Monkey Man almost nails it

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) is two hours of terror, tenderness, intense cardio, a lot of sweating, and a little bit of comedy that gets so close to allowing me to forget about the world outside the movie theatre.  I wanted spectacle, and I got spectacle.  If Sohbita Dhulipala had more screentime, I would have been completely swept away by the scenery, the production design, and the search for vengeance hampered by sleepless nights and disguised as the pursuit for pain.

Like any story centered on a protagonist [known here as Kid (Dev Patel)] whose decisions are based on a desire to take revenge on those agents of corruption who killed his mother and destroyed his village, the path to victory necessitates an interlude with wise beings.  And as an action film, said respite promotes psychological and physical healing with societal outcasts with a leader who will remind you that you must fight to avenge those you lost rather than fight for the pain you think you deserve because you couldn’t save your mother.

Dev Patel is in nearly every sequence if not every scene in Monkey Man.  He enters just about every room with an expression of “you shouldn’t have done that” meets “is anyone here” and a dash of “I want to learn.”

As I mentioned earlier, Sohbita Dhulipala is only on screen for ten or so minutes including foreground, middle ground, and background whether or not she speaks.  Based on the differences between the trailers and the theatrical cut in the US, there were probably many scenes left on the cutting room dashboard.

It’s easy and obvious to make John Wick references — the film itself does it too via dialogue in one scene where the Kid is looking to buy a gun.  The fight choreography (by Brahim Chab) and some of the cinematography (by Sharone Meir) makes me think of Hong Kong cinema with more self-awareness that they’re making a kick-ass-Dev-Patel-kicking-ass movie.  There were a few moments in a fight scene with a yellow backdrop that took me out of the experience a little bit because the way the camera moved reminded me it was there.  That, oh yes, a camera operator is whiplashing horizontally to capture the frenetic energy of the violence.

Would I watch the film again?  Perhaps.  I will be getting it on DVD whenever it comes out so I can watch it many times again with subtitles.  Although Monkey Man did not pause the outside world to the extent I hoped it would, it did hold my attention and soak up a sufficient amount of nervous energy from just beneath the surface of my psyche.  And now I want to re-watch The Green Knight and Polite Society.

Dev Patel should keep (co)writing and directing to refine his storytelling voice so that one day we’ll all be able to say, “That is such a Dev Patel film.”

PS.  If you want to know all about the behind-the-scenes on how Monkey Man went from an idea to the theatres, the Wrap has the story.

Pic creds: IMDB, YouTube screengrabs

The Joy of Fearless Betty I Felt like I was There

I did it. I watched Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Concert Movie again, and this time it was at a Regal.  I don’t know if these observations are applicable to every Regal in metro-Atlanta much less every auditorium at this particular location.

AMC seats: leather exterior and cushiony — think sofa and harder to wipe down due to all those creases.
Regal seats: rubbery exterior and dense — smooth surface that is very easy to wipe down.

AMC screen: made me feel like I was watching a movie.
Regal screen: made me feel like I was at the concert and looking at the jumbotrons at the venue, but I was very aware I was in a movie theatre.

AMC bathrooms: auto-flush, automatic water dispensing at sink with too-hot water, napkins and blow-dry hands.
Regal bathrooms: normal flush, automatic water dispensing at sink with normal water temperature, only blow-dry hands.

AMC’s air: stuffier when the pre-show and trailers were playing (but there were also more people in that showing).  Once the feature started, the AC started blowing.  Air circulation was felt and heard.
Regal’s air: “normal” during the pre-show and trailers.  Once the feature started, after the excitement of the Lover and Fearless segments returned a bit more to center, I sensed a drop in temperature, but didn’t feel or hear air blowing.

AMC uniforms: employees wore the AMC shirts, but I don’t remember what the pants situation was…I imagine they had to be certain colors with the fabric being up to the employee.
Regal uniforms: employees wore black pants, black long-sleeved shirts with bright orange trim in certain places.

I took pictures this time.  Behold:

I don’t know why the Fearless section makes me so happy. “Fearless” is a great song, but my favorites from that album are “Fifteen,” “Breathe,” “White Horse,” and “Tell Me Why” (not including vault tracks). I don’t love “You Belong With Me” or “Love Story,” and yet watching Taylor Swift perform these songs filled me with so much joy.

The “Betty” performance made me giddy as well. Am I going to watch it a third time? C’est possible. I’d go back to the Regal if I do.

I’m Wonderstruck

This self-care weekend consisted of getting this Hellraiser 6-movie collection because it was on sale at Barnes & Noble, and I was in the mood for some Cenobites admonishing humans for playing games (with minimal trickery-loopholing involved).  I purchased this particular set because I already have the first and second Hellraiser films and just couldn’t remember much of the third through eighth films.  There will probably be a blog post  after I’ve finished watching them.

The second part of this self-care weekend was comprised of nearly three hours of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Concert Movie.

In the seventy-hours after she’d announced there was going to be a concert movie initially showing at AMC Theatres and then at pretty much every major chain in North America (and later in other continents), I’d gone back-and-forth between deciding if I was going to buy advance tickets for a screening after opening weekend or if I’d just wake up some Thursday early enough and buy a ticket at the theatre.  I had my sights set on October 19th, but reality sent a scheduling conflict.  On October 13th I spontaneously bought a ticket for October 15th because why not.

Well, reality was not on board for that Sunday matinee.  I was determined to have a do-over, and that’s how I spent the afternoon of October 22nd: with a handful of Taylor Swift fans in the burbs, singing along and sometimes swaying to the rhythm of the music (one girl did a lot of interpretive dance throughout entire sections; it was great).  The concert opening looks awesome on a big screen; Taylor Swift’s expressions and her backup dancers‘ movements were amazing to behold on a big screen.  In fact, I found myself paying attention to the backup dancers in certain moments more than our solo singer herself.  For example, Audrey Douglass caught my eye during “Vigilante Shit.”

I did not make friendship bracelets; I brought stickers.  I gave the girl on my left some multi-colored, iridiscent easter egg stickers; she showed me her left wrist of bracelets.  I asked her if I could have the one with “Ours” on it as it’s one of my favorite songs on Speak Now (OG and Taylor’s Version).

I gave the woman on my right some stickers as well — I don’t recall if they were the easter eggs kind or the one with hearts.  The audio of “Long Live” played during the ending credits (which included pictures of concert attendees and concert bloopers).  As the lights came up, the woman who sat below me saw me, and I asked if they wanted stickers.  I handed one of the girls with her a set of the multi-colored, iridescent hearts.  She thanked me again when they were headed to the exit.

I am so glad I watched the Eras Tour Concert Movie sooner rather than later.  For two hours and forty-eight minutes, I did forget everything happening in the world that sucks for SO MANY PEOPLE as well as very specific circumstances that continue to suspend me at my wit’s end.

I want to see it again and possibly at a Regal not only to compare and contrast the experiences at two different theatre chains, but also because Taylor Swift was beaming with joy during the Fearless segment… and I just wanna feel that way again….of seeing her that happy, of seeing anyone that satisfied.  I mean, if you yourself can’t get to that happy place, the second best thing is to watch someone else have the time of their life, n’est-ce pas?  The Evermore, Reputation, and Folklore eras were marvelous…and I need more of that awe in this mortal coil right now.

Yes, I did buy the cup — and the lids at QT will fit perfectly.

How Denzel Washington shaped the script for Mississippi Masala

Mira Nair is one of my favorite directors.  Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors.  Coming off of an Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor in Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989) and a starring role in Mo’ Better Blues (Spike Lee, 1990), Washington’s next film was Nair’s comedic drama Mississippi Masala (1991) where he plays the owner of a carpet cleaning business who falls in love with an Indian girl who’s never been to India but grew up in Uganda.*

The Criterion Collection Edition is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The special features included on the DVD consist of interviews with actress Sarita Choudhury, writer Sooni Taraporevala, director of photography Edward Lachman, and production designer Mitch Epstein.  Some of what I learned while watching these interviews:

~ Sarita Choudury was twenty-two years old when she was in this film, her first film role.  She had gone to film school in London and heard about auditions for Mira Nair’s new film and went with the goal of somehow working with the director rather than being in the movie.  Describing Nair, Choudhury remarks that “she’s so magnetic.  She’s got these eyes when you talk to her, like she can see right through you, and this smile; and she’s very charismatic and very smart.  I feel like she can tell if you’re telling the truth.”  Rehearsals were initially difficult because she felt so shy around her co-star.

~ Sooni Taraporevala on how Denzel Washington shaped the script:
Denzel brought huge gifts to us.  First of all, his presence in the film, I mean what a gift that was, and how ecstatic we were when he said, “yes.”  But the other thing he brought to it is that he really took an active part in the story and the script.  I met him briefly in New York the first time and he said, “First of all, why would I fall in love with an Indian girl?  And secondly, why would I run off with her?”

And I said, “Because sometimes people can do together what they can’t do alone.”  And he said, “Okay, but I gotta see that in the script.”

And he said to me, “Don’t make him an intellectual, make him a homely guy.”  And that really worked for me because I had created Mina as someone with a very tight family.  I had created a family of the three of them within a sea of Indians who are not like them, so that worked really well to have Demetrius have a family that kind of paralled Mina’s parents.

He said, “You know, do a Sunday dinner, create a world of Demetrius.”  He said, “It’s not about screentime.”

~ Edward Lachman’s recollections of the film:
I loved the script and thought it entered worlds that people hadn’t seen or been exposed to. The film was like a masala of narratives. It’s about finding your home, your identity. You look at the East Indian community, their spiritual home is India that they’re not part of. They consider themselves African, and then they end up in Mississippi where they’re with African Americans, whose spiritual home is Africa. So it’s about these two cultures that are displaced from their own home, but yet one is brown and one is black. So I wanted to create two different worlds, and one way I approached that was using a different film stock for Mississippi than I did for Africa.

~ Mitch Epstein had worked with Mira Nair before twice.  He taught himself the art and science of cinematography.  He thought that he would just be co-producing on this picture, but due to the lack of adequate artistic fluency demonstrated by the art director that they had hired, he decided to take on that responsiblity himself.  He elaborates that “I got my training as a production designer.  I came to it  kind of cold, as a rookie, but working on Salaam Bombay! with Mira, I knew the city of Bombay, now Mumbai, through walking its streets, through responding to it as a still photographer.”

I know exactly what Sarita Choudhury means about Nair’s magnetism and charisma.

*Mississippi Masala is about more than a boy who didn’t think he’d catch feels for a girl (and vice versa) or the friction between two ethnic minority groups in Mississippi in the 90s.  The film also contemplates the irony and paradox of being and ousted “Other” in one’s homeland and then becoming a fractionally more preferred “Other” in one’s new homeland.

Read more about Indians forced to leave Uganda in the early 70s here.

Pic creds: IMDB, Criterion Collection

Would You Wear the Green Sash?

Envision yourself on a quest where you must arrive at a specific location by Christmas and follow through with a promise you made the previous year.  If you keep your word, you will lose your head…literally.  A woman offers you a green sash (or is it more of a large ribbon? belt?) that as long as you keep it tied around your body, you will never die (or at least never be mortally wounded).  Do you accept?

Of course you accept…and to wonder anything more would be to venture into spoiler territory, which I shan’t do.

Since the start of the year, I’ve only vaguely kept up with what movies would be playing in theatres in my city.  I still have not been to a movie theatre since I watched Tenet a year ago.  Among other films, I skipped The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021) when it came to town.  As the months went by, I was no longer sure I would see it at all…and then it came out on DVD.

Passively waiting until it was available on DVD was the right choice in the end.  I got to enjoy the subtitles and a few making-of featurettes, which really contributed to my positive regard for the film.  In one evening, I viewed the film nearly twice from start to to finish with a few repeat-watches of specific segments.  I wasn’t expecting to see a fox companion…that eventually talked [somewhat like the one from Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist (2007) but minus the ridiculous delivery].

Not long after Gawain (Dev Patel) encounters the fox, he sees giant entities traversing across the landscape before him.  On the one hand, it shifts abruptly the viewer’s perception of the time-and-place and even genre of the film, but on the other hand, Gawain did just unknowingly eat some fungus that isn’t meant for dietary consumption.

I really like The Green Knight and I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is due to the film’s fairy-tale tone and story.

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In sports headlines, the Atlanta Braves may bring competitive glory to this here city once again (in general but also for themselves and longtime Braves fans).  I remember the 90s Braves and watching them win the World Series in 1995 against Cleveland on TV.

This moment…the pile-up at the end:

Now that I think back on the last decade before the turn of the 21st century, there was a period of time when I watched a lot of televised baseball and so many of the games were of the Braves.  Why?  Now that decades have passed, I realize fully that it was because of Fred McGriff (who played first base) and Javier Lopez (the catcher).

While we’re at this juncture in the corner of reminiscence, check out these videos:

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Et plus, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Miami Dolphins 30 to 28 (via 3 touchdowns and 3 field goals).  Get game summary, stats, and play-by-play here.

Pic creds: IMDB