AARON BILGRAD MOVIE AWARDS 2019

BEST MOVIE IN WHICH THE MONEY ALLOCATED TO MAKING THE MOVIE WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER SPENT ON MAKING THE MESSAGE OF THE MOVIE A REALITY:  BLACK PANTHER

I am not a fan of comic book movies, but I surprisingly liked Black Panther (a little).  I embraced and felt good about the cultural impact of the film (i.e. the first African-American superhero), and I admire the message they present at the end of the movie.   Black Panther and his Wakanda nation are going to make it a priority to support their people and build “community outreach centers” for underpriviledged Oakland youth and all inner-cities around the world.  However, when it was over and the credits triumphantly rolled, I couldn’t help but think… why didn’t Disney just build all these outreach centers instead of making Black Panther?

Even though I had a blast watching the Black Panther’s lengthy dream sequences with his deceased father , I couldn’t help but get my calculator out to do some math.  The Black Panther had a budget of $200,000,000, and I would say approximately $80,000,000 for marketing.  For this, Disney could build a stadium-sized outreach center in Oakland.  Or, they could be more prudent with the Oakland center (perhaps only $30,000,000), and then use the remaining $250,000,000 to build outreach centers in all major cities.  But then I realized that if Disney would have spent the Black Panther budget trying to better these communities, then I would have missed out on all the CGI rhinos in the movie’s final battle.  NO DEAL!

MOST CONDESCENDING MOVIE TO MOTHERHOOD:  INCREDIBLES 2 

I know everyone loves this franchise (see my bizarre side story regarding The Incredibles HERE), but the storyline of Incredibles 2, and its underlying subtext, felt rotten.  Essentially, the movie’s premise centers around The Incredibles family being called back into action after a long absence from helping society.  There are now new super villains, and only The Incredibles can stop them.  EXCEPT… they have a new super-powered baby, and they can’t just leave the baby alone.  A parent will have to look after this baby.  What to do?  Well, Disney knows its audience here, and it also knows the current cultural and political climate.  And this time it’s mama’s turn to go kick butt.  BUT… this means that superhero daddy has to be a stay-at-home dad to the kids.  This is perfectly fine, but my umbrage comes from how I’m sure this concept was conceived.

I imagine the producers pitching the idea of this subversion on the traditional gender roles in society and other superhero story lines. While Mom is thrust into the challenge of fast-paced action and combat with the bad guy, Daddy is forced to stay at home and endure the even greater challenge of LOOKING AFTER A BABY!  In fact, a full 50% of the screen time is simply the dad character wrestling with relatable parenting issues (i.e. oh no the baby is lost, gonna hurt itself, gonna choke, etc.).  The producers condescendingly assuming that the mothers in the audience will cross their arms and nod along with movie’s point that being a mom is even tougher than being a crime-fighting superhero.  They assume that during a scene in which the brawny dad character chases the baby around the house, the target-demo mom might even utter under their breath “Mmm-hmm, not so easy, is it?”.  It’s a passe and condescending thematic subtext in a modern era where many women are already the hardworking breadwinners of the household.

BEST MOVIE THAT I ONLY SAW BECAUSE IT WAS THE ONLY MOVIE MY MOVIE PASS SUBSCRIPTION WOULD LET ME SEE:  READY PLAYER ONE

I still don’t understand what Steven Spielberg is doing with his life.  I get how he tries to alternate between serious movie and childish, money-making movie.  However, I can only assume that, at this point in his career, he doesn’t have to do much heavy lifting on set — meaning he’s got a team of thousands to do all the special effects work and second unit directors to handle scenes that don’t interest him.  I imagine when he sees the first real cut of the film, his first experience is not unlike our own in such that he is surprised by what THEY pulled off with all the CGI.

This is all speculative of course, but this would mean that all he is likely directing are ‘in-studio’ scenes with the actors.  Ready Player One certainly isn’t known for its characters and dialogue, so is Spielberg, who has plenty of money and could do absolutely anything he wants, truly artistically stimulated by directing video game nerds flirting with each other?  Or directing scenes in which a character sneaks in through a window?  Or finessing, take after take, the exact tone in which an actor says “WATCH OUT!”?

BEST MOVIE THAT I COULDN’T DECIDE IF IT WAS SMART OR BORING:  ROMA

Before we start, it is extremely important to know that I am a huge fan of Roma’s writer/filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron.  His 2001 movie Y Tu Mama Tambien is one of my favorite movies of the millennium.  Additionally, I’m an enormous film snob.  I love long, slow foreign films that get to the core of the human condition.  But this one tripped me up.

A few weeks ago, I was at a dinner party with some friends and some new people.  Small talk arose surrounding recent movie releases.  One girl asked a guy at the table, “Have you seen Roma?”, and he responded, “No, I don’t like boring movies”.  Now, I had not yet seen Roma yet, but I was seething under the surface.  I immediately wrote the guy off as uncultured; a philistine who couldn’t possibly even understand the subtle nuances of a filmmaker like Cuaron.  This made me even more certain that I would LOVE Roma once I watched it.  I even resisted watching it on small-screen Netflix, as true film lovers like me wanted and needed to take in the full theatrical cinematic experience.

For lack of free time purposes, I had to watch it on Netflix, but I still turned the lights out and shut my phone off.  No disruptions for what I’m sure will be a masterpiece.

Going into Roma, I was fully aware of its overwhelming critical acclaim.  But then I watched it, and my brain was battling with itself.   For example, there is a long scene in which the family and Cleo the maid, the main character, are getting ready in the morning.  The camera pans slowly around the house, as we watch each family member join the breakfast table and have very pedestrian and organic dialogue.  Now, the cinephile part of me was thinking:  ”This is amazing!  Such a true portrait of a privileged life in Mexico in the 1970s, contrasted against the experience of their poor, lonely and impoverished housekeeper.  And the minimal dialogue — so true in its realism and indicative of the apathy they may or may not feel for one another”.  But… the guy-on-the-couch part of me was thinking:  “This is pretty boring”.  

Cinematically, the movie is stunning.  There is a long, 8-minute scene in which we see a protest in the streets, and the mise-en-scene (i.e. all the details you see in a shot) is off the charts.  It is filmed in a long pan, with no edits, to truly encapsulate the experience — the viewer taking in every representative item and nuance of this moment in history.  It must have taken the production designer days to stage this scene.  The cinephile part of me was thinking, “I’m blown away by the filmmaker’s intent to allow me to interpret this protest in any way that feels right.  The horrors of oppressive government and its unintentional impact on the common woman.”   But the ‘guy-with-a-short-weekend’ part of me was thinking, “Jesus, hurry this shit up”.  

BEST MOVIE THAT EXPLAINS THE RULES:  A QUIET PLACE & BIRD BOX (Tie)

There is a new trend in horror movies in which you basically have to set up a rule, and have the characters try to survive in this rule.  In A Quiet Place, if you make a sound, you die (with certain exceptions that they will explain to you), and in Bird Box, if you take off your blindfold, you die (with certain exceptions that they will explain to you).  There is even a part where Sandra Bullock literally screams to her child, “If you take off your blindfold, you die!”.  This fully guarantees the financiers of the film that the audience will understand the mechanics of the story.

Now, these are not bad movies, but they are tiresome.  And they fool you into thinking they are real movies by having a supersaturated level of inter-character drama.  In A Quiet Place, it’s between a father and daughter, and they play this relationship for a lot of heartstring-tugging moments.  Not to harp on it too much, but I recall the daughter, who is deaf, was furious with her father for toiling for days during the apocalypse attempting to build her a hearing aid.  At one point, she even ferociously slaps the hearing aid out of  his hand.  What’s her problem?

In Bird Box, despite the ‘eyes closed or die’ premise, in the beginning, before the apocalypse, Sandra Bullock’s character absolutely, positively does not want to be a mother.  But later she must learn to be a good mother.  This is called a character arc.

I only mention this because these movies get far too much praise on account of this attempt at characterization.  Instead, they should be pegged for what they really are:  amusement park rides.

To illustrate the simplicity of this brand of movie, I would like to pitch a new horror movie called “AJAR”.  It’s about terrible demons that come to kill you if you leave the refrigerator door open.  As long as the door is closed, you are safe.  But don’t drink a soda while standing in front of it, or that door’s gonna be AJAR!  At the center of this film is Jack, a single father of two, who was so poor, he didn’t even have a refrigerator growing up.  How will he know what to do when his son, who is in a wheelchair, and his daughter, who is very funny, leave the fruit crisper open just a bit too much?  This movie also has a dog we will like, who, at one point, jumps up and closes the refrigerator door just in the nick of time.

AND HERE ARE THE BEST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR IN DESCENDING ORDER: 

NOTE:  I didn’t get a chance to see many movies this year, and the ones I saw did not change my life.  But here are the movies that impressed and stuck with me:

12) THE FIRST 40 MINUTES OF A STAR IS BORN
Strong acting, sharp dialogue, excellent energy, genuine chemistry, and a remarkable scene in which Lady Gaga goes on stage with Bradley Cooper to sing the beautiful original song “Shallow”, the first 40 minutes of A Star Is Born is near perfect.  Then you can go do something else.

11) BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
Even though almost all of this movie is fabricated (i.e. there never was a Mike Myers character lambasting the very idea of an operatic song like Bohemian Rhapsody — that was just to create some antagonism to Queen’s brilliance), and it reminded me of those cheaply made, late 90s VHI biopics about Def Lepard or MC Hammer, it was still a fun movie to watch, and you do get pretty pumped up.

10) WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (MR. ROGERS DOCUMENTARY)
I don’t know if everybody loved Mr. Rogers, but I sure did.  And this documentary did a fantastic deep dive not only into his story, but what made him so important.  My favorite part was when Mr. Rogers made his TV comeback in the late 70s because he learned that a kid tried to jump from a roof pretending to be Superman.  Mr. Rogers apparently loathed the idea of kids idolizing superheroes.  It was astray from Rogers ideology that a kid doesn’t need the concept of ‘superpowers’ in order to be special — they just are special because every child is special in their own way.  I think that is a good message for kids, and I don’t buy into this stupid, militant parenting advice of “Stop telling your kid that they’re special”.  

