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!

War of the Worlds. Steven Spielberg. 2005. ⚁

Oops! Tom Cruise! And Spielberg! Perhaps this won’t be my favourite movie ever…

[fifteen minutes pass]

Hey… I’m… pleasantly surprised? I’m watching this because as a nerd, it’s my duty to watch all sci-fi movies, but I thought this was going to be horrible. But it’s not! Com Truise is almost believable as a divorced working class dad, and the movie is pleasantly establishing the family’s character without being super-obvious about it. Sure, the precocious daughter is TV sitcom precocious, but perhaps she’s the one that will kill the aliens or something.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Well, that’s a pretty good invasion scene… but is the movie going to be “what’s going on dad? you’re really scaring me” for two hours? What about, like, saying something to the kids? “It’s war. We’re being invaded?” or whatever?

The constant refusal to speak/whining from the children is such a movie cliché.

Well, that’s odd… audiences usually love Spielberg movies…

[fifteen minutes pass]

These kids are the most annoying characters in a movie ever.

EVER!

They’re being invaded by aliens with turbo lasers killing everybody around them, and:

Spielberg makes it all about daddy issues.

Because that’s the only ways to do character development.

Daddy issues are the only way to do character development.

[at least half an hour passes]

There’s bits of scenes in here that have nerve, but Spielberg’s go-to solution is always to have the humans create drama amongst themselves, instead of, you know, having the murderous aliens involved. After seeing The Great Struggle Against The Mask Terror of 2020, I’m not saying that it’s unrealistic — Spielberg knows his Americans better than most — but it’s tedious as fuck.

[the end]

It’s structurally interesting, I guess? And the way that Crom Tuise doesn’t really do much except… you know… get his family to safety? I guess there’s a sop to Major Things Relevancy by having him notice that the shields were gone, but they were already dying, so it didn’t really matter. But it was a nice blow-up-the-aliens scene.

Look, I understand that War of the Worlds is a tough cookie to do. It’s not much of a story, and instead just a… framework to work within: Aliens land on Earth, they kill a lot of people, and then bacteria kills them. (Or viruses? I forget.) So you can do a lot within that framework: Before they die of sneezing, you can stage a rebellion or whatever… or do as Spielberg does: Have it be a family drama, where the protagonist has to defend his children against the harsh environment.

That Spielberg chooses to make it more about defending against other people (like in that child molester cellar) is a less-than-exciting choice.