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

I agree. I think that it's more that he always seems very present in his roles (in a way that makes me think he probably is a pretty good stage actor). I thought he was very funny in his supporting role in Lost City of Z.

I really enjoyed it. Some unfortunate stuff came out about the director a short while back.

Right. It's the antithesis of a role you'd watch just to moon over him and could have been an absolute disaster if it had gone the wrong way.

Also did not see that. Another rec?

Never heard of 'im, maybe this is why. From the trailers I couldn't tell if it was gonna be genuinely creative or just sort of dumb-fine high-octane like Crank (not that I'm above such things, sometimes).

Exactly. It's one of the reasons I'm still awed by Forrest Gump. People throw the word "brave" around a lot but not that many roles actually qualify. I imagine it's very tough, as an established actor, to figure out how things like that are gonna shake out, so they're pretty heavily incentivized to play it safe. Radcliffe didn't just take a risky role there, he took it with some up-and-coming filmmakers, too.

I really enjoyed it. It's an adventure romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, both of whom I thought were hilarious. He's the model on the cover of her romance novels and he decides to save her when a mad billionire (Radcliffe) kidnaps her to help him find a lost ancient city. I thought it did a really nice job of making both characters relatable and not having either of them be the "better" one, so it feels like a nice balance between them. It's light entertainment, but the good kind of light entertainment. HERE'S the review I wrote of it.

Also, I originally wrote The Lost City of Z, but I'm actually talking about The Lost City. Lost City of Z is a VERY different movie.

I think it's good dumb fun. I mean, Radcliffe wakes up with guns nailed to his hands. Samara Weaving is also really good/fun in it.

Yes, I think Boorman did an excellent job, visually.

Not much into Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst...

Rhubarb, 1951

Eccentric millionaire Banner (Gene Lockhart) comes across an intelligent, belligerent, feral cat on his golf course and decides to capture and adopt the animal. Calling the cat Rhubarb, he takes him as an unofficial mascot. But when Banner dies, it’s revealed that he has left a baseball team he owns, and it’s up to PR rep Eric (Ray Milland) to win over the upset baseball players and keep Rhubarb safe from Banner’s bitter daughter, Myra (Elsie Holmes).

A winning, very silly screwball comedy.

There’s something very refreshing about a movie that knows just how silly it is and goes after that tone the whole way through. There are plenty of jokes to be made about a cat owning a baseball team, professional baseball in general, and televised sports, and the film manages to score laughs on all three fronts.

A major sticking point with any animal-centric film, especially one from the 1950s, is the way that the animal actors are treated. With the exception of two not-too-bad moments, it seemed as if the animal action was mainly accomplished through low stress means, strategic angles, and off-screen action. There’s a recurring joke of dogs chasing Rhubarb, the animals disappearing from view, the sound of hissing and barking, and then a shot of Rhubard chasing the dogs. You can tell that this is done using editing, as with pretty much every other sequence where Rhubarb is in danger.

Milland makes for a good lead as he must keep the press, the players, and his fiance Polly (Jan Sterling) happy. Eric isn’t exactly thrilled about being forced into perpetual cat-sitting, but he wants what’s best for Rhubarb and the team. He has an easy chemistry with Sterling, whose Polly is given a subplot about being allergic to Rhubarb, but comes across as just a genuinely nice person.

The sweetest subplot involves the baseball players having a change of heart about their new “owner.” At first, the players all pretend to be injured so as not to be mocked by the other teams (and the umpires!). There’s a long, funny, and cute sequence where Eric brings Rhubarb to the club house and gets the players competitive about who Rhubarb likes the most. Later, in a game, they all tentatively approach the prickly feline hoping that he will let them pet him, as they’ve decided it’s good luck.

The funniest part of the film for me was a running joke about how frustrating it is for Polly to try and watch the games on the television. The announcer apologetically explains that they have to play ads from their sponsor, leading to a long and grating ad for a financing company. Polly sits impatiently through the hilariously long and drawn out jingle at the end of the ad (“Just call on F . . . . F . . . . C!”). It’s a joke that still feels relevant, and I genuinely laughed out loud at the parody ad and the broadcaster’s thinly veiled acknowledgement of its ridiculousness.

