bobbysgotmomentum

I went to see The Phoenician Scheme yesterday, and alas, it's a fizzler. The opening is so strong, that I was genuinely excited! I felt that I was in capable hands. Very Wes Anderson, but the music gave the opening a sense of urgency and Benicio del Toro's physicality brought a degree of menace to it that I genuinely don't expect from his work. And then... it turned out to be a stiff, surface-y lukewarm rehash of the sort of thing he's already done in The Royal Tennenbaums and The Life Aquatic & etc. etc. Shitty patriarch reconnecting with child, sets that make everything feel like a dollhouse, a bunch of celeb cameos, a bunch of monotone line delivery. The comedy doesn't land. Mia Threapleton's acting style is too casual and monotone, to the point that sometimes it feels like a humorous juxtaposition to everyone else's OTT acting and sometimes she just seems like a bad high school drama student. And this is on the higher end of orientialism for his films. This felt like maybe he's entering a Tim Burton-esque bad parody of himself era.

It's a shame, because I actually really enjoyed his last two films: to me they felt like he was using his style to do slightly different things and evolve, and while they were certainly more niche than his most popular, they had just as much heart. Asteroid City felt like it connected so well with lockdown grief, and The French Dispatch is such a charming blend of styles in what is blatantly a love letter to The Paris Review. But this felt like it was missing its heart, just going through the motions. And why would you waste a guy like Benicio del Toro on bad comedy.

It's not all bad - Richard Ayoade's bit as the leader of a humorous stylish freedom fighter/thief gang is delightful, and Riz Ahmed's bits reminded me that he's very good looking. And the beginning really is so good, stylish and urgent with a dark humour underlying. The afterlife segments scattered throughout the film are also a highlight for me, and they felt like that was where the real story was. Honestly, I felt like he could have done more with those and less with the wacky mid century basketball nonsense.

It kind of makes me want to see Anderson do a film about a character with genuine menace. If this had turned expectations on their head, and instead of being another unnecessary shitty patriarch becomes less shitty through reconnecting with adult children story had been about a villain who stayed a villain and didn't reform it all, it would have been a much better story. But this is more of a deflated balloon of a film.

I'm still going to watch the next one he makes though 😂

I also finally went to see Sinners last night. I'm sure everything that could be said about that film already has, and I'm not particularly qualified to say it, because I discovered while watching it that my hearing loss is worse than I thought because I couldn't understand a lot of the dialogue. I'd like to watch it again once it's on streaming and I can use subtitles. It's obviously in dialogue with other vampire films, along with everything else it's doing. Great sound design; I felt especially wrapped in the music, but the way it used sound as an auditory flashback overlaid over the present of the story was also a highlight. Charismatic actors. I was especially compelled by Wunmi Mosaku as Annie.

There were parts that didn't work as well for me - Michael B Jordan passing something to Michael B Jordan did not, in fact, look as convincing as I'd hoped. I can't tell how much it's fair for me to judge characters for doing dumb things in a horror movie, when people doing stupid things when scared is often the fun of the genre for me.

But really, I need to watch it again with subtitles to truly judge the film because I couldn't understand half the dialogue.