Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I am very fond of the play, which I first read in a 7th grade Linguistics class.

The play is based on the myth of a sculptor who is disgusted by women, devotes himself to sculpting, and makes a really sexy statue of a woman and falls in love with her. (Was Pygmalion the original incel?! Discuss!) After a bunch of, um, intimate behavior with the statue, the goddess of love brings it to life and they get married.

The play takes on the overtly sexist elements of the myth and subverts them by having Eliza take the "acceptable exterior" that Higgins gives her and use it to forge her own path. The "perfect woman" walks away from her "creator". Higgins is never able to see Eliza as anything other than a prize. She wants a good job, he constantly remarks that he's made her "fit for a king". She does not want to be a trophy wife (and even compares such an arrangement to prostitution).

To me, the key line in the play (and both films) is when Eliza compares Higgins to Pickering, noting that the latter always treated her like a lady. "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated". Higgins always treats Eliza as less-than. And his only real praise for her is disguised praise for himself--because he has made her this elegant creature.

This is why I find even an ambiguous ending off-putting. Higgins has done nothing to deserve even a non-romantic reconciliation. He acts like a child through the whole film, sulking and throwing insults. He can be a fun character, I'm not disputing that. But the whole film is leading up to Eliza's self-emancipation. Like, imagine if at the end of Empire Strikes Back Vader was like "Join me," and Luke just went "Yeah, okay, sure. What can I say? This guy makes a pretty good argument."

My head canon for My Fair Lady is that it’s not a romantic love story but rather a girl learning that she platonically loves a sassy gay man.

It makes perfect sense that way because otherwise, it’s the most chemistry free, toxic and alien romance in all of musical history, which is saying something (gestures at Kiss Me Kate).

The recent 4K UHD release is eye meltingly gorgeous though. One of the absolute best presentations I own.

I saw this in the theater on its original run and I really loved it. I was 19, which is probably the exact age. I saw it once since then but don't really remember that viewing so well.
I agree that it is slow. And I don't know anymore if it was all that good. I'm really not sure why I liked it I just did. But I also like Hemingway stories about a guy who goes fishing and doesn't catch any fish.

On My Fair Lady:
I've never quite been sure which way the ending was leaning, that she was fully emancipated and with Freddy but had, in her emancipation, reached a level of transcendence and felt an understanding of and perhaps pitying warmth for him so she returned, not to become his romantic partner for god's sake, but to extend a kindness to him... or that they just had to shoehorn in an incredibly awkward romantic ending.
I like to believe it's the former for this simple reason: other than that it's one of the best musicals ever made. It knocks me off my feet.
So yeah, I gotta tell myself it's the former so I can be blown away by this film over and over again.

Made for an amusing scene in The Aviator, at least:

Fences (2016)

I almost said “the best thing about this movie is the scene it inspired in the Aviator” but it felt too pithy.

But too true as well.

rewatched

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The low point of the series thus far. It has a boring villain, bad action scenes, stupid attempts at humor, and a plot that makes no sense. Somehow Moore was also much worse than in his first Bond. The first Bond I'd call genuinely bad.

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caveat: l have not seen My Fair Lady.

For the past couple of years I've been doing a deep dive into old B-movies from the 30s-50s and it's astounding how many films ended with either a marriage or a proposal. Spies, cowboys, stunt pilots, gangsters- doesn't matter. Somebody's gettin' hitched at the end, no matter how contrived or unearned it may be. And in most of these films there's only one significant female character to begin with, so unless the character is already somebody's wife, chances are she's not going to escape the film without being betrothed to somebody. Granted, these are no-budget quickies and they're rife with lazy writing in all aspects, but this was something that has just stood out to me. You'd like to think that a large production like MFL would be above such cliches, but I guess not. The Third Man must have really been a shock to the system for 40s moviegoers.

And an unrelated side note: Many years ago my introduction to the Pygmalion story was via 1935's Mad Love, so whenever it's mentioned I immediately imagine Peter Lorre maniacally calling "GALATEA!!" My Fair Lady probably needed more Lorre, is what I'm saying.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Reading this review again, I totally left out an important if not the main theme: grief. I mean, there's validity in some of what I said, but Robin's journey is mainly one of accepting his wife's death, which is in the form of him being able to prepare a meal for someone else again.

