Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Not Boring)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 by Russ Meyer, an auteur that produced, directed, and sometimes wrote low budget B-movies that prominently and constantly featured women with large breasts.

I am writing a movie review about it for a couple reasons. The first is that I saw it last week in a movie theater, Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, NYC, to be exact. The original rule of this blog was that I would write a review for every new release movie I saw in a movie theater. There were some exceptions to that rule over the the years, but given that I watch less and less new releases in theaters (my son, my work, the fact that there isn’t a movie theater in my neighborhood), I may as well expand the rule to every movie I see in a theater, regardless of whether it is a new release. I would like to write at least two reviews a month, and at least 20 movie reviews a year, and writing a review about every theatrical experience will help narrow what movies I write about. After all, I’m not really seeing less movies. Also the movie reviews will be fairer. For instance, I was considering writing a review for Dune: Part Two, but would that be truly fair since I saw the movie at home instead of where I should have seen it, on the big screen (I was about to write that the visual aspect of it was not as impressive the second time around, but is that because it wasn’t or because I saw on a television set?). This review will also give me the chance to write about the theatrical experience, and perhaps, the future of it. Stay tuned for that after the movie.

What can we say about this movie? It takes place somewhere in the Southern Californian desert where our three large breasted heroines (villains?) spend their time drag racing convertibles. There is Varla (Tura Satana) who has black hair, a violent nature and a short temper, Billie (Lorie Williams) a blonde, playful and sexually reckless, and Rosie (Haji) who is Italian much in the same way that Chico Marx is Italian. That is, she speaks in an Italian accent and that’s it. On the other hand, her lack of a personality defaults her as the relatively sane one.

The first half of the movie concerns this trio’s terrorizing of a young couple. It starts out friendly, and I’m still not quite sure what happened, but ends in a murder of the guy and the kidnapping of the girl. Then as the trio are filling their gas tanks, the station attendant tips them off on an old man living in a nearby ranch that might be hoarding a large amount of money. He lives with his two sons, one of which reminded me of Dr. Frankenfurter’s creation in Rocky Horror Picture Show, i.e. he’s hot and very stupid. The old man is, like immediately, revealed to be sexually degenerate, and somehow this movie turns from a story about the trio kidnapping the girl to maybe saving her from this guy.

In between all of this nonsense are fast cars, fast women, a few murders, two sex scenes that both start and end inexplicably, one fried chicken lunch, and several lame but not annoying attempts at humor. I enjoyed it. As Roger Ebert (movie critic, and former screenwriter for Russ Meyer) wisely put it: a B-movie can’t be good in the classic sense, but they can achieve a certain level of distinction by not being boring. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Is the perfect example that statement. You can say a lot about what it is or isn’t, and the arguments will continue for as long as the movie is still watched, but something we can all agree is that it is not boring.

At the showing, the movie was (briefly) introduced by a film historian who informed me that the movie was a favorite amongst homosexuals and that Russ Meyer was an honorary member of the gay community. (This movie was part of a film series at Nitehawk titled Be Gay, Do Crime!). That is sort of news to me. Like, I was aware that gay film directors like breasts (see Almodovar and Penelope Cruz), so it was not hard for me to realize the connection with Russ Meyer when it was pointed out. But I think the connection is even simpler than that. The women in this movie don’t really act like women. (Of course, neither do the men act like men. The story isn’t written well enough). They do however, act and look like drag queens. Drag queens are the combination of the worst stereotypes of both men and women, the aggression and entitlement of the man, the vanity and vapidity of the woman. And although we can argue about whether being so extra is socially acceptable, I think we can all agree that drag queens are not boring. I like them well enough at a distance, like on a movie screen.

I am happy to report that Nitehawk Cinema showed Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! In its main theater for a 9:30 p.m. showing on a Monday night and that the performance was sold out. Importantly, because the movie is not a new release, Nitehawk will be able to keep most, if not near all of the take from the tickets receipts. On top of that haul, Nitehawk sells good food and alcohol, which probably bring in more money than the tickets.

I believe Nitehawk is the future of movie theaters. Not as many people see new releases in theaters nowadays because of their ability to see movies on streaming services or on demand at home on big high definition television set for less money and less travel. But the experience of watching a movie that cannot be paused in a dark room on a giant screen with a group of people (all of which intensifies reactions and minimizes distractions) is still the best way to watch a movie. Add catered food and mixed cocktails and you've got a high value experience. With the advent of social media, it is now easier for movie theaters to advertise for special events like the showing of old movies. And since tickets can be purchased online several weeks, sometimes months, in advance, the theater will have a pretty good idea of whether the night will be well attended and adapt accordingly. I expect Nitehawk could have even switched the theaters from the large room to the small room depending on demand if it was so required.

