Month: September 2022

Love and Mercy (2014)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 2 hours
Synopsis: Biopic of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: well-acted and directed
What I don’t like about it: sometimes Hallmark-y, people either know the story or don’t really care

Review:
The lead role is played by two actors: Paul Dano plays Brian in the 60s and John Cusack in the 80s. The two narratives play out with relative ease, the first involving the recording of Pet Sounds and the failed recording of Smile, the second involving the tail-end of Brian’s involvement with Dr. Landy (played with villainous relish by noted ham Paul Giamatti) and the beginning of his relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks). Both lead actors are very good at playing autistic and scenes thoughtfully depict sensory pleasure and pain.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, psychiatric abuse

Keanu (2016)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on Amazon
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: Friends get into an adventure over an adorable kitten
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: hilarious, cute, better than it has to be, rewatchable
What I don’t like about it: nah it’s pretty great entertainment

Review:
One of my favourite comedies, this follows a stoner (Jordan Peele) who finds a kitten while grieving a breakup and ropes in his friend (Keegan-Michael Key), a mature straight-laced family man, when the kitten is stolen. The ensuing adventure leads them to pretend to be gangsters to wonderful comedic effect. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this movie.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, some violence, peril for the kitten but no harm

The Control Room (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Three 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Tense Scottish thriller
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: tense, well-acted
What I don’t like about it: contrived, kinda pointless, terrible ending

Review:
An ambulance dispatcher receives a distressing call from someone who recognises him, he gets involved and covers up a crime, soon finding himself in over his head with people controlling him before eventually fighting back and taking some control himself (geddit?).

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Lost Ollie (2022)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: Four 50-minute episodes
Synopsis: A grimdark tragedy for children
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: VFX, sometimes unintentionally funny
What I don’t like about it: deeply unpleasant

Review:
Who is this for? The target audience appears to be children, due to the animated elements and plot of a lost toy trying to reunite with his child, but it seems designed to end a childhood on sight. Ollie, voiced by Jonathan Groff with a bad Missourah accent, finds himself in a second-hand shop being roughly handled by the shopkeeper and longing for Billy, the boy who loved him. He meets other toys abandoned by their owners and they set out on an adventure, just like in Toy Story. Unlike Toy Story however, this story intersperses live-action footage of Billy’s mum dying of cancer and his alcoholic father trying to neglect him into growing up. Billy goes to hospitals, funerals and bars while Ollie and company hop freight trains and swap trauma stories, including the time one of the toys committed a violent murder. If this is children’s media then Richard Thompson’s The End of the Rainbow is a lullaby.

Maudlin, depressing and disgustingly unpleasant throughout, the tone may be consistent but it’s an ugly car crash that makes all other effort in this series pointless and the actors who choose to phone it in seem wise by comparison. ILM’s visual effects are the most impressive part; the animation is only passable but the lighting, blending with the live-action backgrounds, really is indistinguishable from magic.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): death, loss

Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: No streaming
Length: 2 hours
Synopsis: A drag queen seeks love
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: Harvey Fierstein, dialogue
What I don’t like about it: it feels a bit long (the 4 hour play must be worse)

Review:
This play opens with a soliloquy about the lead’s longing to be coupled up, then shows us three of his main flirtations with love. Arnie Beckoff, Fierstein’s alter ego, works as a “female impersonator” in the parlance of the time and has various romantic and sexual misadventures, utilising his unique gift for face-contorting physical comedy. When he does find happiness, something gets in the way for him. Culminates in a wonderful rant at his mother and an eventual happy ending. Probably squarely in the ‘gay interest’ pigeonhole but worth a shot if you like talky plays.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): homophobia, assault, loss, guilty itself of some biphobia

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: All4 right now
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: The cast of Star Trek are mistaken by aliens for the characters they play
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: fun, good effects, better than it ever had to be
What I don’t like about it: honestly, nothing stands out – it’s just a fun ride

Review:
The movie opens on a sci-fi convention as we meet the cast of Galaxy Quest – Tim Allen as the brash captain and the actor who likes to believe he’s as daring as his character, Alan Rickman as a thespian disappointed by his typecasting as the alien sidekick, Sigourney Weaver as the useless token female (“My whole job on the show was repeating what the computer said!”), Sam Rockwell as the dispensable and forgotten red shirt – all taking wonderful advantage of their real-life parallels. Complications arise when aliens appear, led by a hilarious performance from Enrico Colantoni, to recruit the captain in their intergalactic war, having based most of their technology on old broadcasts of Galaxy Quest and believing only the crew of that show can save them.

The film leaves me impressed every time I watch it, not because it’s a great film really but because not a single aspect is phoned-in. The practical effects, costumes, acting, everything is lovingly considered and it adds up to the most fun you’ll have watching something Star Trek-related.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

We Own This City (2022)

Where to find it: NowTV
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Fact-based The Wire fanfic
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: it’s true, good acting
What I don’t like about it: more of a podcast than a drama, hard to follow

Review:
A laundry list of sins are exposed in this series based on Baltimore police. The factual stuff is brilliant but around that is some pretty hacky dialogue and so many references to The Wire that it feels like fan fiction, a vibe not helped by the Windows Movie Maker titles. Does a good job of portraying how little they care about the guy in handcuffs and how quickly they will lie to cover their arse – worth watching if you don’t understand why people say ACAB. Gets better as it goes on.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): cop shit, violence, drugs, sex

Let Them All Talk (2020)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: No streaming (?)
Length: 110 minutes
Synopsis: An author has a college reunion on an ocean liner
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: dialogue, acting
What I don’t like about it: rather directionless, it’s a lot of talking

Review:
Meryl Streep plays a self-important author who travels from New York to London aboard the QM2 along with her nephew and old college friends. They talk about old times, generational differences, differences in how their lives have gone. Not a lot happens but I really liked it anyway.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): death

Snowpiercer (2013)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: Rent on BFI or Amazon
Length: two hours
Synopsis: The Communist Manifesto on wheels
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: metaphor, action
What I don’t like about it: not fun

Review:
I gained a lot of appreciation for this in retrospect after watching Parasite and deciding I liked this one more. The metaphor works better – a train, constantly in motion and “unable” to stop, moves around a world ravaged by climate change. At the back of the train are some overworked and underfed people living in darkness and squalor, a revolution ensues and one of the proletariat fights his way through increasing luxury to the front of the train. There (spoilers for capitalism) he learns that the train is actually fuelled by human bodies and stops it in disgust, taking his chances in the frozen wasteland. And all of that, unlike Parasite, in an action film that I could show to pretty much anybody.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence

Culloden (1964)

Throughout September I will be raiding my collection of favourite movies to review one a day, with a focus on overlooked and underappreciated films.

Where to find it: YouTube
Length: just over an hour
Synopsis: The Battle of Culloden, in the style of BBC documentaries of the time
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: a wonderfully didactic history lesson
What I don’t like about it: it’s no fun popcorn flick

Review:
Peter Watkins is a fascinating filmmaker, tending to favour an experimental documentary style over what he refers to as ‘the monoform’ of dramatic entertainment. Throughout his career, he filmed many fascinating and unflinchingly bleak documentaries on subjects like nuclear weapons and the Paris Commune, as well as satirical fiction such as Privilege, Punishment Park and the fantastic Gladiators. He would prove to be a formative influence on Adam Curtis, who is a formative influence on me.

In this, his first feature-length work, the Battle of Culloden is re-enacted by amateur actors as if a documentary crew were able to time-travel to the battlefield. The effect really works as unfolding developments build significant emotion for what seems, at first, like a dry history lesson.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): grim horrors of war, vividly described