MOVIE DIARY 2023: BACK TO MOVIE DIARY 2023 pt. 3
Yes! We’re back with the final part of BACK TO MOVIE DIARY 2023. To get us all caught up on all of my first watches, I’m throwing in a big ol’ lightning round with the rest of what I’d been watching in July while I was on hiatus and some non-2023 movies of August. But before we get to all that, let’s welcome back Aubrey Bellamy to the guest writer spot! Aubrey was a frequent guest on the original MOVIE DIARY 2018, so I’m glad we’ve finally got her back on MOVIE DIARY 2023!
Oppenheimer (2023) - dir. Christopher Nolan
SPECIAL GUEST WRITER: AUBREY BELLAMY
I hadn’t planned on seeing Oppenheimer (2023, dir. Christopher Nolan) in the theater, mostly because it is so long with a runtime of exactly three hours. It’s a lot to ask of a person, various behavioral discourses about seeing movies in the theater aside. All day last Wednesday before my 7:45pm screening I thought about how late it was going to be when I got out of the movie. That, and about my haircut, scheduled for 4:00pm. Sometimes, it is a charmed life.
Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer – “Oppy'' from here forward – a visionary quantum physicist whose groundbreaking work came to be shadowed by profound ethical quandaries. We meet him first at Cambridge where he writes to a friend “I am having a pretty bad time.” He can’t get a handle on the math and he is shit in the lab. His tutor takes note and suggests Oppy would be more successful working in theoretical physics rather than experimental. This exchange sparked the first (and last) instance in which I was jealous. It is a generalized jealousy, actually, of anyone who exhibits traits atypical to the norm and is then coaxed, ushered even, into realizing their potential.
My lived reality can be found somewhere at the intersection of enthusiasm and paralysis. A mind teeming with creativity held captive by its own inertia. Bright, transformative ideas (I can say this because I have no followthrough) light up my thoughts for hours. Days! But almost as if cued: a fog of procrastination and self-doubt. This cycle of fervent inspiration followed by stagnation is an all-too-familiar rhythm that keeps the door wide open for self-reflection and exploration into what underlying forces could shape such a dichotomy. How’s a bitch supposed to navigate a world where the mind’s vast landscapes of possibility include such wide valleys of lethargy and Candy Crush?
It wasn’t known to me before seeing Oppenheimer that Oppy was a playboy. I feel this aspect of him was the greatest hurdle for Christopher Nolan to capture as he is one of the most sexless directors of our time, and I do mean that as an endearment. Oppy’s passionate (I’m sure) on/off relationship with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) was played too cleanly. The inherent messiness of feelings is something I believe to be out of reach for Nolan artistically, while the relationship with Oppy’s eventual wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) is right in Nolan’s wheelhouse. Their initial meetings hint at a union of equals, two brilliant minds converging in shared understanding, and then sharply diverging in the face of strain, infidelity, and the weight of collective external pressure. So, no sex.
Oppy doesn’t ever really end up having a better time anywhere because as I could have told him, thinking is the problem. Yes, his unparalleled intellect positioned him at the forefront of the scientific revolution, forever altering the global political landscape. (Yay!) It is that same intellect, however, that imbued him with understanding the ethical minefield he had entered. (Booo.) His genius is a double-edged sword that empowered him to both conceive and realize the truly unimaginable (really hard to do) while also making it impossible to overlook potential consequences. Once Oppy served his duty of inventing the atomic bomb, the same government that elevated him to the zenith of scientific glory shunned him by revoking his security clearance and never reinstating it. Sucks. Maybe it’s fine I never had a mentor.
———
Aubrey lives in Los Angeles. She’s got nothing going on.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) - dir. André Øvredal
The trailer made it look pretty dumb and bad in a fun way, but there was a part of me that was sort of hoping it’d be actually good (I always hope that it’s actually good) since the premise is so fun. It’s Dracula! On a boat! Based on that one bit from Bram Stoker’s classic novel, Dracula! To me, that’s a high upside proposition. At worst, you’re getting a silly little Dracula movie, and at best you’re getting ALIEN (1979) meets Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). Unfortunately, what you end up with is this oddly paced mess that can’t seem to commit to what it wants to do. What’s ultimately so frustrating about it is that you can see the seeds of a lean and mean thriller that could have been really scary and fun. Honestly, cutting down the runtime to like 80 minutes would have done so much to keep this entertaining. But because this movie comes in just shy of two hours, we spend a lot of time standing around and hitting the same beats over and over again. The crew is doing sailor shit. The cute kid is being cute. Night falls. Some weird Dracula shit happens. Everyone gets scared and paranoid and pissed off. That keeps repeating and escalating, but it’s way too slow of a build, and it just feels repetitive.
