Sunday, October 4, 2020

Top 10 September 2020 First-Watches

As promised, I did not see Tenet in September. Most of you seem to have followed my advice, because the opening box office for that movie was $12 million. If you had told me a year ago that Christopher Nolan’s giant new blockbuster would only clear $12 million domestically, I would have gasped in horror. Abject horror. Thing is... who gives a fuck about the box office? I cannot really worry too much how Mulan is doing when I spend my days wondering if maybe I should have an escape plan if shit goes real bad in November. (Can't relax yet, folks. This isn't over.)

I really needed some kind of escapism in September. Hell, I need escapism now, which is why I’m doing that 31 Days, 31 Horror Movies series. But last month, my escapism of choice was blockbusters of a kind. Sure, the reservoir of US blockbuster resources are stone dry. Also, I didn't want to see Mulan even if there wasn't a pandemic. However, there is a big blockbuster scene I have been ignoring these past years of criticism: India. If you want big joyous feasts of movies, India has you covered. It is a land where even the superhero movies are musicals. It is a treasure trove.

India’s film scene feels like an alternate dimension where Old Hollywood never died. So the biggest movies remained massive three hour musical epics. Imagine if Hello, Dolly! and Camelot had not killed the big Roadshow movies. Imagine a 1977 where George Lucas needed Star Wars to be 230 minutes long and full of pop love songs between Luke and Leia? Al, movie stars are not the business-drivers they used to be here in the West. Our hottest actors like Chris Hemsworth cannot draw a crowd like say Gene Kelly could back in the day. Hemsworth's Men in Black movie flopped like Kevin Nash getting a fingerpoke from Hulk Hogan. In India though, movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan have dominated the box office for decades. Their movies are guaranteed hits. Shah Rukh Khan is probably the biggest star in the entire world, and most of us in West have no idea who he is.

I’ll get into the positives and negatives of Indian cinema as I review the movies I saw. I maintain that Bollywood and its Tamil and Telugu language equivalents should not be so obscure in Western film circles. I aimed to see the biggest Indian movies I could find across the last fifty years. Obviously that approach limits me to a certain kind of movie, and I still am no expert. (Plus, I only saw six movies since Indian movies are so damn long.) I’ll definitely come back to this theme one day.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), dir. Eliza Hittman

Let us start with one of the least fun movies of the year, Never Rarely Sometimes Always. And oh boy, is this ever a topical one. Abortion is an issue that tears society apart – for the wrong reasons, mostly. It is a really tough subject, and I have been stupidly wrong about it several times in my past. But nobody cares where a cis dude stands on the issue in 2020. This isn’t my call to make and should not be. However, to be clear: if you have a problem with a woman’s right to choose, there’s an X button on your browser tab. Please click it and fuck off forever. I will not judge anybody for doing what is best for them. I’ll judge the fuck out of you if you are going to be an asshole. Oh, and fuck Amy Barrett. A lot of people this week are getting what they deserve.

Anyway, the movie. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is not addressing this difficult subject in a non-difficult way either. This is a very heavy movie. It has an energy that really only art films or film festival movies aim for. Eliza Hittman does not ask for big acting from any of her performers. They all read their lines in a somewhat flat way that I think is supposed to be naturalistic. There are no gags. The shots use mostly natural light or the functional lighting of the rooms the characters are in. Shots are not composed in a very showy way. I cannot recall if the movie even has a score. It feels like you are just following a teenager during the course of a bad week. Her life is unexceptionable and so un-glamorous as to be grim. Not a fun watch.

Now why would you subject yourself to this bitter, depressed view of modern America? Because abortion is real and it happens, and it is normal. It is as standard as getting a cavity fixed. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is the story of Autumn (Sidney Flannigan) an isolated teenage girl who discovers she is pregnant. She travels to New York with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) without their parents' knowledge of what they are doing. It is not a deep melodrama about the intense emotions of the abortion. It is more of a movie of figuring out where to sleep or how to get enough cash for the bus ride home. And also, it is a movie about the ever-creeping and crawling eyes of men all around them. (Yuck.) The title question comes up in an unpleasant way towards the third act. That scene gives Sidney Flannigan a moment to pull off very impressive acting despite almost no dialog.

So, no, I cannot say I recommend Never Rarely Sometimes Always if you want to enjoy a movie. But it is an important thing to exist today. Not enough media has to courage to cover this subject and that's a failure it may be too late to address.

