This week, I caught up with a Best Picture nominee I was not looking forward to, experienced Netflix’s anime Godzilla trilogy, celebrated the imminent return of Criterion to streaming and caught an advanced showing of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
JAN. 29
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018)
Theatrical – DCP
I will admit up front that I am naturally predisposed to dislike Bohemian Rhapsody for a few reasons, but maybe the most pertinent are that I tend to resist pedestrian Oscar-bait biopics like this one, and I never really liked Queen. Out of all their songs, the one that gives this film its title is perhaps my least favorite. It’s too much. With that noted, I still feel comfortable saying I didn’t like this movie at all.
You remember that part in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY when that Imperial officer gave Han Solo his last name and you were like OH SHIT THAT’S WHY HE’S NAMED HAN SOLO?! Bohemian Rhapsody is a lot like that, but with Queen. See re-enactments of your favorite performances! Learn the secret origins of some of your favorite songs!! This is a basic-ass movie aiming for the back row, like they feared if Rami Malek’s teeth were a little smaller people wouldn’t notice they were there.
I also can’t let it skate by that if you consider any of the news stories surrounding this film, from the Bryan Singer factor to how certain story elements fail to align with reality in concerning ways, I don’t feel any compelling reason to question my feelings about this one, awards or not.
WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)
Amazon VOD
I needed to get Bohemian Rhapsody off of me, and based on some discussion lately Walk Hard seemed like the obvious choice. It was uncanny, watching a relatively lowbrow comedy from over a decade ago systematically rip apart the “prestige” Best Picture nominee I just watched in a theater. I liked the songs better, too!
I’m a sucker for films that are primarily about other films, they get the film-school neurons firing. Walk Hard may appear on the surface to be a dumb comedy, but it uses the form to slice open the musical biopic genre with surgical precision and lay bare many of its silliest and most overused conventions. If anyone creatively involved in Bohemian Rhapsody remembered watched this movie, they kept it to themselves because Walk Hard lays down a minefield the Rhapsody gallops over with total abandon. Framing device of career-defining performance? Check. Distant relationship with parents who want to hold the singer back? Check. Band members struggling as frontman grows more distant? Check. Cutaways to random people watching along in a bar somewhere during a big song? Check. It was 90 minutes of ferocious slam dunks. What I’m trying to say here is Bohemian Rhapsody sucks.
JAN. 30
MIKEY & NICKY (1976)
Criterion Channel
All hail the return of Criterion to streaming! I will admit to being a long-time subscriber to FilmStruck who didn’t actually use the service that much due to my format preferences, but having been taught over and over again not to take things like this for granted, I figured I should get started right away with their first movie of the week, a feature that will run until the full service launches April 8.
Mikey & Nicky, a 1976 gangster drama by Elaine May, immediately reminded a lot of the Safdie Bros.’ Good Time, a film which has been stuck in my craw since I saw it in 2017. Both films can be described as nocturnal odysseys that follow doomed, hopelessly toxic men into the deepest depths of their own wretchedness. Nicky, played by John Cassavetes, is the cursed soul who stole too much from the boss and has a price on his head, and in his naked desperation he harms anyone that gets too close. Nicky is exactly the sort of man our society is learning to stop romanticizing, and the film knows it: scenes involving Nicky’s fraught and manipulative relationships with women have both a rawness and sensitivity that can manifest best from a female perspective. This only makes me feel worse about dozing off during a screening of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie in film school. I’m really sorry.
JAN. 31
GODZILLA: PLANET OF THE MONSTERS (2018)
Netflix Original
When I first selected this blindly off my Netflix home screen a year ago, I did not know Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters was the beginning of a tightly interconnected trilogy so when I got to the abrupt cliffhanger ending, I was very confused. Now, the trilogy is complete. I often wonder about what exactly a Netflix film is, and more to the point if I count them as films for purposes of accounting. Even Netflix is unsure how to brand this Godzilla trilogy and uses the terms “A Netflix Film” and “A Netflix Series” interchangeably, but seeing as how each part got a theatrical release in Japan and is movie-length, I’m counting them.
