I don't know why they made it a series, you could've done a movie with less filler. But it's fun to see some of the girls getting cameos, and it gives some legitimacy to their careers and to drag as an acceptable art form and not some novelty thing. The story is kinda thin and comes of as a vehicle for Ru to explore notions of gender in this new era, because she was an old queen who offended the new queens and she just wants to make sense of this messy lil world. Plus it makes a heartfelt comment on older women and queens getting grifted by younger hotties, which is sweet. And she's captivating that any flaws in her acting can be written off, she knows her craft, she knows about stage presence and delivery, she's a good role model, she's built an empire when her life could've gone in a worse third act of Paris is Burning direction (easily one of the most depressing documentaries you can ever watch).
So this series is hammy as hell and she's not pulled out any stops on chances for her to strut (and mince a little) but it's there as padding to make a ten episode series, I don't see why they couldn't have bought a movie original. So it's hard to really keep paying attention. It's a road movie and she plays off some street kid and the chemistry takes ages to really build. The kid jumping around in her undies in defiance of the bad girl scout analogy (because feminism) was funnier. It has its moments. The world would be a shitty place without Mama and her girls and the sunshine and shade they bring. Fuck it, let her have a show. She usually played second fiddle to people like LL Cool J or some background character like in But I'm A Cheerleader. (is that on Netflix? I want to watch that it rules). It seems kind of overdue. I'm glad Drag Race hasn't been written off as some pageant parody. It's kicked America's Next Top Model's ass as far as I'm aware. It's about pride and family and togetherness and helping people not hurting them. We need more glitter. We need Ru. She don't need us or whatever opinions we have on her show. Yes it's not entirely realistic and very Lifetime in its aesthetic, and we could do without the voice overs. But it doesn't suck. A lot of other shit sucks more.
Sunday, 19 January 2020
Sunday, 12 January 2020
Marriage Story: A Crash Course in Divorce Proceedings.
I did want to see Marriage Story and I didn't. You can see why the rave reviews are pouring in, there's nothing lacking in the performances, but I'm doing another live review so I can hash out my own negative opinions.
Right up we're introduced to unconventional characters in an unconventional situation, a husband and wife, speaking on what they like about one another to their separation mediator, only she won't actually read hers. But fleshing them out as real people means she's good at opening pickle jars (because not typical lady thing) and he's a good dresser, (because men are typically bad, embarrassing dressers, ammirite, ladies?) No, I'm not. Already you've got some sort of lazy exposition that doesn't quite fit into unique character building - how do we say they're atypical but still make them likeable? Then he's a playwrite, she's a Hollywood actress. Again, hardly relatable. I looked up if this had any similarities to Kramer Vs Kramer, and while I've not seen it I read up on it since it was referenced a lot in films and TV shows. You have a single child (a son in both cases) stuck between two parents with two different agendas now, who don't want to get divorced but feel it's best they do. So Adam Driver's character has to parse all the "betcha didn't know that about gettin' divorced, did ya, dads?" And Scar Jo, (who is performing remarkably well, as is Driver) is empty and feels ignored and lacking the genius and creativity of Driver's character Charlie. But you can see how they would be completely insufferable as real people. Meanwhile, all the ancillary family characters and players in Charlie's company have to spend time talking purely about the couple like nothing else matters. (I want to say the players are a Greek chorus but I don't think it fits here). Nicole's mother has too close a relationship with Charlie, like it borders on creepy, you know the mum would totally have him. And Nicole's father is a dead gay man (Yes, I did think to myself "I love my dead gay son" cheap, I know.) Meanwhile, Charlie's parents are deceased so you don't have to create characters for them and then you can make the tension from Charlie being too close to Nicole's family. Apparently Nicole thinks Charlie is just like his dad when according to her, she met the parents once, so she'd have to base that assumption on Charlie's account, right? Where this comes up is during a tense but cliche fight over how much they resent one another and who did what wrong and why the other became how they were, and so on.... Nothing original is said. It's slightly fleshed out but such a copy/paste argument from feuding couples long since passed.
Laura Dern's one of my favourite actresses and she's always a joy, you can call her Purple-Haired lady from Last Jedi, I don't think she necessarily belonged there, but she's been given something to really strut her stuff with here, it's only a shame she ends up being a hyper-feminist ballbuster who uses Nicole for her own devious ends. They spend time nutting out this contract, realise it's not what they want and then Nicole decides to be fairer and Charlie decides to get a job in LA anyway. Makes it all for nothing, really. Alan Alda's lovely, if you want a lovable duffer type. Wallace Shawns usually got that role but he's some dirty old actor who's sort of adding comic relief but not in a good way. And Alda and Dern play off one another as the couple's respective lawyers really well, until Ray Liotta comes back to play the lawyer Charlie decides not to go with initially (I don't know who decides when his makeup's getting done that he needs guy liner, but I've seen it before). The scenes seem pretty engaging so far even if you can get infuriated with the couple. Of course Charlie's cheated too. So then Nicole looks more justified in her actions. Could you have avoided that? Did you have to paint him as badly. I get it's to add more tension again. It's more a character study but I can't see myself liking or relating to either of them, or sympathising.
