Palm Springs. Max Barbakow. 2020. ⚁

[twenty minutes pass]

OK, this Netflix movie is the buzziest one around: Even people who seem like OK people have raved and raved about this movie.

STOP READING NOW FOR SPOILERS!

But as I’m sure that anybody’s aware that’s semi-conscious, this is a Groundhog Dag riff, only set in Palm Springs on the day of a wedding.

If I were to imagine… “Groundhog Day! In Palm Springs! With Andy Samberg (the guy from Brooklyn 99)! On the day of a wedding!”…

So far, it would have been precisely what’s happened on screen. It’s just so Netflix: The soft start, the gentle introduction to the concept, the way Samberg doesn’t just tell her what’s up but says “you don’t want to go there” so that they can film her going there…

It’s all so Netflix: You get exactly what you expect to get.

Although the guy with the arrows did surprise me; perhaps it’s going to take off after they’ve done a half hour of bringing the audience on board.

Let’s see!

[one minute passes]

Oh, now he spills the beans. NEVER MIND.

[twenty minutes pass]

OK, it’s better now. And I like that they’ve used the Patrick Cowley hit.

[the end]

This movie is about… fifteen? minutes of fun and then nine hours of sheer tedium. The bathos is only leavened by gauche maudlin scenes.

I’m saying it sucks, and if you liked this, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I’m talking to you, 93% of the 147 reviewers and you, 90% of the people leaving user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

This was excruciatingly maudlin, and not an entertaining rom-com sci-fi melodrama.

SHAME!

The Meetings of Anna. Chantal Akerman. 1978. ⚃

This is the final movie from the Chantal Akerman in the 70s from Criterion’s Eclipse imprint. It makes me want to watch everything from that imprint: It’s movies that (I’m interpreting here) that makes no commercial sense whatsoever to release, so they can’t using the normal Criterion methodology of restoring and adding extras. So we just get a box with a few discs with however many movies fit, on a certain theme or a director.

But the video/audio quality on this set has been great, even if it could have used some touch-ups here and there. I’m not complaining. It’s a great set of films.

OK, let’s watch this one; it’s the longest one (I think?) in the set.

[half an hour passes]

This is fab.

This is Akerman’s first real movie after her career-making classic Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (36th on the critics’ poll of 2012) movie, and it’s not totally unlike that movie. Except that it’s a lot shorter, and it’s about a movie director staying in a hotel instead of a housewife housewifing (and killing).

Which makes me wonder whether this is autobiographical to some extent: I.e., what happened to Akerman after Jeanne Dielman, 23 etc… For instance, the hotel guy calls the protagonist a “directress” (although that doesn’t bring out the terroristress in her).

But I’m totally fascinated! I’m writing this while pausing to go make another cocktail. The cinematography is so precise! Every shot is a delight.

[half an hour passes]

Well, OK, this isn’t Jeanne etc. It’s got so many beautiful scenes… but there’s been two monologues by two different guys that have been so boring that watching paint dry would have been 4x more fun.

Perhaps Akerman is making a point here? When guys are talking, everything gets really, really boring?

It could be.

If so: Well done!

[the end]

I really liked this… except the bits where the men were talking. Those bits were hard to not zone out to. So it’s not a perfect movie… on the other hand, most of the film was riveting. Hm. OK, I’ll ⚃ it.

Fantastic Four. Josh Trank. 2015. ⚂

It feels like years since I’ve seen a super-hero movie. And… perhaps it has been? It might just be the corona.

But, right, this is the infamous Josh Trank Fantastic Four movie? I’ve read about how fucked up this is supposed to be…

Let’s see!

[seven minutes pass]

It’s typical of a movie like this to recontextualise “it’s clobbering time” like this:

Instead of being something Ben came up with himself, or something his friends were saying, it’s instead something his physically abusive older brother would say.

It’s so deep!

And so not Jack Kirby.

[like half an hour passes]

I don’t get why everybody hates this movie!

An imdb rating of 4.3 is basically THIS IS UNWATCHABLE. But it’s been fine… so far. The guy playing Ben is fine, and while they’ve youngified everybody considerably from the comic book, they’re all OK. The changes make sense: With the Storm siblings as brainiacs, it makes more sense for them to be involved with this venture than the Kirby/Lee origin story.

As usual, I’m annoyed with them doing the origin story instead of just doing a super-hero thing (when I’m watching a super-hero movie, I want to see super-heroes!!!!1!), but this is a better origin movie than most.

The rest must be horrible tedium to warrant that level of hostility.

[like another half hour? I’m slightly drunk]

I find this fascinating:

I’m still not getting why this is such a loathed super-hero movie… sure, it’s got a plot that jettisons everything from the Kirby comics except the actual super-powers (which is a somewhat strange move; the particulars of those comic books were why it was a huge commercial success back in the 60s, not the super-powers themselves), but surely very few of the reviewers knows about that, so… why this visceral loathing of this movie?

I’m not saying that it’s a good movie… the pacing is pretty slow and it’s basically a movie about evil gummint military or something… but it’s more entertaining than at least a dozen other Marvel-related super-hero movies.

Perhaps it’s all down to the revelation that The Thing has neither a dick not a butthole. That’d alienate most of the reviewers, I think!

[the end]

I rather liked that. It makes more sense than most super-hero movies, and it does that by jettisoning all the comic-book super-hero plot points.

Good show!