The Oscar Project
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I feel like I’ve written this a few times already this year with other films in this challenge, but I’m pretty mad at myself for waiting so long to watch my film this week for the Family-Friendly Movie category. I went through the list from PureWow.com that I posted earlier this week and found that I’d seen the majority of them, but was able to land on Akeelah and the Bee as my pick for this week, and so happy I finally saw it.
Now, a little background before I get too far into this post. Before last year, I don’t think I’d seen Keke Palmer in any films. I may have heard her voice in one of the Ice Age films she was in, but besides that, I didn’t have any reference for her as an actor. That said, since August of last year, I’ve seen four films with her in leading roles. Two of those are her most recent roles as the voice of Izzy Hawthorne in the Pixar film Lightyear and as Emerald “Em” Haywood in Jordan Peele’s Nope. But I would argue that her better (and more impactful) roles were from early in her career, namely Cleaner and this week’s film, Akeelah and the Bee.
When I was picking the film for this week and saw Akeelah and the Bee on that list, I immediately jumped at it, and Palmer’s presence was one of the deciding factors. But the fact that I also got to see Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne reuniting on screen after first appearing together in What’s Love Got to Do With It? sealed the deal.
Now you might think that with names like Fishburne and Bassett in the film, Palmer’s performance would get pushed aside, but just as she held her own in scenes with Jackson in Cleaner, she is equally up to the task of commanding the screen with Bassett, Fishburne, or at times both stars. She is comfortable playing off these adults with tons of experience and the other kids in the film and that’s what I love about seeing her in these early films of her career.
I’ve gone on too long about Palmer without touching on the story, so here it goes. Akeelah (Palmer) is an 11-year-old girl living in Los Angeles. She is incredibly bright and gets teased for being smart. When a teacher suggests she enters the school spelling bee, she is initially resistant, but does enter, winning handily. Dr. Larabee (Fishburne) is at the bee and begins quizzing her on even more difficult words after she wins, which she mainly spells correctly before being tripped up.
As Akeelah moves on to the local and regional spelling bees enroute to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Larabee agrees to help her study and rise to the challenge. We meet several other contestants along the way that will be both friends and competitors. Akeelah must also push back against her own family including her mother (Bassett) who doesn’t understand why she loves the spelling bee and her brother who appears to be falling in with some unsavory characters in their neighborhood.
This is where the film had to make a choice, and I applaud the direction it went. In one version of this film, Akeelah’s brother becomes a victim of gang or drug related violence and adds yet another thing she must overcome to achieve her goals. But the version we see here shows even he is able to come around, not only helping her study as the national bee approaches, but even being encouraged to do so by his tough guy friends. There is a wonderful montage near the end of the film with Akeelah getting quizzed on words by the local grocer, her school friends, and even her brother and his buddies. The entire neighborhood is invested in the success of this girl in a similar way that people often rally behind superstar athletes that spring out of poverty. The difference here is that intelligence and knowledge are the vehicle, not just strength or athletic prowess.
Now, that’s not to say that films showing someone coming up in sports like this are bad. I’m simply saying that it’s refreshing to see education be the center of an uplift story because we don’t get to see that as much. Of course, there are a few problems with the film, chief of which is the treatment of Akeelah’s main rival in the bee, Dylan (Sean Michael Afable). Dylan is of Asian descent and while the film tries to breakdown racial stereotypes when it comes to African Americans (only able to rise up through sports, not education like we see here) Dylan’s character does fall into some traditional stereotypes related to how he is treated by his father. Dylan’s father comes across as a strict and domineering figure, intent on pushing Dylan to win the spelling bee, devoting every waking hour to this pursuit regardless of whether Dylan really wants it. That said, I appreciate how the end of the film handles this and shows that Dylan isn’t a bad kid. **MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD** In fact, when the competition comes down to the final between the two of them, Akeelah sees how much the competition means to Dylan’s father and purposely misspells a word to give him a chance to win, not just the competition, but his father’s approval. Dylan immediately misspells the same word, telling Akeelah that if he wins, he wants it to be on true merit and they both agree to give their all the rest of the way.
I’m so glad I’ve been on a bit of a run of great films the last few weeks with The Dirty Dozen, Parasite, and now this film. They are all different in their own way, and this was a great palette cleanser after those two previous films with tougher subject matter. I’m also glad I got to see some tremendous work from Bassett and Fishburne who are both wonderful in their roles here.
