MOVIE DIARY 2023: IT'S MY OWN ARROGANCE TO THINK I COULD SURVIVE ON WHAT HE COULD GIVE.

Hello! Yes we are back! MOVIE DIARY 2023 IS BACK! Posts have been infrequent this past couple of months, and I sort of inadvertently took off almost all of November, but that’s over! It’s December, I’m back in the saddle, and we’re going to finish off this year strong. This week I’ve got writer and podcaster Bobby Finger on the blog! I’m super excited to have him on here, I always love hearing Bobby talk about movies, and now you will too, I’m sure of it.

Wrath of Man (2021) - dir. Guy Ritchie
SPECIAL GUEST WRITER: BOBBY FINGER

I remember watching Wrath of Man for the first time on a plane in late 2021. I remember thinking, “This movie rocks,” as I watched it. I remember texting my husband something like, “We should watch this together when I get home.” Despite all those clear memories I did not watch Wrath of Man a second time until last week, roughly two years later, and now I’m kicking myself over a different kind of memory: a lost one. I should remember watching Wrath of Man in late 2022, because this is an annual rewatch kind of action thriller, in my personal pantheon of movies like The Fugitive and Inside Man and The Game and Jackie Brown and The Pelican Brief. 

For reasons I will try to articulate here, I tend to watch those specific thriller movies at least once a year (though in the case of The Pelican Brief… I need a biannual booster). As a child of the VHS era whose two parents refused to pay for cable until I was in my teens, I find considerable personal value in the idea of rewatchability. Growing up I rewatched movies out of a mixture of desperation (they were the only options in the drawer of tapes) and admiration (they were the ones I chose to record off the TV, as having control over a handful of blank VHS tapes was an early way of asserting my taste). I rewatched The Fugitive because my parents recorded an airing of it off network TV; I found it so slick and so adult. I rewatched The Pelican Brief because a neighbor (Amanda) had me over one summer afternoon to watch movies. It was the first and only time I went over to Amanda’s house, and when she presented me with a stack of options, she chose The Pelican Brief after I suggested something else. I do not remember much about Amanda (she moved away not long after), but I do remember thinking The Pelican Brief was one of the most exciting movies I’d ever seen. I taped a copy of it off TV the next time it was on TNT or USA. As I grew up, certain movies continued to trigger a sort of rewatchability itch in my head via a sort of high-frequency pitch only I’m able to hear. (Why do I watch The Game once a year but not any other Fincher, you ask? I don’t fuckin’ know! They speak to me when they speak to me.) They’re not the best movies in the world but they’re an important genre to me, someone who will almost certainly find more joy in rewatching a movie I’ve seen a dozen times than in starting a new television series on an uneventful weeknight. Most of the rewatchables in my little library are gentle, talky dramas and silly, Tight 90 comedies, but one of them is something truly different… a late-career Ritchie.  

I haven’t seen all of Guy Ritchie’s movies. In fact, I haven’t even seen most of them. This is because I tend to not like Guy Ritchie movies. I gave a chance to Wrath of Man because A.) airplane options are limited, B.) it was recommended to me by people who also don’t tend to like Guy Ritchie movies, and C.) because I think Jason Statham and his ironic hyper-masculinity (the acerbic, hilariously stoic, sexy-but-also-asexual tough guy routine no one else can fully master despite Dwayne Johnson and John Cena and Dave Bautista’s attempts at the throne) is by far my favorite thing to come out of Guy Ritchie’s career. The film has an instantly intriguing, almost irresistible structure, beginning with the brutal robbery of an armored truck. Guards are attacked, money is stolen, police are called, and to the clear surprise of the criminals Ritchie keeps in the frame, people are shot. Revealing audio is obscured by convenient static, and a bullet-ridden body is obscured by a conveniently placed door–it’s clear we’re being tricked, Ritchie isn’t hiding the fact that he’s hiding things–and the score’s ominous monotone, a melody as gruff and simple as most of Statham’s characters, grumbles louder and louder until, finally, the credits begin. Something happened during this robbery, and it caused the wrath of a man.