There isn’t a whole lot here in terms of character development---not that the film requires that--and the character of Myra is pretty thin. She basically serves as a mechanism to keep challenging Eric and Rhubarb with petty schemes, like taking the cat to court or trying to convince some shady bookies to kidnap the cat. Holmes doesn’t get to do much aside from sneer and be miserable, but her over-the-top character fits well in the tone of the film.

There’s nothing deep here, but I found it fun and engaging from beginning to end. Bonus points for the quirky touch that Rhubarb has a penchant for stealing golf balls from the golf course, as it’s an accurately quirky/malevolent cat-like thing to do.

The Sword and the Sorcerer, 1982

The wicked Titus (Richard Lynch) and his right hand man Machelli (George Maharis) raise an evil sorcerer named Xusia (Richard Moll) so that Titus can conquer nearby kingdoms. Successfully toppling his neighbors, Titus makes two enemies when he betrays Xusia and kills the family of young Prince Talon (Lee Horsley). Talon later returns as an adult, grudgingly getting involved in a rebellion to overthrow Titus led by Princess Alana (Kathleen Beller) and her brother Mikah (Simon MacCorkindale).

Despite some appealing moments of chaotic imagination, this one ultimately lands on the wrong side of dumb.

There were quite a few moments in this movie that made me want to love it. The evil sorcerer, Xusia, walking around dressed in a way that’s supposed to be medieval but instead looks like someone’s grandmother on her way down to the shops. An action sequence where suddenly the background goes a vivid red and the characters become dark figures against the striking background. A would-be rapist gets pushed face first into a wall to a sound effect that can only be written as DOINK!

Yes, this movie had all the elements of feel good, stupid fun. Unfortunately, those elements are more than outweighed by the exploitative tone and lackluster plot.

When conversations around fantasy and D&D subcultures get around to why women are pushed out of those spaces---or have been in the past---the content of this movie is like Exhibit A for why. There’s obviously the use of anonymous female bodies as set dressing (including one long pan of a random, unnamed woman’s naked body for absolutely no reason aside from, hey, have a look at this naked body). It seems that everywhere you turn in this mystical kingdom, five topless women are probably waiting behind almost every door! But beyond the objectification, there’s the film’s approval of some really unsavory behavior on the part of the main character. After saving Alana from being raped, it takes Talon about 5 minutes before he finds a way to force her into agreeing to have sex with him. If someone agrees to have sex with you so that their family won’t be killed, that’s not really consent. But the character doesn’t see to care about this distinction, and neither does the film. (Don’t worry, when the main character does “complete the contract” with Alane, he very subtly lets his whole crew know so that they can literally clap for him.)

The frustrating part here isn’t just the main character being a sexual predator---he gropes and kisses a lot of women in this film without permission, but it’s a fantasy movie, so they all love it!--it’s the way that this whole arc of treating Alana as a sexual prize renders her character really flat. This is tragic because I found Beller to be the most interesting and charismatic actor in this whole movie, and something like 90% of her scenes just involve being threatened with rape and looking scared and/or defiant.

In fact, there are a lot of missed opportunities for character development or fun subplots. There are a few scenes where we see how unhinged and paranoid Titus has become worrying about Xusia returning for revenge. He rants about how the sorcerer can disguise himself as anyone, and so he must stay vigilant and keep an eye out for someone with a “look of a snake” in their face. More of insane Titus, please!

But the worst offense here is how thoroughly underwhelming Talon is as a main character and how limp the whole rebellion subplot is. These people are . . . not good at rebelling. For most of the film, everything they try lands them in the dungeon. Then they escape. Then they end up back in the dungeon. If there was more visual flair on display, the plot wouldn’t have mattered so much. But instead we get seemingly endless conversations that go in circles. The last action sequence do spice things up a bit, but when you get to the ultimate resolution the main feeling is, “okay, sure.”

You’re too good for these guys, Alana. You’re too good for all of them!

