Month of Movies: December 2018

Total Films Watched: 12. The Big Lebowski, First Reformed, Zama, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Edward Scissorhands, Roma, Great Expectations, Mars Attacks!, Aquaman, Mamma Mia!, Girl Walk: All Day, Bandersnatch

Top Two Films this Month: Girl Walk: All Day and Roma. In the time it took me to finish writing this entry, Letterboxd sent me the annual Year in Review of my activity on the site. While it did not include a full breakdown of all the movies I watched and graded, it did list Girl Walk: All Day as one of my only five-star scores on the site this year. I loved the Girl Talk album when I first heard it and it took me months to even dig up the existence of this movie. Any movie that tries to adapt a full album would face difficulties; doing the same for an ambitious mach-up album, with hundreds of song fragments and no obvious narrative, is absurd. But the movie totally pulls it off, capturing the same joyous diversity of appearances and underground style as All Day embraced. It also adds character dynamics and emotional beats that are done entirely through choreography and a breakneck, unpredictable pace.

Going through the rest of Cuaron's filmography over the past few months gave me a different way to appreciate Roma. Any movie with this much obvious control in its style and appearance is easy to call a masterpiece, but Roma can be labeled with that title for other reasons as well. There's the personal stake that Cuaron has in the story of this indigenous maid working for a family in Mexico City, similar to how he grew up as a child. What I really noticed, though, is how well the movie uses themes and visuals that he debuted in previous movies. At times the parallels are so fascinating that it feels like he is trying to get himself labeled an 'auteur.' It has the contrast between pregnancy and violence (Children of Men), a visit to the beach as an escape from personal darkness (Y tu Mama Tambien) and a strange approach to the working class (Great Expectations and The Little Princess). When he works in footage of a goddamn astronaut, it sealed the deal for me.

Movie Death Match: Film adaptation most deserving of ending its title with an exclamation point- Mamma Mia! or Mars Attacks! I'm finding that I can be a real sucker for a good musical, or even a well-used needle drop. Like most people I enjoy both music and movies, and like most men my age I also enjoy sharing my thoughts about both of those. Mamma Mia! is not the most impressive musical I've seen but it very much does it's job as escapism. All the central female performances are delightful to various degrees, from Streep's serious attempt at lightness to Christine Baranski stealing as many moments as she can. The male performances are down a notch, seemingly cast more to be called 'daddy' on 2019 Twitter than for their actual singing skills. It also suffers a bit as an adaptation of the stage show- some bits of choreography would work better on a stage than on camera and the sheer number of songs gets a bit overwhelming by the end. But hey, there's nothing wrong with enjoying bright, shiny setpieces set to great pop songs for a little less than two hours.

Now, Mars Attacks! is a much stranger adaptation, in this case of a stylized trading card series that I know nothing about. The style is ludicrous, a blend between the 1950's sci-fi look of the original product and the dark whimsy that Tim Burton had become known for. I've heard the effects were groundbreaking at the time and they still look good- they never look "authentic" but the clear cartoonishness isn't distracting either. The cast is ridiculous, billed in a order that makes little sense twenty years later. Jack Nicholson is clearly riffing on the triplicate of Peter Sellers roles in Dr. Strangelove, but since that was already a comedy it just feels like light plagiarism. Danny DeVito is credited as "Rude gambler" but is billed far ahead of Jim Brown, who is essentially the third lead of the movie by the end. And the ending is delightfully, gloriously bizarre and appeals to my musical affection. I'd still say Mamma Mia! is more coherent but Mars Attacks! is better deserving of the wildness indicated by the exclamation point in the title.

Longer Thoughts About: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I have quite a bit of generic nerd cred. In middle school I did a book project on the deep lore of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. One of the few DVDs I own at the moment is the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man. I enjoy watching Doctor Who, have played Dungeons and Dragons more than once and have a blog where I write about movies. These are all fairly mainstream opinions, of course, but I tend to have a familiarity with the major genre properties. Except for Lord of the Rings. This was the first full interaction I've had with the series- I have never seen the original movies before, or the Hobbit prequels, or read a single chapter of Tolkein. I went into this movie with only the knowledge I'd absorbed from years of pop culture and... liked it quite a bit.

The main things that jumped out to me, watching this for the first time, were all technical. Being able to tell all the races of Middle Earth apart seems like basic world building but not every movie does it this well. One close-up shot of the character is usually enough to distinguish a hobbit from a human and an orc from an Uruk-Hai. A lot of this is the makeup and styling that was done, but credit also goes to the casting for choosing people with different facial structures and energies. I also loved the Howard Shore score in all its bombastic, excessive glory. That music is doing so much to establish themes and double down on the emotions of a scene. There are tonal shifts in the movie that work only because of how well Shore hits the literal and emotional beats. For instance, I don't love the visual effects of what Frodo sees while wearing the ring. But the sound and the music of those scenes sells the danger in a much stronger way. Same with the Uruk-Hai, who would be generic ugly zombies with a wildly bizarre origin story if the music wasn't blasting the way it is.