Saturday, February 17, 2024

2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Killers of the Flower Moon

   


Chris's review: Killers of the Flower Moon tells an important story, poorly. I spent the first half of this three-and-a-half-hour-long film confused about what was going on, who was who, who knew what, and where exactly the main point of view was in the timeline. That was a long time to wait before I could start building the scaffolding of plot-interpretation in earnest. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it as a piece of storytelling, and I think it's likely that it will require watching again before I really succeed. There is a whirlwind of disconnected vignettes in my brain when I think back on it. I'm inclined to think of it as so deeply flawed that I can write it off as a failure, but on the other hand, I'm thinking seriously about watching it again, so there's some level of success.

Entirely ignorant of the historical events the movie is based on, the story feels to me like a late frontier-western, and it sort of horrifies me that it was as recent as it was -- 1920s instead of 1880s or something. It definitely feeds my already quite thorough misanthropy. If you have that same tendency and are affected powerfully by stories, you might want to give this one a pass -- especially with all of its many flaws.

Cathy's review:  I really loved this quote from Killers of the Flower Moon: "There might be a public outcry for a while. But then you know what happens? People forget. They don't remember. They don't care. They just don't care. It's just gonna be another everyday, common tragedy." 

You would think that with so much meaning and relevance packed into that one line, I would like the story, and I feel like I should like it. The movie was extremely well-acted, with a standout performance by Lily Gladstone and excellent performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The cinematography was beautiful, and the subject matter is important because if people don't understand our genocidal past, we cannot possibly prevent tragedies like this from happening again.

But I didn't especially like the movie.  For all its strengths, the story was poorly told. For me to like a movie, it must mesmerize me, make me forget who I am, and let me be a fly-on-the-wall in the world of the film.  I also have to be interested in the subject matter, and I was very interested in this one. I have been thinking about racism and genocide for most of my life (no surprise since I'm the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors) and have casually studied it throughout my adulthood. I also grew up in an area of Missouri that was historically Osage, and I now live adjacent to an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota where the people have also faced (and face) racism and persecution.  So the fact that Scorsese's movie failed to mesmerize me is a little surprising.

A big part of the problem is that the movie doesn't know what it is. Is it a historical epic? A mystery? An art-house film? Western? Crime Drama? Yes. All of the above. It suffers from the "jack-of-trades/master-of-none" issue. A movie can absolutely cross genres and succeed, but this one doesn't.

Killers also utilizes an old-timey epistolary format a little bit, occasionally inserting faux old-timey movie clips, a couple of newspaper articles, and occasional artsy scenes of native culture that are (apparently) disconnected from the story, and the epilogue is filmed as if were a 1920s radio drama, complete with sound effects. However, I can't decide if the technique was under-utilized and should have been taken further, or if it should have been cut as a distraction.  The movie was more than 3 hours long, so ... probably cut.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the movie is bloated. It shows us several oil drilling scenes with workers dripping black goo, but only one of those scenes drives the plot forward.   It also mentions the Tulsa Race Massacre several times, and it was an important contemporary event in Oklahoma, and I think the idea was to create a parallel theme, to show the troubled context of the time and place. But the main story does that very well all by itself; it WAS the fledgling FBI's very first case.  I mean, does a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer need to include a discussion of the Green River Killer to understand the serial killer scene of the 1980s?  

Another darling he didn't kill - flashing the folksy newspaper clippings on screen from "Fox News" announcing the Tulsa Race Massacre. It felt like someone thought they were inserting a clever easter egg, but the obvious anachronism yanked me out of the world of the movie, and I found myself wondering why they didn't just name the Tulsa Tribune, which published the editorial that set off the massacre in the first place. I'm really no fan of Fox but using the movie to take a shot at them (if that's what the movie was even doing -- I'm really not sure) for something that happened 70+ years before Fox was founded seems both cheap and inaccurate, and worse, it allows the real-life bad journalism off the hook for its role in the tragedy.