The movie is now on Hulu, by the way.

But what about the third nipple?!!!

Well, but that certainly wasn't limited to B-movies right? I mean, I was recently thinking about the entire history of film for women and how rare it actually is that a woman was a protagonist of a film with all her own agency and none of her arc related to a man or trying to end up with one. I mean, you get down to like 3% of movies or something?
One that always sticks out to me is His Girl Friday where it almost seems like the point of the film is Rosalind Russell's cleverness and independence and all that and the men are kind of chasing her while she's got too much of her own thing going to almost even care, but then in the end she just sort of melts into a love-sick woman or whatever and everything is solved by a man wanting her and fixing her by marrying her.
It's not great even though it's a very funny movie.

Undine -

This is a quiet and whimsical Berlin-set romance between the titular water sprite (Paula Beer) and an industrial diver, Christoph (Franz Rogowski). I very much enjoyed writer/director Christian Petzold's last feature film, Transit, and believe that this one is just as good if not better. I wouldn't be surprised if he trained under or is simply a big fan of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Both movies have a similar simplicity and elegance as well as a keen use of coincidences like ones in Kieślowski's filmography.

My favorite coincidence in the movie is making Undine a lecturer in the city's urban development department for how it makes Berlin a character in and of itself. Doing so also makes the city representative of her romance with Christoph as well as such relationships in general. From her speeches to the many views of the city via train windows, we not only receive a fascinating lesson about Berlin's history, but also observe how its constant border and identity changes mirror romance's uneasy blend of reason and nonsense and its often unexplained shifts from joy to sorrow. Thankfully, the movie delivers this lesson in a manner that I believe is accessible to viewers like myself who have little knowledge of modern Germany. Oh, and what a romance it is, which has just as much to do with Beer and Rogowski - who were also in Transit - being such strong and charismatic performers and having such palpable chemistry as it is Petzold and crew's writing, direction, and timely use of special effects.

Undine ends up being one of 2021's best movies. Not to mention, as someone who yearns for there to be more simple, elegant, and short story-like movies that are at or around 90 minutes amongst the Shang-Chis and Tenets, it's a breath of fresh air. Oh, and speaking of "eyebrow-raising," you'll get a caption that will likely do just that if you watch this on Hulu. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil it for you.

I would have no problem with Eliza coming to a place of pity and even affection for Higgins.

But Higgins acts exactly, EXACTLY, like one of my students (one of my favorite students, BTW). And specifically I mean that his behavior is like that of a 10 year old boy with moderate autism. Egocentric. Doesn't cope well with change. Huffy and indignant when challenged.

The problem is that even in the "she just feels affection but not romance" ending, he clearly expects her to basically be part of his caretaking team. This is a man with like 6 people working for him, and yet he needs Eliza to write a note to make sure that the maid makes coffee and not tea?

She needed to walk into the room, give him an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder, and then walk away.

SF = Z



[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it

Pig, 2021

Robin Feld (Nicholas Cage) is a former chef now living off-grid in the woods with his truffle hunting pig. Robin makes a living selling truffles to Amir (Alex Wolff), a young man who drives a flashy car and sources premium ingredients for local restaurants. When Robin's pig is kidnapped in the middle of the night, he and Amir set out on a quest to Portland to reclaim his lost companion. Along the way, both Robin and Amir must confront painful aspects of their past and present.

I will sometimes write about my experience with a film being harmed by having a certain expectation of the content and tone of a movie. In this case, though I loved the film, I do want to say that if you think that this is some fun, Taken-but-with-a-pig type old-man action film, you are VERY WRONG. This movie is great, but it is not fun.

How do I organize my thinking on this film? Well, to begin with I'll start by saying that I thought both Cage and Wolff were excellent in their roles. Their characters are amazing foils of one another, and they bring different auras of quiet intensity. I was already impressed with Wolff after his role in Hereditary, and here he brings that same sense of a real depth of feeling. At this point, Cage can bring his own quirky gravitas to any role, and there is an undercurrent of electricity between the actors that only builds as they come to develop a relationship.

