Movies That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

[scenicdesign71]

So much for this movie not deserving its own thread.

Ms. Taylor-Joy can actually be heard performing "Downtown" in downtempo (see above), uptempo (karaoke perfection), and a cappella versions,  plus "You're My World", on the soundtrack.

[KathyB]

Archipel was a strange movie. I'm not sure what it was about because it was so abstract. If you watch the trailer on the link, you've pretty much got a sense of the entire movie. I want to say I didn't understand it because it was in French, but I don't think I would have understood it if it were in English--except I would have understood what some of the floating animated words meant, which may not have turned out to make any difference.

[DiveMilw]

That is a neat trailer and I really like the style of animation.  Having said that, I don't know if I could sit through 72 minutes without my mind drifting off.  That is a movie I would be glad I saw but might not fully appreciate.

[KathyB]

The King's Man was a very violent, very action-packed war movie. I am not a fan of war movies. I'm trying to think of even one that I like, and can't even come up with a classic one. It was nice to see Ralph Fiennes kicking major ass, but this is not my type of movie, and I can't genuinely recommend it.

[scenicdesign71]

I haven't yet seen this documentary about Horn & Hardart, titled simply The Automat.  It sounds highly entertaining, but, judging by Wesley Morris's nuanced review, it also sounds like a trove of minor misjudgments and missed opportunities:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/movies/the-automat-review.html

Morris makes this seem possibly like an instance where, given such an irresistible subject -- surely this doc would have sold itself, with or without Mel Brooks's (perhaps overenthusiastic) participation -- no one felt the need to explore it with enough depth or rigor to fully mine its riches.

Which, if true, would be unfortunate: judging by his description alone, I could easily imagine seeing it and pining for the much better documentary that might have been.  But in fairness, director Lisa Hurwitz's interest in the subject seems not only genuine (the film took her a decade to make) but probing; The New Yorker's Richard Brody, for one, is less measured in his appreciation than Morris.

And even if the filmmaker's and her interview subjects' heads were more softened by nostalgia than one might wish, it's not hard to see why.  It really is a pretty dang surefire-irresistible topic -- even or perhaps especially for those of us who were born too late to experience the automat in its heyday (or at all), which includes most people these days, not least of all Hurwitz herself.  (Indeed, the topic's nostalgia-appeal dates back at least as far as 1979, and probably much farther: according to Wikipedia, H&H had by then already been in significant decline for well over a decade).  I might or might not rush out to see this on the big screen, but I'll definitely catch it as soon as it comes to streaming.

And mark my words: if it hasn't already been tried or isn't already in progress, sooner than later there will surely be some fictionalized treatment of the  subject, employing the automat as the central literary, filmic or dramatic "hook" for some ambitious, multi-stranded narrative exploration of (to borrow Brody's phrase) mid-20th-century urbanism: the business history behind the restaurant's innovation and expansion, sure, but also the stories of everyday customers and workers whose near-absence from Hurwitz's documentary gives Morris such (understandable) pause.  Plenty, for sure, of "the transformation of cheap dining into a sort of theatrical experience" cited by Brody.  And, almost certainly, an elegy for a nearly-vanished urban ideal, laced with questions about how, and whether, the American cultural "melting pot" actually works.  From reading even just the small handful of articles that I've linked in this post, it seems to me there's a series (or film or novel or musical) crying out to be made; I'd be surprised if there weren't writers and producers somewhere toying with the idea even as I type this.

[scenicdesign71]

The more I've learned about Roald Dahl over the years, the more off-putting I've found him.  The bizarreries of Willie Wonka leave me numb, and while I do remember the original book, as well as James and the Giant Peach, both holding my rapt attention when they were read (serially, over days or weeks) by a favorite teacher to my second- or third-grade class, I suspect the pleasure of being read-to was itself a large part of the appeal.

In any case, whatever his books' merits, I've yet to encounter a stage or screen adaptation of Dahl that didn't more or less suck (not to mince words) -- so having just now watched Netflix's movie of Matilda, the Musical, I'm neither surprised nor especially disappointed to add it to the pile.  Well, okay: mildly surprised that it's managed to rack up a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and disappointed by the waste of Emma Thompson (though she, at least, seems to be having fun).  When I saw the show on the West End in 2011, I was impressed by a smattering of clever stagecraft, and not much else; but of course that's all been replaced onscreen with blandly competent production design and cinematography, gussied-up with a few flashy CGI sequences.  While the movie doesn't discernibly improve Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly's stage adaptation, it at least streamlines the running time to two only-occasionally-draggy hours (compare to 2hrs 45min onstage, where almost everything, including the intermission, outstayed its welcome).

Anyway, Grinch-iness aside, if it's your cup of tea, by all means enjoy.  I can't exactly be disappointed when my expectations were so low to begin with, but I am slightly regretting having now given Minchin, Kelly, and director Matthew Warchus almost five hours of my life (between Matilda's stage and screen versions) that I kinda wish I could get back.

[scenicdesign71]

Last night I watched The Menu on HBO Max, after having been intrigued by what I'd seen and read when it opened in theaters just before Thanksgiving.  (Turns out, it's also actually still running on a handful of screens here, or perhaps it's been brought back for awards season).

If you're in the mood for dark comedy-horror, this will satisfy nicely: it's a tidily constructed, suspenseful, deliciously nasty chamber piece with a fantastic ensemble cast.  In fact, you could watch it alongside Glass Onion for a fun evening of compare-and-contrast: two 2022 holiday releases, both gleefully skewering the 1% -- one lighter in tone, one darker; one big and flashy, the other small and austere (if no less devoted to luxe surfaces); both set on picturesque private islands where an uninvited guest stumbles into a deadly game -- the film-studies papers practically write themselves.

(Both are also that favorite subgenre of mine: movies whose stories unfold largely on a single set.  Such movies might thereby risk being criticized as "stagey" by a certain kind of film snob, but they offer both their creators and their viewers the pleasure of exploring human-scale space, and the way the characters inhabit it, in detail over time -- often, as in this case, an only-relatively-lightly compressed version of real time.  Glass Onion's prologue, and some of its flashbacks, take us off the island for only brief bits of its runtime, while The Menu is confined entirely to a single evening and a straight linear timeline, venturing off-island only as far as a short ferry ride).

Just in case The Menu's gimmick seems predictable, I'll offer one spoiler:

Spoiler: ShowHide

While things do get a bit bloody, and the movie is hardly subtle in its messaging, there's no literal "eat[ing] the rich" here: the film's meticulously designed ten-course tasting menu is often outré, but doesn't involve any actual cannibalism -- or even very much gore, by horror standards.  The violence, while expertly staged to shock and unnerve (and finally engulfing almost everyone onscreen as perpetrator, victim, or both), is for the most part handled with Hitchcockian restraint.

[Leighton]

I enjoyed The Menu very much!

[scenicdesign71]

Right, @Leighton ?  I actually watched it again a few days later, and found that it held up to a second viewing very well indeed.  I caught one or two things, the second time, that land even more deftly when you already know how everything turns out.  Specifically,

Spoiler: ShowHide

On first viewing, Tyler's (Nicholas Hoult) emotional reaction to the first course seems written primarily to court our disdain -- though it also sparks further conversation with Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) about his excessive devotion to the evening's chef (Ralph Fiennes).  ("You're paying him to serve you," insists Margot -- herself a hired escort, we'll later learn -- her eyes unconsciously lowered, wavering between sympathy and exasperation: "It doesn't really matter whether he likes you or not.").

Tyler has ostensibly been moved to tears by his admiration for the food, and for Chef Slowik's "artist statement" introducing it: "What happens inside this room is meaningless compared with what happens outside, in nature ... we are but a frightened nanosecond.  Nature is timeless."  On first viewing, this all may strike us as silly or sincere, or vaguely portentous if, e.g., we come to The Menu already primed by the trailer to view Slowik as murderously unhinged.  But in re-watching the film, already knowing that Tyler already knows how the evening will end, his tears become a lot more interesting.

Also, the non-interactions between Margot and Richard [Reed Birney] -- and his switching seats with his wife Anne [Judith Light] in order to keep his own face averted from Margot -- registered more pointedly on second viewing.

There are a lot of subtle acting, staging, and camera choices which highlight the intricate dynamics among this roomful of people over the course of the evening; horror aside, the movie is also a witty comedy of manners, and rewatching makes its elegant construction even clearer.  Especially interesting, the second time around, is the ambiguous but compelling connection that develops between Margot and Slowik, by turns high-stakes-adversarial and weirdly comradely: cousins-in-arms in their respective service industries.  It's a generous cut above the usual final-girl vs. evil-genius showdown, and I found myself hoping the characters' edgy chemistry was as satisfying for Ms. Taylor-Joy and Mr. Fiennes to build as it is for us to watch.

Maybe it does deserve its own thread.

[scenicdesign71]

Both [The Menu and Glass Onion] are also that favorite subgenre of mine: movies whose stories unfold largely on a single set.  Such movies might thereby risk being criticized as "stagey" by a certain kind of film snob, but they offer both their creators and their viewers the pleasure of exploring human-scale space, and the way the characters inhabit it, in detail over time -- often, as in this case, an only-relatively-lightly compressed version of real time.

The NYT recently ran an interesting article about films that set themselves an even starker challenge: not only a single set, but one inhabited exclusively by a single actor -- a mini-genre of its own, represented here by five examples ranging from the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Buried (2010) to the currently-running (in cinemas only) Inside starring Willem Dafoe):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/movies/inside-movie-feature-one-set.html