Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Pieces of a Woman plus Short Takes on Standing Up, Falling Down along with suggestions for TCM cable offerings and other cinematic topics

Yearning for Home (Wherever It May Be)

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) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.

Pieces of a Woman (Kornél Mundruzcó, 2020)

rated R 126 min.

Opening Chatter (no spoilers): Assuming no additional traumatic, society-challenging political events this week (although an historic second impeachment of Donald Trump as days roll on toward the Jan. 20, 2021 Biden-Harris inauguration [hopefully with no violence, no matter how hungry for such retaliation certain Trump acolytes may be] could certainly lead to some serious consequences before my next posting, so we’ll see what happens by next week), I’ll hope to get through uneventful reviews of a couple of stories dealing with serious subjects although the former ultimately tries to explore paths forward after a bitter personal tragedy while the latter is somewhat about comedy, gets a bit into comic moments, finds its way toward low-key, personal redemption. In Pieces of a Woman we have an alternately searing/simmering collision of individuals as a couple’s baby dies immediately after birth (no spoiler; that event drives the entire film after its first ½ hour) with the mother trying desperately to pull her life back together even as her own (overbearing) mother pushes her toward various responses that may suit Mom’s needs more so than her grieving daughter’s while the baby's father’s hurt/angry as he seeks atonement from the midwife whom he blames for the horror befallening this family. For me, this is one of the best of 2020, should be up for serious Oscar considerations, now available on Netflix streaming. In the Short Takes section I’ll note Standing Up, Falling Down about a Long Island guy who flops as a stand-up comic in L.A., comes home to various support from/bickering with his family, longs for the woman he left behind (she’s still there but married), makes friends with a depressed, alcoholic dermatologist (Billy Crystal) grieving the deaths of his 2 wives (you can find this one on various streaming platforms; I chose Amazon Prime for $3.99). Also in that section 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, ye tedious software!) along with my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.

Here’s the trailer for Pieces of a Woman:

(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 $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: The timeline of this story set in Boston (shot in Montreal) extends from Sept. 17 of an unspecified (but current) year to April 30 of the next one where we first meet Sean (Shia LaBeouf), foreman of a construction crew building a bridge over a river which he wants to see completed before a daughter is born to him and wife Martha (Vanessa Kirby), an executive in some unspecified company while Sean’s brother-in-law, Chris (Benny Safdie)—married to Martha’s sister, Anita (Iliza Schesinger)—works at a car dealership where Martha’s rich-and-pushy-Mom, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn), has just bought them a minivan (daughter appreciates it; son-in-law’s a bit miffed, as if he’s not capable of taking proper care of his pregnant wife—Elizabeth would likely agree). That night all hell breaks loose when Martha goes into labor; Sean calls their midwife, Barbara, but she’s already dealing with another birth so a replacement, Eva (Molly Parker), is sent in her place. Despite debilitating pains, Martha goes along with being moved first into the bathtub, then into her bed where the baby’s successfully born after an initial panic about the soon-to-be-child’s heart rate causing Eva to suggest the need for paramedics but Sean wants her to finish the birth, after which initial joy turns to horror when the baby can’t breath. Sean calls an ambulance, but as it arrives we go to fade out, with the following scenes clarifying the child died. A month later Sean’s focused on knowing what went wrong, wants to bring criminal charges against Eva (supposedly for “justice,” though that truly means revenge) while Martha’s trying to deal with her grief in a more controlled manner, wants to donate the baby’s body to science to help understand the cause of her death which Sean and Elizabeth oppose, wanting a burial instead. As time goes on, tensions increase among all 3 of these adults, including arguments between Sean and Martha about the spelling of their daughter’s name on a tombstone along with a disagreement on clearing out the baby’s room (he objects, especially wants to keep a set of 4 ultrasounds he’d had framed). He tries to resolve the tension with sex at another time, yet that goes awry (he’s so desperate to get in her he won’t even let her fully get her pants off) as he storms out, although suffering his own terrible pain at the horrid loss of his daughter.

Matriarch Elizabeth recruits Martha’s cousin, Suzanne (Sarah Snook), as their lawyer against Eva, but Sean’s deteriorating in many ways: he convinces Chris to falsify some paperwork so Sean can sell the minivan as finances are now becoming much tighter; Sean’s been sober for 6 years but turns to sneaking whiskey, snorting cocaine, as well as having a hot affair with Suzanne given Martha's increasing disinterest in him (Martha wanders a bit also as we see her dancing at a club, kissing a man, but then leaves before things go any farther). Elizabeth (who’s admitted to her daughter she had a miserable childhood, wanted better times for her progeny, encourages Martha to avenge herself on Eva) finally admits she never liked Sean, gives him a hefty check to just leave, move to Seattle (he’d tried to convince Martha to take a road trip there, she declined) which he does (Elizabeth also unloads on Martha, blaming her for the baby’s death due to insisting on home birth).

