Gamut of Reviews: Summer 2023

aka: recapping that week I got sick and watched a whole lot of movies

Hae-sung (Teo Yoo) watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) in Past Lives (2023)

In this format, I clear house on everything I've been into recently! In 2021, the summer post of this edition was the “Real Heatwave Shit” edition. Last year, I scoffed, saying “this was nothing on this year” and proceeded to talk about characters I’ve been into. Well, this year I was in Antalya in the last two weeks of August! Vienna kept up with Antalya in degrees quite a bit at points — in Antalya it was 36 degrees and Vienna has seen temperatures close to that in July too. Antalya, however, has humidity that makes it feel it’s much warmer and has you chase one A/C at a time when you’re outside. Unless you’re at the sea, something Vienna can’t boast of having. It was so warm in the ocean… so wonderful… I teared up seeing the sea get smaller as we left back to Vienna. I also teared up seeing the Danube on our way home. And then it got thirty degrees here anyway. I can’t wait to tell you every year how last summer was nothing compared to this summer’s heat!

Anyway, in addition to the rising heat, I also came down with a cold. This time around, I chose to watch movies in my bed. I normally don’t really tend to do that, but this week alone I’ve seen so many films, why not spend a whole post talking about them. I’m like Weyes Blood in that I love movies.

We’re talking about these ones today:

• Aftersun

• Cruel Intentions

• How to Blow Up a Pipeline

• The Thirteenth Floor

• Joy Ride

• Medusa Deluxe

• No Hard Feelings

• Past Lives

• The Card Counter

• The Prestige

• Elemental

Aftersun (2022, dir. Charlotte Wells) (rewatch)

I watched this immediately after returning from Antalya. The reason for this is simple: this is set in Antalya, Turkey, and much like my own experience, Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her young father Calum (Paul Mescal and his glorious back) also spend their time in a hotel that deals with all-inclusive bracelets — one that Sophie ends up acquiring. On my first watch, I was hyperfocusing on that Antalya/Turkey aspect to the degree that going into my second watch, I thought that I’d see Antalya, the whole, sprawling coast city and its surrounding province of the same name, revealing everything about these characters the same way Ikebukuro, Tokyo reveals everything about Durarara!!s characters. That doesn’t quite happen — the world in Aftersun isn’t quite that big in a physical sense. Antalya makes sense in that it shows the transitory state these people are in, as a tourist spot that boasts both mountain and sea, history (I’m pretty sure they go up to Aspendos, grrrrr I wish we could’ve gone too…) and modernity (the warden watching a soccer match on his television screen at night), the shallow glitter of the pool and the endless depths of the sea. The idea of leaving and being home, as Calum alludes to, or the Turkish diving instructor talks about. These are minimal moments, showing a world not quite accessible to us or Sophie.

Nevertheless, to Sophie, the restrictions still make up some of the most formative times of her life, in which she finds out about love and the fact that her father is simultaneously a porous presence in her life and someone she doesn’t know, may never know. Aftersun deals with the gravitas of silences, of pictures speaking for the characters, allowing us — and the older, lesbian Sophie — to imbue them with meaning that slipped her as it was happening. There’s so many of these moments. The Losing My Religion needledrop. The moment of Sophie watching the two boys kiss after her own clumsy kiss that was off-screen; the “well, he kissed me, and then we kissed” line; Paul Mescal’s back rippling with waves of hurt as he cries that Sophie remembered people had forgotten his 11th birthday (or maybe more); those strobing lights as Calum dances, and adult Sophie tries to reach him, and almost does, but then… then what happens? He’s gone, and all that is left is that Turkish rug he’s bought her, and the memories and recordings she has of him. Calum is a ghost now, and she’s his age, wondering where he might be. That last scene is one for the ages… Aftersun is such a fully realized movie, subtle and dramatic in all the right moments. There’s both a sophistication to its execution and an earnestness and a sensitivity to it. I think the worldbuilding (as it were) does a great job of adding layers of meaning to the movie. What a joy that it’s in Antalya. It couldn’t be anywhere else.

