Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

Hick, 2011

Luli (Chloe Grace Moretz) lives in a small town in Nebraska with an alcoholic father and an indifferent mother. After a bizarre 13th birthday party in which she’s gifted a revolver, Luli decides to run away. She first hitches a ride with Eddie (Eddie Redmayne), who seems both contemptuous of Luli and attracted to her. She later ends up traveling with Glenda (Blake Lively), but ends up crossing paths with Eddie again. As Luli gets increasingly enmeshed with the messy personal lives of Glenda and Eddie, she finds herself in more danger than she ever imagined.

Overly written characters and an uncomfortable fetishizing of its main character makes this a labored and icky watch.

There were so many times during this film that I found myself sighing deeply, just wondering who thought that what was happening on screen was in any way good or acceptable. I usually like to start reviews with the positive, but there’s sadly almost nothing to praise here. All of the actors---in addition to the main cast we’ve got Juliette Lewis, Anson Mount, etc--are people I associate with being talented. And you get the sense in the film that the actors are trying.

But again, you can SENSE that they are trying. This whole movie consists of watching the actors fight the script, trying to make the writing sound like something that would come out of the mouth of any real human being. Moretz gets the worst of it. Luli is a person who exists in the imagination of someone who has never spoken to a teenager or something? It’s not just that she speaks like an adult, but that she speaks like a scripted adult. Moretz throws a revolving door of actor-isms at the script--take a drink every time she sighs, bites her lip, or pauses meaningfully in the middle of a line, you’ll be dead before she meets Lively’s character--and it honestly made me vicariously embarrassed. The other actors fare a bit better, but no one gets away unscathed.

But the worst part of the film is the way that it overtly sexualizes its barely-teenage protagonist. There’s an extended sequence in the beginning of the film where she walks around in her underwear--again, this is a 13-year old child--and the camera slinks around her body, shooting her from these low or side-on angles. It’s just pervy. Moretz was 13 when the movie was made, and it boggles my mind that anyone thought it was appropriate to film her this way. There’s literally a montage of her admiring herself in the mirror and saying quotes from classic films. It’s not that a teenage girl wouldn’t look at herself in the mirror, but the way it’s filmed and how long the scene lasts made me outright uncomfortable. And what adds insult to injury is that the film gets most of its suspense out of placing her in danger of sexual assault or sexual exploitation. It feels grossly hypocritical to say the least.

Really, though, the overarching problem with this film is that it doesn’t have a point or a compelling arc. The characters are so over-written that they never feel real. This isn’t some slice-of-life. The pacing and flatness of the characters means that it’s not a road-trip romp. The main character doesn’t learn any lesson more profound than “a strange man who follows you around might not be a nice person.” And the dialogue is so painful that these overheard conversations would have been better off missed.

Insufferable. Points for the actors’ efforts.

Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, 2009

This documentary follows stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard as she navigates a challenging year of trying to write and launch a new show.

While there are some interesting behind-the-scenes moments and reflections here, the film as a whole feels very middle of the road.

When I was in high school, I walked into the video store one day and there was a stand-up special playing on the store’s television. I watched a few moments, then asked the clerk what it was. He stopped the DVD and let me rent it and take it home. In the year or so following, I watched a ton of Izzard’s stand-up. I loved the trend of jokes about history and pop culture, and my siblings and I adored the number of quotable lines. I was excited to learn more about Izzard’s life and creative process, but this movie ultimately ends up feeling very superficial.

I really love people who are different, but you can tell that they are genuinely just being themselves. At the time I was watching Izzard, she was still identifying as male, but also playing with gender in terms of clothing. In one show about the cultural dynamics around clothing, Izzard says, “Women wear what they want, and so do I.” It’s a simple statement, but one that really stuck with me in terms of thinking about the “rules” in society and which ones are worth adhering to and which ones seem to exist just because.

There’s really something to be said for the way that Izzard took the risk of being visibly non-gender conforming in the late-90s/early-2000s. While the documentary touches on this a bit, it’s not really a focal point of the film. Instead, it gives us the background of Izzard’s childhood---one especially marred by the loss of her mother--and a present-day look at creating a new show and weathering accusations of too much reuse of material.

I did enjoy learning about Izzard’s path to stand-up fame, including deviations into public escape artist acts. It really does show how making it is some combination of luck and really hard work. The idea of pursuing such a risky profession is hard for someone like me who needs a lot more certainty.