Another good development that I have heard of but not yet experienced has taken place. Movie studios are now able to own movie theaters. (The news is that Sony has purchased Alamo Drafthouse). This vertical integration was long barred because of monopoly restrictions, but (I am assuming) the splintering of American culture and diversification of ways to experience content has rendered those monopoly concerns moot. In the best case scenario, what this should do is allow more opportunity for smaller films to be seen in movie theaters. As it is, since movie theaters have to give a substantial amount of their take to the studios for new releases, movie theaters have an incentive to show only big blockbuster films that they know will sell a lot of high-price tickets. If the theaters don’t have to share the take (because the studio owns the theater) and they can serve food and alcohol (all you have to do is remove zoning laws) then the price of the movie ticket could conceivably remain low enough for people to be willing to watch a smaller movie in the theater. We will cross our fingers and see.

Godzilla Minus One (5/5 Stars)

“I have a question. Does this plan of yours mean certain death?”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“Okay, well, those odds are better than the war.”

So goes a conversation in Godzilla Minus One in which a naval commander attempts to persuade a room of Japanese men to volunteer for a mission to fight back against Godzilla, a monster mutated to gigantic proportions by radioactive discharge of H-Bombs tests in the Pacific Ocean in post-war Japan. It is an extraordinary scene given the historical context. The first notable detail is that the commander is requesting cooperation, not demanding compliance. Japan, and particularly imperial Japan, before and during the war, was extremely hierarchical. Not only did figures of authority demand complete obedience (infamously to the point of death), but the subjects usually obeyed without compunction. The second notable detail is that enough men actually agree to the mission, after, importantly, others do not without shame or consequence. This is right after defeat in World War II, a conflict whose damage to Japan and its people was exacerbated by the imperial leadership’s willingness to sacrifice its soldiers/pilots in suicide attacks and its people in bombing raids far beyond the point of any realistic hope of victory (and, of course, the American’s stunning capacity for ruthlessness in carrying out the same). These men aren’t agreeing to this dangerous mission simply because the authorities are expecting them to. They accept it on their own terms and, specifically, they aren’t willing to risk their lives for nothing. They insist on a plan that makes sense and has a chance to succeed. In one movie scene, you can feel Japanese culture feeling around for the middle ground between gung-ho aggression and total pacifism.

In the annals of human history, there are not many parallels to a society being so thoroughly laid low as Japan was in World War II. What exactly happened has rarely been directly addressed in the history of cinema, American or Japanese. One of the best war movies ever made, Grave of the Fireflies, showed a fire bombing raid, a mother covered head to toe in bandages dying from burns, a sister slowly starving to death. Thankfully, it was animated. The subject matter was so intense that it would have been very hard to watch if the medium itself wasn’t one removed from reality. Godzilla has always been a giant metaphor for nuclear war of course, but here he becomes more than that, a giant metaphor for war itself. How the characters react to Godzilla reveals their feelings toward war, the present one with Godzilla, yes, but also the one that has just devastated the country. In East Asian fashion, the people still pull their punches when it comes to criticizing their leaders, but the metaphor presents the opportunity to indirectly express these feelings, and the writing by Takashi Yamasaki (also the director) is exemplary in this regard. The main dramatic through is the character of Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot that either smartly and/or disgracefully did not complete a suicide mission during WWII, and how he seeks to redeem himself against Godzilla.

After seeing this movie (and being floored by how good it was), I looked up the original movies from 1954. An apt comparison of Godzilla Minus One is the first Daniel Craig era reboot of the James Bond franchise Casino Royale. A similar idea behind both being: what if we took this very popular pulp entertainment and rebooted it as a well-made and produced, dramatically competent, movie. Well, here it is. According to Wikipedia there are 38 other Godzilla movies. I’ve only seen five of them (1954, 1998, 2014, 2021, and 2024) but I would be very surprised if Godzilla Minus One isn’t the best one. This isn’t just a great monster movie. It’s one of the best movies of the year.