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, 2018

Lara Jean (Lana Condor) loves the idea of romance, but finds the reality a bit intimidating. When her older sister, Margot (Janel Parrish) movies overseas to go to college, Lara Jean must come to terms with the crush she has on Margot’s boyfriend, Josh (Israel Brussard). As she always has done with crushes, Lara Jean copes with her emotions by writing a love letter to Josh and then adding it to a secret box of such letters. But when Lara Jean’s letters get mysteriously sent to all of her former (and current!) crushes, she must deal with the fallout, including being part of a fake relationship with former crush Peter (Noah Centineo).

Funny, full of heart, and empathetic to all of its teenage characters, this teen rom-com is a winner.

There’s something a bit magical about the way that this film weaves wacky premises and scenarios in with very real teenage dynamics and social pressures. It gives the film permission to be silly, while at the same time keeping itself grounded in the reality for many teenagers. Take a very fantasy sequence where Lara Jean and Peter have a deep conversation that eventually leads to Lara Jean wading into a hot tub in her lacy nightgown for a sweet makeout session. Very “only in the movies.” Except that a classmate has taken footage of the event and posts it to Instagram. Shattered, Lara Jean eventually turns to her sister for help, who then helps her contact Instagram to have the post removed. (Does this fully make the footage go away? Nope.) This feels cinematic and realistic in a very appealing way.

Holding the center of the film in a wonderful way is Condor. Her Lara Jean is determined yet vulnerable. She’s a protagonist who makes mistakes and sometimes acts in selfish ways, but is receptive to learning and growing as a person. In a scene that’s, again, very “movie-ish”, Lara Jean runs into Peter and then plants a long kiss on him to deter another guy who got one of her letters from approaching her. When Peter and Lara Jean are hashing out the boundaries of their fake relationship and she says she doesn’t want kissing to be part of it, Peter (nicely, but firmly) calls out the fact that Lara Jean kissed him without permission. Lara Jean is operating in a social system where there is hypocrisy that runs both ways, but the film doesn’t hesitate to call her out when she is making sexist assumptions.

The supporting cast is also very good and very funny. While I thought that she was written a bit too sassy, Anna Cathcart has some solid line deliveries as Lara Jean’s little sister, Kitty. John Corbett brings warmth and an adult presence as Lara Jean’s single dad. A scene where he tries to give her “the talk” before she heads out for an overnight ski trip, culminating in handing her a manilla envelope full of condoms made me laugh out loud.

Overall I just really loved the empathy that this film had for its characters. These are kids trying to figure things out, and they all have their own (non-romantic) issues that they’re dealing with. The movie uses Lara Jean’s romance-novel-derived ideas about love to probe the challenges of being in a real relationship, and specifically the challenge of finding a way to trust a person with your emotions because of how that trust makes you vulnerable.

This is probably one of my favorite teen rom-coms that I’ve seen in the last decade. Just very sweet and funny.

When the Wind Blows, 1986

Elderly couple Jim (John Mills) and Hilda (Peggy Ashcroft) follow government directions to prepare for an imminent nuclear attack. When the bomb drops, the couple survives, sheltering behind their detached doors. But in the days following the attack, the couple begins to experience the consequences of radiation exposure, unable to comprehend that this is nothing like their experiences during WW2.

Bleak, bleak, bleak.

It doesn’t take long for the relentless British cheeriness of Jim and Hilda to become incredibly macabre. The easy temptation is to fall into a sort of contempt for these people, with their naivete and blind faith in their government and the social systems that have always surrounded them. (Hilda repeatedly cannot conceive of the idea that the local shop won’t be open). I think that you might look at this film and scoff at their stupidity, but I would say that stupidity isn’t what we’re seeing: it’s denial.

Let’s assume that Jim and Hilda were incredibly astute: what are they supposed to do? Is there a way that they would have come out better if they exactly understood the nature of what was happening to them? Morbidly, I think that pre-emptive suicide is basically the only “solution” that presents itself. These rural, elderly citizens are in no position to prevent nuclear war, and neither do they have the resources to even hope to survive it.

The denial about what is happening to them is the most painful part to watch. An increasingly perturbed Jim tries to chalk Hilda’s bleeding gums up to the shock from the dropping of the bomb. They repeatedly remind each other about their son’s common sense, not wanting to consider the idea that their child (and daughter-in-law, and grandchildren) might be dead.