⇒Later, Martha has to testify at Eva’s intense trial, then during the break she wanders over to a nearby drugstore to pick up a packet of unretrieved photos from months before, finds they’re of her holding the baby just after the birth, returns to the trial where she asks permission to address the court, absolves Eva of any guilt for the baby’s demise. Back home she finds some apple seeds she’s saved in her refrigerator have started to sprout so she plants them. As the story concludes, Martha scatters the baby’s ashes into a river, then either much later or maybe it’s symbolically we have silent shots of a little girl (Juliette Casagrande) who climbs an apple tree, Martha helps her down, they go inside Martha’s home as we’ve reached fade out, final credits.⇐ I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see Oscar nominations here for Kirby as Best Actress, screenwriter Kata Wéber for Original Screenplay, maybe even Burstyn for Best Supporting Actress (she’s been nominated as such before for The Last Picture Show [Peter Bogdanovich, 1971], as well as a Best Actress nom for The Exorcist [William Friedkin, 1973] along with a win at that higher level for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore [Martin Scorsese, 1974]). Whether Pieces of a Woman might rise to the level of a Best Picture nom is hard to say because there are so many other contenders I haven’t seen yet, may not be able to watch all of them before March 15, 2021 when announcements come (awards show, April 25), but at this point I’d certainly say it’s a solid contender to be in my (also the Academy’s?) Top 10.

So What? Pieces of a Woman plunges us right into the horrors of a truncated childbirth—a scene which goes on for 25 intense minutes after our brief intros to Sean and Martha, all done in a single, active, manic take as the camera runs all through their home, variously showing us the intense/pained/relieved/shocked faces of the pregnancy couple and their confounded midwife along with the tightly-seen-rooms they inhabit—then moves much more slowly, but with many bursts of emotion, as Martha, Sean, and Elizabeth variously lash out at each other in their grief over the dead daughter, ultimately taking us through the aftermath of such an interpersonal-horror, finally allowing these main characters to just drift off into their individual directions without the compelling sense of closure we so often desire in our cinematic stories (Did Martha ever know about Sean’s affair with Suzanne? Would she really care all that much at this point, even if she did? Do Martha and Elizabeth reconcile in any manner? What becomes of Sean in Seattle?), yet we don’t need answers to such questions to fully appreciate what we’ve seen on screen (with the intimacy here ideally suited to TV-home-streaming with many theaters unavailable), although we might get further appreciation by watching the interview (20:55) in Related Links below with real-life Hungarian couple Mundruzcó and Wéber as they acknowledge this searing story’s based on an actual birth-tragedy, the resulting loss they suffered, followed by desire to share their insights (comments also from Kirby and Burstyn).

My only negative comment about … Woman is completely extra-textual: Netflix has taken Shia LaBeouf out of any consideration for an Oscar campaign or other publicity for the film because of accusations against him for abusive behavior toward ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs (which, ironically, mirrors some of the unhinged actions of Sean toward partner Martha in … Woman). While LaBeouf doesn’t agree with all her charges he admits he has a history of abuse, alcoholism, and aggression (along with a few arrests connected to those problems), as this situation likely ends any hope LaBeouf might have had for an Oscar nomination for what’s an excellent (intentionally-disturbing) performance as a man unhinged by sorrow. You’d think such problems would also boot him from the next Indiana Jones and … movie (due in 2022, again starring Harrison Ford) even though in … the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) we learned his character, Mutt Williams/Henry Jones III, is the son of Indy and Marion Ravenwood, but he’d already been ruled out as early as 2017; whether his future career hits the sort of rocks Johnny's Depp's been dealing with since his similar personal troubles have gone public will await to be seen. In the meantime, don’t miss the opportunity to see Pieces of a Woman even if you have to spend $14 for a month’s worth of Netflix streaming to do so (assuming you can still tolerate seeing LaBeouf, given his controversial situation).

Bottom Line Final Comments: LaBeouf’s off-screen-problems aside, what strikes me as most odd about … a Woman is the response of the CCAL toward it, which is positive yet not too much so for those many critics at Rotten Tomatoes who’ve given it just 77% positive reviews while responding much more favorably to Standing Up, Falling Down (88% positive), reviewed just below (the more-restrained-folks at Metacritic are consistent with 67% for … a Woman to match their 70% for Standing Up … as well as being consistently lower than the RT responses, which they usually are; more details on these critics-accumulation-sites—as with anything I review—can be found below in the Related Links section). Maybe it’s just because at RT there are 168 reviews cited for … a Woman but only 56 for … Falling Down, so I guess the law of averages might dictate that the more you survey the greater the chance of rejections piling up (but that doesn’t seem to be the case for One Night in Miami [Regina King, 2020] which has 98% positives at RT, based on 180 reviews [I’ll add my mine next week when it becomes streaming-available]). Therefore, all I can say to those like TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek (“But yanking at our most wrenching emotions doesn’t necessarily make art great, or even artful. Sometimes it just makes you want to turn away, to watch from a position of defensiveness.”)—or several others, like my local (San Francisco Chronicle) Mick LaSalle, who say, despite their other words of praise, there’s an inconsistent pace here: “Because nothing can top the first half-hour for drama and artistry, ‘Pieces of a Woman’ inevitably loses some intensity for its remaining running time”—is try harder to fully accept this film on its own terms of varied-pace, simmering-to-boiling-intensity, because I think you’re not allowing it to fully be what it is.

