Tag: movies

Movie review: The Ballad of Wallis Island

get the group back together

I was intrigued enough by the trailer for the film The Ballad of Wallis Island that my wife and I saw at the Spectrum 8 in Albany on Income Tax Day; Tuesdays are cheaper. Charles (Tim Key) is a quirky guy who lives alone on a large property on a remote island.   He’s a massive fan of the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer (Tom Basden as Herb and Carey Mulligan as Nell).

So, he takes some of his lottery winnings and offers them the opportunity to play a private show at his home on Wallis Island. Do the bandmates and former lovers know that the other one is also coming? 

It’s a straightforward concept, but it’s a joy to see the three characters interact; they have great chemistry. Charles is trying to keep the other two happy enough to play together again. He has adapted to his vaguely solitary life, but needed much more.

Nice

It seems almost dismissive to label The Ballad of Wallis Island charming and relatable. One critic notes that “it touches on the passage of time and grief of lost relationships.” The nostalgia of getting together segues into old tensions resurfacing. Another critic: “It was a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and a little bit sweet, all at the same time.”

If you’re a music fan, and the music is nice, you may lean into this idea: wouldn’t you like to be able to have your favorite band get together one more time?

The movie was directed by James Griffiths and written by actors Basden and Key. It also stars Sian Clifford as the shopkeeper. Executive producers – eight are listed – include Griffiths, Basden, Key, and Mulligan, so this is a passion project., as you can tell from this gestation story.  

It’s only 100 minutes long, and it has a 97% positive rating with Rotten Tomatoes critics and 92% with moviegoers. 

Captain America: Brave New World

Sam Wilson

I was going to write a review of Captain America: Brave New World, but I need to talk about a previous storyline, even though I did not see it.  

Think Christian posted an article in 2021 titled Captain America and Christ’s Second Commandment. LeMarr Jackson suggests, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier poses a provocative question: Is the world actually ready to accept and love a Black Captain America?…

“In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America has stood for everything American: an indomitable will, a never-give-up attitude, a paragon of virtue, an extremely hard worker, and—above all else—an outstanding patriot. Not only has he represented these values, but he has also always looked a certain way, with “blond hair and blue eyes…”

“As he walks through a neighborhood with his partner Bucky (Sebastian Stan), a white man, two policemen stop them for having a spirited discussion. One of the cops insinuates that Sam is causing trouble by directly asking Bucky if Sam is “bothering” him. The cop also specifically asks Sam—but not Bucky—for identification, even telling Sam to ‘calm down.'”

Continuity

Having missed the six episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier from 2021, Brave New World was a tad confusing. Part of the storyline of Winter Soldier is this: “Sam.. learns about the first Black super soldier, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). When Sam meets the now-older man, he is disillusioned over how his country has treated him. He was a good soldier, but he was hidden from the public and mistreated by his government—quite unlike Steve Rogers’s experience.” 

Ah, so that explains Bradley’s role in Brave New World. This reminded me of how comic books were an annoying medium. If you miss an issue, you sometimes feel totally out of the loop and confused.

Ultimately, an article in The Hollywood Reporter titled “Chris Evans’ Captain America Wasn’t Expected to Save Us.  So Why Is Anthony Mackie’s?” got me to see Brave New World, which I attended at the Spectrum Theatre. In contrast, my wife saw Conclave, which I had seen months earlier.

As a critic wrote, “Captain America feels like a supporting character in his own movie.” I thought it just me. For a two-hour film, it was busy. The only 49% positive critics’ rating/80% positive with fans seems right. I liked Anthony Mackie as the new Cap and Harrison Ford as President Thunderbolt Ross.

The character Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), “an Israeli former Black Widow who is now a high-ranking government U.S. official, is also controversial” in some circles. Sigh. 

If you follow the MCU stuff, you might want to see it. Apparently, folks attending the Spectrum Theatre were not fans at 4 pm on the Tuesday after Presidents Day because I was the only one in a reasonably large theater.   

Movie review: The Brutalist

Adrien Brody

The Brutalist was the last of the Best Picture films still playing at the Spectrum Theatre that I had not seen. So, I attended the 12:15 matinee with eight others during the week before the Oscars. (There was no way I would see a three-and-a-half-hour movie at 6:50 p.m.) 

I really liked the opening and closing credits, which had the stationary text with the camera’s focus moving.

The first part was “The Enigma of Arrival,” a fictional account of a Hungarian immigrant named László Tóth (Adrien Brody) who comes to the United States.  He stays with a cousin from back home (Alessandro Nivola) who has Americanized himself. That works for a while until a seeming debacle.

