Stan's Movie Dump: Early March 2016

And away we go!

Carol

Oops - I actually saw this in February, just before the Oscars, and I plum forgot about it during my last movie dump write-up! (Speaks volumes, right?) Man, critics fucking adored Carol. I can see why, because Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are just perfect here, but at the same time, some people really went bananas over Carol. Like, to extents I can't understand. (For my money, if you see just one beautifully shot 2015 movie about the love between two women, make it The Duke of Burgundy.) This was pretty good, but let's not shit ourselves.

Kung Fu Panda

I think everyone who made a purchase - any purchase at all - on Amazon last holiday season was given a free download code for Kung Fu Panda. Clever! I'd never go out of my way to see this on a streaming platform, but give me my very own free digital copy, and it'd be a waste for me not to at least check it out. Right? So yeah, that's why I spent an hour and change watching Kung Fu Panda. It was pretty much what I expected it to be - silly, not terrible, and overwhelmingly meant for children.

Sleeping with Other People

Without question the best romantic comedy I've seen in ages. Sure, that last statement comes with two hefty asterisks known as "low bar" and "sample size," but I seriously loved this for, oh, a dozen reasons. The leads have an undeniable chemistry. I genuinely wanted them to end up together. It's full of legitimately funny scenes. It made me tolerate, and even root for, Jason Sudeikis. It stars Alison Brie, who is pitch-perfect in everything. It's not a spoof, but an earnest and played-straight rom-com. It's not an alternative "shitty people" rom-com either, like a You're the Worst or anything else where immaturity and irresponsibility among thirty-year-olds can be dismissed as charming character quirks. It doesn't suffer from Apatowisms like "sex mishaps" or "obnoxious man child" or an over-long running time. It's legitimately funny yet tonally very realistic. There were a number of supporting actors whose work I often tend to enjoy. It's written and directed by a woman - which doesn't make it a better movie necessarily, but the appalling lack of female directors has become a focal point for industry critics lately, and here's a perfect movie to watch if you want to start watching more movies directed by women. The movie was somehow largely about sex and sexual attraction without having any nudity or gratuitously raunchy sex scenes. Okay, not quite a dozen reasons, but I could go on and on. This was a great movie. Watch this movie!

Entourage

This was every bit as awful as I expected it to be. Entourage was a fun little lifestyle porn - perhaps even a sometimes-clever parody of Hollywood - way back when it began, but it quickly became one of the least essential shows on television. Here are four bumblefucks from Queens who just keep falling ass backwards into success, fame, and happiness. All of them are womanizers and serial philanderers and were it not for their steadfast loyalty to one another none of them would have a single redeeming quality. The show's best character is an enormous asshole who's funny but only in completely offensive ways. (Seriously, Jeremy Piven was great, but did Ari Gold ever crack a joke in eight seasons of Entourage that wasn't bigoted, personal in nature, or just plain vulgar?) At any rate, I've already covered on this blog just how undeserved the across-the-board happy endings for every character in Entourage were. What's craziest about this movie is how blatantly and carelessly it disregards every single one of those happy endings - except for Turtle's, I guess, which was already the least-deserved fantasy ending of them all. I mean, putting all cynicism aside for a moment, let me ask - why does this movie exist? In theory, like any TV series movie finale, it's for fans to catch up with the gang again and go on one last adventure together. But this Entourage movie seems more concerned with shoehorning as many celebrities and athletes into its hour-forty than it does with giving its actual characters anything to do. The entirety of Vince's arc is as follows: Vince is starring in and directing a movie; the movie is over budget; Vince needs more money; everyone else figures out how to get Vince that money while Vince throws parties and casually dates Emily Ratajkowski; Vince's movie turns out to be a huge success. That's it! No growth for Vince, no challenges or obstacles to speak of. He isn't even shown working hard on his movie or caring deeply about it. He's just kind of ambivalently making it and, hey, look at that, it's a massive success both commercially and critically. Okay, but what about Eric? If there was ever a characte rin Entourage that kinda-sorta functioned as a moral compass, it was E. Here's E's arc in the Entourage movie: E is fucking supermodels on the reg; Sloan is pregnant with E's baby; the baby is due soon, and Sloan is willing to give E yet another chance at making a relationship work; E stops fucking supermodels on the reg, but not before a brief herpes/pregnancy scare; E and Sloan have their baby and presumably make things work. Again, I'm not skipping anything - this is everything that E endures in this movie. The closest thing to dramatic tension that he experiences comes when two of his bed-buddies pretend that they gave him herpes - perhaps just to fuck with him? Who can really know? My favorite arc might be Turtle's, though: Turtle wants to date Ronda Rousey; Ronda Rousey agrees to go on a date with Turtle if he can last thirty seconds in the ring with her; Turtle lasts thirty seconds and earns the date, allowing Ronda to break his arm in the process. The end! What the fuck!? Keep in mind, by the way, that the real Ronda Rousey said, right around when this movie was released last year, that she'd never fight a man in the ring because "I don't think it's a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television." Did she not realize we could eventually watch the Entourage movie on television? But then, this entire movie takes place in a weird alternate reality best covered by this piece from Vulture. (Holy hell, look at how much I've rambled about Entourage - it's just like old times!) Anyway, until I saw Entourage, Fifty Shades of Grey was the worst 2015 movie I'd seen. It might still be - I dunno. Both films are lifestyle porn pieces based on shitty source material and loaded with bad acting. Entourage seems more aware and unashamed of what it is, but I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. This was a genuinely and objectively bad movie, but it was also exactly the epilogue Entourage and its fans deserved.

