Poor Things 2024

From the get go, this movie is absolutely fucked up. The cinematography is migraine inducing with all the wide angle lens shots and the oddball camera angles. The musical "score", if you can call it that, sounds like what fifty monkeys eventually came up with when handed random badly tuned instruments. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

We have dog heads on chickens, pig heads on chickens, duck heads on goats, an animal I can't even conceptually grasp at all, and a black and white movie that is just slightly less than black and white; more like almost kinda black and sorta close to white. Like someone fucked with the contrast just enough so you'd notice it wasn't black and white. And maybe the black shadows are black and the white highlights are white, but I am having a hard time seeing it. I think the contrast changes randomly just to fuck with you.

Nevertheless, Emma Stone, playing the role of Bella Baxter, is absolutely remarkable in this role. Willem Defoe looks like his face was patched together by a kindergartner and some duct tape, but that doesn't diminish his role as the crazy physician Godwin Baxter at all. Rami Youssef plays the role of one of Dr. Baxter's students Max McCandles, and he is brought into the home to "gather data" but Godwin is trying to get him to marry her. 

He's a little awkward at best around her. And then he asks Godwin "hey, aren't you fucking your daughter?" I suppose that's reasonable considering the incredible absurdity of it all so far. Godwin explains in rather unnecessarily graphic detail that he's a eunuch and it would take same power to run London as it would to give him any sort of sexual function.

Mark Ruffalo appears as Duncan Wedderburn, the family attorney? I'm guessing as he's drawing up a contract of marriage and all. His character is also fucking weird and looks like he's on opium.

To cut an extremely convoluted story, which about 10 minutes into the movie doesn't really matter at all, Bella committed suicide while pregnant prior to the beginning of the movie. Godwin Baxter finds her, and her unborn baby still in her womb. Through some mysterious and weird medical process, he's able to take the unborn baby's brain and put it in Bella's head. And somehow this works to the extent that Bella is able to somewhat function in society. Ish.

Bella and Duncan, who as I mentioned, was actually setting up a contract for Max to marry Bella, instead run off to Lisbon. At some point he stuffs her in a crate and takes her to Athens, and they wind up penniless in Paris. Over the course of the movie, Duncan becomes more and more jealous and insane because Bella can't seem to keep her vagina to herself; including being a prostitute to live. 

Just before the end of the movie, we finally meet Bella's actual husband Alfie, who turns out to be a psychopathic murderous maniac. At some point, Bella drugs him, drags him back to Godwin's home to Max, and they put a goat brain in his body. And everyone lives happily ever after.

There's a lot of weird fucking going on in the movie, which Bella usually enjoys for the most part. The cinematography is absolutely brutal, as I might have mentioned earlier. From pin-hole cameras, to wide-angle shots which may cause you to vomit if you aren't careful, this movie was designed to give you brain damage.

The movie switches randomly from black-ish and white-ish to color. At first, I thought it was just depending on whether you were in the past or present, but at some point that doesn't even make sense. I thought the oddball camera angles and lens changes meant something too, but I'm afraid I couldn't figue it out at all.
I'm not really doing this movie justice with this review, but I can't watch it twice. I really can't.

So if you are in the mood for a watch-once-and-possibly-vomit movie, please, by all means, watch Poor Things.

Migraine inducing cinematography: 1.
Puking in my mouth a little bit from the "music": 1
Weirdly not sure if I enjoyed Duncan and Bella "jumping furiously": 5
The way Godwin describes the atrocities his father put him through with such creepy nonchalance: 3
Tits and ass: 7
Mixing heads and bodies of different animals for fun: 5
Figuring out the significance between the black and white and color scenes: 3
Figuring out the significance between normal, crazy angle, and wide-angle lens shots: 3
The absolute marvelous cast and their talented acting skills that pulled off an otherwise insane movie: 8
Actually seriously debating whether Emma Stone is my new celebrity hall-pass: 6

Which brings this movie's rating to a completely insignificant 4.2.

