Revisiting : 1992's Deep Cover

There are often times where the political, thematic, or cinematic, values of a movie are at odds with the society upon which it is thrust. On other occasions, aesthetics, general techniques, methodology,  the generally accepted filmmaking style, or genre, trend, and style of an era may conflict with the same attributes in a given film if it strays too much from the norm.  It is always a complicated mixture of exhilaration,  and anguish,  revisiting a film that was not only under-appreciated by its time, but by me personally.  A "How did I miss this?!" or “How did WE miss this?!" 1992’s “Deep Cover” is such a film for me. As directed by Bill Duke Deep Cover is a poetic, warm lit, cold hearted jazz/hip hop infused thriller with the same kinetic energy as the underworld it seeks to portray. Oozing the same distilled cool as its star (Laurence Fishburne) out of every frame. Simultaneaously reinforcing and under cutting hyper-masculine energy out of almost all of its dialogue and almost every interaction. The hero's journey is not a journey to be a better drug dealer, or cop (not in most of the ways typical to the genre anyway), definitely not a hero, but becoming in fact more open to his emotions, to what he is perpetuating, (even as an officer of the law) and to what end he is being used.  It is noir conventions as political commentary on the black experience in America. Doubling as both a great under cover thriller, and a great allegory for the way in which black people must adjust themselves in the world.. in effect going “undercover”.   While many times revisiting a film we are imbuing it with qualities it was not born with,  in this case, with the specific aspects of this specific film, I think this is its original intention.  An intentional about face from the narratives most presented on screen about men,  and most certainly black men in 1992, and it is this discovery that made re-watching  Deep Cover  so emphatically satisfying.

Upon first arriving on camera Fishburne's Russell Stevens is the prototypical noir male protagonist, unwittingly out of his depth, but unflappable in his confidence. In fact he is praised by his superior for possessing some of the very same qualities common to a noir protagonist. It is pointed out to him that while being a cop, he is also the ideal criminal ( A powerful under pinning commentary itself).   “A man with a rigid moral code, with no underlying sense of values,  repressed violence, rage” - Special Agent gent Carver reads off to him from his file. These qualities extend undoubtedly from the trauma of watching his father shot and killed in a drug store robbery as a child,  which in Agent Carver’s mind makes Stevens a ready made tool for the job.  In this way the film has no different a set up than most noir films, or even thrillers about going undercover.  It reads like a cinematic want-ad for the hard boiled anti hero. “Wanted: Pent up, amoral seeker of a strict code of justice,  to be set loose into ( add at least encouraged) unto an slowly unraveling rampage of violence and corruption in the name of the law, and/or in defiance of it. Like other noir films Duke’s film undermines the philosophy of any dualist ideological separation between cops and robbers, order and chaos.  But as Deep Cover glides along on its wings of effortless swagger, it becomes clearer and clearer that of these supposed criminal sensibilities, it is Stevens's "insufficient sense of self",  that it most desires to examine. That instead of glorifying these qualities it wants to condemn them. Like its cinematic sibling Carl Franklin's “Devil in a Blue Dress”, Duke’s film gives its protagonist the agency of self -discovery. Undeniably implying that Stevens has: A. not found himself, and thusly that B. self discovery is the underlying  impetus of the character.   It's through Hull's journey as a character that the audience will arrive at the ultimate prognosis of the film.  The Drug war is a play,  and African Americans and Latinos, are confined to strict roles on either side of justice as the antagonist in their own demise,  therefore introspection,  community, and character are key to our survival in a white supremacist country.

““White privilege is a manipulative, suffocating blanket of power that envelops everything we know...It’s brutal and oppressive, bullying you into not speaking up for fear of losing your loved ones, or job, or flat. It scares you into silencing yourself: you don’t get the privilege of speaking honestly about your feelings without extensively assessing the consequences...challenging it can have implications on your quality of life.” ”

— Renni Eddo-Lodge

It is this conceptualization of privilege and hegemony that I think writers Michael Tolkien and Henry Bean encapsulate so well through the two white characters in the film.  For instance, Agent Carver (played with fiendish charm,  ego, and smarm by Charles Martin Smith) is an avatar of this very aspect of whiteness.  Throughout the movie his character remarks several times  (Much to his own delight)  that "He is God"., and indeed he seems to be everywhere, and yet invisible to Fishburne’s Stevens,  much like a god, much like whiteness.  Carver is only interested in the plight of Hull (and subsequently the plight of black people) in as far as it can boost his career. At every turn where it might impede,  stagnate,  or ruin Carvers career,  Carver is not only disinterested,  he is actively hostile towards it.  As Eddo-Lodge's quote asserts, Carvers avatar of whiteness and white supremacy also actively silences and suffocates others. At once made glaringly apparent in an early scene where he uses the “N” word under the guise of seeking to find a man that “understands” the job. As if these black men require a lesson in the scourge of the crack epidemic in the communities they came from, or by way relation to the contagion? Carver (and Smith in his performance) makes it clear he knows he can get away with this not only because of his not so veiled rouse, but because he knows his position and privilege protect him from being seen as in the wrong, cruel, or as the aggressor,  and subsequently he is safe from any recourse or punishment.   This, as well as his clear apathy in the face of so many destroyed lives (like his reaction to the murder a young black male in service of Hull’s cover, right in front of Hull)  prove his privilege, as well as the fact that he is actually not as concerned with the moral end game as he proclaims. This is  made even more abundantly clear in the final scenes of the movie.  Charles Martin Smith's gleefully amoral portrayal and ultimately the character of Carver is a spot on example of the ridiculousness of a drug war that was almost solely created to wage war on black people and people of color by the same government that had no problem trafficking in the drugs themselves if it funded their goals,  and of the audacity of white privilege. And it's pretty readily identifiable in this era or that.

