F. Gary Gray continues the entertaining series with Men in Black: International.* Aside from getting to see Chris Hemsworth on screen,** I totally went for the setup of this film and Molly/Agent M’s story.*** There are aliens and fight scenes and cool hardware and all the things one would expect from the franchise.
*I’d had a hard day, and I wanted only to be entertained. My expectations were low, and this film easily cleared that bar. **Always a treat, and even more so when the movie makes fun of his eye-candy status with in-movie jokes plus a winking Thor reference. ***I like someone who is a striver, and Tessa Thompson captured the excitement and uncertainty of being the new person at the dream job. ****I think I’ve only seen this third one. But you don’t have to watch them in order or anything. Another plus.
Questions:
What’s your favorite thing about the MIB franchise?
Is it a good use of your time to watch a movie that you will mostly forget a week later?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The MiB Agents have been wearing the same standard issue Hamilton Ventura watch since the beginning. The iconic Ventura watch was first released in 1957.
Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood* has a similar pace to Portrait of a Lady on Fire** but with a completely different subject matter.*** And the girls in this were just great, especially Karidja Touré as Marieme/Vic. It’s the kind of film where it’s apparent from the first scene that things aren’t going to go well, but the journey is an interesting one.
The verdict: Good
Cost: free via Kanopy (also on Hoopla) Where watched: at home
Three of the above recommendations have to do with white teenagers’ experiences, the other is about a young woman pre-marriage.
Read this article to find a great list of coming of age films about black girls. I’ve just added a bunch listed to my to-watch list.
Further sentences:
*Interestingly, the translated name of both this and Portrait have been revised a bit to better draw English-speaking audiences. The title of this film, Bande de filles, Google translates as “bunch of girls.” I’m guessing the title was changed to Girlhood to draw the interest of people interested in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The original name of Portrait of a Lady on Fire is Portrait de la jeune fille en feu,Portait of a young girl on fire. The English translation is more evocative of Henry James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady which is a title people are familiar with, even if they haven’t read it. **Languid ***Contemporary French teenage girls who are either the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
Questions:
What did you think of the opening scene?
What decision do you think Vic made after the final scene ended?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The most daunting task for the film was to obtain the rights to the Rihanna song “Diamonds.” She gave them the authorization once she had seen the sequence dedicated to the song.
Sam Hargrave’s Extraction is a great opportunity for Chris Hemsworth to show off his action fight scene skills (plus emoting)* and educated me that in Bangladesh the cars are driven on the left side. The cast is sufficiently international, with Rudhraksh Jaiswal (Ovi) and Randeep Hooda (Saju) giving outstanding performances as the kidnapped boy, and the factotum tasked with recovering him. While it does seem for a while to be one very long fight scene, things do eventually slow down for some character growth before picking back up again.
The verdict: Good
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom brings light to that visible but invisible maker of music: the backup singer. As we follow the careers of singers from the 1960s onward, we see the pleasure and pain that comes of lending your talents to music that becomes famous while only sometimes crediting your work. Given the stories of the backup singers,* this could have been a depressing catalog, but the film is celebratory and hopeful; still, it left me wondering how a woman would have captured the dismissal of such talented women.**
The verdict: Recommended
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
Further sentences:
*While Darlene Love’s story starts as gaspingly awful, she seems to have come out of it okay. Whereas Claudia Lennear’s career trajectory caused both myself and the boyfriend (who was only partially watching) to make audible noises of protest. **”There can be only one Aretha, only one Whitney.” A lot of backup singers swinging for stardom ran into that sentiment. But why can there only be one woman, when there can be so many men?
Questions:
Do you think we’re yet past the “there can only be one” sentiment when it comes to women artists?
Which was your favorite story?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The film has been compared to the similarly themed book The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret, which chronicles the stories of uncredited studio musicians.
Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming is full of really low-energy, quasi-adult men dithering about things for ninety-six minutes that feel more like three hours; it has not aged well.* Now that it’s not the 90s, well-educated white guys who can’t figure out what to do after college are not quite the selling point they once were.** It was interesting to see actors in their younger years,*** and I really enjoyed looking at the details of the craftsman bungalow**** the post-college students lived in, but this is not a good film.
