Month: December 2022

I’ve finally decided upon the proper sequential order of HE’s top 30 films of 2022. Almost every title has a link to my original review. (Okay, one or two links don’t connect to a “review” as much as a riff that contains opinions.) But this is the final order, and if you insist on only considering a Top Ten list…

Okay, I didn’t really like The Northman, but I respected it. Excerpt: “Excessive isn’t the word — startling, repetitious, numbing, eye-filling, confounding and yet all of a single harmonious compositional piece. Obviously the work of a serious artist. Handsome, exquisitely composed and about as bereft of humanity as a film in this vein could possibly be.”

1. Empire of Light
2. Close
3. Happening
4. Vengeance
5. She Said
6. Emily The Criminal
7. Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N.
8. Top Gun: Maverick
9. Avatar: The Way of Water
10. Tar (despite the many irritations)

11. Bardo
12. The Banshees of Inisherin (minus the finger stubs)
13. Thirteen Lives
14. Armageddon Time
15. The Menu
16. God’s Country
17. All Quiet on the Western Front
18. Palm Trees and Power Lines
19. Triangle of Sadness
20. Holy Spider

21. The Batman
22. The Northman
23. Living (decent)
24. Argentina 1985
25. Apollo 10 and 1/2
26. Navalny
27. Las Vegas portion of Elvis
28. Watcher
29. Bros.
30. The Fabelmans

In the midst of moving from Los Angeles to Connecticut last July, I forgot to renew my DBA (“doing business as”) certification. I’ve just been told by my principal bank that I have to re-file and re-validate the DBA thing. That means slogging it out yourself and paying a $150 fee to one of those agencies who do it for you. If you know anything about slogging it out on your lonesome you know you have to spend hours online to figure out the process, which usually culminates in physically travelling to some godforsaken Kafka-esque government office and waiting in line…soul-suffocating misery for everyone involved, including the clerks.

Or was it closer to 20 months? When did mask mandates start to lift in a significant way? I can’t even remember.

On 3.1.22 the N.Y. Times reported that mask mandates were being lifted in “several” states, but didn’t masking more or less stop sometime in the fall of ’21? Can’t recall if it was early, mid or late fall.

I know that when I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home at the Grove on 12.16.21 no one was wearing a mask, and that‘s what I first got Covid (i.e., Omicron). But I didn’t care. Because I was so sick of living a mummified pandemic lifestyle that even being sick felt like a liberation.

For roughly 18 months (3.20.20 to the final third of ’21) we were all part of a Vast Army of Suffocated Shut-Ins.

Tatiana and I got the hell out of Dodge twice to escape the awfulness of it all — to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley area in August of ’20 and then an escape to Belize (lost iPhone, pit-bull attack, dead bats) in June of ’21.

As we speak I’ve been vaxxed four times and have had two four-day bouts with Covid (the last one two or three weeks ago), and I don’t care if I get it again because it’ll just be another flu-like experience and so what?

I died a thousand times during the pandemic, and I’d rather physically die than go through that again.

For several decades I lived as a free soul more or less, acquiring experience, taking my lumps and loving certain moments, and then life stopped sometime around 3.20.20. It was exotic at first, and then it was hellish. Pandemic gov’t assistance was a lifesaver, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that life just slowed to a crawl.

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Mainly because Average Joes are reporting that they’re suffering vague headaches and otherwise (as I noted in my initial reaction) feeling exhausted from the weight and length and gut-slammy nature of Avatar 2. Which is partly attributable to its 192-minute length, and partly due to the heavily-saturated visual spectacle.

It’s too familiar, too cliched, too long and, the underwater stuff aside, not as much of an eye-popper as the original Avatar because it’s basically a flamboyant rehash and because so much has happened big-spectacle-wise over the last 13 years.

Avatar 2 is visually masterful and dazzling from start to finish, yes, but, as the Critical Drinker notes, “visual spectacle is nothing new in movies today, and the more you see it in this film, the less impact it ends up having,..it’s like being fed the world’s largest chocolate cake morning, noon and night for an entire year…eventually you get kinda sick of it.”

Plus pic “suffers from a bloated and self-indulgent screenplay that drags on for at least an hour longer than it needs to…the middle family section is 90 minutes of sheer fucking inertia.”