Unfortunately, while the film does get across the incredible amount of work that Izzard put in and the emotional intensity of trying to create new material on a deadline, there’s a lack of depth or creativity to the way that it’s put together that somewhat dulls an interesting story. It’s like the film version of a book report. Sarah Townsend, who dated Izzard for a short time, clearly has affection for her subject, but this ultimately means that some harder questions are not asked.

Eddie Izzard clearly has a unique brain. She’s gone through a very long journey regarding her gender identity; she once ran 43 marathons in 51 days(!!!!!!!); she’s done good dramatic work (I’m especially a fan of her turn in the Hannibal television series). I saw Izzard live once, in Boston, and she was excellent. This is a very interesting human being, and the film just doesn’t dig into how that all interconnects.

Some okay insights here, but I hope one day Izzard gets a documentary that lives up to all the interesting facets of her life.

Silent Running, 1972

In a distant future, all flora and fauna on Earth has died out and will not re-propagate. Deep in space, Lowell (Bruce Dern) tends to several biomes in a specially designed spacecraft. He holds out hope that one day they will get the call to return home and help revive the planet. But when they do get a call, their direction is to destroy the biomes and return home. Distraught, Lowell turns against the other crew members, going to more and more extreme lengths to save his plants and animals.

Despite some vagueness in the overall premise, I found this to be an incredibly moving portrait of a kind of eco-despair and the way that wanting to take action to protect the environment sometimes comes at a cost that’s too much for someone’s conscience to bear.

It’s hard not to be very pessimistic about the way that our planet will be irrevocably changed over the next few decades. And what makes it very hard to handle is being surrounded by people who will not make the most basic, tiny changes to their lives to reduce the damage they do to the environment. You’d think that washing out a can instead of putting it in the garbage was some huge imposition. Some part of me knows that the world would be a better place without human beings, and yet the idea of all those lives being eradicated is painful. It’s a hard contradiction.

For me, this film captured the heart of that pain. Lowell can see the tragedy of losing the diversity of life on earth. He can see the beauty of the plants and the animals. For him, life is not a product, measured only by its use or its ability to be consumed. But the other men on the ship---standing in for a majority of humanity---has no appreciation or care for the plants and animals. They can have their needs met via simulated food. Why grow or raise food when it can be churned out by a machine? There is one crew-member who seems sympathetic and open to Lowell’s point of view, John (Cliff Potts), but even he seems more tolerant than in agreement. You can tell that he’s basically a nice guy, but he can’t really connect with Lowell’s point of view.

And so Lowell turns to violence. At first, it is an impulsive act to prevent one of the crew from putting a nuclear bomb into one of the biomes, but the circumstances force his hand. He must choose between the lives of his crew or the lives of the plants and the animals in the biome, and it’s ultimately not a very hard decision to make.

But just because the choice isn’t hard to make, doesn’t mean that it comes with no consequences. It can be true at the same time that Lowell made what he felt was the morally correct decision, and yet suffers in the knowledge that he has done harm, and specifically harm to people he cared about. Lowell took life to protect life, and a huge part of the film is him slowly coming to grips with the implications of that, both logistically and in terms of his own humanity.

The most pleasant surprise of the film is the squadron of artificially intelligent robot workers--nicknamed Huey, Dewey, and Luey by Lowell--that Lowell reprograms to help him maintain the biome. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they got such amazing movement, but the answer was that they used actors with multiple amputations to work inside of the robots. There is something undeniably, for lack of a better word, human about the robots and the bond they forge with each other and with Lowell. Lowell attempts to use the robots to replace his lost crewmates, but in the end they are not sufficient substitutes.

I think that it would be easy to come into this film and feel that it isn’t really sci-fi, and I think that that’s not entirely wrong. Yes, the trappings are sci-fi, but this is really a drama set in space, using a futuristic setting to confront a specific strain of environmental anxiety. I found it incredibly effective, incredibly relatable, and incredibly sad. I thought that the ending was perfect and devastating.

If you don’t have some of those environmental anxieties, I’m sure this would be a long haul. For me, I connected very deeply with Lowel’’s emotions and his conflicting feelings. I’d often heard very middling things about this film, but I really liked it.

Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen that one, but I remember thinking it was good (plus, it inspired the premise of Mystery Science Theater, so it has to be good, right?). Anyway, have you ever watched that show, Takoma?