As you might know from previous Two Guys reviews (or, if not, please consider making this blog a regular habit as you can tolerate), I like to end each review with a Musical Metaphor for what’s just been discussed, to provide a final perspective on the content while using aural insights (with music and lyrics) to augment previously-printed-verbal-ones. In the case of Pieces of a Woman I found my thoughts drifting back to a marvelous Judy Collins album, Wildflowers (1967), where she wrote/sang 2 songs I feel should be used in tandem to address what Martha’s all about, has to endure in this heartbreaking story searched for acceptable closure. The first is the gentle “Since You Asked” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgcRQpHAZnE which speaks to the unconditional love this woman wants to share with those around her, including her husband, her mother, and her soon-to-arrive-daughter (“Take the lilies and the lace From the days of childhood All the willow winding paths Leading up and outward This is what I give This is what I ask you for Nothing more”), but fate has other plans for her as she’s denied functional connections with any of these others (or anyone else around her, as noted by the serious stares that greet her when she returns to work after the sudden death of her baby), making me think of the other song, “Albatross,” at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DVNlQ3ajqFk, with its haunting, even morbid approach: “Making up your memories and thinking they have found you They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried […] And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain Come away alone.” For me, Collins has the most engaging vocal presence of any pop singer I’ve ever heard, equally able to conjure up warmth or despair, either well worth listening to from her delivery, here useful in giving us another avenue into the complex, maddening situation Martha finds herself in, trying to somehow carry on, to somehow make sense of what hell she’s been put through.

SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)

Standing Up, Falling Down (Matt Ratner, 2020)

Not Rated 91 min.

After a failed career as a stand-up comic in L.A., Scott returns to Long Island, to live with his parents and sister, as he's now longing for the woman he left behind even though she’s married to someone else; his life takes a turn, though, when he meets a depressed alcoholic dermatologist (Billy Crystal) who gives Scott encouragement to return to his comedian desires, despite any difficulties in the past.

Here’s the trailer:

Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.

A 34-year-old-guy, Scott Rollins (Ben Schwartz), has a sort of reverse-situation from a character in Billy Joel’s song, "My Life" (“Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the west coast Now he gives them a stand-up routine in L.A.” [video from a concert appropriately in Long Island, NY]) in that Scott left everything he knew on Long Island (including girlfriend Becky [Eloise Mumford]) in favor of a hoped-for-comedian-career in L.A. only to bomb out, return home where his Mom, Jeanie (Debra Monk), still adores him, tries to help get him a job at the Post Office; Dad Gary (Kevin Dunn) still doesn’t understand why Scott won’t work in the lumberyard Gary hoped Scott would run someday; sister Megan (Grace Gummer) cares about him but easily gets into caustic exchanges, including Scott’s barbs about her at 30 still voluntarily living at home, dating a security guard, Ruis (David Castañeda), despite Scott’s own directionless-situation. One night in a bar restroom he meets drunk dermatologist Marty (Billy Crystal), so in need of a pee he uses the sink, explains he’s almost-constantly-depressed because of the deaths of both women he married while Scott’s morose because, after abandoning Becky, she’s now married to their mutual-friend, Owen (John Behlmann).

In truth, nothing of much consequence happens during a good bit of this movie (Scott strikes up a friendship with Ruis; Scott and Marty get drunk/stoned together a lot; Marty treats Scott for his “stress hives” while encouraging him on his stand-up routines, sort of in place of being with his own son, Adam [Nate Corddry], hostile toward Marty because his mother killed herself with pain pills while Marty cheated on her) until Scott gets up the nerve to try his new routine at a Levittown club where Megan, Ruis, and Becky (renewed her contact with Scott, admits her hurt when he left) attend but Marty misses, drunk with a woman he picked up at a karaoke bar, sad over having just scattered his second wife’s ashes. ⇒Scott visits Becky, they almost have sex but he leaves only to be chased by Owen; they fight a bit but mostly talk. Marty dies, Scott speaks at his funeral, meets his daughter, Taylor (Caitlin McGee), who works at the Post Office, sparks fly.⇐ While I’m more in with the CCAL MC folks (70% average score) than the overjoyed RT critics (87% positive reviews), I did enjoy Standing …, find it quite watchable especially in its condensed format. It was supposed to be in theaters back on Feb. 21, 2020 but I find no evidence of that, just its current availability on several platforms (I chose Amazon Prime for $3.99, but you can get it for a free trial on Starz). As a Musical Metaphor I’ll use Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” (1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; also on 1966 U.K. version of the Sounds of Silence album) at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=m0oJ8_VTu3c (from 1981 Concert in Central Park) because while Scott’s not initially as anxious as this singer to return to his roots he is put off by his attempted life as a traveling comic troubadour, ultimately finds what he longed for back in Long Island (“Home, where my thought’s escaping […] Home, where my love lies waiting Silently for me”), “silently” because he hadn’t met her yet, but ultimately he seems destined to bring happiness to at least one of Marty’s adult children.

