Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

As I noted in my review, I think The Grey being considered a good film has to do with the perception that the superficial thriller overtones actually disguise a solid psychological drama where plot holes are explained away by the whole thing being a metaphor for faith or death or some such thing. Unfortunately, I don't think it's particularly successful on either front.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I think it's probably to do with critics thinking it was pretty crap/meh, while people on the internet (kids) think it's cool.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

#264 - It's Such a Beautiful Day
Don Hertzfeldt, 2012



A compilation of three short films that all focus on Bill, a seemingly normal everyman whose typical malaise over the mundanity of everyday life is exacerbated when he has a serious health scare.

Good God.

Prior to watching It's Such a Beautiful Day, my only experience with the works of Don Hertzfeldt had been watching his notorious Oscar-nominated short film Rejected (about a handful of darkly humourous and surreal television spots that had been rejected from the network that had requested them) a few years ago - even then, I had been aware of some of its more...shall we say "memorable" scenes thanks to GIFs scattered across the Internet. I sort of forgot about him until I started noticing recently that It's Such a Beautiful Day had been earning some considerable acclaim and was being cited as one of the greatest films of the 2010s (despite technically being a compilation where two of the three segments predate 2010, but hey, if it counts, it counts). It's only an hour long or so, so I figured that I'd give it a try and see what the deal was.

What a deal.

It's Such a Beautiful Day consists of three chapters. Chapter One, Everything Will Be OK, introduces viewers to the life of Bill, a seemingly ordinary man who is trying to live his life despite the fact that he is clearly struggling with mental illness. Though Bill remains high-functioning in the face of increasingly intrusive thoughts that are preoccupied with the inherent sadness of life's more mundane aspects, he really gets thrown for a loop when he has a health scare that weakens what little resolve he still has. Chapter Two, I Am So Proud of You, is mostly a flashback that develops not just Bill's childhood but also goes back several generations into his family history, weaving tale after tale of everyday insanity. Chapter Three, It's Such a Beautiful Day...well, I actually don't think I want to discuss it in specific detail at this point. If this review intrigues you enough to check out the full film then you will probably be glad I didn't.

Despite being only an hour in length, It's Such a Beautiful Day packs so much into its brief running time that it honestly feels so much larger than it actually is. Hertzfeldt's simplistic and near-identical character models (the main thing distinguishing Bill is his hat) make perfect sense given the film's insight into a neurodivergent mindset, plus it also makes for the plainest method for depicting countless instances of depressing, horrifying images. The animation itself is aided by a lot of avant-garde techniques such as multi-screen editing, frequent inter-cutting with real-life footage and photographs, extremely disorienting sound design, and many other things that perfectly reflect the disorder in the minds of Bill and the people around him. The whole film is narrated by an uncredited Hertzfeldt, whose lilting air of apparent disinterest in what he's describing makes for the ideal voice-over to describe the characters' quiet despair and the various disturbing events of the film. The film is simply phenomenal at sucking you down into this dark, dire world and making you feel for its hat-wearing protagonist as he goes through a variety of nightmarish yet mundane perils and vibrant (but no less disconcerting) fantasies.

It's Such a Beautiful Day is undoubtedly one of the most powerful films I've watched in the past few years. In the space of an hour, it manages to effectively communicate what it's like to cope with chronic mental illness that makes everyday life a miserable existence even without the promise of physical distress and death - this is a promise that the film frequently makes good upon. This is most definitely not a film for the sensitive - even if you can handle the film's tendency towards flashy experimentation that frequently feels like deliberate sensory abuse, the film's many meditations on subjects like depression, time, aging, death, fate, and so on and so forth can be genuinely overwhelming on both mental and emotional levels. If you feel like you can handle it, It's Such a Beautiful Day really is an astonishing piece of work. It's visually creative, filled with bizarre profundity that isn't as tone-deaf as you'd expect from the man responsible for Rejected, and is able to strike an emotional chord despite (or perhaps because of) its extremely basic stick-figure design. People who have been following my ratings for a while will know that I try not to give a film more than four popcorn boxes out of five on the first viewing. To give you an idea of just how much I liked this film...well, see for yourselves.

It's such a beautiful day.

Glad you liked it, Iro!

#265 - Rejected
Don Hertzfeldt, 2000



A handful of animated shorts created by Don Hertzfeldt tied together by their being rejected by the clients who requested them.

After having watched It's Such a Beautiful Day, I decided to re-watch the film that was my first serious exposure to the twisted creations of Don Hertzfeldt - his Oscar-nominated short film Rejected, which can be found in full on YouTube and is only about nine minutes in length. The film's plot, such as it has one, plays out entirely behind the scenes as Hertzfeldt is employed by the (fictitious) Family Learning Channel television network to create educational TV spots, as well as by the (also fictitious) Johnson and Mills consumer goods corporation, who want him to make ads for their products. Of course, Hertzfeldt's extremely off-kilter sense of humour and uncanny animation style immediately make it clear why these two clients opted to repeatedly reject his shorts. They start off bizarrely enough with bug-eyed cartoons speaking nonsense, but soon the fictional version of Hertzfeldt starts folding under pressure and the cartoons become increasingly violent and deranged until eventually the film resolves in an extremely destructive climax.

