Biography

dir: Sean Durkin

2023

This is such a profoundly sad story, served up with the visual trappings of brawny success and triumph, seemingly about the great achievements of a talented family.

But it’s far more about the catastrophes, some avoidable, some not, faced by successive members of a family ruled by a cruel tyrant.

I can’t speak as to what the actual Fritz Von Erich was like. The actual Kevin Von Erich, not Zac Efron playing him, claims that the film misrepresented what his dad was actually like, and that he was a decent and wonderful man.

And yet…

I wonder what he thinks is the reason that the family went through so much misfortune, with so many of his brothers taking their own lives. I take that back, that was unkind. I have no doubt, being the only one left standing, that he has thought long and hard over the years about everything that happened, as to how and why he lost all of his brothers.

Of course you can argue that the film’s narrative of a toxic father bullying his sons to greatness and that resulting in their early deaths is too neat, too pat, and you’d be right. It takes away people’s agency, implying that the Von Erich brothers all were victims with no ability to make decisions for themselves.

In reality apparently Kevin didn’t think there was a ‘curse’ on the family name “Von Erich”. After all, his father only went by the name, his mother’s maiden name apparently, because he thought it’d pop more since he wrestled as a heel, and post-WWII, who was hated more than the Nazis?

Very different to today, where too many people are being all Nazi-curious. Instead of asking “are we the baddies?” they keep instead asking “were they really so bad?”

Yes. They were. Stop it.

dir: Michael Mann

2023

Since I’ve gotten to watch and review all of the flicks that were nominated for stuff at the Academy Awards, and the awards themselves have been and gone, now I’m sort-of at the wrap up stage for last year, reviewing the flicks that weren’t nominated for squat, but you can just tell these flicks were sold to their stars by their agents as “you’ll definitely get nominated for this!”

Long way of saying “Oscarbait”. With Director Michael Mann, chronicler of hard men doing difficult stuff without changing their facial expressions. With Adam Driver, who maybe isn’t the biggest chameleon out there, but who definitely delivers intense performances when required.

And what’s it about? Ferrari. Not the car, but the man. Enzo Ferrari.

And what a man. Even wearing pants that he pulls up to his armpits, even in late middle-age, he radiates Italian cool. Sunglasses all the time, night or day, like he’s Marcello Mastroianni, only cooler. He has the poise, the confidence of a man who has faced death behind the wheel of a car going as fast as cars can go at that time, and won.

He’s so self-possessed it’s almost irritating, like, you almost want to do something shocking just to see if he’ll flinch.

After getting up from his lover’s bed, and eventually getting home, his angry wife (Penelope Cruz) fires a bullet from a gun at his head, near his head. He doesn’t flinch.

He’s just too fucking cool to flinch. That doesn’t mean he’s got everything under control, though.

Far from it. His company, the one that makes cars, teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, presumably because he doesn’t really care so much about the manufacturing and selling of cars aspect of his business. He only cares about the racing part of his business.

There is a track record that his cars have, that he dreads having his competitors break. If they break it, and they do, well, he has to yell at one of his drivers to drive faster, and get the record back.

If the driver dies while trying to break the record again, well, Enzo is not going to cry any tears over him.

dir: Stephen Williams

2022

Chevalier is a remarkable story about someone ill-served by history (and this film) who nonetheless seems like he was a pretty accomplished guy. The France that the movie is mostly set in is the France of just before the revolution. Marie Antoinette is Queen. Louis XVI is King. They are just begging to have their heads cut off.

France is one of the pre-eminent colonial powers on the planet. Slavery is its great source of wealth. The peoples of the colonies are considered sub-human. Someone who's found his way from the colonies to mainland France is, at this time in history, up to and including the present, going to find it hard to be accepted for who they are beyond their skin colour.

Make no mistake – the France depicted here is the kind of France you’d expect depicted (by non-French people) as in, so deeply and openly racist you’d think this was set in the antebellum South. One of the many points the flick is making is that whatever pretensions France had of being a beacon to the world of culture and refinement, even as it’s on the precipice of a revolution that would eventually reorder all of Europe, it’s a deeply racist place. They will literally have scene after scene of people telling the protagonist that he is seen as subhuman regardless of and in spite of his brilliance and accomplishments.

The film opens (somewhat unfortunately) with a strange scene where a young Mozart is playing to rapturous acclaim in front of a Parisian audience with an orchestra. He asks the audience if they have requests. The audience start yelling out their favourites. A piece is decided upon, something like “Cantata in E major, third movement”, they start playing it, the interloper borrows a violin and competes against Mozart himself, and everyone is just blown away by how much better this other blow-in is.

“Who the fuck is that guy?” yells a chastened Mozart, just in time for the title.

In the list of things that never happened, this never happened the most.

This is a true story, as in the chap that this is all about actually existed, but so many things depicted in this flick never happened, or are unlikely to have happened. One could argue that, considering the racist hostility that existed around and against him and people like him, efforts were made to erase Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de St George from history, so that the scant record for many of these occasions was deliberate.

dir: Bradley Cooper

2023

Well, hey! Did you want to watch a film directed by Bradley Cooper? Starring Bradley Cooper? Playing a real life person-type person? That isn’t A Star is Born?

Were you desperately curious to learn about the life and times of Leonard Bernstein? THE Leonard Bernstein? As played by Bradley Cooper?

With a big honking prosthetic nose? One so large and honking that it makes him nasally and sound nothing like Bernstein?

Oi, you. Respect the nose, no mocking, no more shenanigans and no more tomfoolery. That nose previously won Nicole Kidman an Academy Award in The Hours where she played renowned writer and river-enjoyer Virginia Woolf. That nose has won more awards than Paul Giamatti.

And clearly Mr Cooper was convinced that this production and that nose were going to win him the Oscar that he covets so much. We are months away from that vaunted awards night, but I am telling you now, Mr Cooper, you ain’t going to win. You have put all your eggs and your nose in the one basket, believing that playing a real person, and a beloved one at that (maybe 50 years ago), would clinch it for you.

But there’s no way you are going to beat Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. That is a biopic. That has long stretches of black and white too, and it’s three hours long, meaning it’s very important. Your film, on the other hand, is only two hours and ten minutes long, therefore it’s not anywhere near as important.