Geek On Film

S4 04 - The Smashing Machine

• Robbie Holmes • Season 4 • Episode 4

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    Welcome to Geekon Film with your host, Robbie Holmes. Welcome to episode four of season four of Geekon Film. This week we're going to be talking about four films. So we're going to talk about a 2017 film called The Bookshop that I saw at a local library here. We're going to talk about Anemone, which is the new Daniel Day-Lewis film written and directed by his son Ronan. And then we're going to have a rewatch conversation about No Country for Old Men. Guess what? It's pretty good. And then we're going to talk about the smashing machine. All right. So we're starting off with the bookshop. So I was able to go over to the Tempe Library. They've been running a summer movie series and they've been choosing films that are on canopy with the correct license for public display. This one is the bookshop. It's uh our friends at IMDB have this as England, 1959, in a small Anglian town. Florence Green decides against polite but ruthless local opposition to open a bookshop. It's written by Isabel Coexit and Penelope Fitzgerald, and is directed by Isabel Coexit. Uh, I have this movie as three and a half stars with a heart, just as charming as I expected. Emily Mortimer and Bill Nyhe are sweet and fun together. Uh this movie is really adorable. You have a widower who has lost her husband in the war, and after many years, uh realizes what she really would like to do is uh open a bookshop. Uh so she goes to what they call the old house and uh in downtown uh in this small town and buys that and lives there and then renovates it to turn into a book into a bookshop. That is Emily Mortimer's Florence Green. And we come across the very much uh very against this high society woman, uh Violet Garmont, played by Patricia Clarkson, who is fantastic. A woman who really would like to bring what she is calling an art center to this small town. Let's see. I think the other one I would call out that is really fun in this movie. Uh you have James Lance playing Milo North, who is sort of the he's charming. He works for BBC, he is sort of driving um poor Florence a little crazy, uh, but is a charmer. And then you have Bill Nye playing Edmund Brundish, who is a uh shut-in older gentleman who spends all of his time reading, and eventually they strike up a friendship. Uh once she opens the bookshop, he sends a note, he becomes a patron. It's a really fun movie. Uh, you get great scenes with there's a young actress, Christine, who's the young girl who ends up helping her at the shop, is played by Honor Knefsey. And I think it's really well written, but she is fantastic as sort of precocious, funny, smart person who opens up Florence and gets her to embrace sort of her maternal side, and it's really uh an adorable movie. You should see it. It's on canopy, like I mentioned. You can also buy it on Amazon or uh stream it on Amazon Prime. Uh, the Amazon purchase is one of the first times in a long time I've had to link to a DVD. Oh, yeah. We're gonna jump over to Anemone. Uh, our friends over at IMDB have this as in Northern England, a man heads out on a journey into the woods to reconnect with his estranged hermit brother with whom he shared a complicated past that was altered by life-changing events decades ago. Uh, this movie is written by Daniel Day Lewis and Ronan Day Lewis, and is directed by Ronan Day Lewis. Uh, I have this, and it really pains me to say this, as two stars. The movie has some truly beautiful cinematography and locations, some great interactions between two great actors. The film is paced very deliberately, or I might even say glacial, and it's moving the story forward. There's a good story hiding in this 127-minute cut, but I don't think it's the entire runtime. It makes me sad to say that because Daniel Day Lewis is probably the actor of his generation, but we will call out uh the fact that there is some pretty amazing individual scenes between Sean Beam playing Jem and uh Daniel Day-Lewis, who is playing Ray, and they are brothers. And Ray has uh absconded to the woods and has left his life behind, and uh Jem goes to find him because there is a problem with Ray's son, um Brian, who's played by Samuel Bottomley. So my take on the movie is uh I can feel these amazing scenes that were written with the idea of having Jem and Ray come to a loggerhead. They are like two old bucks that are coming together. And sometimes that is in love, and sometimes that is in anger, and sometimes that is in frustration, and sometimes that is just to exacerbate the other. And there are some amazingly shot scenes. I can think of the beach sequence where there's a fire between the two of them. Daniel Day-Lewis looks like he's carved out of stone, so does Sean Beam. And that the conversation they're having there might as well be a battle scene, and it's really well done. It just doesn't work for the whole movie. There is some metaphysical and sort of supernatural components to the movie that I didn't vibe with, and I feel like uh the movie is long for what it is, and there is some very grimy dialogue that I that just lost me for a bit. And I don't know, I just didn't love uh this movie, and I I really hate to have to say that, but it was not a movie for me. Um you should check it out. I think that Ronan has at least a good eye for what's going on here, and I think that uh if this film was tightened up and was worked a