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 U.S. Pacific Daylight 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.

Friday January 15, 2021

9:15 PM The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) Best pairing of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton outside of Citizen Kane (with Reed’s film as one of my very few 5 stars-ratings, after seeing it again on re-release). Cotton’s a pulp writer come to Vienna looking for old friend Harry Lime (Welles) but hears he’s dead, seemingly in an auto accident, yet Cotton suspects otherwise, especially given Harry’s underworld activities. As fabulous as are all the other elements of this film (won an Oscar for Black & White Cinematography) is Anton Karas’ great score, played in memorable fashion on the zither.

Saturday January 16, 2021

1:00 PM Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) An injured, wheelchair-bound photographer (James Stewart) uses his telephoto lens to watch others in his apartment complex, thinks a man’s (Raymond Burr) murdered his wife so he gets a friend (Grace Kelly) to help him investigate. Widely regarded as one of Hitchcock’s best (despite its seeming-celebration of voyeurism, which earns it some criticism).

3:00 PM In the Heat of the Night (Norma 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 asks him to stay, help with the investigation despite the racism Tibbs constantly faces. Won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor (Steiger) also Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound (nominated for 2 others).

5:00 PM The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Widely-regarded as one of the best westerns ever as well as part of the long deconstruction of the genre, this focuses on a Civil War Rebel vet (John Wayne) with a hatred for Indians especially because they kidnapped his niece as a child, killed some other relatives; he’s on a quest to bring her home but adolescent Debbie (Natalie Wood) wants to stay with Chief Scar causing further trouble, intolerance, and deaths as neither side can tolerate each other.

Sunday January 17, 2021

12:30 PM A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951) From Tennessee Williams’ equally-searing play (it’s more brutal, as Hays Code-dominated films had to conform to “decency” standards), this masterpiece of interpersonal-brutality stars Marlon Brando in maybe his best role but the acting Oscars went to Vivien Leigh (Actress), Karl Malden (Supporting Actor), and Kim Hunter (Supporting Actress). “Stella!”—what more can I say? Even with the censorship, this is an all-time filmic triumph.

Monday January 18, 2021

1:00 AM Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) This is the film that brought the director international fame beyond his native Spain. A TV actor (Carmen Maura) is upset because her lover’s (Fernando Guillén) left her, then meets his son and fiancée, followed by the other woman accidently drinking gazpacho spiked with sleeping pills. Hilarious chaos ensues including all sorts of mix-ups plus impending danger from an Arab terrorist. Won many awards.

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: Only 1 extra this week: (1) Netflix will release new films on a weekly basis in 2021. 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:

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

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Here’s more information about Pieces of a Woman:

https://www.netflix.com/title/81128745

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVM1J5RfG1c (20:55 interview with director Kornél Mundruzcó, screenwriter Kata Wéber, and actors Vanessa Kirby, Ellen Burstyn)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pieces_of_a_woman

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/pieces-of-a-woman

Here’s more information about Standing Up, Falling Down:

https://shoutstudios.shoutfactory.com/standing-up-falling-down/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbtGLeCruCw (33:20 interview with director Matt Ratner

and actor Ben Schwartz)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/standing_up_falling_down

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/standing-up-falling-down

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

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 20^th 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). 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. 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.

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Thursday, January 7, 2021

The Midnight Sky plus Short Takes on On the Rocks, suggestions for TCM cable offerings, and a few other cinematic topics

Seeking Salvation, Accepting Reality

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

1:02 AM 1/7/2021—January 6 (yesterday, relative to this posting) was supposed to be a normal day of final-holiday-celebrations that some call Little Christmas others call the Feast of the Epiphany along with the Constitutionally-mandated-verification by the U.S. Congress of the Electoral College votes for the next President and Vice-President, but that all got sidetracked when what could have been a lawful, peaceful demonstration by Trump supporters degenerated into an illegal, domestic-terrorist occupation of the U.S. Capitol. Certainly, film reviews are meaningless compared to such an action condemned around the globe, but I’ve continued with my posting anyway both as a means of distracting myself from the fear such insurrections will continue and providing you with some trivial distraction from those horribly-disruptive-events. Maybe 2021’s not going to be such a relief after all!

The Midnight Sky (George Clooney, 2020)

rated PG-13 118 min.

Opening Chatter (no spoilers): When streaming for a couple of current-theatrical-releases becomes available (we’re still in semi-shutdown out here in the San Francisco area, as many of you may be also) I’d like to see News of the World (Paul Greengrass, 2020) with Tom Hanks (should be on Netflix soon) as well as watching Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020) starring Carey Mulligan (don’t know yet when and where it will stream)—neither of which are making much impact with box-office-receipts in their rather-limited-theatrical-presence—but until such time I’ll continue on with downloadable-options, which, based on my interests among the various things available, led me this week to a lead review on The Midnight Sky where Clooney also stars as a forlorn scientist at an Arctic observatory watching our world coming to a quick end due to some unspecified disaster, so he tries to make contact with the one Earth-based spaceship now returning home to tell them to reverse course, go back to that habitable-moon-of-Jupiter they recently visited because that’s the only hope for any continuance of the human species; however, his task is further complicated by the sudden appearance of a little girl who's turning to him for comfort although she doesn’t speak. Also, in the Short Takes section farther below I’ll provide brief comments about On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola) starring Rashida Jones as a wife becoming increasingly suspicious her husband’s (Marlon Wayans) having an affair so she turns to her womanizing-father (Bill Murray) for help in finding the truth about her situation. Further, 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, tedious software!) along with that standard dose of industry-related-trivia.*