Cruel Intentions (1999, dir. Roger Kumble)

Cruel Intentions is the adaptation of 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons, following two step-siblings Sebastian (Ryan Philippe) and Kathryn (a brunette Sarah Michelle Gellar who I wish would return my calls) just before term begins. Theirs is a life in which money has them wishing for nothing, so the logical next step is to re-enact their parents’ messy love lives and, also, ruining other people’s lives. When Annette Hargrove’s (Reese Witherspoon) profile comes out saying she will never have sex before marrying, Sebastian and Kathyrn make a bet: should the sex-addicted Sebastian manage to deflower her, he will have sex with Kathyrn. Should he lose, he will have to give up his 1950s Jaguar to Kathryn before term. So much to that, but there’s also a whole subplot about Cecile (Selma Blair) to try and make her a whore to the school before term starts so her reputation is totally over because she fucked Kathryn’s offscreen guy… or… something…

There were a couple problems that I had with the movie, which felt decadent in its atmosphere and rich in its acting, very erotic at the beginning also, but the script itself seemed more interested in Sebastian’s problems (filling a void with sex is very Millennial Literary Girl-core!) and his relationship with Annette than Kathryn, upon which the whole bet hinges in the first place. Sarah Michelle Gellar does her best and there’s a whole monologue about how she wants to have as much sex as Sebastian does too, but she would be called a whore and he wouldn’t be — but it doesn’t really connect, because she doesn’t get as much screentime as he does. She’s just this evil figure who manipulates everyone around her, and it’s hard to understand her pathos as to why. Normally I wouldn’t really care, but in a movie that takes its time to flesh out the characters and show them as more than just the one dimensional logline, I just wish it had extended that same grace to Kathryn the way it worked amazingly with Sebastian. (That “Get a grip, you pussy” line… whoa.) Nice final needledrop though. “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve always works.

How to Blow Up A Pipeline (2022, dir. Daniel Goldhaber)

Nomen est omen: climate activists blow up a pipeline. A quasi-heist movie that scrambles up the order of its telling — the introduction is dispersed into flashbacks with their names on it, with a timing I didn’t agree with — the heist in question here is to stick it to the gritty, “real”, capitalism rather than the glitzy, glamorous, and unreal casinos (more on them in a bit). The movie supposes you’re in it because you agree with the title, which is the only reason why I imagine this straightforward dramaturgy is told in medias res (a move that will always put you into the second move of having to retroactively explain why you did something — trust me, I used to write like that a lot and still do). The strength of the script still works despite its handicap, though, because I held my breath whether or not they would blow up the pipeline or not; that soundtrack made things so, so thrilling. I would love to see more overtly leftist movies like these.

The Thirteenth Floor (1999, dir. Josef Rusnak)

A tech firm invents a multiplex laser machine/tanning bed through which you can enter Los Angeles of the year 1937. Owner Hannon Fueller (Armin Mueller-Stahl) discovers a secret that only his employee Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko, who I mistook for Clive Owens for most of the runtime lol) can find out. But the next morning, Fueller has been found dead and Hall has to find out why by going there. The way this works is that he takes over the existence of someone else of that reality that matches their likeness/brain matter. In Hall’s case, it’s bank clerk John Ferguson, a fervent dancer with a moustache. (Spoilers) Turns out that just like the virtual reality of 1937, the 1999 the cast is in is also a virtual reality that ends in Tucson, Arizona (or Toronto, Canada) and just like how Hall has taken over Ferguson during his 1937 stay, he’s also been taken over by a man from 2024 that wants to play god in the 1999 VR.

This isn’t a movie I’d normally watch, and within the context of the list, you’ll see my personal choices veer towards the arty and dramatic, if not lowkey. This is one of our family watches, which tend to go towards the highly conceptual. In the case of this movie, I felt the concept was great, but didn’t much care for the execution and found it meandering. “Meandering?” my sister and dad asked me when I said that at home the other day. “How much faster did you want it to be for you!” When you can’t connect with something, even pace will end up in a suspended state, I suppose. My main problem, writing about it now, is that I was afforded no moment into Hall. Who is this guy outside of work? What is he into? What does he want out of this besides the truth, which here translates to “because plot”? I couldn’t answer you that.

