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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Anderson) 2023

10/4/2023

It’s rare that a film adaptation completely lives up to your expectations, but that is just what happened with Wes Anderson’s recent Netflix adaptation of the Roald Dahl book “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Henry Sugar, a wealthy man who can see through the backs of playing cards.

I remember reading this book as a boy and it appealed to me because it was short. Much the same way the book Henry finds in this story, you can sit and read Dahl’s story in just a half hour or less.

The story is simple. Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a wealthy man who, upon visiting the home of an acquaintance, stumbles on a book in the library. The book contains an account by an Indian doctor (Dev Patel) of a man who claimed to be able to see without using his eyes (Ben Kingsley). Henry takes the small volume and devotes his life to learning this skill so that he may win at blackjack. When he is successful, he decides to donate his winnings to charity and make it his life’s work to win big at casinos around the world and use his earnings to set up children’s hospitals and orphanages.

Top Notch Talent
While the entire production is top of the line, the cast is where this film really hits it out of the park. Cumberbatch is perfect as the titular Henry Sugar and Kingsley makes a fantastic man who can see without his eyes. All of the actors play multiple roles and Ralph Fiennes shines as Dahl himself, setting up the story from his writing chair and looking rather like the BFG or the pictures you’ll find of the real Dahl in the back of his books.

Simple and Elegant
The actors are trusted to deliver amazing performances on sets that are often in motion around them, giving the feel of a stage play. Long takes dominate the action and the fact that the entire account is told as a short story is hilarious, yet effective. The actors continuously break the fourth wall, staring directly at the camera and giving asides of “he said” after their own just spoken lines. In just about any other film it would feel out of place, but here it somehow works.

There is no mistake that this is a Wes Anderson film from the slightly washed out colors to the inventive approach to everything on screen. I have yet to check out the other shorts recently added to Netflix (“The Swan”, “The Rat Catcher”, and “Poison”) but will be checking those out and delivering reviews as soon as I do.
10 out of 10

Fantastic Planet (Laloux) 1973

1/9/2023

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I’m searching for ways that this film would be more enjoyable, and I’m sure most of the answers to that question involve copious amounts of drugs.

I received this film as a recommendation in a movie challenge I’m participating in online, and the category for the week was surrealist films, and let me tell you, Fantastic Planet definitely falls into that genre. There were times that this felt like the animated versions of picture books I remember from my youth, but dipped in a Dali painting and then rolled through a pile of the oddest rejected creature creations from Star Wars.

The animation in the film is basic and that’s really just fine. The creations mentioned above are truly unique and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them on film or elsewhere. I really enjoyed the visual approach, and the lack of complex animation actually contributes to being able to focus on the story.

Unfortunately, it’s the story that is a bit lacking. Like the animation, the story is very basic, but at the same time it is strongly allegorical. To summarize, the story focuses on a young Om (human) named Terr who is taken in by a Draag child on a distant planet. Terr is treated as a pet, complete with collar and silly outfits, until he eventually escapes and finds a group of Oms that he aligns himself with. The Oms learn about the Draag society from an information headset Terr brought with him and eventually rise up against the Draags.

The allegory should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever had a pet of their own or seen kids trying to cook ants with a magnifying glass. In that respect, it feels a bit heavy handed and direct, something I wouldn’t expect from a French film. I appreciate the effort, but don’t feel like the execution was as good as it could have been.

Being a French film, I wish I could have watched this with the original French voices and English subtitles. Unfortunately, the English voice cast was bad and probably detracted from my enjoyment of the film. On the other hand, the music was terrific. It was very clearly from the 1970s, but had a good vibe to it throughout.

If you’re looking for something different from the traditional animation from Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc., this is definitely one that fits that bill, but I’m not sure it’s truly a great film.

6 out of 10

Cyrano (Wright) 2021

11/18/2022

I will be the first to admit that I generally don’t love movie musicals and films like Cyrano (affiliate link) are the reason why.

Cyrano (affiliate link) is a musical drama based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Peter Dinklage stars at the title character who is in love with the beautiful Roxanne (Haley Bennett). When the pair meet early in the film, Roxanne professes that she has fallen in love at first sight and asks Cyrano to arrange a meeting with the man in question, the new soldier Christian played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Cyrano is heartbroken at Roxanne’s confession, but agrees to set the meeting.

Christian is similarly smitten with Roxanne, but fears he cannot adequately profess his love. Cyrano works with Christian to write love letters (professing his own love) that Christian can pass off as his own writing.