Instead of leaning fully into scares and schlocky horror, Demeter tries to split the difference between schlock and atmospheric dread, and it ends up doing neither very well. The atmospheric dread approach is a non starter because we already know that we’re dealing with Dracula, we already know this crew is doomed, so we may as well have some fun watching Dracula pick these guys off while they piss their pants. The schlock route has much more potential, but the Dracula kills should have come quicker and should have been a lot more exciting— there’s just too much time in between the minimal action and scares, and there’s not really a whole lot to latch onto about the crew. The crew is mostly a collection of international stereotypes. The captain is a salty old sea dog, gruff and grousing, but he cares about his men, of course! The Russian guy is a criminal and a racist, the Romani guy is a criminal and superstitious, the Irish guy is a charming drunk party guy, the Filipino guy works in the kitchen (sorry, the “galley”) and is annoyingly religious, the cute kid is cute but you know he’s going to die for shock value (sidenote: Unfortunately one of my opinions about mid to big budget movies is that you gotta hand it to them when they kill the kid. I think it’s always shocking even if you see it coming, and not a lot of movies have the guts to do it.). Oh, also David Dastmalchian is again being kind of a weird untrustworthy guy, which is kind of par for the course, but it’s also something that I think he excels at. I like the guy, and it was fun seeing him in a bigger role. Good for him!
Our main dude, Clemens (Corey Hawkins), is the only one that seems to have a fully fleshed out back story, but it’s revealed in such an awkward way. One night when it finally sets in with the crew how fucked they are, he just sort of blurts out, apropos of nothing, that he’s here because continuing to experience racism after doing all this work to become one of the first Black doctors to graduate from Cambridge really fucked him up and now he’s trying to make sense of a senseless world. It’s fine, it’s cool, I get it, I too enjoyed The Knick, but the way it’s just kind of suddenly brought up in the movie makes it feel forced or shoehorned in. It’s especially conspicuous when juxtaposed with the rest of our crew of international nautical stereotypes.
It’s not all bad though, there’s some good in there, but most of it is Dracula-related. All the stuff that leads up to the discovery that they’re trapped on the boat with Dracula is sort of campy and fun. The moment where Dracula spreads his wings and flies and everyone’s like WHAT THE FUCK HE CAN FLY?? is good. The creature design on the weakened, more primal form of Dracula is pretty fun. It’s a clear reference to Nosferatu, but there are some more bat-like features, and there’s the sort of intrinsic humor of Dracula running around killing people on this ship while he’s fully nude for almost the entire movie. Honestly if they had let Dracula hang dong in this, it would’ve bumped it up by at least a full letter grade. BOOM. Problem solved.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) - dir. Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears
What a delight! I loved the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid, so I realize I’m more of a mark for this (especially since a lot of the new characters in this movie are based on characters from the old cartoon who I mostly remember in action figure form), but sometimes it’s just fun to give yourself over to the guilty pleasures of nostalgia. I’m not above this, and neither are you, you liar. When I’d first seen previews of this movie, I was kind of rolling my eyes at the Into The Spider-verse-ification of big budget animation, but watching the whole movie, I realize that Mutant Mayhem has a lot more going for it. The animation style definitely seems inspired by Spider-verse’s, but I think it takes it in another direction, one that is murky and grimy, which lends this interesting texture to the whole movie. The character designs are all so distinct and cool, and the colors kind of gesture at vintage gritty New York graffiti, which is obviously very in line with the Ninja Turtle’s 80s origins.
One thing I really loved about this movie is that they really emphasized the “Teenage” part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I feel like in most Ninja Turtles media that I’ve seen, the turtles are treated more as capable adults who are sort of immature, but in Mutant Mayhem, they really lean into the Turtles being dumbass 15 year olds from New York. Also a neat wrinkle to revise their origin story a bit by taking out the always weird bit about Splinter learning ninjitsu by studying the movements of a master martial artist in Japan. That convoluted bit of their origin is replaced with something funnier and more in line with our modern times — Splinter learned martial arts by watching old martial arts videos that had turned up in the sewer, and he taught the Turtles how to fight to defend themselves from the intolerant human world. That the Turtles continue their martial arts education by watching YouTube videos just feels so perfect and so current. I thought it was a small and clever tweak that really brought a sort of freshness to the story.
