Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they're in a positive mood or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) if they go negative.
Red Rocket (Sean Baker, 2021) rated R 130 min.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): A potential return to a theatrical screening is getting closer for me so we’ll see soon whether that's happened or not, but for now we’re still in streaming mode with one film, Red Rocket, that did have a minor run on the big screen but now comes to us for a $14.99 rental from Apple TV+, and another, Kimi, that’s only a streamer on HBO Max. The former’s about a big-time-porn star now down on his luck, returning to his Gulf of Mexico coastal hometown of Texas City (a place I grew up near, with me across the water on Galveston Island), trying to patch things up with his almost-ex-wife (that could be official as far as she’s concerned) even as he’s equally attracted to a teenage donut shop worker. This is a funky, very independent film, but I found it quite enjoyable, maybe just because everything about it seemed so familiar (well, not the porno star part … oh, well). In the Short Takes section I’ll look at Kimi, a thriller (well done but somewhat formulaic) from acclaimed director Stephen Soderbergh about an agoraphobic woman working for a smart-speaker-startup about to go public when she hears a recording of a woman in great danger yet no one at her company is willing to help her contact the FBI, apparently in fear of bad publicity just before the potentially-lucrative IPO. Then, of possibly-passing-interest to you, with no prior intention to do so I’ve ended up using 3 songs from the Rolling Stones this week, so I hope you’re a big fan like I am. Also in Short Takes I’ll offer suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, such tedious software!), along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer for Red Rocket:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who aren’t that tech-savvy)—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: In 2016 Mikey Davies (Simon Rex) takes a bus ride (with a bruised face, no explanation) back to his hometown of Texas City, TX (on the Gulf of Mexico mainland, right across a wide channel from Galveston) after a 17-year-absence when he was in L.A. working as a hot star in porno movies. He’s destitute and needy—but still a smooth-talker—so he’s soon convinced his separated-but-not-divorced-wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod), and toothless mother-in-law, Lil (Brenda Deiss), to let him sleep on their couch for awhile as he looks for work (neither of them are even the least bit happy to see him, but they can recognize how desperate he is, in a place defined by a sense of desperation as the entire area’s surrounded by foul-smelling-oil refineries [topped only by the rancid smell of sulphur from the Galveston port, not an aspect of this film but something I personally experienced—along with the gruesome days when the wind blew in from Texas City—as I, too, grew up in this place]). Employers, however, are at first dubious to hire Mikey due to the long gap in his résumé, then halt completely when he admits what he’s been doing during that absence (2,000 pornos) from the local sand and marshes (they don’t want a customer to recognize him, cause some scene in their stores—although that says more negative about those theoretical-customers than it does about him, at least in my opinion). Finally, Mikey convinces local marijuana dealer Leondria (Judy Hill) to take him on again as a pot seller, despite reservations from her and daughter June (Brittney Rodriquez) that Mikey will just smoke the goods himself. He stays honest, though, brings in a lot of cash, pays Lexi and Lil a month’s rent in advance, takes them to the Donut Hole to celebrate (if this had truly been a Seinfeld clone [more on that just below] he’d probably have chosen Arby’s, but I can’t remember if that fast-food-franchise is available in Texas City); while there he gets attracted to 17-year-old-worker Strawberry (Suzanne Son), whom he keeps coming back to chat up.
