Logging

Films: The Disaster Artist and Hostiles

The Disaster Artist might be an excellent movie and even though I didn't love it as much as 3 Billboards, I hope it'll win the Academy Award for the meta-story behind the movie. Still, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Feels like we're all laughing at the guy and not with the guy no matter the scale it goes to. To illustrate, I never had any interest in seeing The Room because it feels like the enjoyment comes from being a detached, ironic tourist of madness. Is there something wrong with this? I don't know, but I know it doesn't feel good. Then again, I love Fitzcarraldo, so I don't know...

Hostiles...my god...this film has the intellectual capacity of a rodent. Christian Bale and the setting and cinematography carry the first 20-30 minutes, but it really takes a narrative nose-dive at the midpoint and then totally jumps off a cliff toward the end. There are a few good action shootout sequences, but the "movie" fails its most basic storytelling function as plots are set up only to be abandoned and then completely new stories just pop up out of nowhere. The worst sin, however, is simply being mindlessly ideological, treating all the characters as mouthpieces for the radical political idea that the US Army *gasp* mistreated Native Americans. Jesus, this deserves a special place in the videostore for shit.