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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy. It is March and we are only a week away from this year’s Oscars. The top prizes in Hollywood will be given out next Sunday, March 12 and while I’m a bit behind in my own Oscar nominee viewing this year, I’m excited for the show. It looks like there are going to be a number of live musical performances of the songs nominated for Best Original Song, and the announced list of presenters is already full of some of the top stars of today. But you’re here for the announcement of the next category in the film challenge along with my pick for the week. After some films the last few weeks that might not have been that great for the kids, this week the category is a Family-Friendly Movie. Believe it or not, this was actually a harder category for me to find a film I hadn’t seen before. I have kids so some of the movies I see sooner than others are the newest animated films. This list I found from PureWow.com give us “The 80 Best Family Movies of All Time” and out of the 80, I have seen 58. That said, I did have a decent amount of choices from this list. And before I reveal my pick, I’m not sure I agree that everything on that list is truly family friendly. The Hunger Games appears on the list as does Jurassic Park and The Adam Project, all of which I wouldn’t recommend for younger kids. But by and large, the list is a great look at films the entire family can enjoy. My Selection-Akeelah and the BeeThis film is one that I heard about when it first premiered in 2006, but haven’t seen in the ensuing years. I love the cast of this, especially Laurence Fishburn and Angela Bassett, but also Keke Palmer who was a brand new young actress at the time, and has grown into a star with voice appearances in two Ice Age films and more recent roles in last year’s Lightyear and Nope. I stumbled on her excellent performance opposite Samuel L. Jackson in the 2007 film Cleaner which she made soon after Akeelah and was interested to see another film of hers from this period.
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Here we are at the beginning of March, and if you’ve been following along, you should be almost 20% through your 52 films for the year. I recently posted the full list of films I’ve chosen for the year on Letterboxd. If you’re on Letterboxd, please give that list a like or comment to show your appreciation. If you’re not on Letterboxd, I highly recommend signing up for a free (or paid) account on that site as it’s great for keeping track of the movies you watch, and even better for finding new movies to add to your watchlist.
Given the movies that I’ve watched this year so far, I wanted to take a little pause and just recap my feelings overall through the first two months of the year. To review the movies I’ve watched so far, the current list is:
Let’s start with the highlights. By far the best movie I’ve watched so far in this challenge is Parasite, which I just watched this week and wrote about yesterday. This film deserves all the accolades it received from multiple groups for the 2019 awards season, culminating in in the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars in February 2020. However, a few other films I’ve selected have really popped for me and I’m so glad this challenge has given me a reason to watch them.
My third and fourth films for the challenge (Little Miss Sunshine and Life of Pi) both rate among the best films I’ve seen over the last year and when I have a little time, both will be re-watches for me at some point. Little Miss Sunshine was a huge breath of fresh air. It made me laugh out loud at parts, and also allowed for moments of quiet thoughtfulness as it tackled issues like suicide and depression. And while that film was a wonderful ensemble cast, I was stunned at how strong Life of Pi was with essentially one actor (Suraj Sharma) carrying the bulk of the film. Not only that, he did it when he was only 20 years old and having to act against many scenes where everything around him would be added digitally in post-production.
Two of the films I’ve watched so far have been disappointing, but for completely different reasons. Tom Hanks’s early film Bachelor Party was one I didn’t expect much of, and it delivered on those expectations. It’s a low brow comedy meant to titillate and that’s exactly what it did. I was a bit bummed that it wasn’t a better movie, but even an actor as great as Hanks is going to have some clunkers in his career.
The other film that truly disappointed me was Mad God, Phil Tippett’s stop motion passion project. I wrote in my recap of the film that Tippett has long been someone I admire, even before I knew his name. He has given life to so many creatures in classic films from Star Wars to Jurassic Park and beyond, but this film was a huge let down. The stop motion was great in parts, but wildly inconsistent, which made the whole viewing experience less than ideal. Even now, if you asked me to tell you what it’s about, I would be hard pressed to come up with someone coherent. Maybe that’s the point, but it just wasn’t for me. The other four films I’ve watched this year (for the challenge at least) could all fall under the heading of film classics. Midnight Cowboy, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 8 ½, and The Dirty Dozen are all from the 1960s and tell such different stories from around the world. Midnight Cowboy and Breakfast at Tiffany’s made an incredible double bill at the beginning of the year, both being set in New York City, but dealing with entirely different segments of society. 8 ½ also was an interesting juxtaposition against Mad God the following week since both felt like directors who didn’t know where the film was going when they started making them. However, 8 ½ was created by a master filmmaker (Federico Fellini) who understood his craft as a director while Mad God was clearly created by someone more comfortable in the creature shop and not creating stories.
