Movies Thread

[UNCMSinLS]

#10 of 10: "The Secret Agent". Grade: D

Wow, what a mess! "The Secret Agent" certainly kept the reason for its Oscar nomination a secret. Too many scenes contributed nothing to the plot. Too many confusing characters were thrown into a meaningless mix. And the damn thing lasted two hours and forty minutes. Meu Deus! This was BY FAR the worst of the ten nominees. It will win zero Oscars as the Best International Feature Film award will likely go to "Sentimental Value".

Could my problem with "The Secret Agent" have been the language barrier and subtitles? Probably not because I thoroughly enjoyed last year's captioned "I'm Still Here," a far better movie about the same political era. Could I have watched this too close in time to "One Battle After Another"? Maybe. But the similar length of "One Battle" flew by while this movie dragged like molasses. No, there are no excuses here. This was just an overblown, overrated, confusing, and bad movie.

Here's my Oscar Best Picture ranking with final grades:

1) "One Battle After Another" - A
2) "Train Dreams" - A-
3) "Hamnet" - B+
4) "F1: The Movie" - B+
5) "Bugonia" - B
6) "Frankenstein" - B
7) "Sinners" - B-
8) "Marty Supreme" - C+
9) "Sentimental Value" - C
10) "The Secret Agent" - D

All in all, it was a decent but not great movie year. "One Battle" will likely be the only movie to have a lasting impact, largely because of its timing related to what's going on in this country now. It should win the Oscar, but "Sinners" is the only other movie with a real shot at an upset. I guess we'll find out Sunday night.

 

[EyeballKid]

I haven’t scoured the thread thoroughly, but upon a quick glance of the last couple pages, I don’t see a discussion about the fact that One Battle is based loosely on the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland.”

This is PT Anderson’s second Pynchon-inspired movie, after “Inherent Vice.”

 

[duluoz]

Watched Nouvelle Vague which was fun and funny. They wrote Godard as everyone would want him to be. Then I rewatched Breathless and Pierrot le fou and was struck by how much rhythm they have. My memory of Breathless was that it was jagged and fragmented but this time it didn’t seem so. I’d never seen Pierrot le fou and the heightened absurdism might make it the better film. Also Godard was a pretty early feminist, in a French chauvinist way.

Loved it, it slid just into my top 10. A great intro to the period and movement if you’re new to it, and a whole lot of fun if you’re better versed.

Still haven’t seen Pierrot either. For Breathless, to use an overused and abused term these days, Jean Seberg was iconic. And in NV, the “New York Herald Tribune” scene recreated on the Champs-Élysées was a big highlight.

My tiny gripe is that Jean Seberg is on such a pedestal that I didn’t think Zoey Deutch quite carried it off. But good enough to not detract too much. The Belmondo guy was uncanny though.

 

[duluoz]

#10 of 10: "The Secret Agent". Grade: D

Wow, what a mess! "The Secret Agent" certainly kept the reason for its Oscar nomination a secret. Too many scenes contributed nothing to the plot. Too many confusing characters were thrown into a meaningless mix. And the damn thing lasted two hours and forty minutes. Meu Deus! This was BY FAR the worst of the ten nominees. It will win zero Oscars as the Best International Feature Film award will likely go to "Sentimental Value".

Could my problem with "The Secret Agent" have been the language barrier and subtitles? Probably not because I thoroughly enjoyed last year's captioned "I'm Still Here," a far better movie about the same political era. Could I have watched this too close in time to "One Battle After Another"? Maybe. But the similar length of "One Battle" flew by while this movie dragged like molasses. No, there are no excuses here. This was just an overblown, overrated, confusing, and bad movie.

Here's my Oscar Best Picture ranking with final grades:

1) "One Battle After Another" - A
2) "Train Dreams" - A-
3) "Hamnet" - B+
4) "F1: The Movie" - B+
5) "Bugonia" - B
6) "Frankenstein" - B
7) "Sinners" - B-
8) "Marty Supreme" - C+
9) "Sentimental Value" - C
10) "The Secret Agent" - D

All in all, it was a decent but not great movie year. "One Battle" will likely be the only movie to have a lasting impact, largely because of its timing related to what's going on in this country now. It should win the Oscar, but "Sinners" is the only other movie with a real shot at an upset. I guess we'll find out Sunday night.

Talking movies around town, I’m surprised how many people are all over The Secret Agent. Almost like it’s become the “in the know” movie to say was your favorite of the year. I just can’t understand putting it even near the top.

I thought it was good (solid B) but it’s getting highly overrated IMO. It’s overly long and I didn’t feel the stakes throughout like I expected to.

 

[duluoz]

I like Minnie and Moskowitz quite a lot, though it feels like an adulterated version of Cassavetes inasmuch as it was greenlit as part of Ned Tanen's youth-cult push at Universal. Granted, Tanen also greenlit The Last Movie, which is maximalist Hopper.

I think Cassavetes make the most sense--in particular the two movies I listed--when you keep in mind that the goal is to produce a sort of "onstage" (onscreen) sense of dramatic truthfulness derived from American takes on Stanislavski and the like. In the case of Opening Night, this ideal makes sense of the poor framing, the out-of-focus shots, pointless dialogue, etc. Put those elements in a Malick movie (and add lens flare), and you've got the aesthetic of spontaneity, a sort of New Hollywood shorthand for the guiding presence of a filmmaker behind the camera. But put those same elements in Opening Night, a film about marginalizing the director, screenwriter, and producer responsible for staging a play, and you've got the techniques whereby Cassavetes presumes to show that the film director has created the conditions for truthfulness onstage/screen. In short, Cassavetes's camera struggles to anticipate the movements of characters because Cassavetes has ceded control over those elements to the actors themselves.

Interesting points and I haven’t seen Opening Night yet (I’ll watch it soon), but I’m not sure about what you are underscoring as onstage/onscreen. You lost me in the middle there. My feel for Cassavetes is that he’s mostly trying to stay out of the way and let the actors play the scenes as naturalistically as possible, and obscure any idea of stage/screen. Lingering with the camera in long, sometimes brutally tough moments. And some of it seems pointless because lots of the minutiae of life seems pretty pointless, but it’s real nonetheless, and often captured in his movies. And his slice of life style often frees actor/director/viewer from the conventional plot approach to storytelling.

Which maybe that’s part of what you’re getting at by the end, not sure.

 

[duluoz]

I haven’t scoured the thread thoroughly, but I upon a quick glance of the last couple pages, I don’t see a discussion about the fact that One Battle is based loosely on the Thomas Pynchon novel “Vineland.”

This is PT Anderson’s second Pynchon-inspired movie, after “Inherent Vice.”

There’s some chatter about it way back on pages 23 and 25.

I’ve only read Inherent Vice, so I’m no Pynchon expert. But I thought it was a blast and so was the movie.