Have I ever watched MST3K?

Yup.

Re: Silent Running

I like some portions of this film, but that Joan Baez song they constantly play really sets my teeth on edge, and by film's end, I am ready to reprogram the three bots in Terminator mode and send them on a mission to Joan's residence.

Re: Hick

I had to DNF this flick because of the issue you mentioned with the sexualizing of a minor. It made me physically angry. Alas: Hollywood.

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Oh, yeah.

And I quite liked the recent reboot of it on Netflix.

I didn't love the soundtrack, but music/soundtracks are something I tend to tune out pretty easily. I agree that the song felt heavy-handed and detracted from the overall vibe.

Weirdly, the last 10 minutes are okay. Alec Baldwin suddenly appears in a small supporting role and he's good and has good chemistry with Moretz.

But overall, yeah, yikes. And especially considering she was actually 13 and not, like, an 18 year old playing a 13 year old (which can still be really icky, but isn't quite as bad).

I was just relieved that (SPOILERS) , but there was so much gross, like, male fantasy fetish stuff with her character.

The Last of the Mohicans, 1992

Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice (Jodhi May) are the daughters of a British commander, Munro (Maurice Roeves), being escorted to their father by British Major Heyward (Steven Waddington) and Native guide Magua (Wes Studi). But when Magua betrays them, due to a fierce hatred of Munro, the travelers must rely on the Mohican family of Chingachgook (Russell Means), Uncas (Eric Schweig), and the adopted Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis). Along their various adventures, Cora and Hawkeye begin to develop feelings for each other, something that disturbs Munro and Heyward, who wants Cora for himself.

Despite a story that betrays some old-fashioned narrative conventions, engaging performances and beautiful scenery make this an enjoyable adventure-romance.

The midst of the French and Indian War is a really interesting time period in which to tell a story. As various European powers jockeyed for power in the “New World,” different indigenous nations had to decide which allyships would best benefit them and/or allow them to retain some sovereignty over their land.

I appreciated that the film acknowledges the complexity of relationships between different indigenous nations, and that they have different cultures and traditions. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of depth that Chingachgook and Uncas were given as characters. They are not merely used as window dressing for Day-Lewis’s character, but have their own set of morals and emotions. Even Mangua, the outright villain of the film, has an understandable motivation and isn’t just an evil-just-because indigenous character.

The performances across the board are engaging. Day-Lewis is always solid, and he’s well-paired with Stowe’s strong but understated performance. Cora’s character is dealing with a lot of intense circumstances, and I thought that the portrayal of the growing attraction she feels toward Hawkeye made sense in the context of the film. It’s not merely that he protects her when she is in danger, but that she sees his moral treatment of others, even at risk to his own life. Means and Schweig also have good chemistry with Day-Lewis, and they make sense as a family unit, especially when Chingachgook is distraught at the British handling of Hawkeye. Studi brings a frightening ferocity to his performance as Mangua---someone who is out for revenge and laser focused on that outcome.

My favorite aspect of the film was probably the use of the forest settings. There is a very memorable battle sequence set in a field adjacent to a wooded area, but the movie as a whole makes great use of gorgeous landscapes. It amplifies the central romance of the entire story, giving a lush and sprawling sense of this as an epic tale. I think that the best use of wilderness in film captures both the danger and the beauty of it, and there are large doses of both in this film.

On the downside, well, a lot of this movie made much more sense when I learned that it was based on a novel written in the early 1800s. I’ve read more than my fair share of British and early American novels from that era, and a lot of the less endearing tropes are present and accounted for. The hero is white because . . . of course he is. You can definitely make an argument that Hawkeye’s race puts him in a unique position of being taken more seriously by the British, that being a white person adopted by a radically different culture is a special experience, but . . . eh. That’s not really explored in a very interesting way in the movie. It feels more like a way to dodge featuring a “mixed-race” romance. There is a very sweet parallel romance with Alice and Uncas, but anyone who’s read a novel from this era knows full well the trajectory of that sub-plot.

The story also feels a bit slight. Nothing against the romance, which develops pretty well. But the most interesting aspect of the movie for me was the historical stuff: the simmering tensions between the farmers who have been drafted to fight with the British, the French military commander negotiating terms for surrender, the different indigenous tribes choosing their allies, etc. Obviously the history is meant to be the backdrop for the romance and not the other way around, but on balance I wanted more of the stuff that was relegated to the background.

