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Sep. 15th, 2024 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOver the summer I've seen a large-for-me number of movies, several of them in theaters (repertory and new) that I've been meaning to capsule review.
Johnny Eager
genarti and I went to go see this with sovay back in -- damn, the documentary evidence says April, which is longer ago than I thought -- and I have been meaning to write about it all this time and now can't remember much of what I wanted to say except that for a movie the basic plot of which is "world's handsomest crime man gaslights girlfriend for crime reasons but Eventually Feels Bad" it's incredibly sharp and fun to watch ... now of course a big part of that is the fact that Mr. Johnny Eager has a sad drunken live-in boyfriend who is always there in the background making classical allusions at him, like Grantaire if his obsessive tastes swung in the exact opposite direction of the ethical spectrum. Every scene featuring Jeff is the least heterosexual thing I've seen since I watched Gilda (also with sovay) (really an unsurprisingly incredible track record here). I came out of this movie desperate to make people watch Jeff's introductory scene as a teaser and was so disappointed that no one had clipped it that eventually I had to do it myself; :
and does Johnny Eager die tenderly clutched in his Boswell's arms while planning a fantasy vacation they'll never take? ABSOLUTELY he does. why would you even ask that question.
The Rocketeer
It came up that neither Beth nor I had seen this Disney movie about a 1930s stunt pilot who finds a jetpack and is subsequently pursued by a combo of The Mob and evil British actor Timothy Dalton, playing evil Nazi British actor not!Timothy Dalton. The lead is the most generic looking nineties action hero man I've ever met but Jennifer Connolly as his girlfriend who is trying to break into Hollywood is great and the whole lengthy in which she Exercises her Acting Ability against Evil Timothy Dalton makes the movie worth the price of admission.
I Saw the TV Glow
The one about a TV show that alters your understanding of reality and of yourself. I've turned this one over a lot in my head; I don't know that I have a lot to say about it, but I really wanted to see it in theaters and I'm really glad I did.
Thelma
Also really wanted to see this one in theaters for very different reasons! An grandmother who gets phone scammed sets out on an Epic Quest Across Town to get revenge on her scammer; uses its really charming riffs on action movie beats as a thoughtful exploration on aging, independence and autonomy. I loved the way the grandmother and grandson were both struggling for agency in the same way and also contributed to infantilizing each other; I also loved when Thelma went to her friend's retirement home the 'meeting a contact at a stripper bar' trope was repeated beat for beat with an in-house exercise class. Just an extremely fun time.
White Heat
Went to seeshati's to see this one as a double feature with Infernal Affairs which I also had never seen. The thing that's striking to me, though -- especially in contrast with Infernal Affairs -- is how much a g-man going undercover in prison to gain the trust of a gangster is not presented as any kind of corrupting or morally ambivalent endeavor. When FBI agent Hank saves Cody's life, gets Cody to trust and confide in him, and (textually, they talk about this) fills the psychological hole left by the death of Cody's ma, I think we're supposed to admire Hank's courage and competency but we are absolutely not supposed to think it tragic that Hank is building this relationship towards inevitable profound interpersonal betrayal; there is no lingering on the emotional element of this whatsoever, because Cody Is A Criminal Psychopath. And I don't like Cody any more than the film wants me to like Cody! He does so many murders! But I don't like Hank either because I do actually think you should feel bad for getting someone to trust you profoundly when you know you're going to betray them, and I do think it's interesting that Cody's the only person in the film who shows any sign of having human affection for anybody.
Infernal Affairs
Now here is a movie that understands that when you go undercover for a long period of time you are confronting the loss of your own identity and inevitable profound interpersonal betrayal! Sometimes the classics did have to walk so that the stories that we tell on top of them can run.
Johnny Eager
genarti and I went to go see this with sovay back in -- damn, the documentary evidence says April, which is longer ago than I thought -- and I have been meaning to write about it all this time and now can't remember much of what I wanted to say except that for a movie the basic plot of which is "world's handsomest crime man gaslights girlfriend for crime reasons but Eventually Feels Bad" it's incredibly sharp and fun to watch ... now of course a big part of that is the fact that Mr. Johnny Eager has a sad drunken live-in boyfriend who is always there in the background making classical allusions at him, like Grantaire if his obsessive tastes swung in the exact opposite direction of the ethical spectrum. Every scene featuring Jeff is the least heterosexual thing I've seen since I watched Gilda (also with sovay) (really an unsurprisingly incredible track record here). I came out of this movie desperate to make people watch Jeff's introductory scene as a teaser and was so disappointed that no one had clipped it that eventually I had to do it myself; :and does Johnny Eager die tenderly clutched in his Boswell's arms while planning a fantasy vacation they'll never take? ABSOLUTELY he does. why would you even ask that question.
The Rocketeer
It came up that neither Beth nor I had seen this Disney movie about a 1930s stunt pilot who finds a jetpack and is subsequently pursued by a combo of The Mob and evil British actor Timothy Dalton, playing evil Nazi British actor not!Timothy Dalton. The lead is the most generic looking nineties action hero man I've ever met but Jennifer Connolly as his girlfriend who is trying to break into Hollywood is great and the whole lengthy in which she Exercises her Acting Ability against Evil Timothy Dalton makes the movie worth the price of admission.
I Saw the TV Glow
The one about a TV show that alters your understanding of reality and of yourself. I've turned this one over a lot in my head; I don't know that I have a lot to say about it, but I really wanted to see it in theaters and I'm really glad I did.
Thelma
Also really wanted to see this one in theaters for very different reasons! An grandmother who gets phone scammed sets out on an Epic Quest Across Town to get revenge on her scammer; uses its really charming riffs on action movie beats as a thoughtful exploration on aging, independence and autonomy. I loved the way the grandmother and grandson were both struggling for agency in the same way and also contributed to infantilizing each other; I also loved when Thelma went to her friend's retirement home the 'meeting a contact at a stripper bar' trope was repeated beat for beat with an in-house exercise class. Just an extremely fun time.
White Heat
Went to see
shati's to see this one as a double feature with Infernal Affairs which I also had never seen. The thing that's striking to me, though -- especially in contrast with Infernal Affairs -- is how much a g-man going undercover in prison to gain the trust of a gangster is not presented as any kind of corrupting or morally ambivalent endeavor. When FBI agent Hank saves Cody's life, gets Cody to trust and confide in him, and (textually, they talk about this) fills the psychological hole left by the death of Cody's ma, I think we're supposed to admire Hank's courage and competency but we are absolutely not supposed to think it tragic that Hank is building this relationship towards inevitable profound interpersonal betrayal; there is no lingering on the emotional element of this whatsoever, because Cody Is A Criminal Psychopath. And I don't like Cody any more than the film wants me to like Cody! He does so many murders! But I don't like Hank either because I do actually think you should feel bad for getting someone to trust you profoundly when you know you're going to betray them, and I do think it's interesting that Cody's the only person in the film who shows any sign of having human affection for anybody. Infernal Affairs
Now here is a movie that understands that when you go undercover for a long period of time you are confronting the loss of your own identity and inevitable profound interpersonal betrayal! Sometimes the classics did have to walk so that the stories that we tell on top of them can run.
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Date: 2024-09-15 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-09-15 08:10 pm (UTC)"Choose between us, Eager, me or your beloved."
Thank you for your service.
It came up that neither Beth nor I had seen this Disney movie about a 1930s stunt pilot who finds a jetpack and is subsequently pursued by a combo of The Mob and evil British actor Timothy Dalton, playing evil Nazi British actor not!Timothy Dalton.
I am incredibly fond of this movie for a whole lot of reasons, but a minor and representative one is that the goon to whom nothing good happens (played by Max Grodénchik! only time I have ever seen his human face! it's a nice one!) is named Wilmer.
But I don't like Hank either because I do actually think you should feel bad for getting someone to trust you profoundly when you know you're going to betray them, and I do think it's interesting that Cody's the only person in the film who shows any sign of having human affection for anybody.