And last but not least is The Dirty Dozen. Out of all the films I’ve seen in this challenge this year, I’ve probably seen the most of this one previously, catching it on TCM or other cable channels over the years. But like all the rest, I had never sat down and watched the entire film beginning to end. It is excellent from the casting to the way the characters come together, to the surprises thrown in at the end.
In summary, I’m so far very pleased with the movies I’ve picked for this year’s challenge. I hope I will be able to continue on through the rest of the year at this pace and that you will continue to join me each week and expand your own film horizons.
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In my experience, when people say that a movie is great, to the point where almost no one you talk to has anything bad to say about it, things can go one of two ways. I had the first thing happen many years ago when I finally watched Napoleon Dynamite after friends raving about it for months. I watched it and was thoroughly unimpressed, something I wrote about after returning to the film when I did a 30-day film challenge in late 2020.
The second thing that can happen is the film can completely live up to the expectations, or sometimes even exceed all the glowing things people said about it before you saw it. Parasite is one of those films. It feels like a little more than just three years since Parasite swept the awards season and capped it off with four Oscar wins including Bong Joon-ho for Best Director and the Best Picture award. It’s also hard to believe that just about a month after the Oscars where Parasite led the pack, the world shut down and things have never been the same since.
Ki-woo meets with a friend and agrees to take his place as an English tutor for the daughter of wealthy family. Once he gets his foot in the door with the Park family, he recommends his sister (re-named “Jessica” to avoid detection as his sister) as an art tutor for the Park’s young son. “Jessica” then recommends Ki-taek as a new driver for Mr. Park, who in turn recommends Chung-sook as a new housekeeper when the Park’s long-time housekeeper is let go. The Kims slowly insinuate themselves into the lives of the entire Park family, latching on to the wealthy in order to improve their own station in life. Once they have forced the existing driver and housekeeper out of the picture, the Kim’s begin to settle into their new way of life, but before they can get too comfortable, things take a drastic turn.
The first half of this film was a slow burn the way it set the scene. While initially feeling bad for the Kim’s in their destitution, I soon turned to feeling for the Park family, especially because of how easily they are duped into trusting the Kim family. The two families are mirrors of one another, both having four members, a mother, father, son, and daughter, and part of the genius of the film is how they could almost be considered the same family that diverged at some point in history.
Where the film really shines is in the second half, once the Kims are fully in place working for the Parks. Mr. Kim ingratiates himself with Mr. Park, gaining his trust and helping with whatever needs doing when it comes to driving him and Mrs. Park around. But we find out in the second half that while Mr. Park appreciates the service provided by Mr. Kim (and the rest of the Kim family) he doesn’t truly respect them, even complaining about the smell that Mr. Kim has in the car as they drive around town. We also learn that the Kims are not the first ones to latch on to the wealthy family in the house. This is where things start to unravel for the Kims and ultimately leads to a deadly conclusion.
If you were to ask me what this film reminds me of, my initial thought would be something along the lines of Hitchcock. Rear Window jumps to mind in the way the first half of that film is a lot of set up where not much really happens, but once the action starts, it doesn’t stop. Just like Hitchcock, there are moments throughout the second half of Parasite where things are quiet and you know something’s coming around the corner, but the quiet lasts just long enough to allow you to let down your guard, before the director smacks you in the face with a new twist.
Several times in the second half of the film I was certain I knew where it was heading, but every time I was wrong. It’s rare in movies today that things can catch seasoned viewers completely off guard, and this film is the exception that proves that rule. Director Bong delivers a trail of breadcrumbs that oftentimes seem to lead to safety, but only serve to take the film in a new direction completely different from where you expect it to go.