I also found myself frequently confused about what was going on.  Part of that was structural - the movie tried to gradually reveal who the villains were, to let the audience figure it out along with the Osage experiencing the tragedies firsthand. This creates a sort of bizarre split-personality with conflicting motives in one of the characters.  It also serves to bloat the movie further - one scene is shown TWICE, the first instance keeping the identity of a perpetrator secret, the second revealing it. Mysteries do this sort of thing all the time, but it wasn't well done here.  There were also a number of unexplained red herrings - like what was up with declaring the Osage incompetent and preventing them from accessing their own money? The other had to do with Mollie's insulin, but I won't go into detail on that one to avoid revealing spoilers.

I very much admire Robert De Niro's and Leonardo DiCaprio's talent, and they did wonderful work here.  But I think Scorsese should have moved away from his favorite tried-and-true actors, and gone with other men. De Niro's casting as William King Hale wasn't so bad, I guess ... Hale was in his 40s at the time in real life, not his 80s, but that age difference doesn't really matter to the plot/story-telling though it unintentionally misleads the viewer about how long he lived after the events in question.  On the other hand, casting DiCaprio (who is in his late 40s and 12 years older than costar Lily Gladstone) to play Ernest Burkhart was a serious misstep, both because it calls attention to Leo's creepy tendency to prefer younger women, and because it's inaccurate and unrealistic given the plot of the movie. The real Ernest was in his early 20s, and his wife Mollie was 10 years older than he was.  Ernest's behavior fits with that of an ignorant and inexperienced kid, and the power dynamics between Ernest and Mollie (who is played as worldly and more experienced than her husband) don't quite work given the real ages of the actors.  

I did like the ending - it was satisfying if not happy, and I rather liked the radio-show depiction of the epilogue, but as with Maestro, I resent this movie for its wasted potential. It could have been a great movie about an overlooked part of our history, but it wasn't.




(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 5 out of 10 nominees):

Currently unranked:



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Tuesday, February 13, 2024

2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - The Holdovers

  

Chris's review: The Holdovers was good but not great. It was easy to empathize with all three of the main characters. It's neat seeing the '70s portrayed as a historical era. Paul Giamatti, especially, was excellent. And I'm glad to have watched it. But it leaves me feeling a little hollow. I'm not dying to see it again.

Cathy's Review: This movie had shades of Dead Poets Society, but without the charisma (but that's not a bad thing), and set in a very hairy time: 1971.  I would have been a toddler that year, but I remember enough of the middle 70s to recognize the cars, hairstyles, decor, and tech, and it nudges (but doesn't grab) a nostalgic spot deep inside. 

Unlike Dead Poets, it lacks the inspiring teacher and the likable students. Instead, it focuses on one bitter, hardass teacher, a bitter kid with a smart mouth and a surprisingly good heart, and the school's bitter cook who is mourning the loss of her son in Vietnam. The main character even says, "I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me. I think you and I have this in common."

There were of course, the douchy parents, the decent parents, the asshat headmaster, the school jerk, and the nice and horrible townies. Lots of common tropes.  But the movie managed to surprise me many times, when people believably acted well when you didn't expect them to, or you expected poor behavior, but it turned out to be someone other than the expected person who did the "wrong" thing (though it was arguably not wrong).

I think most people would call this a comedy, but it's really not. It's a drama with a fair amount of comic relief.  Is it good?  Yeah, it is. Very good, even, but not excellent. The writing and acting were good, and I loved the real sets (no sound stages were used), but it had some pacing issues (that mostly disappeared by the second half of the movie). While I liked this movie more than Anatomy of a Fall, I thought AoaF was the slightly better film. Chris thought Holdovers was enough better than AoaF, that when it all shakes out, this movie is (currently) ranked slightly above AoaF.



(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 4 out of 10 nominees):

  • American Fiction (Brilliantly ironic smart comedy; Cathy: 1, Chris 1)
  • The Holdovers (Very good teacher/student relationship story; Cathy 3, Chris 2)
  • Anatomy of a Fall (Beautiful courtroom drama; Cathy: 2, Chris: 3)
  • Maestro (Gorgeous, well-acted boring slog; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
Currently unranked:
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2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - American Fiction

 


Cathy's Review: Years ago, I admired a lovely piece of pottery with vivid blue glaze, and my (then) boyfriend (who was a ceramic art student, among other things) looked at it and scoffed, "whore glaze." 