*You can also see an interesting follow-up from our last posting about Wonder Woman 1984, an in-depth-video (26:16 [ads interrupt at 12:30, 17:00]) exploring its Rotten Tomatoes rating dropping so much from 89% the week before it was released down to much lower since Christmas Day (60% as I go to “press”), including factors such as only a limited number of critics were allowed to see it before Embargo Day (in this case 11 days before the movie’s debut, no reviews allowed until E.D.), female critics later responses didn’t drop as much as those of males but only about 30% of those critics are female anyway; there are also some quick numbers given on the Top 10 box-office champs of 2020—domestically and globally—plus streaming numbers from some various platforms as 2020 closed.

Here’s the trailer for The Midnight Sky:

(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.)

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: (There are some notable flashbacks inserted from the present tense of this film throughout, but for clarity I’ll just put most of my comments in chronological order.) In 2019 a well-respected, approaching-middle-age-scientist, Augustine Lofthouse (Ethan Peck [with George Clooney’s voice overdubbed]), gives a presentation about discovering a previously-unknown moon of Jupiter, K-23, which he senses might accept human habitation due to its geothermal properties; that night he meets Jean Sullivan (Sophie Rundle), begins a romance with her, but soon after she breaks it off because of his obsession with work, leaving little time or interest in forming a true bond with Jean. A few years later he discovers she’s had a daughter by him but neither of them reveal to the girl who her father is. Then we jump to 2049 at (fictional) Barbeau Observatory in the Arctic where Earth has just suffered some cataclysmic event (we’re never told what except it was due to some “mistake,” with deadly bands of radiation circling the globe implying nuclear war) so everyone at the base except Augustine (now played by Clooney) goes back to be with their families, even though their deaths are surely imminent. He stays behind, drinks a lot of whiskey (for good reason).

Augustine (who’s likely to die anyway, given he must perform a daily blood-transfusion process on himself due to a severe illness) sets a self-appointed task to make radio contact with the spaceship Æther (in ancient mythology, the "stuff" of empty space) the only one currently in operation, on its 2-year-voyage coming home from exploring K-23 (which they did find to be pleasantly-habitable), but at this point there’s no contact to Augustine nor from him to the crew—Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo), his pregnant wife, Sully (Felicity Jones)—who had a nightmare of being left behind alone on K-23—Maya (Tiffany Boone), Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), Sanchez (Demián Bichir)—so they have no idea what’s transpired on their home planet. Augustine then faces another challenge when he discovers he’s not alone but is sharing his accommodations with a little girl, Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who doesn’t speak but implies her name with a drawing of this flower. Despite his initial distain for suddenly having to take responsibility for the child (says he’s the “wrong person” for her, as he’s kept everyone at a distance throughout his life), he soon begins to grow fond of her, makes the decision they need to undertake a dangerous trek through snowdrifts and howling winds to a weather station which has a stronger antenna, more likely to make contact with the Æther. In the process, they camp one night in an abandoned structure, but ice breaks up the next morning, almost drowning them as well as Augustine losing all his transfusion gear, setting him up for an even-sooner-demise.

Despite being forced to walk through the frigid conditions (their motorized sled also sank under the ice)—and Augustine accepting the moral crisis of shooting a dying man found in an airplane’s wreckage—they reach the weather station, make brief contact with the Æther, although that’s soon cut off because the crew decided to enhance their own communication options by changing course into an unexplored region of space during the return trip, but that led to danger from asteroid debris slamming into them, damaging their comm system and radar. Adewole and Maya do a space walk to successfully fix the injured components but then endure a second barrage which injures Maya; she dies shortly thereafter. Sully contacts Augustine again who implores them to go back to K-23, restart humanity; Mitchell insists on taking a transport down to Earth to be with his family even if they’re already dead, so Sanchez joins him in order to give Maya a proper burial. Adewole and Sully plan on using a gravity swing around Earth to propel them back toward Jupiter with Sully in one last dialogue with Augustine, explaining how his grand accomplishments encouraged her being in NASA.