Plenty has been written about this film and the statements on class and social inequality, specifically in Korea but also in the world at large. At the end of the film, Ki-woo narrates over the last few scenes that he has a plan in place to bring the Kim family out of poverty, but the very last image shows him still residing in the same basement apartment where he started. Despite the proximity to the wealthy Park family, his position in life hasn’t changed, and the Kim family as a whole is in a much worse situation. It can even be argued that by associating with the Kims, the Park family has collapsed and begun a fall from grace…the host succumbing to the infection of the parasite that has invaded. This film is one that I absolutely plan to revisit at least once in the next few months. I need a little time to sit with it in my consciousness, but I know there are things I missed on my first viewing. Just like watching Rian Johnson’s Knives Out a second time last fall, there will surely be little details that I pick up on now that I know the outcome of the story. Bravo Bong Joon-ho! This is truly a masterpiece. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy. I can’t believe it’s the last week of February already and in just a few days we will be into March! I’m not sure where you are, but there have been a few nicer days in my area lately, so it feels like spring is right around the corner. Between that and the days getting longer, I definitely feel like things are changing for the better. With that aside, it is time to pick a movie for the week nine category, An Independent Film. Like several of our categories this year, this is rather broad and there are plenty of options to pick from. If you need some help picking something for this week, check out this list of Indie movies put together by Esquire. My Selection-ParasiteThis is the second most recent film I’ve selected for the challenge so far, and one of the newest films for the whole year for me. I also hate to admit that 2019 was a rough year for me in terms of keeping up with the Oscar nominated film. To date, I’ve only seen 18 of the 53 films nominated, and as much as I’ve heard about this film in particular, it’s one of those I just haven’t sat down to watch until now.
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After a few picks this so far that were a bit of a miss, I was so glad to watch The Dirty Dozen this week for the challenge. This was a movie that I have seen bits and pieces of over the years when it’s on TV, but I had never actually sat down and watched the whole thing beginning to end.
The story is that of a group of army prisoners in WWII that are hand picked for a mission behind enemy lines. They are to parachute into France just before D-Day and locate a chateau where many high-ranking German offices will be, and kill as many as possible. The film is littered with stars of the era including Lee Marvin as Major Reisman, the officer in charge of the operation, Ernest Borgnine as General Worden, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, and a very young-looking Donald Sutherland. As with many films about a group of misfits that need to come together, the best part of the movie is the middle. Two other movies came to mind when thinking about this, Remember the Titans, and The Breakfast Club. Now, both of these might sound like silly comparisons to a WWII special ops movie made in the 1960s but hear me out. I’ll focus mostly on Titans but bring a few thoughts on The Breakfast Club as well.
The similarities between Titans and The Dirty Dozen are quite interesting when you break them down. The first act of both films really covers the set-up. In The Dirty Dozen, Major Reisman gets his orders from the general about the mission and goes to the military prison in London to pick up the “dozen.” They are salty and unsure about the assignment, but don’t really have a choice and go along. In Titans, the film starts with Yoast as the head coach, and covers a bit of the politics going on around the decision to have Boone take over the team.
The second act of both films is really the “training” section. Boone and his coaching staff put the team on busses to get them away from town and to the seclusion of a nearby college campus where they will conduct their summer training. Not surprisingly, the busses fill along racial lines before Boone orders everyone off the bus and reassigns them as an offence and defense, intentionally mixing things racially to start breaking down the barriers. Similarly, Dozen takes the prisoners to a remote clearing in the countryside, where they build their own encampment. Reisman tells them that they are all in it together and if any one of them fouls up or deserts, the entire squad will be sent back to prison to carry out their sentences.
In both films, the disparate groups initially scoff at the idea of getting to know their opposites, but slowly learn to trust one another. In Titans, there are scuffles between offense and defense at the camp, but soon enough the prejudices start to fade and black and white stand side by side, as long as they’re on the same side of the ball. Similarly, one of the first scuffles in Dozen occurs when Savalas’s asks if they have to eat alongside Brown’s character, using language any black man would find offensive. As the entire group fight over this, Reisman quietly leaves the room and tells the guards outside “Oh, the gentleman from the South had a question about the dining arrangements. He and his comrades are discussing place settings now.” Reisman knows that if they can come to some understanding amongst them, even through physical fighting, they will ultimately become stronger.
This is also something you see in The Breakfast Club, though without the racial undertones. Throughout the middle of the movie, the five detentionees fight about the stereotypes and preconceptions they each have about the others. It’s not until they start talking to each other, and more importantly, listening when others are talking, that they start to realize how much they have in common. While these five don’t have anything pushing them from the outside other than being in the same detention together, the result is the same and by the end of the film, they all seem to come out stronger, or at least more open to different viewpoints, than before.