The hilarious thing is, when people ask me "How can you watch X movie, it's so Y you're a weirdo" I don't usually counter with what they watch. Now I have to go "How the fuck can you sit through movies like this about miserable shit like divorce and custody battles?" That gets your rocks off? Cool. But this is misery inducing stuff and the weepy soundtrack doesn't make it endearing. Nobody's dropping balls on technical levels, the acting is good. It's the script I'm not entirely buying. You don't get a lot of films like this these days, so it feels like a return to a time when character dramas were dominating the awards rather than action heavy superhero movies. But yeah, this isn't a popcorn, Netflix and Chill thing. It works in a situational sense, that an average viewer could identify with the circumstances. It's presentation is fine. It doesn't drag on relentlessly but some of the montages are a tad much. I think there's only so much you can do with divorce narratives - one of the parents might have had a boozy past and have too much wine at dinner, the other blames them cheating on the sexless marriage.
Laura Dern has an awesome feminist rant that rings true but feels really shoehorned in. You get to sit through an awkward dinner that includes the court appointed child expert watching Charlie and the son eat, then Charlie stupidly cuts himself on accident to make more awkwardness. Boy, Charlie's really blowing it. Yeah this is entertaining I get he's trying to avoid getting help and is meant to seem hopeless as a human being, but this is really stupid. The kid's insufferable and generic. I'd probably swear at them too the way Charlie does. I don't know how old the kid is meant to be playing, but he looks eight and he can't read, apparently he's seven, my reading age must've been more advanced since I could read words, like, you know "time". If the implication is the divorce has impacted on this kid's learning in general, it's not appearing that way.
Laura Dern's character's clearly using Nicole in her own stupid "I gotta beat the man" way (some reason she can't stand Charlie walking away with bragging rights to a 50/50 custody arrangement so she wrangles it in Nicole's favour, hence her later bending the rules rather than dispute the arrangement and go back to court). So it's all dumb. I get it, though. People do watch these movies, they are interesting, they're well done. I would rather avoid them. It really has good moments but they're not worth the shit between. Adam Driver has so much more to offer than Vader 2.0. So I hope this becomes a defining thing for him.
Ultimately things just run their course and it's all amicable even after the papers are signed. I don't know why divorced people would want to sit through a fictionalised version of their lives. Other than masochism. If this floats your boat, that's great. I didn't expect to be so annoyed with the characters or questioning the realism of it as much as I did. I have to agree with YMS though it is a more fleshed out version of a well-known story, there's nothing incredibly superficial about it. I think from my perspective when you're doing gender comparisons on two romantic leads you need to steer further away from stereotypical behaviours. Why even bring their genders into it? Could you have done a remake of this with a gay couple, sadly probably not, since it makes so many comments on how women and men are perceived in parental roles. It would be more interesting if it were a same sex couple. Maybe I'm bored with cis/straights bitching about how hard marriage is. We need more varied takes, I suppose.
Either way I'd be generous about giving this more than a five or six out of ten, or a three out of five.
Right up we're introduced to unconventional characters in an unconventional situation, a husband and wife, speaking on what they like about one another to their separation mediator, only she won't actually read hers. But fleshing them out as real people means she's good at opening pickle jars (because not typical lady thing) and he's a good dresser, (because men are typically bad, embarrassing dressers, ammirite, ladies?) No, I'm not. Already you've got some sort of lazy exposition that doesn't quite fit into unique character building - how do we say they're atypical but still make them likeable? Then he's a playwrite, she's a Hollywood actress. Again, hardly relatable. I looked up if this had any similarities to Kramer Vs Kramer, and while I've not seen it I read up on it since it was referenced a lot in films and TV shows. You have a single child (a son in both cases) stuck between two parents with two different agendas now, who don't want to get divorced but feel it's best they do. So Adam Driver's character has to parse all the "betcha didn't know that about gettin' divorced, did ya, dads?" And Scar Jo, (who is performing remarkably well, as is Driver) is empty and feels ignored and lacking the genius and creativity of Driver's character Charlie. But you can see how they would be completely insufferable as real people. Meanwhile, all the ancillary family characters and players in Charlie's company have to spend time talking purely about the couple like nothing else matters. (I want to say the players are a Greek chorus but I don't think it fits here). Nicole's mother has too close a relationship with Charlie, like it borders on creepy, you know the mum would totally have him. And Nicole's father is a dead gay man (Yes, I did think to myself "I love my dead gay son" cheap, I know.) Meanwhile, Charlie's parents are deceased so you don't have to create characters for them and then you can make the tension from Charlie being too close to Nicole's family. Apparently Nicole thinks Charlie is just like his dad when according to her, she met the parents once, so she'd have to base that assumption on Charlie's account, right? Where this comes up is during a tense but cliche fight over how much they resent one another and who did what wrong and why the other became how they were, and so on.... Nothing original is said. It's slightly fleshed out but such a copy/paste argument from feuding couples long since passed.
