It seems most of the movies I stream at home are middling at best — so I was happily surprised to get three good ones in a row, the middle of which was I Care a Lot, featuring a deliciously wicked and potent performance by Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl). This was the best movie I’ve watched at home in years. There are some silly holes in the second half — that, writing about it now a few months later, I cannot remember — but that are sparing enough to not ruin the picture.
I Care a Lot is a mostly terrific, fast-moving entertainment in which a lot of things happen in quick succession right from the very beginning. I may have mentioned this before, but I like it when things happen in a movie. This is a good old-fashioned juicy movie. “Wildly entertaining” as it’s been tagged might be a little over-exuberant, but this is a fun flick. 8/10
I have this vague memory from long ago of a show called Unsolved Mysteries. As I was growing up, I never paid it much attention. It never grabbed me the way the Leonard Nimoy-narrated In Search of… did; neither did it capture my imagination like the great fictional anthologies of the era: Amazing Stories, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the revamped Twilight Zone. And for a long time I hated any sort of hokey TV re-enactments of true events, but I’ve softened on that stance as long as it’s well done.
Again, my memories of the original run of Unsolved Mysteries is vague at best since I just plain didn’t watch the show. What I do recall is a lack of polish and pragmatism.
But this is 2020, and it’s a whole new era of documentary filmmaking colored by outstanding series like Making a Murderer. It’s in this context that Netflix has revamped the old hokey series for something altogether compelling – mostly.
So there’s 6 episodes, and they vary in quality. Only 3 are completely worthwhile. My take on each (NO SPOILERS except as noted):
Episode 1, “Mystery on the Rooftop” is the best of the lot – a fascinating case involving some basic physics. Figures they’d put the best one first to get you hooked. Highly recommended.
Episode 2, “13 Minutes” is a skip except for die-hard true crime fans. You could do a lot better with an average episode of Dateline or 48 Hours.
Episode 3, “House of Terror” is a close 2nd to Episode 1. Great gory case from France. ==SPOILER ALERT==: Everyone thinks he’s still alive; I don’t. I’m quite sure he offed himself. ==END OF SPOILER==
Episode 4, “No Ride Home” is a good unsolved mystery (that makes the series title appropriate, no?); 3rd-best of the lot.
Episode 5, “Berkshires UFO” is just that – a UFO sighting by multiple people. There’s no evidence that there was a UFO, just witness testimony. I’m sorry, I don’t believe in the whole alien abduction thing. Either this was a conspiracy to make something up or there was some LSD in the water supply. This episode is relatively lame and not in keeping with the fact-based reporting of the other episodes. Or, that is, the reporting I suppose is in keeping but the evidence just isn’t there. If you believe aliens built the pyramids, then this one’s for you.
Episode 6, “Missing Witness” is about a domestic murder case. Not bad, about on par with an average 48 Hours.
Poster perjury: I love the poster marketing image above, but that scene is nowhere to be found in these episodes. Episode 1 makes up for this infraction, though, so I won’t be asking Netflix for my money back.
A second batch of episodes will arrive on October 19.
Tramps, recommended in the Times Netflix under 90 post, is borderline non-movie. Or maybe it’s just bad. I hated the way it starts, and made me wish I was watching an early Jarmusch film, e.g. Stranger than Paradise. And the premise is lame as hell. But the premise is only to get the central couple together, and on that level it half-works. The chemistry / interaction between the two works, but, again, you still need to make a movie.
Put another way, Tramps is not without its charms, but also not with much of an idea. The Times list lauded the film as “giddily entertaining.” In no universe is it giddily entertaining. Really, save that kind of praise for something at least half worthy. Catch Me If You Can gets that kind of praise. So the Times list has been severely compromised. 5/10
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A note on the three movies I’ve watched so far zuhause (at home): this hasn’t been a stellar start for my dive back into at-home streaming. But there is SO much promise — that enormous queue in my iTunes Wish List. So many exciting films out there, I must believe many of value.
Comparison Notes: Buffalo ′66, with similar themes, and an infinitely better movie; Blue Valentine, Uncut Gems, Before Sunrise, Good Time, Quiet City (2007; couple meet in the subway)
Not a lot to say on this. Actually, I do have more to say if anyone’s interested, so maybe ask me later.