For any of these three films, the middle section truly feels like the best part, but why is that? I think it’s because this is where we see the most character growth and that makes us as viewers feel like there is hope. If five high school kids can overcome their differences and learn about each other, the T. C. Williams football team can come together and successfully integrate to win a Championship, and a group of 12 condemned men can take out a Nazi stronghold in occupied France, then it should be easy for us to tackle whatever the day throws at us.
Granted, it’s never that easy, and these stories aren’t happy endings. The Breakfast Club kids make it out easiest, finishing their essay and heading home to think about what they learned during detention. In Remember the Titans, the film ends with a return to the funeral that opened it with the entire team mourning the loss of their friend and teammate Gerry Bertier. Yes, they won the championship, and gained lifelong friendships, but they lost their teammate and one of their best leaders.
The Dirty Dozen has the least happy ending of these three films, but then it is a war film after all so the stakes are much higher. The squad makes it to the chateau full of Germans, only losing one member during the parachute jump. Everything seems to be going well until Savalas’s character turns on Brown’s and alerts the Germans to their presence through the resulting gunfire. Ultimately, only Major Reisman and Joseph Wladislaw (Bronson) survive, accompanied by one of the guards, Sgt. Bowren (Richard Jaeckel). The rest of the squad is either killed by German gunfire or sacrifices themselves to complete the mission. They did go in knowing it was likely a suicide mission, but I was hopeful that a few more would survive.
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We are only a few weeks out from the 95th Academy Awards and I’ve been hard at work watching as many of the nominated films as possible before the awards ceremony. If you haven’t checked out my preview posts on each category, be sure to look through those to get a feel for what is nominated while you fill out your Oscar ballots.
It is time to pick your movie for week 8 of the 2023 challenge and this week we’re looking at a film Set During a Historic War. IMDb has a great list of the top 100 War Movies set during the 20th century. Of course, you don’t have to pick something from the 20th Century, but since the world was at war so much over that time, it’s a good place to start. My Selection-The Dirty Dozen
As with so many of my selections so far this year, this is a film that has been on my watchlist for so long. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it on television over the years, but it’s one that I’ve never sat down and watched in one go.
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Like last week, this week’s film is one that I wasn’t sure about immediately after watching, but unfortunately I couldn’t find as many bright spots.
I had tremendous hopes for this film. I have long been a fan of the stop motion work of director Phil Tippett. He has worked on some of the biggest films of the last 45 years, starting with groundbreaking work at then fledgling Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) on Star Wars. He contributed to many productions for ILM over the ensuing years including three more Star Wars films, Jurassic Park, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Starship Troopers, and The Twilight Saga. His creatures have become a bit of legend with as many of these huge franchises. What wasn’t readily apparent was the work that Tippett was putting in on his own passion project, Mad God. In progress since 1987, it’s hard to believe that it took 35 years to put this film together, but when you understand that the film makes much more sense. That’s not to say that the “story” makes sense, but it makes sense how occasionally disjointed the film feels. You can tell it was put together from various pieces over the course of decades using an array of visual techniques that evolved over the course of production.
Where this film shines is in the production design. Tippett’s hand is evident in every detail on the screen and there are some absolutely stunning shots in the film. The opening feels like it got the most attention with close-up shots of the Assassin reacting and looking around the world. We don’t get any facial expressions because his face is entirely masked, but you can get the emotion from the subtle ways he moves his head and body and the motion looks entirely lifelike. The creature designs throughout the film are stunning in their creepiness and I wouldn’t dare take a trip through Tippett’s actual dreams if these are what he pulls out for a film.
On the other hand, some of the stop motion, which is what Tippett is most known for, is quite lacking. I’m sure many of these scenes are done in a jerky manner intentionally, but it feels so out of sort from the beautifully smooth and subtle movements to open the film. There is also plenty of blood and gore in some of these scenes, specifically the surgery on the Assassin, and while I get that this is a horror film, it feels gratuitous and doesn’t advance the already spare plot in any way. For me, it only made things more confusing.
Now, I understand that this is labeled as an experimental film, and that often means there isn’t really a strong plot, but this film feels like it wants to have a story, but doesn’t know what that story is. It’s interesting that I watched this following 8 ½ last week, another film that felt cobbled together while it was being made. The difference here is that Fellini had strong experience making narrative features throughout his career, while Tippitt doesn’t display that same sort of prowess. I think Mad God should have either gone even further into the experimental direction and completely discarded any pretense of a plot, or focused a bit more on a true story instead of dedicating most of its effort to creature and set design.