Even though some of the jokes come across as juvenile, Rejected is still a solid piece of work that perfectly demonstrates Hertzfeldt's bizarre sensibilities in the space of a few minutes. The minimal production values and animation style make up a lot of the film's charm, as do the white-on-black intertitles backed by snippets of Beethoven. The shorts' gradual shift from the quirky to the unsettling is handled surprisingly well, as is the film's climax (which, without giving too much away, definitely hints at the sort of medium-bending experimentation that became very well-realised in It's Such a Beautiful Day). I definitely think I need to check out more of Hertzfeldt's work - they might not be guaranteed to match up to Rejected, but Rejected definitely makes the most of its potential and is an enjoyably ridiculous piece of work with just enough depth to elevate it above its cruder elements.

I thought The Grey was a decent watch but ultimately it's fairly bland and very forgettable. I was also let down by Man on Fire, although I think it's pretty solid. I am a fan of Bad Lieutenant and Panic Room.

#266 - Whiplash
Damien Chazelle, 2014

Original review found here.

#267 - For a Few Dollars More
Sergio Leone, 1965



A pair of rival bounty hunters - one a nameless cowboy, the other a former Army colonel - join forces to take on a gang of murderous thieves.

Sergio Leone films don't exactly lend themselves to repeated viewings, though in their case that's not necessarily a bad thing. This marks the first time I've watched For a Few Dollars More in at least a decade and the second time overall, but on the basis of that original viewing I put the film into my original Top 100. It didn't make the cut the second time around, but I still liked it reasonably well. I watched it again for the 1960s countdown and, though time will tell if it goes on my ballot, it is still a very good film.

A large part of what makes this film work so well has to do with the fact that Clint Eastwood's iconic Man with No Name (here named "Monco" as a result of the hand injury he sustained during the course of A Fistful of Dollars) now has a good foil in the form of Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef). Though Mortimer's slick black suit is a far cry from the colourful poncho ensemble that Monco wears, the men themselves are still very much cut from the same hard-bitten cloth. The interplay between Eastwood and Van Cleef is fantastic - they are rivals and have enough personality differences to generate some friction but their grudging respect for one another is another great trait. They team up to go after Indio (Gian Maria Volonté), an especially vicious and crazed bandit whose behaviour suggests he feels some serious guilt over some unspecified event in his past (but not enough to stop going on crime sprees, of course). The film fills out its two-hour running time with some standard Leone trademarks - prolonged stand-offs, drawn-out action sequences, appropriately gritty yet aesthetically pleasing cinematography, casually dangerous yet lyrical dialogue and, of course, a classic score by Ennio Morricone. Essential viewing for anyone who's interested in Westerns.

#268 - Dressed to Kill
Brian de Palma, 1980



When a woman is murdered, the investigation brings together a handful of disparate characters.

While it's no secret that de Palma's particular style of directing often pays homage to Hitchcock, it is with Dressed to Kill that the influence becomes overt to the point of feeling like a complete rip-off. Not only that, but it's hard not to feel like de Palma is also recycling concepts from his own movies - there were at least a couple of instances where the film copied Carrie (such as the fact that the opening scene involves a shower scene with gratuitous nudity that ends in violence, but then again that also happened in Blow Out - I guess he actually made it work with Blow Out). It's a shame because the film does seem to offer a decent (if overly derivative) premise and mixes in a giallo influence with its Hitchcockian ambitions, but the effectiveness of the execution is debatable.

I never quite know whether or not the inability to summarise a film without spoiling it to a considerable extent should be considered a sign of a film's strength or of its weakness. The fact that I could virtually spoil the entire film with a single word doesn't speak to its originality, so of course the quality of its execution is paramount. In that regard, Dressed to Kill still feels very much like de Palma with its lurid cinematography (which is probably this film's greatest strength, as established by one sequence that is captured in a lengthy uninterrupted take) and histrionic score, but unfortunately superficial style only gets one of his films so far unless it's got a compelling enough narrative (which it doesn't). As such, the film is held together by some fairly decent performances - Michael Caine is good enough as the murder victim's psychiatrist, while Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon end up being okay as the prime suspect and the victim's son respectively. Unfortunately, the actors aren't great at selling these rather underwritten characters. While it does have an alright undercurrent of suspense, the poor writing sullies it considerably, especially when the film reaches its endgame.



I'm not about to completely write off Dressed to Kill because it does have a fair bit of visual style and more than a few moments of tension and unpredictability, but it ends up being undone by damn near everything else about it. It still feels awfully rough and underweight (especially considering how de Palma followed it up with the far superior Blow Out immediately afterwards) and it doesn't quite manage to compensate for its glaring weaknesses in terms of scripting, character development, or pacing.

#269 - Re-Animator
Stuart Gordon, 1985



A disgraced scientist creates a formula that is capable of bringing the dead back to life, which does not have good results.