9) GERALD’S GAME
I know, I know — this is supposed to be just a throw away, ‘let’s-make-a-movie-out-of-a-Stephen-King-book’ Netflix movie.  It’s a simple story about a woman who is trapped, handcuffed to a bedpost in the middle of nowhere when her husband has a heart attack and dies.  And the front door is open.   However, it’s very well done, and the ending was fresh, unexpected, and makes the whole movie have a deeply chilling feeling in retrospect.  If you’ve got Netflix, you will have a good time with it.

8) MY DINNER WITH HERVE
Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones plays Herve Villachaize, the dwarf from Fantasy Island and Nick Nack in the James Bond movies.  A desperate reporter comes to town to interview the author Gore Vidal, but winds up stuck interviewing Herve past his prime.  Herve tells the reporter that he has the most fascinating story of anyone, and the two form a bond over a few days.  It’s a conventional movie in some ways, but uniquely heartbreaking in a way I can’t get out of my head.

7) BLACKKKLANSMAN
Everybody who saw this calls the movie something different.  ”KKK Black Klansman”, “Klansman Black KKK”, and I’ve even heard “Black Kuh-Kuh-Kuh Klansman”.  However, this is Spike Lee’s best film since Bamboozled.  However, even though this is a true story, I still don’t get how the KKK didn’t recognize the difference of the voice on the phone (Denzel Washington’s son) and Adam Driver in person.  They sound totally different, but I just let it go.  There is a poignant scene in which Adam Driver, after having been immersed with the Klan for a few weeks, starts to re-think the value of his Jewish heritage.  What was just a traditional Jewish upbringing that he didn’t give much credence, suddenly takes on a surprising meaning and importance when faced head on with the hatred from the Klan.

6) BURNING
At first I thought this movie had some of the Roma effect.  I couldn’t tell if it was great or overrated.  It’s a very slow burn,  and there are a lot of long scenes to endure.  However, when it finished, all the scenes do fit nicely into an overall narrative from the perspective of one person’s paranoia about a missing girl.  But, more notably, the actor Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn on The Walking Dead (which is the worst show of all time), gives the best acting performance of the year as an arrogant, mysterious playboy.  I wish he was nominated.  He deserves it.  For the few reading who have seen this movie, the parts in which he yawns is Marlon Brando-esque perfect acting.

5) THE TALE
Ok, disturbing, disturbing, disturbing — but all the actors shine in this HBO true story about a 11-year-old girl who was horribly taken advantage of one summer by two people she idolized.  Laura Dern plays the girl as an adult thinking back on everything (by way of reading a story she wrote from middle school), and confronting all of her wrongdoers in the present.  Again, very disturbing, but everything works.

4) THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
At first I thought this looked like one of their lesser works like Ladykillers or Burn After Reading, but it is arguably in their Top 5.  I liked some stories better than others, but they are all literary in their storytelling and themes.  Some were so depressing that I watched them again the next day just to experience that specific emotion again.

3) THE ZEN DIARIES OF GARRY SHANDLING
On the surface, this looks like one of those HBO movies that would be promoted for a week, show up on your HBO GO, and just disappear.  However, and I’m not a fan of Apatow movies, but it is the best thing that Judd Apatow has ever done (by far).  Judd was Shandling’s assistant, and this is Judd’s masterful, heartfelt portrait of a very creative man, brought to life by way of actual excerpts in his journal on his rise to stardom.  If you ever fashioned yourself creative in any way, you will relate to Garry’s internal and insecure thoughts he shares as he moves through the peaks and valleys of his career, life, and early death.

2) THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
It seems as though there are more documentaries released than ever before.  And most of the ones that get buzz are pretty good, but I found this one to be at the top of the heap.   This is such a fascinating story about three strangers who, by a strange twist of fate, realize that they are triplets.  The story just gets more and more bizarre from there, but this documentary unfolds in an incredibly captivating way to reveal even more sinister and depressing details of their story.  Everyone focused on how they were alike (same clothes, taste in food, etc.), but it was how they were incredibly different that makes the story fascinating.

1) HEREDITARY
One of the marks of a great movie is how much and how long it sits with you afterwards.   I saw this movie about 7 months ago, and I still constantly think about the true eerieness and horror of many of the scenes.  There are a zillion horror movies now, each one borrowing off the formula of the one before it, so when an original one comes along, it’s pretty exciting.  This movie creates a chilling mood that never lets up, and just slowly becomes more terrifying in every scene.   Additionally, this is a first time filmmaker, and I read that he literally storyboarded every single shot.  This definitely shows, as each shot in every scene is perfectly nuanced and styled to fit the mood perfectly.   Most horror movies are all about startling the audience as much as possible with jump scares, but this one creates that chilling feeling that makes you shudder, which is far scarier.  I saw this movie last summer, and I didn’t think it would hold the #1 spot all the way past the Oscar season movies.  But it impressed me far more than anything else I saw.

To read Aaron Bilgrad Movie Awards from past years, click HERE