Briefly, though, I thought it good television, a compelling 7-episode documentary series. It’s a little sad that this is like a gazillion times more watched than the infinitely superior Making a Murderer, but there you go. It’s a lot more lighthearted, which probably explains its excessive popularity. Lighthearted, that is, if you don’t mind animal abuse.
One note on the 8th episode — it’s just a coronavirus-from-home set of interviews with the main characters — not, as I had assumed, a previously-produced 8th episode that was always planned for release after the first seven. I got about halfway through before getting bored. The original 7 episodes: recommended, and important to understand this most unique zeitgeist. The water cooler film of the moment, if only ‘water cooler’ were a term that applied any more.
A “timely” Times article… I love good short films. Conversely, I greatly dislike being dragged down by overlong bad ones. If you’re going to make a bad movie, better to keep it short so as to inflict minimal pain.
I can’t vouch for any save two of the films mentioned; further, I am unfamiliar with the author. My interest is piqued, though. The two I saw, Obvious Child and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, were very good, which bodes well for the whole list.
If you’re into True Crime, I direct you to a compact 3-episode series on Netflix, Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer. There’s a lot of division among the few critics who reviewed it, but I found it well done, fair, and fascinating. And I can’t help but think that the critics who didn’t like it simply prefer to have their heads buried in the sand.
…with its deconstruction of the psyche of an internet killer, “Don’t F**k with Cats” is one of the most compelling true crime docuseries that has been produced by Netflix to date.
My esteemed readers are due some TV posts, so I’ll start with this. I love Tom Papa. I first got to know his wonderfully good-natured comedy from his regular appearances on Live from Here, the continuation of A Prairie Home Companion. The much-beloved A Prairie Home Companion, I will add, no matter what you must now say about Garrison Keillor.
And Live from Here is, too, much-beloved. And so is Tom Papa. The material in “You’re Doing Great!” seems particularly well suited for me at this point in my life. Apt-tastic, if you will.
My thoughts on The Irishman will ramble like the film itself.
1- I think no intermission speaks to the lack of chapters, to the lack of big story arcs. Does a movie that’s 209 minutes long need an intermission? Even if you don’t need to use the john, that’s a long time to sit. Longer films of yore had intermissions: Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, Patton, and, it was rumored, The Hateful Eight. But those movies all had significant story movements. Chapters, if you will. Like a novel. Or a good epic/saga-like film. Such sweeps don’t exist in The Irishman. The film starts and just goes in a somewhat monotone fashion until it’s done. No intermission is criminal.
2- Yes, monotone. But there’s a lot going on. And it’s not exactly draggy. As long and big as it is, The Irishman is not hard to follow and hold one’s interest, more or less, for the whole length. It’s not boring.
3- I felt that all the star power was not used that well. Pacino, yes, because he plays Jimmy Hoffa, a larger-than-life character. The De Niro and Pesci characters I thought should have been played by younger actors. I didn’t entirely buy their act, though I give some credit for the depiction of aging.
4- One big problem is that it’s hard to become emotionally invested in the Irishman/De Niro’s character.
Think about The Departed. You’re pulling for the good guy, the DiCaprio “good cop.” You’re not pulling for anyone in The Irishman. They’re all pretty much a bunch of weasels, and not even the fun quirky type of weasels you can pull for in any way. So that even more is why it’s a big so-what. Somehow in Raging Bull, even though Jake La Motta was a jerk, you were made to care about him a little. You’re definitely pulling for our hero/anti-hero in Breaking Bad. In The Irishman, I found myself glazed over because I just didn’t care, other than as a point of interest.
It’s a personal odyssey, but it’s not thrilling enough to be a personal thriller. Not round, but flat.
5- The worst sin: I don’t think anyone’s going to come back in 5 or 10 years and say oh what a great movie that was. There’s nothing particularly memorable or novel about it. There’s no a-ha! moment. There’s no classic quotable line or citable scene. It was all rather hum-drum. Well-executed, but humdrum.
6- The Irishman never plunges into a juicy, thrilling story like The Departed. That kind of lock-in setup never happens. The film just plugs along. However, the meditative moments that draw the film to a close combine with the earlier highlights and better sequences to raise the whole into positive territory, if barely.
