While We're Young

2015 - R - 1h37m

Brilliantly written, witty, very witty, 1/2 biting satire and the other half is as seriously straight as Ben Stiller can get, although possibly not possible.  He's always that visiting character Ben in Meet the Fokkers.  Does this help in this instance?  Yep, you bet, perfect casting.  Ben always seems to manage that edge of "I'm being screwed here", and he does it very well.

 

Could not have gotten closer to his opposition in the casting than with Adam Driver, and paired with Naomi Watts as his married partner in life.  

 

What I carried away the most from this was a truth that the industry...ok, wait, our entire social structure in these last 2 decades in particular...values youth above experience.  It's a well-known phenomenon aka age discrimination, aka gerontophobia.  It's sponsored by people who define what "prime" means.  But in truth, it's also a product of selfish ambition, which again, in this particular culture and over the last 20 years has been in great disproportion.

 

This is the story of a man and woman (both equally treated to a great degree here, although the story centers around the 2 male's initial relationship and goals) who are looking back with both longing, and celebration.  But mostly longing.  The loss of youth, the idea of being parents past, the pull of the need for success, the possibility of being fruitless in the face of dynamic personal effort...all play into how the story works when they meet the carefree, giving, inventive, selfless, seemingly original younger version of who they would like to be.  We think the magnet to be natural, but is it?  No spoilers here.

 

Great performances all around, very funny, dripping with irony and good spirits.  

- Agitatus

Ratched (or is it "Retched"?)

Ratched 2020

TV_MA

(TV "Maturity Analysis" needed?)

The LGBTQ+++ Alphabet community strikes again, this time with a sure-fire script for the uninitiated into their wares, selling marginalism juxtaposed over and against emotional hope and anathema relationships gone totally normal.  Buffoonery also abounds in the area of chauvinistic political overlords, aka Gov. of California played by the the overly capable Vincent D’Onofrio, of earlier fame on Law and Order, Criminal Intent, albeit a great many pounds later it seems, something on the order of Orson Wells (he actually elicits that aire, with the goatee still intact, etc).  

Overboard acting and “new” noir is offset by the incredibly bright and crisp cinematography, showcasing deep focus and almost painfully stark lines.  This is NOT Casablanca…it’s Casablanca invaded by a Disney colorist and mise en’ scene by the likes of John Alcott of The Shining (there is a list of a crew of 4 separate cinematographers on IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7423538/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1).

But people, let’s be “straight” about this ok?  It’s a plot over-poisoned/whelmed by schmarmy same-sex overtones and over the top aggrandizing of the state of queer culture.  The theme of “set my people free” seems to take the day, and at the expense of course of the Catholic Church, or any church authority, and as I said, womanizing politics.  It is conveniently placed back in a time when those themes were “in extremis”.  So just like the almost neon contrasting atmosphere of the scenes, so is the sexuality overexposed.  

I quit the series when Ratched finally kissed the much older and I think not properly cast Cynthia Nixon.  “That’s it”   I declared, and turned it off.  

Wait, let’s throw in euthanasia as a serious subplot, and anti-death penalty as well.  California, ye shall surely fall off into the ocean as many have predicted.  Man, get your head out of that gutter.

- Agitatus

Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler 2014

R - 1Hr 57Min   -  Netflix

I see I'm late to the game here as usual, viewing an older movie that seems fresh to me, at least.

 

The resemblances here to Taxi Driver are plenteous and obvious to anyone who knows a great plot.  Louis Bloom's hair in fact (Jake Gyllenhaal) echoes the different stages of unkempt and disheveled or tied up in a knot states of psychosis that the character finds himself in, as did Travis Bickle in an oily state, or a Mohawk, in his time of crisis in Scorsese's internalized drama. The "lonely man", single mind, up against the world, and finding the violent and disturbing and consistent state of affairs on the street does what he needs to do to maintain self-protection.  In Taxi Driver it's a gun.  In Nightcrawler, it's a camera.  But in both, at least at the beginning, our protagonist is searingly open-faced, vulnerable, almost naive. 

But the analogy breaks down about half way through the film.  Our man Louis it turns out is a Narcissist of the highest order, and Travis in Taxi Driver...well he was simply a kitty-cat lover in the end, and at despair over his own self, along with everyone else.  Travis did not have a perspective of himself that was healthy or disciplined outside of angst, and a conflicted person internally, whereas Louis, in Nightcrawler, is always highly aware of who he is, who others are, and in control.  A real psychopath, a complete abuser of relationships, a ladder climber of the first order.