I’m so sad to slam this movie as I have and I appreciate the dedication of Tippett and his studio to bringing this film into existence. Stop motion is one of the most difficult ways to make a movie, especially something feature length, ultimately this should have been left as a series of short films or some other method of release that would allow the artistry that is there to really shine.
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Happy Super Bowl Sunday. I hope your team is in the big game and you’re able to enjoy a win, unless of course they’re playing my Cowboys.
Before you focus on the big game tonight, whether for the game itself, the halftime show, or the commercials, it’s time to pick your next film for week seven. The category this week is a Stop Motion Film. As usual, I have a post here from Rotten Tomatoes with their Best Stop Motion Animated Movies of all time. My Selection-Mad God
As a lover of Phil Tippett’s work even before I really knew his name, I can’t wait to see this film which will probably be one of the most recent releases I pick this year.
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Let me paint a picture for you. There is a movie that has received praise from nearly everyone who sees is over the course of decades. You’ve heard about that movie, and always said to yourself “I should watch that to see what the fuss is about,” but you never get around to it. Then one day, you are a few weeks into a film challenge, trying to watch 52 films over the course of a calendar year, and that film fits one of your categories, so you decide to finally watch it and when you do, you have a number of moments where you cock your head to the side like the RCA dog. You finish the movie and don’t entirely know what your thoughts on it are, but you know it was something special in its own way. That is my experience with the 1963 film 8 ½, directed by Federico Fellini.
When picking this film for the category of a Film With Subtitles, I used the list I cited in my post earlier this week and 8 ½ was listed as the sixth best foreign language films of all time in the article I linked. After my first viewing, I’m not sure I can agree with that, as I can probably name at least three or four foreign language films I would put above it right now. That said, there were elements of this film that truly blew me away.
Now, if any of this sounds a bit autobiographical, you’re absolutely right. Fellini followed much the same path as Guido does in the making of 8 ½, so named because of where it falls in the chronology of his films at the time (6 features and 3 short films). There was plenty of planning in place, sets being built, actors cast, but still no real story to make a movie around until a bolt of lightning moment similar to the one Guido experiences in the finale of the film.
As I noted above, I wasn’t quite sure about my feelings on the film when the credits rolled. I’ll give you a little peak behind the curtain with how I do my ratings of films to help explain why I ultimately felt this film was worthy of an eight out of ten. If you don’t care, just skip the rest of this paragraph. My brain works in weird ways and sometimes I need to sort through individual aspects of a film before I rate it. To that end, I have a spreadsheet I put together where I can enter the title of a film, who directed it, and when I watched along with individual number ratings for a number of categories from story and acting, to sound, music, and visual effects. Because I’m a numbers nerd, I then average those and come up with an initial rating which sometimes falls in a decimal range between two numbers, which allows me some flexibility to round up or down depending on how I felt on an emotional level about the film. I’ll tell you that this film fell short in a number of areas including the story (because it felt like it was made up on set, which I think some of it was) and the sound (it was decent, but nothing mind-blowing). Where the film elevated itself was in the cinematography, production design, and the music.
Being a black and white film, the cinematography was so important in this film. There are scenes set outside in the bright Italian sun and they are as bright and almost washed out as one would expect. But in other moments, we see interiors that are lit and shot with such care that we get rich textures and layers in almost every shot. Cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo uses unique camera angles throughout to elaborate on dream sequences and to place the viewer in the wandering mind of the troubled director on screen. When you pair this with the incredible design of the sets and locations used in the film, they combine to produce some of the most satisfying elements of the film visually.
The other piece that really stuck with me was the soundtrack for the film. Like the cinematography, there are moments when it is bright and loud, while others where it steps back to allow the visuals to shine. There are elements of classical music with heavy jazz and swing influences throughout and even some elements of carnival or circus music mixed in. Throughout the entire film, I always felt that the music was perfectly capturing what was happening on screen, regardless if we were in reality or Guido’s memories and dream world.
In my final analysis (for now) I can honestly say that I didn’t love the film, but I appreciate the craft with which it was created. This was (regrettably) my first Fellini and while I’m not initially ready to tackle another one of his films, I have put a number of them on my watch list because I think he is a director that I need to sit with for a while to be able to fully understand. |
AuthorI'm just a film buff who wants to watch great movies. Where else to find the best, than the list of those nominated by the Academy each year? Archives
May 2023
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