Joy Ride (2023, dir. Adele Lim)

Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) have been friends since childhood; Audrey is an adopted child into white parents, while Lolo and her family has immigrated from China. A dynamic emerges: while Lolo gives no fucks what anyone thinks of her, Audrey is hyper-aware of belonging; and as they grow up, Audrey is now a lawyer laughing uncomfortably in a white male space, and Lolo’s an artist working in Audrey’s shed (yes) who doesn’t want to help out her parents’ Chinese restaurant because they won’t understand her art (of dicks). When a business opportunity brings Audrey to China, she needs a translator, and also, Lolo suggests, what if they went to see for her birth mom, since the adoption service is on the back of the photo. Audrey, Lolo, and Lolo’s cousin Vanessa aka Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) travel to China… tagging along is C-drama star Katherine Wang aka Kat (Stephanie Hsu)… and while Audrey is initially against finding her birth mom, the plot has to coax her into it — I mean, the business partner (Ronny Chieng) asks something about how he can make a business deal with someone who won’t even know their family.

Hijinks ensue. China is travelled, then South Korea. Jokes are made. Sex, drugs, and… K-Pop WAP. But the third act reveals a vulnerable, soft edge to the movie that brought me to tears several times (okay, in my defense, my emotions are currently lowered!). The core of the movie is about belonging, and where it is that we can truly say we are part of something — a fraught moment for any immigrant person, who might feel like they neither belong here (where they were born and raised) nor there (where people like them “belong”, where people say they “should go back to”). And I think what the movie captures at so well is that the idea of belonging is a pretty fake one. It’s constructed like everything else. And sure, one might think that mainlanders have it easier, but it’s the outsider that reveals the true core of it all. Belonging is the space you are in, and the people that love you and will forgive you when you’re wrong. Friendship is where you belong. A very, very warm film that instantly pushes it into the same conversation as last year’s tremendous Return to Seoul (directed by Davy Chou), albeit with more — way more — cocaine involved.

Medusa Deluxe (2022, dir. Thomas Hardiman)

Mosca died in a middle of a hairdressing competition. Who’s done it? The idea is a simple one, but over the course of this movie running for one hour and forty minutes, the one-take style wanders through the halls, trying to capture the atmosphere more so than trying to solve the (bafflingly simple) murder mystery. With this setting, the one-two of in medias res, then the slow revelation of character and their motivation worked well because of the narrative framing of, well, “who’s” done it, so you’re working in reverse already. But it all boils down to the crime itself being quite uninteresting and the ending sort of flatlining its dramatic potential. That being said, it does look cool at points (the one take setting works so well when the scene is a terse one) and the actors do a great job. I was not unentertained! The ending credit song of “Rock Your Baby” by George McRae charmed me so much and then there’s a dance sequence by the actors! Like!!!!! I’d see an hour and forty minutes of that.

No Hard Feelings (2023, dir. Gene Stupnitsky)

Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a Montauk native, needs money to sustain her home. In order to cover her Uber job, she takes a strange Craigslist ad of two parents that want their son to be college-ready in terms of soft skills, if you catch my drift, in exchange for a very, very nice car. So Maddie, a 32 year-old grown woman, starts to fake date Percy (Andrew Berth Feldman), a nineteen-year-old. Hijinks… or something… ensue.

No Hard Feelings kind of lost me in the middle truth be told. The premise is so stupid so as to take the movie on a whole new ridiculous level, and I'm surprised it was taken this seriously (genrtification aside, which is an important issue that the movie couldn’t answer, the age gap thing was worse. Within the context of this film, answering it felt tacked on as a sort of “the young’uns care about this so we have to too”, which brought a sour taste to my mouth. Also like that one… really strange moment of like “Gen Z” “calling out” “homophobia” ???????? Hello????? The whole party scene needs to be canned). I'm frankly surprised the ex (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) angle wasn't played up much more and I would’ve loved to see Moss-Bachrach and Lawrence together more often. It seemed to me like the movie was more sympathetic to the lesser character (Percy) and the actor, who did a great job, was given more moments to show off his talents (him singing “Maneater” by Hall & Oates on the piano… like… lmao) as opposed to the superior Jlaw, who got all the “comedic” bits, which felt more like just piling onto the poorer and more nuanced character. Anyways, when it was funny, it did make you howl. I just wish that didn't come at the expense of botched dramatic moments and strange sympathies. The friendship did feel sweet.