 

Dangal (2016), dir. Nitesh Tiwari

If India ever made anything like Oscarbait, Dangal would be it. This is my second outing with superstar Aamir Khan after his 2001 film, Lagaan. Dangal is to women’s wrestling what Lagaan was to cricket. They’re massive movies aiming for high sports drama. I discovered after watching the movie that Dangal actually was funding by Walt Disney through their Indian subsidiary. This is exactly the kind of sports movie Disney loves: underdog, blandly inspirational stories. Luckily Disney has not yet colonized India too heavily, because Dangal feels like a movie they never would have made. It is intense and unrelenting, with a hero the movie is not afraid to show in unlikable ways.

Dangal is the true story of Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir Khan), a frustrated ex-wrestler tired of watching India fail to win major international awards in sports. He pushes his dream onto his daughters, Geeta (Zaira Wasim and Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita (Suhani Bhatnagar and Sanya Malhotra). We follow those daughters as little girls just learning to wrestle. Then later as young women, struggling with their father’s shadow, and trying to achieve the family dream. Aamir Khan goes through a striking physical transformation in the film. He starts out toned and muscled, then very overweight. He’s pulling off a Christian Bale here, since he’s usually much slimmer. The Phogat family is our heroes. But Papa Phogat’s training methods borderline on abusive. It is a very uncomfortable watch at times.

Dangal is a musical like most Indian movies I’ve encountered. Interestingly, however, the movie sticks to realism. The characters never sing on camera. All the music is played over the soundtrack. I love that there is music because otherwise Dangal would be a harsh watch. The best sequence in the movie would be Geeta befriending a girl and them escaping out into the world together as free adults for the first time. (This looks extremely like a love story between these young women, which would have been quite the bold direction for a Disney-Bollywood collaboration to take. Sadly, no such luck.)

Also, Dangal is steeped thick in Indian nationalism. Which is… an increasingly dicey thing in the 21st century. Look up India’s ruling party and the crazy shit it is doing. Mahavir Singh Phogat is a big supporter of the current nationalist party. So ehhhh. On the other hand, Dangal does feature one of the most awesome suplexes of all time. If you love real-ass Olympic wrestling, there probably isn’t a better movie out there.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), dir. The Coen Brothers

The Hudsucker Proxy is a Lesser Coen Brothers film. It is not terribly well-remembered. That’s pretty unfortunately since this is a better movie than its reputation implies. (It has *no* reputation, in fact. Nobody remembers this movie.) However, Hudsucker did come out between Barton Fink and Fargo, two masterpieces. The Big Lebowski was just four years away and would do a lot of what Hudsucker Proxy was aiming for, and do it a lot better. Plus, what the fuck kind of name is “Hudsucker Proxy”? If the Coens were less ridiculously brilliant and did not shower the Nineties with classic after classic, I’d probably fight harder for Hudsucker. Instead I just think it is an interesting movie, even if non-essential.

To explain that title. “Hudsucker” is the name of a giant fictional corporation. And “Proxy” is an idiot stooge put in charge by the corrupt board members. The real puppetmaster is a cigar-chomping scenery-chewing Paul Newman. 

This is the backdrop to a pretty broad homage to old-timey screwball comedies. It would definitely help if you have seen any of those. Sadly I have not.  Hudsucker Proxy is a hyper-stylized version of the Forties but it never really decides which one. Sometimes it is Tim Burton’s Batman. Sometimes it is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Sometimes it is Darkman (Sam Raimi was the 2nd unit director on the film). Sometimes it actually feels like a Coen Brothers movie. The result is a really strange, pretty uneven movie, but one certainly never an uninteresting one.

Tim Robbins stars as Norville Barnes, the titular “Hudsucker Proxy” to the gang of evil capitalists. He is a kind of a Midwestern doofus from a town called Muncy with a brilliant invention that appears to just be a circle on a napkin. Jennifer Jason Leigh is Amy Archer, a fast-talking “one of the boys” reporter. Together they’re basically Lois Lane and mild-mannered reporter, Clark Kent. Leigh is making some big decisions in her performance. I cannot tell if her manic energy is based on any particular screwball comedy or a parody of a parody of a Looney Tunes cartoon. I kinda like it. The plot wanders down some odd directions. Nothing about this plot implies Hudsucker Proxy’s downright cosmic stakes in its third act. But sure, I cannot say I saw that ending coming.

The Devil All the Time (2020), dir. Antonio Campos

The Devil All the Time is not a horror movie, despite its title. It is a sad family drama set in the backwoods of Appalachia. Two generations of men and women face tragedy after tragedy while grappling with a seemingly uncaring Christian God. Netflix promised us the blockbusters, here you go. The crowds love nothing more than dense, literary movies about punishing subjects and no clear resolution. The Devil All the Time is obviously based on a novel. You can tell instantly by the voice-over narration and the non-linear chapter-like structure. You bounce between two towns, one in Ohio and one in West Virginia, where groups of people crash into each other’s lives, usually for the worse.