Ultimately, though, he gets a commission from American tycoon Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who discovers Tóth’s genius. His beloved wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) finally joins him, unlike when he last saw her. 

I appreciated the intense portrayal of the immigrant experience, including their credentials from their previous country that were not applicable in the US. The movie showed how people can be marginalized and fall into traps of drugs and other problems because of their difficult situations.

Let’s take a break

Then there was a 15-minute intermission. I haven’t been to a movie with an intermission since Reds in 1981, and like that film, I thought the first half of the movie was far more substantial than the second. 

Even some critics who liked the film, 93% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, noted that “The Hardcore of Beauty 1953–1960” was a lesser part. “If The Brutalist stopped after the intermission, it would be a near-perfect film, an immigrant story in the vein of The Godfather Part II”. Russ Simmons of Kansas City radio station: “The film’s second half meanders and leaves us with dangling plot threads.”

A negative review by Brian Viner (Daily Mail UK): “There are many impressive things about this film, not least the acting, but for me it too often loses its narrative grip in the second act, veering off on tangents that feel unnecessary, distracting and self-indulgent.” Audiences were 80% positive. 

Afterwards, another patron asked me what I thought of the film.  I said I liked it but didn’t love it. He had been in situations where he was an artist with a patron, and he saw first-hand how the patron could try to take over the artist’s whole life, which he related to immensely. I can see that.

Movie review: I’m Still Here

Ainda Estou Aqui 

Of all the movies nominated for best picture, the film I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui  in Portuguese) is the one I knew the least about when I went to the Spectrum Theater in late February to see it. I couldn’t even remember the name, saying to the ticket seller, “It’s the, uh, Brazilian film,” and they knew what I meant.

In 1971, “Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship.” You first get a sense of this with a roadway police stop. Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and Rubens (Selton Mell) are living a reasonably comfortable upper-middle-class life. Eunice and Rubens clearly adore each other. They and their five children get along as well as a large family can. Rubens was in the federal legislature in the past but is long retired.

First, Rubens, then Eunice, and briefly, even one of their daughters are taken away and interrogated.  This turns their world upside down, “The film is based on Marcelo Ruben Pavia’s biographical book and tells a true story that helped reconstruct an important part of Brazil’s hidden history.” This true story is just one of many families disrupted by the government. 

Awards

The film won the Oscar for Best International Film. It was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture—I preferred it to Anora, FWIW—and Torres was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture—Drama, and justifiably so. Fernanda Montenegro played the older Eunice Paiva in the film; she is the mother of Fernanda Torres.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it received 97% positive reviews from critics and audiences. And it did better box office in the UK than expected.  

David Sims of The Atlantic notes correctly, “By highlighting Eunice’s role as a parent, [director Walter] Salles pushes viewers toward considering the mundanity of living under a dictatorship — and the gnawing nightmare of lacking control in the face of obvious evil.” A strong film. 

Movie review: Flow

from Latvia

The star of the movie Flow is a solitary black or dark gray cat. It’s a feline in an animated feature, but it isn’t a cartoon cat, so it speaks only to mew and doesn’t walk on its hind legs. It sleeps on a human bed in a house surrounded by cat sculptures.

Humans must have existed at some point, but none appear in this film. Whatever happened to this world is getting worse, as the cat has to run to higher ground to stay above the flooding.

Eventually, a boat floats by and soon holds a lemur, a capybara, a heron, and the cat. How do these nonanthropomorphized creatures communicate enough to work together to survive? They must find a safe space. Oh, and there is a pack of dogs nearby.

Director Gints Zibalodis from Latvia co-wrote the script with Matiss Kaza, co-wrote the engaging music with Rihards Zalupe, and is listed as the movie’s editor, cinematographer, and art director. I particularly loved the painted aspect of the creature, especially the primary canine.

Future?

Even more than The Wild Robot, which I also liked, Flow is a credible futuristic tale. The reviews were almost universally positive, 97% with the critics and 98% with the audiences. One reviewer wrote: Flow is a spirited and wild film experience that must be experienced and appreciated for the ground-breaking, profound feat of excellence that it is. This writer was moved, engaged, and enthralled by its scope, beauty, and heart. An inspiring ode to wildlife and its resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.”

A friend of my wife said it was a meditative film, which I can relate to. We saw Flow at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany at a mid-January matinee. Thee were only six of us there, and two left when they realized they were in the wrong theater. 

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