. I hope that kid was wrecked.

Unfortunately, Chiron got arrested even though he should be considered a hero, and next we see him, in act three, he has followed in Juan’s footsteps and become a hard drug dealer who goes by the name Black, as does the act. It’s so interesting to see how the tiniest of decisions and life occurrences forged this path to something unexpected for us but maybe inevitable for him. Luckily, his mother is doing better and in a rehab home, sorry for how she ruined his life but like you can stuff those sorries in a sack. But good job on no more crack, crack is whack. There’s no hope with dope. Chiron, or Black, gets an unexpected call from Kevin who says he should visit him sometime if he’s ever in town. Cue Chiron driving across state lines immediately, because this was one of like two people who meant a great deal to him. Their reunion is nuanced and subtle and self-conscious and beautiful, and the whole last 30 minutes or so is captivating yet simple, like the whole movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that felt so serene and still, even when the characters were screaming or fighting. It all still felt smooth and at a constant, stable level of unruffled tranquility. It’s a beautiful film that says so much while saying so little. I don’t really know what it’s saying but I know I liked it. ​

​

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

Hoo boy, here it comes, people. Gird your loins.

This movie was the equivalent of Russia getting Trump elected. It was that time when internet trolls who played video games decided that women had more rights than they did. It was when Richard III had his nephew arrested and executed. It was the earthquake in Italy. The one last year or the one in 1626, take your pick. It was Chernobyl. It was what the energy drink Chernobly does to your body. It was bad. It was so bad that it was offensive, and it was so offensive that it was bad.

This piece of utter awful shit, which should not be allowed to exist because it gives people who hate women and probably all humans and animals too an apparent license to be pieces of shit to women and humans and animals because such evil viewed through a lens of ‘eh it happens’, comes to us courtesy of Tom Ford, who I thought was a misogynist like 90% of men are but I didn’t realize before this movie just how much he really, really, really, really, really must despise women. If he didn’t have success as a designer I bet he would have been the head boy of Gamer Gate. This movie is the movie version of Gamer Gate but without the necessary opposition from feminist thinkers and people who aren’t idiots. The fact that it was considered for awards this season makes me literally nauseous.

This shitstorm tells the story of Amy Adams who is an art dealer or curator or maybe an artist herself and she works with weirdos as you do in the art world. She’s loaded and has a husband. None of this matters to her character; all that matters is that she has an ex-boyfriend who I THINK we are supposed to feel bad for, but who is actually the most frightening character of all last year because he represents thousands if not millions of similar men who think they are entitled to have a woman who lives her life in a way that pleases him. The most horrible part of this movie is that this kind of entitlement isn’t supposed to be a thing, I think he’s supposed to just be the nice guy who got hurt and you understand his pain. And that is what is horrifying. This ex-boyfriend is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a writer who knew Amy Adams from childhood (I can’t be bothered with character names they need to own that they were a part of this disgusting and insulting garbage movie) but they got together after college. They did not communicate well, with Amy telling him he needed to get a job and write something that gets published, but in a way that says oh we do have to eat you know and not in a shrewish way. But ain’t no woman gonna tell a white man how to live! They drift and Amy has an abortion without informing him beforehand, because it’s her body and her decision and she also didn’t ask his permission if it was okay to cut her toenails and I bet he was really upset about that too, so he flips out on her because that’s the surefire way to convince someone that you’d be a good father and they break up. Years later, at present day with Amy and her money and her husband and her house slaves who tiptoe around her, Amy gets a manuscript in the mail from Jake. She starts reading this book, and then the story in the book is like 99% of the movie. The book story stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a husband and father, because it’s about him, with Isla Fisher as his wife because she looks exactly like Amy Adams and this casting is the only good part about this film because finally people realized that they should play twins or something, or here that they should play the book version of a person and the real version. A girl also with long red hair plays the teenage daughter. So, Jake wrote a book that is inspired by his relationship with Amy. That’s nice, right?