Ritchie’s screenplay (based on a French thriller called Cash Truck that I will probably never watch), is hilariously, needlessly nonlinear, but he’s not playing with the timeline because the resulting late-stage reveals are particularly good or surprising. (Of course he’s getting revenge because X thing happened! Of course Y is the mole! Of course Z is the ultimate baddie!) He’s doing it because it makes the movie cool. And I’m cool with that! Structure as aesthetic! Why not. Statham, who goes by “H.” makes enemies at his new job in the armored security business, where he is instantly competent and by no means combative, for no reason beyond the workplace tension it creatives provides him the chance to say lines like, “Just worry about putting your asshole back in your asshole.” Andy Garcia shows up as a character I can only describe as Big Boss simply because the movie required Statham to report to an older version of himself. Ritchie doesn’t even gesture at an absurdist criminal lore, instead he chooses not to burden his characters or his audience with the threat of a sequel, or even an explanation beyond, again, the title.

It’s John Wick without the baggage, a mid-budget action thriller totally free from the threat of universe extension directed by and starring a pair of men who have other shit to do. It’s a paycheck movie with panache, a re-pairing of Statham and Ritchie that’s as much about nostalgia for their first films as it is about the two of them maintaining their lifestyles. It’s Wrath of Man, and I can’t wait to watch it again next fall. 

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Bobby Finger is a writer and co-host of the podcast Who? Weekly.

Maestro (2023) - dir. Bradley Cooper
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

What a movie! Bradley Cooper’s got the goods! Like many of you (I would have to assume), I was very closely following Fran Magazine’s frequent “Maestro Moment” posts in the season leading up to Maestro’s release, so I was getting pretty excited to finally see this. Unlike many of you (I would have to assume), I don’t know that I have much of a connection with Leonard Bernstein, so a lot of the subject matter in Maestro was pretty new to me, but I was absolutely swept up in this movie and the life of this emotionally exhausting genius.

As with A Star Is Born (2018), Cooper has such a sharp eye for melodrama and a great feel for those emotional swells. Any other movie starting in black and white then later transitioning to color? Lame. Cliche. Trying too hard. Drake saying no meme. But when Maestro starts in black and white and then transitions to color? Brilliant. Purposeful. Bradley Cooper acknowledging Maestro’s place in cinema history. Drake saying yes meme. I think part of it, especially during that black and white section covering Bernstein’s early years as an up and coming composer, is because it’s shot like a classic Hollywood musical, excitement and passion welling up inside the characters, staying up all night intoxicated by each other’s company, breathlessly running to the next scene as the camera struggles to keep up with them—it’s romance, pure romance! How can you not get swept up in Maestro and Felicia’s love story? They’re so in love, they’re inseparable, they’re two ducks in a pond! But then you see the cracks start forming, and you begin to understand that all the things that drew Felicia to Maestro are going to be the same things that eventually drive them apart. It happened to Matt Bomer and it’ll happen to her. There’s this great shot where Felicia is standing just offstage while Maestro conducts, and Felicia is watching him while she’s standing in his gigantic shadow. It’s very literal, very on the nose, but in the context of this great melodrama, it just works! It’s sort of breathtaking, an encapsulation of the perils of being romantically involved with A Great Artist—AND THEN BAM THE MOVIE’S IN COLOR BABYYYYYYYYY!

The performances in Maestro are top-notch and really moving. I typically feel like I can never really connect with whatever Carey Mulligan is doing whenever she’s in a movie, but I think she was perfect in Maestro. There’s so much love and so much heartbreak in her performance, and she brings to light such a complexity to Felicia. There are a few scenes where we get to see Mulligan just sort of let loose and tear it all up with some serious capital-A Acting. The scene in the later half of the movie where she’s talking about getting ready for her date that wasn’t really a date, and where she talks about realizing that she was the one who never really knew herself when she was with Maestro is a real gut punch. Heart wrenching stuff that pushes you to reexamine those earlier scenes where we were all caught up in the romance of it all.

Bradley Cooper also knocks it out of the park with his performance as our titular Maestro, and I think a large part of it is because Cooper is one of the best flirts in movies today. Flirting in movies is a tricky thing to do, and I kind of feel like it might almost be a lost art, but Cooper seems to do it so effortlessly. Cooper recognizes that Maestro’s a charmer, and when you see the way Maestro talks to almost everyone in this movie, you get why everyone loved him so much. He’s got a natural charisma, he loves to chat, and it’s fun and exciting to be around a renowned artist who seems genuinely interested in you. Imagine the First Great American Conductor starts complimenting your look and asks if you want to get some air on the roof… what, are you not going to walk up to the roof with Maestro?… IT’S. MAESTRO. Come on, man. I mean, even beyond just the flirting and romance, you can see that Cooper plays Maestro as a man who not only moves and enchants the people around him, but also as man who is moved and enchanted by life, the people, the music. Every scene we get with Maestro conducting an orchestra we see him swaying and gesticulating, wrangling all the sounds and instruments to produce those beautiful melodies while also giving himself over to the emotion of the moment. It’s beautiful! That scene where he’s sweatily conducting that orchestra in that church! This is a man who’s given himself over to his art because he must! It’s the only place where he doesn’t have to be anything else to anybody else.

