The Death of Stalin is not a film that’s been getting a lot of attention but, since it was directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci, I’m looking forward to seeing it. Iannucci, of course, created both Veep and The Thick Of It and it should be fun to see him turn his satirical sights to death of one of history’s greatest monsters.
Incidentally, in high school, I wrote a short story about a history student who was haunted by the ghost of Josef Stalin and a host of other dictators. Unfortunately, no one in the class knew who Stalin was so they didn’t really understand the story. Oh well. Story of my life…
You’re watching a movie called Song to Song. It’s about beautiful people in a beautiful city.
In this case, the city is Austin, Texas. The people are all involved in the Austin music scene and they’re played by actors like Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, and Cate Blanchett. A good deal of Song to Song was filmed at the Austin City Limits festival and several real-life musicians appear as themselves, though only Patti Smith is on screen long enough to make much of an impression. To be honest, both the music and Austin are almost incidental to the film. Though the movie was sold as an Austin film and it premiered at SXSW, it could have just as easily taken place in Ft. Worth.
The film is made up of short, deliberately obscure shots. The camera never stops moving, floating over images of sunsets, sunrises, and oddly empty streets. Because the film was shot with a wide-angle lens, you’re never not aware of the expanse around the characters. At times, all of those beautiful film stars run the risk of become specks on the landscape, as if the film itself is taunting the characters for thinking that they are more important than nature.
Who are the characters? It’s not always easy to say. There are plenty of voice overs but it’s rare that anyone directly states what they’re thinking or who they are. When the characters speak to each other, they mumble. The dialogue is a mix of the banal and the portentous, a sure sign of a film that was largely shot without a script. Eventually, you turn on the captioning so that you can at least understand what everyone’s muttering.
Michael Fassbender plays Cook. Cook appears to be a music producer but he could just as easily be a businessman who enjoys hanging out with and manipulating aspiring stars. People seem to know him but nobody seems to be particularly impressed by him. Cook spends a lot of time standing in front of a pool. Is it his pool? Is it his house? It’s hard to say. Cook is obsessed with control or maybe he isn’t. Halfway through the film, Fassbender appears to turn into his character from Shame.
Ryan Gosling is BV. BV appears to be a lyricist, though it’s never made clear what type of songs that he writes. At one point, you think someone said that he had written a country song but you may have misheard. BV appears to have an estranged relationship with his dying father. BV may be a romantic or he may not. He seems to fall in love easily but he spends just as much time staring at the sky soulfully and suggesting that he has a hard time with commitment. BV appears to be Cook’s best friend but sometimes, he isn’t. There’s a random scene where BV accuses Cook of cheating him. It’s never brought up again.
Rooney Mara is Faye. Faye contributes most of the voice overs and yet, oddly, you’re never sure who exactly she is. She appears to be BV’s girlfriend and sometimes, she appears to be Cook’s girlfriend. Sometimes, she’s in love and then, just as abruptly, she’s not. She may be a singer or she may be a songwriter. At one point, she appears to be interviewing Patty Smith so maybe she’s a music journalist. The film is centered around her but it never makes clear who she is.
Natalie Portman is Rhonda. Rhonda was a teacher but now she’s a waitress. She might be religious or she might not. She might be married to Cook or she might not. Her mother (Holly Hunter) might be dying or she might not.
And there are other beautful people as well. Cate Blanchett plays a character named Amanda. Amanda has a relationship with one of the characters and then vanishes after four scenes. There’s an intriguing sadness to Blanchett’s performance. Since the first cut of Song to Song was 8 hours long, you can assume her backstory was left on the cutting room floor. (And yet strangely, it works that we never know much about who Amanda is.) Lykke Li shows up, presumably playing herself but maybe not. Berenice Marlohe and Val Kilmer also have small roles, wandering in and out of the character’s lives.
There’s a lot of wandering in this movie. The characters wander through their life, stopping only to kiss each other, caress each other, and occasionally stare soulfully into the distance. The camera seems to wander from scene to scene, stopping to occasionally focus on random details. Even the film’s timeline seems to wander, as you find yourself looking at Rooney Mara’s forever changing hair and using it as a roadmap in your attempt to understand the film’s story.