While Shin Godzilla was Toho’s return to live-action following the American film in 2014, Planet of the Monsters is the studio’s first attempt at animation. While I don’t gravitate towards anime, one thing I like about it is that of any film form, it seems the most limitless in terms of scale. Just about anything can happen in anime, so for Godzilla’s first entry into the medium the setting is suitably fantastical. This trilogy is set in a future where kaiju have overrun Earth, and humanity has abandoned the planet with the help of some humanoid extraterrastrials who were previously displaced by kaiju on their planets. When the survivors decide to return to Earth and defeat Godzilla, they find the planet has violently mutated to accommodate a new dominant species.
As in many a Godzilla picture, while there is time to fight the monster there is much more time for lots of discussion. Planet of the Monsters juggles a lot of themes and its meditation on humanity not being at the top of the food chain are interesting, but there’s also a lot of crazy gobbledygook science too, of which your mileage may vary. The cast of characters is largely indistinguishable from one another. The high-concept premise is compelling, even if the prevailing mood can get cold. This being the first of an interconnected series, the movie doesn’t attempt to function as a standalone feature.
FEB. 1
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (2014)
Blu-ray 3D
The second How to Train Your Dragon is a textbook sequel for this sort of movie, in that it does almost everything right: it allows us to spend more time with characters we like, maintains the first film’s pleasant atmosphere while considerably upping the dramatic stakes, and tells a story that feels essential instead of extraneous. While the first film was largely about the vikings overcoming their prejudices and internal conflicts and learning, well, how to train their dragons, the sequel introduces a real human villain. Having the antagonist be an external force doesn’t allow for as much character growth and can cause the film to feel occasionally overstuffed, but the upside is that the danger and emotional stakes are ramped up considerably. There is some real drama here, moreso than the other installments.
The Dragon series falls well with the Dreamworks house style and looks good enough without being showy, but the character animation, especially of Toothless, may be the single most crucial component that all the movies get right. The mind-control sequence (which feels surprisingly risky) only works because Toothless’s physical characterization is so distinctive.
GODZILLA: CITY ON THE EDGE OF BATTLE (2018)
Netflix Original
The anime Godzilla trilogy lumbers on in a very similar vein to the first installment. The story picks up immediately with nary a refresher, and follows the remaining survivors as they encounter an Avatar-esque native tribe, spend a lot of time discussing in pretty specific detail how to defeat Godzilla, and fight amongst themselves before taking another shot at the monster. BUT – is Godzilla the real monster here?
There is a lot going on in these Godzilla films, and it’s easy to detach a bit as the exposition flies around willy-nilly. The crazy plot is contained in a movie that might be a little too earnest for its own good, and attempting to detail what happens feels like a silly exercise if you’re not at least somewhat familiar with Godzilla lore. Mechagodzilla City, anyone? Godzilla spends even more time sitting dormant than he did in Plane tof the Monsters, and while his presence is still felt because almost every conversation is about Godzilla, it’s a stretch. I’m very glad I’m approaching this series with all of the installments now available, as I can’t imagine City on the Edge of Battle is very useful as a stand-alone piece.
FEB. 2
GODZILLA: THE PLANET EATER (2019)
Netflix Original
I don’t know if the final chapter of Netflix’s Godzilla epic is the best of the three, but it at least bears the closest resemblance to a more typical Godzilla movie. Godzilla is awake for more than 5 minutes this time, and the stakes shift from the humans fighting Godzilla to Godzilla fighting another monster. Some religious themes which served as undercurrents in the previous installments are brought much more to the fore, and the macro stakes really outweigh the personal ones as the series ostensible lead character, Haruo, is largely sidelined in favor of a conflict that grows larger than human concerns. The Planet Eater goes out there and gets metaphysical, and I can’t accuse the trilogy of not ending on a crazy enough note. Is it enough to get you on board if the first two parts didn’t do it for you? Maybe not.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (2019)
Theatrical – DCP
The How to Train Your Dragon series has held up for a while now as sort of the Planet of the Apes of animated franchises: you may not think about them every day, but these sneaky-good films show up and consistently over-perform installment after installment. Unsurprisingly, The Hidden World continues the streak and ends the series on a moving high note that cements this series’ status as one of the great film trilogies.
