Delayed Reaction: Woodstock

Premise: An exhaustive documentary about all that was going on during the original Woodstock.

 

The most incredible thing about Woodstock, the documentary, is that it exists. The Woodstock festival ended up being one of the defining cultural events of the 20th century. I say this even with a hesitation about Boomer mythologizing. It was a huge event and became the defining event of a generation. Now, how often does an event like that have a professional film crew covering it from beginning to end with nearly unlimited access? Repeatedly, while watching this, I was impressed with the foresight Michael Wadleigh and his crew had to catch certain moments or get so much coverage for others. Think about all the great documentaries you've seen that had to reuse the same grainy footage or even reenact scenes. It cool to watch something that was on the ground and ready.

 

Now, let's be honest, there's a symbiotic relationship going on here. Part of reason the legend of Woodstock grew was because of how well it was captured in the documentary. The reason the documentary is such an exhaustive account is because the interest in the Woodstock event has led to numerous re-edits and remasters. Woodstock wouldn't be what it is now without the documentary and the documentary wouldn't be what it is now without the interest in Woodstock.

This documentary is grueling in length at around 3h45m. This isn't a movie you can decide to watch on a whim. You must dedicate a night to it. I've been putting it off for months for exactly that reason. The performances are great. The documentary does an excellent job showing what it was like there. Perhaps it glosses over some of the roughest elements, but even just from what is included in the movie, Woodstock looks like a nightmare that I wouldn't've wanted to participate in at any age. Even with the punishing length, the editing is pretty great. I was impressed by all the ways they found to shoot the different performances so that they didn't all look the same. I do wish I would've seen this movie when I was a little younger though. It was depressing how often my thoughts during the movie began with "these kids".

 

For anyone who is a fan of the 60s counter-culture, this is an essential text. I don't know that it says anything though that hasn't seeped into the cultural consciousness in other ways. This is the Woodstock you've always heard about. (I sort of wish I'd just watched the original, shorter cut though)

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: How to Talk to Girls at Parties

Premise: Some British punks in the 70s stumble onto a group of aliens who are going through some sort of bizarre rite of passage on Earth.

 

I don't think anyone knows what to do with John Cameron Mitchell. What is his career? What should we expect from him? He debuted in 2000 with the cult hit, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He used that momentum to get the infamous Shortbus made in 2006: a film most famous for incorporating explicit sex scenes into it. He then took a hard turn in 2010, making the Oscar-friendly, soberly dramatic Rabbit Hole. His next full movie is How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which almost looks like a step back. He returns to the loud, campy style of Hedwig but with most of the edge removed. By all accounts, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a pretty light and tame movie. Other than some nudity, this is basically a PG-13 comedy. Part Encino Man, part Dude Where's My Car. How to Talk to Girls at Parties is the movie you'd expect Mitchell to make in order to get the attention and backers to make Hedwig. I don't think of the movie as a step back though. It's more of a settling down.

 

Overall, I quite enjoyed this movie. Elle Fanning gets to be charmingly weird. Nicole Kidman looks like she came to the movie with some ideas. A lot of the other aliens, like Ruth Wilson and Matt Lucas are clearly having fun playing dress up. The themes of the movie are anything but subtle, but I don't think it was trying to be over-clever about it. This is a very straight-forward movie. I like a lot of the character quirks. It's got some good punk music. It's a hyper-realized interpretation of the 70s' punk scene. It doesn't bother with crazy alien effects. They all just dress in different colors and that's it.

 

I wonder how this movie would've been received had it premiered at South By Southwest with an unknown director rather than premiering at Cannes with thoughts of Hedwig, Shortbus, and Rabbit Hole in mind. It feels much more like a Rotten Tomatoes 67% than a 47%.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Year of Spectacular Men

Premise: A young woman navigates a rudderless life over a year, working through a few relationships in the process.

 

I was curious about this movie as a family affair. It was written by Madelyn Deutch and directed by her mother, Lea Thompson. It stars Thomson, Madelyn, and Thompson's other daughter Zoey Deutch. When a family has this much of a presence in a movie, that either means it's a deeply personal film or they had to call in family to get it made at all. Sadly, this leans toward the latter case.

 

This movie mainly works because of the movies that did the same thing better. It's a really familiar movie. Its favorability coasted on how much it made me think is similar movies that I liked. It's a little more interesting by being a female lead rather than a male lead, but there are plenty of those arrested-development coming-of-age stories out there too. I like the basic DNA of this kind of movie, so it was easy for me to appreciate the broad strokes of this. This is not a movie I disliked.