Coraline

Found this one on HBO and figured, why not? Webber named his kid after this movie (or was it the book?) so it must be worth checking out. And it was! This is a well-made unsettling kids' movie. Its biggest accomplishment was probably its creepy and dreamlike atmosphere. The whole thing felt like a cross between Psychonauts and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Would you believe that Tim Burton had nothing to do with this movie whatsoever? I couldn't! But yeah, this was interesting and watchable and better than I expected it to be. Although, fair warning to Webber - even in this movie everyone seems to call Coraline "Caroline." So get ready for that. (You probably already knew that.)

The Theory of Everything (2014)

Finally got around to watching this one, and now I've seen every Best Picture nominee from the last two years. (Hard task, I know.) This was more or less what I expected it to be - a standard and largely vanilla biopic about Stephen Hawking and his long-time wife. Eddie Redmayne was a convincing enough Hawking, but his acting Oscar for this role seems like a classic case of "let's just give it to the guy who pretended to have a disability." No one needs to see this, but doing so isn't a chore or an unpleasant or boring experience, so do what you will.

Starlet

Sometimes a unique premise executed the right way is all you need for an interesting movie. In this indie film from the guy who made Tangerine (Sean S. Baker), a young woman without much stability in her life - okay, minor spoiler, she's a porn star - befriends a guarded old lady. What struck me was how realistic their relationship felt, from its origins all the way through the end of the movie (no, not a death). And here's a heartwarming fun fact - Besedka Johnson, who played the old lady, was 87 years old when this movie came out and had never acted in anything before. She was "discovered" at a YMCA and immediately put in this movie and she was just fantastic. I would have assumed she was a 60-year acting veteran, but no - this was her very first professional performance of any kind. Sadly, it was also her last, as she died a year later. Bittersweet! Maybe one day they'll make a movie based on her story. Eddie Redmayne can play her and win another Oscar.

Zootopia

My sister works three or four shifts a week, which means she has a lot of weekdays off and (often) very little to do. So during my spring break (woo!) we made plans to go the movies. Her pick was Zootopia, the latest animated feature film from Disney (not Pixar) and it ended up being pretty good! Some of the criticism aimed at this movie has focused on the subtle-as-a-brick metaphors for racism and discrimination. Foxes are crooks, rabbits are "dumb bunny farmers," and predators are pre-disposed - because of their biology - to be violent and angry and dangerous. Familiar, no? But in defense of Zootopia, I mean, it's a kids' movie. For children. Do you want racial prejudice metaphors to be subtle here, or is it more fitting for a child to be able to understand the moral of this story? Anyway, I liked Zootopia because it was funnier and more clever than it had to be. Where lots of kids' movies are content to just revisit the bug-eyed slapstick comedy of Looney Tunes, Zootopia was more concerned with visual gags and callbacks. The story was also tight and well-paced with only a few obvious signs of a three-act structure being forced onto arcs and relationships that didn't really need one. I dunno - I liked this.

Mommy

A foreign language film, all the way from Canada. (French Canada!) Critics absolutely loved this, and I can see why. It's the story of a troubled teenager and his barely-holding-it-together single mother. Mom doesn't want to give up on her Steve, because doing so would mean sending him back to some sort of juvenile foster-prison hybrid. But Steve is an on-and-off nightmare - a kid prone to violent outbursts and destructive tendencies. I thought the central conceit and the performances here were great, but I wish this had held more of my interest as it started to drag through its second hour. Most interestingly, the whole movie is shot in a 1:1 aspect ratio, a perfect square that makes every frame look like a record cover or an Instagram photo. It's strikingly narrow, which is probably meant to show how trapped Steve's mother is, or how tightly confined and restrictive it can be to deal with a shitty but lovable problem child. This was an interesting movie and I applaud its experimental cinematography gimmick, but I'd be lying if I said I loved the movie.

Macbeth

This showed up on a few "best of 2015" lists and Michael Fassbender in particular earned praise for his depiction of Macbeth, but overall it didn't do a ton for me. Maybe I shouldn't have expected much. This is a Shakespearean classic, after all, and there are only so many new spins a director can put on it. Here, it was played straight and dramatic and with all the gravitas it could muster. It was beautiful, and I'm not sure there's a better possible straight-laced movie adaptation of the source material, but it was still the same slow-moving story I read in high school.

Straight Outta Compton

I stand with Trev. Not usually a biopic fan but this was great. Rags to riches, rise and fall, history lesson, #diversity, excellent soundtrack (obviously) - there were just a lot of positive boxes to check here. One thing Marissa pointed out was that Dr. Dre seemed to get a pretty rosy edit whenever the film depicted any inner friction going on in N.W.A. Ice Cube also came out of it looking good. The same can't be said of a few other famous personalities - notably a certain dead one and a certain incarcerated one - but I suppose that makes sense!

Mistress America

Critics seem to adore Greta Gerwig, especially in her collaborations with Noah Baumbach, but Frances Ha disappointed me when I saw it last year. I'm glad I gave the Gerwig-Baumbach partnership another shot, though, because Mistress America ended up being one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. Gerwig stars as a spirited and adventurous almost-thirty New York woman full of big ideas and grand plans. She takes her soon-to-be-stepsister, a college freshman, under her wing and the two become fast friends. The movie mostly takes place from the point of view of the eighteen-year-old. This is a nice touch - in her eyes, at least initially, the woman in her late twenties making plans and living life in New York is a perfect role model. Of course, it's immediately apparent  to the audience - or maybe it's just that I'm much closer to thirty than eighteen - that Greta Gerwig's character doesn't have her shit together whatsoever. You know - to hilarious extents. This was farcical and screwbally and full of razor sharp wit and I just dug it a whole lot, alright?

My movie pace will slow down. I promise! The dumps will become fewer and farther between. Twenty-plus movies a month is just completely unsustainable. You hear me? Completely!