Geek On Film

S4 E5 - Bugonia

• Robbie Holmes • Season 4 • Episode 5

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Welcome to Geek on Film with your host, Robbie Holmes. Hey there, folks. Welcome aboard to episode five of season four of Geek on Film. I'm Robbie and I'm excited to get back to it. I was a little dejected and it took me a while to get here because of the films I had been watching. Felt like they had just been disappointing me. So I wanted to take a breath and not put out another podcast where the main review was not super positive. So I'm back. I'm going to break up a couple of movies that I was disappointed with across a couple episodes and try to make sure I have something in the main review that I'm excited about. So we're going to talk first. We're going to talk about three films today and one experience. First, we're going to start with Good Boy. Our friends over at IMDB have this as a loyal dog moves to a rural family home with his owner, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows as dark entities threaten his human companion. The brave pup must fight to protect the one he loves most. I have this as two and a half stars over on Letterboxd. I said it was a clever concept, felt a bit slow and fast. So I would smash uh I would I would say that there were pacing issues. Uh maybe this could have been a short. There were a few sequences uh that are truly creepy, and the sound, framing, and editing do an amazing amount of work. Indie the dog is a good boy, but the movie could have been called The Okay Boy. Uh I really liked the idea. I was super into the concept of Good Boy, where we're basically following a horror film from the perspective of the dog in the movie. It is written uh by Alex Cannon and Ben Leonberg and is directed by Ben. It is also their dog, Indy. Uh, he is amazing, he's very sweet. Uh he's very uh he has a huge amount of facial expressions. He's got so much to offer as a as a pup. Uh he's pretty great. Um, I would say this movie uh fell down for me because it did run into that problem of we're hitting on similar uh overarching themes and we're hitting them a few times, and it felt a little bit like um at the length of about 70 or so minutes, um, we were pushing up against uh what was possibly maybe a 40-minute short. Um, I will say they did a lot of amazing uh footage. It took a really long time to shoot this. There was a QA afterwards uh with Ben and Indy. Uh so we got a chance to hear about Indy's star-making performance, and uh we got to see some behind-the-scenes footage of how they pulled off some of the shots. Um a truly uh well thought out, well-conceived and um worthy uh you know experiment in film. Um you should see it. It's uh it's not yet uh available on any of the streaming services, but you can definitely premium VOD it. Um yeah, good boy. Uh so we're gonna jump over to the movie that sort of stymied me and put me a little bit uh on my back foot. Um so we'll talk a little bit about Tron Ares. Uh our friends at IMDB have the um synopsis as a highly sophisticated program. Ares is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission. Uh it is written by uh there's a trio or more of authors. Let's see. It is written by Steven Lisberger, Bonnie McBird. Uh they are the created by for the characters. Then the story is David DeGillo and Jesse Wigateau, and then the screenplay is by Jesse Wigateau. Um I have this as two stars uh over on IMDb, and my review is a film that suffered greatly from me watching Tron and Tron Legacy today before seeing this film. I spent over six hours in the grid today. This movie is missing the earnest and genuine feeling the first two have in abundance. There is enough concepts here to make a trilogy, and they are crammed into 119 minutes. Jody Turner Smith does an amaz does amazing work with her character Athena, has a believable and effective arc. This is in contrast to Jared Leto's Ares, who goes from being a program to coming into the real world to trying to become a permanent, to become permanent. And I didn't feel any changes in his character's demeanor or delivery. The Nine Inch Nail score is amazing and kinetic, uh, but there are times where the movie doesn't live up to the music out the scene. Um, so mentioned already, we have Jared Leto as Ares, we have Greta Lee as Eve Kim. Um, they are sort of the two biggest protagonists. You've got Evan Peterson here as Julian Dillinger, who is uh a relative of a character from the first couple of movies. You've got Jody Turner-Smith as one of the programs that's coming out into the real world Athena. Um, a nice little bit of stunt casting. Jillian Anderson is Elizabeth Dillinger, uh, our main protagonist or main antagonist's mother. Um Hassan Minaj is in this, uh, as well as uh Aturo Castro as sort of