Dude Rates Movies

First Man is no movie to show to kids who want to become astronauts. If anything, it illustrates how perilous and hard space exploration is. It follows the entire decade of the 60s, from the first NASA missions to Apollo 11, and shows that working as an astronaut in those times is no safe trade. People die. From the T-38 crash in early Gemini tests to the fire in the Apollo 1 cockpit, the film doesn't ignore disasters. Narrated entirely from Neil Armstrong's point of view and his family's, those people who are gone are colleagues, friends, or even neighbor. And as the others lose their lives, Neil continues advancing to the next level, riskier than the previous one.

One can imagine what kind of bravery and morale fortitude Apollo-era astronauts must have had to continue towards their goal. The popular image is the one of hot-shots and cow-boys so excited and with some much self-confidence they happily hop on the rocket ready to launch. We learn that that this is not the profile of Armstrong. In his case, death is not only a risk ahead, it is also a shadow behind. He lost his 2-years old daughter to a brain tumor before enlisting in the NASA space program. He is surrounded by death, and deals with it using total rectitude, coldness, and expertise. Such overall professionalism which certainly contributed to him having been selected to command Apollo 11. Ryan Gosling is absolutely suited for the role, which might be the peak of his career. He projects so much intensity, yet inspire so much calmness. His composure and silence form a fortress to an internal storm that is palpable.

The movie soars when it demonstrates the perilous nature of space exploitation from inside a spaceship. Those scenes are so masterfully done they are enthralling. You don't even observe it, you are in it. Director Damien Chazelle uses all the tooling at his disposition to immerse us into the missions, and it works impressively well. First-person shots entering the confined cockpits reproduced to incredible detail. Close-ups to nuts and bolts to show that this thing is fundamentally a pile of scrap that is going to be shot into space. Various distant metallic cracks when it is about to get alive. This is the most incredible rendition of what it must feel to be in a rocket I ever experienced.

We like to impress ourselves with the anecdote that states that the Apollo program sent men to the Moon with a computing power that is less than what is available today in a single cellphone. So we should also impress ourselves with the fact that First Man was made with a budget of $59 millions, which is about a third of what is usually available to those kinds of movies. The lack of budget sometimes shows. When the crawler is bringing the Saturn V rocket from the hangar to the launchpad, we only get to see the crawler. The astronauts, by-standing, are looking up and commenting on the impressive size of the rocket, but we never get to see what they see. Chazelle therefore needs to employ wonders of creativity to convince us, and he delivers. By filming the astronauts taking the elevator to the top of the rocket, we get to see the big cylinder going by vertically while we gain scary height as we can tell by the Cap Canaveral early morning scenery. There you understand the sheer scale of what is happening. They intend to launch a high-rise building into space!

First Man is about war as much as it is about space. The reasons the U.S. were fueling the space program was solely to beat the Soviets at it. Those astronauts entering spaceships to go to space were really entering heavy machinery to go to war. And those who lost their lives in a test were fallen brothers of a battle. Add to that the stern, stoic personality of Armstrong, and "Cold War" would have made an alternative title full of sense.

For Armstrong though, it seems to be an escape. When saddened by the loss of a colleague, he desires solitude from his wife, or rather the company of the Moon, which he observes with a sextant. When the Saturn V is headed towards the Moon and the interstage ring separates from the rocket's second stage, the sustained shot of the ring falling back to Earth rhymes with the way a man would remove his own wedding ring before leaving his family for a get away he might never be coming back from.

First Man is not a crowd pleaser. Neil Armstrong's detached behavior would be a mood killer for those who expect the movie to be a modern revision of The Right Stuff with hot-shots. The absence of joy, however, is not to be confused with the absence of character development. Of all the characters that are presented to us, Armstrong is certainly the one on whom the idea of going to the Moon has the deepest impact.