⇒By this time, we know Augustine knows Sully is the daughter Jean never told him about when they were together, about to part (she lied, claimed a false pregnancy), but when we learn her actual name is Dr. Iris Sullivan we (and he) understand the girl with Augustine in the Arctic is just a mental projection of his long-lost-child, with his ability to break through his emotional walls to care for this apparition is an after-the-fact-attempt to connect with an offspring he never knew, a further symbol of all those he kept at arms-length over the years, pursing his personal quests instead. As is explored in this video (10:35 [interrupted with ads at about 3:50, 10:00]), with its own spoilers (you’ve been warned!), this obvious allusion to Adam and Eve as Adewole and Sully—seemingly the last humans alive until she delivers her baby—may carry some trepidation for a renewal of our species because Adewole wasn’t thrilled to learn about the pregnancy, so as they separately leave the control deck during the final credits we’re left to wonder what sort of “family” situation they’ll develop on that distant moon, especially if Iris/Sully eventually takes after her introvert-father in pulling back from human contact, a result that would surely doom these people in hopes for species-rebirth on what seems to a Eden-like-location—so, if you’ve decided to indulge in spoilers anyway, here’s another video to give you more context to the film’s ending, the last 11:43 of scenes prior to those credits.⇐

So What? Without the slightest attempt to preach Middle Eastern-based-monotheistic-religions to you but simply in an attempt to make legitimate note of something I’ve never really understood from my limited exposure to Torah/Old Testament study, I’ll ask you to go to this link, read through if you're unfamiliar with chapters 4-5 of the Book of Genesis from the Judeo-Christian Holy Book (or skim, if you prefer) to see the human lineage from Adam and Eve (both created directly by God—OK, you also might need to read Genesis, chapters 1-3 to see how this comes about) through their first children Cain, Abel (killed by Cain), and Seth, followed by other sons and daughters, with Cain and Seth both marrying, producing offspring. BUT, if the only women available for these first sons of Adam and Eve (as well as their later offspring and eventually their grandchildren) are all of the same direct lineage don’t we have an enormous scientific or religious or ethical incest problem here? I don’t fully know how various theologians/religious scholars try to explain/rationalize this quandary (attempts are made in the links just cited, yet I see no plausible method of truly squaring science with religion, especially with claims early Biblical humans were somehow “purer” than those who came after the Great Flood), but the same situation—especially from the scientific perspective (assuming these Biblical stories are more literary/faith-based than actual evolutionary-history anyway), which is our actual concern with this The Midnight Sky story—will be in place for Adewole and Iris when they settle on K-23 (sorry if I’m drifting into spoiler territory here, but it’s hard to make my point without some reference to the film’s latter events) because whatever child they first have will need to mate either with her/his parents or later offspring to keep the repopulation-project going, but seemingly with some drastic genetic hindrances that would render the “new humanity” into the mode of the worst stereotypes of hillbillies or inbred royalty (even “pedigreed” animals face this doomed sentence if heritage lines are kept too narrow, severely weakening the gene pool). Is this how we'll "survive"?

So, why my concern with incest-trauma in the midst of a contemplative, intra-familial/sci-fi film? It’s because I think The Midnight Sky, somber as it is, contains more potential value than it’s being given credit for by OCCU critics, for example Variety’s Owen Gleiberman (a guy whose opinion I usually trust quite a bit) who says: “Some viewers will surely be moved. To me, though, ‘The Midnight Sky’ just proves that a movie that reaches for the stars can still come up empty-handed.” I don’t find it “empty,” but it still bothers me its solution for human-perpetuation seems so flawed, unless that’s the point here, that our species has lived past its intended-shelf-life so an evacuation to another celestial home is useless unless we can do so with a huge population of mostly-unrelated-people (easing DNA degradation) as in the more-physics-based/more-cinematically-successful but still-difficult-to-comprehend story, Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014; review in our November 13, 2014 posting).

Bottom Line Final Comments: The Midnight Sky’s adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel, Good Morning, Midnight (2016), but not having read it nor finding a comprehensive summary I won’t know if the incest-considerations I’ve brought up are grounded in the original book or in how her ideas were translated into the screenplay. What a great many in the OCCU would tell me, though, is “don’t be so concerned because this film’s not that good anyway” (even the often-upbeat Leonard Maltin [who, oddly enough, like Gleiberman, mistakes the setting as the Antarctic—don’t these guys get press kits anymore or recognize what’s north of Canada and Greenland in an on-screen-map?] says “I felt like I’d seen it before, such is the familiarity of its plot points and its most ambitious action scenes […] even the prodigiously talented composer Alexandre Desplat is defeated by an unexceptional screenplay.”), Rotten Tomatoes only at 51% positives, Metacritic surprisingly-higher (but still lukewarm), a 58% average score (as always, more details in Related Links below on anything I review). There seems to have been a limited theatrical presence from Dec. 11, 2020 (although I find no mention of it at either Box-Office Mojo or The Numbers) so it’s main presence is as a Netflix streaming option if you’d like to explore it there. It’s slow (except when the ice breaks, the space debris flies), thoughtful, unnerving in its depiction/assumption of the imminent doom of our planet (not so damn-far-fetched from the U.S.A. perspective, given how our [soon-not-to-be] current Administration has rolled back environmental protection laws, even in the face of verified, human-dominated climate change), it’s well acted, enhanced with a good many impressive visuals, yet if you just went by standard averages of critical reviews you’d likely never find a reason to even consider it.