 

I'm less familiar with Madelyn Deutch than her younger sister. Simply put, I do think Zoey is the more talented actress and would've made more sense in the lead role. I've seen her as a character with Cheetos in her hair before and she does it better. I kept trying to come up with who would work better in Zoey's role in the movie as well. An Eliza Coupe type is the best I could do. Zoey's strength is not being uptight, which the role often required. That said, there is obvious chemistry between the sisters and their mother on screen. Very often, it felt like they were playing variations of a familiar dynamic. My favorite parts were when it was some mix of those three and no one else.

 

The main character, Izzy, isn't as endearing as the movie seems to think she is, nor does it really sell me on how memorable the relationships are. The interview with all the guys she dates suggest she was this unique, interesting person that they shared a connection with, but Nicholas Braun was the only person she had any chemistry with. We only catch the sour parts of the Jesse Bradford relationship. She spends most of the year in her room doing nothing. I'm not sure where this character the guys keep talking about is. She's perhaps too unmotivated and unaware of the opportunities she has. She's in college, seemingly long past when she should've graduated. She decides to move to L.A. on a whim, where she mooches off he sister's success. She gets auditions through connections with her sister. She sustains herself with a job as her sister's assistant. It's great that she ends the movie by realizing this is only the beginning of her story, but that means I just spend 90 minutes watching a movie about a fully unformed character.

 

And, it's frustrating how determined this was to not have a "Hollywood ending". The way that the relationship between her and Braun ends is so perfunctory. The whole ending is, really. I feel like the idea for the movie was that Izzy has this diary that ends up being a book of relationships over a year. Then, as Deutch wrote the screenplay, that idea became less important but she was still determined to keep that as the ending. I just do think it's needed. Take out all the stuff about the journal/book and the movie is exactly the same.

I surprised myself with how much I had to say about this movie. It's that special kind of frustrating where I can squint and see a movie I'd really like. It's a lightweight, easy-to-watch movie. I'd be curious to see a Madelyn Deutch screenplay that wasn't developed with such a close connection to her family. I need to see her in more to buy into her as an actress.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Quick Reaction: Tom Jones

So this is the movie that won Best Picture between Lawrence of Arabia and My Fair Lady? That's...odd. Now, I didn't live through the 60s, but Tom Jones feels much more like a late 60s than early 60s movie, right? It's bawdy and irreverent. This plays like a counter-culture movie. Even before the Beatles and the hippies though, the Academy of the 60s was pretty playful. As many comedies and musicals won best picture that decade as stuffy austere movies. I've seen enough of these comedic takes on this era (The Favourite, Love & Friendship) that some of the novelty of Tom Jones at the time is lost now. It's a fun and funny movie though. Albert Finney is a force. It's surprising that this movie could win Best Picture without giving him Best Actor. He's so much of what makes it all work. The overt and subtle winks to the camera worked. They stopped just short of overdoing it. It's really striking how much of this movie feels modern. Like the silent film opening: that's something I associate more as a modern gag than one of that era. I think I like this Best Picture win more than I necessarily like the movie, if that makes sense. It's more interesting to see this in the list of Best Picture winners than if Cleopatra or How the West Was Won had won.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Devil All the Time

Premise: A young man living in a small town has a life marked by death and revenge.

 

I don't fully get this movie. I understand the different plot points of it. I'm at a loss about the why though. This is an eventful movie. A lot happens. It never stays on any one thing for long, often because the person at the center gets killed before too long. There are about two seasons of Justified rolled into a single movie. It's a lot and everything gets short shrift as a result. When it's all over and Tom Holland's Arvin is trying to stay awake in that hippie's van, imagining the ways his life could be in the future, I was left with a feeling of "OK, but why?" This movie is a collection of interesting stories that all could be fleshed out more. There's also the question of just how cursed can this kid's life be.

 

So, there's the generally flawed idea in business to keep throwing money at something until the problems go away. The Devil All the Time takes a similar approach. Instead of money, it's familiar actors. This cast is ridiculous. Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson are the only actors I'd call A-listers, but there are a ton (Literally. Put them on a scale) of familiar or rising talents. Bill Skarsgard, Haley Bennett, Sebastian Stan, Riley Keough, Jason Clark, Harry Melling, Eliza Scanlan, Mia Wasikowska. Pretty much, every 10 minutes another familiar person would show up in this movie. I really want to know who it was with all the friends and favors to call in. Writers/Director Antonio Campos and Paulo Campos don't seem established enough for that yet. My guess is producer Jake Gyllenhaal is the one who recruited so many people. Regardless, it's an impressive collection of talents, and they really do make the movie interesting, no matter how scattered the story feels. I mean, halfway into the movie it's got Pattinson showing up as a charismatic protestant preacher. That's a luxury few movies have.