"What's whore glaze?"

"It's what Bede Clarke calls the glaze potters use when they only care about selling pottery ... and not making art," Chris answered.

It seems that all art forms fall prey to some form of whore glaze, and American Fiction is all about creating the literary version of it - in this case it's a black author who writes a novel that caters to the white liberal establishment, and then he's horrified by its success while his better works go ignored.

Jeffrey Wright's acting was nothing short of masterful, playing both the humorless damaged author, and also the stereotypical version of himself when he pretends to be his own pseudonym. He manages to be just convincing enough while letting the movie audience see his discomfort.  

I particularly loved the scene that showed him writing the book - his characters came to life and acted out the scene in front of him, even interacting with him in a very live-theater-sort-of-way.

It was also beautifully filmed, mesmerizing, and never boring.  Best yet, it's funny as hell, while delivering a message with a bite.

The movie - even its title - is packed with meaning and layers of irony, which the filmmakers use like a scalpel to comment on race relations, stereotypes, and artistic pandering for monetary gain. 

Here's another bit of irony - this probably-more-fragile-than-I-ought-to-be white woman loved it.  Was it a work of black literature that pandered to me, and did I fall for its pandering?

But it almost felt like it was made for me on a very personal level.  It was about a novelist, which I myself very much want to be, compromising his craft (even as a joke), and it delves into the meaning of art, a discussion I'm always up for. It's also about someone who is tired of being defined by what society says he is, something I've been thinking about for years, as I research the antisemitism of WW2.  My grandfather resented being considered Jewish first and a man second, so Wright's character really resonated with me.

Chris's review: American Fiction was a ray of sunshine on a gray day. As a white liberal, I'm both the intended audience and the butt of the joke, and being targeted that way was delightful. The surface story was relatable and easy to like. There were also maybe dozens of little jokes layered onto it, some of them pretty 'meta' that I think viewers run the risk of missing, but each one you perceive and understand adds a juicy frisson of pleasure to the experience as an 'insider who got the joke'. I barked out an uncontainable laugh three or four times at those and now wonder how many I missed! I'm still mulling the ending over, trying to decide where I stand on its quality. I will absolutely watch this again.



(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 3 out of 10 nominees):

  • American Fiction (Brilliantly ironic smart comedy; Cathy: 1, Chris 1)
  • Anatomy of a Fall (Beautiful courtroom drama; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
  • Maestro (Gorgeous, well-acted boring slog; Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
Currently unranked:
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2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Maestro

 


Chris's review: Maestro was a miserable slog. The characters and situations were frequently pregnant with possibility but then not developed enough to make me really care. On the occasion that I did find myself starting to care, the movie would invariably jump five years forward and abandon my engagement. For more than half the movie I found myself wishing he'd just get on with it and die of lung cancer. I don't normally think that I know enough about filmmaking to credit the director vs. other elements of the film, but in this case, it felt like the acting was all marvelous, and the direction, or maybe the writing, let the actors down.

Cathy's review: I think a conductor is an artist who paints music with the brush of his baton, using other musicians as the paint and canvas. Bradley Cooper played both a great conductor and he directed and wrote the movie. He succeeded at the former but failed to utilize his filmmakers to tell a good story. There is a reason "birth of a superhero" is a (sub)genre of its own, but "superhero gets even better" isn't ... because the latter is BORING. This slice-of-life movie STARTED with his big break and went from there, but left all kinds of big weird gaps in it, and there were serious pacing issues.  

The Good: The movie was beautiful to watch, and lovely to listen to. The acting was great, and I found myself completely unbothered by the prosthetic nose, though the main character was a little more nasally than the real person (Cooper otherwise captured the cadences of Bernstein's voice pretty well). Like Oppenheimer, the movie uses color and black-and-white to indicate different time periods, and it does that very well.