WRONG. The book has the family driving along a road in Texas or Texas-adjacent when they get harassed by a car of thug cowboys who are drunk and pure evil and think it’s fun to drive other cars off the road. Things get worse as Jake cannot drive fast enough to get away from them because it’s a family car. The other car full of horrible white Trump-voting men forces Jake’s car to the side of the ride and plays sick twisted unbelievably horrible psychological games with the three and I think they had a gun because of course they had a gun. I don’t really want to think about how awful this was and how terrifying but eventually they convince Isla and the daughter to drive away with half the thugs as collateral while the others take Jake away in another car because his was destroyed BY THEM and they’re like oh we will get help. Obviously they will not get help, and they drop Jake in the desert like miles and miles away and leave him to die. He doesn’t die, and he finds his way to a police station where he meets Michael Shannon who is decent enough as a cop who is trying to help this guy find his family but OF COURSE THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BE OKAY. Of course the women have been raped and murdered and Jake and Michael find their bodies in a ditch naked and entwined with red hair swirling all around them because it’s supposed to be beautiful??? Because Tom Ford and everyone involved in making this movie are fucking sick in the fucking head and all decent people realize HOW UNNECESSARY ALL OF THIS IS TO PUT IN SO-CALLED ART WHEN IT HAPPENS ENOUGH IN REAL LIFE SO IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO SAY SOMETHING USEFUL ABOUT IT OR HELP STOP IT THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE? It’s like the problems I have with Law & Order SVU, about how it normalizes sexual violence and violence against women without really saying anything useful about it because the sheer volume and magnitude of the crimes they use for entertainment will always outweigh whatever thing they might say to try to end how common it is and so it just reinforces that it is common and contributes to the normalization of it as part of our society that we will never be able to end, it’s like that but 1000x worse because it doesn’t know it’s doing this and that is sad and pathetic and I feel bad for everyone involved in making this.

Jake and Michael the cop try to find the guys who did this, and they do, they find the one ringleader on a toilet he built on his front porch and then he gets angry that the two men came upon him while he’s doing his business in the great wide open like if you actually cared about privacy why did you put your toilet on your front porch my brain cannot take how stupid and awful every single part of this movie is even this tiny insignificant detail I JUST CAN’T. Michael is eventually like, screw the laws that will let this guy go because our justice system is fucked but at least we had a justice system last year, so they decide just to deal with him vigilante-style. Fine, okay, do it! But no, even in his imagination Jake is a coward, and he feels bad for the guy? That killed his family? Because this white man deserves to have a second chance even though he destroyed lives for kicks? I really lost it even more when Jake fails to kill the man that killed his family WHEN HE HAD THE SHERIFF’S PERMISSION TO DO IT, because he had an attack of the white-male conscience that says no don’t hurt other white men, we deserve to live our best lives Oprah-style even if we destroy women it’s okay. So the villain – the villain who won a Golden Globe for this bullshit – gets away and then other stuff happens but I was seeing through a fog of rage and don’t remember much until Jake happens upon him again and he shoots him but not fast enough because he is an idiot and the villain guy hits him with a shovel or something and blinds him and even though villain dies, Jake wanders blind outside and then dies too, but at least he gets to die in the sunshine?! And you think, my god this was utter garbage that has hurt the world just with its existence but at least it’s over.

BUT THEN YOU CUT BACK TO AMY READING THIS PILE OF GARBAGE and you realize with her that OH YEAH, she was supposed to be the woman and the girl was the daughter that what, she aborted? And he hates her so much that even in his fantasy world of how a life might be with a wife and daughter he HAS THEM RAPED AND MURDERED??!! BECAUSE SHE HAD AN ABORTION? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WHY ISN’T THERE ANOTHER LEVEL TO CAPS LOCK I NEED ANOTHER LEVEL TO CAPS LOCK. So this is why this is the most misogynistic trash I have ever seen, because a man decided that if a woman had an abortion without the consent of the man who impregnated her, then she deserves to be sexually assaulted and murdered and so does the fetus that could have been, or something like that. OH my goodness, I forgot to talk about the opening. The movie cold opens with one of Amy’s gallery showings, which has naked obese women dancing while dressed in circus makeup. The art installation, I will repeat, features obese women dancing on stools around a gallery while naked and made up like ghoulish clowns. So he did tell you right off the bat that women in this movie were going to be treated as objects worthy of scorn, but I don’t think it was meant to be like oh isn’t that terrible of us? I think he and everyone who greenlit this movie really do only see women as objects worthy of scorn if they do not obey men and comply with the standards of beauty, body size, action, and all other kinds of behavior in ways that men have established for them in order to be condoned in society. All of us who saw this waste of time and money and thought are worse and dumber for having seen it. I award you no points, Tom Ford, and may god have mercy on your soul. 

