What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It's hard to believe that this was not only from a first time director, but that it was his one and only film, given how deliberately crafted it feels. I'm also surprised at what it managed to get away with given the standards of the 50's, from religious brainwashing and domestic abuse to putting children in very clear danger and forcing them into emotionally intense situations. And it's not all just through implication. It actually outright shows some stuff that I imagine would have been considered disturbing to some audience members from that time.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder)- This was masterful. Here is yet another one of the many, many classics on my backlog that it took me forever to get around to, but such is the case when I'm into so many different things in multiple different mediums at the same time. I've seen many classics that I respect from a technical and/or historical standpoint, and many others still that I do quite like but don't personally fall in love with. However, this is one of those that really does feel timeless to me. It's probably one of the earliest films that I've seen (in terms of release date) that tackles a meta-narrative of sorts with how it openly and unsubtly comments on the Hollywood system beyond just the plot itself taking place in a Hollywood setting. It's also a great example of a film that pretty seamlessly and expertly blends genre, in that it's clearly a drama with a dark romantic focus to it, but also strays more than once into the realm of (I would argue) psychological horror what with Norma's manipulative behavior in guilting Joe into staying with her, with an increasing focus on her dependency both destroying his life and mental state as well as his submissiveness to her feeding her ego-induced delusions of grandeur to a pretty toxic effect for both of them. The now deservedly iconic final scene is all the more haunting in context of the entire movie leading up to it (and yes, this is one of those that I unfortunately had spoiled for me long ago through the osmosis of countless pop-culture references).

Overall, these are the other movies that I've seen this year that I really liked in one way or another and that lived up to their famous pedigree (for the classics) or hype (for the more modern stuff) or that I just really liked in general because it suits my personal taste:

Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton)
Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (John Huston)
The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
The Day of the Jackal 1973 (Fred Zinnemann)
In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison)
The Sting (George Roy Hill)
Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack)
Thief (Michael Mann)
Manhunter (Michael Mann)
Sorcerer (William Friedkin)
Kramer Vs. Kramer (Robert Benton)
Network (Sidney Lumet)
The Verdict (Sidney Lumet)
The Changeling (Peter Medak)
The Blob 1988 (Chuck Russell)
The Monster Squad (Fred Dekker)
Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone)
Good Morning, Vietnam (Barry Levinson)
Presumed Innocent (Alan J. Pakula)
Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
Audition (Takashi Miike)
I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-woon)
The Wailing (Na Hong-jin)
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)
One Cut of the Dead (Shin'ichir? Ueda)
The Suicide Squad (James Gunn)

Mind you, again, these are just from the ones that I've seen this year that I had never watched before, and at that only the ones that I really loved. I'm particularly surprised that it took me as long as it did to get around to Twelve Monkeys and both Michael Mann films that I listed since I love Gilliam's Brazil so much, and I've been a huge fan of Michael Mann's 90's and early 2000's output (Collateral is still probably one of my favorite movies of all time). I have been trying to watch more movies in general on my days off, though most of that has been older stuff. To be quite honest I have barely watched that many movies that have actually released this year.

Also, I may very well add to this list, not just movies that I may end up seeing later on from this point, but others that I'm sure I have forgotten about in trying to list everything that I watched this year that I really liked. It's still easy to forget at least a few.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched The Green Knight. It's a really slow, but beautiful movie. Every frame of it's like a museum painting.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Watched Candyman last night. I'm a bit conflicted on this one upon initial viewing and kind of want to see it again to clarify my thoughts on it. The original film is one of my favorite horror movies of the 90's, and I feel that this movie does a great job of respecting the message, themes, and tone of that movie. However, the story beats felt all over the place on my first viewing, one scene in particular feels like it could be cut from the film entirely without losing any story or theming, and some of the CG is distractingly bad. That said, the cinematography and general camera work is excellent, and the score is pretty great as well. This movie is a mishmash of things I really like and a lot of individual issues that add up. I still want to watch it again, though, as I'm not quite sure I entirely got every aspect of what the movie was trying to say on my initial viewing, aside from the more obvious subtext.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Player (Robert Altman; 1992). A really good and different take on a thriller. I'm always a bit iffy when it comes to anti-Hollywood films, not because I don't love seeing greedy, corrupt, soulless executives being called out for what they are (I very much do enjoy that), but because more often than not these sorts of stories can come off as overly preachy, pretentious, and/or cheaply vindictive if handled by poor talent. When done well, though, they can be a sharp critique on the nature of the business and still a great film in their own regard. Much like Sunset Boulevard (which this film clearly takes inspiration from, among other classics, and openly acknowledges it), this is definitely the latter case and I really love the unexpected ways in which the story unfolded. I definitely need to check out more of Altman's filmography in the future.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I saw Alan Moore's The Show, and it's an intriguing curiosity piece. Full of subversions of detective tropes, nods to the British Dennis the Menace, and even a superhero lurking around despite Moore's insistence he's done with the genre. Plenty of times where it's Moore doing a pale imitation of Lynch, and I don't think the themes of the movie tie up in any meaningful way, but it's nonetheless cool we're getting works like this from him.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. You can tell that Christopher Nolan took a lot of influence from this movie for the bank heist scene in The Dark Knight. It's interesting for an earlier Kubrick film. On the one hand it feels a lot more standard in execution than much of his later work (not to imply standard as a bad thing, to be clear), but it's also easy to forget that a lot of aspects of this movie were completely against the norm for it's time, such as the non-linear storytelling.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Apartment. Another excellent Billy Wilder film. Shame it took me so long to get around to it, but to be fair romance isn't really my genre. That said, when a story is well done, I find that genre rarely matters, and this is definitely a case of that.