Godzilla himself is a fearsome monster. He has come a long way from a man in a suit knocking over skyscraper models. There is the iconic scene of crowds of people running away from him as he stomps through Tokyo. Godzilla’s heat ray is a straight up atomic blast that prompts an extraordinary scene of not just physical destruction but emotional devastation. The movie won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects and, somehow, this is a low-budget movie. Or at least relatively low, like 30 million dollars. I frankly don’t understand how that is possible, except to say that everyone else in the industry has much they can learn from it.

Unfrosted (3/5 Stars)

 

There is a scene in Unfrosted, a movie that parodies the making of the original Pop-Tarts, in which the product is tested in the labs over there at Kellog’s. The brains behind the operation, Bob Cabana (played by Jerry Seinfeld) and Donna Stankowski (played by Melissa McCarthy) are stationed behind sandbags, plate glass and barb wire while Steve Schwinn (played by Jack McBryer) dressed as an astronaut tests out the products ability to interact with an ordinary kitchen toaster. This takes place on Earth, but Steve Schwinn moves in slow motion as if miming the low gravity of the moon. Then Bob Cabana looks over at Donna Stankowski and mugs, “Isn’t this a bit much?”

Take a moment to consider the context. Kellog’s didn’t test the first pop-tart this way. Indeed, Kellog’s didn’t even make up this story as part of an advertising campaign for the Pop-Tart. So it doesn’t make sense for the joke to be on a self-serious and unaware Kellog’s. Actually, the reason why the making of the Pop-Tart is being treated as if it is a NASA mission is because of Jerry Seinfeld. It is Jerry Seinfeld that really likes Pop-Tarts. It is Jerry Seinfeld that co-wrote this movie, directed it, and cast himself as the lead. So when Jerry Seinfeld remarks, “Isn’t this a bit much?” there is only one person who can be the object of that joke, himself. But the character Bob Cabana doesn’t seem to understand this, and really, the movie doesn’t understand it either, which is the main reason why the majority of it fails comedically.

Jerry Seinfeld once remarked that making a sitcom episode is like running with an egg. A movie is a compartmentalized and cooperative process and a joke is a fragile thing. For the joke to survive from inspiration to showtime, it needs to successfully survive writing, production, editing etc. Sometimes you can pinpoint, where exactly in the process the joke fails. Unfrosted is an example of a movie failing at the starting gun. The idea is wrong. The movie doesn’t know where the joke is.

If Unfrosted was going to work, then Jerry Seinfeld and his obsession with highly processed breakfast options needed to be the object of satire. To do this, he should have cast himself as the CEO of Kellog’s and he should have played the part straight with no winking. Then Jim Gaffigan should have been the long-suffering and weirdly obsequious Bob Cabana. Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan should have switched parts.

Then when the CEO of Kellog’s, Jerry Seinfeld, insists that competitors are to be spied upon, that a head scientist from NASA is to be poached, and that a coterie of crazy persons are hired to perform research (don’t change any of this, definitely keep Bobby Moynihan as Chef Boy Ardee), this will be funny because Jerry Seinfeld really is crazy about Pop-Tarts and everyone in Hollywood would gladly do anything he wanted. Just take a look at the cast herein, if you don’t believe me on that note. Jerry Seinfeld has such tremendous good will stored up from his TV show, which itself made so much money, that a rolled up red carpet follows him around on the off-chance he might want to do something, anything, other than stand-up comedy. (I heard he once remarked off the cuff something about bees being interesting. A year later, you had The Bee Movie.) That reality can be funny, particularly in the context of an unimportant breakfast option, but this movie doesn’t see that potential. It is frustrating to see so much not quite work and so much left on the table.

Here is an example of something left on the table. Melissa McCarthy, a NASA food scientist, is poached by Jerry Seinfeld. He argues to her that Pop-Tarts are an exciting innovative frontier in food and that it is a waste of her time to be working on the moon because that is never going to happen. Walk on the moon, Jerry scoffs, come on. Okay, that is funny enough. But where is the scene where NASA actually does put men on the moon and Melissa gets angry at Kellog’s because she missed it to work on Pop-Tarts. (This would be the dramatic end of Act II, a development that threatens to pull the team apart for good). And now imagine Melissa getting mad at Jim Gaffigan instead of Jerry Seinfeld because I switched the characters. Same goes for the Pablo Escobar and the Milk Thugs scenes. I mean, Jim Gaffigan can actually act ashamed/scared. Or to put it another way, Jim Gaffigan can actually act.