“I went through a period when I thought sex had to be violent,” Rooney Mara’s voice over breathlessly explains, “We thought we could just roll and tumble, live from song to song, kiss to kiss.”
As you watch Song to Song, you find yourself both intrigued and annoyed. This is a Terrence Malick film, after all. You love movies so, of course, you love Malick. Even if his recent films have been flawed and self-indulgent, he is a true original. You want to support him because he’s an artist but, as you watch Song to Song, the emphasis really does seem to be on self-indulgence. The images are beautiful but the characters are so empty and the voice overs are so incredibly pretentious. Should you be mad or should you be thankful that, in this time of cinematic blandness, there’s a director still willing to follow his own vision?
At times, Song to Song is brilliant. There are images in Song to Song that are as beautiful as any that Malick has ever captured. Sometimes, both the images and the characters are almost too beautiful. The music business is tough and dirty but all of the images in Song to Song are clean and vibrant.
At times, Song to Song is incredibly annoying. It’s hard not to suspect that the film would have worked better if Natalie Portman and Rooney Mara had switched roles. Mara can be an outstanding actress with the right director (just check out her performance in Carol) but, in Song to Song, her natural blandness makes it difficult to take her seriously as whoever she’s supposed to be. Portman has much less screen time and yet creates an unforgettable character. Mara is in 75% of the film and yet never seems like an active participant.
At times, the film is annoyingly brilliant. Malick’s self-indulgence can drive you mad while still leaving you impressed by his commitment to his vision.
And then, other times, the film is brilliantly annoying. Many directors have mixed overly pretty images with pretentious voice overs but few do so with the panache of Terrence Malick.
Even fans of Terrence Malick, of which I certainly am one, will probably find Song to Song to be his weakest film. Even compared to films like To The Wonder and Knight of Cups, Song to Song is a slow movie and there are moments that come dangerously close to self-parody. Unlike Tree of Life, where everything eventually came together in enigmatic poignance, Song to Song often feels like less than the sum of its parts. And yet, I can’t totally dismiss anything made by Terrence Malick. Song to Song may be empty but it’s oh so pretty.
It’s a film that premiered, earlier this year, at Sundance and then it got a very brief theatrical run. It was directed by Mark Pellington, who is one of those odd directors who, for some reason, I always assume is more talented than he is. Seriously, when I saw this was directed by Mark Pellington, I actually got excited. I was like, “Mark Pellington!? He’s great!” Then I realized that I wasn’t really sure who Mark Pellington was. I looked him up on Wikipedia and I realized that I was mistaking him for actor Mark Pellegrino. Mark Pellegrino played Jacob on Lost and is an outspoken Libertarian. Mark Pellington is some guy who started out in music videos and then eventually moved up to directing pedestrian films.
Anyway, the film stars Shirley MacClaine as this annoying old busybody who demands that Amanda Seyfried write her obituary because MacClaine wants to know what people are going to say about her after she’s dead. When Seyfried discovers that everyone hates MacClaine, she writes a boring and very short obit. “Everyone hates you,” she helpfully explains. So, MacClaine sets out to do some great things so that her obituary will have a little more spark. She’s going to set a fire of quirkiness, she is! Of course, this leads to MacClaine adopting a little black orphan, getting a job as a DJ at the local radio station (she plays boring adult contemporary music, of course. No EDM), and helping Seyfriend get a boyfriend.
To be honest, this film would probably be a lot more bearable if it was a prequel to Bernie, because then you would at least know that you could look forward to Jack Black showing up with a hunting rifle and putting everyone out of their misery. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. Instead, this is another one of those movies where a cranky old tyrant teaches all of us young folks how to better appreciate life.
Y’see, Shirley MacClaine is playing an oldster so she has a sharp tongue and she’s always putting people in their place. Because she had to struggle, we’re supposed to ignore the fact that she spends most of her time making everyone around her miserable.
Amanda Seyfried, on the other hand, is a millennial so she puts her feet on her boss’s desk and has no direction in her life. Why, she just needs some annoying, elderly busybody to come into her life and make her listen to smooth jazz. She might even get a hipster boyfriend out of the deal! (Of course, her potential hipster boyfriend is a 2008-style hipster as opposed to a 2017-style hipster.)