Take whatever headache, nausea, anti-vertigo or motion sicknes medication you use before watching the movie, turn the volume down, and make sure the closed caption is on in the language of your preference before watching, and you might get through this movie unscathed.

Fargo, 1996

 

I am going to assume if you are reading past the first sentence here, that you have seen Fargo and are purely curious what I am going to write about it, or you have lived under a rock for the past 30 years and have never gotten around to see this beautiful movie. 

That's not to say living under a rock has certain advantages. For instance, there are a lot of movies that you should be happy you have missed. This is certainly not one of them. This is one of those must-see movies for anyone who considers themselves a movie buff. 

This movie was released in 1996, during the last few years where renting movies at Blockbuster was still a thing. And unlike a lot of movies you would rather wait for to rent, Fargo actually did pretty well in theaters and garnered a lot of positive accolades as well as awards. 

It was written and directed by the Coen brothers, which, if you don't know, created some of the most masterful movies of their generation. Fargo takes place in Minnesota, which is odd, because the actual city of Fargo is in North Dakota. That tidbit of trivia is completely meaningless to the story, but I thought I'd mention it. Not only that, but they filmed a lot of this movie in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, nowhere near Fargo, ND. But that's neither her nor there, just some random trivia I thought I'd share.

William H. Macy plays Jerry Lundegaard, a car salesman that has made some rather shitty and dubious financial decisions with regard to the dealership owned by his father in law. When I say "decisions", I am really saying "he embezzled money" and cheated a lot of customers out of money. In addition to that, he's been using the lot to embezzle money by using invalid VIN numbers with the IRS to evade taxes. Apparently quite a lot of taxes.

When he realizes that everything is going to go to shit due to a government audit (which will completely out his shady tax scheme, and possibly uncover all the other schemes he is involved with), he asks his father in law Wade (played by Harvey Presnell) for a loan. Although the specific reason for the loan is somewhat unclear, it seems that he wants to invest in a parking lot business. 

The scheme is so believable that the father in law invites an investor to join them in a meeting and they decide to just outright buy the business Jerry wanted in on and leave Jerry with nothing more than a finder's fee, if that. This is Wade's way of not only letting Jerry know how little he respects him, but outright insulting him. Now Jerry realizes he's completely screwed. 

With me so far?

So now that he basically has been fucked over by his father in law, he devises a plan to have his wife Jean (played by Kristin Rudrud) kidnapped so he could collect a ransom from Wade, his father in law. Did I mention Wade is pretty wealthy? Even though he is, he has made it very clear to Jerry that any inheritances or money that might be distributed would only be done to his wife and son, but not him directly. Another slight that Jerry is upset about. 

For the rest of the movie, we just watch helplessly as Jerry makes mistake after mistake, trying to get this ransom from Wade. This includes hiring two thugs Carl Showalter, played by Steve Buscemi, and Gaear Grimsrud, played by Peter Stormare, who are at complete odds with each other the entire movie.

Jerry tries to make this entire ransom scheme as simple as possible, but Wade steps in and completely fucks up his plans. Now his father in law is dead, his wife is in danger because Gaear is a complete nutjob, and he still doesn't have the money he needs for his schemes. 

Marge Gunderson, the pregnant Minnesota state trooper who is rather unfazed as only a true mid-westerner could be by this entire investigation, is the calm against Jerry's storm. She is investigating the murder of a state trooper and two other victims who happen to have been driving a vehicle from Jerry's dealership, that, unbeknownst to her, was perpetrated by the very same thugs that Jerry hired in the first place. Now Jerry is completely spooked, the two thugs are spooked, and the movie goes to hell. Oh, and a wood chipper comes into play, which is always nice. And that is about it as far as the plot of the movie. 

The thing about Coen brother movies that I love so much, and find to be so remarkable, is that what you see from beginning to end is merely a snapshot of a situation in one or more character's lives. You aren't arriving in the beginning, nor is the end all perfectly wrapped in a nice little bow tie like most other films. You are simply an observer in a very small yet important window of a situation. You know that there was more to the store beforehand, and you know the story continues on after the movie is over, but it has no bearing on the movie itself. And this goes for nearly every Coen Brother film out there. 