The Bad (and it's a doozy):  There was no STORY. It strings together one conflict in his life after another but denies us the resolutions, shying away from important stuff - the very things that make his life interesting, the problems to be solved, the things that make scenes come together as a story. Like how did Bernstein come to terms with his bisexuality in an era when it wasn't accepted?  How did Bernstein's unhappy wife reconcile herself to her husband's infidelity? (In one scene, she is desperately unhappy with him, then in the next, she is content ... and it never shows her acceptance or their reconciliation. She forbids him from telling their daughter about his affairs with other men, and he lies to his daughter's face about it, but later, the daughter somehow knows, without showing us how she found out, though it does hint at her feelings of betrayal.  Then his wife gets sick and it skips over the immediate aftermath of her death.

Interestingly, I also hated last year's Tár, another best picture nominee about a conductor. And I loathed that main character so much, I couldn't even finish the movie.  I was able to finish Maestro (if nothing else, Bernstein was a likable man and I grew up listening to his Peter and the Wolf) but I was glad when it was done.  In the end, I hated how Maestro wasted itself. So much potential to be a GREAT movie, and I resent it more than I probably should for having failed.




(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 2 out of 10 nominees):

  • Anatomy of a Fall (Beautiful courtroom drama; Cathy:1. Chris: 1)
  • Maestro (Gorgeous, well-acted boring slog; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
Currently unranked:
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2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Anatomy of a Fall

 



Chris's review: Anatomy of a Fall was really captivating, and I think it's probably a better film than my attention span will give it credit for -- not speaking French, I had to watch with subtitles, and that's a lot more work than just letting the experience wash over me. I think I liked it better than Cathy did.

The characters were all believable and interesting. I was frustrated that the trial central to the story took place with nothing but circumstantial evidence. I think that were I the prosecutor, I wouldn't have brought it to trial.

Cathy's review: I have mixed feelings about this one: On one hand, it's a BEAUTIFULLY-made courtroom drama. On the other hand, it's a lot of work to watch because only half of it is in my native language, and the other half is in French which I don't really speak.  Because of that, we had the subtitles turned on, and of course, it subtitled BOTH the English and French sections, and I found myself reading all of it, even the English sections. Ideally, only the French would have been subtitled, but oh well.

However, the very thing that made it a lot of work, was also a strength. It played with language in a way that I really value - because I did something similar in my book - people speak different languages at different times for different reasons. The premise behind the language play here is that a German woman is married to a Frenchman, and they speak English together because that's the language they share.  So sometimes they speak English and sometimes French (though surprisingly, never German).  

The movie was beautifully filmed (holy shit - the mountains near Grenoble, France are BREATHTAKING - no wonder my grandfather loved the mountains so much) and beautifully acted, and the story was very well told. I also enjoyed seeing the inside of a French courtroom and seeing how they do things differently (there are more fluid interactions between the witnesses, defendant, lawyers, and the judge) than here.  I also saw a little bit of those differences in the TV show Un village français. Kind of neat - the actor Samuel Theis plays a minor though important supporting character in that TV show, and he also plays the husband in this movie.  

The ending also managed to surprise me - in that it didn't go the way I expected (don't want to give too much away!).  So, highly recommended.  




(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 1 out of 10 nominees):

Currently unranked:
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Monday, February 12, 2024

Ice Cream Recipe Review: Bi-Rite Creamery's Vanilla Ice Cream

“Vanilla Ice Cream” on page 35 of Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones by Kris Hoogerhyde, Anne Walker and Dabney Gough. 

  • The online recipe can be found here. 
  • My other vanilla ice cream reviews can be found here.

This is the first ice cream recipe I've made in many years that has neither a sweet syrup (which helps keep the ice cream a little softer when fully frozen), nor a texture agent such as corn starch (which grabs free water molecules and helps prevents the ice cream from getting icy).  But ice cream never used to include those things, so I suspect it will be fine. I might have to let it sit longer at room temp before serving, and it may have a slightly shorter shelf-life in the freezer.  