It’s all helpless and hopeless, and I couldn’t help but think of the people right now, in this moment, who are living through fear and trauma and pain and death that is none of their doing, and that they are powerless to escape.

The animation style is very effective. While most of the film is hand-drawn, with soft and round figures, many shots show real-world footage, and sometimes real settings in which the characters are placed. The contrast of a real trashed kitchen with the doll-like figures of Bill and Hilda highlights their innocence in the face of the horror of war.

One element of the film reminded me of something I read in an article about climate change. Basically, people vastly underestimate the severity and overestimate their ability to cope with challenges they haven’t faced before. The couple assumes that their experience will be like the Blitz, and approach their preparations with something bordering on nostalgia. As they create a little tent of dismantled doors and grouse over how to take care of bathrooming needs, the sense of dread builds because they have no idea what they are up against.

Devastating, which is exactly its intention.

When the Wind Blows is one of those films I've been wanting to see my entire life but haven't yet. The graphic novel was in our school library and it fascinated me. I've seen the music video for David Bowie's "When the Wind Blows" multiple times. I'll have to seek it out.

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I will say two things:

1) At least it is short.

2) You basically know what's coming. So it's really sad, but not with shocks, if that makes sense.

Yeah, It always baffles me people find this shocking or surprising. Surprise, surprise, women, as the fair sex, are beautiful and both men and women (including straight women) enjoy looking at beautiful female bodies in art. It's a fairly new phenomenon to take issue with that other than the world-old issue based on puritanical grounds motivated by religion. Come to think of it, this is puritanical, too.

Anyway, is that a problem only because it's the woman's body? What if it was a naked man's body? Would you call that objectification, too? Is Derek Jarman's Sebastiane, which contains a few oiled hunks posing, wrestling, frolicking, and doing everything else naked the objectification of the male body, too?

And if so, what's the solution? Sanitizing all art so that there are no images of naked male/female bodies? Does the director always have to have a good reason to put a naked person in front of the camera?

I used to read write-ups by a woman who was a strong adversary of this sort of puritanical thought. I loved how she ridiculed the 'fake feminist' (as she called it) ideas in an amusing and snide way. She was quite a feminist, but one of liberated persuasion. She believed she could have sex with any stud she wanted and that it was nobody's business. She also never missed an occasion to voice her attraction to a male actor she found attractive, often pointing out the features of his body she found attractive or downright stating that she watched the film only to take a look at this or that Adonis' body. I have absolutely no problem with her doing that or with directors including lewd images of female or male bodies. Even if there is no other reason to do that other than for the viewer to enjoy looking at those bodies.

Anyway, that girl I mentioned was a riot. I remember how she dismissed and then engaged in war in the comments section under an article that stated that women have the right to wear anything (or nothing at all) and no man has the right to do anything to them. She called that bollocks and the utopian adolescent fantasy of the fake feminists that don't know the world. She claimed that convincing women that this is true is hurting them and putting them in jeopardy because the world isn't as beautiful as the author of the article claimed and some men will hurt the woman who exposes too much of her body. So, if a woman was attacked by a rapist after she walked half-naked and intoxicated in the middle of the night, this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody other than the victim and the article's author who tried to persuade the reader that the woman has the right to do anything she wants. Long story short, there are some things we theoretically should be able to do in a perfect world, but should abstain from doing in our real world given how dangerous they might be. And since we live in an imperfect world we cannot eliminate that danger by social policies. So, if your idea is that not showing this kind of objectification in art will somehow make the world a better place, then I'm afraid you've got another thing coming. And if this isn't your idea, I have no other idea why you take an issue with that other than "I just don't like seeing it in movies", which is fine, but hardly an issue in general.

It's hard to resolve this beyond saying it's the dream of a drooling, acne-ridden, cave-dwelling teen boy. But most fantasy worlds are exactly that, so is it really that surprising?

Haven't seen it, but isn't this film like a Conansploitation? You know, barbaric times require barbaric measures. And the main point of fantasy films like that is this sort of content. Do you want to sanitize them all? If not, why even mention all that? If you do, how's that different from crazy Evangelical puritans who want to remove all sin from art?

