Kuolleet Lehdet (Fallen Leaves) (2023). A melancholy but charming production from Finland. Two lost souls, both down on their luck for different reasons, try to form a tenuous romantic connection. A study in loneliness, despair, and hope, punctuated by radio reports of Russian atrocities in Ukraine (which I imagine is a big concern in Finland) and occasional strains of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Pathetique. Perhaps “three” lost souls would be more accurate if you count the cute stray dog. Nominated for the 2023 Cannes Palme d’Or and winner of the Cannes Jury Prize.
That dog also won the Palm Dog, you have to count him!
Alma, the mutt who plays Chaplin in Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves lapped up the Grand Jury prize, with the film’s human stars, Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, on hand to accept the honorary dog collar. “In the spirit of Aki Kaurismäki, there is not much to say,” noted Pöysti, choosing to go with an honorary “Woof” or, as they say in Finland, “How!” Fallen Leaves is the third Kaurismäki film to score a Palm Dog, after Laiki from Le Havre won the competition’s jury prize in 2011 and Tähiti aka Hannibal took the top dog honor for The Man Without a Past . “Aki claimed it was the best award he won,” recalled Palm Dog founder Toby Rose.
Just watched this. Agree with everything here, plus it was also exceptionally slow and kind of boring. Way too many overly long shots of Mel Gibson staring straight ahead in silence. One scene was literally just Vince Vaughn eating a sandwich in a car while Mel Gibson, surprise, sits next to him and stares straight ahead in silence. It goes on for several minutes.
I suppose they were attempting to depict the boredom and monotony of certain aspects of police investigation, but there are ways to do that without literally showing them doing nothing for extended scenes.
That’s great – thanks for posting! I had no idea that Cannes offered a Palm Dog (or should that be “Palme d’Og” or “Palme de Chien”?) It’s apparently a genuine award for best performance by a canine. I must say, though, that as cute as the dog in Fallen Leaves was, and as much as one may admire the symbolism, his role was basically to be a sweet dog. Whereas in Anatomy of a Fall, as I mentioned earlier in discussing this movie, Messi, the dog who played Snoop, genuinely had to act at a critical point in the movie.
The Zone of Interest
Not recommended.
I actually do not think this is a bad movie, but I was disappointed. If you have heard the premise of this movie, which is that Rudolf Hoss and his family live right next to Auschwitz, you can more or less predict what this movie is like. They go about their daily life while he is a horrific monster making horrific decisions and doing terrible things.
I didn’t find that this really did much that made an impact on me. The story is quite true, by the way. He and his wife and kids did live right next to the concentration camp.
The movie was just kind of OK.
Dude Bro Party Massacre III
Not recommended at all.
It’s a comedy and not a sequel like the title suggests. It’s terrible, unfunny, and does nothing that other spoofs or horror comedies haven’t done better. It was honestly boring.
Skip this, watch Unmasked Part 25.
In case you missed it, I made a post about this movie here, and a followup post with some historical background immediately after.
If you didn’t miss it, then fine, both of us are obviously movie fans and we’re entitled to our opinions. I will say that this is probably not a film for everyone, but its artistic merits are pretty evident, as are the reasons for its critical acclaim and Best Picture nomination (though I don’t think it will win).
Everything Everwhere All at Once. This one gets a “meh” from me. It’s been too well received for me to be bold enough to say it sucks, but my experience of watching it was that it dragged on for no good reason and had a lot of wackiness shoehorned in to no good effect. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of wackiness and weirdness, but I want it to be in service to characterization or storytelling or worldbuilding or whatever, not just stuff that gets thrown up in front of my face so I can admire how imaginative the filmmakers are. The movie does provide a framework for it (or an excuse to do it, if you will) with the whole multiverse thing, but it wears rather thin, IMO. And whatever character development and/or message we ultimately get seems rather perfunctory.
Distill the story down to a five-page synopsis and give it to a more disciplined filmmaker who would develop it from there and turn in a finished product about a half hour shorter, and you might end up with something I could get behind with more enthusiasm.
In the theater: The Iron Claw The story of the Von Erich family wrestling dynasty. My roommate is a wrestling fan so I accompanied him. The film was well done but depressing. I did not know the story going in.
Streaming: On You Tube, Five Golden Hours. Starring Ernie Kovacs (said to be his favorite role). He has affairs with recently widowed women. He meets his match when actually falls in love with one. Recommended.
It’s cool; I think this movie was adequate, but never really excelled for me. I do think it is just one time where I am the outlier.