It also has more vanilla than most - it calls for both a vanilla bean and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.  I suspect that I will like the more intense flavor.  I used a Madagascar Vanilla bean (my last one from Vanilla Bean Kings which are by far my favorites. I'll order more from VBK when I use up some other beans I have on hand). Because my own homemade vanilla extracts are months away from being ready, I researched vanilla extracts, and splurged on two fancy ones reviewed by Saveur: Organic Pure Vanilla Bean Extract “Crush” by Sonoma Syrup Company (which I used in this recipe) and a Mexican vanilla bean extract Pure Vanilla Extract Elixir by Villa Vainilla, that I purchased for a ice cream recipe that calls for extract made with Mexican vanilla. 

July 25, 2024 update: Finally got around to trying this again.  

Substitutions and Techniques:

  • Turbinado sugar instead of white sugar (always) as I prefer the flavor.
  • I brought the dairy/sugar/vanilla bean combination to boil, then turned off the heat, and immediately tempered the eggs.  Once I added the egg mixture and it thickened, I let it steep for 30 minutes before transferring the custard to my mini milk can for chilling prior to churning. In retrospect, I probably should have done it the way the recipe called for because I suspect the hot dairy is a more effective solvent for the bean than the thickened custard is. 
  • The recipe doesn't say when to remove the vanilla bean. I fished it out just before churning.
  • I used my tedious egg-tempering method (which is basically like theirs but in smaller amounts, and pouring from high up)
  • I didn't churn right away - I chilled the custard in my mini milk can in a sink of cold water, then transferred the can to the fridge to chill all day. I churned in the evening.
  • 2024-07-25: Did the no-temper technique. Except for the vanilla extract (which I added at the end) I put all the ingredients (cold) into the pan, and whisked regularly until the temperature reached 175F. 


Results:

  • Same day: I made a rookie mistake - I stopped the churn in the middle of churning, and then the paddle froze to the sides, and I could NOT get it going again. I am annoyed with myself- I KNEW this would happen (because it's happened before). So I hand mixed the harder sheets of ice cream frozen onto the sides of the bowl into the softer custard as well as I could but I fear the texture won't be representative of the recipe. The soft-serve stage seems OK, but it's hard to say what the end result will be once fully frozen.
  • Next day: The flavor is good, but the texture is definitely lacking, and that is probably my fault. I think I'm going to have to make this one again to give it a fair churn.  
  • One week later: I tried again, and that's when I discovered that I'd actually broken the hub assembly on my ice cream maker (a part that is well-known for breaking, though mine lasted for 7 years). I ordered an after-market replacement. In the meantime I froze the unchurned custard. 
  • 10 days later: When the part arrived, I thawed the custard, and finally churned it. It seems fine, but I don't think it's a fair representation of the recipe, so I will try one more time.
  • The recipe is small - it barely makes a quart.  
  • 2024-07-25:

Uses:

  • I made a new caramel sauce from the Salt and Straw ice cream book though I substituted glucose for the light corn syrup. I failed (again!) to get it dark enough during the cooking, so it's not as richly flavored as it should be, but it was much better than last time. I amended it with a little bourbon, a little black strap rum (very dark) and some orange extract, and it's quite good. And it stayed much softer when frozen, so it made a much better ripple to fold into the ice cream after churning. My last batch was hard like stiff taffy when frozen.
  • I layered in some caramel sauce (see uses section below) when I was packing the ice cream away, to make a ripple.
  • 2024-07-25: Layered in strawberry sauce and chunks of shortbread cookies to make a strawberry shortcake ice cream. 



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Saturday, February 10, 2024

2023 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Triangle of Sadness




This piece of garbage has been nominated for best picture?!?

Triangle of Sadness is boring, weird, and gross. And it’s mostly about a bunch of particularly gross rich people not one of whom I liked, nor could identify with.

Added in 2024: I quit watching about halfway through, and couldn't bring myself to finish it. Chris thought it was worth finishing (and did), but he still rated it last among that year's nominees.

Seriously though - the freeze frame the trailer uses is of a woman vomiting (see below).  






(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings of 4 out of 10 nominees):

Unranked:
    - Originally written January 25, 2023
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