As with many musicals, the film feels like it focuses too much on the musical numbers, and not enough on the rather thin plot. That said, there are plenty of beautiful set pieces throughout the film, and as something set in 16th century France, the costumes and locations are stunning. I also appreciated the choreography in the dancing scenes, some of them involving dozens, if not hundreds of extras often dancing in unison as the camera slides effortlessly through the throng.

As for the film itself, I’m not quite sure if it wants to be a comedy or a drama, which aligns well with the character of Cyrano himself. As someone who does not look like everyone else, he often tries to hide behind his humor in public. In private, he expresses his feelings, attempting to earn Roxanne’s love through his earnest words.

For a movie musical, the music itself was not very memorable. The one exception was the heart wrenching “Wherever I Fall,” sung by the soldiers on the eve of battle as they write home to their loved ones.

In the end, despite the visual appeal of the movie, I can’t come to love it. As with most movie musicals, I think I would have loved this had I seen it as a live performance on stage where the limitations of space require more ingenuity and creativity to tell the story than on film where you can shoot in numerous locations and sound stages.

7 out of 10

Author

Jonathan Ytreberg is the main contributor and creator of The Oscar Project.

The Abyss (Cameron) 1989

11/17/2022

Long before director James Cameron took us on the most famous ocean voyage of the 20th century, he embarked on an undersea adventure that taxed everyone involved, but still manages to hold up over 30 years later.

The Abyss (affiliate link) features a small crew of Navy SEALs traveling to a deep sea oil drilling platform with the mission of finding a nuclear submarine that crashed nearby and retrieve the warheads before the Soviets can get to them. The team is led by Cameron regular Michael Biehn playing Lieutenant Hiram Coffey. Ed Harris is in excellent form here as the platform’s foreman, Virgil "Bud" Brigman alongside Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Dr. Lindsey Brigman, Bud’s estranged wife and designer of the special platform.

After recently reading a book all about Cameron’s films and learning what went into making this film, I’m not at all surprised by how well the underwater photography holds up all these years later. True, there are a few instances where it’s a bit clunky and could be done better today with digital images. But the look and feel of all the underwater scenes are generally superb, owed in large part to the insistence by Cameron that most of them be shot in an enormous tank built specifically for the film.

The other visual element that must be mentioned is the water creature that comes into the station mid-way through the film. Even if you’ve never seen the film, you probably have seen images of the water creature or heard about how difficult it was for ILM to create it. So much had been made of this sequence that I foolishly expected it to be a more central part of the film, and was quite disappointed when it only covered a few short minutes of screen time.

What brings the whole film down just a bit is that the visual appeal doesn’t quite make up for the story that begins to break down as it passes the 2-hour mark. Like many Cameron films, The Abyss is too long and loses steam after the midway point. While we are initially led believe that Lieutenant Coffey and his team are the villain as they fight Bud and his crew for control of the rig, the true enemy in the film is the crushing depths of the ocean, and the lack of time to complete the mission.

The ending of the film feels a bit unearned by the rest of the story and the last five minutes of the film feel like Cameron just didn’t know how to end things and wrote “and they all lived happily ever after” on the last page of the script. The visuals and technology are a sight to behold even many years later, but all that doesn’t make up for a story that feels unfinished.

7 out of 10

Vengeance (Novak) 2022

11/16/2022

To say I was pleasantly surprised by this film would be an understatement. There is plenty to love here and it is a promising directorial debut from The Office’s B. J. Novak.

Now, the premise of this film is a bit odd on reflection. Ben (Novak) is a journalist from New York City who gets a call from the family of Abilene, a girl he had a fling with, informing him that she is dead. Her brother asks Ben to come to West Texas for her funeral where he quickly realizes that the girl had made much more of their relationship than he had. To top it off, he decides to record a podcast about the situation, complete with interviews with the family and acquaintances, as he tries to figure out who murdered her.

As odd as that may sound, I think that’s the whole point here. I could actually see myself listening to a podcast like the one Ben makes in the film with the help of his producer Eloise (Issa Rae), who also serves as his lifeline back to New York and the life he had before.

The rest of the cast is good with Boyd Holbrook shining brightest as Abilene’s eldest brother. Dove Cameron and Isabella Amara play her sisters which should have been one character, while Eli Bickel plays her quiet youngest brother, mourning the passing of his sister by connecting with Ben. Ashton Kutcher brings in a solid performance as the somewhat villainous music producer who was helping Abilene kick off a music career, but might be into more than just music.

The film plays the “fish out of water” trope in a fresh way for the most part, dropping in humor at Ben trying to fit in while clearly not fitting in at all. The film is clearly a statement on certain aspects of our culture and veers a bit between beating you over the head with it and keeping it so hidden that it’s hard to find. It is not a perfect film, but a solid directorial debut which leaves me excited to see what Novak tackles next.

7 out of 10

Jurassic World Dominion (Trevorrow) 2022

11/15/2022

Did we really need another Jurassic Park/Jurassic World movie? Of course not. Are they going to keep making them throughout eternity because people love dinosaurs? Absolutely.

The big draw in this version of the story was always going to be the giant family reunion. We got a glimpse of Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, (affiliate link) but this final film in the Trevorrow trilogy brings Laura Dern back as Dr. Ellie Sattler and Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant. Throw in a bit of a redemption story for Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) and pretty much everyone that survived Spielberg’s original 1993 (affiliate link) film is here.

Chris Pratt returns as Owen Grady, now in a full relationship with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). This time around they are tasked with protecting Maisie (Isabella Sermon), a young clone that nefarious people want to get their hands on. She is predictably captured in the first 10 minutes of the film, but proves to be resourceful as the rest of the cast joins forces to rescue her.

Despite the star-studded cast from previous films, two new additions shone brightest for me. DeWanda Wise plays Kayla Watts who aids the crew by supplying an airplane to the new remote dinosaur sanctuary, while Mamoudou Athie plays Ramsey Cole, a corporate lackey of the new villain who ultimately helps the heroes by turning against his employer.

I mentioned above that we get some redemption for Dr. Wu and while it’s nice to see Wong in the film yet again, I had a hard time connecting this newly repentant Wu to the one who was seemingly at the heart of all the evil of the previous film.

As with most franchises like this, the film sticks with the formula that has proven to work over the last three decades. In that respect, there is nothing new, not even any really crazy new dinosaurs. But if you love the dinosaurs, and let’s face it, who doesn’t, this will surely scratch that itch better than anything else out there.

6 out of 10

Belfast (Branagh) 2021

11/14/2022

While I don’t quite agree with this being up for Best Picture at the Oscars earlier this year, I do understand the appeal for certain audiences.

Set at the beginning of The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1969, the film follows a young boy named Buddy (Jude Hill) as he navigates those troubled times with his parents (Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan) and grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds).

This is the first part where the film lost me a bit in that I didn’t connect with the story. It’s obviously a very personal story for Branagh who is from Belfast and would have been around Buddy’s age at the time of the events depicted.

The story feels so much like a stage production with cramped sets and a rather fake looking barrier that one might see along the back of a theater stage. That said, the cinematography throughout is wonderful. The way we see things through the eyes of young Buddy, from the events on the street that begin The Troubles, to the hushed conversations the adults don’t want him to hear, are well executed and it’s easy to see the craft in the film.

On top of that, the cast is excellent, as evidenced by Oscar nominations for both Dench and Hinds. Dornan was a bit less convincing for me as Buddy’s father, but still managed to get across the love for his son, even as he had to be away for extended periods for his work.

I can understand why many people lauded this as one of the best films of 2021, but still just couldn’t make that connection on a personal level to it. I appreciate the artistry and care put into making the film, but stop short of calling it a true masterpiece.

7 out of 10

Cow (Arnold) 2022

10/30/2022

Why would anyone be interested in an hour and a half long film about dairy cows with no narration, no plot to speak of, and forces us to look at our treatment of animals for our own gain?

The simple answer is that it’s an incredibly engaging film. It tracks the life cycle of the dairy cows, starting with the birth of one calf and ending with the death of the mother who gave birth. That’s a severe oversimplification of the film. Through the film, the viewer begins to understand what the cow is thinking, existing on her level. When the newly born calf is taken from her after only a few minutes where she is allowed to clean it, one shot lingers on the mother for at least a minute or two, simply watching her bleat in frustration at losing her baby. However, she doesn’t get much time to grieve, as she is sent off to get milked before long, both literally and metaphorically going in circles throughout the course of her life.

The film spends some time looking at the newly born calf, taken from its mother and forced to live in a too small space, not able to stretch its legs or run with other juveniles. We watch as the nubs of incoming horns are burned, and the calves are given milk to help them grow. We know instinctively that their life will end up in two ways, either on the endless production line of their mothers, or sent to a slaughterhouse to provide a different type of food for us.

The presentation of the film is that of cinema verité, showing us how things are with no comment. Many people will say that this is an anti-dairy farming film, or a pro-vegan/vegetarian film, but I don’t think it is meant as such. It is meant as a look into the world that all of us are connected to, but most will never see or even think of. We go to the grocery store and milk is there in a jug for us, so we don’t have to worry about the process it took to make that happen. I know I thought a bit more about where my food comes from after watching this film, and while I haven’t consciously changed any of my eating habits, I have given more thought to what is required to bring certain items to my plate.