[Avaitor]

Yeah, I wasn't really up for romantic comedies when I got to The Apartment, but there's so much more to it that I was able to get hooked into immediately.

It's also a really dark movie for how big of a hit it was.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So, No Time to Die...

Spoiler

I wasn't expecting a thematic sequel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service but with the roles reversed, and I'm very pleasantly surprised it went that route.

It's so bittersweet watching this. Unlike every other last Bond film like Diamonds Are Forever, View to a Kill, License to Kill, Die Another Day, this movie absolutely knows this is a finale and milks that for all it's worth. And for Daniel Craig, who thanks to film delays across his time as Bond, is the longest-serving 007 in film history. A 10-year-old who watched Casino Royale in cinemas would be in their mid-20s now. Which you can also apply to Roger Moore since he also played Bond uninterrupted for over a decade, but his era never had the multi-movie character arc Craig's bond had. While not all his films have been stellar, none of them have been boring, all setting up pieces of the puzzle. And while it's obvious there was little planning involved in Bond's arc throughout his run, Quantum's seeming omnipresence in Quantum of Solace devolved into nothing in further installments, while Spectre's involvement here is so easily swept under the rug after the previous film, and you can tell they wish they could have done a lot more with Vesper, I still liked his story throughout the films. Going from a killer far too primal and fierce to be the traditionally dashing film Bond, to a man run through the gamut and whose existence asks if the adventures of James Bond still have a place in today's world, and then to someone saving the day not because of duty but love, and his journey turning into myth passed on from generation to generation. Critics of the Craig era often accuse his run of repeating the same "How does someone like James Bond fit in today's society?" question a little too much, but I argue that's the point since it's the running theme of his era that No Time to Die is very willing to play with, such as with Lashana Lynch's character. And yeah, the Bond films have been fighting off cultural irrelevance for quite some time, remember in Goldeneye where M accuses Bond of being a misogynist dinosaur from the Cold War, but these films know that's a pressing concern and apply it to Bond's character: A man trying to persevere while the passage of time and the whims of his superiors have other plans for him, ultimately learning the best lesson any human can learn is how to ensure the generation after theirs can prosper. I love how this film in particular takes the bombast and extravagance of the James Bond mythos and converts it into both tragedy and something uplifting. Within the 007 universe, there will always be world domination plots or global heists organized by eccentric supervillains, but there are also people willing to step up and stop them. While the history of one such person becomes wistful but affirming tales told to a child.

It's almost unfair to Craig's successor that this film was so good. I struggle to see how the next Bond, whoever they are, will top this. Die Another Day's awfulness and the Austin Powers movies turning the standard Bond tropes into jokes gave people such low expectations for the series that even if Casino Royale weren't a great film, it still would have blasted them away. But this was an end on a high note. And as I said earlier, this is the first time a Bond actor is allowed the chance to bow out gracefully than to abruptly leave due to creative differences or contract disputes.

[close]

[Dr. Insomniac]

As for Many Saints of Newark, it'll take some time to digest (after all, how many years did it take for fans to go from hating the finale to loving it?), but as of now, I didn't like it all that much. A messy film that reminded me of the Star Wars prequels rather than something like Better Call Saul. Often felt the film was supposed to be a standalone film about class struggles within the 70s Newark black community, but then they taped Sopranos characters in-between scenes for marketability. The attempt to mirror and contrast Harold's struggle with Dickie's is disjointed, and I would have preferred if it stuck with Harold's.

