Once again, I have no idea what this is… it looks like a documentary? But this time, I guess the South in the US?

Eek! People are talking in this one! In D’Est, there was no talkin.

This DVD really isn’t ideal — it’s interlaced, so it’s all smudged when doing tracking shots (which Akerman loves to do). It’s also anamorphic 16:9, which makes the resolution even lower, and it’s all just kinda… not sharp.

And there’s no subtitles, and I’m not quite sure what people are saying?

I’m just saying: This is not an ideal way to watch this film, so I’m not sure my take on this is right, but it just feels a bit half-assed, as Akerman films go. That is, she’s using her well-known techniques (long shoots that call for great framing and tracking shots that can be contemplative), but she’s here mixing in Americans talking to the camera and, and 16:9, and… it’s not shot on film? Is this video? Digital video?

And it’s just not as compelling.

It’s more of a traditional documentary. (It’s about the murder of James Byrd Jr.)

Must be digital video, I guess, but this looks quite good for early DV. I mean, it has the usual problems (everything that’s over a certain brightness is all #fff, so you lose details in the bright bits)…

… but it’s quite nice in lower light conditions.

I mean, I totally understand Akerman wanting to do this documentary — she happened to be here after this horrendous murder, so doing anything but a straightforward documentary about racism would be impossible, I guess?

But the film just seems overwhelmed by its subject matter (which is natural).

South. Chantal Akerman. 1999. ⚂

Superheroes!

But why can’t they hire real hairdressers? His white bits look like somebody glued on some white hair onto a dark-haired wig.

And I guess the white bits moving around are just to signal that we’re in a different part of the Multiverse now?

Still, bad wig in this universe, too.

My theory is still that Disney half-asses scenes like this on purpose: When everything looks fake, they can cut down on spending on the big actions scenes. Because then they don’t stick out like sore thumbs. But I’d prefer that, if the normal non-action scenes could look better. Instead everything is half-assed greenscreen and CGI like this.

Wigstock.

Uhm uhm. This seems awfully abrupt, doesn’t it? I mean, Wanda can rewrite reality, so she’s set. So why this sudden total heel turn?

And the entire Multiverse thing — I see the attraction for people writing movies, because you can do fun stuff like in the third Spider-Man movie, having the different Spider-Man actors meet. But long term, it just lowers the stake of absolutely everything: If you blow up one universe, then there’s another you can go to, and if you fix one universe, there’s an infinite number of universes where things went wrong. So it just makes nothing matter — bad or good.

Hey, it’s… Ash!

I’d forgotten that Sam Raimi did this — and I’m surprised that Disney let him after running the Spider-Man franchise into the ground back when.

Can Raimi do the same with the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”!?!

OK, I’ve started zoning out because this is kinda dull. But I have to give Raimi props for the special effects — this movie does look better than most Marvel movies, and I was a bit unfair at the start there.

Ah right:

Raimi reportedly began shooting with only a half-finished script, and it shows.

It does — it’s like nothing is happening in this movies, except for people running around.

Man, that’s a lot of fan service. Which I approve of!

Oh man, still half to go.

MAKE IT STOP IT”S SO BORING

But I kinda want to see how this ends. I wonder how pissed off Elizabeth Olsen was with this movie. It seemed like it squandered a pretty interesting character arc for… nothing. Perhaps they’re gonna put in a And Now She’s Nice Again (i.e., the Sylar move) at the end?

OK, I withdraw the nice things I said about the CGI.

Sometimes the subtitles are way way off.

Well, that was really boring. It’s like… nothing of interest happened, and the only new thing we “learned” about the MCU was the dreamwalking thing, and it was totally lame. They wanted a movie that followed up from Wandavision and the Spider-Multiverse thing, and they forgot to actually write it? And instead they just started filming a bunch of “neat” scenes?

So while I was bored out of my skull watching this, a couple of the scenes were, indeed, pretty neat, so I’m upping my throw of the die to:

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Sam Raimi. 2022. ⚁

Nobody is as Bogart as Bogart.

Huh… it’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie with Bogie? *ponder* I’ve mostly seen hoiti-toiti films lately — did Bogie miss out on all those films?

I’ve missed him, I realise now.

I’ve seen this before, of course, but it’s been a minute. And I’ve recently seen Ray’s first three movies, and they all stunk. But this is as good as I vaguely remember.

This is so noir. All those sharp shadows everywhere, the meta qualities, and the cynicism pervading everything.

That’s some suit.

Ray is really subtle with the dick jokes.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Anyway… the first hour of this film is just kinda perfect. And then the last third alternates between boredom and exasperation — when it’s clear that Dix Steele is a psychopath, it’s not really interesting whether he killed Mildred or not. The excitement is then in whether Laurel can get away from him without getting killed or not, and that’s exasperating, because she’s just not trying that hard.

So the tragedy the film seems to be going for — with the resolution to the murder mystery that arrives too late to make a difference — dissipates completely. Instead Laurel getting out of the movie alive is the happy ending, which negates the tragedy I think Ray was going for with the end of the relationship.

*time passes*

I’m now watching one of the extras on the disc here, and Ray explains how they first shot this film with a totally different ending: Bogie kills Laurel, and the cops burst into the apt (which was Ray’s first Hollywood apt) and arrest him. But as he explains — romances (and marriages) don’t have to end in violence! (Gloria Grahame, who plays Laurel, had just divorced Ray, but nobody on set knew that yet.) “This is a very personal film.”

That certainly… puts another twist on the entire thing.

In a Lonely Place. Nicholas Ray. 1950. ⚄