FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / February 2023 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © Jet Tone Production
We’re already well into the fresh hell of February, waiting for springtime, annihilation, strife, success, or whatever the case may be. January is behind us, but I’m still thinking about resolutions. I’m of the mind that suggests we human beings aren’t supposed to have everything figured out and locked in by the dawn of a new year. So, I’m still working on my resolutions, which naturally includes a sub-chapter for resolutions specifically about movies. This applies to not only my writing on film, but also just how I consume cinema, as well.
Because while I’ve enjoyed getting more into YouTube stuff and other ways to power through middle age with dignity, I’m still pretty fucking obsessed with film.
The last time I talked about film and resolutions, I dedicated an entire column to short film subjects. We’ll probably do that some more of that in 2023. However, I think this year I want to actually share what I hope to get around to this year. I don’t know about you, but I find that it helps to organize a little when you’re approaching something as relentless and vast as this medium.
So, if you’re interested, and you don’t mind that we’re talking about January shit in February, here are a few of my film resolutions.
1. Write more on foreign films, particularly contemporary ones, and featuring countries outside of the ones I tend to lean into
2. See at least a couple of really good 80s horror movies in Manhattan.
3. Watch more foreign films, particularly contemporary ones, and featuring countries outside of the ones I tend to lean into.
4. Submit film writing to another major publication.
5. Find someone who will pay me a meager few bucks a month to write about physical media, which is becoming increasingly important, PEOPLE.
6. Drink *exactly* enough whiskey to finally get me through a hate-watch of Pearl Harbor.
7. Record the HELL out of some new episodes of my horror podcast The Hounds of Horrors
8. Write my first new film script in roughly 15 years (for shits and/or giggles)
9. Don’t get burned out, which means making time for weird shit on YouTube, or my gradual ongoing return to playing video games.
10. Fight Dick Van Dyke in the eighteen-foot-high steel cage.
11. Watch more silent films goddammit.
12. Put these resolutions on Twitter, like a normal fucking human being.
In the Mood for Love (2000): A+
Image © Jet Tone Production
Wong Kar-wai movies are a category I’d like to clear by the end of 2023. I’ve been slowly but surely going through the filmmaker’s stylized, complex resume, with Chungking Express being a favorite for a long time now. The affection I have for that movie, combined with the specific and expansive love people have for In the Mood for Love, made the latter almost intimidating. It was almost like I had to like the movie.
That’s fucking bullshit, of course, and In the Mood for Love is simply something I wish I had gotten around to sooner. It tuned out to be an exceptional date movie, as well, with my wife being drawn in by the gradual-to-change circumstances against gorgeous cinematography that seem to define a lot of Wong’s movies.
Yet Wong has never in my experience been someone who repeats himself exactly. In the Mood for Love drew me in with its story of two married neighbors who strike up a friendship that becomes something more. Every step of the way, this movie reminded me that it’s a singular piece of spectacular cinematic storytelling.
The Fabelmans (2022): A+
Image © Universal Pictures | Amblin Entertainment
Someday, maybe, I’ll write something longer and deeper about Steven Spielberg’s far-reaching, shockingly dark autobiographical film The Fabelmans. I was pretty confident that I’d like the film, as I had been on a roll recently with really enjoying and appreciating Spielberg’s work as a filmmaker. My only serious expectation was that the film would be a romantic one. Especially when it got down to subjects like the desire to engage storytelling and the process of creation. I imagined some drama in a story that’s very clearly based on his childhood, the divorce of his parents, and how he came to become obsessed with film. However, I ultimately expected something that functioned as a summation of Spielberg’s most crowd-pleasing qualities.
I guess I was technically about the summation. It does showcase a lot of the wildly expressive and responsive nature of his characters and pace in a story with much narrative ground to cover. It does feel often like a Spielberg film. Yet its actual comments on the origin and evolution of the artist were far bleaker than I had expected. There are numerous grim surprises in this film, but which are expressed with incredible technical bombast.
I could go on, but I won’t. Really, it’s a far more jarring and astonishing movie experience than I had anticipated. Its expression of its themes and how those elements were brought to live are still nagging at my conscious thoughts at time of writing.
Confess, Fletch (2022): B+
Image © Miramax
Shame on every damn wretched one of you for not watching this movie last year. It’s available on Paramount+ and presumably elsewhere to rent or buy. You can fix this now. You can give the respect deserved to Jon Hamm going leaps and bounds beyond Chevy Chase’s classic performances as a lovable louse and investigative reporter Irwin “Fletch” Fletcher. Dear god, there’s still time to make this right.
With excellent character beats for not only Fletch, but also the often unfortunate people who wind up in the cyclone that is his casual existence, Confess, Fletch crafts a pleasing and compelling murder mystery story. The film walks a delicate balance of potentially introducing a new character and film series, while also building a mystery around funny, memorable characters. That seems to be easier said than done than these days, and while Confess, Fletch isn’t in all seriousness some revelation that must be experienced wholesale, it is one of the most entertaining comedies of the decade thus far. Don’t sleep it on it.
Elvis (2022): A-
Image © Warner Bros. Pictures
Speaking of 2022 surprises that continue to nag at my thoughts, nothing quite compares to how overwhelmingly shocked I was by how much I liked Baz Luhrmann’s lush, frenzied, and noticeably sweaty biopic of the iconic, to-this-day-controversial Elvis Presley. I’m no fan of the director, with his overblown, boring 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby being one of the worst movies of that decade. I watched Elvis out of sheer curiosity, and to see how Austin Butler would play a man who the music history nerd in me cannot help but find fascinating.
Butler’s performance captures not only the physicality of Presley, but also recreates a spiritual facsimile of a man who went on one of the most staggering rides from life to death that any human being could undertake. For an excessive filmmaker like Luhrmann, supported particularly well in this instance by cinematographer Mandy Walker and production designers Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy, the visual decadence and vicious energy that pushes us narratively forward only serve to enhance Butler’s work as an actor and emotional anchor for this entire endeavor. This also applies to Tom Hanks taking on the unbelievable challenge of playing a figure as bizarre as Col. Tom Parker and succeeding more than I had guessed.
Elvis shouldn’t have appealed to me this much, but with this film, I finally see the strengths of Baz Luhrmann as a director.
The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch: (1968): B-
Image © Daiei | Arrow Films
May you never become so cynical that you can’t have an absolute blast with something like the 1968 Japanese horror film The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch. Loaded with low-budget special effects and an impressive amount of ambition and dedication to making something exciting without much in the way of resources, the film is quite possibly one of the definitive rainy day afternoon sort of screenings.
Based on a shojo horror manga and coming to us from the same guys who made movies like the Gamera films and Rashomon (that was awhile back though), The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is exactly what it promises in the title. A young girl (Yachie Matsui) is reunited with her actual family after spending years in an orphanage. Poor kid, her entire family has problems. Dad’s doing weird shit with snakes. Mom’s not really talking. Her sister hangs out in the attic and things seem a little tense. This is a lot for a young girl, as you can imagine.
None of this amounts to an actual masterpiece or anything. You may have to adjust your expectations for the special effects that dominate this film, for example. Hopefully you’ll be willing to, as The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch has a playfulness to how all of this unfolds, in addition to a suitably spooky atmosphere and good performances. I think you’ll even appreciate the inventiveness and clever little touches for the creature effects.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.