Movie: Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature
How I watched: PBS Independent Lens
When I fell asleep: I don't think so?
When it had me: It never did
When it lost me: Lost the whole time
What I have to say: I just watched Hale County This Morning, This Evening. I'm going to try to puzzle out my reaction right here. This was almost a long form montage film with images of this county in Alabama. Images of basketball games, sun and moon, fields, popcorn popping, bees crawling in a truck bed, shadows, lightning storms, church, people dancing. All these images are inter-cut with a handful of title cards. One said, "Whose child is this?" I don't remember the others very well. We meet a young family and watch them have three kids and bury one over the course of a few years. We meet another young man who wants to study at a good school. At one point we see him at a college but I don't know if he is going there or just went there to try out. There is no traditional narrative structure, no explanations of very much that is happening. The opening title says that the film maker started filming to try and see how they came to be viewed as they are. He might mean black people, or southerners, or both. I was at a complete loss while watching it and I remain there now. I know that I could get real heady and try to assign meaning to a bunch of it which is what critics undoubtedly have done but I really just wanted to watch it and experience it. Now I'll read what people are saying about it and see if that helps or hurts my opinion of this film. ......Alright, people seem to think this movie is a response to a 1941 book or journalistic endeavor called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men about white sharecroppers in this same county. That was apparently mostly photographs of depression era white people. And now this doc is a photography based scrapbook about the black people who live there in present day. Oh! I just remembered another title card, "What happens when all the cotton is picked?" After that card it showed black men playing basketball, football, one guy standing on the back of a horse and then a black military man in a humvee. I wondered if he thought sports and armed services were a new form of slavery. The white critics basically think it is a poetic look at a place and its people. I can see that, I guess, but you have so much power to say something in a film and I feel like an opportunity is missed when you work so hard at not giving the audience any kind of structure or point of view. I think this is artful. I think I don't prefer this kind of piece.
Movie: At Eternity's Gate
Nominated for: Best Actor
How I watched: Arclight
When I fell asleep: I nodded off a couple of times. I woke to snoring from my two friends who were with me and at least three other people in the theatre. I'm estimating at least six of the 18 people there were asleep at some point.
When it had me: There were some frames of film that looked very painterly and pretty. Willen Dafoe is a good actor.
When it lost me: Like, all the time!
What I have to say: What more needs to be said? This movie was a hot mess. I could tell it was really going for something at times...blurring out the bottom portion of the frame from time to time as an example. But moments like that felt like tricks, not cohesive story telling. Perhaps our theatre had a carbon monoxide leak? Or maybe this movie just didn't pull itself together.
Movie: Of Fathers and Sons
Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature
How I watched: Amazon
When I fell asleep: Not today, Satan
When it had me: When a child 'executed' a bird to be like his father.
When it lost me: a lot
What I have to say: This movie left a lot of unanswered questions and I didn't like that. I found the film maker unreliable. This guy goes under cover as an extremist, leaving his family for years and sits by watching people get shot at and maybe killed? Why would he do that? He doesn't explain, so I wonder about his motives. Maybe I should find his sacrifices heroic, but I don't. The whole movie is toxic masculinity, religious hate and basic disrespect for life and it's a lot to put up with. You get sad early on and then you just have to emotionally tap out. At least that was my experience. Not my favorite.
Movie: Christopher Robin
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects
How I watched: On demand, with the kids, on a sick day
When I fell asleep: Sleep would have been a relief
When it had me: Pooh's voice was right. That was all.
When it lost me: Too many times to count!
What I have to say: This whole movie was really very unnecessary. As a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh since forever, at least I finally got to see a grown Christopher Robin yelling psychological abuse at his magical and caring toy bear because I always felt like that was missing from A.A. Milne's work! No! Wait! Did I say I wanted to see that? Because I DIDN'T! NO ONE wanted to see that! My older child preferred to go watch YouTube videos and my younger child kept saying, "Mom, when will this be over?" I think this was not Disney's best effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment