Nickel Boys
NICKEL BOYS is one of the underdog Best Picture nominees, one of the indies that doesn’t get that much discussion outside of film critic circles, definitely not seen as a frontrunner, but happy to be nominated. I was planning to see it anyway based on the effusive praise I’d seen, but the nomination gave me an extra push to see it on the big screen, so that’s a nice thing about the Oscars.
I was also able to see it pretty much blind. I did see a trailer before another movie a few days earlier, but that actually didn’t make it very clear what it was about. It did make me wonder if it was going to be told in first person perspective, which does turn out to be the case. Most of the time the camera represents what the main character Elwood Curtis is seeing. So, you know, it’s kind of like the classy version of HARDCORE HENRY or the MANIAC remake. There’s also a section where the camera follows behind the character’s head, like a video game (or IN A VIOLENT NATURE). Director of photography Jomo Fray (ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT) shoots it both cleverly and beautifully. It’s kind of the same category as I’M STILL HERE: some beauty and nostalgia in a story about resilience in the face of horrible atrocities. But leaning heavier on the latter this time, and using the former to make it all the more eerie what we know is going on here. (read the rest of this shit…)
Comments
Have you or a loved one experienced COMMENT BLOCKAGE? You could be entitled to not having that anymore. Sorry everybody, I’ve heard from several people that their comments have been blocked for days or weeks on end. One person fixed it by using a VPN and one by switching to mobile, but neither should be necessary. If you’re getting blocked, Chris asks if you could highlight the url in the browser and screenshot along with the error message to help us narrow down the problem. You can send that to me at outlawvern at hotmail dot com. Thanks for your patience.
A Complete Unknown
A dumb and insignificant pet peeve of mine: Every time a trailer comes out for a music biopic, I see a bunch of posts about “I can’t believe they still make these after WALK HARD.” Yeah, ‘cause that’s the way it always works. After there’s a good parody the whole genre ends. Couldn’t possibly be that this is a type of movie people enjoy.
Well at any rate WALK HARD couldn’t stop the director of WALK THE LINE from returning to the scene of the crime. I’m not sure but there might even be a violation of the Prime Directive here, where the parodied has become aware of the parody, altering the course of the format. While everyone is making fun of biopics that try to explain a person and their art too neatly, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN seems to be arguing, even with the title, that Bob Dylan cannot, in fact, be explained. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hearts of Fire / Oliver & Company / Hot Summer Nights
A Complete Unknown Pre-Game Triple Feature: HEARTS OF FIRE (1987) / OLIVER & COMPANY (1988) / HOT SUMMER NIGHTS (2017)
I want to review Best Picture nominee A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, but to set the scene I thought I’d first take a look at earlier works from some of the people involved. So here’s a movie starring the subject, one written by the director, and one with the same star.
First up chronologically is the rock ’n roll drama HEARTS OF FIRE (1987), which starts out like LIGHT OF DAY but goes a little A STAR IS BORN. It follows 18 year-old singer/guitarist Molly McGuire, played by Fiona, a real singer who at the time had two albums on Atlantic Records and had guest starred on an episode of Miami Vice. Molly fronts a bar band in a small town and one day she’s surprised to see reclusive former rock legend Billy Parker (Bob Dylan, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID) sitting at the bar. She scares him off with her gushing, but on another night he impishly appears in the crowd shouting a request for “The Unusual,” his song she told him was her favorite. Actually I guess it’s a John Hiatt cover, but he comes up and performs it with the band – a highlight of their small time rocker lives. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m Still Here (2024)
(not to be confused with the one where Joaquin Phoenix raps)
Last Saturday morning I was stressing about the situation – the billionaire gremlin coup and dismantling of society that is happening before our eyes with only measured pushback – and it was too much. I had to make myself stop thinking about it. I want to stay aware, but I have to take care of myself mentally, I can’t spend every day dwelling on catastrophes that I’m powerless against. It’s the weekend, I told myself. It’s a nice day, and I’m seeing a movie, the last best picture nominee I haven’t seen…
But the movie was I’M STILL HERE (Ainda Estou Aqui), about a family dealing with their patriarch being disappeared by the Brazilian government in 1971, and I couldn’t help but come out thinking that’s gonna be us very soon. I hope that’s just the doom and gloom talking, but I have zero doubt that Musk and Trump would love to have this kind of stuff done in their names, that more than enough cops and soldiers would be on board (or would sign up just to do the honors), that not one Republican would raise one finger even one time to do one tenth of jack shit about it, and that Democrats or laws wouldn’t be adequate to stop them. So… signs point to bad, and my morale did not improve that day.
