Week Ending 1/2/26

Can you really call something a 'fight' if your opponent must first be stabbed enough times to lose enough blood so its tongue is hanging in abject fatigue before the real battle begins?

Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude works precisely because it portrays Peruvian matador Andrés Roca Rey's career with a fly-on-the-wall approach. He provides no narration or context insofar as the original purpose of bullfighting or why it still exists today. He merely films its violent dance with as much objectivity as possible so audiences can decide whether the imagery is beautiful, abhorrent, or both.

I'm glad we almost watch Rey die three times since drama only exists if we know the bull might get his vengeance (they're dead as soon as they enter the arena, so victory is impossible). The fight is therefore more about matador vs. audience than matador vs. bull. The former toys with the latter to enthrall the crowd and that need to entertain is what affords the animal the opportunity to deliver what everyone really wants: a mauling.

There's also a lot to chew on concerning the hypocrisy of machismo via the costuming (I cannot believe Rey can even move after watching him get dressed), sycophancy (Rey's entourage lauding him as an immortal God before commiserating about thinking he died once he's out of earshot), and psychopathy (calling an unnecessary, fixed 'fight' courageous rather than idiotic). Because any meaning bullfighting might have possessed should be explicitly rendered hollow by a modern society.

7/10

Will Tracy truly cut the chaff from Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet! to focus solely on what made it so unique: its paranoid sci-fi conceit. Bugonia completely excises the external distractions inherently created by a police investigation constantly removing us from the absurd philosophical debate of its leads. It's now all about Teddy (Jesse Plemons), Michelle (Emma Stone), and the inevitable imperative to push the envelope far enough to reveal the truth.

In so doing, however, Tracy also removes Jang's silly idiosyncrasies and replaces them with a more straightforward drama built upon a metaphor between bees and humanity that doesn't exist in the original—explicitly or implicitly. This is a strange decision considering Jang was attached to direct the remake himself before dropping out due to health concerns. I therefore wonder if this was a brand new script specifically catered to Yorgos Lanthimos' own sensibilities upon boarding the project.

Because this is very much a Yorgos film despite retaining every crucial narrative beat within the Korean original. Its visuals are meticulously composed. Its rage proves more politically motivated in its personal quest for vengeance while still remaining darkly comic. The unforgettable fantasy flashbacks are rendered in a style that brought Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Antichrist to mind. And Aidan Delbis injects a welcome dose of innocence and heart that helps the themes hit harder than Jang's otherwise self-serving cast of eccentrics.

I'm also a sucker for an epilogue montage of silent vignettes that looks like it singlehandedly ate up most of the total budget.

8/10

His community college teacher, upon reading his first essay, called him to his desk to ask what he was doing there since he obviously had the smarts and talent to attend a much more prestigious school. The answer was of course a complex one mired in familial strife, so Sy Hersh marks that moment as life-changing. He subsequently transferred, found journalism, and never looked back.

Directors Laura Poitras (who asked him to make this documentary twenty years ago) and Mark Obenhaus (who has worked with Hersh multiple times) use Cover-Up to commemorate the historical effect of his specific journalism and the integrity that went into reportage during an era when people still believed the job meant holding truth to power. If Nixon and Kissinger are name-checking you as a "son of a bitch," you're doing something right.

This is a strange film in that it wants to highlight Hersh's achievements and learn about the legwork that went into them (with the accompaniment of his original files) while also trying to get him to divulge more than he's willing to share. Some of that is asking him to talk about himself. Some to reveal sources. So, we get great stories reminding us about what we lost when for-profit news media embraced editorials above sourced reporting mixed with a combative tease of an explosive epiphany that never arrives.

The whole is therefore solid, but dryly matter-of-fact. It feigns "gotcha moments" that amount to little due to Hersh's complete faith in his own morality and ethics to the point that we must wonder what the filmmakers' purpose was for including them. Yes, he's fallible like anyone else. He admits it and stands by decisions made in the moment. Hersh's work ultimately speaks for itself and he has no desire to overshadow its potency with hindsight—a fact that doesn't necessarily help the film's ambition.

7/10

Better a harvest than a slaughter as commerce and modernity enters the bucolic countryside commune that adopted Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones) amongst its ranks. Because progress is coming to make profits more valuable than lives. Neither Thirsk, his best friend and steward of the land (Harry Melling's Charles Kent), or the inhabitants calling it home for generations can stem the tide. For some it might just be easier to just leave and start anew.

Athina Rachel Tsangari's film is a fascinating one as it introduces the myriad fractured pieces of civilization at a moment of uncontrollable change in Scotland during the Middle Ages. The utopian dream of kinship fostered by Kent's kind yet cowardly "owner." The restless struggle of farmers preparing for the coming winter. Strangers blown in to threaten a tenuous normalcy by their differences in appearance and nature. And heartless enemies demanding allegiance.

Fire, violence, and cruelty abound as these elements collide to force each party to look inward and take stock of their strength and loyalty amidst the uncertainty of their survival. And it all unfolds upon the shoulders of a widower imprisoned by his lost love to remain true to the land in which she's buried. Land he knows intrinsically despite being a visitor himself. Land that owns his soul regardless of who arrives next to claim ownership over it.