Laura Dern's one of my favourite actresses and she's always a joy, you can call her Purple-Haired lady from Last Jedi, I don't think she necessarily belonged there, but she's been given something to really strut her stuff with here, it's only a shame she ends up being a hyper-feminist ballbuster who uses Nicole for her own devious ends. They spend time nutting out this contract, realise it's not what they want and then Nicole decides to be fairer and Charlie decides to get a job in LA anyway. Makes it all for nothing, really. Alan Alda's lovely, if you want a lovable duffer type. Wallace Shawns usually got that role but he's some dirty old actor who's sort of adding comic relief but not in a good way. And Alda and Dern play off one another as the couple's respective lawyers really well, until Ray Liotta comes back to play the lawyer Charlie decides not to go with initially (I don't know who decides when his makeup's getting done that he needs guy liner, but I've seen it before). The scenes seem pretty engaging so far even if you can get infuriated with the couple. Of course Charlie's cheated too. So then Nicole looks more justified in her actions. Could you have avoided that? Did you have to paint him as badly. I get it's to add more tension again. It's more a character study but I can't see myself liking or relating to either of them, or sympathising.
The hilarious thing is, when people ask me "How can you watch X movie, it's so Y you're a weirdo" I don't usually counter with what they watch. Now I have to go "How the fuck can you sit through movies like this about miserable shit like divorce and custody battles?" That gets your rocks off? Cool. But this is misery inducing stuff and the weepy soundtrack doesn't make it endearing. Nobody's dropping balls on technical levels, the acting is good. It's the script I'm not entirely buying. You don't get a lot of films like this these days, so it feels like a return to a time when character dramas were dominating the awards rather than action heavy superhero movies. But yeah, this isn't a popcorn, Netflix and Chill thing. It works in a situational sense, that an average viewer could identify with the circumstances. It's presentation is fine. It doesn't drag on relentlessly but some of the montages are a tad much. I think there's only so much you can do with divorce narratives - one of the parents might have had a boozy past and have too much wine at dinner, the other blames them cheating on the sexless marriage.
Laura Dern has an awesome feminist rant that rings true but feels really shoehorned in. You get to sit through an awkward dinner that includes the court appointed child expert watching Charlie and the son eat, then Charlie stupidly cuts himself on accident to make more awkwardness. Boy, Charlie's really blowing it. Yeah this is entertaining I get he's trying to avoid getting help and is meant to seem hopeless as a human being, but this is really stupid. The kid's insufferable and generic. I'd probably swear at them too the way Charlie does. I don't know how old the kid is meant to be playing, but he looks eight and he can't read, apparently he's seven, my reading age must've been more advanced since I could read words, like, you know "time". If the implication is the divorce has impacted on this kid's learning in general, it's not appearing that way.
Laura Dern's character's clearly using Nicole in her own stupid "I gotta beat the man" way (some reason she can't stand Charlie walking away with bragging rights to a 50/50 custody arrangement so she wrangles it in Nicole's favour, hence her later bending the rules rather than dispute the arrangement and go back to court). So it's all dumb. I get it, though. People do watch these movies, they are interesting, they're well done. I would rather avoid them. It really has good moments but they're not worth the shit between. Adam Driver has so much more to offer than Vader 2.0. So I hope this becomes a defining thing for him.
Ultimately things just run their course and it's all amicable even after the papers are signed. I don't know why divorced people would want to sit through a fictionalised version of their lives. Other than masochism. If this floats your boat, that's great. I didn't expect to be so annoyed with the characters or questioning the realism of it as much as I did. I have to agree with YMS though it is a more fleshed out version of a well-known story, there's nothing incredibly superficial about it. I think from my perspective when you're doing gender comparisons on two romantic leads you need to steer further away from stereotypical behaviours. Why even bring their genders into it? Could you have done a remake of this with a gay couple, sadly probably not, since it makes so many comments on how women and men are perceived in parental roles. It would be more interesting if it were a same sex couple. Maybe I'm bored with cis/straights bitching about how hard marriage is. We need more varied takes, I suppose.
Either way I'd be generous about giving this more than a five or six out of ten, or a three out of five.
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