While the cast made this movie watchable throughout, it couldn't overcome the fact that all the story-telling was really surface level and mostly reminded me of similar movies and shows that went into everything in more depth.

 

Side Note: I didn't expect the movie to be so violent. That's not a complaint. I'm just looking back on my notes and realizing how many exclamation points and "oh no"s I had in them.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Children of a Lesser God

Premise: A teacher at a school for deaf children falls in love with a deaf employee there.

 

OK, what happened to William Hurt? His run in the latter half of the 80s was epic. He got consecutive nominations from 1986 to 1988 with a win that first year. He was in The Big Chill in 1983. He had a run of Woody Allen movies that was successful too. He managed to power a movie like The Doctor to be a box office success as late as 1991. Then he sort of went away. He's worked consistently since then. He got an Oscar nomination for A History of Violence in 2005, but he hasn't been a major player in any way for a long time. He's settled into a distinguished character actor. It just feels like it shouldn't've happened so abruptly, right? It would be like if, after Bradley Cooper's Oscar nominated three-peat from 2012-14, he did nothing but make Serenas for a decade and occasionally showed up as the 6th lead in courtroom dramas.

 

It's less surprising what happened to Marlee Matlin after becoming the youngest lead acting Oscar winner ever. No matter how terrific she is in this, there's only so much filmmakers can find (or choose to find) for deaf actors. As cool as it would be if she could just follow up with a The River Wild and have everyone just accept that the character happens to be deaf, that's not really how it works. She's carved out a pretty good career anyway, but it didn't open the kind of doors an Oscar normally does. (Then again, it's not like Monique did a lot after Precious)

 

For one movie though, those two were pretty great. I have no complaints about Matlin winning over the competition that year, since no part of me believes Sigourney Weaver for Aliens actually stood a chance. I'll admit, the "novelty" probably gave her the edge over more established actresses that year, but I'd have to think her work would've still been considered even if deaf performances were more common. The movie itself isn't anything special. It's just a romance story where one person is especially afraid of settling down and lets past experiences get in the way. If you take out the deaf angle, it's almost indistinguishable from dozens of other romance movies I've seen. Hurt and Matlin are what make it work.

 

I did have one question while watching the movie since I'm not around many deaf people. Do people who can hear really talk that much while signing? I mostly figured Hurt spoke so much while signing as a way to help the audience. Certainly, I think that's why he often repeated what Matlin said to him. Then, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that he'd maybe speak for lip reading purposes in case his signing was bad. Regardless, the movie made it feel pretty natural the way it did it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Gosford Park

Premise: A wealthy early 20th century dinner party is scandalized after a murder with an unknown killer.

 

Robert Altman + Julian Fellows really does sum up the entirety of this movie. It looks and sounds like Fellows' hit from a decade later, Downton Abbey. The huge ensemble and darkly comedic tone are emblematic of Robert Altman, especially in that era. This is 100% exactly the movie I expected, which means, it was an OK movie.

 

The cast is incomparable. One of my favorite podcasts, This Had Oscar Buzz, has a weekly game where the hosts guess what the 4 Known For movies on a person's IMDB page are, and it's a running joke how often Gosford Park shows up. This movie has everyone. It would probably be quicker to list off who isn't in it from that era. Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith are the people who got Oscar nominations out of it, and that feels about right. This is rightly the jewel of Altman's late era. It's a lavishly dressed movie. No one in the cast feels unintentionally out of place. It juggles a dozen story lines nimbly. It must frustrate other filmmakers how easy Altman makes it look.

 

I did find the movie a little dull and stuffy. I realize that the humor of the movie is meant to combat and play off that, but, like most Altman movies I've seen, the humor didn't work for me. So, I was just left with a lot of the stuffiness. There's an aware cleverness that never seems to work for me with Altman. Still it's a good movie. It didn't quite jive with me, much in the way that I never felt the need to watch Downton Abbey, but it's still a good movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Great Ziegfeld

That was quick.