There are a lot of jokes coming at a very fast clip, but it still manages to feel cohesive. Some of the sort of muttered throw away jokes are just so funny, I can forgive it for feeling sort of annoyingly improv-y at times. There is a funny little recurring bit about how Michelangelo loves improv comedy that has a nice pay off in the final fight. The movie has plenty of nice little character-specific bits that show off a lot of personality, moreso than many of the other Ninja Turtles movies and cartoons I’ve seen. I think in a lot of the older TMNT media, the Turtles all have their little characteristics (Leonardo is the goody two shoes leader, Raphael is an angry loner, Michelangelo is the party dude, Donatello is a nerd), but there was never that much done to round out their personalities. Mutant Mayhem gives each character a very well-rounded and clear personality. We still see those expected characteristics of theirs, but their lives and motivations all seem more real and lived in here. It does so much to have the turtles each want something, and to have them all collectively want acceptance from the human world. Those early parts of the movie — where they wistfully creep around the human world, sneaking into outdoor movies in the park screenings, watching kids their age have fun — do so much to give the Turtles some pathos and to set up their motivation. It also plays right into the angle of them just being regular teens who want to be able to fit in and do what regular teens do.
The voice talent is really great across the board. Loved Ayo Edebiri bringing her Ayo Edebiri energy to April O’Neil. She really brought a lot of personality and developed a unique, new take on that character. Donatello was my favorite when I was a kid, and this version of Donatello was a lot of fun. I got a kick out of how Donatello’s nerdiness in this one extends beyond being into science and gadgets and gets into being really into videogames and anime. All of the little tweaks and additions to these familiar characters just worked for me, plus it was fun whenever you get to watch the rest of the Turtles gang up and clown on Leonardo for being corny. Also, Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan brings a new angle to Splinter, playing him as an overprotective father (I loved his 80s Hall and Oates-esque look in the flashbacks) to these rowdy teens, desperately doing what he can to stave off their inevitable teenage rebellion. Also extremely fun to have Splinter get into a very mid 90s era Jackie Chan-style fight. There’s so much attention to detail in the fight choreography, and the fight between Splinter and those henchmen felt like something right out of First Strike or Mr. Nice Guy. I also loved that this is in the genre of movies of everyday New Yorkers banding together to save their heroes by throwing garbage and shouting at the bad guy at a pivotal moment (Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie immediately comes to mind, but I’m certain there are others). I don’t know! I’m just sort of listing parts that I got a kick out of at this point, so I don’t really have much else to say. I just had a lot of fun with this one!
LIGHTNING ROUND LET’S GO GIRLS
Ok here’s the rest of the first watch movies I’d seen in July while I was away. Once we get through these, we’re all caught up and I’m going to have to see more movies for the first time.
New York New York (1977) - dir. Martin Scorsese
I thought it was fine. Very intense De Niro performance, then he takes a backseat for the last half hour of the movie while Liza just lets loose. The best part for me was all the fantastic sets. The nightclub interiors were so fun, and I also loved the soundstage-y outdoors sets.
Between The Lines (1977) - dir. Joan Micklin Silver
Really fun movie about kind of a bleak situation, the death rattle of independent journalism in the world of alt weeklies. Loved the whole atmosphere of the movie, the messy drama, the wacky Jeff Goldblum performance, the tongue in cheek sense of humor about the pretentiousness of the literary scene.
Midnight Cowboy (1969) - dir. John Schlesinger
I thought this was great. A genuinely good Jon Voight performance too! He’s so tragic and dumb and earnest. Dustin Hoffman looks the most sick and unwell anyone’s ever looked in a movie here. Loved the style of the dreams and fantasies too — Ratso’s Florida fantasy is a little comedy masterpiece tucked away in this big downer.