And wouldn’t it be funnier if Jon Hamm and Jon Slattery had a good idea for the marketing of Pop-Tarts, which Jerry Seinfeld rejects because he wants the moon. (That’s a MadMen reference). And wouldn’t it be funnier if, but I should stop here, I don’t want to be too obvious about wanting to work with Jerry Seinfeld.

The Boy and the Heron (3/5 Stars)

I saw my first Miyazaki movie, Spirited Away, when I was in college. It had come out a few years before that and had won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was part of a cultural wave that took subtitles into the mainstream. I thought it was a good movie without fully understanding it. A few years ago, I decided to watch it again, thinking that I would have a better grasp of what was going on within it. After all, I had twenty more years of life experience, saw many more movies, and had married a Japanese woman. The second time around, I understood it less than I thought it would. I still don’t quite get many parts of it. (Why is the furnace guy, half-spider?) I reread Roger Ebert’s review of it, and I don’t think Roger fully understood it either, but that wouldn’t stop either of us from admitting that it is a great movie. Sometimes, on a very basic level, you can just tell.

Indeed, having watched several of Miyazaki’s other movies and now The Boy and the Heron, it occurs to me that maybe these movies aren’t just replete with references that only the Japanese would know naturally. Maybe these movies are universally weird. It is hard to say.

Not that I can’t grasp the basics. I understand the basic emotional throughline. The movie takes place in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The boy’s mother died in a fire-bombing. After the war, his father moves his family to the countryside and he marries the sister. But the spirit of the mother still haunts the boy and this takes form in a strange building that is either a portal into another spiritual dimension, a temporal plane that takes place in the much distant past, and/or the product of space aliens. A grey heron, creepy and then funny, pesters the boy into following him into this fantasy land whereupon he happens upon many magical creatures and has several adventures. I think he succeeds in the end, in that sort of coming-of-age non-material maturation way.

I have a full knowledge of Aesop’s fables, greek mythology, arthurian legends, Grimm’s tales and other western folklore. I can only imagine that much of what is here might be references to past versions of Eastern folklore. The heron probably has some significance as may the carnivorous parakeets. But I do not know for sure. What I can tell you is that the movie is visually arresting, that it moves along at a fair pace and that there is always something to either marvel at or ponder over. The grey heron is a bit of a scene stealer, in particular, the way that it is animated so it is both an actual bird and some sort of costume for a small fat man.

In any event, I am very glad I saw it in a movie theater. And I’m pretty sure it would have been just fine without the subtitles too.

OSCARS 2024

 

In 2024 it was the 1970s again. During that decade, arguably the best ever for American movies, the movie gods aligned in a way that has not been seen before or since. Popular movies, that is movies seen by the most people in any given year, were also the most critically acclaimed movies, that is movies that won the most awards. This is rarer than you would imagine, and for the past two decades was almost a non-existent alignment. Virtually no one saw Moonlight or CODA for example. But Oppenheimer not only won Best Picture, but it also was one of the highest grossing movies of 2023 (also, see Barbie). Just like those 1970s Oscar darlings The Godfather, Star Wars, Jaws, The Exorcist, The Sting, Rocky, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather Part II, and Annie Hall, all of whom were in the top 50 highest grossing movies of the decade. And for the second year in a row and the third time in five years, my pick for Best Picture is the Best Picture. This is after I batted zero from 2005 to 2018. Yes, I picked Oppenheimer.

2024 was also notable in that I saw a majority of the movies that I reviewed at home and not in a theater. This has much to do with the birth of my first son, Hiro J Travis. Opportunities for date night, or just seeing movies by myself in theaters diminished. Hopefully, as he grows, and we find reliable babysitters, I will be able to see as many movies in theaters as I did before (what we need is a good movie theater in Ridgewood. Anyone? anyone?). But till, then, what I choose to review will actually be less about what I see in a theater and more about what I just watched and how interesting I thought it was. I'm aiming for at least 18-20 reviews a year. Watch out for that.

