Movie Frenzy July
Susie reviews Barbie’s Outlaw Nation, Not-Nolan Oppenheimer, Soderbergh’s Full Circle, and Survival of the Thickest
Notes From the Film Critic’s Desk:
Every once in a while, a critic is enormously relieved to not receive a professional assignment.
For example, if I had been hired by the Chronicle to submit a review of Oppenheimer, I couldn’t have walked out of the theater before it was finished. And walk out I did. I forgot to get my ticket money back, I was so eager to escape.
Whatever else it is, Nolan’s picture is an assault on the ears— the soundtrack and SFX include a continuous wall of sound that I think is suppose to imitate “blood rushing between the ears” — but meanwhile, the dialog is delivered in whispers.
Many a baleful look fills the screen. Moral clarity and consequential characterization is absent. Narcissism is prominent. If you give a damn about: The Bomb, What Happened to the Rest of the Rest of the World, and McCarthyism, you will probably take umbrage with this film.
Perhaps I am Nolan-phobic. Perhaps I will try watching it again when it’s streaming with sub-titles. YMMV. I have little patience these days.
I’m devoted to historical drama of the Cold War and the H-bomb, so let me offer some alternatives I enjoyed, which I’ll describe further below: the Oscar-nominated documentary The Day After Trinity, and a two-season TV series from Sam Shaw that was waaaaaay ahead of its time in 2014: Manh(a)ttan.
Meanwhile, below are my summer reviews of some fine entertainments! What have you been watching?
Meet the artist behind the ‘Barbie’ trailers
Millions have seen at least one of the “Barbie” trailers, tingly moments of bliss so addictive, they took on a life of their own. As Tim Cole, CEO of the World Trailer Awards, told The Chronicle: “The Barbie trailer ‘pop’ is irresistible.”
So who cut this one?
Most of the time, the public has no idea who cuts the trailers for movies and television shows. In the 1960s, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock were the first film directors who insisted on editing their own promos, using state-of-the-art filmmaking techniques to make the teasers for their “Dr. Strangelove” and “Psycho” classics .
Ironically, the Barbie filmmakers had no idea that Kubrick trailer revolution would be key to their iconic teaser . . .
Continue reading . . .
“Barbie Nation” - The Documentary that Blew the Cover Off Barbie Realness
Director Susan Stern reveals the fan hysteria, protest and hidden Mattel history in interview with Susie Bright
Excerpts from Interview between Susie and Susan Stern:
Q: What was the initial response to your documentary?
A: The reviews were mixed. “TV Guide” called it “sickening,” and “Entertainment Weekly” said, “Sordid, disturbing, and, ultimately, irresistible.” I was flattered.
There was no such thing as streaming in 1997. The film was a festival hit, but I couldn’t get a wider distribution deal.
“Barbie Nation” debuted on PBS. One cable company offered to buy it, but only if I censored it: They said I could have one gay man, but not two. Ha!
Continue reading . . .
Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Full Circle’ jacks up the karma and consequences
You’ve been sucked into a fuchsia vortex of “Barbie” trailers. You’re braced for three hours of Christopher Nolan expounding on “Oppenheimer’s” atom bomb.
Fuhgeddaboudit. You can lay a sure bet that the tightest, most original show of the summer will be a TV miniseries hardly anyone knows about: Steven Soderbergh’s “Full Circle.”
The director’s latest is a noir caper of a kidnapping gone very wrong, inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece, “High and Low.” In six episodes reminiscent of an Elmore Leonard novel, Soderbergh (“Out of Sight,” “The Limey,” “Ocean’s 11”) proves that as long as he’s standing with a camera in one hand and an editing knife in the other, his Swiss-clock timing for suspense and emotional depth will not be denied.
Continue reading . . .
Michelle Buteau is irresistible in ‘Survival of the Thickest’
The Netflix show stars comedy sweetheart Michelle Buteau as a plus-size fashionista determined to put a ring on it, make bank and enjoy her chosen family to the hilt.
Michelle Buteau is Netflix’s new comedy series prom queen of enlightened cutie-pies. Does the world need another “You go, girl!” testimonial, a plucky femme who’s not going to let the world burst her self-affirmation bubble?
Normally, I would say no. But Michelle Buteau may be too irresistible in her rom-com debut, “Survival of the Thickest.”
Writer and star Buteau outshines the rest of her cast, gets all the best lines and has an after-school-special therapy moment for every day of her life. It may sound obnoxious on paper, but onscreen, Buteau’s presence is easy to drink in. She is charismatic, tender, and she sports the cutest little freckle face since Meghan Markle. When she’s lit, you can’t turn away.
Continue Reading . . .
The Day After Trinity
“You may well ask, why people with a kind heart, and humanist feelings, why they would go and would work on weapons of mass destruction” - Hans Bethe
Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Jon Else • 1981
“As a young man, Oppenheimer was a committed anti-fascist, but the authorities forgot this during the war when he was made director of Los Alamos Laboratories, where the bomb was secretly designed and assembled. Archive footage shows the actual tests in the desert. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki the scientists began to realize something of the horror of what they had created and Oppenheimer campaigned against the hydrogen bomb. Finally in 1954 an ill-conceived security hearing brought his career to a sudden and tragic end.”
Interviews and background are excellent. If you don’t much about this period, it’s almost a requirement to see THIS before you watch the Nolan bio-pic, which is impossible to discern with a deep background.
Watch Full Film for Free . . . Criterion is promoting it without charge for the next month.
Manh(a)ttan - TV Series
Trailer is corny but boy, is this show good. Binge City.
Here’s the funny thing: Manhattan is all about fictional characters who are composites of a community that lived at the “Los Alamos” secret testing lab and camp in the middle of New Mexican Indian land.
Yet the reality of what it felt like to be in such a crazy place, the insanity of human folly and betrayal, the realness of what was happening to everyone, not just one man — it rings true. The little touches are devastating. Unforgettable characters.
When this show came out, it debuted on WGN, a channel once best-known for showing Cubs ballgame reruns, and hardly anyone knew about it. A real lost gem.
Streaming on: AMC+, FreeVee, Hoopla, Tubi, or Rent on: Amazon, Apple, Vudu.