However, this particular movie is one of the exceptions that actually does tie things up rather well. The viewer is left with some questions, there are still some mysteries to be solved, but there is some sense of certainty that the movie is over as far as Jerry's story. 

Fargo is not a fast-paced thriller or action flick, it's not an overly done drama or crime film. It's simply a movie about a guy who has no idea what he's doing, who makes some pretty fucked up decisions, and loses everything in the end. 

Unlike most of my previous reviews, I'm going to simply rate this a 9 out of 10. And this is because I firmly believe everyone should see this movie at least once; twice because you probably missed something the first time. If your repertoire of films does not include Fargo, it is immeasurably incomplete.

Fatman 2020

So what do we have here, exactly?

Mel Gibson was one of my favorite actors growing up (with the Lethal Weapon series, Mad Max, etc) and I was pleasantly surprised that he played this role so well. A mediocre role in a somewhat mediocre film with so-so actors, director, writer, etc...

After his career somehow survived his various career killing situations (google is your friend) that came up over the past decade and a half, he has given us this rather fun-to-watch-once-and-forget movie. 

I should also mention the not particularly well-known director/writer brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms. They are not famous, they've had some interesting kudos at various film festivals, and yet they still kinda pulled off a somewhat courteous chuckle-worthy and goofy Santa Claus movie.

In a nutshell, it's an action comedy flick about Santa Claus having to seek out funds from the Federal Government in order to keep his factory working and keep his elves fed. Apparently they'v'e been living off the government dole for some time, and this year the check is only half of what they usually get. 

Apparently Santa's excuse for the slowdown is that "kids don't believe in Santa" or "aren't very well behaved" et al and has come up a few times to suggest why Santa's elves haven't been as busy as usual, thus the pared check situation. These excuses are basically ignored by the military folks that show up with a proposal: to build weapon parts for a couple months. 

You get right away that the federal government stiffed Santa just to get him to get the elves to build weapon parts, right? 

Well, as it turns out, the government stiffed Santa to get him to get his elves to build weapons parts. Is this a reflection of the U.S. Government and an insight to how our government really works? Could one walk away from this movie with a different point of view about the global insanity that our government leaders create from a need for power and greed?

Probably not.

In the meantime, this extremely spoiled rich kid Billy Wenan (played by Chance Hurstfield) decides he doesn't appreciate the idea of getting coal in his stocking. So he hires "Skinny Man" played by Walton Goggins to kill Santa. He'd already hired him to kidnap and force his school mate into admitting she cheated so he'd win first place in a school project, so what's so hard about killing Santa? Can't be that much of a big step...

So.  

The trailer might suggest that it's just a straightforward action flick, and it's not that far from the truth. There are lots of little plot twists and it's dark comedy is actually close to interesting enough to finish watching the entirety of the film. 

You would expect this to be a rather nutty film, and it is. I mean, the plot is certainly oddball, but that's okay. And the actors aren't exactly a-list, but that's fine. The writer/director brothers are sort of unknown, but that's cool. I had a hard time watching Mel Gibson in anything, to be honest, but it was tolerable. 

I suppose what I'm saying is: I'm okay with this movie. I came in expecting an all out action flick and I saw something rather fun to watch as well. Not as fun as the Gibson classics, but still fun nonetheless. 

As everyone has been pretty much in lock-down on and off over the past 8 or 9 months, and things have gotten pretty desperate with what to watch online, this movie somehow leaked through the cracks and caught my attention. I watch a lot of movies and shows, so I figured, what the fuck. Might as well say something mediocre about a mediocre film. 

Mel Gibson playing Santa and getting shot several times: 5

Overall plot: 3

The scene when the elves explain their diet to the military guy: 7

A movie with barely memorable cast members still doing a decent job at pulling off a mediocre film with a couple kinda funny situations:5

For a perfectly mediocre total of 5 out of 10.