Best Original Screenplay

Justine Triet and Arthur Harari - Anatomy of a Fall

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach - Barbie

Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer - Maestro

Rebecca Miller - She Came to Me

Nicole Holofcener - You Hurt My Feelings

Best Adapted Screenplay

Ted Kupper and Jonas Karlsson - Corner Office

Christopher Nolan, Kai Bird, and Martin Sherwin - Oppenheimer

Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese, David Grann - Killers of the Flower Moon

Tony Macnamara, Alastdair Gray - Poor Things

Priscilla Presley, Sandra Harmon, Sofia Coppola - Priscilla

Best Documentary

20 Days in Mariupol

The Pigeon Tunnel

Best Costumes

Barbie

John Wick: Chapter 4

Napoleon

Poor Things

Priscilla

Best Hairstyling/Makeup

Barbie

Maestro

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

Priscilla

Best Production Design

Barbie

Killers of the Flower Moon

Napoleon

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

Best Use of Cultural Appropriation

Anatomy of a Fall - Sandra Huller's Trilingual Performance

Barbie - Mattel's Barbie

History of the World Part II - George Wallace as George Wallace

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse - DaVinci Vulture

The Super Mario Bros Movie - Nintendo's Mario and Luigi

Best Original Score

Asteriod City

Corner Office

Oppenheimer

Killers of the Flower Moon

The Pigeon Tunnel

Best Sound Design

Beau is Afraid

Maestro

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

Oppenheimer

The Zone of Interest

Best Use of a Song

Anatomy of a Fall - Bacao Rythym and Steel's Cover of 50 Cent's PIMP

Barbie - "I'm Just Ken"

Maestro - Mahler: Symphony No. 2

The Iron Claw - Rush "Tom Sawyer"

They Cloned Tyrone - "They Cloned Tyrone"

Best Supporting Actress

Rina Sawayama - John Wick Chapter 4

Emily Blunt - Oppenheimer

Da'Vine Joy Randolph - The Holdovers

Margo Martindale - Cocaine Bear

Marisa Tomei - She Came to Me

Best Supporting Actor

Donnie Yen - John Wick: Chapter 4

Robert Downey Jr. - Oppenheimer

Jamie Foxx - They Cloned Tyrone

Ryan Gosling - Barbie

Mark Ruffalo - Poor Things

Best Stunt Direction

John Wick: Chapter 4

Barbie

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part 1

The Killer

The Iron Claw

Best Visual Effects

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I

Napoleon

Oppenheimer

John Wick: Chapter 4

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Best Cinematography

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer

Maestro

Priscilla

Poor Things

Best Film Editing

Anatomy of a Fall

Priscilla

Maestro

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix - Beau is Afraid

Zac Efron - The Iron Claw

Bradley Cooper - Maestro

Cillian Murphy - Oppenheimer

Peter Dinklage - She Came to Me

Best Actress

Sandra Huller - Anatomy of a Fall

Lily Gladstone - Killers of the Flower Moon

Emma Stone - Poor Things

Sydney Sweeney - Reality

Awkwafina - Quiz Lady

Best Director

Ari Aster - Beau is Afraid

Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer

Martin Scorsese - Killers of the Flower Moon

Bradley Cooper - Maestro

Sofia Coppola - Priscilla

Best Picture

Anatomy of a Fall

Barbie

The Iron Claw

Killers of the Flower Moon

Maestro

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

Priscilla

John Wick: Chapter 4

You Hurt My Feelings

Poor Things (4/5 Stars)

 

It would be understandable if you thought of Director Yorgos Lanthimos as a satirist. His movies (“The Lobster”, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, “The Favourite”) feel like satires. But to be a true satire, the movie has to comment, through comparison or metaphor, on reality or something akin. That is for something to be a satire, there must first be a real-life subject. WIthout that subject, the art can’t be satire. 

“The Lobster” and “The Kiling of a Sacred Deer” dealt with situations that never existed and people that never will exist. “The Favourite” took its inspiration from the real-life monarchy of Queen Anne of England, an accident of history that thrust the guardianship of a nation-state upon a woman who had lost 17 children in the space of 11 years to miscarraige and infant mortality. It could have worked as a comment on the absurdity of a political system based on hereditary rights, but Mr. Lanthimos seemed to take no interest in the story’s historical significance. Instead, it was a great movie about “mean girl” backstabbing.

Which brings us to “Poor Things” , his latest endeavor, a movie that seems like it is commenting on our world, but has its satiric power undercut from the fact that it appears to take place in an alternate universe. Like his other movies, it is probably best to not think too much about what it might mean. Yorgos is doing something weird and is doing so in a very competent and fascinating way. Just take it as it is.

