In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
OMG you won’t believe the fortnight I’ve had! I saw my best friend from uni who I haven’t seen in a decade and she gave me a cold – which I haven’t had in a decade either. Ugh! I’m so wretched right now! But I saw my sister, I joined a gym and I finally got really good at yoga.
Unfortunately, all my big ambitions to write about the movies I’ve seen have been thwarted. I’ve seen Dune (2021) three times now. I’ve been to see The French Dispatch (2021) with my sister, who I watch every new Wes Anderson movie with. I’ll talk about that in a minute.
My weekly film night has continued, and we’ve watched Fight Club (1999), The Princess Bride (1987) and The Sixth Sense (1999).
In preparation for Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), I’ve rewatched Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989) and Ghostbusters (2016).
I’ve also rewatched Battleship Potemkin (1925) for my Russian movie strand in the TMINE Multiplex.
I’ve just not written about any of them! I’m so sorry!
I’m going to try my best to do as many of those today. Let’s see if I manage it.
UPDATE: I’m giving you The French Dispatch and a Ghostbusters triple-bill. Work sucks. Boo!
Screen 1: The French Dispatch (2021)
Director: Wes Anderson
Writers: Wes Anderson (screenplay by), Roman Coppola(story by), Hugo Guinness (story by)
A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in “The French Dispatch Magazine”.
Nat says: ‘A love letter only Wes Anderson understands’
I think all you need to know about The French Dispatch you can probably work out from the fact Wes Anderson has set it in a town in France called Ennui-sur-Blasé.
I’m not sure you can ever accuse him doing anything by numbers, as he’s one of the most precise and particular of directors, making even Stanley Kubrick look like he was clocking off work at 5pm every day. Every frame and every second of the soundtrack are perfectly composed. Every part of them tells a story or a micro-story.
But despite that profound attention to detail, The French Dispatch feels like Anderson throwing something out there, not having really worked out what he wants to do with it. It feels like he’s bored with being Wes Anderson and doing things the Wes Anderson way.
The movie is an anthology of stories from a supposed New Yorker style American magazine of the 60s and 70s, containing ‘colour’ stories from the small French town in which it’s set. It’s a lovely idea. When people talk about accurate depictions of journalism in movies, they mean depictions of investigative journalism such as All the President’s Men (1976) and Spotlight (2015). Very rarely do you see homages to feature journalism, which is the bread and butter of most newspapers these days.
Unfortunately, Anderson’s love letter to both France and feature journalism is a set of stories that verge on the surreal. Featuring virtually everyone who’s been in a Wes Anderson ever, they are self-contained in almost every sense.
Owen Wilson’s cycling tour of Ennui-sur-Blasé was the most effective for me. It was funny, short and precisely the kind of journalism you’d expect. It was also full of little Wes Anderson flourishes, such as the apparent use of back projection to convey a 50s/60s studio production feel, only for him to subvert it with some ingenious pratfalls for Wilson as he has frequent accidents.
After that, we venture into more opaque territory. Murderer-cum-artist Benicio Del Toro paints prison guard-cum-muse Léa Seydoux naked and art dealer Adrien Brody decides he wants to buy his work. It’s not especially amusing, apart from its own framing narrative in which Tilda Swinton makes a presentation to an audience about how she set up the corresponding gallery. It’s a beautifully coloured scene, in contrast to the black and white of Del Toro’s scenes, and Swinton is fantastic.
But what’s the point of it? I’m not sure. It’s not funny. It’s actually mildly offensive – why the full frontal scenes for Seydoux? Are we supposed to admire the mass murderer Del Toro? Are we supposed to be amused by the in-no-way-novel attacks on the art industry? I’m sure Wes Anderson knows what he means. Or maybe he was too bored to come up with a meaning?
We then go rapidly on to student protests, with Timothée Chalamet leading student protestors in their efforts to have sex-unsegrated dormitories. New arrival Lyna Khoudri as a fellow protestor is simply wonderful, but it’s not even a slightly pointed attack on 60s French student protests. It’s the equivalent of Anderson trying to batter to death the Tolpuddle Martyrs with a piece of candy floss. For a man who lives in France, you’d think he’d have a better measure of the place by now.
Also, why does Chalamet not speak French, even though he can, being half-French, everyone else does and his character is French? Does Anderson know? Does Chalamet know? Are there now so many levels of irony that the entire edifice is supported all the way down to the bottom by nothing but irony without end? Can Anderson see the bottom?