Soon, Mikey’s having sex with both Strawberry and Lexi, but when he’s off for a full weekend with the girl (they go to Galveston, ride a roller-coaster on the historic Pleasure Pier) Lexi gets jealous, then angry at Mikey. Mikey stays upbeat, though, makes friends with Lonnie (Ethan Darboe), Lexi’s neighbor, so the guys hang out at a strip club, Mikey talks about his porno career, but later he causes Lonnie to initiate a massive vehicle pile-up, talks Lonnie into taking sole responsibility for it, giving us the impression Mikey can’t afford to be arrested for some reason (there’s a lot in this plot that goes intentionally unexplained except maybe for the sense of overall-atmosphere including brief shots of Donald Trump on TV at a campaign rally, later accepting the Republican Presidential nomination). ⇒Next, Mikey convinces Strawberry to break up with her high-school-boyfriend, Nash Parker (Parker Bigham), leading to Nash and his parents (Brandy Kirl, Dustin “Hitman” Hart) beating up Mikey at the Donut Hole parking lot; this leads to Mikey telling Strawberry she’d be a natural porn star, so she agrees to go to L.A. with him. When Mikey tells Lexi he’ll be off to the left coast she has Leondria send June and her brothers to steal Mikey’s $3,000; when he asks for it back Leondria gives him only $200, says leave now, so he walks to Strawberry’s home where he sees her at the front door in a red bikini, but we’re not sure if this is reality or imagined, for the film abruptly ends.⇐
So What? Initially my choice for which of these reviews would be in the spotlight vs. Short Takes would seem to be a close call as their CCAL responses are near-identical (more details in the next section of these comments, followed by the Kimi review), Kimi's new (for a welcome change, with my so-far-in-2022-postings mostly focused on catch-up-2021-releases) so it has no industry-awards-nominations (probably won’t get any in 2023), but Red Rocket’s also got nothing from the main Guild groups this year (although it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, nominated there for the Palme d’Or, plus was chosen as a Top Ten Film [of 2021] by the National Board of Review), but, in all honesty, what drew me to it for a larger exploration is its setting in oil-refinery-dominated Texas City, a somewhat small place (pop. about 50,000) but one just across a small branch of Galveston Bay from Galveston Island, where I grew up in the city of Galveston (pop. now a bit less than Texas City but was about 70,000 when I was there in the 1950s to mid-‘60s). There just aren’t many movies set (as well as actually shot) in one of the areas I’m most familiar with (Austin and Dallas, TX, NYC, the San Francisco Bay Area being the others) so I had to finally see what was presented here even though more-compelling-options kept cropping up over the last couple of months until I finally made room for it on my schedule, found myself relatively amused by what I saw. (The area still looks boringly-familiar, with only quick shots of the long-standing Pleasure Pier roller coaster in “the floating G” [as DJs on Houston's big-time-Top 40-radio station used to refer to my hometown], so for nostalgia purposes it was pretty much Texas City or bust, although as director/co-screenwriter/co-producer/film editor [yes, this truly defines independent filmmaking with extremely low budget, small crew, no rehearsals] Baker admits [in the second-item-interview listed with this film in Related Links much farther below], the Donut Hole is an actual store but in Port Arthur, TX [about 100 miles further up along the TX Gulf Coast, very close to the Louisiana border].)
As far as this film’s content is concerned, I mostly have to let my nostalgia for the place (what there is of it; I have no plans to move back or even travel there any time soon, even with no impeding-pandemic-considerations) be my main reward here because as far as action goes this film is pretty, pretty close to the concept of the “show about nothing” that I enjoy so much in NBC TV’s Seinfeld (1989-1998)—so marvelously carried forward in HBO TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-present, starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David [a major writer for Seinfeld, now provides the outlines for Curb ...'s improved-dialogue)—as Mikey mostly just bums around his old stomping grounds, gets involved in relationships that he should have avoided, rarely accomplishes what he sets out to do, but that probably felt Seinfeld-familiar to me giving me a bit more engagement with what I saw, compared to how I responded to it immediately and after the fact vs. my fun-to-watch/easy-to-move-on-response I had with Kimi (more details, obviously, in the review below). I know that some critics (and a few friends I often watch these Hollywood products with) base their essential feeling about a film on how much they can relate to the characters presented, so if that’s how you weigh the value of a story you watch, Red Rocket (I really have no explanation for this title unless it’s a penis-porno-reference, given Mikey’s screen-name of Saber) might be one hard to get into (for the same reason some other friends don’t care for Seinfeld/Larry David) because—except for Strawberry or Lonnie—there aren’t many appealing presences in this film, although you might find some sympathy for how Mikey tries to find better options in his meandering life, even as few of them come to fruition for him.
Bottom Line Final Comments: As noted above, the CCAL’s quite supportive of Red Rocket in that the folks surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes give it 88% positive reviews while those noted by Metacritic offer a 75% average score (quite good for them as they rarely get higher for anything I note they’re reviewing [more details in Related Links on both of these critics-accumulation-sites for the 2 cinematic-offerings I’m exploring this week or in any Two Guys posting]), but it hasn’t been available at very many domestic (U.S.-Canada) venues since its December 10, 2021 opening, taking in only about $1.02 million, plus a bit more from France, Australia, and New Zealand for a current global gross of $1.36 million. You might still find it in a theater somewhere (I see only 1 option in my San Francisco Bay area), but you’re more likely to stream it on Apple TV+ for the cost of a monthly subscription plus a $14.99 rental fee. I can’t promise you’ll like it as much as me (especially if you have no particular reason to care about this location or the appropriate-to-that-location-development of the characters), but I did find it enjoyable in a leisurely manner and think you might do so as well.