If Anthony Mann had directed it, I am pretty sure their relationship would have been the linchpin of White Heat, because he cares almost obsessively in his film noir period about the moral swamp of undercover work (and when he moves into Westerns, he just finds different moral swamps to drop his characters into), but it was directed by Raoul Walsh and I like him very much as a director, but he's not interested the same way.
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:13 am (UTC)Max Grodenchik! I was so surprised and delighted to see him!
Yeah, White Heat is well-directed for being a crime story of action and suspense, but the camera does not ever really want us to consider Cody and Hank in parallel to each other cinematically -- it feels like they ought to be narrative foils, and instead it's really Cody's movie and Hank is efficiently playing his necessary role within it.
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Date: 2024-09-16 01:59 am (UTC)The funny thing about the lead in The Rocketeer is that he played a character in a single early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I can picture that character perfectly. But despite having seen The Rocketeer several times as a kid, I not only can't picture him in that role, but I also revert to thinking that the guy in The Rocketeer was never in anything else I've seen.
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:16 am (UTC)All throughout the movie I kept squinting at him like "he looks kind of like an off-brand Tom Cruise ... he looks kind of like an off-brand Bill Pullman ..." but tbh none of that was of any use whatsoever in helping me to remember what he looked like without Googling.
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:31 am (UTC)The wild thing is, looking Billy Campbell up now, I see that he had large supporting roles in two things I've seen a million times: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Tales of the City miniseries. And yet I could not have told you he was in either of those, or that the guy who played Quincey in the first was the same actor who played Jon in the second, or that either of them were the same actor as in The Rocketeer or Star Trek: TNG. It's like the man is a walking contagion of face blindness.
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Date: 2024-09-16 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-18 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-16 04:46 am (UTC)As I said to you, I don't fully agree with this!
I do think that we're supposed to see Hank as heroic, and that he doesn't hesitate to follow through on his plan, etc. (And honestly, Cody is SUCH a Criminal Psychopath that I was glad we didn't have the "oh but... can I betray him... when he murdered and tortured all those people but was kinda nice one time to me personally??" beat.) But I also took it -- from Hank's initial complaints about being exhausted and burned out on undercover work, and from some of the acting choices -- that we were supposed to see this as dirty work, that maybe had to be done and maybe wasn't inherently corrupting to the soul but WAS deeply unpleasant to Hank start to finish, even as he carried grimly and nobly on with it. There was a tragedy there, to me, but it was the tragedy that this was what was necessary and that Cody was not interested in any kind of affectionate relationship with anyone who wasn't as utterly devoted to him and his crimes as his ma; there are other gangsters who try to appeal to him, and get nowhere, and Hank only does it by carefully positioning himself as 100% loyal at all turns, which is always going to be a calculated fake even if the motive is "stay alive and get power in the organization" rather than "betray you to the Feds, of whom I am one."
Anyway. A particularly subtle or nuanced film it is not, and obviously Infernal Affairs is much, MUCH more interested in delving into the psychological side of undercover work, but I saw more grey areas in White Heat than you did, I think.
Also, unrelatedly: THELMA WAS SO GOOD I LOVED IT SO MUCH!!!
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-16 06:54 am (UTC)Glad you liked my favorite of Hong Kong's One Country, Two Identity Crises film offerings. I'm fond of the second film in the trilogy beyond its merits because it gave Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang's characters more baggage to carry, but it's less of a film and more of an indictment of the national hopes for the handover (the old mole/triad boss/love interest named Mary is replaced by the new mole/triad boss/love interest named Mary, time is a flat circle, etc.).
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:26 am (UTC)Although I've heard much about this film, I actually had no idea until like last week that it even was a trilogy. I do like when characters have additional baggage though ...
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Date: 2024-09-16 08:37 pm (UTC)Yup. So generic, I haven't a ghost of a memory of who played him or what he looked like. Jennifer Connolly, I totally remember and I've a vague sense of Dalton's totally-not-himself villain, but nothing of that hero.
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Date: 2024-09-18 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-17 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-18 03:28 am (UTC)