A solid historical romance with plenty of lush scenery.

Yellow Submarine, 1968

In this animated musical film, Pepperland is overtaken by the music-hating Blue Meanies. As the land is drained of life and color, Fred (Lance Percival) is sent for help, and soon finds the Beatles. Fred, the Beatles, and an eccentric scientist named Jeremy Hillary Boob (Dick Emery) journey together in the yellow submarine on their way to save Pepperland.

Visually engaging and full of enjoyable songs and gentle humor, this is a total treat.

There’s a huge slew of movies that exist in a sort of pop-culture periphery. I know their titles. I maybe know the basic premise. I’ve seen a handful of iconic images. This film definitely fell into that category, and while I’d never been given a reason to avoid it, neither had anyone ever really nudged me toward it. But honestly, this might be a new favorite.

I have a small list of entertainment--a ragtag mix of movies, television, and even YouTube videos-- that just makes me feel better. I watched this movie on kind of a rough day, and had a lot of trouble focusing. I finished the film, then I watched it again. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it one more time before I had to return it to the library. This movie just has a brand of good vibes that I really respond to, and it feels like a great discovery to have made.

There’s an ease to this film that’s incredibly appealing. When movies go too casual in their approach, it can sometimes feel like everyone is just phoning it in. But there’s a level of visual engagement here, along with a steady dose of dad jokes, that gives the film a strong sense of personality despite its easy pace and relatively low stakes.

The integration of the music is also done in a way that is enjoyable because it doesn’t try too hard to make the transitions into the songs super seamless. Someone mentions the title of a song, they sing the song. This might sound like a backhanded compliment, but for the distractible state of mind that I was in, I loved that this was a movie that I could sort of fade in and out of without feeling like I had to rewind it to catch what I’d missed.

The only critique for me was that some of the visuals were at times a bit too much and too intense for me. The kaleidoscopic animation was lovely, but also challenging to look at for extended periods.

One of the first films in a long while that I’ve felt compelled to own.

One of my favorite films of all time, full stop. The racial swapping etc. doesn't bother me, as I see it as a film of its time which as you mentioned, was based on a book that was very much of its time, also.

The Uncas/Alice stuff is some of my favorite content, simply because of how it is presented in an entirely cinematic way with basically no dialogue or exposition, and yet its climax gets me every single time I watch the film.

Which brings me to the promontory scene at the end. From the time that resounding shot is fired, freeing a now-redeemed Munro from his torment, to the final scene, we get some of the most moving and cinematic beauty in any film ever made. The music, the shots, the action, all without dialogue. Absolutely stunning stuff, and I get misty-eyed simply thinking about it. Whenever anyone asks me what my favorite scenes are in film, this always jumps right to the top 5 in my mind. Such beauty, majesty and melancholy sadness.

Another thing I always think about when thinking of this film, are the scenes with the family dinner near the beginning, and the somber overtones, which is both subtle foreshadowing of events to come as well as signifying the end of an era of Colonial life that was both brutally hard and incredibly rewarding and most of all, free. This was pointed out to me during a viewing a had with my friend @John McClane, and I always remember this viewing when these scenes are playing.

Excellent review, was this the first time you had seen it?

There are just so many bad takes on Yellow Submarine, from dismissing it as some hippy curio, to it being a childrens movie that children don't like, to being a fan of the Beatles is some necessity to appreciate it.


They're all wrong. Even if it is very emblematic of a particular generation, and crappy kids probably didn't like it and being a fan of the music is certainly going to help (but if you aren't a fan of the music, at least on a cursory level of appreciation, your probably a monster and this wouldn't be the movie for you anyways)


What the movie is is pure cinema. It's a place to set your mind. It's a curious vibration you just have to be still enough to hear. It's the kind of thing, if you need to explain its virtues in any real depth, just walk away.


Like other examples of what we might consider pure cinema (Passion of Joan of Ark, Fantasia, 2001, Gummo, 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, Magnificent Ambersons), I don't think there is any need to br all the film down into something that needs analysis for its genius to be felt. Not that we can't and not that this wouldn't add to its overall effect. But just immersing oneself in it is all that is actually required.