Like the OCCU folks, you, too, may be among those who don’t find enough interest in concepts of The Midnight Sky (which Augustine frequently contemplates through a skylight while doing his nightly-transfusions, hence the title) to bother with it, but if you’ve paid your monthly fee to Netflix or are willing to do so given a whole lot of other fine fare they also offer (especially the magnificent Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom [George C. Wolfe, 2020; review in our December 31, 2020 posting]) then at least consider exploring The Midnight Sky, a somber-but-generally-engaging-experience. As usual, I’ll conclude the review with a Musical Metaphor, which has to be Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” (from his 1970 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipNed8wYLdg (I use this live version because it came from a venue near me, although back in 1993), another apocalyptical tale, also about the situation of “Thinkin’ about what a friend had said I was hopin’ it was a lie [… until] The loading had begun Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed To a new home in the sun.” Maybe there’ll be a successful new home for Sully, Adewole, and their descendants, maybe not, but let us take this film’s lesson to heart before it no longer confronts us with fictional scenarios.

SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)

On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020)

rated R 97 min.

In what’s ultimately a romantic comedy, a NYC wife (Rashida Jones) suspects her husband (Marlon Wayans) of having an affair with his attractive co-worker so she gets her somewhat-estranged, womanizing father (Bill Murray) to help her spy on her spouse, leading to increasing suspicions but no actual evidence of adultery (sort of like claiming there's voter fraud with no proof of illegal ballots).

Here’s the trailer:

Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.

You’d think teaming Coppola and Bill Murray again after Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003; Oscar for her Original Screenplay), plus added star-wattage (although for others more so than me) of Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans, there’d be ample reason to see On the Rocks even without strong CCAL support (RT, 86% positive reviews; MC, 73% average score), but, as with Mr. Gleiberman above, I’m now saying enticing-potential doesn’t always pay off in great results (I say it better, of course!). The basic premise here is a NYC wife, Laura Keane (Jones)—married with 2 daughters, preteen Maya (Liyanna Muscat), younger Theo (Alexandra and Anna Reimer)—faces writer’s block on her new novel while suspecting husband Dean (Wayans) of an affair with sexy co-worker Fiona (Jessica Henwick), because he’s at business-events/traveling with her so much. Reluctantly, Laura enlists the help of her flirtatious, semi-retired art-dealer Dad, Felix (Murray)—he left Mom (Barbara Bain) long ago for a woman who got him into the gallery business but then died; now he maintains men are biological-roamers so he’s just following his genes—to spy on Dean with circumstances furthering their assumptions, yet no clear evidence. ⇒This concludes when Dean and Fiona go to a Mexican resort to close a deal so Laura leaves the kids with Grandma, she and Felix travel there too where she plans to confront Dean but instead learns he’s on a flight home even as Laura finds Fiona (with girlfriend Mandy [Ximena Lamadrid]) simply staying in Dean’s previous room. As you might imagine in a plot played for laughs, all’s well that ends well as Laura makes up with both Dean (she confesses everything) and Felix (after berating him for his treatment of Mom).⇐

It’s pleasant enough but too predictable (now I’m sounding like Mr. Maltin but, again, with more insightful expertise!), has some nice moments like Laura and Felix in his convertible frantically chasing Dean and Fiona’s cab through nighttime NYC streets, but overall doesn’t deliver much although the main actors handle their roles convincingly. While On the Rocks had some marginal presence internationally for a total of about $1 million, it’s mostly on Apple TV+ ($4.99 monthly) if it appeals to you (if you’d prefer a serious version of a relationship impacted by flimsy-circumstantial-evidence I’d say look for any decent film version of Shakespeare’s Othello [1603], possibly the one [Olivier Parker, 1995] with Laurence Fishburne, Irène Jacobs, Kenneth Branagh). Thus, my Musical Metaphor here will try to balance relationship-comedy and full-blown-tragedy with The Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky” (on the 1982 album named for this song) at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QU-8lJtvVA4 (this video uses some grim footage from the ultimate-paranoia-film, 1984 [Michael Radford, 1984]) as it superficially could be about a lover’s devotion but actually concerns pent-up-disgust (“The sun in your eyes Made some of the lies worth believing I am the eye in the sky Looking at you I can read your mind I am the maker of rules Dealing with fools I can cheat you blind”), so maybe you’ll just listen to this song a couple of times (unless you really like these actors).

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 U.S. Pacific Daylight 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.

Saturday January 9, 2021

3:00 PM King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, 1933) Original tale of a huge ape on a secluded island with natives and dinosaurs, taken away by an entrepreneurial filmmaker as an NYC stage attraction until all hell breaks loose. Marvelous stop-motion-animation by Willis O’Brien of the island’s creatures (racist stereotypes of the natives, though), culminating with Kong’s capture of Fay Wray, carrying her with him to the top of the Empire State Building for the (sad) grand finale.

5:00 PM North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) One of Hitchcock’s top achievements (that’s saying a lot) about a case of mistaken-identity gone terribly wrong as ad executive Roger Thornhill (Gary Grant) is thought to be a U.S. spy, hunted by thugs working for a foreign agent (James Mason). A marvelous collage of great scenes including the crop-duster-in-the-cornfield; also stars Eve Marie Saint, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau providing a great combination of tension and laughs.

