Biopics, documentaries, and character studies

 I recently was on a biopic or character study concept recently through a few different titles.  I had seen Moonage Dreams last month, a music documentary compilations of David Bowie's career, and then last week with Tar, Call Jane, and Till.  All of them had strong points, and had me ruminating on different concepts and what actually draws us to wanting to watch any of these styles of films.

Out of what I have watched recently, I can say that I tend to prefer more of the documentaries, and fictionalized character studies, but overall I can say that Till sparked some of my interest well enough that I knew I would need to do some of my own homework to finalize my thoughts and feelings on the matter.  To a degree, I'm still trying to formulate thoughts on Till, but can at least touch on it as it relates to the whole.

Biopics have been something that I've been trying to determine how I feel about a lot of them.  In recent years, I've been leaning more towards the character study as opposed to a biopic, especially if it's someone that I've learned about someone and seen them in a certain light.  As a result, if I'm going to see a biopic, I tend to be a bit more hesitant especially if there is a documentary available.  Documentaries and biopics however tend to present the people they are portraying in a certain light.  It is important to do research on people in either genre.  

Biopics tend to take it one step further, though.  Whomever is the director or film crew will usually alter the story some to make the story flow better and fit more cleanly into a story arc.  

Moonage dreams was much of the concert and interview footage of David Bowie.  While I found it fascinating how his music changed and pushed boundaries over the years, it also lightly touched on the crazed fans, but it did nothing towards commenting on his relationships with people over the years.  While it is hard to cram all sorts of subject matter into a one-three hour block window, I have become more vigilant on the questions now as I watch.  But at the same time, in the two hours and forty-eight minute run of Moonage Dreams, it was enjoyable to get lost in the music and the craze that was David Bowie, despite not being somebody who grew up in his early years.

Character studies tend to be the happy medium between these two genres, as you get to peek into somebody else's life, but you don't get the confusion or need to do a deeper dive into somebody's life. I have enjoyed these more recently because, as a result, I don't have to do as much homework going into or after the movie. There are less questions individually about the person's life, more just a focus on what could have been pre or post story arc.  Tar had an interesting approach to this, but takes it steps further.  The ending doesn't stop at a point where the viewer can draw one's own conclusions of where Tar proceeded to go after what was viewed.  As a viewer, I wanted to be given some of my own creative process.  Then you have a character study film, like Call Jane that takes characters, and creates stories around historical events.  Whilst Call Jane focuses on family planning and essentially what could be the start of programs similar to Planned Parenthood, you get to the point of viewing that you start to wonder how historically accurate is what I am watching?  

Hearts beat Loud

Hearts Beat Loud is your classic summer indie film that's fresh off the film festival circuit.  I screened this movie, in June, 2018 at the Charles Theater in Baltimore.

The premise behind this movie centralizes around a single dad, whom is about to close a few chapters in his life: sending his smart, hardworking daughter off to college, and closing his music store.  Nick Offerman, who plays Frank Fischer, lives in an up and coming neighborhood, Red Hook, of Brooklyn.  His bonding moments with his daughter comes from their love for music and weekly jam sessions.

The driving force of this movie is the solid soundtrack and the fun simple moments between Offerman, and his daughter, Sam played by Keirsy Clemmons.  The budding relationship between Sam and Rose (played by Sascha Lane) left some desires of being developed a bit more, as well as the backstory of Sam's mother.

The Seagull

The Seagull is a movie adaptation of Chekhov's work of the same name.  I was able to screen this version at The Chekhov's work is often laden with a large cast with multiple connections to the other characters.  Over the years, I've often wondered with seeing different staged versions of Chekhov's work done for college thesis projects, I often wondered if my confusion or aversion to his staged productions where the translations presented.  I was on the fence about screening this movie for much of the same reason.  I thought, is the translation going to be decent?  Am I going to be able to pick up themes or how each character is connected?  Or am I just going to be lost in scenery for 100 minutes.

The Seagull, as a film, has something that many stage productions lack: original live set.  By filming this outside in a lake village, it made it far easier to visualize and pick up on smaller references that frequently get lost in stage sets. Despite me not seeing a staged production of the Seagull, I think many of the other staged versions of Chekhov's work I got lost in trying to relate the set design to the natural ideas that were trying to be conveyed within the work.  It is a bit of a loss that the Seagull is  filmed it in upstate New York, rather than a small lake village in Russia, the scenery and cinematography for this "production" eased some of the viewing needs.  It made the play productions within the film, easier to comprehend, and it incorporated many of the natural elements, which made it easier to tie the overall themes and the micro-scenes within the movie, which can easily

The cast for Seagull was a star-studded European cast, some of whom had theater experience, which I think lead to the overall well dramatized versions, but it would have been nice had there been some Russian leads, whom may have been able to add something other than what westerners are familiar with seeing on the screen.  Despite this, I found most of the cast that had been selected for the film had other character study type rolls under their belts, so I felt that acting was a stronger carrying point of this film.  The group played well together and I felt that the director managed to keep all the different love triangles tight and managed well, in a 100 minute film, so you weren't trying to take notes in the movie of how Character X was connected to Y.

