Well, as I sit here typing this, I am eagerly awaiting the announcement of the National Board of Review’s picks for the best of 2017! I keep thinking about how, in 2015, nobody took Mad Max: Fury Road seriously as an Oscar contender until it was named best picture by the NBR. What the NBR does today will go a long way to determining whether this is an exciting Oscar season or a boring Oscar season.
However, the National Board of Review are not the only people who have been tabulating votes over the past few days. Last night, the Gotham Awards were handed out in New York City. The Gothams, which honor independent films, have lately been a pretty good indicator of what will, at the very least, receive a nomination in January. Based on last night’s results, it looks like it could be a good year for Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, Saoirse Ronan, and James Franco!
Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award: Jordan Peele, Get Out
Best Screenplay: Jordan Peele, Get Out
Best Actor: James Franco, The Disaster Artist
Best Actress: Saorise Ronan, Lady Bird
Special Jury Award for Ensemble Performance: “Mudbound,” presented to Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks
Made in NY Honoree: Michael K. Williams
Breakthrough Actor: Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Breakthrough Series — Long Form: Atlanta
Breakthrough Series — Short Form: The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes
Back toe beginning? Of just the country or of humanity itself? Judging from this poster, it looks like both. Are there any post-nuke adventures that aren’t outrageous? It’s a legitimate question, I think.
Anyway, this is a poster for a film that came out in 1989.
I was doing some research on the history of French cinema for an upcoming series of reviews and I came across this charming little advertisement from 1916. I guess this was sent to theater owners to encourage them to show Fantomas.
Would I show Fantomas is I got this in the mail? I sure would! I’d even hire someone to dress up like Fantomas and deal cards outside the theater. If only I had been born 100 years earlier…
The hour is late so I won’t say too much about this poster for this 1971 film. According to the Grindhouse Database, this movie only has a 46 minute running time so it must have been 101 very quick acts of love.
I like the fact that the quote from “Dr. Ann Foster” doesn’t actually say anything about the movie, just the subject matter. Why, it’s almost as if Dr Foster was just some randomly quoted person who, in all probability, never actually saw the movie!
This poster is for a 1971 film called Terror From Under The House. I haven’t actually seen this film. Normally, I would look at this poster and assume that it must be about a monster living in a basement but this is 70s exploitation that were talking about. Just because its featured on the poster doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to be in the film.
Apparently, Terror From Under The House was just one of the many titles used by this film. It’s also known as:
Revenge
Behind the Cellar Door
After Jenny Died
Inn of the Frightened People
I ekdikisis (which means “The Revenge” in Greek)
Il passo dell’assassino (which means “The Killer Steps” in Italian)
Miedo sangriento (“Bloody Fear” in Spanish)
Violence en Sous-Sol (“Violence in the Basement” in French)
The main thing that I noticed about this poster was that apparently, audiences were forced to accept the “Free Screaming Teeth of Terror” as proof that this movie was so frightening that watching it could lead to death. I’m not sure what exactly that means but this film was rated PG so, honestly, how scary could it be?
This poster is for the 1958 film, The Bonnie Parker Story. That’s right — this film predates the better known Bonnie and Clyde by about 9 years. Dorothy Provine was cast in the title role and, judging from this poster, it looks like her Bonnie was even more dangerous than Faye Dunaway’s! Apparently, in this film (which I haven’t seen yet), Clyde was renamed Guy.
(Bonnie and Guy doesn’t quite have the right ring to it, does it?)
Anyway, it’s a good poster, one that is direct and in your face. That’s something I always appreciate about any film poster. Plus, there’s that tag line!
(Hi everyone! Usually, my sister — the Dazzling Erin Nicole — tracks down and selects the images that we feature in our Artwork of the Day feature. However, Erin is taking the week off — and November 24th is not only the day after Thanksgiving but her birthday as well!, so be sure to wish her a happy one! — so, for the next few days, I’ll be selecting our artwork of the day! — Lisa Marie)
Look at those bricks fly!
Listen, I really can’t tell you a thing about whether or not Pay or Die is a good movie or not. All I know is that the film was released in 1979, it was rated R, and this was the poster. It’s a tremendously effective poster, though. I don’t know if it’s a fair representation of what happens in the movie, of course. But I hope it is. I hope there’s at least one scene featuring two men and a woman kicking the Hell out of a brick wall.
