BEFORE: I'm finally at the point where I can start watching more of the Academy screeners from last year, I've worked the more important ones in with my other films that are on either DVD or Netflix. Some of them have already started popping up on premium cable, which allows me to just cross them off the list of screeners (and remove those from the pile at the office) but this one hasn't. So a screener it is, and I promise that once this airs on cable, I'll record it for real. Probably. But I need to follow the link with Caleb Landry Jones out of "God's Pocket", because I need him to get to tomorrow's film also. Alternately, I could have followed the Richard Jenkins link to "The Shape of Water", but I'm not ready for that yet, and that doesn't get me to where I want to be.
OK, if I'm being honest, I watched this one late Saturday night, before leaving for Connecticut. But I didn't know for sure that I'd have a way to watch a DVD there, because this one's not on Netflix yet, which is how I watched "God's Pocket". But I'm just going to count it as my Monday movie, because it seems to be about people staying in a hotel, and on Monday I was also staying in a hotel. So there you go.
THE PLOT: The film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadow of Walt Disney World.
AFTER: Ugh, I really didn't enjoy this one at all. This film only got one Oscar nomination, for Willem Dafoe, and that makes perfect sense. He's really the only redeeming thing about the movie, nobody else can act worth a damn. Sure, they seem like "real people", but most real people are also bad actors and don't know how to deliver lines properly. Plus most of the characters are either people losing at life or are dishonest people trying to cheat the system, so it's another "feel-bad" movie today, if you ask me.
I don't hate all kids, for the record. Just loud ones that are out of control, which seems to be most of them, if I'm being honest. Everywhere we went over the last two days, it seemed like there were screaming children, and no parents willing to take control of them. What happened to discipline? We've thrown it out the window because supposedly kids raised to. be spirited and energetic and without any "boundaries" end up being more creative, healthier and happier people. Yes, but they'll also be out of control, annoying, and more likely to engage in anti-social or destructive behavior - so I really miss the days when parents weren't afraid to spank a kid or find a way to rein them in, because some of us want to go to a restaurant or bar (yes, I said BAR!) without hearing kids crying at their parents or screaming at each other.
And that's really all this film is about, for the first hour, which I found enormously frustrating. I worked hard to get to a point in my life where I don't have to take care of kids, I don't have to deal with them or discipline them, and most of the time, I don't have to put up with them either. So why do restaurant hosts keep sitting us, a childless couple, next to a family with two or more kids? And then I'M the bad guy for requesting a table far away from kids, but if we just sit down, you know that clock is ticking, and eventually the screeching is going to start. We used to have smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants, I vote that we bring back this idea, only have a "people with kids" and a "people without kids" section. Wouldn't that be a great idea? You don't even have to label the sections that way, just have an understanding with the seaters and waiters that if a family has kids, they go over to THAT side of the restaurant, and I want to sit on the other side. Can we make that happen?
Anyway, the kids in this movie basically live at this Florida hotel, they're not siblings but two or three of them are always playing together, going into rooms where they shouldn't, messing with the hotel's electrical system or spitting on people's cars, or worse. (The worse happens later, but it's a long, slow, annoying slog to get there...). And all of this happens because Moonee's mother is a garbage human, someone with no discipline or self-control who has also then instilled those properties into her. (And yes, bad acting skill seems to be one of those properties, too.). I spent the first hour waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering where this is all heading, as the mother steals and sells perfume to tourists, teaches the kids to beg for food from the local diner, and has another scheme stealing Disney wristbands from people and selling them back to the same tourists. Oh, and she's also a sex worker advertising online, so there's that.
There's one point where Moonee and her mother have a free breakfast at a resort hotel, she just charges it to someone else's room when the waitress comes by with the check. We had a similar experience at the hotel we were at in Connecticut, since we had a $30 dining credit all we had to do at this burger restaurant was give our room number. However, the cashier, instead of asking our names, read the name out loud associate with that room number, and we just had to say "Yes, that's us." I thought this was a horrible system, which allows for rampant fraud. It would have been better for her to ASK us our names, or for some I.D., and then check that name against the name associated with this room. As it is, we could have said ANY room number in the hotel, assuming there was a guest staying in that room, and said "Yes, that's us," to whatever name she read out. Just saying.
My points tonight are being directly awarded to Willem Dafoe, and not any other cast member or aspect of this movie, because that's how I see it. By the way, the ending is not only a cop-out, it's factually impossible, but I can't really elaborate here without spoilers.
Also starring Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Valeria Cotto, Josie Olivo, Mela Murder, Edward Pagan, Patti Wiley, Jasineia Ramos, Christopher Rivera, Aiden Malik, Macon Blair, Krystal Nicole Watts, Sabina Friedman-Seitz, Sandy Kane, Carl Bradfield, Gary B. Gross.
RATING: 3 out of 10 helicopters
No comments:
Post a Comment