‘Compartment No. 6’ not a movie for 2022 or the 21st Century

Posted on June 6, 2022 by reelentropy
Maybe some found footage would have spiced things up. Images courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.

4/10 On Feb. 8, Compartment No. 6, a slice-of-life train ride across the Russian countryside and the Finnish-language submission to the Academy for the Best International Film of 2021 and one of 15 shortlisted so that voters might actually watch it, was cast out as one of the bottom 10 to not receive a nomination. Russia used the same Soviet rail system to invade Ukraine weeks later.

Compartment No. 6 of the sleeper train from Moscow to Murmansk, Russia, sometime in the mid-‘00s based on the technology, certainly before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to make this story impossible- Laura (Seidi Haarla), a Finnish doctoral student, has been sent by her professor and lover to the far reaches of Siberia to research the Kanozero Pteroglyphs as a pretense to break up with her. Laura chooses compartment no. 6 wanting to be alone, but she is saddled with a crass, sexist Russian oiler Lyokha (Yuri Borisov) as a bunkmate.

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Pixar ‘turns red’ for sexy streaming generation

Posted on June 6, 2022 by reelentropy
Turning Red is a fun movie about happy, energetic people, one of whom turns into a giant red panda. You love to see it. Images courtesy Walt Disney Pictures Pixar Animation Studios.

8/10 In 1995, Pixar’s Toy Story wrenched animation into the 21st century early, bringing action the type of action figures that were already growing outdated as playthings to life in a way that simply wouldn’t have been possible in another medium, and millennials have grown up with most of our cultural imagery computer-generated to one degree or another. Now it’s almost 30 years later, and members of the same age group are now digital natives, the most plugged-in, well-informed generation of young people in history, and the same studio is making movies for them.

Toronto, 2002- Mei-Mei Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese-Canadian girl who is sexually eager if not quite mature, has been doing her own thing since she turned 13, but just a month before her and her friends’ favorite band comes to Toronto, puberty hits like a ton of bricks, transforming her into a giant red panda whenever she becomes emotional per a family curse her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), hadn’t told her about.

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Checking in on Netflix’ big ‘every week’ originals push

Posted on June 6, 2022 by reelentropy
Can you hear the quipping? Images courtesy Netflix.

3/10 The Adam Project is the intersection of ongoing commercial efforts from Ryan Reynolds to stay in the Deadpool character he likes so much and from Netflix to assert their ability to draw Hollywood talent. Those aren’t real reasons to make, like, a work of art, but it’s OK, because this isn’t a work of art – it’s just a movie. Give everybody a dead dad or a dead wife, and presto!

2022- Adam Reed (Reynolds, who also produces) crashes back through time from 2050 to hide with a 12-year-old version of himself (Walker Scobell). Together, the pair must – ahh, there’s a lot of things going on. Their father, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), invented time travel, but he just died, so they have to go back a little further to talk to him, and his financier, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), is evil and she’s pursuing them from 2050, so there’s action scenes. The older Reed’s wife, Laura (Zoe Saldana), has also come back in time to do the same thing, they’re trying to find her too. It’s a lot, there’s a lot going on.

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Coming-of-age done right in thoughtful, sweet ‘CODA’

Posted on June 6, 2022 by reelentropy
Step 1: hire actors who can physically perform their parts. Emilia Jones, already a trained singer, spent nine months learning ASL and industrial fishing, and the rest of the Rossi family is played by deaf actors. Images courtesy Apple TV+.

8/10 CODA is the archetypical coming-of-age story done properly, with an earnest, complex mix of emotions. There’s a well of authenticity here that’s usually absent from the genre and brings out the best it has to offer.

Gloucester, Massachusetts- Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), entering her senior year at Gloucester High School, is the only hearing member of her blue-collar fishing family. She harbors a passion for singing, which her deaf parents and older brother, Frank, Jackie and Leo (Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin and Daniel Durant) don’t appreciate. When choir director Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) starts coaching her to try out for Berklee College of Music in Boston, her competing interests in herself, helping her family and boys threaten to tear her life apart.

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Gorgeous ‘Drive my Car’ leaves a lot in the glovebox

Posted on June 6, 2022 by reelentropy
As great as it looks, even Drive My Car’s most iconic images are sort of empty, calling for the viewer to fill them with meaning. Images courtesy Janus Films.

7/10 Drive My Car is an expansive, slow-breathing odyssey across layers of performance. It’s never boring, but it’s deliberate and demands the viewer meet it halfway, and I can’t help but go away wanting more.

Hiroshima, Japan, some time ago- Two years after the death of his wife, renowned actor Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) drives across Japan to direct a performance of Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya.” Due to a strange theater policy, Kafuku isn’t allowed to drive himself around town, and is forced to relinquish the wheel of his beloved hot rod-red 1987 Saab 9000 Turbo to the theater’s driver, Misaki Watari (Tōko Miura). Instead of playing Vanya himself, he unexpectedly casts his wife’s lover, hot-headed celebrity actor Kōji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), who’s had to leave blockbusters behind over an underage sex scandal, in the title role.

All of this information is scattered throughout the runtime. Kafuku’s wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) doesn’t die until the 35:45 mark – we can know that exactly now that Drive My Car has been dropped on HBOmax after several months of extremely limited availability.

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