Spoiler

And I don't agree with revealing Uncle Junior was the one who ordered Dickie's death. Sure, revealing the old school was nothing but nostalgic lies and the bad guys in the past were even worse than the people now has always been a theme in The Sopranos, but it comes at the cost of revealing Dickie wasn't a barely-functioning junkie and, while still a murderer with abhorrent views, was one of the least horrid parental figures in Tony's life by comparison. Now I'm supposed to see Junior as the guy who ultimately ruined Tony's and by extension Christopher's lives instead of the closest thing Tony had to a parent. Guess whenever I rewatch the finale, I'll be glad Junior is heavily senile and stuck in a shitty nursing home instead of the bittersweetness I felt when originally watching that scene? Same thing as thinking how kind it was the nurses left Sil's wig on during his coma. Junior was definitely no saint in the show, and he obviously had people whacked for petty reasons, but he comes off as exaggerated here. All of the returning characters feel like exaggerated versions of their show selves. Maybe I would have been more okay with the reveal if it was better executed, because they don't give Junior much meat to chew on in this film. Movie juggles too many characters to give them focus, jarring when a series that utilized arcs spanning over 12+ hours a season is now stuck with only 2 hours.

[close]

[Foggle]

Interesting thoughts about both movies! I skimmed through the spoilers to avoid learning too much but you definitely got me hyped to see No Time To Die now.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And since I mentioned Die Another Day, I found this interview from Brosnan soon after he was laid off from the role, confusingly making him the one Bond actor who got fired instead of quitting. He's understandably far angrier and blunter here than recent interviews about his time as Bond. Some mean things to say about Lazenby and mentioning his recent roles were great stress relief for how mad he was at the EON producers, for instance.

I've heard a few 007 fans suggest now that Craig's gone, EON should rehire Brosnan back for a final Bond movie just so he'll have a proper sendoff this time instead of Die Another fucking Day, as an apology, and so Brosnan has one other good Bond film in his tenure instead of just Goldeneye.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just saw No Time To Die and pretty much agree with Dr. Insomniac's take on the movie (and Craig's run in general). It wasn't perfect, but it was a a genuinely interesting character arc that persisted over five films of uneven quality. The best thing that I can say is that even in the weaker movies, I always still enjoyed Craig's portrayal as Bond. It's not as iconic as Connery's (but what possibly even can be?), but I'd argue that this interpretation felt more like a real person than just a fictional character, while still fitting into the core Bond archetypes.

I still maintain that Casino Royale is the best Craig Bond movie (it's one of those introductions so strong that it's just hard to top), but this one pretty much ties with Skyfall as an overall great Bond movie. Quantum of Solace was bad from what I remember (I honestly haven't re-watched it since it came out), but even then I still recall liking Craig's performance in it and felt that he still got some good scenes in there. I didn't dislike Spectre like most did (in many ways it felt like a throwback to classic-era Bond), but it felt really out-of-place in tone and execution with the rest of Craig's run, and did have some headscratchingly stupid writing even by Roger Moore Bond movie standards.

Still, all movies in this run were at least watchable, and at best were memorable action thrillers with a strong emotional core. I also found Cary Fukunaga's direction in No Time To Die in particular to be some of the best in the entire franchise, as expected.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Fukunaga's vision for Bond was great. The grit from the earlier Craig films was still there, but intertwined with some of the surrealism of Connery's films like Safin's poison garden, and his elegiacal nanobot farm. Curious if he or any of the other writers were Metal Gear fans since Safin's tech heavily resembled FOXDIE. But I also wonder what Danny Boyle's film could have been, especially since I read the ending to this film was what drove him to quit the project.

Agreeing with what others are saying about Paloma. It's a shame she didn't have a bigger part in this film since she was really fun, and fun characters who didn't die were rare in the Craig era.

Rewatched Goldeneye recently,

Spoiler

and noticed Trevelyan predicting Bond's legacy will be a small memorial service with only Moneypenny and a few others.

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As well as him mocking Bond for all the dead women in his life, which referred to Tracy in the original context but could easily remind younger audiences of Vesper. I'm struck by how much Goldeneye's scenes and messages influenced Craig's era, even more than it influenced Brosnan's other Bond films. It's such a trailblazer that I'm disappointed Campbell's only directed two of these.