beautiful boy | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2019) #2!

Posted on January 24, 2019 by Darren

It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast!

This week, I join Ronan Doyle and Jay Coyle to discuss the week in film news. But first, we talk about the films that we’ve watched this week, and what a bumper selection that runs the gamut from Wim Wenders’ Trick of the Light to films like Gotti and United Passions. There’s also an extended chat about the impact and legacy of Cloud Atlas, and the work of the Wachowski Sisters in general.

It’s also a bumper week for film news, with the looming Oscar nominations, the Screen Ireland 2019 production slate, the American release of Maze, the South by Southwest premiere of Extra Ordinary, the announcement of Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters sequel, and the Dublin International Film Festival Fantastic Flix lineup.

The top ten:

Creed II
Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Bohemian Rhapsody
Aquaman
Bumblebee
The Upside
The Favourite
Stan and Ollie
Mary Poppins Returns

New releases:

You can download the episode here, or listen to it below.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: beautiful boy, Cloud Atlas, Ghostbusters, gotti, mary queen of scots, maze, Oscars, stan and ollie, the favourite, trick of the light, united passions | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Beautiful Boy

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Darren

Beautiful Boy is a cocktail essentially comprised of three contrasting main ingredients, none of which particularly gel.

Most obviously, it is a traditional performance-driven piece of awards fare designed to showcase the talents of Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carrell; there is a lot of shouting, a lot of confrontation, a lot of listless staring. On top of that, it is also a more modern piece of awards fare, one younger and hipper than stodgy old dramas about addiction; Beautiful Boy might be a good seventy-percent intercut montage set to music of beloved artists like David Bowie and John Lennon. The remaining third is a fifties moral panic anti-drugs film for the twenty-first century.

This movie is Timothée Chala-meh.

These three styles of film are constantly battling within Beautiful Boy. There must be a way to synthesise these three competing approaches into a holistic and satisfying piece of work, but instead Beautiful Boy bounces frantically from one mode to another, never settling on a single cohesive tone or approach. This is disappointing, as Beautiful Boy is a very earnest and sincere piece of work. There’s a strong sense that the film is trying to articulate something that is both important and profound. However, it just cannot clearly translate that sentiment into speech.

Beautiful Boy is a mess of a film, but a fascinating mess in a number of places.