This looks like it’s going to be one of those minimal Akerman films, which makes a change from the previous two films in this box set. They were more traditional, with people being interviewed and stuff.
So far (fifteen minutes in), we’ve had four long takes, each looking out this window to the neighbours — shot through these drapes. The neighbours are puttering around in their rooftop garden. And the sound is the natural sound from Akerman’s apartment (presumably), with her answering the phone. But also doing a voice-over… about two of her cousins committing suicide, and her family in general.
It’s riveting!
Part of the attraction is the sheer Peeping Tom aspect of it all… nobody could actually sit staring at their neighbours like this. But here, we have no other choice.
*gasp* Outside!!! It cannot be!
Oops. This is a DVD, and it’s interlaced, and the deinterlace seems to be hitting the resolution of the drapes, so everything’s all shimmery all of a sudden…
This needs a blu ray remaster.
Is that Akerman? It kinda looks like it?
Oh, yeah, this is a movie about Israel and being under siege.
Oh, right, this is the infamous super-hero bomb? I’m already impressed with how nonsensical it is, and we’re only a couple minutes in.
I’m fascinating by how abrupt this movie is. It’s not using the normal super-hero storytelling devices and aesthetics at all. Perhaps some of that’s due to budget constraints — using cheap subway tile in this laboratory, and then having the rest of the set be in pitch darkness — but it’s refreshing to see something actually filmed on a set instead of just being greenscreen and CGI, which is the standard now for even the simplest of scenes.
(Although parts of the office is CGI and that is probably a CGI mouse.)
Hey! That shows Jared Leto’s dedication to the role — at the start of the movie, he was a forty pound weakling, but during the filming, he bulked up to Charles Atlas size!
Hm… the film’s kinda lost something now… it was weird and abrupt at the start, but in a good way. Now it’s more… abrupt but somewhat boring.
It’s still odd! I’m wondering what happened to this movie, so excuse me while I pause to google.
So this was filmed in 2019 in London. But later that year, Marvel/Disney reached an agreement with Sony to tie things more deeply into the Marvel movie timeline, allowing the Spider-Man-verse (which this is part of, sort of) to be part of all that. This led to reshoots. The movie was meant to be shown in 2020, but then Corona happened, so it was postponed to 2021, and further reshoots happened to keep up with the Spider-Man films. Then premiere was postponed to 2022, and more reshoots happened, and then we got what we got.
The negative reception toward the film generated an ironic meme culture surrounding it with “praise”, which led Sony to re-release it into 1,000 theaters on June 3, 2022. This re-release also performed poorly, making just $280,000 over the weekend.
It bombed twice.
The film does feel really, really tightly edited. Perhaps over-edited? Like someone has tinkered with the film for more than two additional years, getting everything super tight? And I like that! It’s not like any other super-hero movie… I could imagine they just keep moving the date back year after year, never ending, doing reshoot after reshoot: The Movie On The Edge Of Forever.
Seems more like an episode of something rather than a film
I understand what he means, because it’s way off model for one of these movies… and I’m starting to like it more.
*rolls movie again*
OK, that’s a cheap joke, but heh.
*gasp* Kitty!
I’ve seen super-hero movies that are a lot worse than this. Like — most of them? The start of this is pretty intriguing, and then it gets iffy, and then at the end it’s more traditional. It’s a mess, kinda. I think ⚂ would be a more reasonable rating, but I’m never reasonable, so:
This screen is very wide. And it kinda looks like they’ve used a lens that’s kinda fishy? When a car drives across the screen, it makes strange contortions…
Hey, that’s…
Yes, it’s Fred Astaire!? Wow. From 1955?
He still looks pretty spry.
This is quite amusing. It’s quite light in the Astaire dept — he’s done half a dance and a couple of scenes.
But it’s still quite nice.
OK, here comes the dancin’.
The movie is slightly odd — it’s a 2 hour+ extravaganza, but the story is so… un-epic.
It’s also kinda “eh” in that the premise seems to be that the old Astaire character is gonna end up with the 18-year-old Leslie Caron character — he just has to wait a couple years for her to be all growed up first.
That’s a nice green colour.
It’s a strikingly… transparent film. I mean, it’s just so professional? It’s generically well-made without any distinguishing thing about it whatsoever. The name of the director, Jean Negulesco, doesn’t ring any bells at all, but he’s done a whole bunch of movies:
Of those, I’ve seen… How to Marry a Millionaire, and… no, that’s it, I think? Huh.
Wow, that’s some Manhattan matte painting. It’s like a perfect, if feverish, vision of Manhattan-ness.
Well, OK, the movie does explicitly call out the creepy differences in age and power between the Astaire and Caron characters, so it’s got that going for it. But that’s only done as the third act drama bit — the thing that’s getting between them and their eventual blissful happiness, so…
Hey! Now the sofa is more blue than green…
Teal. Teal.
This is not a great film. I’m not even sure you could call it “good” on any reasonable scale. But it’s a perfect example of its genre — it distilled from a whole bunch of films that are actually good. It’s kinda flawless in that way? So I really enjoyed it — a lot, but your mileage will vary. I wasn’t bored a second. So:
