Movie Review All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) 

Directed by Laura Poitras 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Nan Goldin 

Release Date November 23rd, 2022 

Published December 21st, 2022 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a powerful and haunting exploration of the work and life of a remarkable artist. The bold and brilliant Nan Goldin made her first impact on art culture in the 1980s with her sensational art piece, A Ballad of Sexual Dependency. That multimedia experience included explicit and deeply personal photographs depicting the many relationships in Goldin's circle, including brutally honest explorations of her own relationship. Though some told Nan Goldin that photographers don't photograph themselves or their own lives, she defied them and became a cult legend. 

Defiance is a strong quality in Nan Goldin. Defying conventional, suburban expectations of her life was a hallmark of Goldin's childhood. Following the all too early death of her older sister, Nan Goldin defied her parents by continuing to ask questions about why her sister died so young. And, later in Goldin's life, she became defiant of the corporate art world by leading a protest against one of the corporations that funded many of the biggest and most well-known museums around the world. 

The owners of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler Family, donated millions to museums around the world, including ones that were home to the work of Nan Goldin. Goldin however, never afraid to bite the hand that supposedly fed her, started a protest movement aimed specifically at getting the Sackler family name off of the walls of world of art. Why? Because Nan Goldin was a rare survivor of the opioid crisis, one who came out the other side of her addiction with her voice intact. 

Thousands of people have died from overdose and illness related to the Sackler family's pharmaceutical products, Oxycontin and Fentanyl. Over the years, the callous and cold-hearted statements made by the Sackler family regarding their deadly products have come to light and Nan Goldin uses those statements as part of her art and protest movement called "PAIN." PAIN targeted what they call 'Toxic Philanthropy,' essentially the uber-rich who use philanthropy to cover up for their unethical, immoral and or illegal business practices. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Stars at Noon

Stars at Noon (2022) 

Directed by Claire Denis

Written by Claire Denis, Lea Mysius, Andrew Litvack 

Starring Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, Benny Safdie 

Release Date October 14th, 2022 

Published ? 

In the hands of any other director, Stars at Noon would be a taught, fraught, political-spy thriller filled with car chases, action, and excitement. In the hands of Claire Denis however, Stars at Noon is languid, sexy, dripping with sweat, and far from anything you would expect from  spy thriller. The film stars Margaret Qualley as a wannabe journalist caught up in the political unrest of Central America. Joe Alwyn co-stars as the ostensible spy in this spy story, an Englishman caught between American and Central American interests. 

The film begins with our protagonist referred to only as Journalist. We eventually hear her called Ms. Johnson but that's merely an indication of Denis' disinterest such mundane matters as peoples names. Identity is less important than getting to what is more interesting to Claire Denis, the politics of sex, the sexual marketplace, and the place her female characters occupy in that odd marketplace. In this case, Qualley's journalist has been placed in a unique position. 

After having written an article critical of the regime in charge, the Journalist has had her passport taken away and her journalistic credentials revoked. This places her at the whim of men who might be able to help her in exchange for her body. That's the case with a local official who took her passport and broke her phone and still demands sex from her. That would be the case for another high ranking official were he not impotent, though his willingness to help her is now waning. 

The journalist's relationship to the English spy also begins in a transactional fashion. The pair meet at a hotel bar. The spy mistakes the journalist for a sex worker and, being desperate for American currency, she doesn't disabuse him of this notion. She needs money to try and get back to the United States, a task that gets ever more difficult as the story progresses. The hook up with the spy initially seems like a one off but when she finds herself in even deeper trouble she seeks him out again only to find that he may be in even more trouble than she is. 

My telling of the plot is actually more concise than Denis' presentation. For Denis, the book on which this script is based is a hanger from which she can explore other ideas, visual and sexual ideas, power dynamics, and other things that capture her fleeting interests. Yes, there is ostensibly a thriller plot unfolding with our protagonists attempting to flee from the corrupt elements of government attempting to arrest the spy. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Corsage

Corsage (2022) 

Directed by Marie Kreutzer 

Written by Marie Kreutzer 

Starring Vicky Krieps, Florian Teichtmeister, Katharina Lorenz 

Release Date December 23rd, 2022 

Published December 20th, 2022 

Corsage stars Vicky Krieps as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Obsessed with her looks and dismissive of royal duties, Empress Elisabeth cuts a strangely bad ass figure in Corsage. She's not quite punk rock but she's in the rebellious metaphorical realm. She was a Queen but, according to this movie, one who chafed hard against the crown her entire life. She was a devoted mother whose motherhood was taken from her by royal decree as she became disengaged from her children who were essentially brainwashed by royal formality with only a little of their mother's true spirit mixed in. 

We meet Empress Elisabeth as she is doing her royal duty. This means being trussed up in the tightest corset possible in order to meet a public obsessed with her weight, her looks, and her outfits. We watch with mouths agape as catty fellow royals and richies snarkily comment on her appearance in the most passive aggressive fashion before she steals back a modicum of self worth by faking her way out of the needless, thankless task of glad-handing. 

 Faking a fainting spell, Empress Elisabeth returns home to the comfort of her gaggle of servants, stylists and sycophantic family members. Most prominent in her circle are Elisabeth's closest friend, Countess Marie Festetics (Katharina Lorenz), Lady in Waiting Ida Ferenczy (Jeanne Werner) and her hairdresser, Fanny (Alma Hasun). With these women and her private servants, Elisabeth expresses her loathing of her royal duties and the various ways she subverts her station. 

Corsage unfolds as series of set pieces that give us a glimpse of Elisabeth's agonizing chafing against her station and the few desires she is able to indulge. One specific indulgence is a male friend whom she desires but is more than likely... not her type. Then there is another potential lover, George "Bay" Middleton, the Queen's favorite horse trainer. The two have remarkable chemistry but Bay seems to recognize how dangerous an affair with Elisabeth may be while she obliviously flirts and pouts. 

Drama surrounding Elisabeth's children involves the shifting allegiances of her son Rudolf. At once Rudolf warns his mother about indulging her flirtation with Middleton and then he turns around and becomes her biggest supporter, as he also launches a bit of a scandal with his rumored affair. Elisabeth's youngest daughter repeatedly antagonizes her mother over her improprieties in a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere but going nowhere is kind of the heart of Corsage. 

Writer-Director Marie Kreutzer is a skilled storyteller with a knack for knowing where to linger and where to surprise the audience. A good example are the highly charged scenes between Elisabeth and her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister). The marriage is fraught with various dramas from Elisabeth's desire to be involved in state affairs, to her unwillingness to participate in the boring rituals of royal life. Naturally, both struggle with fidelity even as Elisabeth does make attempts to connect with her husband. 

As mentioned earlier, vultures surrounding the royal family consistently made Elisabeth's looks into a topic for scandal and speculation. Corsage examines those issues by not examining them at all. Rather, Kreutzer's script and Vicky Krieps' performance bring these issues forward in how Elisabeth dressed and her remarkably extreme approach to weight loss. The title, Corsage refers to the original use of that word, which described what we came to call a corset, the bodice of a woman's dress. Elisabeth was obsessed with the corsage she wore, wearing it as tightly as possible, painfully tight. 

It was an expression of her anxiety over her weight and a message to those in her court who thought to criticize her appearance. By showing off her extremely small waist, she hoped to head off criticism of her appearance. Sadly, then many began to speculate that she was sickly and pale, or even dying due to her extreme vanity. She truly could not win. Elisabeth's diet is another extreme demonstrated in Corsage in a scene where her dinner consists of a thin slice of an orange. Not the whole orange sliced, one thin slice from an orange. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Horror of 2022

Let's rank the Horror Movies of 2022!

Rank	Item
1	Pearl
2	Nocturna Side A and Side B
3	We're All Going to the World's Fair
4	Godforsaken
5	Hatching
6	The Yellow Wallpaper
7	X
8	Men
9	Nope
10	Barbarian
11	Resurrection
12	Terrifier 2
13	Hellraiser
14	Orphan First Kill
15	Christmas Bloody Christmas
16	The Fireplace Adult Swim Yule Log Secret Movie
17	Studio 666
18	Kicking Blood
19	Fall
20	The Black Phone
21	All Jacked Up and Full of Worms
22	The Mean One
23	Violent Night
24	The Scary of 61st
25	Bodies Bodies Bodies
26	Children of Sin
27	Halloween Ends
28	The Invitation
29	Surrogate
30	Room 203
31	The Long Night
32	The Free Fall
33	The Legend of La Llorona
34	Rucker
35	The Curse of La Patasola
36	Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Movie Review Avatar The way of Water

Avatar The way of Water (2022) 

Directed by James Cameron 

Written by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

Starring Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana 

Release Date December 16th, 2022 

Published December 19th, 2022 

It's not that Avatar The Way of Water is a bad movie, far from it, this is an incredibly accomplished movie. I just don't care. I can't get emotionally invested in the Avatar franchise. James Cameron's obsession with replacing human actors with CG creations leaves me cold. Without a human face to connect to, I'm left adrift amid the spectacle of Avatar The Way of Water. I can appreciate the technical accomplishment but I can't enjoy Avatar The Way of Water the way I have enjoyed so many more worthy, thoughtful. human movies such as Aftersun or Everything Everywhere All at Once, or even Women Talking, a movie that is more poignant than enjoyable but you get what I am saying. 

Where Avatar is a massive technical achievement, it's not a great movie. It's a machine tooled product and no matter how well made that product is, it's inert, it is as compelling as a really great looking appliance. I appreciate the beauty of a streamlined refrigerator with a neat LED readout and connection to my smartphone, but it's not something I am going to think about much beyond my purchase of it. Eventually, it recedes into the scenery, leaving no lasting memory. That's Avatar the Way of Water in a nutshell. 

Avatar The Way of Water is set nearly 20 decades after the first film. The story finds the Sully family, headed up by former human turned Na'vi leader, Jake Sully thriving in their forest home until the 'sky people' return. The sky people have come back to Pandora not to retrieve more 'unobtainium' but rather to conquer Pandora and make it the new Earth. That's the background story anyway, the main story involves reviving the late Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), by placing his memories into a Na'vi Avatar and sending him to kill the biggest threat to humanity's plan, Jake Sully. 

Thinking that he can protect the Na'vi best by leaving, Jake packs up his family, including his wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), sons, Netayam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). Also joining the Sully's will be their adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the miracle child of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (Also Sigourney Weaver). The fewer questions asked about Kiri's origin story, the better, I'm pretty sure not even James Cameron could explain it. 

The Sully's run off to live with the water dwelling people of Pandora, led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife, Ronal (Kate Winslet). Here, the Sully's will learn to swim and to live off of the bounty of the ocean. They will be treated as outcasts while slowly earning their place in the tribe and blah, blah, blah. There is nothing new here, every inch of this portion of the movie is a trope from other fish out of water movies about new people in new situations. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Nellie and Nadine

Nellie and Nadine (2022) 

Directed by Magnus Gertten 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Nadine Hwang, Nelly Mousset-Vos, Sylvia Bianchi 

Release Date December 16th, 2022 

Published December 16th, 2022 

The miracles that needed to occur to create the love story of Nadine Hwang and Nelly Mousset-Vos are incalculable. First, an Asian woman needed to find herself in Paris around the time of the start of World War 2. She needs to join the French resistance and be betrayed by a friend and sent to a concentration camp. At the same time, an Opera singer in Brussels has to also join the resistance and also be betrayed, after saving countless lives, and end up at that same concentration camp, Ravensbruck. 

They then must meet, fall in love, and survive the concentration camp. They end up being separated as they are being liberated from the camp with each settling back where they were, Nadine in France and Nelly in Brussels. They must exchange letters, and agree to meet and get back together, upending the lives of Nelly's family, including a teenage daughter, and they must move to Venezuela, a place where there was  community of LGBTQ people waiting for them. 

It's all entirely improbable but it happened. The new documentary, Nelly and Nadine from the remarkable documentary filmmaker, Magnus Gertten has brought this story to the world and in doing so he's rescued one remarkable piece of world history and a landmark love story in the history of LGBTQ people. It's astonishing, beautiful, heart-rending, and inspiring. That this isn't already an Oscar winning movie is shocking, it's something that has future Best Picture winner written all over it. 

For years, the documentation of this immaculate love story languished in an attic on the French countryside. Remember the teenage daughter I mentioned earlier, Nelly's daughter, she wasn't her mother's biggest fan. Thus, the family history wasn't merely uncelebrated, it went unmentioned. That woman's daughter, now grown and mother herself, Sylvie Bianchi, recalls knowing and loving her grandmother Nelly, visiting her home in Venezuela, but Nadine was only known as grandma Nelly's roommate. 

Little did Sylvie know, that after her grandmother passed and her things were brought back to Belgium, there was an entire lifetime of history sitting in a box that was deemed to emotionally painful to open up and examine. So, how did this story finally find the light? That's where the amazing Magnus Gertten comes in. While working on a project to identify women in some super 8 footage he'd found of women liberated from concentration camps, he stumbled over Nelly and Nadine, at first unaware that they were connected. 