As you should know, if you’re a much-valued-regular-reader of this silly blog (or a welcomed-new-peruser of my [informed?] ongoing-drivel), I wrap up each review with a Musical Metaphor to give some aural-closure to what’s gone before; as anyone who’s read my opening paragraph way-back-up-front this time now knows, this week’s songs all come (by chance) from the Rolling Stones so for Red Rocket I’ve chosen “Out of Time” (on their 1966 U.K. album Aftermath and 1967 U.S. album Flowers, but the version used here is from their 1975 Metamorphosis album) at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=cISm1BTvp80, linked to film-footage from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019; review in our August 1, 2019 posting) where it's used in the soundtrack. While the song’s sung by a man putting his former girlfriend in her (down-the-rankings) place, relative to Red Rocket these lyrics could be sung to Mikey by Lexi and a chorus of her Texas City chums: “You don’t know what’s going on / You’ve been away for far too long / You can’t come back and think you are still mine / You’re out of touch my baby / My poor discarded baby / I said baby, baby, baby you’re out of time.” Mikey keeps trying to get back into the Texas City scene, though (the epitome of desperation, based on my experience)—even if it’s just to get stable long enough to get out of it again—so we’re ultimately left with the ambiguous question of whether he made it or not, just as you’ll have to decide whether to watch it or not for your own opinion of ... Rocket's conclusion.
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
Kimi (Steven Soderbergh) rated R 89 min.
Angela, a woman terrified to leave her home, works for a high-tech company about to go public with their A.I. speaker-assistant when Angela (whose job it is to listen to Kimi’s client interactions, improve her accuracy) hears what seems to be a murder but when she tries to get help for the seeming-victim she’s met with indifference from her boss, then danger from hired thugs.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading any further, I’ll ask you to refer to the plot spoilers warning far above.
Here’s a clever-mash-up of Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola), and The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright, 2021; review in our May 20, 2021 posting), so it’s bit of a thriller-genre-stew (with great art found in a couple of those examples) but kept consistently intriguing by another master director (no, Joe, not you), although it’s more of a competent revisit to elements of what I’ve just cited (with a good bit more effective slam-bang-action toward the end than most of what you’d find in these other examples) than anything all that new or innovative. We’re in Seattle where agoraphobic Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz)—with fear of leaving her spacious loft, intensified by a previous sexual assault where she ended up being on trial more so than her attacker, along with an acknowledgement in this story of the COVID pandemic (although you won’t see much use of masks in public)—works for the Amygdala corporation, maker of a state-of-the-art-smart-speaker, Kimi (voiced by Betsy Brantlley), with CEO Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGuadio) nervously ready for the Initial Public Offering where he stands to clean up as his A.I. device doesn’t depend on trial-and-error-algorithm-improvements (any of us who’ve used Apple’s Siri or Google’s Alexa can appreciate better responses than “I don’t understand the question” or a history of a sports franchise when we simply ask for a current score) by using employees like Angela as a “stream interpreter” to monitor recordings of Kimi’s interactions with clients, correcting her mistakes so they won’t be repeated. She’s also intrigued by Terry Hughes (Byron Bowers), a lawyer who lives in another loft right across the street from her, yet while she welcomes sexual visits from him she can’t muster up enough courage to meet him downstairs at the coffee truck; we see she’s also being clandestinely watched from another apartment by a guy with binoculars, but his presence here will be explained later. While listening to a Kimi conversation Angela notes something uncomfortable behind loud music, uses sophisticated filters to block out all but the conversation between a frightened woman and some angry guy, Brad, about to do her harm.