Cooper plays Maestro like a man spilling over with an enthusiasm for people and a deep love for his art, but I think what’s interesting about Maestro is that it makes you look at that almost mythical charisma of Maestro over a few decades, and over time you understand that while it’s not exactly an act, the charm is perhaps a mode that Maestro defaults to as a way to cope with a deep internal struggle about his complicated feelings about his sexuality. That Maestro charm that he turns on to protect himself, though it’s still charming to outsiders, seems to have turned into a kind of cage that has kept him from being the truly free artist he so desperately strives to be. There’s this really incredible scene where later in his life Maestro is talking to his daughter because she’s upset about the rumors she’s been hearing about him being gay. When she asks him if the rumors are true, he lies and says that they aren’t true and that people make this stuff up because they’re jealous of him. She takes a second and she tells him that she’s relieved to hear it, and the look that Cooper has on his face at that moment is so powerful. He manages to keep the sort of stern yet reassuring fatherly expression that he’s put on for his daughter, but you can see in his eyes that the light has dimmed and that he’s really hurt by his daughter telling him that she’s “relieved,” and he’s hurt that he felt that in that moment he couldn’t be honest with her.

I think Cooper is a really talented director, and I’m sure he’s glad we’re all taking his serious efforts seriously, but the thing I love about him is that even under all the weight of prosthetics and prestige, Cooper can still be so funny. Obviously the Snoopy joke was a huge laugh for everyone, but in that same scene there’s also a great sort of naturalistic moment where he sort of trips over himself and he exasperatedly mutters “Jesus” in character, which got a big laugh from me. Then the scene quickly switches gears to be a really emotional Acting scene with him and Mulligan going at each other, unleashing all their pent up frustrations. Then after all that tension has built up it ends with an even funnier Snoopy visual gag. That sort of emotional whiplash is tough to pull off, but Cooper does it so effortlessly, and I think it’s because he really understands how to choose a moment. He gets that there are times when funny, odd things will just simply intrude on your serious moment

I’m gonna start wrapping it up because I’m definitely going long on this one, and I don’t really know if I have an endpoint but if you want to talk about it more, we can do that on the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord. I didn’t even get to the part about Felicia’s cancer or that fucking coke party! I guess I’ll just end here and say that the image of an old Maestro dancing to Tears For Fears’ “Shout” in the club, will stay with me forever. A really funny moment that’s also underscored with so much triumphant emotion. It feels amazing to get so swept up in a movie like this!

May December (2023) - dir. Todd Haynes
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Todd Haynes movies to me always feel a little unpredictable. I’ve liked pretty much everything I’ve seen of his, but I’ve also seen enough of his movies to know that if it seems pretty straightforward it means I’m probably going to be on a fucking ride. Not in a like rug-pull, plot twisty kind of way though. His movies always just sort of end up in an unexpected place, and I love seeing how he gets there. May December is no different. It’s loosely based on the big Mary Kay Letourneau news story from a hundred years ago, but Haynes sort of plays with our expectations of what this could actually be, and while the movie’s not necessarily a rebuke, I think he gets in way deeper with these characters than we expected, and it’s surprising to see what we find.

May December is a big acting movie (‘tis the season for exactly that), and the three leads are so impressive. Julianne Moore plays Gracie, the embattled former teacher who’s married her much younger student, in a way that only Julianne Moore could do it. Gracie has this air of both danger and fragility about her that’s really compelling to watch. It feels like any moment she could snap—this woman constantly lives on the verge of a meltdown, and you can’t look away. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actor who’s come to spend time with Gracie to help prepare herself for a role as Gracie in an upcoming movie about the whole affair. Portman is pretty terrific here, playing Elizabeth initially as a sort of mysterious, untrustworthy presence (truly the only thing morre untrustworthy than an actor is an actor “doing research”), and it’s really interesting to see this develop over the course of the movie. They’re both such stars and they’re turning in such compelling performances, but for me Charles Melton ran away with it.