Sunday January 10, 2021

2:45 PM Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972) An 8-Oscar winner: Best Director, Actress (Liza Minnelli), Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Art Direction, Sound, Score Adaptation and Original Song Score, Cinematography, Film Editing (close for me on these last 2 with The Godfather which won Best Picture [I agree]). A great film, best musical of all-time for me, set in 1931 Berlin as an American performer & an English academic get involved, Nazis on the rise, notable differences from the play.

Tuesday January 12, 2021

11:15 AM Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Still my All-Time #1 (even though Sight and Sound’s poll dethroned it in 2012 in favor of Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958] after 50 years on top); a triumph of script, acting, cinematography, editing, sound design, art direction, special effects, score, with Welles as director, star actor portraying Charles Foster Kane, an enormously wealthy (by chance as a kid) newspaperman (patterned on William Randolph Hearst) whose early progressive ideals succumb to pragmatics destroying marriages to 2 wives (Ruth Warrick, Dorothy Comingore) and a long-time-friend (Joseph Cotton), retaining loyalty only from his business manager (Everett Sloane). Except for the eye-of-God beginning and end it’s told in flashbacks with 5 narrators imparting their subjective accounts of his life (hard for us to know what’s true). Won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz [grandfather of noted TCM host Ben Mankiewicz]), no others.

Wednesday January 13, 2021

5:00 PM Murder by Death (Robert Moore, 1976) Screenplay by Neil Simon, this hilarious parody of novel/movie murder mysteries brings together versions of famous detectives Charlie Chan (Peter Sellers [yes, seems racist but reflects the numerous original depictions of Chan]), Nick and Nora Charles (David NIven, Maggie Smith), Hercule Poirot (James Coco), Sam Spade (Peter Falk), and Miss Marple (Elsa Lanchester) challenged to solve a murder by Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) and his butler (Alec Guinness); toward the end even Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson show up briefly.

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: Here are some extra items you might be interested in: (1) Variety's ongoing Oscar nomination predictions at their site, The Collective; (2) Films with possible multiple-Oscar-nominations (surprisingly enough, includes both The Midnight Sky and On the Rocks). 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.

1:02 AM 1/7/2021—I composed the paragraph just below at about 8 AM U.S.A. Pacific Time on 1/6/21 before setting down to morning papers and breakfast, eventually followed by this posting, but around 11 AM the awful D.C. disruption happened, thankfully finally under control, so I’ll just keep my statement below as it is because nothing about those thoughts has changed (yet, regarding various political results). I can only hope the insurrection at the Capitol was a singular event so I can go back to concentrating on meaningless-film-reviews, but that depends on whatever tactics Agent Orange (and his minions) employ next until that blessed date: 1/20/202, Biden-Harris Inauguration.

In closing, I’ll note my (perceived, at least) success with keeping all aspects of this posting shorter than I’ve rambled on in past years so let’s see if I can maintain such brevity throughout 2021. At my end, there were greatly-reduced-hours in the writing and posting process (research for all these links remained about the same, though) giving me time to watch the runoff-election-results for the U.S. Senate which seem to have delivered victories to the Democrats with Rev. Ralph Warnock and Jon Ossoff set to provide a 50-50 split in the chamber, allowing incoming VP Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking-votes; technically, neither of these races are final yet but look assured, just as the official verification of the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden and Harris will eventually conclude but still drags on as I finish my posting due to the political theater clown show being staged by a good number of GOP members of Congress to curry favor with Trump voters for future elections (reminds me of this "FRAUD AT POLLS!' clip from Citizen Kane where a once-dominant “populist” politician also suddenly found defeat so his media empire lied on his behalf). I’m extremely happy with these Democratic shifts in the political winds, bringing me to some final Musical Metaphors from the days of my youth, Ray Charles with "Georgia on My Mind" (from the 1960 album The Genius Hits the Road), Sam Cooke with "A Change Is Gonna Come" (from the 1964 album Ain’t That Good News), and Crosby, Stills & Nash with "Long Time Gone" (from the 1969 album named for the group), or as Nina Simone exclaims, "It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life for me And I'm feeling good" (from her 1965 album I Put A Spell On You). Keep on singing 'til I see you again, next week.

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

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Here’s more information about The Midnight Sky:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80244645

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBeUmOTknDM (15:15 interview with actors George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Tiffany Boone, producer Grant Heslov, and cinematographer Martin Ruhe; claims to have spoilers, but I’m not aware of

any from watching this video)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_midnight_sky

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-midnight-sky

Here’s more information about On the Rocks:

https://a24films.com/films/on-the-rocks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3risHrSS8U (29:56 interview with director Sofia Coppola and actors Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, Marlon Wayans [with lots of chatter about their mutual love

of NYC and how the city’s charm is captured in this movie—which I don’t really get that much of a sense of after having watched it, but maybe my not-so-pleasant experience of living there in 1973-’73 has something to do with my response, although I admit it was a lot cleaner, less dangerous, more enjoyable on short visits in relatively-more-recent years since the late-1990s])

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/on_the_rocks_2020

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/on-the-rocks-2020

with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).

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). Ken