God is the most common character across all these stories and the most absent. The Devil, despite being a title character, makes no appearance either. Almost every character in the story has a deep faith and a strong relationship with their Maker. But also, they are led by their faith to horrible acts and unfortunate ends. One of the first scenes is a memory of a WWII marine crucified by the Japanese on a distant Pacific island. From there God either inspires the characters to violate girls, sacrifice their pets, or go on mass-killing sprees across the country. The reverends are corrupt, the sheriffs are bought, and the poor stay poor. Perhaps the Devil is not so absent after all, since he seems to be in every scene, indeed, all the time.

If you can overcome the awful nihilistic tone to The Devil All the Time, you will be richly rewarded by a strong cast. When somebody says the names “Riley Keough, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Harry Melling, Bill Skarsgard, and Jason Clarke” to me, I’m there, okay? You had me at Riley Keough. Robert Pattinson already got a lot of buzz thanks to his sharp Texan scumbag accent. However, everybody in this movie is putting in great work. Tom Holland is growing up into a really intense adult actor. He might blossom into a Jake Gyllenhaal one day.

Plus, The Devil All the Time is not all devil. If God is anywhere, it is in the scenes of real love that appear between the madness. I particularly loved an early scene where two couples fall in love at the same time in the same diner. This whole movie reminds me of The Place Beyond the Pines, another dark family saga whose thesis I can’t say I understood. I like this one better. Cannot really say why.

Baalubali: The Beginning (2015), dir. S. S. Rajamouli

Three years ago, I saw my first Indian movie, Baalubali 2: The Conclusion. It was maybe the most amazing blockbuster I’ve ever seen. Finally, in the dark depths of Hell Year 2020, I saw the first one. Baalubali 1 and 2 are really one movie across two releases. It is a grand saga across two generations of mighty heroes in a fictional mythological kingdom. Baalubali 1 ends virtually mid-story, with Baalubali 2 picking up immediately afterwards. Neither movie stands on its own. The first movie does not conclude any of its storylines. It jumps into a flashback about the main character’s father (both named "Baalubali"). Then ends mid-flashback. The continuation of that flashback makes up the bulk of the second movie, which then cuts forward to conclude the son's story.

But even if you've seen only half the story and have no context, Baalubali is not a complicated story to follow. If you know your legendary heroes, you know the Baalubalis (both played by the mononymous superstar, Prabhas). These movies are all about immense feats of strength, massive battles against impossible odds, and absolutely no shame. They are as big and as silly as possible. If you’re not down for a bearded barrel-chested man performing slow-mo Herculean feats with a smile on his face, these movies are not for you. Our heroes are perfect, as wise and generous as they are unbeatable in battle. Baalubali the Younger can lift up a shrine to Shiva on his shoulders and carry it to a waterfall. Then he’ll climb a mile high up that same waterfall because a saw a girl’s face in the sand. Women also get their big moments. Sivagami (Ramya Krishnan), Baalubali the Elder’s mom, is a fierce queen, perhaps the most intimidating character in the duology. She stops a sword with a dagger and kills two men while holding a baby in her other arm.

This is, needless to say, awesome beyond words.

Really, the entire story of Baalubali should be viewed as one mammtoh six-hour-long movie. This is the best way to view Peter Jackson’s eleven-hour Lord of the Rings trilogy as well. I think Baalubali 1 is not as good as Baalubali 2. But Baalubali 2 is the grand finale. It feels unfair to say the beginning of a story is less impressive than its conclusion. Combined, Baalubali makes for easily the greatest blockbuster of the 2010s. You think Endgame is epic? Wait until you see Baalubali and his girlfriend ride a flying swan boat in the sky. Why don't the Avengers sing?

Enthiran (2010), dir. S. Shankar

I have been waiting ten years now to watch Enthiran (AKA: Robot). RedLetterMedia recommended this movie heartily in one of their first Half in the Bag episodes. Jay called it “a big feast of a film”, a phrase I have stolen several times now. Enthiran, and a lot of Indian movies, really are big fattening meals. They are heavy and they make you want to go to bed afterwards. That which is why I could only get through six in September. I really appreciate getting to see wildly unique types of big blockbuster movies from other cultures. But man, India, three hours is a long fucking time. Does every movie need to be an E-ticket epic? I feel a bit bloated after this month, is all I’m saying.