little bit more, it could have been a movie I really enjoyed. So it is in the theaters right now. I was lucky enough to get to see this as an early screening thanks to our friends of the Phoenix Independent film meetup. We are on to my rewatch this week. Uh this one is No Country for Old Men. Our friends at IMDV have this as violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and over two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande. I have this as five stars and a heart. Wow, first rewatch in a long time. The film is haunting, smart, sharp, from the script to the cinematography to every single performance. Truly a masterpiece. It's the first time I have revisited a film and upped its grade uh though this dramatically. I originally had it at three and a half stars. I also feel like I really did not remember this movie very well. It had been a long time since I saw it. And it was one that just didn't resonate with me the first time I saw it. And uh I think I have been educated further on how to watch film, and I think that really helped me. I think uh this is a movie that, upon rewatch, is absolutely either the best film of 2007 or the second best film of 2007. I loved it. I can't believe how good this movie was. And I am so looking forward to uh purchasing the Criterion 4K uh the next time that there's a big sale going on, so I can show it to my wife. Uh, she's never seen this movie or doesn't remember it, and I can't wait to have that experience with her. Um the performances, we'll jump in real quick. We have um Tommy Lee Jones is playing Ed Tom Bell, who is the sheriff. Antra Gore is uh played by Javier Burdem, who is sort of like evil incarnate. Um Josh Brolin is playing Lewin Moss, who is the unsuspecting hunter uh veteran who stumbles across uh a bunch of dead folks out in the uh out in the desert and uh finds a bunch of money and uh is dumb enough to go back and try to give one of them water, who is still alive. Uh Woody Harrelson is playing Carlson Wells. This is a really like unique and kind of perfect three-act scene uh set of scenes for him to be a part of. He walks in, you understand who he is. There's a full arc for the character. It's very fun. Carly Jean Moss is played by Kelly McDonald, who is um Lewin's wife, and she's great. Garrett Dillhunt is playing Wendell, who is the deputy under uh Tommy Lee, Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff. He is really fun. The way that he's written is very is very almost simple, uh, but he plays it so well, and and him and Tommy Lee Jones have such great chemistry. Tess Harper plays Loretta Bell, who is um Sheriff Bell's wife. And who else do we need to touch on here? Oh, Stephen Root plays Man Who Hires Wells. There's some really great uh actors in this movie that are behind the scenes or that are small one-moment scenes. I love this movie. I can't get over how good it is. It is written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen and Karmic McCarthy McCarthy. Um, the joke that they had said is that one of them folded the spine and the other one typed the words right out of the book and uh is directed by the Cohen brothers. You should have seen this movie. If you haven't seen this movie, you should see this movie. You should try to see it as fast as possible. It's amazing. Uh, it is currently on uh Paramount Plus and on Canopy. You can also buy the 4K and stream it over on Amazon. I have links in the show notes. So uh let's jump over to our main review, Smashing Machine. So uh Smash Machine has our friends at IMDB have the story as the the story of a mixed martial arts and UFC champion, Mark Kerr. It's a very straightforward uh summary. Thank you so much, IMDB, for being a robot. Uh we'll jump over to Letterboxed. Uh I have this movie as three and a half stars with a heart, a really solid film. Dwayne is pretty great as Mark. Emily has taken on a thankless role here. Uh the level of vulnerability that is on display is impressive. Benny Safty directs a film that could have been a by the numbers uh film and infused it with emotion and great framing. The shots of Mark in the mirror multiple times are impactful. And the in-ring choices and direction add a huge amount of weight to the film and the immediate immediately ground you in the film that you're about to watch. We'll go back. It was written by Benny Safty and it was directed by Benny. Uh this movie stars Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr, and uh Emily Blunt as Dawn Staples, his girlfriend. Uh Ryan Bader, who is a UFC fighter, plays Mark Coleman, Mark's Kerr's best friend. Baz Rutin plays Baz. Uh, he's pretty amazing, another non-actor. You have so many uh individual players here that are doing uh yeoman's work to make this movie feel real. I can't even call out all the pieces. I think the thing I would say is uh we end up opening this film, seeing Marker become sort of the during his first fight, and then sort of his natural ability to be an amazing uh mixed martial arts fighter, his background in wrestling and his ground and power nature, uh his physical stature and dominance over people. Um, you also get to see a little bit of the interior uh interiority of the character, how he is uh very concerned about the first person he fights and how that person might be injured and he wants to go check on him. And that is not put on or is not for show. Marker seems to be a gentle giant who is constantly trying to live in a world where he is gifted this