Month of Movies: July 2018

Total Films Watched: 13. 13th, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility, Dazed and Confused, Hero, Winter's Bone, Thor: Ragnarok, In Bruges, Locke, The Brothers Bloom, Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible- Fallout, Jaws.

Top Two Films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Jaws.

Like approximately 35% of all films that I watch now, I saw Crouching Tiger because the podcast Blank Check is covering the full filmography of the director. I have now seen three Ang Lee films because of that miniseries and this one is easily my favorite of the set. Granted, it probably helped that I had seen very few martial-arts movies before this one and could easily be wowed by the choreography. But what really won me over about the film is the bizarre structure. All three protagonists in the film feel like they're in slightly different sub-genres of the martial arts movie and the overlap between them is fascinating. Michelle Yeoh is investigating a mystery for the first third, Chow Yun-Fat is coming out of retirement to avenge his dead master, and Zhang Ziyi has a coming-of-age story with a dash of the Khaleesi/ Khal Drogo dynamic. It's really fun to see all those types of martial arts movies get sown together and result in a complete crowd-pleasing hit.

Speaking of crowd pleasers, though. I had somehow never seen Jaws before last weekend. As both a cultural hit and an important milestone in blockbuster cinema, it was a film that I needed to see. What surprised me the most is how well the film moves. There's barely a wasted scene- the few moments that aren't directly about the hunt for the shark are still rooted in character and don't outstay their welcome. Spielberg is, to nobody's surprise, a really good director of action. But he also know show to relate people and spectacle in a way that makes both seem more dramatic. I was going to eat right when Quint started the Indianapolis speech, but that scene completely sucked me in. And that isn't even my favorite performance in the film!

Movie Death Match: Best Mission: Impossible Movie I Saw This Month- Mission: Impossible or Mission: Impossible- Fallout? For the record, neither of these is my favorite of the whole franchise. That would be the fifth movie, Rogue Nation, which was also the first one I had seen in full. And beyond being parts of the same franchise, there are a lot of more specific parallels between the original M:I film and Fallout. Both 1 and 6 have female arms dealers, elevator shafts, helicopter-based climaxes, and villains outed over streaming video. (The last two elements are much more realistic in Fallout, for what it's worth. Especially the video and the rest of the technology that the IMF uses.)

But otherwise, these movies feel entirely different. The original Mission: Impossible is very dramatically tense and relatively low-stakes. Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt as a complex character who feels the full betrayal of his team and can barely stand the tension of the centerpiece in Langley. He grows, he matures, and he is shot by an overactive camera at all times. De Palma has a lot more unique visual flourishes than McQuarrie; the scene between Cruise and Henry Czerny at the fake restaurant is almost entirely done in close-ups from below, which looks really strange. Fallout, on the other hand, is much more normal as far as blockbuster action goes. It feels a lot darker compared to the fifth film and there's a lot more incredible action, but it still feels like the format these movies have taken.

It is legitimately tough for me to rank this franchise, aside from Rogue Nation remaining my favorite of the series. For now I'll put the original De Palma ahead of the new one just for the sheer bravado of the filmmaking. I think Fallout might top it over time, but I'll stand by this ranking for now.

Random Thoughts About: Winter's Bone. Up until this point I've been covering a pretty masculine, action-packed set of films for this entry. So I do appreciate the chance to take it down a notch and talk about a very small, rural, gritty film from a female director. This is the movie that put Jennifer Lawrence, and to a lesser extent John Hawkes, on the map. Lawrence plays a teenager in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Her mother is 'out of it' in a poorly-defined way and her father's absence is the plot of the film, so she has to take care of her younger siblings on her own. When her father puts their house up for bond and then misses his upcoming court date, Lawrence has to scramble to track him down and save their home.

Winter's Bone is a cold movie in both the setting and the relationships. Everyone in this region is either related to the Dolly family or closely connected. Seemingly everyone in the family lives within walking distance in these woods but barely speak to each other. Lawrence's Ree Dolly has to spend a long time talking to people and earning her right to know even the most basic information about her drug-making dad and his whereabouts. It's an interesting performance in retrospect because it seems so different from the roles she would get later on. Most Jennifer Lawrence movies either age her up or focus on her appearance (Mystique in the X-Men movies, most of her work with David O. Russell, Passengers). It's easy to see how Ree's determination and working-class charm got her the role of Katniss, but even those movies are more physical and do more to glamorize here. This is all raw determination and earnestness.

The movie doesn't entirely live up to the performances that Lawrence and some of the other characters give. Debra Granik is definitely trying to create a grounded, realistic portrayal of life in a part of the country that's rarely depicted. And for the most part, the movie devotes itself to that approach. But the ending gets far too over-the-top for my taste. The whole small-town criminal syndicate that pops up does not work and the performances are also at a very different pitch than the rest of the most well-known cast. It also abandons some of the more interesting characters, like Ree's best friend who is around a lot but gets very little to say or do. Hawkes does the best at navigating both sides of that divide- he can follow a strange, limited stand-off in a barn with a monologue given to Jennifer Lawrence.