When they accomplish an achievement, Armstrong's colleagues congratulate themselves for getting closer at beating the reds. But when, at his initial NASA interview, Armstrong is asked why he thinks space exploration is important, he answers that it is because it provides a shift in perspective. He is describing what is now documented as the overview effect. His mates are warriors. He is a sailor. When him and Buzz Aldrin has set foot on the Moon, Aldrin is shown jumping around as if it was playground time. Armstrong is experiencing a profound emotional meltdown. It is eerie, in this moment, how, behind the opaque silver-plated visor of his helmet, we can almost understand more about his internal state as we ever could during the rest of the movie on Earth. And as we start being able to peek through this impenetrable facade, he seems to finally have found a way to commune with himself.

The movie is unconventional on various fronts. It is a saga on an entire decade yet you don't have the usual montages to show progression. This doesn't prevent the rhythm of the movie from being fantastic. As soon as you think the story might be about to develop a segment that is going to be a bit boring, it moves on without further ado to the next interesting chapter. There is not a single second in those almost 150 minutes that is useless. The music is from outer space. When the lunar module is about to land, Justin Hurwitz drops an incredible melody made of strings and brass instruments going stronger and stronger in an almost jazzy mood. As the narration focuses on Armstrong flying the module and doesn't show the conventional tour of the world with people listening to the live feed on the radio or TV, the music alone, with its originality and wonder, conveys perfectly the greatness of what is happening.

This is a film made by people who decided not to take the traditional paths, and who designed their own beautiful ones. They are true artists, and this is a masterpiece.

This is the movie that Steven Soderbergh shot with an iPhone, to celebrate how such accessible mean of filming marks the democratization of film-making. Well, judging from the result, this is mostly the democratization of 90s-like serie-B film-making. This is bullshit anyway, since the hardest parts of film-making are sound recording and acting. Anyone can buy a reflex camera with nice video support for not that much more than an iPhone and record close to professional-grade videos. So this should definitely be taken as an experiment rather than anything else. Anyway, the screenplay is excellent and the cast, lead by Claire Foy, is very good. Steven Soderberg delivers a solid thriller, as usual, and even knows how to exploit the exotic filming format at hand to make it consistent with the thematics of the movie. Cool.

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What an incredible consistency on delicacy and gentleness, supported by brilliant directing and acting. In a narration without judgment, which seeks feelings and sensitivity in flawed characters, the line between good and bad becomes blurred, such that we feel torn between ethical concerns and sheer compassion. Very well deserved Palme d’Or from 2018.

Such a charming movie. It is simple, thoughtful, consistently funny. It just keeps on giving. Move your ass and go see it.

With Roma, Alfonso Cuarón achieves what Terrence Malick only ever tried. The semi-autobiographical depiction of Cuarón's own childhood, narrated through the prism of a sublime cinematography, with a tone that tries to trigger some sort of transcendence in the spectator, immediately reminded me of The Tree of Life. However, Roma approaches the exercise very differently: with humility and simplicity. Contrary to its Texan counterpart, the Mexican chronicle doesn't feel awkward or weird at parts. It is complete, sound, and rich.

The children in the movies are only side characters. The main character is Cleo, the maid of the upper middle-class family, and nanny of the children. What makes the movie so peculiar is that it has an extremely non-didactic narration. As such, there is not much dialogs nor context about Cleo's life. She's a rather shy and silent young woman, and we can only try to read her state of mind from the numerous shots where she is pensively taking a break or just working in the house.

As far as we can tell, she is an angel. The archetype of the sweet, innocent, saintlike maid, is in fact so frankly painted that it seems Cuarón wasn't interested in drawing nuance, but rather in reporting his galvanized memories from childhood. In the movie, Cleo has a particularly loving relationship with the children, and the way the narration approaches her character matches the way the children must see her: a loving, pure, and protective angel.

The non-didactic narration goes on to include various elements of Mexico's culture without explaining them. There is a fanfare going on in the street of the house. Why? Is there some sort of celebration? There is a student's demonstration being repressed. Why? What are they protesting about? There is no explanation. The movie only shows, and never tell. I browsed quite a lot of interviews and Wikipedia articles afterwards, and I very much enjoy this procedure: first discover by the power of the image without understanding, and then, once the tale is over, go read about it.