physique and this drive and this physicality to be able to um cause damage to other humans, yet also uh it has a caring and soft side to him. Um, this movie follows him through all kinds of problems and issues in his life. Uh, he has drug issues, he's doing narcotics, he eventually gets clean, his girlfriend is sort of a chaos monkey who is constantly putting him on the ropes, uh, is trying to stop him from working his program. Uh Emily Blunt's character here. I don't know if she is as uh difficult in the documentary or in real life as this character is here, but uh boy, she is not a person you have a lot of sympathy for. Even though Mark is a problematic and has his own issues, uh, in my opinion, she comes across Dawn as a very difficult character to have any empathy or sympathy for. Uh I think the relationship between the marks is really astounding. And I give a huge amount of credit to Ryan Bader for really infusing that with an intimacy and a connection that makes it feel real. I think that is the thing you can walk away from this. And Baz Rutin, uh, really as his trainer and trying to keep him on the straight and arrow and getting him ready for his next fight and his return is great. Yeah, I think this movie's good. I it really is. I don't know why it is not getting the love that it should be. There are a lot of critics who are I was listening to some reviews about this movie that talk about things that I don't know are part of the problem. They're describing things like uh the fact that he always cries and covers his face. Well, we see him cry, I think, three times. One is the first time he's crying, which seems like he's overwhelmed. The second is in front of his friend uh Mark, where he's admitting that he's broken, and the third is where he's overwhelmed, I believe, and uh Dawn has him on the on the ropes. And I think every single one of them makes sense for him to cover his face a little shamefully. The first time is him crying because he is not sure how to handle things. The second is because he's admitting he's failed, and the third is the person he cared about the most probably has been uh causing him the most chaos. I think it's well done. I think the there's a real competency and confidence in the shot selection and what Benny is being able to pull across here. I think that some of the shots with the two shot angles of him in the mirror and then a second camera capturing the other side of it. I listened to Benny talk about this and he said, he really just said to Dwayne, like, you know, you how often have you not been able to let it go? And then he sort of just stepped out of the way. There was a main camera that was sort of mounted that had the mirror angle, and then there was a secondary camera that was floating around, but way out of his periphery. And I just think that he captured something special. I don't know that uh this is a movie that's gonna win a ton of awards. It should get Dwayne Johnson on people's radars as a person who can absolutely play a role of stature and and sort of carry a movie. I think the only thing that people are gonna complain about is, of course, he is playing a character that is physical and is has his physicality as a big part of the character. I think that um that is going to hold him back from one or two other new roles where he'll have to prove himself again without the physicality as a main and lead actor. I think he's really good. I think people are going to claim that that is part of what makes this work. And it is. I mean, people just brush off how hard it is to get in the shape that he's in in this movie. He is monstrous. He is huge. I don't believe there is anything going on there except for Dwayne. His body is unreal in this movie. And that is part of what makes us believe that he is Mark Kerr. I think the prosthetics on his face, I think his hair, I think all of that works really well. And there, I heard some critics say that they could not stop seeing Dwayne. And I was like, I don't know what film you're watching. Of course, near the end, when he shaves his head, he's a little bit closer. But the prosthetics on his forehead and how pronounced that is, and his eyebrows and his nose, in my opinion, disappears into this role. Of course it's Dwayne, but I stopped believing it was Dwayne Johnson and The Rock, and I started believing that it was Mark Currier in this film. And uh, you should give him a chance. Uh all right, that's it for me this week. I think uh I'm gonna stop it there. I am not sure what the next movie is going to be. Uh, but I will keep going on this train. I'm gonna keep watching new movies. I am going to, oh, I'm going to see Tron Ares, I think, on Sunday. That'll probably be the main review on the next movie uh podcast. I think after that, I am not sure. I did break down a watch list for my wife, uh, which I'm excited about. She's been watching more movies with me and trying to make sure that I take stuff off my watch list and make a combined one so that way we know what movies we can pull from if we're not sure what we're watching. I'm gonna leave us there. Uh go see movies, go see the smashing machine. I can't believe how low it opened. It doesn't deserve that. It is a much better movie than uh where it opened at. You should give it a chance. Okay, have a good week. Bye bye. This has been a Keepgone film production.

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    Robbie Holmes

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