Past Lives (2022, dir. Celine Song)

Hae-sung and Na-young are in love. They’re twelve years old and their homes are close (he turns left, she climbs the stairs). If Na-young asked Hae-sung, they’d get married, she knows it. But Na-young’s family (her mother, an artist; her father, a director) is immigrating to Canada. When asked why, Na-young replies that she can’t get a Nobel Prize in South Korea. Hae-sung takes this in, and when he sees her the last time, he only tells her “Goodbye. I’ll see you then.” It’ll take over twelve years for Hae-sung (a moving Teo Yoo) to meet Na-young, now Nora (Greta Lee) again — thanks to him camping in her father’s movie’s Facebook page, asking for his friend. A Skype friendship blossoms. Nora is a playwright in New York now; Hae-sung, an engineering student. Though Nora’s Korean has become rusty from lack of use, they talk for hours and hours, and before it becomes more, Nora has to abruptly stop. Because they are the same they’ve always been, and being the same as you’ve always been is a problem when you’re trying to be a new person in a new country. Meanwhile, Nora meets someone new: Arthur (John Magaro). They get married. And then Hae-sung enters the picture again, this time in New York. To see her in person.

I never do bring up my favorite movies of all time. They’re movies like Moonlight and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a movie Past Lives also brings up!!) and Howl’s Moving Castle; movies of low-stakes drama, where two people try to work out what being “meant to be” means, the shapes of love and its relationships. The movies where being together is an effort, a decision, and not so much fate. It’s the kinds of movies where it’s them against the world, which is to say, the world is the way it is and it’s a miracle these two can meet. Or can’t meet. I like having my heart broken in a million little pieces only to look at the mess and declare it glorious. Pisces-ass movies, in short. Past Lives is a Pisces-ass movie. These people will say everything that’s on their minds, their hearts, and the drama will come from the inevitability of Hae-sung and Nora not happening. The imagery is delicious, the silences hefty, the dialogue equally so. I cried so many times. The line “Who you are is someone who leaves” decimated me. It was never not going to be a favorite for me.

The Card Counter (2021, dir. Paul Schrader)

William Tell (Oscar Isaac, one of the GOATs) lives a simple life. He’s done an 8,5 year stint in prison, learned how to count cards, and now he likes to drive from casino to casino, playing little bets and winning a little money, covering his room in white sheet to write his journal. It’s a lonely, lonesome life, with modest goals. Things change when someone spots him at a security seminar by John Gordo (Willem Dafoe): Cirk (Lye Sheridan, and you pronounce it kirk, yes), the son of Roger Baufort. Roger, much like William Tillich (Tell’s real name), used to work at Abu Ghraib as an interrogator (a nice word for what amounts to torturing) under the tutelage of “civilian consultant” Gordo. Gordo got away with it, while the soldiers were discharged and either turned to a life of abuse (Baufort) or prison (Tell). Cirk wants to kill Gordo. Tell takes Cirk with him in the hopes of changing his mind. He also switches from the predictable Blackjack to Poker, taking an offer from the charismatic La Linda (Tiffany Haddish) with the goal of going to Las Vegas for the World series. Will he succeed winning the competition? Will Cirk go kill Gordo? And what’s up with all that white sheet?

The atmosphere of this movie instantly pulls one in. This is a cold, synthetic place: casinos, here, are devoid of life, are nothing but artificial life that show only an approximation of life and a slice of the American dream that Tell has never been able to attain, and even refuses to to some degree. (Meanwhile, some Ukrainian appears to competition as Mr. USA and is swarmed with his own groupie gang) Within this alien space, Tell learns to find joy — and Isaac’s eyes do so much work, so many nuances of hurt and joy and a careful wall built up, sometimes all at once. He deeply cares for Cirk. He deeply cares for La Linda, though he’s not sure how much is allowed. And what originally began as just a way to pass time becomes a place for him to answer the question: can he atone for what he’s done on Earth? (Or put another way: can he find a family, a place to belong?) The movie kept too much of a dramaturgical distance for my taste. For instance, when (spoilers) Cirk still goes to kill Gordo, it’s told to us, and thus felt like this tragic moment that struck more minor than major. Too cooled. There’s definitely a disconnect between the first and the third act; the first act felt more like it would be about poker. By the third act, it’s about Tell’s past, and the beats didn’t hit me the way they should; the payoff had no setup. That being said, though, Oscar Isaac. GOAT. That cinematography, that cold directing. So good.