I’ve been a fan of Melton since he showed up as the second, much hotter Reggie on Riverdale. Reggie at his core is classically sort of a dumb himbo jock, and Melton easily pulled that off on looks alone, but he also brought this extra layer of menace to that character which I thought was really fun. He’s doing something completely different in May December and he’s incredible, he’s got the range! I am now stanning for Melton. To me, he is Mother Melton. He plays Joe, the young man who was victimized by Gracie when he was in 7th grade. He’s sort of the axis on which everything in this movie turns, at least emotionally. Melton has this impressive vulnerability about him that is so interesting to watch here. Joe is someone who’s been traumatized so deeply that he has no sense of what’s been done to him. As Elizabeth spends time with him and Gracie to research her role, we get the sense that Joe is only now just starting to really grapple with what’s been done to him. He’s starting to realize how thoroughly that’s messed up his life, and he just doesn’t know how to deal with it. What’s worse is he’s really getting hung up on how the ramifications of this whole affair have not only affected his life but also the life of his kids. I think going into May December I’d thought that the relationship and the tension between Gracie and Elizabeth would be the main focus of the movie, but Haynes plays with this expectation or predisposition, and he hangs the emotional crux of the movie on the real victim in all of this, Joe. The headlines with the Mary Kay Letourneau story all focused on her predatory behavior and the scandal of it all, but we never really got to hear from the victim, Vili Fualauu’s side of things in any serious way. May December however puts Joe right at the center of it, which makes things seriously uncomfortable, particularly the audience who maybe hadn’t really thought too hard about what Vili Fualauu was going through all those years of being with his abuser.

Everything about the way Melton plays Joe makes Joe seem like such a deeply sad character. It’s really heartbreaking seeing Joe unravel. He’s spent a long time trying to convince himself that this extremely fucked life is not actually extremely fucked and that it’s really what he wanted to begin with. I think intellectually you might understand that Joe just wasn’t old enough to make these decisions for himself at the time, but watching this movie, you really get that not only was he not old enough to make this decision, but also that Gracie’s actively been manipulating him to stay with her for years. The scene where he tearfully confronts her and tells her that they really need to talk about the nature of their relationship and she brushes him off by “reminding” him that he was the one who wanted this, that he was the one who was “in charge” felt really fucked up because you’re seeing that this is how she’s been putting him in his place all these years. It’s an amazing scene that is so revealing. She’s putting the blame and the responsibility on him while presenting herself as a fragile woman that he needs to protect. It’s pretty insidious!

Even more heartbreaking is when you come to understand that Joe’s completely missed out on his youth because of all this. He was a kid when this scandal happened, and Gracie was pregnant with their first child while she was in prison, so as soon as she got out Joe had to help raise his new daughter. He must have been like, what, seventeen? eighteen? He was so quickly forced into adulthood and parenthood that he wasn’t able to figure out who he is outside of Gracie. His hobby of raising butterflies seems to be his only refuge, and he’s indulged in a little tepid online flirtation that won’t go anywhere with a woman that he’s never seen and who he only knows from his butterfly Facebook group. He hasn’t even smoked weed! The first time he smokes a joint is when HIS SON offers it to him before he leaves for college. It’s another heartbreaking and poignant scene. Joe smokes and instantly gets too high, laughing hysterically which quickly turns into weeping. He confesses to his son that he’s not sure if smoking weed with his dad is going to be a good memory for him or if he’s just fucking him up. He really doesn’t know! He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a teen, and he never did! That youth was stolen from him! Once his kids go off to college, they’re going to be out there experiencing a life that he was never allowed to have, and I’m sure that he’s happy for his kids, but I’m sure there’s also some envy there, and I’m sure there’s more than a little bit of fear setting in as he realizes he’s going to be spending the rest of his life with the woman who was responsible for stealing a normal life away from him.

Joe has a single moment of youthful rebellion when he sneaks off and hooks up with Elizabeth in her hotel room, but it’s a fleeting moment. It’s upsetting to watch, really. Elizabeth has been coming on to him and when they fuck, he fucks like someone who’s still new to fucking. It’s hot and heavy for literally a minute and then it’s over, but the sad part is after the fucking how he gets into bed and he looks so excited to be there, the same way that teenage boys look when they’ve touched a boob for the first time. Joe’s excitement is met with Elizabeth letting on that she likes him but she’s mostly just doing this for her research for this role. As she sees that Joe is upset to learn this, she condescends to him, “this is just what grown ups do.” Extremely fucked up! Joe’s spent a lifetime being manipulated, and the moment he musters up the conviction to make his own decision, he learns that he’s just been manipulated into doing exactly that again. For what it’s worth, Elizabeth does seem to genuinely have concern for him as she tells him that he’s still young enough that he can just leave and start over (especially now that she’s already gotten what she needs from him for her role).