The really disturbing thing for us, the onlookers to this media tragedy, is that we can see that this is what shapes our voyeuristic nature, our need of inside information, first-hand accounts, our seeming need for abject horror over and above good news or news that may be of political importance.  We crave dirt, salivating over death at times, embellishment drawing us in, as a rule, and will never admit it openly.  At least that is the case until we get absolutely tired of it.  It's not about news gathering, or about Louis, or even greed...it's really about us, or at least one version of a great many of us, as we salaciously want to see the blood on the pavement, the final moments of a life.

Concerning the NEWS...There have been many expositional pieces in cinema...Broadcast News (1987) or Network (1976), all the way back to Citizen Kane in '41. Nightcrawler utilizes the far end of a single human's psyche, and absolutely opaque behavior as the catalyst for the news being conveniently exploitative.

 

It's great, tense, and action packed as films go, with some nail-biting driving scenes and anticipation of events. So it's a fascinating, while also sadly reflective piece of film.  7 or 8 out of 10.

Here's a short list of like-minded subjects to take a look at if you've never seen them:

 

Ed TV

All the President's Men

Talk Radio

Natural Born Killers

The Truman Show

A Face in the Crowd

Broadcast News

Network

Medium Cool

 
- Agitatus

As Good As It Gets (again)

1997

PG13  2hrs 19min

Re-viewed again today, I believe my 4th time through.  Haven't seen this in awhile, but every time....same reaction.  I cannot recall a time during the viewing of this film that my face was not in some state of smiling.  Every single shot and scene just dripping with lovely humor, characters played to the max, pathos, fun, sincere emotional giddyness.  I HAVE to put this film on the top 10 of my all-time list.  

I found myself laughing even at the small scenes, so perfectly wrought....like where Melvin is packing for the trip, and the stuff on the bed.  Ugh...painfully delightful.

It bears some similarities to Silver Linings Playbook in the juxtaposing of hopeless relationships to hopeful romance, and the turn of events that help us look up instead of down.  Playbook brought that sense of identification with losing and yet winning in the end.  Am I a hopeless romantic?  I hope so.


So my advice...If you haven't seen this for awhile, take it in again. 
- Agitatus

Summary of my Spring Viewing so Far 2020

I've just been TOO busy for blogging, so what I'll try to do is catch up on all my viewing experiences in a nutshell, especially since Covid drove us all inside.  You'd think I'd have more time, right?  Well, we're moving, and the house needs renovating to show it...so there's that.  And then there is all this hand washing...

So, I'll try to summarize this crazy season by simply LISTING first my film intake, and then go through each one and give it the "Film Festival" treatment...meaning Thumbs UP or DOWN, and a number between 1 and 5.  That's the protocol we used at Heartland FF.

LIST (in no particular order):

The Place Beyond the Pines
Horse Girl
Better Call Saul
Where the Money Is
On Body and Soul
The 2 Popes
The Perfection
The Laundromat
Hunter's Prayer
Ad Vitam
Extraction
ROMA
The Stranger
The Assignment
Blow
Bandits
What Did Jack Do?
Jupiter Ascending
Maniac S1
Money Heist
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Glow S1
Killing Them Softly
Blood Father
Road To Perdition (seen before, many years ago)
The Occupant
Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City
Love, Death & Robots
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool 
The Witcher S1: Ep1 only (if that tells you anything)
All the Bright Places
Lost Girls
Spencer Confidential

Yes...I have actually viewed all of this since March 10th.  And that's just Netflix!

So, the next post will be an attempt to actually do the short reviews for all of these.  If you're interested in any one particularly, please write me at: agitatus@gmail.com

- Agitatus

An entry from my music journal.  03/24/20
- Agitatus

Hunters 2020

Amazon Prime

The FIRST episode was really excellent.  It drew me in in many ways, I was captivated by the trauma of a young man in crisis over the death of his grandmother, surprised at the lengths that people would go to to hide in our midst yet also not surprised. I was impressed with the many little details of the 70s that they threw into the script, and the accuracy of it's buffoonery, to some degree.  It was enough to draw me in to the show and want to see another episode - #2 of Hunters.  Sure!  Could not wait to be done with my days' work to sit back and see what would happen.  The FBI lady in Florida was intriguing and I was already drawing lines between the 2 parallel stories. 