The verdict: Skip
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
*It reminds me ofSwingersin that regard, though this is if you took Swingers, extracted all the humor, the whirling friendships, dialed down the energy to 10%, and eliminated the fun swing dancing scene. **This has a Metascore of 75, which is pretty high. The last boring movie I watched (One and Two)had a meta score of 47. I can only think that those reviews must have been from 1995, when the movie was released. ***Eric Stoltz is always fun. The big surprise that the main character, Josh Hamilton (Grover) is someone I’m familiar with as Clay’s dad in 13 Reasons Why and also Kayla’s dad in Eighth Grade. I would not have noticed, except I started looking up things on IMDB before I was finished watching it. The true sign of an uninteresting film. ****The floors needed redoing, but man, those built ins! To die for!
Questions:
Did you happen to watch this in the 90s? What did you think?
Can you think of an equivalent slacker movie with women as protagonists?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The film was almost accepted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, but Noah Baumbach refused to cut 15 minutes as they requested, and the film was ultimately rejected.
Christopher Nolan’s 2002 remake of 1997’s Insomnia (also called Insomnia) is a slow thriller* where the point is not really who done it,** but how this is all going to play out.*** Much like what I’ve heard about 2019’s Midsommar, the endless light makes for a fun turnabout setting for the noir plot. Both Hilary Swank and Al Pachino were fun to watch: her turn from a fan to a questioner and him from calm and confident to shambling mess.
The verdict: Good
Cost: $2.99 via Google Play Where watched: at home
*Thus making it not actually thrilling, but interesting. **A wikipedia article on the term whodunit/whodunnit. **I liked this setup as the big name star who didn’t appear on screen until minute 58 was clearly the guy who done it.
Questions:
Do you think he meant to do it?
Are you more of a fan of serious Robin Williams, or funny Robin Willimas? Why?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Similar to the 1999 movie, Mystery, Alaska; all of Insomnia was shot in Canada. Only aerial photography of Alaska was used.
Tom Hanks’s That Thing You Do is a gentle pleasure of a movie from start to finish, capturing all that was shiny about 1964.* In this breezy movie, Tom Everett Scott (Guy Patterson) is the anchor to the Wonder’s skyrocketing fame, while Johnathon Schaech (Jimmy) is a “serious” musician teed up to have problems with fame.** Liv Tyler’s big speech falls flat, which I’m blaming on the writing and not the performance,*** and there are a few things that cause discomfort in 2020,**** but overall, this movie is a good distraction.
The verdit: Good
Cost: $3.99 via Google Play Where watched: at home (as a palate cleanser after watching Monster. I had no idea I would get to see Charlize Theron twice in one night. She plays a girlfriend.)
*This is a baby boomer nostalgia film for sure. Which doesn’t keep it from still being fun. **More fun than the both of them: Steve Zahn as Lenny the guitarist. ***This is a male-centered film. ****There’s a little bit of Magical Negro going on with Bill Cobbs’s Del Paxton, and Obba Babatundé’s Lamarr would have been nice to have something to do besides be the cheerful servant.
Questions:
How long will that song be stuck in your head?
Which is your favorite time the Wonders (or the Oneders) perform “That Thing You Do”?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Including full versions, alternative versions, live versions and snippets, the song “That Thing You Do” is heard eleven times in the movie.
In Monster, Patty Jenkins directs Charlize Theron to an Oscar-winning performance, but also provides a nuanced portrait of a serial killer. Aside from Theron’s full command of the screen,* Christina Ricci turns in a masterful performance as Selby.** Many things disturbed me about this film,*** but in the good kind of way that means I’m not ignoring depressing things about real life.
The verdict: Recommended
Cost: free via Roku (with ads) Where watched: at home
*I loved her can-do spirit when she was feeling up and the contrasting low points. Theron’s physicality was great too, the way she captured Aileen’s reach out/pull back energy. **The unsure ingenue-type who also was a bit whiny and I never really understood why SHE didn’t go and get a job. What a fun performance! ***The low prices for sex acts, for one. The number of men depicted who are willing to pay for sex. The casual discarding of women who are sex workers.
Questions:
What kind of world would we have to live in so none of the events of this movie would take place?
Did you find Aileen to be a likable character? Why or why not?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Charlize Theron said in an interview that she was confused when Patty Jenkins approached her for the role. “Why me?” she asked the director. “These are usually the [roles] that I have to go out there and sweat blood and kill somebody for.” Jenkins’ reply was “Honestly, I just looked at you, and I looked at everybody else, and I said to myself, ‘I could kick the other actors’ asses. You, I’m not so sure.'”