 

Not the movie. That beast is a 3-hour epic. I mean the turnaround time. The movie covers the life of theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. It follows him from his days running a "World's strongest man" show at the 1893 World's Fair to his death in 1932. And the film came out in 1936. That's fast, even by Hollywood standards. Normally, Oscar voters need a little more distance from something to award it Best Picture. I really appreciated the size of the movie. This was a show and does right by the real Ziegfeld. Part of the reason it's so long is all the extended sequences recreating his elaborate theater shows. This was sort of like watching the non-musical version of The Greatest Showman. Now, I don't know much about the real Ziegfeld or what actually happened in his life. Maybe he was a monster, but the movie version of him was pleasant enough. Damn though. Three hours was too long.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Premise: A Sorkinesque retelling of the trial of the 8 defendants in the Chicago 7 trial.

 

2020 has been a weird year. Obviously, that's an understatement and the changes go far beyond movies and TV. That's sort of my thing here though, so that's my focus. I have no idea how this Oscar season will play out. Few films are getting traditional releases. Many are getting delayed until next year's Oscar season. The Oscar eligibility window even goes later than normal. It certainly feels like a year for the tiny indie movies that critics champion every year to get more seats at the table. What's also strange is that Netflix is the only company in town acting like everything is normal. They were already largely skipping theatrical releases for their movies. They had their films lined up and completed months before Covid caused everything to go haywire. OK, it's not quite that simple. This movie too was hit by Covid. The Trial of the Chicago 7 was set to be a Paramount release this Fall and Netflix negotiated for it once it became clear a theatrical release wasn't happening. Still, it's October, and Netflix is coming out with the first film in what looks like a traditional, aggressive Oscar slate. They are perhaps the only company with a set of releases like this.

 

Even in a normal year, The Trial of the Chicago 7 would be an Oscar movie. In an election year, it's political but with just enough distance to look like it wasn't targeted at anyone now. The case is large and varied (you know, except for women), with a mix of Oscar winners, up-and-comers, actors playing against type, and TV actors trying to make a splash. Aaron Sorkin already has shelves full of trophies for his work, including an Oscar. In a year with so many norms flying out the window, it feels odd to say this, but I think The Trial of the Chicago 7 is the most viable Oscar frontrunner out there so far.

 

This is an incredibly watchable movie in the way so many screenplays from Aaron Sorkin are. It's got that same playfulness and seriousness that make The American President, A Few Good Men, and The West Wing re-runs to easy to rewatch. It has the clever, rapid fire dialogue that he's famous for*. It's idealistic but in a way that isn't as insufferable as more recent attempts of his (cough - The Newsroom - cough). It's really best to leave Sorkin as far away from computers and the internet as possible, so a period piece is a good idea. You can choose to relate the similarities between this summer's protests/riots to the 1968 Democratic presidential convention riots/protests as little or as much as you want while watching this. This really is just plain a crowd-pleaser. Sorkin gets courtroom drama.

 

*People have already made supercuts of some common Sorkin phrases he uses in this movie.

 

I could ask 10 people who the best person in the cast of this movie is and get 10 different answers. Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden is the closest thing to a lead. He represents the youth movement trying to bring changes by working with the establishment. Redmayne is known for his roles that ask him to take big character swings. It's nice to see him do something tame. Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman is probably my favorite in the movie. He keeps up a decades-old trend of being great when he's in something where he's only an actor (not a writer). He's been inching toward a real Oscar campaign for years, and it seems likely that it will pay off now with how he shows off both the rebellious and thoughtful side of Hoffman. Jeremy Strong really commits to playing eternally hazy Jerry Rubin. It leans right into playing for laughs but stops just short of making it all a joke. Yahaya Abdul-Mateen II does a great job with the frustrating treatment of Bobby Seale in the trial. Mark Rylance, as the attorney the Chicago Seven is part great-lawyer, part-rebel as well. Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman gives the kind of infuriating performance that's so effective, that too many people will dislike the character to appreciate the work he's doing. There are a lot of other people too. Pretty much all of them are used effectively.

 

It's true, there aren't many women in the movie. It's hard to criticize the movie for that though. All the defendants, lawyers, prosecutors, and judge in the actual case were men. That alone is a lot of characters to juggle. As nice as it would be for Caitlin FitzGerald or Alice Kremelberg to have more to do, it's understandable that anything with them would be the first thing on the cutting room floor.

 

Aaron Sorkin isn't the greatest director around. He doesn't do anything fancy with how the film is shot. He doesn't ask much from the cinematography. The movie could be converted into a stage-play pretty easily. That's not a criticism. The directing is satisfactory and doesn't get in the way of the story, screenplay, and performances. Perhaps a different director would've made the film a little more interesting, but it's still quite good as is.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend