Tag: opinion

Jay’s Take: Vortex

A relatively spoiler-free movie review.

France’s resident moviemaker/troublemaker Gaspar Noé (“Enter the Void”; “that movie where Monica Bellucci gets raped for ten minutes”) has a new movie out called “Vortex” . It’s one of the best new movies I’ve seen in the last 10 years. That’s a mean feat. Discuss:

Vortex is about a small family – an elderly couple, living alone; and their son – dealing with the late-stage dementia of the matriarch. And while in many ways it – aesthetically & thematically – slides nicely into the controversial director’s filmography at this point in his life (he’s turning 60 next year), it’s also unique amongst his back-catalogue. In this way and others, it’s sure to draw comparison with Michael Haneke’s 2012 movie “Amour” (also about an elderly couple and their offspring dealing with the deterioration of the wife). With Amour, a well-known & incendiary director took his unique cinematic language and translated it successfully to a serious, contemplative “chamber piece”. I’ve always wanted to call a movie a “chamber piece” and now I can. Twice! Vortex is a “chamber piece”: a serious-toned character drama in-and-around one location.

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Jay’s Quick Take: Cabaret

A revisionist movie review.

“Cabaret”. It’s a classic, according to “industry experts”. It’s on every “Top 1000” / “See This Before You Die” list, and all the reviews on Plex have that little “tomatoe” icon. Director Bob Fosse is known for more than his four main theatrical features, from Cabaret-on, although at least two of those movies are actual, confirmed personal favorites (full disclosure: I haven’t seen “All That Jazz” yet). Shouldn’t “Cabaret”, then, be worth 5000-words-or-more? Surely? Meh. Surely it’s been done.

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Jay’s Take: On Deadly Ground

A revisionist movie review.

“You wanna know who he is? Try this: delve down into the deepest bowels of your soul. Try to imagine the ultimate fucking nightmare. And that won’t come close to this son of a bitch when he gets pissed.”

– Michael Caine re: Steven Seagal

Let’s talk. Aside from the man himself, do any of us REALLY KNOW Steven Seagal? Sure, NOW he’s the schlub who can disarm a pistol-toting goon faster than my Mazda can reach top-speed uphill in eco-mode – who has private “line readings” with his co-actresses (albeit allegedly) in expensive hotel rooms in cities whose elite still see the man as the mainstream movie star he was 40-years-ago – but just WHO is he? No one understands the “mythos” of Seagal better than Seagal himself. And for this review, it’ll be important that we make this distinction now, at the beginning, because -SHOCK- “On Deadly Ground” is up for re-evaluation, and (surprise!) it’s really, really good.

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Jay’s Take: House of Gucci

A spoiler-heavy & deeply-subjective movie review.

Ridley Scott, what are we to do with you? Guy’s movies consistently underperform at the box office and yet he still keeps pumping them out, and studios are happy to let him. Why is that? We’ve all heard the story about when Kevin Spacey was edited out of “All the Money in the World” and Scott reshot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in one week (we also heard about how Michelle Williams was paid less than a HUNDREDTH of what Mark Wahlberg was to come back but, forget that, because Ridley Scott doesn’t have time for your bullshit). The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that his are the ultimate in money-laundering fronts: high-class picture-films with sky-high production values that add legitimacy to the Lizard People’s ever-domineering hold over the global sex-slave market. Or the Big Studios’ hold over the encroaching streaming & independent markets. Plus, he’ll shoot it for 20-bucks on a weekend: fast, AND cheap! Look, any idiot can make an “important” film on his iPhone now, but it takes a serious “auteur” like Scott to make an “important” film with unlimited resources at his disposal and STILL have it turn out to be plodding garbage that no one is interested in paying money to go see.

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Selected Scenes: Thief

A spoiler-heavy single-scene film analysis & review.

Are there directors you are familiar with who you think you know everything about? You swear you’ve seen ALL their movies, you understand their technique, and when a new movie of theirs’ comes out you recognize their trademarks & make sure all your friends know them too? “That’s why you’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties.” I’m like that with Paul Thomas Anderson, and Michael Mann, apparently. When I first started writing this “Selected Scenes”, I had intended it to be a “Jay’s Take”: I was convinced I knew enough about Mann’s filmography that I was qualified to write a lengthy, in-depth review, as opposed to a quick discussion (since it isn’t like the film doesn’t have a Criterion edition that includes a wealth of supplemental material of more qualified people saying the exact same things… right?). Yes, I have seen a handful of Mann’s movies: some more than once. But to think I am an expert is a fool’s errand: I haven’t seen “Ali” or “Collateral”, nor “The Last of the Mohicans”, or 2015’s career-ending box office dud “Blackhat” (and you think I WOULD have seen that, just to know what the fuss was about). Did you know there’s a Michael Mann horror movie about Nazis and the occult, called “The Keep”? I didn’t, and it sounds awesome! Although, in a way, I know it will also be incredibly disappointing. That’s where I’m at from what I HAVE seen of his, and “Thief” – although it is early Mann, man – follows this methodology to a tee. Even with the seeds of doubt, I still think I know more about Michael Mann’s movies than I platonically should, and I think you’ll find out that you do too.

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