🎬 "So, so glad you called."

Bridesmaids (2011). Welcome to the 25th edition of The Reel!

Feb 10, 2021

Estimated reading time: 5m 53s.

Have you heard the news?

You haven’t?!

(🔼 How to build hype 101)

Call it a quarter-life crisis, call it a cry for help, or call it a final desperate attempt at popularity and acceptance, but The Reel is launching a podcast.

The first episode of Movies (And A Rap) will be out next Tuesday 16th February, and every Tuesday after that.

Each episode will feature me, Monsieur Le Reel, briefly running through the following sections:

Movie news!
Movies and TV reviews!
A rundown of everything released on streaming that week!
A 60 second rap, written and performed by me!

No, this is not a joke.

Well I suppose in the more insulting sense of the world, yes this is definitely a joke. But please do tune in!

You can follow the new Movies (And A Rap) Instagram here, which will have links to Spotify and all other podcast platforms.

I dearly hope you enjoy, and may God have mercy on my soul.

Time for some reviews!

This week: Oscar bait, young love, and new additions to the family.

🪝 Heeere, fishy fishy fishy.

Nomadland (2020), film, directed by Chloé Zhao.
Sound of Metal (2020), film, directed by Darius Marder.

In normal times, the Oscars would be taking place this month.

Cue illogical nominations, a lack of diversity, host issues, and generally low excitement. They’ve been postponed until April 25th — perhaps a more permanent overhaul is required?

Despite the delay, the last four months have still seen many Oscar contenders released, including Nomadland and Sound of Metal.

When you’re the last person left after a festival and you debate whether this whole “existing” thing is really worth it. (©Joshua Richardson/Searchlight Pictures)

The former stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a recently widowed and unemployed woman in the post-recession U.S. Facing homelessness, Fern becomes a “nomad”, living in her van and travelling across vast swathes of American landscape in search of work.

Idealised #vanlife this is not. While at times beautiful, this is a bleak, lonely, and depressing journey. Fern is almost always alone, finding only temporary solace with other equally isolated nomads.

After a month of lockdown, this is what I picture outside my 5k looks like. (©Searchlight Pictures)

Nomadland is more like a painting than a story, all textures and sentiment over tension or plot. McDormand will win Best Actress and the film will win Best Editing, among a few others, but it would be an unbalanced Best Picture winner (despite outrageously good critical reception).

A more justified victor would be the sublime Sound of Metal. Riz Ahmed plays a metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing, with Olivia Cooke as his girlfriend and bandmate. It starts with hints of The Wrestler or Black Swan, a character portrait of a performer under pressure, with subdued lighting and morose overtones.

Not as intense as the “not quite my tempo” scene in *Whiplash*, but then what is? (©TIFF)

With no subtitles for the (many) sign language scenes, it’s a powerful depiction of the deaf community in America. It also manages to surprise as it goes on, naturally and deftly folding in issues facing Riz’s character beyond just his newfound deafness.

Nomadland might steal the headlines in April, but if you want to be entertained and excited as well as moved, Sound of Metal should be higher on your watchlist.

Look out for:

Real-life performances. Many in Nomadland’s cast (including YouTube guru Bob Wells) are real nomads with no previous acting experience. The breakout star of Sound of Metal is Paul Raci, a hearing actor who fluently signs having grown up with deaf parents.

If you liked this:

One of the greatest snubs in Oscar history is that Jake Gyllenhall wasn’t nominated for Best Actor in 2015 for Nightcrawler. Riz Ahmed was a revelation in that film, which is superior to everything reviewed in this week’s blog.

Rating: Nomadland ⭐⭐⭐⭐, Sound of Metal ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

👨‍👩‍👧 Babyteeth, you just don’t know, know.

Babyteeth (2019), film, directed by Shannon Murphy.

Babyteeth comes highly regarded, and it’s easy to see why.

A young girl dying of cancer?

An older boy living on the streets, with a drug problem?

A romance betwitxt the two?

Ben Mendelsohn?!

A surefire mix for critical success!

This Australian coming-of-age film’s central romance, between a sick Juliet and renegade Romeo, is complicated and tender. After a chance encounter, 16 year old schoolgirl Milla becomes infatuated with 23 year old Moses, and he begins an uneasy relationship with Milla and her worried parents.

Maybe it’s because we have very similarly shaped bodies, but I, too, was infatuated with Toby Wallace’s Moses. He is untrustworthy and dangerous, yet disarming and alluring. I also think we’d be friends. Like I could show him my comic book collection and he could help me beat up bullies, that kind of thing.

“Will you meet my friend? No? OK will you meet me?”

Eliza Scanlen plays the challenging role of Milla brilliantly, and Ben Mendelsohn is, as always, a powerhouse (and not playing a villain for once).

Babyteeth verges on experimental at times, and not in a good way. A few trippy scenes knock the film off-kilter, and one wonders if they were better off left out. But the whole package is an emotionally satisfying one.

Look out for:

Music is at the heart of the film. Milla and her mother both play instruments and discuss theory, and a varied, ethereal, and sometimes pure banging soundtrack keeps the viewer engaged. Keep an ear out for a repeated motif based on “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers (a song famously rumoured to be about heroin).

If you liked this:

Mendelsohn stars in one of the few other Australian films I know (and love), crime drama Animal Kingdom. Coming-of-age is also tenderly rendered in 2012’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which has a surprise twist that would put M. Night to shame.

Ratings: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

⏩ Quickies

Short and snappy reviews for a short and snappy time:

Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016, film, dir. Sharon Maguire): ⭐⭐⭐

If there’s one thing that could rescue 2021, it wouldn’t be made by Pfizer or Astral Zendaya: it’d be a fourth instalment of this franchise. Everybody’s favourite klutzette is back with a bang (literally). Not as side-splitting as the timeless Bridget Jones’s Diary, but a splendid (and strangely sexy) pregnancy comedy.

WandaVision (2021, series, cre. Jac Schaeffer): ⭐⭐⭐

Five episodes in and that’s enough for me. It’s impressive how often Marvel manages to reinvent the wheel when it comes to long-form storytelling but this little piggy is all Marveled out. Until they inevitably bloody sink their hooks into me again.

My girlfriend every Tuesday night when I force her to read my blog and give me her feedback.

Instant Family (2018, film, dir. Sean Anders): ⭐⭐

I was very certain this was going to be about a person or family who actually create another instant family for companionship or sport, much like this “Grow-A-Guy” SNL sketch. How wrong I was. Occasionally moving but so sweet that it’s like mainlining pure, emotional glucose.

📃 Quote of the Week(s)

“Well, I can always find time to save the world. And Bridget, you're my world.”

Mark Darcy, you heartthrob. This quote from Bridget Jones’s Baby beats out much more profound lines from Sound of Metal purely for its perfect, appropriate, 100% fat cheese.