Dying is easy; comedy, hard.
Of course I was going to check this out-- Zach Cregger's Weapons was one of the more interesting horrors of last year, Barbarians one of the more interesting horrors before that.
Does it deliver? Save you the suspense: yes, but how it delivers is I submit the question to ask.
Armando 'Bing' Lao is 2026's National Artist for Film
This September 2026 Armando 'Bing' Lao (1948 - 2024) was posthumously granted the title of National Artist of the Philippines, generally considered the highest honor the state can give one of its citizens.
Coming toon
I saw Dave Green's Coyote vs Acme and-- surprise surprise-- liked it.
Didn't sound promising. The premise itself is looney tunes-- that Wile E. Coyote would finally come to his senses and attempt that most American of undertakings, file a lawsuit against the Acme Corporation; that the case would blow up into a congressional hearing commanding nationwide attention; and that this whole silly drama would be material enough to fill a hundred minute feature.
Not to mention the real-world decision of Warner Discovery to treat the picture as a 30 million dollar tax writeoff; the struggle to find an alternative distributor; the last-minute rescue by Ketchup Entertainment, which bought the movie for fifty million.
The big online fuss surrounding its unlikely commercial release; the basically low boxoffice returns which, most unlikely of all, barely fazes the fans-- no one is blaming Ketchup, and a handful of articles have called the release a 'win' despite the modest numbers.
David Robert Mitchell's The End of Oak Street is a bowl of Spielberg movie parts (ET, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park to name an obvious few) torn into bitesized pieces and tossed together, with a dash of Robert Zemeckis for plot dressing. Less obvious are bits of tone and detail from classic science fiction author Clifford D Simak, who liked to set one fantastic premise after another in a smalltown setting ("The Big Front Yard," Way Station).
Spielberg and Zemeckis are quick handy labels to slap on this concoction but I submit Simak is key-- not just to this picture but to much of what Spielberg (and Mitchell here) is doing. You get a patiently built-up portrait of suburban (in Simak's case rural) life, you're introduced to characters and their dynamic within the family, who in turn form relationships with the community at large. Then something happens and we're shown the characters' increasingly panicked reaction to events, the story's eventual resolution ideally a natural outgrowth of what the characters have learned along the way.
By 1971 Celso Ad Castillo had written and directed a number of features when he was tapped by Fernando Poe Jr. to direct a biopic on one Teodoro Asedillo, a former schoolteacher and police chief turned revolutionary during the American Occupation.
Apparently the two were feeling each other out. Ad Castillo may be a veteran filmmaker, having written eighteen scripts and nine features previously, but FPJ (as Poe is popularly known) had at this point directed eight, produced fifty, acted in approximately ninety. Ad Castillo must have acquitted himself well; FPJ called him 'my little genius' and asked him to direct three more pictures in quick succession (Ang Alamat, 1972; Sto Domingo, 1972; and Esteban, 1973)
FPJ was said to have impressed Ad Castillo in turn with the scene of Asedillo addressing the people of San Antonio (see pic above) who, thanks to American propaganda, have lost faith in him. The shoot happened in the latter part of the day, involved a high wide shot with plenty of extras, was eight pages long on paper including an intense monologue; on top of which they had already been delayed some three to four hours setting up. FPJ was exhausted; his brow furrowed while reading the script, and no one knew if he was happy or not with what Ad Castillo had written.
Then the movie star launched into it: a long, involved speech at the end of which he was yelling himself hoarse, and you felt the frustration exhaustion and anger in his voice wasn't all acting.*
Long day's journey into night
(Warning: story and plot twists of the movie-- and the three thousand year old epic poem the movie is based on-- discussed in explicit detail!)
First things first: Got no problem with Lupita Nyong'o's Helen/Clytemnestra or Elliot Page's Sinon (not Achilles as conservative pundits had complained about early on); Helen's fierce bitterness about being pawn and property to Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and Sinon's hauntingly solemn reproaches to Odysseus for using him as bait are rare bright spots in the movie.
I do have problems with Matt Damon as Odysseus.