I am not one that is an avid proponent of Chekhov's work, but I can appreciate a well done version of his work.  With that regard, it is also important that you take my review with a grain of salt much for that reason.  I enjoyed this film rendition more than I thought I would, and I find that it was a good early summer film to take in on a hot summer's day.

24 Frames

24 Frames is the final film of Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian film director.  Kiarostami, a film director, artist, and photographer melded cinema and photography into his final ode to cinema.  It was worked on and completed in 2016, however, it did not make it to Baltimore, MD, until June 2018.  I am not sure if this was because of editing reasons, or abilities to promote or obtain the film.  The premise behind this film, was to take 24 of his still frame photographs and animate them.  The idea seemed to be something right up my alley of different, and combining of art forms.  Each frame was roughly four and a half minutes, focusing on stark or bleak landscapes. 

Many of these frames were black and white landscapes.  Snow and water seemed to be central themes in the frames, and I am not sure if this was a thematic choice, or more based on the ease of animating these features.  Birds were also a regular theme, most commonly ravens or crows, which again, had me thinking if these were allusion to foreboding of death.  There were some cow scenes, and the two frames that the cows were used seemed to be pretty similar animated footage. 

The concept behind the film is creative and different, and while I can appreciate the stills for what they were, I felt some of the moments before and after what would be the normal stills to almost tamper with the simple beauty that was included in his photography.  Some of the frames, the four and a half minutes was enough, others it seemed like an eternity.

There was music included in some of the frames, and when included, I found those frames to be more of the ones that peaked my interest.  While the approach was to get the viewer to be more in the moment, some of the inclusions of animation was a bit too jilted, which made it a bit more of a challenge to be able to fully surrender to the scenes.

While I appreciated many of the water and snow frames, how some of them were spaced in the group was seamless.  It appeared to have some that transitioned well.  My only complaint with some of the use of birds, and animals in some of these scenes were a bit too surrealist for my taste (a cow sleeping on a beach for one, a wolf rolling in snow while others worked a carcass, a pigeon flying by a window after a group of crows passing by the same stark countryside view, a song bird singing for four and a half minutes as tree work comes to the two trees close by).  These images and animations at times seemed like an odd Dali painting in a moving photo, which was a bit too much for me to process as a viewer.  Some of these frames I think would have been more effective and achieved the same beauty in the moment effect if they were shorter.

The final frame, was the ideal climax pinnacle of the body of work, and tied the collection together well.  I'd be curious to know more about his work, and if any these started their journey in a Chelsea Gallery.

Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom

While one must have some suspended, non science logical approach to view and of the reptilian world movies, the original, Jurassic Park, had much more of a clever, well written script.

Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom, had far less of a promising script.  It tried too hard to please the original reptilian world fans.  The premise behind this lackluster film, was Isla Nublar, island home to the Jurassic World Park, is under duress.  Three years after the demise of the park, the dinosaurs are left to their own devices.  They have overtaken the island, but there is a nearby volcano that is on the brink of eruption.  Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are summoned to rescue some of the dinosaurs from the extinction level natural disaster.  While procured to find Blue, the smartest of Owen's pod of velocraptors, the duo and team of interns uncover a cover up corruption ring.

Jurassic Park, the original one, at least despite being science fiction, had some decent approaches to facts, and while it wasn't completely believable, it had some form of potential, and used a reasonable fact based concepts behind it.  Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, threw all those out the window.  There was mixing of trex and raptor blood.  There were weird hybrids that didn't have any typical reptile behavior.  While I realize that this type of movie is not PhD biology thesis material, and simply trying to be an entertaining mindless summer movie, it tried to hard to reconnect the original, the most recent, and appease science fiction nerds, and restorted to a failure worse than Dune level of what is this rubbish?  I had strong inclinations that this was going to be the driving force, and was going merely for the summer blockbuster effect, and honestly if I didn't have MoviePass, I probably would have passed on this one.  I'll save my comments for MoviePass for another blog post, but albeit, I had Sharknado sequel standards going into this: extremely low standards, and this movie didn't even meet those, nor do I really think The Rock would have starred in this which is also, not saying much.

While the graphics and CGI premise on the original dinos from Jurassic World were impressive, and the sound of the roars were regular that I envision bad weather drinking games made to this, I'd put this more in the terrible movie category well below Anaconda: not even worth the redbox rental fee.  However, I'm sure back in the day, when I lived in the middle of nowhere Minnesota in the dead of winter, this would have been our classic drinking game movie.

The premise behind the movie was trying to take on the whole potential catastrophe and what it could do to the environment and the need to save animals, which is a point I usually am gung ho about supporting, but not when it's attached to a movie that can't seem to have valid plot points or make my science oriented brain hurt.  Animal trafficking, was also touched on, as these bandits truck these dinosaurs into a home to then be marketed in hopes to raise enough money to use dinosaurs as a military weapon is such a far fetched idea, that it makes the real animal trafficking issues to also be a a joke, which is a shame, while I'm sure this wasn't the intention, they wanted to take on so much point wise that it ended up being a fizzle. 