Enthiran is (or was in 2010) the most expensive Indian movie ever made. This movie feels like a conscious attempt to emulate giant Hollywood SciFi movie-making - but with a distinct Indian flair. So, yes, the plot is basically Frankenstein with an AI robot going rogue after discovering emotions, then having a huge CG battles in the streets against the military. But that plot is interrupted by musical interludes. And where Hollywood movies need to have this kind of serious realism, Enthiran is not bound by those conventions. It is not just a SciFi blockbuster. It can also be a romance. It can also be a wildly over-the-top Stephen Chow-esque comedy. It does not seem like a particularly serious movie until suddenly there’s blood and a suggestion of gore. A lot of police officers die in the climax.

The star of Enthiran is Rajinikanth or “Superstar Rajinikanth” as the credits call him. He’s a dumpy old man in a lot of make-up and wig. He’s also the greatest Tamil-language movie star of all time. I can't say I fully get the appeal. He reminds me more of Deep Roy than an A-lister. Rajinkanth gets to play a double roll as both Dr. Vaseegaran and his robot creation, Chitti. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a ridiculously gorgeous human being, plays Sana, the love interest for both Frankenstein and his Monster. I fully understand Aishwarya Rai's appeal. As the scientist and his creation fight for Sana’s love, eventually the entire Tamil region of India is threatened by SciFi shenanigans. 

I really cannot explain in words how amazing the climax of Enthiran is. Just incredible imagination to pull off the wackiest effects. Chitti builds an army of clones, then uses them to turn into a ball of death, then a snake to fight the Indian government. It only gets more incredible from there.

There’s also a sequel, 2.0. It isn't as good.

 
 Sholay (1975), dir. Ramesh Sippy

Sholay is India’s answer to American Westerns and Italian Spaghetti Westerns. It belongs in a genre known as a “Dacoit Movies” (which translates to "Bandit Movies"), sometimes also called “Curry Westerns”. India never had a Wild West, but its history has decent equivalents. Railroads spread out into the wild frontiers, while bandits fought lawmen. Sholay is set in the then-present day of 1975, but off in the rural mountains far away from modernity. The plot is a fairly typical Western story. Two lovable outlaws are hired to save a village from a ruthless bandit. Think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but they wandered into The Magnificent Seven. Also, they sing.

If there is a reason to watch Sholay besides it being a really great classic Western, it is the very first song. Our heroes Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra) casually steal a motorcycle with a sidecar and sing together. This is “Yeh Dosti”, a big happy, incredibly-catchy folk friendship anthem. The lyrics translate to something akin to “we’re friends, friends forever!”. If you need something wholesome in your life, check out this scene, if nothing else. As lovable rogues their swagger is more Rat Pack-era Dean Martin than Han Solo. They play off each other great as a comedy duo. Jai and Veeru each get their own love interest to prove their heterosexuality. But really, Sholay is a Jai and Veeru romance.

The (not quite) boyfriends are hired by an ex-constable, Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) to protect his village from the evil bandit, Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Thakur and Gabbar have quite a bit of brutal history between them as well. Sholay has the plot of a Spaghetti Western. But the execution is entirely Bollywood. Besides the aching romance and music, this is a three-hour movie padded out with long sequences of comedy. Jai and Veeru are imprisoned early on and escape an incompetent prison warden who dresses like Adolf Hitler. The tone is a bit odd therefore. In one scene, a man will be mutilated or a child will be murdered. In the next, Jai and Veeru are hanging with Basanti (Hema Malini), a pretty stage coach driver who cannot stop talking. Gabbar Singh is one of the great villains of India cinema, yet he loves to watch pop stars sing love songs around his campfire.

I really appreciate the uniquely Bollywood turn on the Western style. Sergio Leone would have given you something more epic, but probably not something so much fun. “The greatest story ever told!” claims Sholay’s poster. It wasn’t lying.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), dir. Peter Hewitt

Somebody, I don’t remember who, told me that the second Bill & Ted movie was “bogus”. So based on that vague half-remembered conversation, which I might have even misunderstood, I never saw Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. (Was it my high school physics teacher? Mr. Collins? How dare you. Why did I listen to you anyway? You made us watch The Thirteenth Warrior in class, your taste sucks.) That was absolutely a mistake. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. And it made me immensely excited for the third movie.

…Which by the way, was perfectly okay. Bill & Ted Face the Music was fine. Nice and refreshingly happy, but still only decent. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was much better.

