Recently Watched Films

I ended up going to the theaters yesterday because my ride told me he'd be quite late picking me up.  We both agreed it would be more convenient for the both of us if I went and saw a movie, so I ended up seeing The Beekeeper.  It's a John Wick knockoff, but it's a fun John Wick knockoff at the very least.  It just didn't live up to its fullest potential.

And two of my regular customers ended up going there ten minutes after I got there, and neither of us knew we were gonna see it.  They even picked the seats next to me at random!  Free-kee.

Occasionally ridiculous in the dream/hypnotherapy sequences and borderline slapstick bio-pic in others, 'When Nietzsche Wept' somehow remained compelling enough to have me sit right through to the end despite an unconvincing father of psychoanalysis (Jamie Elman as Freud) still having to show ID for the age of consent  and Katheryn Winnick as cigar chomping proto ladette femme fatale Lou Salome.

There is very little exploration of Nietzsche's philosophical ideas here but instead his incredibly prescient innovation in the realm of psychology as seen through the prism of the incipient discipline of psychoanalysis in Vienna circa 1882. Ben Cross is brilliant as the likeable albeit conveniently repressed and commensurately flawed Dr Breuer, adrift in a loveless marriage, a materially successful career but bereft of passion, danger or excitement in his unfailingly dutiful life. Things start to resemble the relationship between poets Verlaine and Rimbaud at this point (see Agnieszka Holland's 'Total Eclipse' from 1995) with Nietzsche advising Breuer to throw off the shackles of his unthinking conformity and embrace his freedom. Nietzsche certainly never did this, having died a virgin (despite being portrayed in a whorehouse) and was an invalid for most of his adult life on a pension paid for by academia. Whether Breuer actually makes this existential plunge is open to debate as the Director would have us believe this whole extended sequence was under Freudian hypnosis. Armand Assante was assigned one of the most thankless casting gigs of all time by being asked to portray the most innovative and radical thinker humankind has produced in over a thousand years. My gut feeling, on a personal level is that when Friedrich Nietzsche entered a room, that room got larger i.e. Assante exudes a cynical but palpable personality consistent with what he sees as his remit but I suspect Nietzsche was silent, inscrutable and withdrawn which is clearly anathema to cinematic portrayals. The movie is based on Irvin D. Yalom's 1992 novel which I haven't read but is purportedly concerned with the idea of limerence which as an idea is about as robust as 'gender' in 2023.

It starts rather unpromisingly as if we are heading into a US Cluedo franchise somehow deserving of a voice-over by Foghorn Leghorn and starring the cast of Friends to make things more palatable for Hollywood audiences. Daniel Craig is likable enough as southern fried Inspector Benoit Blanc but why not dispense with his Norleans affectations and just be Detective Ben White? I mean, lordy lordy, comedy just may not be his thang' y'all? The talents of Kate Hudson and Kathryn Hahn are completely wasted on merely repeating 'Oh My God' over and over again throughout as if this might at some point provide a comedic denouement. Yep, the laughs are very few and far between hereabouts with Edward Norton (Fight Club) about as convincing as a scamming idiot savant billionaire as Ted Bundy was a feminist. That said, Director and writer Rian Johnson reverses out of this casting cul de sac with a very ingenious and entertaining sequence of flashbacks and POV shift revelations that add depth and nuance to what is, at heart, an Agatha Christie whodunnit? With contemporary influencers and technology gurus as the butt end of many of the gags. I haven't seen the earlier film from 2019 so can't say if this might be the law of diminishing returns setting in or not. The palpable chemistry between Craig and Janelle Monae is judiciously exploited to mask many of the film's worst faults of which the music is exempt (if you like the Beatles) Serena Williams has one of the funniest scenes playing herself from a fitness video. That's correct I am starting to run out of positives...