friends of Eva of uh Greta Lee's character. Uh they could have been probably merged into a single character. Yeah. Um so this was directed by Joaquim uh Roaning, and uh I was really dejected. I I really saw this as a sort of frustratingly like big loss because I really like the Tron ecosystem. Um, I started watching Tron Uprising, the cartoon, um, because I like this so much. I think that uh seeing a movie with so many potential possibilities of what we had dreamed about back in the 80s, about the world of Tron escaping off the grid and into the real world, just felt so weakly executed. Um, you know, it's beautifully shot. There's a lot of amazing sequences in this movie that look beautiful, but it loses, there's just no heart to it. There's no story really for why they're coming out, other than somebody decided to weaponize the programs. And that doesn't make a ton of sense, in my opinion. But that's the movie we were given. So uh I will review that movie, and I think that movie wasn't very good. And that is actually why it's been weeks since I recorded an episode, because I had planned on doing an Etron Aries episode where I would review the other two movies and this movie, and I was just deflated. So uh I'm now uh ready to give it a shot. I think that's also because I've seen a few movies that I'm going to spread out across this episode and the next one that were um at least uh three-star movies and above, but this movie really was not what I expected, and a little uh I had had my reservations going in and I felt like they were all confirmed and and then some. Um I didn't like this movie. Uh normally I would say you should see this movie. You should you if you like Tron, this movie will probably not be for you. It is worth seeing the visuals, it's pretty cool. The soundtrack's pretty amazing, so go check it out on Spotify. Um, I ordered you, I ordered it on vinyl. It's pretty unreal. That's how into this I was. I ordered the vinyl and had it arrive at my house the day that I saw Tron Ares. Um, yeah. Okay, uh I want to talk a little bit about an experience. So, our friends uh at the Real Deal Film Society this month, we uh talked about Donnie Darko, which is one of my favorite films of all time. And uh it's just so much fun to be able to sit down with a bunch of people who have different opinions about a film uh and and can spend two hours talking about a film very candidly, very confidently, never stomping on somebody else's opinion, never telling someone else they're wrong. It's so welcoming and so much fun, and I'm so glad to be a part of the Real Deal Film Society. I do not believe I will be there at this month's uh discussion, and that makes me really sad because we chose to do the social network, which is in my top five films of all time. Um it's in my top four favorites and has been since I saw it again on Letterboxd, probably five or six years ago. It is an astounding movie that I love with all of my heart, but Donnie Darko was such a fun conversation, and there's so many things to jump into in that movie: the director's cut versus the original theatrical cut, whether or not it actually makes sense. Is it a time loop movie? Uh, do we need more information? Did we need what was in the director's cut to tell us about what was actually going on and the idea of like this person is the manipulated dead, this person. I think it, you know, was a complicated and fun conversation. And I think you should spend some time thinking about film and you should go talk about it with some cool people, like I do. It's super fun. Um, all right. I think we're gonna jump into the final review for today, which is Begonia. Um, so our friends at IMDB have uh this listed as a synopsis where it's two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnapped, kidnapped the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth. It is written by Will Tracy and Hang Hoon Han and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. I have this as three and a half stars with a heart. Uh, Emmasone is great as the unflappable lead, CEO boss, Jesse Plumens is unreal as a character who is dejected, despondent, and riddled with conspiracy theories. Aiden uh does Diblas is maybe the emotional core of the film. A fantastic movie, not exactly what I thought it would be, or not exactly what I thought, but that's sort of par for the chorus for the Argos Lanthamos. Um so we'll talk about the cast a little bit. So the two main characters that we spend almost the whole movie with are um Teddy and Don, and Jesse Plemens plays Teddy, and uh Don is played by Aiden Delvis, and then they kidnap uh Michelle, who's played by Emma Stone. Uh, there's a few other characters in the movie uh storyline that I don't know is really that important. Um Casey is played by Stravos uh Halkaeus, who