I can’t. I really wish I could. But the movie is too impenetrable to analysis for the audience to be able to work it out.
The final chapter sees food writer Jeffrey Wright discussing a hostage situation in which he was involved. We have cameos from more of Anderson’s usual entourage, including Ed Norton and Saoirse Ronan, as well the always wonderful Mathieu Amalric, but it’s another situation where the best bit about it is the framing narrative, in which Liev Schreiber interviews Wright.
I enjoyed a lot of The French Dispatch‘s mise-en-scène. I loved its cast. I loved its delightful evocation of a time and a place. I loved its use of different narrative styles. I loved its praise of journalism.
I just don’t know what it really was trying to tell me. If it had been funnier, I’m not sure I’d have needed to know, but unfortunately, it fell just a little too flat for me. It was a little too long and a little too woolly for me to care what it thought or to make me laugh.
And my sister agreed. I thought you’d like to know it wasn’t just me, BTW. We were both disappointed it wasn’t quite his best, despite almost being the most Wes Anderson film possible. Hopefully, we’ll like his next one better when we see it!
Screen 2: Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989) and Ghostbusters (2016)
A triple bill of movies in which some barely respected scientists go into business for themselves hunting and trapping ghosts, eventually saving New York several times.
Nat says: ‘What you going to watch? Only the first one’
You’ve seen these right? I’m not crazy in thinking that. I mean, maybe not the second one or the reboot with women (I mean why would anyone want to watch a movie with heroines instead of heroes, right? 🙄 Oh. It sucks. Is that why? Oh. Sorry, I understand then. My mistake. As you were). But the first one at least?
Good.
Okay, so that’s probably the only one you need to have watched. It’s a really good, fun movie, with a catchy soundtrack, excitement and good characters. It’s also the only one that deserves a rewatch, because it’s better than you probably remember it, just in different ways.
What I found most interesting, was its take on Reaganism. You see a bunch of academics trying to launch a business in the era of Reaganomics and talking about the different pressures of the public v private sectors. It’s also a rare case of adults – albeit ones from Saturday Night Live – making adult life decisions in a vaguely adult way in a movie.
I was also really curious to see how much ‘science’ the movie contains. Clearly, it’s not real science, but somebody (Googling it, I suspect Dan Aykroyd) who is putting in ‘real’ parapsychology, not just gobbledygook totally made up for the movie.
These are people reasoning stuff out together, too, not just one random scientist spouting the answer to whatever question needs answering. They take measurements, they look at plans, they do engineering and chemistry. It’s science… of a sort.
Other things of note.
- Sigourney Weaver is gorgeous in this. She’s never normally allowed to be sexy, and clearly she’s 80s rock video sexy in this, but it’s surprising just how much leading lady potential was squandered by 80s casting agents.
- The effects are as bad as those in Dune (1984)
- It’s really almost shameful how little Ernie Hudson gets to do, how badly his role is written and how clearly everyone wanted to be working with Eddie Murphy instead. He’s almost literally segregated from the others and the main action
- It’s astonishingly sexist by modern standards and Bill Murray’s character isn’t just a sex pest, he should be locked up
Unfortunately, Ghostbusters II is just thoroughly unenjoyable. It’s almost the definition of an unwanted sequel, there just to bring in the bucks, as our heroes have to be retconned back to being down on their luck (no more ghosts!) and everyone pretending the events of the first movie had happened. And yet again, Sigourney Weaver is chased around by a sex pest. Two, of course, because Bill Murray is back.
I was bored by most of it and it felt like everything good had been thrown into the first movie, with nothing to spare for a second.
About the only good bit of it is watching how a still nascent Hollywood merchandising industry tried to recapture the genie in the bottle of the first movie. They bumble around, they try to come up with a catchier soundtrack, they try to add in extra Ghostbusters, they put in-movie merchandise for everyone to buy. It’s really obvious what they’re trying to do – but I was fascinated to seem them working it out as they went along, ready for the slick operations we see today.
Ghostbusters (2016) is if anything worse. It’s Ghostbusters meets Bridesmaids, with female academics going through the same motions and job roles as their predecessors in a cruder way than the original. If Ernie Hudson was treated badly, feel for poor Leslie Jones.
The movie’s real joy is Kate McKinnon, who steals all the scenes she’s in. Chris Hemsworth as their eye-candy secretary is entertaining, but never really does anything except point out that they’re women.
