CS Film Club II

I'm out this round. I'm still determined to finish my 31 Days of Halloween even if it takes me the rest of the November.

I'll get one up early next week. For real.

Have a staycation coming up.

I gotta wait for volleyball season to be over

There's apparently two different versions available on Prime Video.  Should I lean more towards one than the other?

You're Next

It sucked.

There. Happy now?

Doomsday


The Long Good Friday
Ratatouille
Paper Moon
Cries and Whispers
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?


Let me know if you need more picks.

I'll do Paper Moon, it's been on the list for a while.

Paper Moon

We've all seen movies about con men before.  Oftentimes they take on a protege and we watch the grift unfold as they go for the 'big score.'  They're typically entertaining and aren't especially deep.  Paper Moon, a movie I knew nothing about before watching, is about a small-time con man Moze who hits the road with a young girl Addie who may or may not be his daughter, played by real-life father daughter duo Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal.  Their relationship never demonstrates a father/daughter dynamic, in many ways they approach each other as peers who have something to learn from each other.  They also never go for the 'big score.'  Instead, we watch them on the road as Moze is commissioned to take newly-orphaned Addie to her aunt's house in St. Joseph, Missouri.  Along the way they do some small con jobs to make money and begin to develop a professional as well as personal bond, a bond that is always kept at arm's length even at the very end.  Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, it employs much of the same style and aesthetic he used in The Last Picture Show, shot in black and white and set in desolate middle America.  Much like that film, Paper Moon employs its setting and time period to great effect and really makes you feel the environment that surrounds Moze and Addie.

Paper Moon is a simple but emotional movie that I'm a bit disappointed that I hadn't seen until now.  It never feels condescending or like it's playing down to the audience and in a way it's somewhat refreshing seeing flawed main characters who actually demonstrate those flaws.  I also have to give credit to the movie for not falling into my biggest cinematic pet peeve, the irritating adult-like child.  Addie doesn't exist to talk back to Moze, she isn't a foil to every decision that adults make and isn't written just to create conflict.  She's an actual character who makes decisions, has a personality and plays off the characters rather than being a catalyst for disaster.  I wish more movies with child characters would take a page from this playbook.  Great movie!

A so says Doomsday

Let Him Go (2020)
I didn’t go into Let Him Go with a lot in the way of expectations. The film got respectful but disinterested reviews and the trailers made it look kind of interesting but not thrilling. The film itself I’d say more or less lived up to the B/B+ level that its reputation promised but it kind of took a while to get there as I actually found the first hour or so of the film kind of dull. The film is set in Montana and sets up this situation where George and Martha Kent find themselves in an odd custodial situation where their son has died and his widow has re-married and brought the Kent’s grandchild with her to live with her new husband’s horrible clan of rednecks. That first half shows the Kents… I’ll stop with that joke now… going to visit their grandchild and hatching a very misbegotten plan to get the kid back which goes wrong for them. At that point the mask is off as far as this redneck clan and the movie starts kicking into gear as they turn out to be really fun to hate and the grandparents need to find a way to solve this whole messy scenario. Confession: apparently this movie is set in the 60s and I didn’t notice this (I just assumed there wasn’t any technology because of the cowboy cosplay that this region is obsessed with) and knowing that now it makes a little more sense that these people didn’t use more conventional tools like Child Protective Services to address this problem. Either way I found the film’s finale pretty satisfying and throughout there was some pretty nice cinematography and scenery. Not a movie that’s going to change the world or anything, but I ultimately felt it was worth my time.
***1/2 out of Five