Where and when does this movie take place? That is a paramount question you may be asking yourself. There are certain identifiable landmarks. The places are given European names: London, Lisbon, Paris. The characters dress in prudish aristocratic suits and dresses sort of like it might be the turn of the 20th century (circa 1900ish). Certain set pieces, like the medical auditorium where surgeons can watch whatever new operation may be the next big thing, are associated with that time and place. 

But this is not the turn of 20th century Europe. There are strange scientific inventions that were not there back then and indeed would be new today. It’s sort of like Steampunk, but not even that. The color scheme is more vibrant and varied than Steampunk as it pertains to the landscape, makeup and the costumes. (All three categories just won Oscars and you will understand why). In one scene, a band in what would pass for a normal upper class ballroom plays music with discordant make-believe instruments. 

Perhaps the best example of the weirdness of the time/place conundrum is how the characters speak. Again, they wear the tuxedos and dresses of upper class British socialites and speak with upper class British accents. But they also curse like sailors, like all of them. In fact, it is interesting how they go back and forth between the two. They will start off a conversation as if they are in a Merchant and Ivory film, get frustrated and drop a bunch of “F” bombs. Noone in the history of the world speaks like this. It is weird. And boy, you should see them dance. You won’t forget it.

The conceit of the movie is that this mad scientist, Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Defoe) comes upon a pregnant woman who has just attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. The woman died but her unborn girl was still living. For reasons I couldn’t really understand, he performed the following experiment: he transplanted the brain of the daughter into the skull of the woman, and then, via an experiment that directly alludes to Frankenstein, he brought her to life and named her Bella Baxter. So, this person is both her daughter and her mother. Now Frankenstein was a metaphor for man’s relationship with God and the rights and obligations between the two. I have no idea what this mother/daughter relationship could be a metaphor for. I expect it may just be weird.

What you have then is a situation in which Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone) is essentially an infant mentally in the body of a full grown woman. This provides the opportunity for some throw-down acting by Emma Stone who spends the first part of the movie doing a great impression of my infant son Hiro. Then, in that great tradition of “fish-out–of-water” movies, Bella goes into the world and confounds society with her childlike questioning of how things are. The movie does some shallow exploring of wealth inequality and scientific ambition, but settles down on its primary topic: Sex and men’s obsessive desire to possess women. Her first paramour Duncan Wedderburn is driven to madness by her free spirit. He is played by Mark Ruffalo who is increasingly funny in the movie as he more and more loses his mind.

This movie is notable due to the sheer amount of vulgarity present in it. Not only is there much cursing as noted above, but there is also quite a lot of nudity and sex. There have been more vulgar movies for a very long time, but I don’t think there has been one as vulgar as this one that has garnered so many Oscar nominations. It has been noted that taboo subjects in general society have changed. What we once considered “grown-up” categories: sex, violence and curse words are now commonplace. Instead, we shy away from the “n-word” and other racial epithets for fear of society’s retribution. This occurred in my life-time. Remember “There’s Something About Mary” in 1999. That was a shocking movie. “Poor Things” has ten times the vulgarity of that movie. And Emma Stone won the Oscar. As a result, there will be legions of young women interested in acting who will watch this movie and consider her performance to be a normal thing.

It is inherently unfair to satirize the past and not just because they are all dead and can’t defend themselves. To be more fair, try thinking of human beings that lived in past times not as older, but as younger. Take the general course of human history and consider that someone in 1000 A.D. would only have their own personal experience plus whatever amount of the past had been written down and taught to them as part of their education. Whereas, a person today, has not only their experience but Wikipedia in their smartphone, which is the entirety of human experience within a Google Search. If we equate age with experience, everyone today is much much older than anyone in the past.

Yorgos Lanthimos perhaps is sending up past times as an absurd place in terms of how it viewed sex. Back then, there were taboos on homosexuality, pre-marital sex, sex between races and sex between classes. You can look at it through our eyes today and consider it all backward and outdated, particularly for the reasons given for the taboos (i.e. religious, nationalistic, racial). But we now know things that they didn’t know back then. For instance, we have ways of telling whether a child is actually genetically related to its father and we know that certain diseases are caused by germs and some germs and not others can only be transmitted through sex. And with that knowledge, we have developed ways to make sex much safer than it was then in the past. If you forget all that, then the world in the past may seem like an absurd place. If you understand that there was an obvious, albeit misunderstood, connection between promiscuity and certain plagues breaking out in society, you would be less judgmental on the value placed in the past on a woman’s virginity or the taboo upon male homosexuality. You wouldn’t want your son to visit a whore or your daughter to sleep with a sailor. You wouldn't know exactly how it might happen, but you knew they could die or go insane (this is what syphilis does). If you were religious, and you probably were, you may conclude by experience that God didn’t like these actions because the people who did them were visited upon by strange and awful maladies.