I really like the first Bill & Ted movie, by the way. The characters of Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted "Theodore" Logan are never ones of great thoughts and deep emotions. Basically, both of them are the same guy across two bodies, I couldn’t tell you if Alex Winters plays Bill or if Bill is played by Keanu Reeves. They are just good dudes, living happy lives. As a teen comedy, Excellent Adventure isn’t bawdy or angsty. It might be the only high school movie of the entire Eighties to not have gratuitous nudity or sex jokes. There aren’t even weed jokes when Bill & Ted seem like they *must* be stoners, right? Nope, Bill & Ted are so innocent they could star in a Shonen anime. They simply accept their world as it is. A space age future George Carlin visits them in a time travel phone booth, why not? They’ll just let him into their lives with an open, accepting heart.

The first Bill & Ted movie pretty solidly covered time travel as a concept, so Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey takes our heroes to the metaphysical plain of the afterlife. Bill & Ted are killed off by goofy robot versions of themselves, then travel to Heaven and Hell to set right the world. Along the way they meet the best character of this film series, William Sadler’s Death. You can beat Death, just as long you challenge him in Battleship. Death is this wonderfully dorky man, adorable in his desperate need for attention and earnest charms. This is a wild ride of the movie. Hell is full of these Tim Burton or Joe Dante-esque slanted nightmare houses. Heaven has a couple of Martians who fuse into a giant sludge to turn into a single giant Martian. Bill & Ted are so instantly likable even the great El Shaddai himself lends them a hand. And of course, it ends in a huge rock concert. Everybody can be happy in the Bill & Ted world.

There’s a bit of everything in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. The bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2, effective horror imagery, wacky practical effects, and more George Carlin. It’s an incredibly solid sequel, with only a single weak note. That being the homophobic slur the evil Bill & Ted bark at their good selves. Oh well, the Nineties were a shitty time in a lot of ways. Bill & Ted though? Good dudes and they were in good movies.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020), dir. Charlie Kaufman

See Full Review (I wrote many words already on this movie, you're not getting more until the Top 15 of 2020 list.)

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), dir. Aditya Chopra

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is going to be a really tough movie to recommend to people. I completely cannot pronounce that title. Let’s call it “DDLJ” since that’s the movies Twitter hashtag. And yes, people are still tweeting a lot about DDLJ twenty-five years after the fact. It is that popular of a movie.

If you had asked me to imagine a Platonic ideal of a Bollywood movie, I would probably have imagined Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. (The title roughly translates to “The Brave-Hearted Will Get the Bride”, and is one of the last lines of the movie.) It is a huge epic of a romantic comedy. And yeah, this being from India, it is over three hours long. Of course, it is also a musical. A beautiful girl and a handsome boy fall in love, then have numerous romantic complications that keep them away from each other. That fits the purpose of a movie like this, which is to be bright, festive, and full of beautiful locations.

DDLJ stars Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) and Simran (Kajol) a pair of Indian young adults living in Britain as part of the ex-pat community. Just before they both reach their planned adulthoods with Raj going into business and Simran sent off in an arranged marriage, their families allow them to go on vacation in Switzerland. They wind up separated from their groups of friends and fall into each other’s arms. Raj is cocky and careless, while Simran is fastidious and conservative. But they are both super fucking hot. What do you think is going to happen? 

That is really only the first movie. DDLJ’s second half is a whole other movie where Raj follows Simran to India, hides inside her groom’s entourage, and tries to convince her father to let them get married. It is a very Shakespearean-style of romantic comedy with hidden identities, and cultural mores remaining intact by the end.

I fully respect Kajol’s decision in this movie to not pluck her eyebrows. That is a brave Frida Kahlo statement. I couldn’t imagine any Western actress pulling off a unibrow. Also, Kajol is SMOKING HOT, in spite of, or maybe because of, the eyebrows. She also spends a good chunk of this movie soaking wet from dancing in the rain or in the bathtub. So, yeah, that’s a plus for me.

I do, however, have a bigger issue with DDLJ. These thoughts extend as well to Dangal. There is nothing transgressive about these movies. They play in a space of gender liberation and speak out about the poor treatment of women in India. But ultimately, all the girls are loyal to the men in their lives. It all feels so tokenistic. Like, the movies had to say something about feminism because the subject was unavoidable. Yet other than “oh that sucks”, they offer no structural solutions and if anything, reinforce the status quo. They'll play in the space of breaking conventions, then never do.

But DDLJ is just charming enough that I cannot worry too much about that issue. It is a really bright, infinitely pleasant thing. You cannot watch this movie without being a bit happier. The heroes are funny, sexy, and they’re placed in gorgeous locations. I think the best scene of the movie is when Simran’s father interrupts a love song so he can dance with his wife. It’s wholesome. The world’s problems seem to matter a bit less watching a movie like DDLJ.

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October is not going to have one of these First Watches lists because I am very busy with my 31 Days, 31 Horror Movies project. But November that might be Shakespeare themed. Hard to see what the future will bring these days though.

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