The Prestige (2006, dir. Christopher Nolan)

Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) were once friends — coworkers, really. But when Angier’s wife dies during a water tank trick because Borden may have possibly bound her hands with a risky knot, things go south between them very quick. Angier makes Borden’s bullet catch trick fail, leaving Borden with two fingers missing. Borden makes Angier fall so bad that Angier has to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. Borden is a master magician, with illusions that are impressive, but has little show. Angier, meanwhile, is a showman, but not so much an illusionist. This is an important distinction, because Angier will spend many years trying to one-up Borden’s one great illusion, The Transported Man (exactly what it says: he leaves from one door and enters from another). When he even employs the help of Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), Angier thinks he’s got it figured out. On one of his shows, he dies — and Borden happens to be there, under the stage, watching Angier die in a water tank the same way Angier’s wife did. Borden is tried for murder, and the only thing that may save him is Angier’s journal…

Now the way I tell this to you is not the way it’s presented to you, because not only is this a Nolan (Christopher) flick, it’s also a Nolan (Jonathan) flick: both love their stories as mazes. But unlike something like Tenet, a movie I found tedious and frankly bad, the jumps in time tell the story better than if it was chronologically told. Recently there’s been a revival of Nolan (Christopher) as a sort of arbiter of gay movies, and what is gayer than lines like “I don’t care about you. I care about secrets” or the fact that as a man, Angier and Borden try to one up another man. Hmm… well, stellar cast and a good twist aside, what struck me so much about this movie is that it isn’t really about magicians (ha). It’s about writers. It’s about being a writer reading something that wowed you and trying to replicate its magic (impossible, but informative all the same); it’s about being a writer and wowing other people, maybe even the ones closest to you; it’s about art vs the rest of life, the push and pull of forever having to observe life but also having to live life. The stuff that would permeate both of the Nolans in their later works — clones (Jonathan) and dead women (Christopher) (ok I kid) (not really) and the way time warps and bends, the connection of science and art — has sort of a transparent blueprint within the movie, practically telegraphed within near the end. Even the way the movie is called The Prestige, named after the third act of a magic trick, is a cypher to both Nolans. It’s all a puzzle, but this time, it’s also an aching, roundabout question of how to make art when there’s so much other art, so much other good art, and how to still be yourself*. I will say, the way that the Nolans go on about it is still very Nolan (both of them), in that stories feel like solutions to be worked out and the movie’s implication that many people can arrive to the exact same solution, which I don’t know if I believe in myself, but for once in my life I really liked a Nolan (Christopher) movie not just for its concept (the way I did with Inception), but also for its gripping, strong writing. (Had to make the distinction because Jonathan Nolan’s first season of Westworld I absolutely adore.)

*Trying very hard not to bring in how much I disagree with the idea of this meme wrt to writing, but that’s a post for another day.

Elemental (2023, dir. Peter Sohn)

In this Disney-Pixar movie, various elements exist not as people, but as, well, elements. We follow Bernie and Cinder Lumen, who leave their home Fire nation to Element City, which had previously welcomed the Water, Earth, and Air immigration waves, making Fire the last element to immigrate. They have to make do in a home way out of town and in these conditions Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) is born, who soon grows up wishing she could take over her father’s shop, the Fireplace. Except she has an insane temper, the outburst of which eventually leads to water flooding out of the pipes, and with it, Wade (Mamoudou Athie) comes out of it, an inspector who must report the shop for various violations. Ember chases him into Element City, and what originally begins as the question on whether or not the shop will remain or not — including a moment in which they must close a broken barrier — ends up being about interracial romance and the “follow-your-dreams” type of immigration story.

Structurally a mess, everything comes too short here (despite a generous runtime of an hour and forty-two minutes), coming from poor set ups and poorer pay-offs, especially so when it comes to the character of Wade, who seems to have very little going on for himself in a way that matters (apparently just no desires but a whole lot of words for Ember herself?). Things that you think are important are suddenly sidelined for a big tearjerker moment and I was left feeling very unsatisfied. Pixar, the studio for big, formulaic storytelling, messing up their own rules here is a shame. This was another family watch. It’s not often that we all think the same at home after watching a movie, but it says a lot that all four of us thought a certain plot point to happen only for it not to happen. It’s a shame, honestly; there’s a moment in the movie where Ember says that not everyone is afforded the luxury of following their dreams, which is correct, only for the movie to hand it to her just like that. Like why not make a conciliatory attempt at both respecting parents and following your heart? I don’t know. Anyway, the Turkish dub was cute, the localized names were well-picked (Wade is Deniz in Turkish, that was the only one I would’ve changed, but to what I can’t really tell you either lol) and I thought the worldbuilding aspect, at least as much as we were shown, was pretty nice.