I'm still catching up on some movies released last year. The Academy Award nominations were released earlier today. The list confirms my belief that 2014 was a pretty shitty year for the types of films that get nominated for Academy Awards - but an otherwise solid year overall if you explore the places where the old white men of the Academy do not often play.
Interstellar generated a great deal of excitement from movie fans prior to release, only to land with a bit of a thud as it gets celebrated by some for its visual treats but picked apart by many for logical lapses and a problematic third act. I'm not here to defend the third act - it is a stinker. The stinky third act is also one that you can see coming if you are paying attention both because it is a fairly conventional and familiar sci-fi "surprise" and because the film is larded with relentless hinting. The third act, however, only wounds and does not fully kill the experience of what was, for the nearly two hours that preceded it, one of the most entertaining movies I have seen this year.
That Laura Poitras' Edward Snowden documentary CitizenFour feels like it has been gestating for a long time testifies to the hyper-speed at which the news cycle churns. Major media operations long ago lost interest in the story, even though it is barely more than a year old, more revelations have trickled out, and it just happens to be one of the most important stories of the century so far. But, hey, who cares about domestic spying when there is ebola to hyperventilate about?
Revisiting films from childhood carries risk - a lot of it. A film that you loved as a child and now remember fondly as an adult can be ruined when you screen it again and realize just how cheesy or dumb the movie really was all along. On the other hand, sometimes you can watch a movie that you have not seen since childhood and now, as an adult, realize there was a level of depth and symbolism that went completely over your head the first time around. The latter is the case of Fright Night - the 1985 original - a movie that still works quite well on the surface as a fun, comedic horror film but that also explores themes of sexual angst that seem obvious now but did not register with my childhood self.
Not done or gone, just have been taking a bit of a hiatus. I've been catching up on other things, but, to be honest, I'm also a little counter-cyclical with the film release slate these days. I find summer movie releasing a bit depressing. There's a massive amount of screen space taken up with lowest common denominator junk. Even my local "arthouse" theater has Transformers - and other major studio releases - playing. I can't blame them too much as they do need to stay in business and they can't help it if people vote with their dollars for more franchise sequels.
Smaller films that might have some appeal for adults tend to get short shrift releases - limited space and out of theaters in a week or two. But it's also pretty amazing just how few R-rated action/thriller films see release these days, particularly in summer. Even Expendables 3 (for which I have zero expectations given the awful last one) will be PG-13. If you're looking for something action-y that isn't pulling punches (no pun intended) to satisfy the censors and the marketing bosses, you're lucky to find one or two movies out there, and if you've seen them, it might be weeks of waiting for another one.
I haven't stopped seeing movies, of course, and I'll have some reviews up soon. I liked Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves. Saw The Rover, which was a bit of a disappointment perhaps because I loved Animal Kingdom so much. It is still worth seeing, and I am a bit sad that it has been such a bomb at the box office (lacks critical cachet and A24's marketing efforts seem lacking on this one). 22 Jump Street is funny enough to merit a watch, even if little to no effort was put into originality or a coherent story (which the filmmakers might chalk up as part of their satire of sequels, even if that might be a cynical appeal for a pass). I saw a solid documentary, Band of Sisters, which you might be able to catch as it continues its marathon roadshow around the country. Mexican film The Amazing Catfish has a few issues, but it works decently and is worth a watch if you're up for a bittersweet family story. That's about all I can recommend from the films I've seen since my last review, although there are a few well-reviewed films kicking around out there (though several of them it looks like I may have missed my 7 day window for seeing in a theater in between rushing them on to VOD). I'll be seeing the much-hyped Snowpiercer soon.
I'll be back posting soon. In the meantime, have a good weekend and above and below is music for this hiatus. But remember when you're celebrating this "Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes."