Taking its inspiration from a short story by none other than H.P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator definitely feels like an attempt to bring both Lovecraft's particular brand of horror fiction and the classic "mad scientist" type of B-movie. The vibe is so strong that if you cut out the more graphically objectionable content (and there is a lot of that) and converted it to black-and-white then it could easily have been made at least twenty years previously. Of course, such an observation could easily speak to this film's none-too-original adaptation of Lovecraft's Frankensteinian tale into a somewhat standard slice of low-budget '80s horror, but the fact that it remains rather entertaining regardless of that speaks to some hidden quality.

The film is ultimately zombie horror by way of mad science, with Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Coombs, whose extremely off-kilter and uncanny performance is almost too off-putting to be entertaining) attending a medical college and planning to perfect his re-animation serum using the college's sizeable collection of cadavers. Of course, this being a horror movie, it comes as no surprise that the re-animated corpses turn out to be mindlessly violent. Throw in a sub-plot about a stereotypical stuck-up professor who instantly becomes West's rival and there, you have enough of a plot to sustain the film in between the various zombie-like shenanigans, though you shouldn't expect it to be much chop (the same goes for the acting).

At least Re-Animator delivers fairly well in other areas - being somewhat aware of its corny narrative, it at least tries to have a little fun with its goofy-sounding music and frequently wooden performances. That's without mentioning the practical effects on display, which are surprisingly solid when they're not being noticeably fake, such as the attempts to create a disembodied head that is still capable of expression and speech. Of course, if you're watching a film like this in the first place then you've got to be prepared to roll with a lot of silly details (such as the serum looking like the contents of a glow-stick) and of course be able to handle some violent imagery that still looks quite messed-up even in 2015. Far from the best, but also pretty far from the worst.

Can't say much for the rating. But +rep for watching it.

Sounds like you can.

Going to give sharknado 2 a miss

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Wasn't too crazy on Re-Animator myself either. Good review.

I'm midway through It's Such a Beautiful Day, finding it very pretentious and random. Then again, It's probably just beyond my intellectual capabilities.

I wouldn't presume as to one's intellectual capabilities being an automatic indicator of disinterest in It's Such a Beautiful Day. As for being "pretentious and random", well, it is supposed to be a detailed portrait of the disordered thinking of someone with a history of mental illness. As a result, there are plenty of non sequiturs where Bill is set upon by intrusive thoughts and general depressive episodes, which only get worse as his physical health starts to fail and he starts to have delusions in addition to his existing issues.

#270 - Mad Max 2
George Miller, 1981



In the fallout (heh) of society's breakdown following a nuclear war over dwindling resources, a lone driver ends up caught between a group of civilised survivors and the murderous gang that is terrorising them.

You'd think with my fondness for post-apocalyptic science-fiction (especially the Fallout videogame series) that I'd be all over the Mad Max films. With Fury Road coming out next week, I thought I'd try to at least watch the first two (I already saw Beyond Thunderdome once in the last couple of years and once was definitely enough), but as events transpired I only ended up watching Mad Max 2. Time will tell if I end up re-watching the original but I figure that if I - or anyone else - has to watch just one of the currently released films, then Mad Max 2 is definitely the stand-out.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's without its flaws. I really want to like Mad Max 2 more than I do, but there's just too much wrong with it for it to be truly great. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there are few characters of note and quite a few of them tend to be annoying. Mel Gibson plays the titular anti-hero as a stoic badass, which isn't too much of a challenge, but Bruce Spence as the Gyro Captain makes for a rather annoying comic relief counterpart to Max throughout the film. The good characters tend to be rather nondescript as well, not even their leader who acts as a gruff yet optimistic foil to pessimistic loner Max. Also, that feral kid is annoying as well - it's probably just as well that there aren't more kids. Can you imagine a Mad Max film with a lot of kids running around? It'd be terrible. At least Lord Humungous makes for a distinctive enough villain with his raspy voice and hockey mask. The plot also feels generally inconsequential, connecting one action sequence to another and only occasionally offering up an interesting character moment.

On the action front, it's solid enough. The leather-bound steampunk aesthetic is pretty iconic and the outback setting makes for a good backdrop to a bunch of primarily vehicular conflicts, though it takes until the climax for there to be a truly worthwhile one. Mad Max 2 is pretty watchable for the most part, but it suffers a bit for not quite delivering on its potential. The characters are generally pretty average (if not downright irritating) and the action isn't quite as thrilling as it should be, yet there's something oddly charming about it that means I can't quite dislike it as much as I should. It'll never be great, but at least it's good enough.

Well said, will finish it. I'll say this, it does have an imagination in regards to visuals; very energetic (not in the norm, cutesy way). The fact that every individual event is so disconnected from the last is likely why I'm not so happy with it, but taking Bill's disease/disorder into account and how the film's structure is trying to resemble mental illness itself, it all sorta makes sense.

Loved Whiplash, never seen any of the Mad Max movies though. Good review!