Thanks, now I have to watch it to find out if it's really that bad or if you're exaggerating. Sounds fun, though!

I hate analyzing films through the lens of modern social/feminist ideas.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I was neither shocked nor surprised by the inclusion of this shot. I was disappointed that a film that at times showed a real flair for visuals and had an actual charismatic woman in a main role instead frequently sidelined itself into ogling random women.

Beautiful naked bodies, even when shot with a pretty objectifying eye, can still be an effective part of a movie. In this film, there's no sense of (1) these moments relating to the story or (2) actual artistry in the presentation of them.

Yes, clearly the point I was making was that no one can or should ever be naked in a film. Nailed it.

It gets very old that when I talk about my reaction to this kind of pandering use of female bodies, I'm accused of having something against nudity. Nudity/sex is fine, and can be used effectively for a variety of purposes in movies.

The nudity in this particular film feels merely thrown in to satisfy an audience whose interest in the women in this film (and 99% of the women in this film are presented with this no-name-just-naked framing) is only titillation. Do I vibe well with content that feels like it was given half a thought before being handed to a 14-year old boy to jerk off to? I do not.

You're acting as if my response to how elements are presented in a film must exist in a binary: that I must either ignore/accept it or advocate for the total removal of it. That's just silly.

This film repeatedly takes time that could have gone to character development and instead uses that time for shallow fantasy sequences that don't even have the benefit of being presented with an artistic eye.

This isn't even about feminism or whatever (though I think it's interesting that you seem to take for granted that fantasy must by default belong to straight men), it's about how a movie chose to devote time to an unsatisfying/unnecessary element while at the same time neglecting one of its biggest strengths (the main actress's charisma and storyline, both of which are much more interesting than the main character).

The Sword and the Sorcerer sucks. I think the nudity, which is obviously gratuitous, was probably the most memorable thing about it.

For me, Xusia's struggling fashion sense is this movie's enduring legacy. Like someone's exhausted hippie grandmother.

He’s gotta be careful not to show too much skin, lest he gets assaulted mystically for it.

If this movie featured Talon bursting through a door, only to fall sexily into a half-dressed Xusia cavorting by a shallow indoor pool, I would have given it .

No problem with that.

Not everything has to relate to the story. It's the American cinema's mania where every element has to serve the plot and if it doesn't it's style over substance or useless or something. Any American film that escapes the confinement of sticking to the story is usually accused of something like that. I love it when filmmakers digress and egotistically insert stuff that has nothing to do with the story.

Isn't the object of the presentation artful enough in itself?

Naah, but you're going down the boring route of "no strong female character, instead women are merely showing off their bodies". It's literally the most lazy form of film criticism. But my question is clearly whether this sort of portrayal is fine, too. I'm not asking if we should censor all nudity. I'm asking if we should censor this kind of nudity that's thrown in only to titillate the viewer without any artistry, not to mention it might be rapey and 'wrong'.

Which doesn't make it a philosophical masterpiece, but... fair enough? Plus seeing a nude woman doesn't have to automatically mean titillation, but whatever.

Please stop advertising this film, then. Now I'm afraid it'll disappoint me after you hyped it up so much. Jesus, a film buff friend rated it high, too. Another film buff friend claims the director is the master of 'so bad it's good' movies. I'm gettin' it!

You sounded like a generic leftist Letterboxd reviewer in your review, is all. I don't mind if you don't like seeing this sorta stuff when it 'doesn't contribute to the story'. But this begs some questions, which I asked.

Mkay, so it sounds like you just don't like cheap (s)exploitation films. Noted.

It doesn't have to but it mostly does. I merely stated that many fantasy films are straight from the mind of a salivating male teenager, just like those womanish feminist melodramas (Sirk, etc.) are straight from the mind of a lonely mature housewife. But surprise, surprise, many men like Sirk (for the record, I don't), and many women like dark fantasy. I think no genre belongs to anybody, though many genres have an overrepresentation of male voices and ideas. Which is good, I think, because it literally makes the few female voices more original and therefore more unique in comparison.

I'll have to watch the film myself and get back to you with my absolute and irrefutable claim as to whether this is indeed true.