7/10

How great is it that Jang Joon-hwan conceived of Save the Green Planet! after watching Misery and being disappointed Annie Wilkes lacked depth? Combining the desire to tell a similar story from the kidnapper's perspective with an absurd conspiracy theory that Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien hellbent on conquering Earth by seducing its women, he hatched this violent sci-fi farce wherein Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) becomes humanity's delusional last hope.

It's a wonderfully unhinged concept that plays with the ambiguity surrounding whether Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-shik) is an alien or Byeong-gu is simply crazy, but there's a large portion of the runtime where that intrigue takes a far backseat to the resulting police investigation and Kang's many escape attempts. This section of the film isn't bad per se. It just pales in comparison to the overall potential of Byeong-gu proving to be a sane person in an insane world.

So, expect some narrative repetition and huge tonal swings—the whole shifts to pitch black nightmare when Hwang Jung-min's Su-ni leaves and than back to silly upon her inexplicable return. Jang thankfully sticks the landing with the final twenty minutes, but there are so many plot threads by then that it feels like the movie ends three different times. It's therefore a perfectly messy project to fine-tune via a remake and I'm officially excited to watch Bugonia as a result.

7/10

The answer to the question, "Who was the other nominee for Best Desirable Male at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards alongside Billy Baldwin, Tom Cruise, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Denzel Washington?" is ... a clammy, tuberculous-ravaged ghost as played by Val Kilmer. If he wasn't so good in Tombstone to earn it on merit, I'd say he deserved a supporting actor Oscar nomination for pulling that feat off alone. Arnie Grape robbed him.

This film is a true embarrassment of riches acting-wise. Every two minutes I'm like, "Is that Spiros from "The Wire"?" Or, is that Trixie from "Deadwood"?" By the time Billy Bob Thornton arrived, I just stopped wondering and started assuming the guy who looked like Robert John Burke probably was Robert John Burke.

I'd give the first three-quarters a solid 8/10 thanks to devilishly good villains (an unhinged Powers Boothe and Michael Biehn), one of the best sidekicks in cinematic history (Kilmer), and a pitch perfect Dante Hicks to Jules Winnfield pivot from Kurt Russell. That tonally insane final quarter was messy, though. Weird cuts. Truncated storylines. And the film keeps going well past its logical narrative end to dance in the snow and have Robert Mitchum deliver a "what happened next" epilogue line reading straight from a 1970s teen comedy.

I also thought Ike might pop-up at the end to blow Earp's head off since the latter kept letting him live to fight another day, before realizing it was much more damning that Earp didn't think cowards were worth the lead.

7/10

To look at Wicked: For Good objectively is to see two unique forms of category fraud. One, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande should both be billed as leads. Two, if you're going to demand labeling the latter as "supporting" in the first film, you must agree the former is the "supporting" role in the second. This is thematically true (Glinda is the character changed by its plot) and, I do believe, confirmed by total screen time too.

As for the film itself: if the second half of your story cannot hold up to the first, don't split them. This demarcation not only augments my issues with the musical being a prologue to a dream that exists outside the dreamer's mind, but its songs feel like a melody was foisted upon the dialogue after forgetting musicals need music. Its narrative also feels rushed to the point where any political ideas inherent to the whole 'scapegoats versus charlatans' conflict become little more than background color for a race to make it all fit together canonically with The Wizard of Oz.

It therefore becomes a two-hour epilogue to a flawed yet coherently drawn predecessor that plays with time too flippantly to wrap our heads around its progressions as anything but external checkpoints devoid of character ambition. And the fact that it holds a "two wrongs make a right" resolution as constructive—that patsies are a necessary tool towards providing an empty-headed rabble direction towards achieving what their opportunistic leader wants them to want—is actually quite terrifying.

Unless, of course, the real message is to reveal how democrats are truly no better than republicans and Americans deserve a third alternative that actually serves the people above the system. Something tells me that's not it, though. Not when the sole victim of this whole enterprise (Boq) is ultimately transformed into a bloodthirsty killer.

My wish is for this same story to be told from the Grimmerie's vantage point of providing characters the worst version of their desires en route to remaking Oz in its own nightmarish image.

4/10

This holds up really well. Yes, the adventure stuff (Val Kilmer was always a standout here) and hero's journey (Warwick Davis is unforgettably pure and sweet) stand the test of time, but so too does the production design, special effects (my partner yelled "Phil Tippett!" when his name popped up in the opening credits), and script.

I don't think I realized how good Billy Barty's High Alden was when watching it as a child, though. The way he coyly manipulates situations to fit the people thrust into them rather than force them to fit his vision or desire is so much fun. He's not necessarily a charlatan since he does possess magic and power. It's more that he's a master of improvisation as a means of augmenting both.

The score started playing and I was instantly humming along as if it had been hiding in the recesses of my mind, waiting to be unearthed again. Never reading The Hobbit until Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films released makes rewatching this so interesting now since it is obviously an homage (Did Ian McKellen use Patricia Hayes' Raziel as inspiration for Gandalf?). And you know Jean Marsh's devilishly great performance would have been the genre turn everyone wanted to earn an Oscar nomination had it come out this decade.

8/10