Good morning,
As much as I hate to trash a work of some effort by professionals who no doubt contributed their best to a failed project, today I just have to start with thoughts a terrible movie that started out with promise and end with other horrifically bad feats of cinema.
PRETTY DARNED AWFUL
Put together a great premise, stars of renown, moody music, creative cinematography, clever camera angles, a sense of angst, ominous clues, and disquieting events, and then lead trash the entire thing and you have Leave the World Behind.
Gadzooks. What a waste of two hours of my life. The movie embarks on its road to disaster with the “slow boil.” A not-so-little thing occurs early on during a family’s vacation. This isn’t a spoiler, as it is prominently highlighted during the trailer—an oil tanker heads straight to the beach and is grounded in the sand, without explanation. Then the same family is met by the owners of the house they’ve rented—a Black businessman played pitch-perfectly by Mahershala Ali, and his daughter—seeking sanctuary in the second home which is, during this time of rental, not really theirs to occupy. This promises an interesting interplay of an interloper in his own home and the Julia Roberts character renting the home that she perceives as “hers,” while fearing their (not explicitly because of color, but the implication is part of it). It then moves along at a glacial pace, presumably to heighten the sense of foreboding but only heightening my sense of impatience…
Other odd things occur, including the loss of television and telephone, continue to mount. Clever clues are hinted of some sort of event that has thrown the world into disarray. What that event might be—whether a nefarious power, a climate event, an extra-terrestrial event, remain unclear and are unexplained until the last few minutes, but never really fleshed-out. But even that disclosure is unsatisfying and incomplete, following a disjointed series of reveals with a lack of interconnectedness that supports the conclusion that this a mish-mosh of genres that seemingly written by amateurs as they go along. Julia Roberts can’t really shake her American sweetheart persona to play a misanthropic, negative, angry person. Ethan Hawke is more than believable as an earnest, confused protagonist who just wants to keep his family safe. And Kevin Bacon does a great turn as a prepper ready for anything. But all of these talents wasted, as the movie quickly winds up in several nonsensical unsatisfying denouements. What a disappointment.
I WISH I’D SAID THAT…
I am reminded of some of the best and biting criticisms, like this from Salman Rushdie, reviewing 50 Shades of Gray:
“I’ve never read anything so badly written that got published. It made Twilight look like War and Peace.’.”
BAD MOVIE PANTHEON
And that’s to say nothing of Eyes Wide Shut, Jack and Jill (one of Adam Sandler’s many stupid movies), St. Elmo’s Fire (why are these good looking, successful people unhappy?), Avatar, Howard the Duck, several of the Eddie Murphy movies (despite his notable successes), and the dreadful Cats (horrible in both its film and stage versions and holder of the gold medal in my book).
THE ROOM
The Room is, of course, one of the worst movies of all time, notwithstanding becoming a cult classic of cringe years later. Its awfulness is memorialized—and celebrated—by the brilliant The Disaster Artist. I recommend The Disaster Artist as a wonderful meditation on Hollywood, eccentricity, dreams, and just laugh-out-loud absurdity.
Here are a few scene-by-scene comparisons of the original and The Disaster Artist:
Have a great day,
Glenn
Thoughts on this year’s Oscar contenders? (I’ve been on the road so I may have missed it).
Me:
1. Poor Things
2. (A tie) American Fiction and Past Lives
3. Holdovers
Haven’t seen all the rest but those that I have fall in the middle, with Barbie DFL (it made my eyes hurt)
I think it really resonated with me bc we are all living our daily lives while evil is happening all around us, even if not directly next door.. and do nothing