Because the movie doesn't explain its context but only shows things happening, it holds an incredible richness. Since it doesn't explain, it doesn't have to summarize, and it doesn't have to simplify. It doesn't even have to take a side about anything. There is an incredible amount of detailed cultural and historical details that are left there for the spectator to care about and be curious about. And it works so well because those things happens in the movie like they would happen in life: you experience them without understanding all the implications.

The only thematic about which the story does take a stand is the place of women in society. Feminism isn't always found where we expect it, and as much as I think Spielberg's The Post was the most feminist movie of 2017, I think Roma is the most feminist of 2018. The movies draws an incredible, voluntarily non-subtle, harsh contrast between men and women: to all appearances men are strong and solid, while women are fragile and modest. But when it comes to reality, men are weak and cowards, while women are enduring all the pain, and are greatly brave. Cuarón said in an interview that Roma was a "love letter to the women who raised him". This is more than a love letter. This is an ode. The only representative of the male sex who are spared in the story are the children, who are still retaining the innocence of youngness. We can only hope that when they grow up they won't evolve into the kind of men who behaved so badly with the women raising them.

Roma needs to be experienced like a stroll. The first hour is slow, descriptive. It relaxed me. The second hour is way more turbulent, with drama and havoc as immersive as you can expect the craft of Alfonso Cuarón to be. The whole adventure followed me the days after, leaving a taste of peace and melancholy in my mind.

I love the nuanced profiles of hitmans and their romantic sensibility. Lots of humoristic moments too. Martin McDonagh is Tarantino with a conscience. Such an excellent movie.

Apart from the awful cinematography this is a beautiful gem of creativity and originality.

This is a compilation of short stories, about 20 minutes each, unrelated to each other, but on the same theme of people being in distress. This is glorious to watch. This is the kind of stories that make you ask yourself « How would I react? » and can compare that to how the characters react, learn about their personality from that, and see how it plays out in the end. Excellent.

It's about two girls. One of them is a sociopath and has no feelings. The other one is normal, but she happens to despise her step-dad. So the first one casually asks why she doesn’t simply murder her step-dad. The story is clever in that the sociopath one is presented as so cold and pragmatic she achieves whatever she wants, but she has a big weakness: because of her inability to feel emotions, she assumes other people act rationally too (as in a cost/benefit analysis) and has a hard time processing how other people’s emotions will interfere with her plans. The movie is very well-made, but it lacks some icing to make it truly excellent. In particular, there is no great scene that stands out, and the resolution fizzles out a bit. In any case, I’ll keep an eye on the director, who makes an impressive directorial debut, and on the two lead actresses (Olivia Cooke, whom you may have seen in Ready Player One, and Anya Taylor-Joy, in Split), both definitely very good.

The surface-level narration breaks down in unison with the emotional meltdown of the lead character played by a marvelous Jennifer Lawrence. The film can be seen as the unreliable testimony of a woman in state of shock, each exaggeration and inconsistency being exploited to draw the very ambitious metaphor that lies beneath. The result is a spectacular and intensively emotional piece of cinema that leaves an indelible mark on the mind. Fascinating.

A thoughtful look at a familial crisis in contemporary Iran. The directing is clever and the acting excellent, especially from lead actor Payman Maadi. This is high quality cinema, keeping the story somewhat suspenseful all while having a humanist view of the characters and the context they’re evolving into.

The obsessional usage of the long-take (the movie is one long take, although with ellipsis) allows some spectacular context switches all while maintaining continuity, which is splendid. All the characters are more or less crazy and it all turns into an exquisite cacophony.

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Margot Robbie produces an original movie on the very bankable subject of ice skating, where she plays the lead whose 80s’ style of clothes and hairstyle showcase the latest sexy fashion, telling the story of a 80s’ scandal few people remember. The movie, which is amazing, proceeds to win four times its budget, be nominated for multiple Oscars and is acclaimed by the critic. Beware Hollywood, because this woman is going places.

Spielberg casually redefining the entire war genre. You don’t have much time to think about it because the proximity with soldiers and the unforgiving depiction of the horrors of war are flooring you the whole time. It’s captivating.

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