(And as long as I'm talking about the acting, the supporting cast is also really strong, including Adam Arkin as Amir's distant and dangerous father and David Knell in a very brief role as the owner of a swanky restaurant who has a past with Robin. And, heck, I'll also mention that the pig is incredibly adorable and endearing.)

What I see as the most powerful central theme of the film is the dangerous interplay between grief and denial. Robin has, following the death of his wife, chosen to essentially close himself off from his past life, barely allowing himself to confront anything that might remind him of her. Perhaps the greatest surprise of the film is that most of the search for the pig does not involve seedy underbellies or shady alleys. Instead Robin finds himself again and again face-to-face with the people he left behind, and it is so clear that they loved him and respected him. In shutting out the pain of the memory of his happiness with his wife, he's also shut himself off from so many other sources of love.

With Amir, this denial and grief centers on his troubled relationship with his parents. Amir's father is clearly controlling and manipulative, and puts his son down rather than wanting him to grow and be successful. Amir clearly aspires to be cultured and successful--in the car he constantly listens to an audiobook about understanding classical music--but we can clearly see that it will never be enough for his father. Amir is not really chasing his own happiness, he is trying to follow in the footsteps of someone who has no interest in seeing him rise up. A repeated thread about Amir not understanding why Robin won't "use his name" to get information or favors shows the way that Amir thinks about reputation and status.

This is ultimately a film about loss and how we cope with it, and specifically how having a troubled relationship with our past can paralyze or derail our present. This is a beautiful film, but it is also an incredibly sad one. To quote a certain interaction at the end of the film would be to spoil a major part of the ending, but there is a simple exchange n the last 10 or so minutes of the film that wonderfully sums up the film's perspective on acknowledging loss and why it is so important to do so.

The look and style of the film fits the purpose of it very well. The colors are all browns and grays and the whole thing is muted. The moments that are literally lighter--such as a sequence in a butcher shop or the aforementioned scene in an upscale restaurant--are cold and sterile. In the scenes that are dark there is grief, but there is also warmth, such as in a conversation between Robin and a former employee who now runs a bakery.

I have no real criticisms of this film. It was 100% not at all what I was expecting. But what I was expecting--Nicholas Cage snapping necks to rescue his pig--would have been cheap sensation compared to what I got. This was a really powerful look at grief and the price of closing ourselves off from the more painful human emotions.

I get that. I’m just willing to believe him transforming her from street urchin to woman of privilege buys some friendship cache despite his enormous shortcomings.

Not enough for a romance, because jeezy creezy is he repellent on that front, but as an eccentric amigo that’ll help her live fat? I can live with that.

But he is clearly gay, right? If he didn’t fall in love with her at the end (which I’m not saying he does!), everyone would chalk his mannerisms and behavior to the era not being able to explicitly state his homosexuality. This movie is essentially Queer Eye for the Poor Girl. I will die on this hill!

Agreed. But his ownership of her success---again, it's always that he has made her--and his inability to acknowledge her feelings means that he is welcome to some affection and pity but also that he really doesn't deserve to be the "last stop" for her character. Have that reconciliation sequence AFTER she's married Freddy and I'm cool with it, honestly.

I can live with him being her one weird friend, but the intent of that ambiguous ending is to open a door for romance, and on that front I find it repulsive and a betrayal of her story arc.

He strikes me, frankly, as being more asexual than gay (though this might be more the effect of the way that gay characters have their sexuality scrubbed away in older movies/writing). While he does literally sing a song about how much he'd like to be married to someone exactly like Pickering, it seems to me that he has no sense of romance at all. He wants company and predictability. As an intelligent person, I think that he wants someone who is more of an equal who will grace him with some friction from time to time--something his servants are limited in their capacity to do. I do think that his "Why aren't women more like men?" song is kind of a joke, because the fragility that he describes in woman (being upset if someone is home at the wrong time) is exactly the behavior he himself exhibits.

He does, completely seriously, make me think of students I have (and adult clients I've worked with) whose disabilities make it incredibly challenging for them to regard other people as having wants and needs that might be as important (or more important!) than theirs.

In other words, he's a self-centered buffoon, and the movie gets this hilariously correct until the moment it suggests that Eliza might choose him as a romantic partner.

I LOVE that reading.