Elizabeth is our entry point into these people’s lives, but obviously she’s more than just a fly on the wall. She quietly takes an active role in pushing Joe and Gracie while hiding behind the guise of being an impartial observer, here to get to the truth of who these people are beyond the sensational headlines. What we discover through Elizabeth is how the whole affair between Gracie and Joe really messed with the lives of the people around them. Things might have calmed down a bit now, but the deep emotional damage has been done. Elizabeth’s mere presence is enough to upset this delicate and false calm in Gracie and Joe’s lives because just by being there Elizabeth is reopening wounds that have never fully healed. Part of Elizabeth relishes this. It’s exciting for her to get into this person’s life, and while she makes a lot of noise about finding the truth behind the headlines and about making sure that her performance will be more real and honest than the awful TV movie that came out after the scandal broke, she’s completely unconcerned with the real hurt these people have experienced and are still experiencing. Her only concern is for her movie, and when we finally do see a bit of her movie it’s just more sensationalized garbage.

I think it’s interesting to take Elizabeth as a voyeur and as a kind of audience stand in, especially in light of learning that her movie looks like totally insensitive schlock. Is Elizabeth a sort of commentary on how ineffective “telling someone’s story” can be when it’s offered up as a mass media product? There’s a really funny joke that builds through the movie where it’s clear that Elizabeth is a very famous, Julliard-trained actor that everyone recognizes, but as we get snippets of people mentioning the TV show they recognize her from, it’s clear that it’s some sort of long-running medical/procedural CBS-esque drama. The joke culminates in the reveal that the show is called “Norah’s Arc” and that it’s like Grey’s Anatomy but with a veterinarian instead of a doctor. It’s hilarious, but it also makes you question how serious Elizabeth is about all of this. She did take the trip out to meet and spend time with Gracie and Joe, and she is doing a lot of poking and prodding that someone wouldn’t be doing if they weren’t interested or invested, but what does any of that amount to? Elizabeth’s movie is awful, none of what we see in Elizabeth’s performance really captures the nuanced darkness that we learn exists in Gracie. Really the only recognizable thing about it is Elizabeth replicating Gracie’s lisp. Elizabeth feels like a comment on how no matter how deeply actors or writers insist they are attempting to be truthful and respectful about a real life tragedy, horror, disaster, etc., the end product will never fully do justice to the real people involved. Especially if the story is geared toward mass entertainment. In that light, May December is kind of an interesting companion to Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). While Scorsese seems to end his film by acknowledging his own shortcomings and limitations in attempting to tell the story of the Osage people, Scorsese ultimately feels like he had to do what he could as any step towards truth is worthwhile. Haynes, on the other hand, seems to view the pursuit of truth in this type of entertainment as a futile one, one that will always come up short because the people being tasked to tell the truth about the story are themselves not truthful.

The third part of the blog, where I plug the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord

It feels good to be back, so big thanks to Bobby for joining me on here this week, and big thanks to you for continuing to read this blog. I went pretty long on the two movies I talked about today, but MOVIE DIARY 2023 has never really been about being concise, I guess. I’ve skipped over a lot of movies that I saw in October and November, but maybe I’ll get into them with a later post. I’m sure you’re all dying to hear what I thought of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023).

Split Tooth Media had a great interview about independent filmmaking with my pal, filmmaker, and producer Zach Fleming.
Zach is also producing a new short called Lesbian Jesus Is Pregnant With Vibes. They’re currently fundraising, so check out their page and kick some bucks their way if you’re into it!

Former MOVIE DIARY 2023 special guest George Matthews has his Best and Worst of 2023 up right now on his substack High Fantasy. I love George’s writing, and he’s got some really good picks (and some “hot takes” as well) on those lists!

Boy Movies’ Allison Picurro (also a MOVIE DIARY 2023 special guest) has her Boy Movies Gift Guide up now!

I also loved John Waters’ Best Movies of 2023 list. Have I ever told you about my boring story about running into John Waters at a gas station in San Diego?

I’m planning to do a sort of end of year list this year for MOVIE DIARY 2023 and I’m seeking the help of the homies on the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord as well as many of my former special guests from MOVIE DIARY 2023 and MOVIE DIARY 2018. If you’re interested in getting in on this, join up with the Discord to read more about it. Our big list will be coming out sometime in January 2024 because Ferrari (2023) is coming out on Christmas and we’ll all need time to assess how the latest Michael Mann will fit in there, I’m sure.

I think that’s it, so I’ll see you next time!