is a police officer who has a connection to uh Jesse Plemens' Teddy. Um we eventually find out uh uh that Teddy's mother is uh in this film and is played by Alicia Silverstone. It was a really nice nod. I had seen that she was a part of the film, I wasn't sure what her role was. Um and I think that in the end, uh the things I really want to call out on this movie are the crafts. Uh wow, what a beautiful movie. Um I am so interested in the way this was pulled off. Like it caught my breath when it opened, but I found out that this movie was shot in VistaVision. Um, and Robbie Ryan is the director of photography, and then it's edited by Yorgos Mavro Sardis. Sardis. Uh sorry about that, Yorgos. Uh, and uh you can see how much there is a synergy between the two the the Yorgos Squared and Robbie Ryan that that is coming through. And Jaroskin Fendricks is the composer for this movie again. So he has worked with Yorgos before. Um it's really gorgeous. Like it's it's breathtaking. The movie opens with uh a bee on a plant, and it's in this like sort of four by three aspect ratio, and so you're it's almost like watching a television show about like you're it's reminding you it's a story, is that is is what it feels like when you put it into that aspect ratio, and it's to remind you you're watching something. Whereas I feel like, you know, 16 by 9 and PanaVision, things like that, or full IMAX make you feel like it's taking up as much space as possible. But just having those little bars on the sides is reminding you that you're at a movie, you're being entertained, something has been created for you. And uh, at least that's how I always feel about it. And I really feel like uh this movie's script is really great. Um it's I don't know that I needed exactly where it went in the last 30 or 20 minutes to make me feel like I had what I was looking for out of this movie, but that was the decision that was made. And I think that the movie pays off. Uh, you spend an awful lot of time um trying to figure out whether or not uh Emma Stone's character is uh an alien and is a part of a race that has come to planet Earth to basically enslave humans and uh to make things worse for humanity. And uh it's really unbelievable the lengths that Teddy's character goes to. He has an entire process for how he determines whether or not someone is here, and uh it's it's really uh crazy and fun. All of this is based on a uh book that is uh that was made into a movie called Save the Green Planet. So that is where uh Jang uh Jun Hoan's uh portion of the writing comes from, um, and so gets credit coming over as an adapted screenplay if it gets that far in the academy. I really can't believe the amount of power that is in Jesse Plymouth's Emma Stone Gorgos Lanthamos. That trio have the ability to pull off almost anything. And uh the amount of pairings now between Emma Stone and Yorgos feels like it could be almost like discussed as like Spielberg and Tom Hanks or Robert De Niro and Scorsese or Leo and Scorsese, and I it's really just an astounding set of films that have Emma Stone has proven she can do anything. I described her the other day to my wife as maybe like a modern-day Merrill Streep. She's fantastic. Uh, I I had such a good time with this movie. Uh I was definitely uh on the edge of my seat at times. There are times where it goes kind of off the rails uh in some of the best ways. I really think you should see this movie in a theater before it's gone. It's worth seeing it, see it in a place that has great sound. The sound is unreal. The mixing, the score is great, but I just think the sound and the way that this movie is brought together, every aspect of the creative components and everything below the line in this movie really matches Yorgos and the director's vision, uh, the director's cinematography. Um, really an unbelievable movie. You should see it in theaters if you can. Okay, that's it for me this week. Uh, expect me to come back soon. I think my next episode is going to be about if I had legs, I'd kick you. Uh, because that movie was really good and I really want to talk about it, but I want to shine a bigger light on it. Um, so I already have that sort of queued up, scripted up, and ready to release uh and record later this week. Uh thank you for sticking around. Sorry it's been a minute. Uh, I look forward to hopefully getting that mega doc uh written assignment up soon. Uh and uh yeah, I revisited Megalopolis and I want to revisit uh the Megadoc so I can write more effectively and more um uh from a place of knowledge and not just sort of my memory. Um talk to you soon and go to the movies. Bye. This has been a keep gone film production.

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Robbie Holmes

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