About Fred

• This Happy Breed is the British domestic drama that all other British domestic dramas want to be when they grow up. Not above being a little sappy, there are nonetheless some wonderfully staged moments throughout, and I found it very satisfying movie.

The one thing you can’t say about Love Lies Bleeding is that it doesn’t go hard.

Brooke Adams is good in Vengeance Is Mine, but for all its interesting moments, the movie feels very muddled and unsure of itself.

• Short Sharp Shock feels very much like a ’90s gangster movie, one heavily indebted to its American inspirations of Scorsese and Tarantino, but the three leads are also very good together, in this simple story of the bonds of friendship, betrayal, and violent crime gone wrong.

For a lot of its run, Dinner in America feels like it’s trying a little too hard. But by the end, there is genuinely a sweetness (nonetheless undercut with nastiness) between these two characters.

Am I OK? is…OK. It doesn’t entirely come together, especially at the end, and there are a few scattered bits and even characters I might have cut. But the film is full of funny and tender moments, as well as a thoroughly endearing performance by Dakota Johnson.

I also re-watched and really enjoyed Bull Durham (1988).

Last week, I watched 10 movies:

• “I see that I have neglected to summarize the plot of Porky’s,” Roger Ebert wrote at the end of his original review. “And I don’t think I will. I don’t feel like writing one more sentence (which is, to be sure, all it would take).” Its plot is very thin, desperately crude, misogynistic, and more than a little creepy since these characters are supposed to be high school students. The movie probably benefits from the fact that there are worse versions of this kind of teen comedy, many of them inspired by Porky’s, but that doesn’t make it worth seeking out.
• Our Body is remarkably intimate, patient, and empathetic. It quietly observes these women, often in their most vulnerable moments with their doctors, and we understand that we are seeing them on their best, worst, and sometimes last days.
• There are good performances in Girl, Interrupted, but they often feel like performances in search of a character, and the movie feels episodic in a way that never quite adds up to anything.
• Babetida Sadjo is fantastic in the Our Father, the Devil, an “eloquently composed” and “bleak, slow-burn character study” (in the words of critic Robert Daniels).
• There are no shocking revelations in wait in Butterfly in the Sky, but that doesn’t make it a less lovely or insightful stroll through the history of Reading Rainbow.

• If The Gift doesn’t entirely work, it does have some moments of real tension, and some good performances. I think Bateman, in particular, weaves a really interesting character by the movie’s end.
• Sasquatch Sunset is just too deeply weird and novel to write off completely. It’s not particularly successful as a narrative—it veers wildly into absurdity and never really develops these creatures into characters—and yet the film is strangely kind of moving.
• Jim Henson: Idea Man is genuinely enjoyable. It’s full of interesting history and fond reminiscences by those who knew and worked with him. It’s also not entirely uncritical of the man, although it does feel like there’s a fuller picture than what Ron Howard’s talking-heads documentary provides.
• Going in Style is never what I would call funny—indeed, there are scenes, like a late trip the characters take to Las Vegas, that feel interminable—but there are moments of bittersweet amusement.
• Godzilla Minus One is a lot of fun. Who would have thought that marrying a wartime melodrama to a giant monster movie could be this effective?

I also rewatched Waking Life, for what I think was the second time, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for the first time in many decades. Waking Life is, as always, interesting, full of compelling visuals and ideas. Snow White, meanwhile, succeeds largely on the strength of its storybook animation, mostly in the scenes involving the wicked stepmother.

• The remake of Flatliners somehow manages to be even worse than the original, which wasn’t a very movie good to begin with.
• Waterworld is surprisingly not terrible. But I guess when you cost that much, at least in 1995, not terrible isn’t nearly good enough. It’s not a great movie—it largely squanders its premise, and there’s limited evidence of that skyrocketed budget on the screen—but it’s surprisingly entertaining.
• Prom Night is surprisingly terrible, a mostly dull and confused plot with few if any scares or even tension. If it truly is “one of the most influential slasher films of the period,” that may say some pretty terrible things about the genre.

• There is some stunning use of color, as well as black and white, in Bonjour Tristesse, along with lovely performances all around.
• Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos are both phenomenal in Blue Is the Warmest Colour. The film is maybe best known for its very graphic (if simulated) sex scenes and its length, but it’s also a genuinely touching story about the awakening of desire and about how a love can fall apart.
• If Dune: Part Two doesn’t hold together as a narrative quite as well as the first half, that might be Frank Herbert’s fault as much as Denis Villeneuve’s. The second half of the novel is a lot more complicated—and also the part I don’t remember as well from decades ago when I last read it. But as compelling as the movie often is, even at three hours, and as stunning as a lot of its visuals undoubtedly would have been on a giant screen, it often felt oddly paced and a little padded. I enjoyed the movie a lot, and may do so even more when and if I revisit both halves as a single film, but the end felt less like a satisfying conclusion than the set-up for the sequel, which is reportedly already in the works.

I also rewatched the (still delightful) Before Sunset.

I watched another 6 movies last week:

• Daisy Ridley delivers such a quietly understated and socially awkward performance in Sometimes I Think About Dying, and I think I kind of unexpectedly loved it.
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is certainly clever and inventive and pointed when it wants to be, even if I’m not convinced it needs to be as long as it is.
• The best thing The Pope’s Exorcist has going for it–maybe the only particularly good thing–is Russell Crowe. But he delivers such a fun, over-the-top performance that I could not help but be entertained.

• Brooklyn 45 stumbles a little near the end–I think I would have preferred a slightly cleverer ending, something to make the whole thing feel a little less repetitive–but the cast, particularly Anne Ramsay, turn in such strong performances, and the movie makes such effective use of its locked-room set.
• There are very good performances in All Creatures Here Below, from Dastmalchian’s barely controlled anger to Gillan’s oddly childlike brokenness. The film arguably tosses one too many tragic cliches into the mix, but those performances, along with the naturalistic direction, keep everything surprisingly grounded.
• I just did not find Guarding Tess funny. Like, at all. What little it has going for it, in the pairing of Cage and MacLaine, is lost in a very dumb and belabored kidnapping subplot late in the movie.

I watched 6 movies last week:

• Where Is the Friend’s House is so effective because it is seen so thoroughly through a child’s eyes. We know what Ahmed knows, even when the adults around him don’t, and we understand his inability to articulate that, even as he feels compelled to the right thing for his friend.
• All the reviews I read of The Unknown Girl compare it unfavorably to the Dardenne brothers’ earlier films, none of which I’ve yet seen, but praise Adèle Haenel’s performance, which I agree is what makes the movie work.
• There’s a sense of inevitability that hangs over The Beasts, but it’s so well observed, asking you to empathize with all its characters, even those who do and say terrible things.

• The Heroic Trio is ridiculous, but it’s frequently ridiculous fun.
• Saint Omer is slow and emotionally draining, but it asks difficult and important questions.
• Roger Ebert called The Marriage of Maria Braun the story of “an indelible monster who is perversely fascinating because she knows exactly what she is doing and explains it to her victims while it is being done.” And yet, I think it’s more than that, because Hanna Schygulla’s performance is so good and self-assured that we never quite feel like Maria is a monster, even as she undoubtedly treats others around her monstrously.

I also re-watched Interstellar, which I think I liked more the second time around, a decade later, and Dagon, which remains a really good Stuart Gordon Lovecraft adaptation, all the more so for its micro-budget.