Ok, but half way through the 2nd episode I had to stop. During the torturing of the piano man.  I had had enough.  This is outright the most juvenile and tortuous representation of media that I've ever seen.  It's a laughing stock. There is a point at which I am truly confused, if this is really supposed to be a drama, or a dramedy, or just outright comedic darkness.  Totally confused.  The scene of "hunter" introduction in the elevator was the first huge mistake, and after that it went totally south...

I am just going to stop watching and call it a night and go find something serious to do, like paint a painting, or read a great book or something.  Amazon Prime, you've just outdone yourself with this stupid waste of money and my time, and also demonstrated you have quite a ways to go to get into the Netflix standard, or AMC.  Horrific, ridiculous.  I can't even begin to believe that Al Pacino was willing to put his name on this and be a part of it.  

I LOVE Israel, the Jewish people, their culture, and their lives, and I would die for them the same as I would believe that they might die for me if I were oppressed.  I cannot stand the idea of Nazi perpetuation, their ideology still in place even today in the 21st Century.  I would not have a faith at all if it were not for the existence and the perpetuation of the Talmud, the Torah, and the living scrolls of testimony and history that completely reveals the story of mankind.  I believe in the right of Israel to exist as a nation, in fact I am in favor of those of our own who have fought for that right, and beside them, dying for their cause.  

But this audacious display of nationalistic mockery and buffoonery makes me ill.  I don't care how close to the truth it may be, it is a shame to display the seriousness of this history in a way that makes clowns of it's heroes.  You can call it black comedy if you want, but there is a point at which the black becomes actual darkness, and you've hit it here AP.  

Amazon Prime, withdraw this series please, and reconsider in order to make something worthy of our time and attention. And may I say also that this is why this particular post does not have a picture with it.   The show is not worthy of a screenshot.

And of course this does meet all of the current social rules of including LGBTQEtc heroes and ethnicities, so it has that, consider that a plus or not is your own decision (and that's me partially placating and complying with the LGBTQEtc and Ethnicities social rules for those of you reading this that have a sensitivity this way).


- Agitatus

A Hidden Life  

2019 R - 174 min

I was going to write a review on this film at some point, but I'm quite certain that I found another review that goes beyond my style and states everything QUITE clearly.  A great review by a fellow writer/critic.  And as of this writing I've been able to catch this film in the theater only once on opening day, and it was magnificent, as predicted.  But...also difficult for me to put into words any better than Joel Mayward.  So, without ado...here is his link:
...
Joel Mayward on A Hidden Life
- Agitatus

First there is:

Shock and Disbelief - Denial

then

Pain laden with Guilt

then

Anger and Bargaining (blame)

then

Depression, Isolation, and Reflection 

circular, until...

A Turning Point

and then (time depends on external and internal factors)

Working it Out, Rebuilding

then

Acceptance

These steps are at times revisited over the same subject if they are reawakened by an event that reminds us of where we were when the whole thing started.  A photograph can do it.  A birthday. An anniversary.  A song.

If you find yourself in the first step of a personal crisis again, long after you were thinking it was dead, stop, ask yourself, "Didn't I accept this already?"

RollingThunderRevue

The Rolling Thunder Review - A Bob Dylan Story
- a Martin Scorsese film

TV-MA - 2 Hours 22 min

Netflix

[the Real Deal]

Genuine
Heartfelt
what it was really
all about

Archival footage never looked
this way
From a central vision
Marty did not stray

Joan and Bob and Joni too
joined the train
and made
ballyhoo

Narrated by itself
With a voice
Like Allen
the awkward guru

Flower children
pokin' holes in the night
drivin' hippie wagons
to Jimmy Carter's delight

Genuine
Heartfelt
what it was really
all about

Payin' homage 
To the Natives
Turnin' defendant 
Into Plaintiff
The eye of the Hurricane
Smilin' big now
Free from the big house
And the whisky-drinkin' 
Injun
Holdin' up the flag
Against the wind

Finding love
Shootin' straight
Seeing hate
Dissipate

Trail end
Seems a disaster
In the mind of the
money master

But it was

Genuine
Heartfelt
what it was really
all about


- agitatus

(Incredible piece of modern historical film - nice capstone nod to the brightest side of the generation explosion and a rare look at what sublime intensity lived inside one poetic troubadour - make sure you see this)

Jim & Andy - 2017

Jim & Andy 2017

R - 94 min

I viewed "Man on the Moon" after it came out, somewhere in 2000, and my word for it was simply "incredible".  Then Jim Carrey took all of the documentary footage and sat on it for as long as...well most likely for as long as it took to no longer be entangled with Andy Kaufman.  About 9 or 10 years it seems.