The movie is great, though, and maybe not what you expect. Directed by Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARES, DARK WATER remake), it opens with the deeply unsettling juxtaposition of a title saying “Rio de Janeiro, 1970, Military Dictatorship,” and a bunch of beautiful people in a beautiful place having a great time. Teens are playing beach volleyball, a dog keeps getting in the way, so they hand him off to little brother Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), who shows him off to his friends, and then their bare feet pitter patter off the sand across the street, to the house to ask his dad, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, upcoming ANACONDA movie?) if they can keep him. He’s in an important meeting in his office and their lovable maid Zezé (Pri Helena) begs the kid not to interrupt, but luckily Rubens is just as charmed by the mutt as everybody else, and even gives him a name. (read the rest of this shit…)
On the Count of Three
A sincere trigger warning here: ON THE COUNT OF THREE (2021) is a movie about suicide. So please skip this one if that would bring up thoughts you don’t want. This is a very dark buddy comedy and in the opening scene the buddies have agreed to shoot each other. One of them hesitates at the last second and knocks the gun away (“I balked on that one, sorry,” he says), and they agree to have one last day, unencumbered by any worries about the future, before they go through with it.
Outwardly it would appear that the more messed up of the two is Kevin (Christopher Abbott, POSSESSOR, POOR THINGS, WOLF MAN), who has been severely troubled his whole life and tried to overdose by himself only three days ago. His best friend Val (comedian Jerrod Carmichael, also making his directorial debut, not counting two HBO documentaries) is seemingly more grounded, but he’s the instigator here, busting Kevin out of the psychiatric hospital, driving him to an alley next to a strip club and asking him to do this. When he asks Kevin if he was serious about wanting to die the other day or if it was just a cry for help, Kevin is offended. “That’s rude.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Rodeo (2022)
RODEO (2022) is a raw, low key, French crime drama about the world of motorcycles. Specifically it’s about one woman, Julia (Julie Ledru, Furies), a.k.a. Unknown, who loves to ride. It just kind of throws us into her life and she’s not big on talking or being vulnerable, so we never really learn much about where she’s coming from other than what can be gleaned by what she’s up to at the moment, or by doing the math from the little details. For example her mom is only mentioned as someone who will call the cops on her if she sees her, her dad only when she lies about him as part of a scam. As she falls into an underworld the movie doesn’t hold our hand explaining what’s going on, but it’s mostly straight forward anyway. They steal motorcycles, fix them up, sell them, ride them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Outlaw Johnny Black
To date I have not seen Kevin Costner’s HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1/?. I want to see it, I’ve heard good things, and I’m sure it will happen eventually, but there’s another independent western passion project by an actor/director that’s more important for me to catch up on: Viggo Mortensen’s THE DEAD DON’T HURT. Which I also haven’t seen, because there’s another one that’s even more important than that, and it’s Michael Jai White’s OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK. Of the three he’s the actor I follow the closest, and I even have a t-shirt for this movie because I donated to its IndieGoGo a million years ago. But then it didn’t play theaters in Seattle and when it came to DVD I kept putting it off because it was 135 minutes.
Yeah, I don’t usually complain about length, but this is a comedy western that’s as long as THE WILD BUNCH, and longer than UNFORGIVEN. It sounded like a mistake, and I think it was. But I’m glad I finally saw it. Maybe it’s indulgent, but it has heart. (read the rest of this shit…)
Street Trash (2024)
Yep, they made a new STREET TRASH in 2024, it recently had a limited theatrical release, it’s produced by Bloody Disgusting and Screambox so it’s probly on there, and also it’s on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. When I say “a new STREET TRASH” I’m intentionally being vague about how it relates to the 1987 slime epic of the same name, like those entertainment reporters who announce an upcoming “reboot” and the more you read the more clear it is they didn’t ask if it was a remake or a sequel or what, so they’re just using a term that has been bastardized into meaninglessness and hoping nobody notices that they don’t actually have any information.
This could qualify as a remake, but a very loose one, using part of the premise and spirit of the original, but otherwise being totally different. Or it could be a sequel if you figure that the biological weapon called “Tenafly Viper” is a militarized version of the deadly spoiled wine from the first one. At any rate, it’s a movie called STREET TRASH that has a few similarities to the previous film, including the only important one: a bunch of people melt horribly, and a variety of beautifully colored liquids pour out of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wicked: Part I
WICKED: PART I starts near the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead, felled by a well-aimed bucket of water. The celebration commences. Glinda the Good Witch (Ariana Grande, DON’T LOOK UP) arrives in her bubble to address the crowd, and somebody asks her if she knew that dead lady. So she tells us (part one of) the story of her days as the college roommate of the would-be wicked witch.
I’m gonna start this review with a flash forward too. I thought this movie was okay. I didn’t hate it. I don’t really get it. Stay tuned for details.
I sometimes say I’m not a musicals guy, but really I’m just not a Broadway guy. It’s not as much the “I’m gonna start singing now” format as it is the specific modern Broadway style of storytelling, tone of melodrama, sense of humor, and especially musical styles that don’t appeal to me. Case in point: huge crossover hit and cultural phenomenon Hamilton (Disney+ version). I swear I tried to watch it with an open mind, but I just don’t know how to stop wincing. It sets off all my too-corny defense systems.
(read the rest of this shit…)
1. Patreon
Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!
2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody
click here for my Amazon author page (NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.
4. My exciting line of fashion and leisure products
(I get a couple bucks per item, you get a cool t-shirt, mug or lifestyle item)
-