Meanwhile, AnnJewel Lee Dixon (as the little girl that MacClaine adopts) is a plot device so she doesn’t do anything unless the script specifically needs her to humanize the other characters. She gets to dance towards the end of the film.
Oh, and then there’s Anne Heche. She plays MacClaine’s estranged daughter. The reunion between her and MacClaine is so overwritten and overperformed that some viewers will probably be inspired to rip out their hair while watching it.
Hey, did I mention that there’s a scene where MacClaine does something quirky and all of the supporting characters break out into applause? I think we’re supposed to clap to but I think most members of the audience will be too busy ripping out their hair by the handful.
Fortunately, I really love my hair so I resisted the temptation to start plucking strands out of my head while watching the film. It wasn’t easy, though. To be honest, the pain of plucking a strand of hair is nothing compared to the pain of watching the first fifteen minutes of this film and realizing that you already know every thing that’s going to happen. By the time that the priest showed up and started to cry while talking about a time that MacClaine’s character had been rude to him, I imagine that viewers with less self-control were halfway bald. But, as I said, I love my hair too much to take my frustration out on it. Instead, I just kicked the coffee table a few times. Now, my foot hurts. Ow.
Seeing as how Shirley MacClaine is one of the last of the truly great actresses from Hollywood’s Golden Age and she actually does give a pretty good performance (when the script allows her), it’s a shame that the rest of the movie is such a let down. Then again, this film is full of talented people who are let down by an overwritten script and Mark Pellington’s painfully obvious direction. This is one of those films that tries to hard to be profound that it forgets the importance of being entertaining.
As I watched this movie, I took a glance at Mark Pellington’s filmography. Did you know that he directed The Mothman Prophecies? The Last Word really could have used a visit from the Mothman. Seriously, this film was crying out for a scene of MacClaine putting Mothman in his place. The fact that Mothman did not appear leads me to wonder what exactly this film was hiding.
Seriously, why are the people behind The Last Word protecting the Mothman?
Okay, forget anything that I may have said about being reluctant to see Mother!, the latest film from Darren Aronofsky. Forget anything that I may have said about suspecting that Jennifer Lawrence is no longer as interesting an actress as she was at the start of her career.
Seriously, this looks fucking brilliant!
Mother! opens on September 15th and I can’t wait to see it!
Here’s the trailer for Goodbye, Christopher Robin!
For a while, I’ve been predicting that this film could be an Oscar nominee. It’s a biopic. It’s about British people. And it’s about war. With Dunkirk and Darkest Hour also probable contenders, it’s looking like next year’s Oscar telecast could very well be dominated by the British going to war.
This one opens on October 13th and it will provide some counter programming for all the ghost movies and found footage rip-offs.
I just watched the latest installment in the Sharknado franchise on SyFy and what can I say? I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet so I’ll just say this:
Sharknado 5 is the best Sharknado yet!
Seriously, it’s amazing when you think about it. The annual premiere of the latest Sharknado film has literally become a national holiday. If you were to judge solely by what was happening on twitter tonight, you would be totally justified in thinking that literally everyone in the world was watching Sharknado 5. Who would have thought that a franchise about sharks in a tornado would become a pop cultural milestone? At this time, when the country seems so divided, Sharknado 5 brought us all together. That, in itself, is no small accomplishment.
But beyond that, these film are consistently and surprisingly entertaining. Considering that it was the fifth film in this particular franchise, Sharknado 5 felt remarkably fresh and creative. Have no doubt, Sharknado 5 had everything that you would expect from a Sharknado film. You had Ian Ziering grimacing as he manfully beat up sharks. You had Tara Reid acting like a super hero. To the delight of many on twitter, Cassie Scerbo returned as Nova, who is now the leader of the Sharknado Sisterhood.
(My friend Ian Rice tweeted me, during the movie: “What is that (the Sharknado Sisterhood)?”
“The Sharknado sisterhood follows and monitors sharknados across the world,” I tweeted back.