Posters like this are actually a huge reason why I enjoy researching grindhouse films. Just looking at it is enough to inspire you to create your own movie in your head. Why are they kicking through the wall? Why are they even working together? Why is the movie called Pay or Die? Do they own someone money? Does someone owe them money? Maybe they’re kicking through the wall of a bank. The possibilities are endless!
I will say this, though. If I ever did use my bare hands to smash through a brick wall, I’d probably try to make sure that my boobs were a little better protected when I did it. Seriously, I imagine breaking through a wall, especially one made of bricks, is not as safe as they make it look in the movies. Considering all of the kicking that appears to be involved, I would also probably not wear open-toed sandals while doing it either. That just seems like common sense to me.
The Emoji Movie is basically Inside Out, except instead of taking place inside of an awkward teen’s head, it takes place inside of an awkward teen’s phone. Instead of sharing a universal story about the pain of growing up, it shares a universal story about the pain of having too many lame apps on your phone. Instead of featuring a melancholy voice performance by Richard Kind as a forgotten toy, it features an annoying voice performance from James Corden as a forgotten emoji. Instead of being really wise, funny, and sad, the Emoji Movie is dumb, stupid, and idiotic. Otherwise, it’s just like Inside Out.
Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) is a Meh Emoji. He lives in Textopolis. His job is to look like he’s always meh but instead, he’s always full of emotion and positivity. His boss, Smiler (Maya Rudolph), says that Gene must be a malfunction and therefore, he has to be deleted. Gene says, “No, I must discover who I actually am!” With the help of the forgotten hand emoji, Hi-5 (that would be James Corden), Gene flees from app to app. (It’s kinda like The Lego Movie but not funny, touching, or clever.) They track down a hacker named Jailbreak (Anna Faris) and, at one point, they’re all rescued by a blue bird that comes flying over from the Twitter app. They’re all chased by a bunch of bots and I have to admit that I liked the bots just because they were trying to destroy Gene and Hi-5. Anything that would have ended James Corden’s lameass Ricky Gervais imitation would have been fine with me.
Nobody (or, at the very least, nobody who writes for this site) is as enthusiastic a capitalist as I am but the naked commercialism of The Emoji Movie really tested my patience. Essentially, it’s just an 86-minute advertisement with a vapid “Be yourself!” message tacked on. (If The Emoji Movie was sincere in its message of individuality, it wouldn’t celebrate the idea of people communicating exclusively in emoji.) Early on, when Gene and Hi-5 escaped into Candy Crush, I rolled my eyes. Later on, when an awed Gene said, “This is Spotify?”, I nearly threw a shoe at the TV.
(I did enjoy the scene where the Just Dance app got deleted, just because the dancer — who was voiced by Christina Aguilera — let out a terrifying scream as the app collapsed around her. I’ve always imagined that’s what happens whenever I delete anything.)
Usually, I try to force myself to come up with at least 500 words for every review that I write but the really does seem to be more effort than this movie deserves. (I was actually tempted to write this review exclusive in emoji but then I realized I was just be playing the movie’s game.) I will say this: children will like The Emoji Movie because children are stupid. Ask them again in five years and this will be their response:
In Mudbound, Jonathan Banks plays one of the most hateful characters to ever appear in a motion picture.
We never find out the character’s given name. Everyone just calls him Pappy. He’s the patriarch of an unimpressive family, a wannabe king who has no kingdom over which to rule. Pappy never has a kind word to say to anyone. He even tends to be brusque with his grandchildren. When one of his sons returns from serving in World War II, Pappy only wants to know if he got laid in Europe and how many men he killed. Pappy only killed one man in World War I but he did it face-to-face. He’s proud of that.
As much as Pappy dislikes the members of his family, it’s nothing compared to how much Pappy hates people who aren’t white. Pappy is the type to demand that, when he dies, he not buried anywhere near anyone black. Pappy is also the type who takes it as a personal insult if a black man uses the same door that he uses. When he sees Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) using the font door of the local grocery store, it doesn’t matter that Ronsel has just returned from serving his country and is still wearing his uniform. It also doesn’t matter that Ronsel’s mother is helping to raise Pappy’s granddaughters. What matters is that Ronsel is defying the social norms of 1940s Mississippi and Pappy takes that as a personal insult.