When Angela reports this to her boss he doesn’t want word of this in any way interfering with the IPO, tells her to delete the recording, but will allow her to come into headquarters to discuss it with an exec, Natalie Chowdhury (Rita Wilson), but before she goes she works with a European hacker friend, Darius (Alex Dobrenko), to find the troubled woman’s named Samantha. Fearing the worst—and promised by Natalie to bring in the FBI—Angela puts a clean copy of the recording on a flash drive, musters up all the courage she can, goes to HQ where Natalie wants to hear the recording, Angela insists on waiting for the FBI to show up, Natalie goes to contact them yet takes a long time, then Angela sees a couple of thuggy-looking-guys (Jacob Vargas, Charles Halford) headed her way so she runs, in hopes of getting to the local FBI office; she manages to elude her pursuers for awhile but is finally caught, taken back to her home as the thugs need to destroy all traces of her evidence.
⇒At her street entrance, Angela's watcher-neighbor, Kevin (Devin Ratray)—turns out he’s another agoraphobe, realizes she’s in trouble—intervenes with her captors, allowing her to get away, but when she reaches her supposed-upstairs-safety she finds the dangerous Antonio Rivas (Jaime Camil), whom we’ve seen earlier demanding more cash from CEO Hasling (if you’re sharper than me you’d already know he’s the “Brad” on Samantha’s recording, Rivas was his hitman, but it took me until the end of this story to feel verified with all that). Using Kimi to distract her captors with lights out, loud music, Angela manages to escape through a ceiling panel into the work-in-progress-dwelling above where she gets a nail gun, kills her would-be-killers, then Terry shows up. Final scenes show Hasling on TV being arrested, Angela (her hair now died pink rather than blue) with Terry at the coffee truck.⇐ Certainly, overall this is an enjoyable-movie to watch with enough carefully-calculated-twists to keep you absorbed during its compact-running-time which is a much-more-condensed-investment of your viewing options than watching the 3 classics I cited at the top of this review. Sorry, … Woman …, you’re nowhere close to that status although I do rank it with the same 3 stars as Kimi while the CCAL’s much-more-supportive of this new movie than The Woman in the Window, with RT’s 91% positive reviews, MC’s 77% average score for the new one vs. RT’s 25% positive, MC’s 40% score for the older one, putting me notably higher with … The Woman, lower with Kimi, so you’ll have to decide whom you trust to properly deliver the goods on screen and in reviews.
However, if Kimi does intrigue you it’s found only on HBO Max so a subscription's needed but there's no extra rental fee. As you know, my Musical Metaphor here comes from the Rolling Stones, this time with one of my all-time-favorites of theirs, “Gimme Shelter” (also from 1969’s Let It Bleed) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLx4xJdCcZ4 (a live performance that could easily be from anywhere in the last 30 years, with Lisa Fischer sharing mic duties with Jagger) because of its overall sense of foreboding along with specific lines like “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away […] a flood [of panic] is threating / My very life today.” Once she begins her quest to find out about Samantha, Angela quickly learns the end of her own life is “just a shot away,” forcing her to rise above all of her debilitating-limitations first for some stranger’s benefit, then for her own, even if the final product gets frequently-formulaic (and, whatever happened to Kevin?), but just ignore the occasional naysayers such as San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle who calls Angela “entirely unpleasant, nasty to everyone with whom she interacts […] ice cold and self-important, such that we lose interest in her fairly quickly”; tell that to Terry and Kevin for starters, then check back in with me.
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.
I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.
(Yes, I know, I get more carried away with some of these descriptions than I do with others but, trust me, they’re all well worth your consideration, for those various reasons that I’ve noted or elaborated.)
Friday February 18, 2022
9:15 PM Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969) Maybe it’s just because I’m from Texas and recognize a lot about Joe Buck (Jon Voight), but this is to me is among the pantheon of the all-time-bests as wannbe-cowboy Joe leaves the Lone Star State for NYC to be a gigolo but has no luck, finally accepts friendship with hustler Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) trying together to survive in the big city while dreaming of comfortable life in Florida. Won the Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay (Waldo Salt), nominated for 4 others including Best Actor for Voight and Hoffman (who should have shared it in my opinion but lost to “America’s cowboy,” John Wayne for True Grit); distinction of being only X-rated Best Film, though it’s rating was later changed to an R.
Saturday February 19, 2022
1:15 PM Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) Difficult to make a satire about nuclear annihilation but this one succeeds, an hilarious send-up of the Cold War escalation between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. (regarding surviving nuclear holocaust in underground bunkers for years: “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”) as a very deranged general orders a hit on Russia which looks to succeed. Peter Sellers is in 3 roles, others include George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones. (2/15/2022 Yes, given the current tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine it may be even harder now to laugh at this grim story, but “Mr. President, we must not allow a satire gap!”)