Boiled down, the too-much-chocolate-cake aspect, I think, is what seems to be giving people headaches. (And which may have killed that poor guy in India.) Chocolate cake overload. Avatar 2 may or may not reach the worldwide $2 billion gross that director-writer-producer James Cameron has said it needs to earn to be considered a success, but like I said a day or two ago, three Avatars on Pandora will be more than enough. Please.

The only thing that could prolong the interest factor would be if a huge Navi army travels to our planet to confront the powers-that-be and…I don’t know, demand that they leave Pandora alone. Perhaps a wild-ass battle of some kind, or perhaps some kind of a Davy Crockett goes to Congress denouement…I don’t know. Okay, confronting humans on their own turf isn’t such a good idea. The Navi can’t breathe our air, for one thing.

Three is enough, over and out.

7:55 pm update: I forgot to include several ’22 films for my primo list — I’ll include them in Tuesday’s bigger, more definitive rundown.

The ones I forgot to mention are Bardo, The Batman, Thirteen Lives, Armageddon Time, Argentina 1985, Apollo 10 and 1/2, Navalny, God’s Country, Watcher and Palm Trees and Power Lines — 10 in all for a total of 29. Okay, if I add Till it’ll make an even 30.

Take that, Jeremy Fassler!

Earlier: Some of these 2022 films (boldfaced) are excellent. I’ll post an expanded rundown tomorrow with a few excerpts and rimshots, but here, for now, are 2022’s finest. Okay, it was a weak year.

Earlier this afternoon HE commenter Jeremy Fassler wrote “hey, man, all you do is piss on everything! If you hate movies so much why do you maintain HE?” Or something close to that.

Every year I come up with a list of least six or seven top-top tier films combined with 12 or 13 good to pretty good ones. This year’s tally came to 19.

Hey, Fassler — have you seen Close or Happening or Vengeance? Have you considered the possibility that your taste in films might be your own and that my preferences follow their own suit?

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Lakshmireddy Srinu, a resident of the Kakinada district of India’s southern Andhra Pradesh region, died of cardiac arrest last weekend while watching Avatar: The Way of Water.

It has been theorized (but not proven) that Srinu’s heart couldn’t handle the 3D wowser excitement levels.

A report posted this morning (12.19, 9:37 am) by metro.co.uk’s Alicia Adajobi didn’t mention (a) what day Srinu died on (although it was probably on Friday, 12.16), (b) how old he was or (c) whether or not he was obese.

The original report, posted on Saturday, 12.17, was filed by Parmita Uniyal of New Delhi’s Hindustan Times

Dr. Sanjeev Gera, director of Noida’s Fortis Hospital, told Unival that Serinu may have died “because of stress…increase in blood pressure like what happened in this case, arteries of the heart could have ruptured and that can cause sudden cardiac arrest.’

Aster CMI Hospital’s Dr. Pradeep Kumar added, ‘This may be due to a plaque rupture in the coronaries or triggering of an arrhythmia due to excitement.”

So James Cameron‘s film didn’t actually kill the poor guy. Most likely his heart was in bad shape to begin with, and all he needed was a little push.

You know this story adds to the Avatar want-to-see factor. You know it does.

The MAGA insurrection against the U.S. Capitol happened on Wednesday, 1.6.21. According to the below text, Former Trump assistant Hope Hicks expressed concerns to President Trump about potential violence during the then-forthcoming 1.6 demonstration on Monday, 1.4.21 and Tuesday, 1.5.21. And that he didn’t share her concerns.

Hick’s 1.6 Committee testimony begins at 4:15. Notice how Hicks speaks with a kind of twangy, vocal-fry sexy baby voice:

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Two and one-third years ago**, Tom Cruise performed a wild-ass, death-defying motorcycle jump off an up-sloping ramp in Hellesylt, Norway. It will presumably be the most hair-raising action stunt in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount, 7.14.23).

And the featurette is a fascinating proof of two things. One, the 60 year-old Cruise (58 when the stunt was performed) is utterly fearless. And two, the on-camera “Tom is the man!” testimonials by the filmmakers (including director-writer Chris McQuarrie) and stunt coordinators is relentless. Example: “He’s an amazing individual…the most aware person I’ve ever met.” If just one person had shrugged their shoulders and said, “Yeah, the stunt is really hairy but this is what Cruise has always done…it’s his brand and we’ve been watching him do this shit for several years so you can’t say it isn’t, you know, kinda familiar.”