And hey, if you didn’t consider the above, then “Poor Things” might be a satire. 

Barbie (4/5 Stars)

“There is only one thing worse in life than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

- Oscar Wilde

Barbie is a movie that is full of ideas. Don’t be distracted by all the pink, Ryan Gosling’s biceps, or Margot Robbie’s plastic smile. A definite feature of the movie is an exploration of what the doll means, to society, to consumerism, to the little girls that play with the dolls. Barbie’s baggage is as extensive as her wardrobe. And the creators, writer/director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach are dealing with it head-on and with great comedic effect.

There is money to be made in taking an existing trademark and making a movie out of it. The Transformers movies are the most profitable example I guess. But, the gold standard, for me at least, is The Lego Movie, which was action packed and funny but also had a clear sense of what made playing with the toy a worthwhile experience. This was beautifully articulated in a perfect ending scene by the boy’s father (played by Will Ferrell) who had lost the original point of the toy by supergluing his perfect creations so that they could never again be taken apart. 

Barbie doesn’t have such a clear vision of what makes the toy work, but then again, Barbie is means many things to many people. The movie, with cleverness and humor, presents both sides: that Barbie is an icon of feminism, out there in the workforce doing very smart and prestigious jobs like President and Scientist. And then the other side: that Barbie is an icon of tyranny, that she has an unattainable physical beauty that depresses the young girls who play with her and make them feel terrible about themselves. Many think pieces have been penned about this. I remember seeing a Simpsons episode about it when I was very young.

What is missing from all these philosophical musings is what is closer to the actual truth. That Barbie doesn’t have much of an effect either way and for that reason it shouldn’t be controversial. However, this is the last argument the Mattel corporation would ever use in its defense. Like Hollywood’s weird obsequiousness to critics of diversity representation, they would rather be a bad guy than admit that they are unimportant. And the same goes for the big speech about society’s expectations for women in this movie. The only thing worse about society having unrealistic expectations is the awful truth: that no one really cares. The thing that makes Barbie such a hot topic is its interaction with women’s vanity. Women can complain all they want about having to do so much to keep up appearances, but so much of why they are so high in the first place is because women are competing with each other. In other words, it is women that are setting such high expectations. All one has to do from letting Barbie get one down is to be less shallow. 

I’m skipping much of the plot which for the most part doesn’t make much sense. Actually, this movie is quite good at doing just enough to keep the plot going and not worrying too much about whether it is doing enough. Sometimes, the lack of a coherent explanation forms the basis of a knowing joke. I mean, how much does it matter how one gets from Barbieland to the Santa Monica boardwalk? This movie would prove that it doesn’t matter all that much at all and makes a pretty good joke out of how illogical it is. In any event, the plot is this: Everything is perfect in Barbieland until the girl playing with Barbie in the real world starts making her doll go about doing depressing things. This provokes an existential crisis to Barbie, who then takes a trip to the real world and delves into philosophical musings about her purpose and yada yada yada. At the same time, Ken also takes a trip to the real world and, in doing so, he discovers patriarchy (power and horses) and a purpose other than beach. He brings it back to Barbieland and transforms Barbie's Dreamhouse into the Mojo Dojo Casa House (coming soon to a fraternity near you).

For most of this I was wishing Greta Gerwig had expended her considerable talents on a more personal type of movie like her first exceptional ones, Lady Bird and Little Women. I was at least comforted by the fact that she was getting paid and perhaps, like Christopher Nolan and other directors, would have more of an opportunity to make personal movies because she was a good sport that did some big budget movies as well. (In this scenario, Barbie is Greta’s Batman). That is, until I witnessed the Great Ken Beach Battle and Musical Number. That sequence won me over and is one of the best things I’ve seen in the movies in 2023. Ryan Gosling has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this movie. That is no mistake. The man is committed.

Overall, Barbie is a lot of fun, which is the right attitude to have towards the doll in general. I mean, come on, it’s a toy. Noone is actually asking women to look like her. Certainly not Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, who is portrayed here by Rhea Perlman, a very not-barbie like woman. Sometimes it’s just nice to have an excuse to wear bright pink. 