I didn't particularly like the Beatles as a child, but I understood Yellow Submarine was a keyhole into seeing both the world and film in a different way. Then when I grew older and came to consider the Beatles a defining thing in my adolescence, the keyhole expanded in a way that it allowed me to see the music in a different light. And as I became an adult, and film became more of an obsession, the quality of the films animation and how it is edited and put together according to its filmic whims, became yet another lens to view it.


It's one of the greatest things ever made. It's easily the best of the already great Beatles filmography ( well, let's skip Magical Mystery Tour). And even with many imitators out there, it still remains completely fresh and unique.


The best

Yo, dude, this means so much to me. I often think of that viewing, too, because I remember us getting pretty lofty with our discussion whilst watching.

For those that aren't in the know: I had taken a class within the subsect of contemporary French philosophy, and we got pretty deep into an analysis of the first third of Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze/Guattari. When I watched with Sedai, I had already seen the movie over a dozen times and had developed an all encompassing analysis of the film based off the work I did in that class. That is frontier life of Colonial times was a dying, feudalistic lifestyle being subsumed into the burgeoning ethos of capitalism, and there wasn't a single piece of the world that wasn't touched by this shift.

It really is a beautiful example of the push and pull between two completely incompatible worlds as the former dies. Some of my favorite quotes that hit the high points of my analysis:

When society has a cataclysm shift it graphs the old world onto the new. And The Last of the Mohicans is one of the greatest films in this regard. So many of movies lines can be viewed through this lens, and it never ceases to make me geek.

Finally, and most important of all, which version did you end up watching @Takoma11?

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how to phrase it. It wasn't offensive--as there are many documented cases of white people being integrated into indigenous tribes either as children or adults--but more like it was so obvious that they needed a white lead character for buy in with a majority-white audience. By making Hawkeye a white character it positions him in this insane venn diagram of identities, and yet it feels like the film barely scratches the surface of it.

Agreed. I just wish it hadn't been so glaringly obvious that

Yes, the last 15 or so minutes are stunning, and I like the way that the story sort of fades into the landscape.

Yeah, the historical positioning, like I wrote, is really excellent. For everyone in this film, the future is a complete unknown. Not exactly related, but I once talked with someone whose great-grandfather lived in Mexico . . . until he woke up one day and live in the United States because the land now belonged to the US. The idea of being in such a state of flux in terms of your citizenship, sovereignty, allies, identity, safety, etc is just nuts. And that's on top of, like you say, the precariousness of life on the frontier even without political upheaval.

It was my first time seeing it.

Yeah, I didn't find myself needing to analyze or figure it out. It was just there to enjoy in all its creative splendor.

It's pretty neat when you are learning something and able to apply it to a work of art.

I'm not sure. I got it from the library. I think it was the Director's Expanded Cut.

This was the version I owned and that we watched when McClane came by to visit. I normally always try to watch the Director's Cuts of any film, but after some chatting with McClane, who insisted the theatrical cut was the superior cut, I went back and watched it, and found myself agreeing for the most part. Oddly, while it adds some extended scenes etc., the Director's longer cut inexplicably cuts some great content out, some of which are a couple of the best lines in the film. These days, I watch the Theatrical Cut!

"Someday, I think you and I are going to have a serious disagreement.”

Also, above I listed Munro as the person who was shot, but I meant to say Duncan!

Interesting. Next time I'll pay more attention. I just ordered the DVD from the library without looking too closely.

Actually, I didn't mind this getting cut. If there was one critique I'd make of the script as a whole, it was that way too many things were overly foreshadowed in a not-so-elegant way.

I knew what you meant, no worries.

Yes, the theatrical cut is, IMO, the best version to watch. However, I will say that's coming from a place of analysis within the framework I mentioned earlier. But more specifically, there's a cohesion to the scene cuts in the theatrical version, as well as the flow of the soundtrack that is lost in both the Director's Expanded Cut and the Director's Definitive Cut. Both the DEC and the DDC have editing that makes for some sloppy cuts that are quite jarring.



And HERE is a big break down of the changes. They are so subtle, but it's a fine example of how subtle changes can completely change the context/viewing of the movie.

The TC is also the only cut with this music. Damn shame it got cut.

It's also responsible for a line I quote pointlessly all the time


"I've got a hooole in me pocket"


No, I don't know why. No, it never relates at all to any kind of pocket trauma I'm suffering.


It just comes out, without clarification, as it should be.