Two questions: (1) The ramp was constructed by the Dead Reckoning engineers, but within the world of the film’s story, what’s it doing there? What’s the actual purpose? Who would build such a thing except to give an adventurous actor an opportunity to perform a terrific motorcycle stunt? (2) Why doesn’t the featurette let us see the motorcycle smashing into the rocky terrain below and exploding into pieces? I love watching vehicles get destroyed.

The sequel, Dead Reckoning Part Two, will be released on 6.28.24.

** Right in the middle of the pandemic, of course, as well as the Biden-Trump presidential campaign.

TAR‘s muddy, under-lighted, haunted-house interior visuals were shot on an Arri 765 (film) and an Arri Alex (digital).

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “My final verdict is that I kinda hate TAR visually, and that the various shadings and ghostings and mysteries are just too tricky by half. It’s too referenced, too smartypants. It drives you nuts.”

Excerpt from 12.9.22 TAR piece by Slate‘s Dan Kois:

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “Field is deliberately snobbing the audience. Shipobo-Conibo is the straw that broke this camel’s (my) back. On one hand Lydia has been savagely cancel-cultured by robots, and at the same time she’s totally responsible for her fate? Field is all over the map. Truly great art speaks to the none-too-bright, under-educated person as well as the brilliant viewer with an elegant education.”

Santa Barbara friendo to HE: “I’ve had the reverse reaction. On the surface TAR is engaging and it can be enjoyed by everyone. After repeated viewings (like you’ve done) you start to uncover deeper layers.”

HE to Santa Barbara friendo: “Field is only interested in attracting your well-dressed, elegant education, hybrid-driving crowd. I’ve seen the damn thing four times, and it still frustrates me.

“Kois’s analysis piece states the following: “In the middle of the night, Lyda gets up to comfort daughtet, Petra. And if you look closely, you’ll see, motionless in the dark corner of Lydia’s bedroom, nearly unnoticable at the back of the frame, a red-haired woman — Krista.

“First, you can’t notice Krista standing in a dark corner of Lydia’s bedroom because Florian Hoffmeister‘s cinematography is so covered in mud and shadow that you can’t see much. That’s intentional. And two, you’re telling me I have to watch this film a fifth time?”

TCM’s death reel errs grievously by calling the late Leon Vitali an “actor”. As Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker makes clear, Vitali only began as an actor. He became a legendary figure by devotionally serving the ultimate sorcerer, Stanley Kubrick, on a 24/7 basis.

From “At Long Last Leon,” posted on 5.12.18:

“Vitali said to himself early on that he’d like to work for Kubrick. What he didn’t expect was that once that work began Kubrick would want Vitali at all hours, all the time…focus and submission without end. If the early sentiment was “I’d give my right arm to work for Stanley Kubrick.” Kubrick’s reply would be “why are you lowballing me? I want both arms, both legs, your trunk, your lungs, your spleen, your ass and of course your head, which includes your brain.”

“Yes, Virginia — Stanley Kubrick was no day at the beach. Then again what highly driven, genius-level artist is?

“But he was also a sweetheart at times, to hear it from Leon. It was just that Kubrick believed in trust and had no time for flakes, fractions or half-measures of any kind. His motto was that if you’re “in”, you should be in all the way. And Vitali was, obviously, and yet during those 21 years he worked on only three Kubrick films — The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. But that was Kubrick, a brilliant control freak who wound up eating himself in a certain sense.”

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We’re basically talking about a p.r. move. The Elon Musk proxy would essentially be a facilitator, a smoother-over. He/she wouldn’t change the fact that Musk, Twitter’s enfant terrible CEO, wants to bring about the subjugation and, if possible, the ruination of the fanatical wokester left — a cause that in itself exudes a certain honor as wokesters aren’t just culturally suppressive Stalinists but Trotskyites. Alas, Musk has counter-balanced that horror by being impolitic and a blunderer.

Chappelle invites Musk on stage, Musk gets booed for 10 minutes and stands there not knowing what to say, then Chappelle insults the people booing by saying they are in the cheap seats. Comedy punches down, and the crowd says “F*ck You.” Good.
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— Christian Christensen (@ChrChristensen) December 12, 2022