You have no problem with that. Note that, amazingly, my review is not about your opinions.

Didn't say it had to.

Nope.

I didn't say anything about censoring it. I almost wonder if you are so upset at the idea of me objecting to these sequences that you aren't at all paying attention to why.

This movie has a lot of places where it needed more. More character development, more interesting action. And instead it takes a lot of time with either (1) parading anonymous female bodies in front of the camera or (2) redundant conversations between characters.

Maybe for some people, random naked women is an acceptable use of runtime. Congratulations. I'm not in that camp and my review reflects that.

I don't believe I said that seeing nude women (or men) automatically equates to titillation. In this film, it does.

You wrote a really long response about a movie you haven't even seen. And you're slinging around ad hominems. In a post where you also described me as being lazy. Oh, but you're "just asking questions." Okay.

I hope you reread this and realize just how terrible it is on all levels.

Your review is about your opinion, so I asked for your reasons, none of which transcend the realm of subjectivity. Note that your opinion is not merely "I didn't like it because it's not my thing". It was a very precise indictment of the objectification of the female body by using it as a set dressing. Your words. It seems like your issue is not with just this one film, but a larger group of similar films. Therefore, since I haven't seen the film, I formulated my questions in broader strokes.

You literally listed it as one of two reasons why nude bodies in this film don't work for you.

So your position is that the human body cannot be a work of art itself? You're treading on thin ice here. What follows is the question of what makes the presentation artful and whether art can be transgressive. It's all connected.

OK, so your position is you hate it but directors should be able to portray whatever they want. A film can objectify female bodies and involve women being threatened with rape and looking scared and/or defiant. Thanks for letting me know my upcoming New Pink Wave film has your sign of approval.

But you seem to be coming from a social perspective. And if there's no possible action you want to take, the whole thing is just words (tokenism), and such inaction is something any serious activist would dismiss. Fine if you're working in the social framework of honing your writing skills for the next big thing, but your review doesn't need the feminist edge for you to voice your highly subjective dismissal of B-movie nudity.

Ha! But the lack of character development is tied to portraying women in an objectifying way, right? It's the heroine you'd like to see as something more than just a set dressing. Character development can be a nice thing in some films. In others, not so much. Also, there's something I don't understand. You say it needs more interesting action and then you say it resorts to parading anonymous female bodies in front of the camera. You also said it portrayed rape. Sounds like plenty of interesting action to me. But yes, I get it. Dark Fantasy written by 14 yos is not your thing. It requires imagination and the ability to disassociate the whole thing from the real world - something most modern film watchers are unable to do.



For the record, random naked men is an acceptable use of runtime, too. I believe that a director has the right to use the runtime of their film in any way they want to, including just showing a blank screen for 2 hours. It's up to the viewer to respond to it and love or like or dislike or hate it, but gluing some wobbly social theories to a piece of cookie-cutter cash-grab entertainment is never a good idea. Sure, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Instead, it exists in the viewer's imagination, and the imagination should have no boundaries.

At this point I don't even have to watch movies. For the most part, I know the modus operandi of film reviewers and what to expect after reading what they wrote. I also know my taste and I'm sure I can rely on it. Lastly, my foolproof intuition always directs me in all the right places. Watching this film will only be a formality. 😏

Seriously, though, my initial questions weren't about this specific film. They were much broader in scope. I was trying to navigate the landscape to try and pinpoint your approach to this thing, only to find out it was exactly the way I expected.

Women directors are just inferior to men directors. But you know, they make for great actresses. They're almost as good at music, though. Sorry for being misogynist just because I have good taste in film.

inb4 "I didn't say you're a misogynist", yeah, but I kinda feel like one myself after I realized there's no female in my TOP 15 directors of all time. What can a man do, I have to be faithful to my taste, can't keep up appearances just to seem progressive and get accepted by my leftist friends. There are some female director geniuses, though, and paradoxically they all come from the time it was harder for a woman to land a director job. Modern women just can't make movies. And I very well know the reason. If they actually focused on the beauty of their craft instead of focusing on a ham-fisted feminist message, they'd do better. You know, not every woman can be Akerman.