After a minute or two, Ian replied: “I’m sorry I asked, LMB.”)
Of course, the script was full of one liners and deliberately bad puns, all of which were delivered with a straight face by the dedicated members of the cast. There were plenty of homages and references to other films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. The special effects were cheap in the most likable way imaginable. And yes, there were celebrity cameos but — as opposed to what happened with Sharknado 4, Sharknado 5 did not allow those camoes to distract from the story being told. Yes, Abby Lee Miller got eaten by a shark. Yes, Geraldo Rivera got sucked out of a blimp. But Sharknado 5 never lost its focus.
And what was that focus? Well, basically, Finn accidentally created another sharknado. No big deal, right? I mean, Finn specializes in destroying those right? Unfortunately, this time, Finn and April’s son, Gil, got sucked into the sharknado. So, for most of the film, Finn and April were chasing the Sharknado across the world while Gil spun around inside of it.
Of course, while Finn chased the latest sharknado, the world was being destroyed by flying sharks. A lot of famous landmarks ended up getting destroyed. Actually, at the rate that these movies go, I’m shocked that there are any monuments or memorials left. It was not an easy life for Finn but, fortunately, the Pope showed up and gave him a blessed chainsaw and…
Okay, never mind! Are you expecting a movie about a tornado full of sharks to make any sense!? What’s important is that the film is a lot of fun and Ian Ziering and Tara Reid, to their credit, are still going out of their way to make their characters vaguely credible.
What sets Sharknado 5 apart from the other Sharknado films is that, about an hour into the film (80 minutes if you’re watching with commercials), Sharknado 5 takes a very, very dark turn. People who you don’t expect to die, die. Places that you don’t expect to see destroyed end up getting destroyed. It all ends with an homage to one final film and a cliffhanger. You don’t want to miss it!
And I’m certainly not going to want to miss Sharknado 6.
Listen, if you ever find yourself being unexpectedly menaced by a shark, you’re going to want a redneck around. Trust me on this. I may not be one myself but I’ve grown up around rednecks and I feel a lot safer around them than I do with sensitive types from up north. Seriously, if you’re under shark attack, who do you want protecting you? A guy with a gun and a cooler full of beer or someone who drives a Prius? Elon Musk may be smarter but, when it comes to sharks, Trace Adkins is going to be more helpful.
The other great thing about rednecks is that there’s nothing that they can’t do with duct tape. Give a redneck enough duct tape and a weather satellite and I guarantee that he’ll find a way to stop climate change. There’s a name for that: redneck ingenuity.
When I was watching Trailer Park Shark on Wednesday night, I was impressed with the amount of duct tape on display. As the main character, a redneck played by Thomas Ian Nicholas, was using duct tape to solve yet another problem, I tweeted that I was enjoying the music playing in the background. To me, it sounded like something that Ennio Morricone would have come up with for a spaghetti western. It fit the scene perfectly because Trailer Park Shark is a film that make duct tape feel just as epic as the final cemetery confrontation in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Andrew Morgan Smith, who did excellent work on the film’s score, informed me that the musical cue was called “Redneck Ingenuity.”
That’s a perfect name because, while Trailer Park Shark is about a lot of things, it is ultimately a celebration of redneck ingenuity and the never-give-up attitude of life in the Southern bayou. The characters in Trailer Park Shark have a lot to deal with. Because of a freak rains storm and some evil plotting by mean old Mr. Deconnard (Dennis Haskins), their trailer park has been flooded. And with the flood has come a shark! It would be easy to give up, especially when people and horses start getting eaten. But no one surrenders to fate! No one gives up!
It’s a lot of fun, as any movie about a shark attacking a trailer park should be. All of the characters in the park are memorable in their redneck way. Even with the majority of the park underwater and neighbors getting eaten left and right, they’re still just as likely to be fighting each other as they are the shark. While I personally have never lived in a trailer park, I’ve lived close to a few and I’ve spent a few nights visiting and this film gets the atmosphere just right. Griff Furst, who is something of a specialist when it comes to bayou chaos, brings this location to life. From the very first tracking shot to the film’s action-packed finale, the bayou feels alive. You can easily imagine this location and these people existing long before the cameras started rolling. The relationships feel real.