It’s one thing to develop a well-rounded cast of human characters, but the way Toothless is not only characterized but given a meaningful arc as a character that is, well, an animal that can’t talk. The dragons are never strongly anthropomorphized, they always behave like animals, but Toothless isn’t marginalized and his story, whether he is on-screen or not, is the crucial thematic core of the film. There’s also human conflict which pushes the story along to the titular hidden world and an enjoyably snakey dragon-hunter villain played by F. Murray Abraham, but the vikings, the dragons and how both they and their relationship evolve is where the good stuff is.
If you’ve seen the How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2, making the trip to see The Hidden World should be a no-brainer but if you haven’t, this is the perfect chance to catch up on one of the best mainstream film series you might have missed. Each entry enriches the others in an essential way, and taken as a unit the accomplishment of this trilogy is kind of staggering.
BULLITT (1968)
Blu-ray
Bullitt is a movie I’ve been aware of for a long time, and I knew two things about it: it’s got Steve McQueen in it, and there’s a car chase. Now having watched it, I can say that it’s got Steve McQueen in it, and there’s a really good car chase. Unfortunately, this masterful sequence (which is no less visceral today) happens in the middle of the second act and the rest of the film runs out of steam. McQueen has a flinty, Daniel Craig Bond kind of vibe and is fun to watch, but it’s difficult to recommend that you watch the parts of Bullitt that are not the car chase.
FEB. 3
ASSASSIN’S CREED (2016)
Blu-ray 3D
Movies like Assassin’s Creed are one of the biggest reasons I miss the glory days of MoviePass. I went to see this one afternoon as a random toss-off that I had no expectations for, and I ended up feeling down to clown with its weirdness. I’ve never played any of the games myself so I have no personal insights into its fidelity to the source material, but I took note of lots of jumping and slashing, which seem like things you would do in those games. The cast is bizarrely overstuffed with the likes of Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Michael K. Williams, Brendan Gleason, Jeremy Irons and Charlotte Rampling (!), and I can’t help but enjoy it even as I sometimes stumble through the hazy plot (and strain to see through the literally hazy visual effects). I continue to be intrigued by the dreamlike flying shots that begin each “flashback” sequence, as they sport a unique multiplane look that comes close to replicating an old-fashioned animated tracking shot with several planes of depth.
Assassin’s Creed joins the club with the Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla of movies that have 3D Blu-rays that are more available than most, but aren’t a great technical showcase for the platform. Godzilla is overwhelmingly dark to the point that adding 3D glasses can severely compromise perception of detail, and Assassin’s Creed’s showcase sequences are bathed in a thick layer of fog that does no favors for depth perception and invites ghosting. Sort of a shame.
FEB. 4
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018)
Netflix Original
Is this the sort of movie that only Netflix money can buy? It’s rare to see an anthology film approach the mainstream, and even rarer to see an anthology helmed by one (set of) filmmaker(s). The six segments vary plenty in terms of tone and story, but they are uniformly well-cast and gorgeous to look at. The Coens’ particular brand of comedy is as black as ever, and you can be assured that not everybody makes it intact to the end of their story.
The opening segment that gives the film its title is the most immediately arresting and distinct in terms of tone, and I’m relieved it wasn’t spoiled for me. The fifth segment starring Zoe Kazan is the most substantial and rewarding and does the best job grounding the comedy enough to actually get invested. In a rarity for the anthology format, each segment truly feels like it has the production value of a feature uncompromised by a restrictive budget. I didn’t watch all six segments in one sitting and watched on a few different devices, and I can attest that the material really benefits from a large screen. Some of the wide shots could pass for expanded IMAX frames in terms of their scope, and it’s a shame that the cinematography will be largely relegated to phones and TVs. This is a Netflix film I would have watched in a theater.
Worrying About Film 