Jim Carrey is everyone.  That's what he's settled on it seems after playing Andy Kaufman in this Hollywood doc.  He concludes the film with the question, "What would happen if I just decided to be Jesus?"  

He's referring to his own ability to house a real-life person, channel them if you say that, reproduce them if you want a dry description of the term, clone them if you like Millennial terminology.  Egotistical if you take that at face value.  I mean, who does he think he is anyway, Jesus? (that's humor ok)

There is true denial, fear, and confusion alongside resignation, peace, and seeming tranquility all at once in the persona of Jim Carrey after he exhausted himself on the role of the unique and stratospherically out-of-the-box Andy Kaufman.  It's in his face, both of them.  In the real-life and updated version of Carrey in this 1/4 tribute film, he is as frank and serious as he's ever been, dropping the giant smile, while at the same time not allowing his cheeks to sag.  They are as uplifted as ever.  Permanent laugh lines.  

"MOTMoon" would have to be on record as his signature film, as Jim Carrey's biggest role ever, not because of box office ROI, but because of the life similarity, familiarity, and depth of the character that he physically embodied before, during, and long after the last take of Jim & Andy.  To be fair to the "exhausted" part of it, he states convincingly in his interview, "I don't miss Andy".   Not for lack of love, for the fact of having completely exhumed him and replaced him for a time.

But I got the sense, towards the end of this film especially, that while a relaxed Jim Carrey seems resigned (by what we can tell he's relaxed because he's wearing a fairly heavy outer jacket for the entire interview that becomes the narrative for this film), he shows a great deal of tension and stiffens the upper lip against the end of himself.  Even the personality-swallowing Carrey (who could embody Jesus most likely of anyone) cannot hide his entire body language.  But that's most likely because this is indeed him and not "acting" Carrey.  Here he is in fact baring himself open, and in that he is relaxed.  I simply mean that his conclusions about the nature of self and the universe...they are less than convincing.  

While the attempted bravado of facing the "unknown" is fed by what he has stated is the abstract nature of the self in the here and now, all things being "placed on us", and therefore exonerating ourselves of responsibility for how it's turned out, or what our "choices" are (hence the tea cup analogy: "did the tea cup choose to be drunk or was it my thirst?" - then I had to ask myself, "Well, does the tea cup have volition, like we do?"), Carry leans far forward when trying to tell us that we all long for what lies beyond.  The subtitle for the film is in fact "The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton".  Now THAT is exactly like the comedian, the escapist, to have a serious title appended by an embellished and decorated facetious one.  It is the hallmark of the lone ranger, the only child syndrome, the reclusive or exclusivity of narcissism and implosive indulgence, however you want to look at it... to put the vanilla icing of Comedy over our vegetables and meatloaf.

This is not to say it's a bad thing, something to shy away from, or deny.  I've been doing it my whole life, so I should know.  I echo this whole thing right down to the core, because it is also me we're talking about here, my own profile.  I've just never written a check to myself for 10 million dollars, and I did not have a chance to put it in my father's pocket when he was buried.  But neither can I blame Jim for his direction here.  It's totally understandable, believable for where he's at and what he's been through (man if you can make it through the Hollywood wringer and still smile....), and unlike many of the words normally used about Jim Carrey, even by himself, "genuine".  Tony Clifton said it on stage, "That smile, he's smiling all the time, that's fake!"

If this film passed you by....NO WAIT! ....if this film passed you by and you ALSO did not see "Man in the Moon", then rewind...........see "Man in the Moon" first, THEN check this one out.  You will not get as much out of this Making-Of  documentary if you don't see the real film first.  You will however need to see MOTM on Prime as a rental or elsewhere, and Jim & Andy on Netflix.  Here are the links:

Man on the Moon
Jim & Andy


- Agitatus