LYT's Awards Season Review Bites, 12-24
All my short takes on one page
(Image credit: the photobooth at the Netflix party)
Note: if this is page playing sound right now, scroll to the bottom and pause the embedded video. I’m still getting used to the coding and embedding here.
I can hardly assume that everyone who looks at this Substack is also following me on all the social media channels — however, if you are, this piece may be mildly redundant. As I cram-watch all the award-contending movies at the end of the year, I mark most of them with quick, coupla-sentence reviews designed to fit the criterion of “allowable social media reaction” and not “embargoed review.” I found this year it helped to keep me really on point.
Here, for your quick perusal, are all that I posted to Bluesky, in order-ish. Last year I tried to do TikToks for all of them but that is an almighty task with smaller rewards. But you will see a bonus video at the end of me reviewing some awards swag. They may be mildly restyled for clarity, but I’m not going through and italicizing a bunch of stuff, because this is my site and I don’t have to. These do not cover everything I saw, but most of the biggies.
PIECE BY PIECE, the Pharrell LEGO Movie, will be overlooked for awards b/c it's not a very probing doc, nor "kiddie" enough to fit LEGO stereotypes. However, it both justifies the format and makes the case for Pharrell as major cultural influencer while paving the way for future docs to rethink style.
Holy crap, THE SUBSTANCE. I'm not used to movies that have generally good reviews being even more gruesome than TERRIFIER 3. Love to see it, though.
#NOSFERATU: Handsomely mounted, atmospheric Dracula retelling looks expensive, depicts Count as a more repulsive, controlling rapist with no consent barriers. Other than that, doesn't add much besides more boobs, blood, and (in one scene) Drac dick.
#AREALPAIN- Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin go on a Holocaust tour. The former neurotic; the latter a stereotypical American abroad, loud, spontaneous, self-righteous with no filter. He is a real pain...yet so is what he's masking. I wanted him to shut up, but the inevitable reversal is effective.
Happily, #BLITZ is not a Hope & Glory ripoff, but a tribute to the sort of English children's books I, and probably Steve McQueen, grew up with: The Railway Children, The Silver Sword, and plenty of Dickens, if he'd lived in WW2. As such, plays like a serial boy's adventure w/extra blunt racism.
My one-word review of Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World: Indeed.
#ANORA-Sean Baker does it again! Premise-wise a "realistic" Pretty Woman, it ultimately accelerates into farce with expertly modulated tone. Mikey Madison is a star as the survival-minded escort; Karren Karagulian a scene-stealer as a not-so-great crime family fixer. Best-of-year level, no surprise.
Watching #SINGSING cold made the end credits a delightful spoiler; that aside, I'm always as sucker for movies about putting on plays. Colman Domingo keeps that fart-smelling face he does to a minimum; Paul Raci's back as a mentor to troubled noobs. Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin makes big impression.
#WillAndHarper- Will Ferrell uses fame for good, and models basic decency and respect to his newly out trans friend, while passers-by are mostly respectful on-camera, and super-bigoted when hiding behind keyboards. Not a radical movie in concept, but perhaps radical in its ordinariness to many.
#NIGHTBITCH- canine body horror is misleading marketing; fantasy asides distracting from the more banal fear of giving up one's artist dreams to full-time parent even the sweetest kid in his terrible twos. Amy Adams believably tries to embrace; director Marielle Heller again shows strong empathy.
#SATURDAYNIGHT and #SEPT5 make a nifty thematic pair about scrambling to put on live TV. I prefer the former, as an SNL BTS feels new-to-me, and GOTHAM Riddler Cory Michael Smith is an amazing Chevy Chase. Sept 5, shot a bit like Skinamarink at times, takes longer to settle into its groove.
#RedONE is better than a $300 million, 4-quadrant Xmas movie starring The Rock has any right to be. Expensive-looking, expansive mythology and action aimed at teens with minimal obligatory sentiment; interesting fundamentalist vs. pure faith subtext. Chris Evans is the real star.
Not having been familiar with #THEPIANOLESSON beforehand, I would not in a million years have guessed it would end THAT way. That's all I'm gonna say, except great acting all around too.
#HARDTRUTHS - so I guess narcissistic, joyless, inconsiderate neat-freak English mothers aren't just a white thing. Some fun to be had watching this as fiction rather than living it, but felt fairly one-note to me.
#LONGLEGS - more like at long last, I see this movie that's totally geared to me. Makes me remember that feeling of loving The X-Files and Millennium before the former got abducted up its own ass. Nicolas Cage as Tiny Tim worshipping Satan could go so many ways, but Oz Perkins keeps it creepy.
#Gladiator2 - About a billion times better than the awful, awful original, which still makes it just an okay historical(ish) actioner). Napoleon had more to say about war, politics, and cannonballs blowing people up good. Paul Mescal has a nice physique but doesn't leave much of an impression.
#ChickenForLinda: Very Frrrrrench family comedy, animated in children's book-y style, about trying to catch and slaughter a chicken during a citywide strike. Best in its night scenes, and 3 musical numbers don't add to story but let animators go briefly weird. Novel mostly b/c it's not Hollywood.
#JanetPlanet: All I have to say is that Janet, Planet, I don't love you. I already lived the life of an only child with single Boomer granola parent, their dating life with narcissists, and the toll it took on my physical and mental health. Takes more than a reenactment to engage me.
my #KNEECAP insta-take, to be enjoyed in the spirit intended: Jaysus, Ireland, it took ya fuckin' long enough to get into hip-hop, ya ballix.
#NickelBoys: Always exciting to see the language of cinema shaken up a bit - using subjective POVs, interjections, and nonlinear narrative, the film recreates the fragmentation of memory about a racist, race-based juvenile prison. Sometimes light on plot and one reveal feels cheap, but overall great.
#TheSeedOfTheSacredFig: This year's major Iranian-film-to-get-its-director-arrested feels like a warning of what we may be in for in a year or two, as well as commentary on Iran now. Depicts family of a pro-admin judge disintegrating; good use of surreptitious phone footage of protests.
#ACompleteUnknown: Lays out thesis explicitly, that all the old folks songs were new once. Tries to make the case that your Boomer dad's favorite inscrutable genius was also a little bit punk rock; half succeeds. Great cinematography like old blues photos. Little insight.
#Wicked: A big, expensive, FX-heavy musical for the price of a movie ticket. Not sure if it's specifically great as a movie but feels like a dang good deal for a show. Though not Baum-based, Oz-design is close enough. (Wife says leads don't sing as well as the OGs, but she still liked)
#TheBrutalist: Overlong saga of Holocaust immigrant succeeding among wealthy patrons for a time; predictable 1st half; gets better as closet bi side/heroin/obsession comes to fore. Looks great, and story flows; alas, depends on Human Stain-style concealment of key issue for a lifetime.
#Flow: Might have been a bit too zen for the mood I was in, but I appreciate the lead kitty in animated Noah's-Ark-minus-Noah with only five (non-talking) animals aboard. Looked enough like a game that i wanted to control it at times. Global warming metaphor obvious but fair.
#BABYGIRL: Nicole Kidman has this terrible problem that she's tired of having sex with Antonio Banderas. The rest is like a gender-flipped SECRETARY, with Kidman as the sub and her intern Harris Dickinson as dom. Mostly about the kink and little else, but fun as those things go.
Click the pic below for my review of Inside Out 2’s promotional candy mailer.
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Happy holidays!