Speaking of feeling real, I always suspected that Dennis Haskins had the ability to play a really evil character. Seriously, go watch the earliest episodes of Saved By The Bell and you’ll see some hints of darkness underneath Mr. Belding’s goofy exterior. That said, Haskins does such a good job playing this film’s villain that you eventually forget that you’re watching Mr. Belding threatening to kill people. Instead, he’s just a very bad man with an interesting preference in weapons.
(Speaking of weapons, Tara Reid also shows up, playing a trailer park resident who has a wide variety of weapons at her disposal. Though her role is small, her appearance allows for some playful poking at the Sharknado franchise.)
I liked Trailer Park Shark. It’s a blast of pure entertainment and my favorite of the recent SyFy shark movies. Since SyFy reruns everything a hundred times, keep an eye out for it!
Watch it in honor of the rednecks who keep us safe from sharks, often at the cost of life, limb, and satellite dish.
Hey, why not? Listen, SyFy has been showing shark films for over four years straight now. We’ve had zombie sharks. We’ve had toxic sharks. We had a ghost shark. We’ve had a planet of the sharks. The sharks have taken over the oceans. They’ve taken over the jersey shore. There’s even a movie called Sand Sharks, in which the sharks take over the beach! And, let’s not forget that SyFy and the Asylum have built an entire franchise around the idea that sharks can survive in a tornado. (And I haven’t even mentioned what happens in Shark Exorcist.)
My point is that there are a lot of shark movies and, as a result, the sharks are having to branch out and explore new aquatic territory. It was inevitable that the sharks would eventually find their way to the Mississippi River.
As soon as I saw the title of this movie, I thought to myself, “Please tell me that this movie will open with a big old riverboat getting attacked by sharks.” You can imagine how happy I was when, less than five minutes into the film, that’s exactly what happened. When you’re watching a movie on SyFy and you see a bunch of CGI sharks jumping onto the deck of a riverboat and snapping off people’s heads, you know you’re in a good hands. You know you’re going to be properly entertained for the next two hours.
Really, when it comes to shark movies, all you really need are the sharks and some victims who, for whatever reason, refuse to stay out of the water. However, Mississippi River Sharks offers a bit more than that. After the sharks get finished with that riverboat, they move on down the Mississippi and attack a small town’s annual “fish rodeo.” Needless to say, a fish rodeo always tends to attract the most eccentric among us and this one is no different. For instance, there’s Possum (Kevin J. McGrath), who isn’t going to let a little thing like a shark attack stand in the way of his quest to win a trophy. There’s Big Bill (Marco St. John), who owns the local car dealership and who doesn’t see why the presence of a few sharks should stand in the way of making a little money. There’s Wyatt (Dean West), who has a way with a quip and quickly emerged as a favorite of the viewing audience. And then there’s Tara (played by Cassie Steele, star of both Degrassi and Zombie Shark) who quickly shows that she knows just how to deal with ill-tempered sharks.
Finally, there’s Jason London, playing the role of …. Jason London! That’s right, Jason London plays himself in Mississippi River Sharks. In the film’s universe, Jason is well-known for starring in multiple editions of the Shark Bite franchise. (“We don’t talk about Shark Bite 3!” Jason snaps.) When Jason accepted the invitation to be the fish rodeo’s special celebrity guest, he never realized that he would have to face real-life sharks! However, when those sharks do arrive, this movie hero proves himself to be … well, not much of a hero. Watch the movie to see what happens. I’ll just say that London is hilarious and it’s a lot of fun to watch him pretending to be a pretentious and stuck-up movie star. He delivers his lines with just the right amount of weary annoyance.
(And yes, there is a Jeremy London joke but I won’t spoil it.)
(Also, it’s mentioned that Jason London also starred in Here Comes Santa Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Shark. Seriously, somebody needs to make these two films.)
Now that the sharks have invaded the Mississippi River, where will the sharks show up next year? Well, just remember this — the Mississippi River is the biggest river in the United States. Those sharks could end up anywhere. Personally, I’m hoping for Minnesota Winter Sharks.
Through the Shattered Lens