Find my complete review at Pride.Media 

Movie Review Babylon

Babylon (2022) 

Directed by Damian Chazelle 

Written by Damian Chazelle 

Starring Margot Robbe, Brad Pitt, 

Release Date December 25th, 2022 

Published December 12th, 2022 

Babylon is an outright disaster. From minute one to minute last, this careening, gross, nightmare of Hollywood decadence never finds its feet. The point, I assume. is for the movie to be dizzying and disorienting, but it's a little too effective at evoking that feeling. It's nice to be on wild ride but Babylon rarely relents to let you catch your breath. That might be okay if we were more invested in the characters caught up in this tornado of activity but these characters are too thin and stock for us to cling to them amid the storm. 

Babylon stars Margot Robbe as Nellie LaRoy, an ambitious young actress, eager to be the biggest star in the world while also being the biggest personality in every room. We meet Nellie at a party where she comes bursting in, in search of cocaine. Nellie finds what she's looking for with the aid of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an assistant to the Hollywood heavyweight who is throwing this massive party. The party happens to have an entire room full of cocaine which Nellie gobbles up quickly and with abandon. 

Urging Manny to abandon his job, tending to the party guests, Nellie gets him enjoying the cocaine as well and the two develop a quick friendship, though it's clear that Manny is smitten. Circumstances part the new friends as the wild party finds a woman dying from an overdose that requires Manny to move her body, and a large elephant whose appearance gives cover to the body being smuggled out the back door of the expansive party. 

The dead girl is fortuitous for Nellie as the young woman was supposed to play a big role in a movie the following day. Nellie is spotted at the party and tapped to take the dead girl's place. Working on no sleep, running on pure adrenalin and cocaine, Nellie nails the part with her incredible talent for crying on command. This is a silent movie breakthrough for Nellie as the camera clearly loves her while the lack of lines needing to be memorized or performed, means her deep New Jersey accent is covered up. 

Meanwhile, Manny is tasked with tending to the needs of Hollywood's top leading man, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). After driving the drunken Conrad home, and watching him nearly die in a pool accident, Manny is invited to help Conrad get to the set of his newest blockbuster that same day. This means maybe an hour of sleep before a 16 hour day on set. Even with the exhaustion, the stars in Manny's eyes drive him to become essential to the finishing of the picture. 

It's Manny who gets the task or renting a new camera after several other cameras were destroyed in the midst of the epic filming of fight scenes involving Roman soldiers. Manny saves the day and his career as a Hollywood Producer, Director, and all around go-to guy begins. Naturally, this will bring him back into the orbit of Nellie though it appears that any romance between the two just isn't in the cards. Manny and Nellie appear to be star-crossed for life. 

The middle portion of the three hour car wreck that is Babylon, deals with the arrival of the talking picture in Hollywood. Nellie and Jack's careers are devastated by sound. For Nellie, having to memorize lines, being unable to move around under the strictures of a new sounds set up, and her New Jersey accent, stunt her career just as she was becoming a big star. Jack meanwhile, doesn't know how to project his star power with his voice. Suddenly, the period piece romances that had been his bread and butter, seem silly with his modern American accent. 

Manny, on the other hand, appears to thrive. He becomes a big deal at the studio where he works. He's a director and a producer and he oversees several film projects at once. Among his best work is making a star of a little known trumpet player. Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) was seen at the party where the film opened and from there was hired to score some silent films. With Manny in charge, and sound pictures becoming a massive hit, Sidney becomes a superstar on the big screen, though not without some compromises that he's not all that comfortable with. 

Manny's fortunes turn on his attempts to save Nellie's career. As her career flounders, Nellie tries and fails to get clean, getting off cocaine and alcohol, but she's quickly sucked back into her addictions as she struggles in the sound era. Her career is officially flushed following an incident at the home of William Randolph Hearst where Nellie clashes with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, and refuses to allow the famed newspaper magnate to grope her. How this scene ends is weird and gross, and a strong referendum as to whether you are willing to buy in on director Damian Chazelle's odd vision of Babylon. 

For me, I was out of Babylon just minutes into the start of the movie. One of the first things to happen in Babylon is an elephant pooping in epic fashion all over a poor day laborer. The metaphor is clear, the little people in Hollywood, the ones who make life possible for the rich, famous and powerful, are getting pooped on. In this case, that's not just a metaphor. A few short scenes later we're forced to confront a man with a fetish for being urinated on. And to make sure we cover all of our grossest bases, the Hearst mansion scene ends with vomiting that would make Mr. Creosote blush. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media.