As I struggled to watch, all I could think of was the cliched plot lines of every other summer and winter blockbusters I have seen in recent years: King Kong (2006), Godzilla (2014) and Jurassic Park (1993).  While recent remakes of King Kong and Godzilla were mediocre and good, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, just couldn't seem to live up to the rest of the field.  Peter Jackson's 2006 King Kong was a long winded 3 hours, with pretty island scenes and an overly anthropomorphized animal chasing after a girl.  Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, took on a similar approach, but altered, destruction of a pretty island, overly anthropomorphized animals that eventually chase after girls. And even then the hybrid dinosaurs that they used were as if the CGI team came up with the notion of what if we create a mutt of a dinosaur as if Alien, Predator, TREX and raptors all went to a raging orgy.  Even the suspense that they tried to build fell short of the building suspense of the 2014 Godzilla. 

Movie production companies seem to be building more of the empire of remakes, adding on to franchise story lines, and blockbusters.  I felt that Solo, the prequel of the Star Wars movies worked more in the interest of new fans of the Star Wars Franchise, as well as the old.  Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom seemed to want to appease to the original Jurassic Park fans, but instead threw in a weird plot line to tie the Jurassic World Series to the Jurassic Park originals. and failed miserably.

Unfortunately, I was hoping for a reasonable summer blockbuster, and instead was given mush that was trying to pass as diamond worthy.

Unsane

Unsane is Steven Sodorberg's 2018 thriller.  It was shot mostly with an Iphone and is the story of Sawyer Valentini.  Sawyer relocates from Boston to a small town in nowhere Pennsylvania.  She relocates as a way in hopes to escape the man whom has been stalking her for the last two years.  Once she relocates, she goes to see a counselor, and unbeknownst to herself, she signs papers to have herself committed for 24 hours.  The 24 hours then becomes a week, and she then becomes convinced that her stalker is one of the night nurses.  She does what she can to try to survive and get out.

While this wasn't the best thriller I've seen this year, I think it brings to light some of the stigmas most of what our society has towards getting help.  At the same time, the movie can serve as a hindrance for a lot of people to want or be able to admit or try to get the help they need.  While I'm sure that there are psychiatric centers like the one portrayed in this movie that tries to get patients by any means necessary and bill insurance for what they need. 

I appreciated the approach of using an IPhone to shoot this movie, however, I think that Soderberg used this method, as this seems to be the new up and coming method to approach film-making.  At times, the phone allowed for some new fresh angles.  The downside, was in a lot of the dark hospital scenes or forest scenes, the coloration of the shots becomes distracting.  The approach fails to have the sheer beauty of Tangerine, the 2015 crime thriller movie that started the iphone approach to filming. 

The thriller aspect of the movie, was mostly a sleeper approach, wanting to appeal more towards the "smart people horror movie" crowd.  (The Witch, Good Night Mommy, A Quiet Place would also fall into the same category).  While the movie had some good seat jumper moments, and surprises and plot twists.  I wanted to enjoy the movie, and while the story seemed new to the genre, it still fell short.  I had paired this with a double feature with the 12 days documentary.  While I think the two served as a good contrast on the topics of self help and care, ultimately it still fell short a bit in being a solid approach for what I was expecting with this film. 

12 Days

12 Days is a 2017 documentary out of France.  It's US release date was in March 2018, and I viewed it at the Parkway Theater.  By law, in France, anyone whom is committed to a psychiatric ward or hospital, must see a judge roughly 12 days after their commitment.  This is to deem whether or not they are fit to be released or should continue treatment.

The documentary follows a grouping of patients, some of their time in the hospital, as well as their hearings.  They also have many scenic scenes between cases.  The scenic scenes help set the tonal, grey and cold rainy or misty scenes of some of the hospitals.  The premise of the documentary is fascinating to me, as the stigma of needing to get psychiatric help in the United States is always a challenge.  Many in the states can't get the help that they need due to sheer costs, limited insurance or options for that matter.  Many of the stories that they portray are heartbreaking.  Some don't see the need for their commitments, while others appreciate the help that they are receiving and comment on how they feel the treatment to be helpful.  Unfortunately, I'm sure mostly due to doctor-patient privileges, most of the documentary covers only the trials.  Some of the trials we see are early in the treatment process, others are later.  Everyone that we witness, the patient is told that they need to receive more treatment.

There is enlightenment in seeing another country's process, it's just a shame that we weren't given more information about maybe the hospitals, what allows others to commit certain people against their will, in addition to the court cases.  I realize that most families, friends, patients or doctors may not want to disclose everything about why somebody is committed, the healing process, treatment, etc., but there are just so many other approaches that this documentary could have brought forth in it.  The documentary itself was relatively short, and like I said, was a string of the different court cases.  It also would have been beneficial to see a variety of different rulings, in addition to the variety of judges.  Another topic that could have been pursued could have been why these judges chose to hear these types of cases.  Overall, I enjoyed the film, I just left wanting to know more.