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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 3 years

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Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

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bunnyandbirb · 7 years

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Birb’s Summer 2017 Sports (Anime)

My first distinct memory of trying to play sports involves trying to win a game of soccer by ignoring the ball and repeatedly kicking the opposing players in the shins instead.

During four years at my basketball-crazed college, I never went to a single game (my priorities were with Overwatch and figuring out how to survive the rest of the month on two dollars.) I remember once going to watch the Denver Nuggets play, and then waking up when it was all over. So yeah. I might not be a “sports person.” That being said, I fucking love sports anime. They’re super straightforward, feel-good shows and I’m a sucker for underdog stories. I would call them a guilty pleasure, except I don’t feel guilty about watching them at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re all good.

I watched all of the sports anime that debuted this summer (in one night) and here are my sleep-deprived opinions:

Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun (Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun) Studio Hibari

Aoyama is a freshman in high school, a genius soccer player, and has a crippling obsession with cleanliness. I was very into the premise of this show when I first read the description, which is why I watched it first. I’m still glad that I did watch it first, so I could get my disappointment out of the way faster. Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun isn’t a true sports anime, more like a comedy anime with sports. The pacing in the first episode is pretty atrocious, barely introducing the main character before suddenly getting into a game with an enemy team (that I think I’m supposed to care about?) and then wrapping it all up in less than ten minutes. Basically the whole thing is a series of setups for jokes, and if they don’t make you laugh, it’s a little bit awkward.

The ‘clean freak’ joke started getting stale near the end (and it had only been one episode). There was even a moment where they actually tried to take it seriously (it’s so TRAGIC that he wants to play SOCCER when he’s a GERMAPHOBE), and that just made me confused. Aoyama also looks suspiciously similar to Haru from Free!, and it doesn’t help that they both have that quiet, unfazeable, non-personality.

I don’t even remember the names of the other characters, because they weren’t particularly interesting. There was an angry guy who was always angry that Aoyama didn’t want to be a dirtyboi, generic side characters, and then some girl who stalks the MC because he talked to her once. The best part of the show was the ending, which was an obvious nod back to old-school sports anime and was pretty entertaining.

The show’s art/animation isn’t that bad, which is a shame because I’m never going to be watching more of it. I’d say this is a mediocre show that I can see people liking if it matches their sense of humor. I’m not someone who finds gag comedy particularly funny, which doesn’t make me the right audience for this kind of thing.

Ballroom e Youkoso (Welcome to the Ballroom) Production I.G.

It’s an anime about ballroom dancing. The first time I heard of this, I immediately thought this was coming out to snatch up the audience of Yuri on Ice. I still don’t think I’m wrong, but Ballroom e Youkoso feels both similar and very different from both that show and Haikyuu!!, another product of this studio (and one of my favorite shows in this genre.)

Our main character is Tatara Fujita, a kid (supposedly in eighth grade, clearly doesn’t look it) with no hobbies and no idea what to do in life. He almost gets beaten up but is saved by Sengoku, a professional dancer and owner of a nearby dance studio. He eventually gets a lesson and then watches a video of Sengoku dance, which gets him hooked on dancin’ (at least it isn’t drugs.)

To understate it a bit, this show is VERY DRAMATIC. Maybe I should have expected an anime about dancing to ham it up a little, but this was a level of drama that I haven’t seen in a sports anime in a long while. They stretch limbs like nobody’s business to emphasize the ‘fluidity of dance’ or something (I don’t really know) and I laughed out loud at how silly some of it looked. Not to the say that the animation is bad. The whole CLAMP-esque rubber limbs syndrome is clearly a stylistic choice, and everything looks pretty good when they’re not dancing.

But it’s not just the animation. The plot is also VERY DRAMATIC. The entire show is a lot heavier than a lot of other sports anime, and all of the characters are way more passionate about dancing than I’ve ever been about anything. And honestly, I did get a little caught up in it. The music in this show is pretty good, and definitely contributed to how invested I got in the scenes. The characters are likeable so far. There is a bit of fanservice every now and then, which is annoying but I’ll deal with it. This is a true underdog story, and while I can predict how the rest of the show will go by watching these first five episodes, I’m sure I won’t be bored following through with it.

Dive!! (Not-Free!) Zero-G

Okay, so the alternate name isn’t really Not-Free!, but it should be. This show is mostly boring and a little hilarious (for unintentional reasons.) Dive!! is an anime about… diving, and is centered around a middle schooler named Tomoki Sakai. His combined middle/high school diving club will shut down unless one of its members can get into the Olympics within a year, which is totally reasonable.

Where to even start with this.

It’s almost impossible not to compare Dive!! to Free!, because it begs you to compare them. I can imagine they had a list of how to one-up Free! and, judging by the show, came up with this:

MORE ABS. Everyone gets a 10-pack.

Swim jammers? Pussy shit. Speedos only.

You like high schoolers who look like college students? We got some that look like they’re 12.

Add another exclamation mark in the title, that’ll really get ‘em going.

I’m not exactly sure what Tomoki’s character is supposed to be. In the first episode, he is walking to the diving club with his girlfriend. She starts talking to him, trying to engage him in a conversation… you know, the thing people in relationships have sometimes. He only gets like three sentences through before he starts zoning out completely and has an inner monologue about how much he loves diving. THEN when she confronts him, he looks past her, sees his beloved senpai and BLUSHES. IS THIS A BL SHOW??? IS THIS GIRL A BEARD?? But really, watching this pissboi interaction was probably the funniest thing in the entire show.

The animation is serviceable, but if they wanted to compete with KyoAni’s work on Free!, they might as well have not tried at all. All of the characters are forgettable as fuck except for one, who isn’t even a main character. Actually, I take that back. The main character’s emo twin brother is also pretty memorable, only because he spends every waking moment trying to steal MC’s girl. The majority of the show is straight-up boring; Unlike Ballroom e Youkoso, I didn’t feel any sense of tension or urgency no matter how much they tried to get me to care.

In conclusion, Dive!! sucks. Don’t watch it.

Nana maru san batsu (Fastest Finger First) TMS Entertainment

This might not be considered a “sports anime” in the traditional sense, but I would argue that’s exactly what it is. Koshiyama Shiki is a nerd enters high school and is drafted into the “Quiz Study Group”, where he learns the joys of competitive quiz bowl. So yeah, it’s basically a show about people answering trivia questions on a timer.

I’ll be honest; This show isn’t that special. It’s predictable, the characters are generic, the dialogue is pretty trash at times, and the art is decent. Pretty much everything aside from the actual tournaments crawls by at a snail’s pace, and by the third episode I was skipping past most of the scenes that didn’t have to do with quizzes. There also is some random fanservice (really? In a quiz bowl show?) and sometimes the character artist draws their heads too big for their bodies.

Despite all that, I will keep watching this show until the end. I’ve had a lot of fun learning about quiz bowl, mostly because I didn’t know anything about it before this. I’m a big fan of trivia, and I feel like I can just watch the show for that and still enjoy it without caring about whether the characters die in a fire or not. I’ll just ignore the repetitive conversations and weak romantic subplot in between tournaments.

Okay, so the two shows I said were my faves of the bunch are about ballroom dancing and quiz bowls. But my three all-time favorite sports anime are about tennis, volleyball, and football, so I’m just saying my preferences are based on the qualities of the show, not on the fact that I’m a loser.

Well, that’s it for now. Hopefully we’ll see some more quality sports anime in the future... or I’ll just wait for the next season of Haikyuu!!.

~Stay tuned for more nonsense~

- birb

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