5:00 PM In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) A rich industrialist builds a factory in Mississippi but is murdered; Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), visiting the area, is arrested for being Black with a fat wallet until he’s identified as a top Philly cop so local chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) asks him to stay, help with the investigation despite the racism Tibbs constantly faces. Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Steiger), and Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound (nominated for 2 others).
Monday February 21, 2022
1:00 AM Weekend (Jean-luc Godard, 1967) One of the seminal accomplishments of the French New Wave as rationality and traditional filmmaking techniques are put aside by one of the world’s most eclectic directors as a materialistic/homicidal couple (Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne) are on a journey to get an inheritance from her dying father, but on the way their car is totaled in a crash leaving them to walk through scenes taken from history and literature in a series of long, traveling shots paralleling the screen. From there it really gets weird, though you should watch/decide for yourself how much.
5:00 PM Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961) In 1928 Kansas, a tale of high-school sweeties, Deanie and Bud (Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty), who put off sex until after college and marriage but ensuing tensions entwine them (with further pressure on Bud as he tries to control his promiscuous sister [Barbara Loden]) with Bud a washout in college, Deanie for a stay in a mental institution. Some say it’s marvelous, others say it's soap-opera. Won Best Original Screenplay Oscar (William Inge).
9:45 PM Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Do you really need my description to know what this one’s about? If so, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre are “looking at you, kid,” to watch it! A movie truly defining what I consider to be a 5 stars-“classic,” celebrated for decades as a story of hope, patriotism, and making the right decision when romance conflicts with greater needs in the early years of WW II.
Tuesday February 22, 2022
1:30 AM Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1973) Cut down from near 5-hr. TV miniseries to near 3-hr. film about a supposedly-happy-couple, Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson) who work through the pain of abortion, his affair with a younger woman, separation, and arguments over divorce leading to remarriages with others; magnificent but emotionally-brutal to watch, inspired also-grim 2021 HBO mini-series remake starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac.
7:45 PM On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) An aging couple (Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn) on annual holiday at a New England lake face trouble as he shows signs of senility but agree to watch their daughter’s (Jane Fonda) stepson-to-be (Doug McKeon) while she's off with her fiancée; relationship between youngster and oldster begins rocky, smooths out. Made lots of money, got great reviews, won Oscars for Best Actor (H. Fonda—his first [should have won for The Grapes of Wrath, 1940]), Actress (Hepburn—her fourth [plus 8 other noms]), Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Thompson), nominated for 7 more including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress (J. Fonda).
Wednesday February 23, 2022
11:00 AM Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) A perennial favorite on stage brought to screen; famed tennis player Ray Milland sets up an accomplice to terminate wife Grace Kelly yet she kills the assailant instead in self-defense, then is set up by her husband to be convicted of murder, but … .
If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: In quick fashion, here are some extra items you might like: (1) Are movies and TV shows avoiding the COVID pandemic?; (2) Early predictions on Oscar winners (scroll down from Best Picture discussion to see the other categories); (3) Twitter users can vote on favorite film with that audience winner to be announced on the Oscar broadcast; (4) Spider-Man: No Way Home now #3 on the All-Time Top 10 Domestic list, #6 on All-Time Global. As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder that you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
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AND … at least until the Oscars for 2020’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, March 27, 2022 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists. You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when they’re compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike any awards voters who blindly fill out ballots, sometimes—damn it!—for films they’ve never seen).
To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the
Oscar nominees for 2021films.
Here’s more information about Red Rocket:
https://a24films.com/films/red-rocket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ4EFj8SzJg (31:17 interview with director/co-screenwriter [with Chris Bergoch] and actors Simon Rex, Bree Elrod, Suzanna Sun, Brittany Rodriquez)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/red_rocket
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/red-rocket
Here’s more information about Kimi:
https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYeB2LgKJ1cIOjAEAAABQ:type:feature
(not much of an official site but the only one I could find except this one at IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14128670/reference)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhKtGsl08RQ (5:10 supposedly this video is about explaining the ending but really it’s just a summary of the movie in no more detail than what I’ve written about above but you might enjoy getting such a recap with accompanying imagery)
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kimi
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/kimi
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If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty of them about people broken down by various circumstances, with maybe the best one of the bunch—calls itself "perfect"—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I should also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song always “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of the great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP).
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