Cow (affiliate link) is a film I would urge anyone to give a chance. It truly is a unique experience for each viewer and the story changes based on your own preconceptions about the topic.

7 out of 10

The Redeem Team (Weinbach) 2022

10/29/2022

It’s not surprising that just a few years after the excellent documentary The Last Dance (affiliate link), about the rise of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, that we get another excellent basketball documentary.

The Redeem Team (Netflix link) is a deep dive into the story of the 2008 Men’s US Olympic Basketball Team. While not as detailed as The Last Dance (affiliate link), it provides plenty of backstory to the events that led up to those Olympic Games in Beijing. We got to see the rise of the original Dream Team in The Last Dance (affiliate link), and this is the next logical chapter, looking at basketball when the world had caught up with the United States, and even our top talent wasn’t guaranteed a win on the world stage.

The film provides plenty of typical documentary fare with talking head interviews from the likes of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwayne Wade, players on the team that had fallen short in 2004 and wanted to come back to the Olympics and regain the former glory. In addition to this, however, is going further back, not only to the original dream team, but even back to a controversial Olympic gold medal game where the Soviet Union beat the United States. This historical context serves to elevate the story of US Olympic Basketball and shows that it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the inclusion of Kobe Bryant in the film. He was an integral part of the 2008 team and was able to put his Lakers loyalties aside, facing down NBA teammate Pao Gasol in their very first game. One of the most touching scenes comes near the end of the film with the team celebrating Kobe’s birthday while at the Olympics. He can be seen with his daughters, including Gianna who was only two at the time. It was sobering to see that footage and hear the interviews with him at the time and only reminded me that he was gone too soon.

This documentary is essential viewing for any true sports fan, and should be included on the watchlist of anyone interested in great comeback stories. It is a great retelling of a relatively recent time in our sports history, and one that some people may not remember exactly the way it happened.

8 out of 10

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Scheinert & Kwan) 2022

10/21/2022

A tour-de-force of visual stylings, The Daniels (Scheinert and Kwan) deliver the best multiversal story of the year in Everything Everywhere All at Once (affiliate link).

By now, you’ve likely heard someone raving about this film and it’s definitely one I think everyone should experience. It is just that, an experience, and you need to be open to thinking about film in new ways, something that doesn’t happen that often in film.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (affiliate link) is many things, and that’s what gives it broad appeal. It is an immigrant story, a family drama, a science fiction dimension travelling epic, and a kung fu action film all rolled into one. Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang is the heart and soul of the film. She is not only the glue holding the film together, but similarly strives to hold together her family across time and space. Ke Huy Quan is similarly wonderful as Evelyn’s husband Waymond Wang. It was great to see him in a role completely different from his most famous roles as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (affiliate link) and Data in Goonies (affiliate link) even if Waymond retains some of the goofiness of those characters from Quan’s youth.

Stephanie Hsu looks to be a star on the rise and her portrayal of Joy, Evelyn and Waymond’s 20-something daughter is spot on. The other star of the film is Jamie Lee Curtis as the IRS inspector auditing the Wang’s finances. She feels deliberately out of place in the film and is so much fun to watch as she changes characters based on which universe we see her in.

Visually this film is incredible. The number of worlds the creators had to dream up to tell this story is phenomenal and each different world has a unique direction. No two universes are the same and that is expressed through the visual styling. Many of the various lighting effects used in transition from one universe to another appear to be practical in-camera effects rather than digital additions done in post. These give a more lived in feel regardless of which universe we’re in.

A few spoilers coming, so skip ahead if you haven’t seen the film.

We need to talk about the rock scene. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more deep and emotional heart to heart talk between a mother and a daughter than when they are simply rocks on the edge of a cliff. Everything leading up to that moment has made the audience invested in the characters, that we absolutely believe that these two random rocks are the characters we have seen over an hour and a half. I also love the fact that the Daniels included actual footage of Michelle Yeoh as an actor on red carpets and such for the universe where Evelyn is a movie star.

Not to spoil too much, but I understand the “happy” ending that the film provides. Personally, I almost wish it would have concluded on a more somber note, but understand the decision to end it the way it did. I hope that the buzz about this film continues strongly enough as we head into Oscar season and it gets the recognition it deserves in categories like Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Screenplay. I doubt that any of the acting will be recognized, but think it could be a long shot for a Best Director nomination and even perhaps Best Picture.

9 out of 10