7- Captions are placed over characters who will meet a usually violent end, even though those characters have little or nothing to do with the story. They’re introduced on screen, with a note on their demise, and proceed to have no import.
8- The film’s only title presented on-screen (prior to end credits) is “I Heard You Paint Houses.” This is code for whacking those who need to be whacked. Again, if Scorsese had any sense of grandness we’d see intro titles. And why “I Heard You Paint Houses”? Like that’s a big-time title. Of course there’s no intermission. We couldn’t even get titles.
9- On Netflix. Back to point 1. There are big plot points, but the film just isn’t built in a way that lends itself to an intermission. Or maybe it does, if the desire were there. One may wonder if the film was built this way to make the theater-going experience as uncomfortable as possible. So that Netflix could make a point: how much better would this be to watch at home? Locally, in all of San Diego county, the only place showing the film was the Landmark Hillcrest, the local art house. Like a Scorsese film starring De Niro and Pacino is some kind of indie.
The Landmark features non-reclining seats that if anything are less comfortable than average. So I said if you can’t beat em, join em. I tried to stay with the film best I could, taking no break in the last 2 hours of the film. And, I admit it worked well to watch at home. Unlike Roma, there’s not a ton of long shots with detail that is missed on your home screen.
It would seem that this type of release will become more and more the norm. It’s a little sad. I give A24 grief now and then, but they, along with Fox Searchlight, Blumhouse and a couple other studios, are keeping the theater alive with movies other than Marvel and animated releases.
10- Marvel movies aren’t cinema. In significant vectors, neither is The Irishman. In just as many other vectors it is. There’s a lot of good production value here — would we expect anything less? I hardly loved it, but at least we’re not seeing the downward spiral à la Oliver Stone.
11- A lot of caveats on this, but on balance: 6/10.
Netflix does Roma a tremendous disservice by releasing it simultaneously to its own streaming service and theaters. Yes, I see that it officially was released in a highly “limited” way to theaters beforehand, but that does no good for people who live in such far-flung locations as San Diego. By releasing in that way, it very well assures that the only way realistically to watch it is at home.
Which is a shame, because of all the films of 2018, Roma is the one that perhaps most of all needs to be seen on a big screen. There are many sweeping long shots with lots of small detail that are absolutely miniaturized on even a 4K 55″ set as mine is.
A MOVIE SHORT-CHANGED BY NETFLIX
Roma′s visual depth is one of its strongest features, despite being in black and white — this is a very cinematic film. But I can only go by my viewing experience, which was handicapped. That, and trailer perjury — there is no Pink Floyd in the movie — knocks Roma, as seen at home, down to as many as two pegs from where it might otherwise have been. One thing it does is reaffirm why I go to the movies.
Having said all that, the movie did hold my interest, and I liked a number of the scenes. Roma had a good, almost Iñárritu-like flow to it, and even on my small screen the visuals were conveyed, though tamped down like so much pipe tobacco. 7/10
FOR FANS OF TRUE CRIME, THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Almost exactly two years ago I wrote: “Making a Murderer on Netflix is a magnificently compelling, gut-wrenching, and heartbreaking series.” Part 2, released in October last year, doubles down on being among the most riveting television ever aired. And where Part 1 might have been shortened by a couple episodes, that is not at all the case in Part 2 — every minute is used to its full value. For fans of true crime, this is as good as it gets.
SPOILER ALERT! — Referring back to my previous spoiler comments, I will add that the Avery case, in the absence of anything to contradict the evidence raised by Kathleen Zellner — is even more solidly, and clearly, on the side of his innocence. Zellner is in a different league than the original defense; we will see where she can take it. Does this mean a Part 3 is in the offing?
[End of Spoilers]
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So I never was able to produce a TV 2018 part 2 post as intended. Those items, including Roseanne without Roseanne, are hereby tabled for a future post.
I Care a Lot is a mostly terrific, fast-moving entertainment in which a lot of things happen in quick succession right from the very beginning. I may have mentioned this before, but I like it when things happen in a movie. This is a good old-fashioned juicy movie. “Wildly entertaining” as it’s been tagged might be a little over-exuberant, but this is a fun flick. 8/10
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