There are six narrators in Mudbound, all of whom tell us their story and share with us their thoughts. Pappy is not one of those narrators and, for that, I was thankful. I would have been frightened at the thought of entering his hate-fueled mind. All we have to do is look into his hateful eyes or listen to his scornful voice and we know what’s going on in Pappy’s head. He’s a man who has accomplished nothing in his long life, whose only happiness comes from making others miserable, and who fears the change that he secretly knows is coming. It’s not just hate that makes Pappy demand an apology when Ronsel Jackson uses the front door. It’s fear.
Mudbound tells the story of two families in Mississippi and the farmland on which they both live and work. (Early on, when a skull with a bullet hole is discovered, we’re informed that an old slave cemetery is under plowed fields.) Pappy’s oldest son, Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke), owns the land. Desperate for his father’s approval, Henry hopes to succeed as a farmer but he soon proves himself to be rather clueless. Henry’s wife is Laura (Carey Mulligan). Laura was a 31 year-old virgin when she met Henry. She tells us that she married him because she didn’t want to be alone. She stays with him because she loves their children.
The Jacksons live on Henry’s land. They’re tenant farmers and Hap (Rob Morgan), the family patriarch, dreams of one day owning his own farm. While Pappy openly hates the Jacksons, Henry treats them with a patronizing condescension. (Whereas Pappy knows that he’s hated, Henry actually thinks that the Jacksons look up to him. There’s not a lot of humor to be found in Mudbound but I couldn’t help but smile at Henry’s cluelessness about how little Hap thought of him.) Henry and Laura even hire Hap’s wife, Florence (Mary J. Blige), to serve as a housekeeper. Henry and Laura think they’re doing Florence a favor, never considering that they are essentially asking Florence to neglect her own family so that she can take care of their’s.
The Jackson and the McAllans do have one big thing in common. They both have sons serving in the army. Ronsel is a sergeant who is both surprised and happy to discover that white Europeans are not the same as white Americans. Henry’s younger brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), is a captain in the Air Force. When the war ends, both Ronsel and Jamie return to their families. Jamie returns with a severe case of PTSD and a drinking problem. Having experienced freedom in Europe, Ronsel is angered to return to a country where he is still expected to sit in the back of the bus and cheerfully accept being treated like a second class citizen.
When both of them are caught off guard by the sound of a car backfiring, Ronsel and Jamie immediately recognize each other as returning soldiers. A friendship develops between them, one that goes against the racist norms of their society. Violence and tragedy follows.
Mudbound is a Netflix film. It’s currently getting a one-week theatrical release so that it’ll be Oscar-eligible. (If it is nominated for best picture — and many think that it may be — it’ll be the first Netflix film to be so honored.) That said, the majority of the people who see Mudbound will see it via Netflix. That’s a shame because, visually, Mubound is a film that should be seen on a big screen. The imagery — the farmland that seems to stretch on forever, the storms that always seem to roll in at the worst possible moment, the scenes of Ronsel and Jamie in Europe — is frequently beautiful and haunting. (The comparisons to the work of Terrence Malick are justified.) Even when viewed on a laptop, Mudbound still looks good but I fear that the small screen will rob the film of some of its epic scope. Since Mudbound is a leisurely paced film, I fear that many members of the Netflix audience are going to be tempted to hit pause and then not return to the film for an hour or two, therefore robbing Mudbound of its cumulative power.
Over the time that I’ve spent writing this review, I’ve come to realize that I actually liked Mudbound a lot more than I originally thought I did. As opposed to many of the films that I’ve seen this year, I have a feeling that Mudbound is actually going to stick with me. Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Jason Clarke, and Rob Morgan all give wonderful performances, though the cast standout is Jason Mitchell, playing a man who, having tasted freedom, refuses to silently go back to the way things were.
Mudbound is a very good film. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a great film, though many other critics and viewers are. Director Dee Rees captures some beautiful images and some wonderful performances but the film itself has some pacing problems. The first part of the film is occasionally too slow while a few of the final scenes felt rushed. I haven’t always been a huge fan of Garrett Hedlund in the past and, when the movie started, I had my doubts about whether or not I’d be able to accept him as Jamie but, by the end of the movie, he had won me over. In the past, I’ve found Hedlund to be a little stiff but, having now seen Mudbound, I have to say that he’s grown as an actor. I’m looking forward to seeing where his talent takes him next.
Even if it does have flaws, Mudbound is a powerful film and one that I recommend taking the time to watch.