​

SECRET LIFE OF PETS

Possibly best movie ever?

​

SULLY

What happened to Laura Linney! Why is she being so mean! Is she still as upset as the rest of us that she couldn’t make things work with Rodrigo Santoro, because I am! Why couldn’t she take her brother’s calls and care for him AND marry the hot Brazilian and have all his babies? I guess she realized that she could have done both those things – kind of easily, if we are being honest – and so she turned into a super sour grumperpuss who even though she eventually married a nice old white-haired hero man doesn’t think he’s good enough because she could have had a Brazilian and so she yells at him all the time and it’s so mean and unfair to poor Tom Hanks who is really the best of men and like ughhh Linney why you so mean?!

And why are other people being mean to poor Sully! He is a g-d hero! All these stupid white corporate men are trying to blame him for SAVING PEOPLE’S LIVES instead of letting them die which would have happened if he listened to anyone but himself, but they are like well we don’t want our insurance premiums to go up blarhghhhhh. Big fat sacks of meat, all of them. Sully and Aaron Eckhart should get parades every year that are better than the Thanksgiving ones because let’s face it, those are boring and awful especially when they keep using dreadful NBC talent who aren’t even good enough for the shittastic Today Show oh my god what a mess that is. HOW DID THESE PEOPLE GET JOBS? Did you see Natalie Morales’ interview with that other woman who has a job at NBC, of Sunny Pawar, the best interview subject on the planet to land? They asked him what kind of stuff he bought for himself with his big Hollywood money and whether he liked burgers or hot dogs more and how it felt to be in a Hollywood movie when he grew up watching big Hollywood movies. UM HE NEVER SAW ONE BEFORE YOU AMBASSADORS OF IGNORANT WHITE PRIVILEGE. But I digress.

“Sully” tells the story you already know of how Captain Sulvang Solventdetergent landed a plane on the Hudson river and saved the life of everyone onboard and is a true smart hero man who deserves parades like I said. So, going into this, I was thinking that it would be boring to see a story that I already knew and torturous to see a freaking plane crash which I don’t have to tell you is my nightmare because it is everyone’s nightmare. I had no idea how they would make this a movie. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how nicely it was done. I mean I still did not need to see it, but it wasn’t bad. They begin after the fact, which I loved because I thought oh my goodness hooray we don’t have to see a plane crash! But then of course we do see every second of the actual event, just in flashbacks that are haunting the cap’n. The poor dear also is haunted by daymares of the plane actually crashing, tormenting him with endless variations of what could have gone wrong or what tiny thing he could have done differently that would have ended in disaster. So, not only do we see the actual crash, but we see lots of much worse and scarier potential crashes into NYC skyscrapers and stuff! So terrifying! Thanks Obama!

The post-heroic-action drama comes from like I said above all the idiot men who are trying to blame Sully for the damage to the plane or to the water in the river which I bet was so dirty to begin with because they are asswipes who can’t deal with the fact that they have wasted their lives doing really dumb shit and not having fun and have never been to Thailand which everyone should go to so warm. Of course, they eventually grudgingly accept that it’s okay that he decided to save hundreds of lives in the least damagey way possible instead of destroying sections of freaking New York City and killing everyone onboard plus everyone below?? These people are dumber than the Serious Man in “Arrival”. Can people in charge of stuff stop being so incompetent and stupid like ever? In any situation.
​
Anyway, Tom Hanks is amazing and should have been nominated. We really take him for granted and we can’t. I am betting that he is the one to save our country, I really am. He can do anything as long as he finds a suitable Godfather quote.

​
​**********************************************

I guess that’s it for this year! I regret that I didn’t get to every movie but if you are bothered by that, why not figure out a way to send me screeners? I mean the freaking hosts of the “Gilmore Guys” podcast got screeners but noooo not me. Cool. That’s cool. Or send me money to see more movies in London they cost like 20 pounds which in human money is like what 1000 dollars?

Anyway tell me your thoughts and whether you agree or disagree, especially about how terrible NBC is. I’d especially like to know your thoughts on the movies I didn’t get to, especially before I get to my predictions so I can sound like I know what I’m talking about.
​
Tomorrow I will post my Oscars-focused thoughts and predictions so stay tuned!

The post Oscar Weekend 2017: All (or some of) the Movie Reviews You Need Before Sunday appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.