War of the Worlds, the 1953 version with Gene Barry. Watching this as a kid scared the heck out of me, and I think it’s still pretty effective. Now what I notice are
- TV camera-inspired Martian machines with their red-green- blue eyes
- a beautiful flying wing; I wish these would have taken off (if you permit me a phrase) - imagine seeing these at today’s airports
- Gene Barry is a hunk!
- Doctor Clayton Forester! No, not him, the original one
- the mostly science-based story, ruined by the religious claptrap at the end; instead of a nice clean “killed by microbes” ending, we have a god saving Earth, a god that must really hate Martians
Drive-Away Dolls. There’s nothing in this movie that won’t remind you of another film, but if it steals its moves from past entries in the Quirky Romp sweepstakes, it’s still enjoyable if maybe a bit thin in the end. Like Thelma and Louise, or Harold and Kumar, its two leads have a simple task to perform - driving a car from Philadelphia to Tallahassee - but get sidetracked by unforeseen circumstances, and I wish the film had thrown in a couple more of these. The drive-away car they hire happens to be of interest to shady characters who are in hot pursuit, like Repo Man, there’s a Pulp Fiction-like briefcase the contents of which we do eventually get to see, and reference to a certain Sam Peckinpah cult favorite I won’t name. It’s so lighthearted and silly you won’t mind - hey let’s call it an “homage” and leave it there.
I watched it without knowing Ethan Coen was the writer director. So are the Coen Brothers officially defunct? Well they had a good run; this neither embellishes nor disgraces their achievements.
See How They Run - This is farce without laughs, a whodunnit where you rapidly stop caring about who did it, a film that so desperately wants to be a Wes Anderson film without containing any of Anderson’s wit, style, panache, timing or talent. It relies on the conceit that it is some kind of meta-version of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, a play that if you’re in the UK you don’t know unless you’ve seen it in the West End and if you’re not you likely don’t know at all, which makes doing a “meta” version of it completely pointless*. There are a cavalcade of characters we don’t care about apart from Saoirse Ronan’s gabbly police constable and Adrien Brody’s murder victim (Brody appears to believe he’s actually in a Wes Anderson film and plays it as such). Sam Rockwell as lead seems embarrassed about the whole thing, the twists (such as they are) are predictable, and the last-minute extra death is played entirely for laughs and ignored by the police for no good reason.
With a much tighter script and competent directing this could have been a much better film. But it isn’t.
*I have seen the stage play. It doesn’t really help much.
Wow…how vastly different our tastes! I’m a Wes Anderson fan, and on every rewatch of this film I appreciate more.
Different strokes etc, but just wanted to add a dissenting opinion since it still appears on HBO.
Well, they were killed by microbes…microbes put there by god in his wisdom, yada yada.
The demise of the Martians was awesome in the 1953 version, with the machines crashing into buildings.
In the remake, Spielberg blew it – Tom Cruise turns around a corner and sees a machine not moving and somebody tells him that they seem to be having a problem.
Bel Canto, 2018 Julianne Moore picture about an opera singer taken hostage by the nicest terrorists in film history. Inna was like “I couldn’t stand the book, hopefully the movie will be better.” (It wasn’t.)
Jurassic Park, 1993 movie about a 13yo girl who knows UNIX. And dinosaurs.
Boogie Nights, Julianne Moore weekend continues with this 1997 film about the American porn industry. Inna was gobsmacked, had ZERO idea that porn was legal in the US, had no idea it was shown in movie theaters, and at the end, literally thanked me for picking this film for us.
I really enjoyed See How They Run. A bunch of actors having fun, a bunch of self-referential humor. Different strokes and all that.
I wanted to like it, but it just didn’t stick any of the landings IMHO. If others liked it, that’s all well and good.
My daughter went to see Madame Web last week (without me) and loved it, making her possibly the only person to do so if the reviews and comments on the film are anything to go by.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (rented on Amazon). Overall, I would call this movie good but not great, amusing but not hilarious. Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al was great, and I loved how they leaned into the absurdity of it all, but at heart it was kind of the same joke over and over again, so it got a little stale.
On the other hand, I did find it quite refreshing to see a movie that, like Al’s parodies (particularly the early ones highlighted in the film), is just stupid and silly. No post-modern relativism or trying to be edgy or “droller than thou” style - just lots of dumb jokes about bologna and accordion-playing. It definitely had a retro vibe like movies from the era it was depicting.
Yes, cute movie but I don’t think about it all that much and I saw it when it was new.