Napoleon (3/5 Stars)

 

If Ridley Scott were to live long enough (He is presently 86 years of age), we were bound to get a Napoleon movie. He has three loves. Dystopic Science Fiction, Strong Female Leads, and Historical Drama. The historical dramas (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, The Last Duel) are what we are going to miss the most about him. Not that these are his best films but because no-one else in the movie business makes them. Or at least no-one who has the goodwill and box office clout to make them with the type of big budget production that they require.

Napoleon Bonaparte is a towering historical figure. I read Will Durant’s Story of Civilization, which told the story of the West in eleven volumes and took the author and his wife their entire lives to write. The Quarter Century of the French Revolution and Napoleon took up the entirety of the last volume. As Durant would say, it was a time of compressed history. More happened in that 25 years than usually happens in 100. Ridley Scott brings to this task his usual diligence and competence. The directing is sure, the camera frame doesn’t spare the details, and the production value spares no expense. Cast as Napoleon is Joaquin Phoenix, who seems to have ripened into the go-to actor for complicated characters (He has played both Jesus and The Joker in the past five years). Not that his performance here is all that complicated. Because of the dichotomy between glorious victories in battle and dismal performance in the bedroom, Phoenix’s performance is part entitlement and part impotence, which more remembers than dispels all the satirizations of Napoleon as a very short and very temperamental man. A memorable line herein is, “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop.”

The problem with this mediocre movie is the same one that plagues almost all biopics. It’s a problem of scope. For Napoleon, this is a larger problem than most historical figures. There is a tendency to want to include everything notable that the title character has been involved in. However, when the title character has been in so much, what you get is an abridged version of a life, and the more that is cut out, the less what remains can hold together the plot. 

Here are the items that this movie concerns itself with: Napoleon’s famous battles including Toulonne, Egypt, Austerlitz, the Russian Campaign. (Try as the movie might to be comprehensive, we don’t get Napoleon crossing the alps in the Italian campaign.) The other half (half!) of the plot is about Napoleon's romantic relationship with Josephine. What doesn’t make the cut is the revolutions in political science, the revolutions in science (the meter system anyone?), the liberation of the European Jew, the French breakup and reconciliation with the Catholic Church, the global naval wars and the list goes on and on. In a way, this movie is a really good example of how Hollywood bastardizes history. There was only so much run time in this movie and what was prioritized in Napoleon’s life was the sex and violence. 

To witness how this common problem can be avoided, one can watch Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln which decided to not tell the story of Lincoln’s life but to focus on a six month period where Lincoln set out and succeeded in passing the 13th Amendment through the U.S. Congress. Because that movie constrained the time period, it didn’t have some obvious problems in character development that this one has. For one thing, characters that are introduced in the first half hour of the Lincoln movie still exist in the plot at the end of it. In Napoleon, all the characters besides Napoleon and Josephine that have roles in the first half, don’t make it to the second half. One of the biggest characters, Napoleon’s competing general at Waterloo, Lord Wellington, literally shows up in the last hour. If you didn’t already know the general arc of history of this movie, it might be a bewildering journey through random names and places. And if you do know the general background, you will notice details that are brought up but not really developed. Robespierre really did try to shoot himself but failed. It was dramatic when it happened I’m sure, but it is hardly dramatic when the movie shows it. How could it be, when Robespierre is hardly introduced before he exits stage left. Can you really pick up from watching this movie why it was such a disastrous move by Napoleon to invade Russian and then to hang around in Moscow for so long. The sequence must be about 10-15 minutes at most in this movie. 

But really, the worst part of telling this story fast-forward and only focusing on the battles and the love relationship between Napoleon and Josephine is that it inevitably draws connections that almost certainly are not there. Napoleon didn’t abandon his army early in Egypt because he missed Josephine and was worried that she was cheating on him (she was). He didn’t decide to reclaim his throne after his first exile in Elba because he read about Josephine dancing the waltz with the Russian emperor in the newspaper. That’s crazy. It makes sense to try to draw that connection dramatically in this story because otherwise the two halves of the plot would have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But come one, just do less and you’ll make a better movie. I wonder what this story would feel like if Sofia Coppola told the story entirely from the point of Josephine. Now that is not too much plot for a movie. Imagine a story about Napoleon without battles. Wouldn’t that be interesting.