The Seventh Seal (1953) - dir. Ingmar Bergman
I came into this only knowing about the Knight playing chess with Death, and that ends up being kind of the smallest part of the movie! It’s really less a premise and more a table setting for the actual movie. I really enjoyed this examination of life and death during the time of the Black Plague. The images of the procession of flagellants were so striking and horrible, it really drives home how bleak this world was. I loved Squire Jons, who sort of seemed like he must have been the inspiration for Ray Stevenson’s Titus Pullo character in Rome. Squire Jons gets all the good man of action type scenes, but Max Von Sydow’s aging knight carries us through all of it. His cavalier approach to confronting Death and his ultimate acceptance of Death’s inevitability gives a sense of melancholy, but there’s also a sense of personal satisfaction in that acceptance that is ultimately hopeful. Feels like an extremely Swedish attitude, and it’s one that Von Sydow pulls off as admirable, even desirable.
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) - dir. Pedro Almodóvar
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen something with this kind of ominous, threatening tone that has such a deeply goofy sense of humor. Sort of had a William Moulton Marston-type of freak logic in it, how bondage/captivity leads to truth and freedom for women. Antonio Banderas sets the tone perfectly and Victoria Abril does a great job at essentially being his straight man. Totally absurd and funny ending that actually works and keeps with the tone.
The Heartbreak Kid (1972) - dir. Elaine May
Extremely funny and sort of mean-spirited, which is just how I like ‘em! Jeannie Berlin brings so much humor to her role and Charles Gordon is maybe one of the funniest actors ever in this. I feel like it’s kind of rare to have an actor so ready to play a role so weasily as this. A perfect ending too, watching Grodin as his enthusiasm inevitably and visibly drains from his face at his own wedding and you see him feel the walls closing around him yet again.
Smithereens (1982) - dir. Susan Seidelman
It’s a tough thing to do, following a protagonist that’s so unlikable, but still managing to keep her a little sympathetic. I honestly don’t know if we’re meant to root for or even like Wren, but she’s definitely entertaining. I didn’t really expect this to end up being such a bummer, but I did enjoy it, and I don’t think it would have been as good if anything worked out for Wren. Also, you gotta love a Richard Hell appearance! And if there’s one thing you can safely bet on with a Susan Seidelman movie, it’s a Richard Hell appearance.
Sidenote: The Heartbreak Kid and Smithereens are kind of spiritually in line with Passages, now that I’m thinking about it. The Heartbreak Kid sort of shares that funny quality of watching a guy both launching himself into a mess and also dragging people into his mess, where you’re just like watching him and wondering what the fuck is even going through his head. Smithereens sort of lines up with the meaner and more serious side of Passages. Like Passages, Smithereens also follows around a chaotic protagonist ruining her relationships and burning every bridge she has, and both end with the protagonist friendless and flailing.
The Souvenir Part II (2021) - dir. Joanna Hogg
I was worried I’d have trouble with this because I didn’t really remember what went down in Part I, but it was fine. My memory was jogged, and Part II is kind of also about remembering things imperfectly, and the tension inherent in trying to turn your real life into art, so actually not really remembering Part I so well was kind of on theme (I’m obviously a very savvy movie watcher). Anyway, I loved it. Sometimes movies about making art can feel tiresome, but Joanna Hogg really made this feel so authentic and personal. It’s a real journey! Sorry, as I typed that last bit I could almost hear Patrick’s (Richard Ayoade) voice in that one scene where Julie’s praising his movie and he calls her opinion “Marvelously generic.” Apologies to Patrick, but I got a lightning round to get through here. We can talk about it more in the Discord if you want, Patrick.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) - dir. Tay Garnett
Really went on a ride with this one! A lot of fun. John Garfield and Lana Turner are great together, just two magnetic movie stars. It sort of just keeps going, keeps escalating, and I had no idea how any of it was going to end, but I was fully onboard.
A Room With A View (1986) - dir. James Ivory
I’m always down to check out a Merchant-Ivory, and this one was top tier. Great performances from everyone but Daniel Day Lewis just sort of steals the show by being such a little bitch. The break up scene with Lucy and Cecil was a standout — so heartfelt and surprisingly tender, showing Cecil as a person and not just a joke or someone to resent.
La Piscine (1969) - dir. Jacques Delay
*Beautiful gowns voice* Such beautiful scenery. Loved that pool and the vacation home, a perfect setting for this great entry in the wonderful genre of psychosexual AirBnB trips. It’s very very French. Kind of sexy, mysterious, and emotionally suspenseful, but it loses steam when it stops being about fucked up adult relationships/infidelities and becomes more about a tired and predictable murder investigation. Personally as sexy as it was, my favorite part was watching Alain Delon being playfully annoying and then actually annoying to his wife Romy Schneider. I love seeing myself represented on screen.
Cruising (1980) - dir. William Friedkin
Really enjoyed this extremely disquieting movie. Al Pacino is great at playing someone just fully coming unglued. The “Precinct Night” at the club was one of the wildest scenes, the imagery felt almost surreal if it weren’t for having such grit and real life griminess. Such a brutal, unsettling ending too. It really made me feel pretty bad, but in a way that I can’t stop thinking about.
Sorcerer (1977) - dir. William Friedkin
The movie goes on for about an hour before it lets you in on what it’s about; it’s really incredible, and it kind of pushes the boundaries of the whole “getting the team together” convention in action movies. Once the crew gets going, it’s such an intense, nerve-wracking experience. A lot of very cool, difficult looking shots, and I still have no idea how Friedkin pulled any of it off. The scene where Roy Scheider is driving through that canyon while he’s losing his mind stands out as a haunting and terrifying scene in a movie that’s just filled with them.
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) - dir. William Friedkin
Totally high octane movie with one of the most exciting and harrowing car chase scenes I’ve ever seen. The car chase absolutely lives up to its reputation. William Petersen is such a fucking psycho in this movie, and Willem Dafoe is the perfect villain here. It’s also so beautifully shot. I’ve got such a fondness for anything that features that smoggy old 80s/early 90s Los Angeles, and this movie really makes it look so breathtakingly cool. I also really loved those shots of Willem Dafoe making his counterfeit money, and that incredible shot of him lighting his painting on fire in the beginning. He’s just so goddamn compelling and watchable in this, I loved it, I couldn’t look away.
One Way Passage (1932) - dir. Tay Garnett
A cute one! Very fun. I’ve only ever seen William Powell in The Thin Man (1934), but I love his whole deal. He’s such a charming gentleman criminal, and he almost makes being alive in the 1930s and on a transpacific cruise ship seem appealing. Kay Francis was really great too, and I thought the romance between her Joan and Powell’s Dan was really sweet. My favorite part of this movie was definitely this group of grifters on the boat sticking up for each other and getting one over on the cop. Grifting for love and for freedom, the most fun you could possibly have in the 1930s!
Deep Cover (1992) - dir. Bill Duke
I had no idea that Bill Duke directed movies, I love Bill Duke! Absolutely fucking incredible. The best movie I’d seen since Barry Lyndon (1975). Typical undercover cop movie type stuff, but it’s so perfectly executed, and it’s just endlessly cool. Laurence “Larry” Fishburne broods through the whole movie with so much charisma, and he just cuts such an imposing figure. Larry looks maybe the best he’s ever looked, and he’s just got a parade of incredible outfit after incredible outfit. A style icon! Jeff Goldblum is also pulling off one of the more interesting Jeff Goldblum performances I’ve seen. He’s an actor who sort of has those very distinct tics that he brings to all of his performances, but this is maybe the first time where I’d seen those tics applied to a criminal, and it’s kind of cool to see that Jeff Goldblum stammering in the context of this character who’s on a dark path, thirsty for power. What usually tiptoes on the line between charming and sleazy leans further into the sleazy, and it really works.
The third part of the blog, where I plug the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord
Wow if you’d read this far and made it through that gauntlet of a lightning round, a big thanks to you! Hop onto the Discord and brag about your endurance and your deeply ingrained sense of perseverance!
I’ve been listening to this new Agriculture album a lot lately. I love the enormity of it, and I love the idea of a black metal album that’s about reveling in the awesome power of nature. If you’re into black metal like I am, I think you’ll like it too!
I dropped a couple of Fran links last week, but you should always read FRAN MAGAZINE, particularly this one where Fran is talking about Passages (2023)!
And don’t forget to subscribe to FRAN MAGAZINE so you don’t miss any of the good stuff! Subscriptions are half off right now, so get in there!
I think I’ve already talked about my love for Allison Picurro’s BOY MOVIES on here, but I’m gonna do it again because the latest one is a great piece on the real King of England, Jason Statham.