Uploaded by Alex Gonzalez on 2016-07-16.

I want to digress a bit to talk about Jeff Goldbum. Jeff Goldblum in Deep Cover gives a performance that is indicative of all that makes Jeff Goldblum a favorite among so many. His patented rapid fire cool, constant state of faux confusion, and ability to make almost any scene seem completely improv, color and empower his character to rare heights even for Goldblum.  In this role, surprise and unpredictability are built into the character even without Goldblum, so that Goldblum's inhabitation of the character is a perfect marriage.  No one knows who David Jason is, including David Jason.  Is he a lawyer,  a drug dealer,  a house husband, a killer?  So we get to watch Goldblum as David, mold David into who it is he wants to be through Goldblum's sly and intelligent reading of the character and his trademark histrionics. What we learn along the way, is that in a way David is a mirror image of Russell.  Both David and Russell begin the film on a journey of self discovery, but where they end up, and the particulars around how they arrive there are entirely different .   David Jason's biggest weapon against those that undermine him is that they never see him coming.  To the point Felix Barabosa (Gregory Sierra) the cartel boss for whom Jason supplies - believes that he can cruelly bully,  pester,  and belittle David for years and nothing would happen.   There is a wonderfully complex understanding of the intersection of privilege to dissect here, where Balboa possesses a specific structural privilege through the nature of his rank and authority in the Cartel over David, but David (who himself is used to being a victim of racism as well) possesses a more macro structural privilege himself through the inclusion of his ethnicity as white. . I don't find it hard to believe that this is a contributing factor to why David chafes working under Balboa.    Reinvigorated by the appearance and attitude of Laurence Fishburne’s Johnny Hull (His cover)   and propelled by his own inflated but bruised ego , David Jason morphs into the kind of men he has always incorrectly seen himself as better than, and quite possibly the man he always wanted to be.  This newfound menace is conveyed with incredible skill. By the film’s end the transformation is complete, Goldblum is a werewolf, his fangs fully bared, his predatorial nature on full display no longer in hiding. Physically everything from his hair to his walk, and body language has morphed into a man who is now confidently himself, or at least the man he envisioned himself to be. And it's both jolting, and surprising to see Goldblum turn his almost magical charm and likability against and on us. David Jason is the embodiment of the hypocrisy of moral high ground, and absolutes in a capitalist society.  Greed is good,  and white is good,  and everything else is a tool or a waste.   There is no limit,  and as soon as David gets a taste of this (as suggested by Barbosa) in his first kill,   he is possessed by his own avarice and bloodlust.  In a way David Jason is a white version of Tupac Shakur's "Bishop" from Ernest Dickerson’s "Juice". Hopped up on violence as an extension of his power,  derived from his sense of powerlessness as an undervalued member of a criminal enterprise, and a undervalued minority in America.   Goldblum from start to finish sculpts the mannerisms, and attitude,  of a covertly racist, white male  on a destructive journey of revenge and megalomania.

““To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured””

— Michael S Kimmel

As the other avatar of whiteness in the film, Goldblum like Carver puts on the airs of some version of what we know today as white liberalism,  or at the very least libertarianism.  He consistently refers to himself as an ally to Johnny.  One could imagine him relating his own Jewish American experience to that of Hull's as an African American, or repeating the oft quoted line from Jordan Peele’s Get Out, “I would’ve voted for Obama a Third Term if I could”.  He keeps company with African Americans,  he understands the basics of what troubles the black community in a racist hierarchical society,  but he also feigns ignorance of his privilege by coalescing our struggles,  while fetishizing and demeaning a black woman wantonly in Johnny's presence (purposely) All of which is calcified in a scene where he’s challenged about his inherently racist analogy of Johnny as “A panther,  a jungle storm,  and a magnificent beast” and his retort is "I can say anything I want". He like Agent Carver talks a great deal about the struggle of black people while unempathetically performing as a cog in a wheel that runs over those that either can't afford him, or challenge his privilege, and/or lifestyle.  David's privilege is as invisible to him as he desires it to be because of his standing.  He can “say what he wants” unapologetically because he at least in passing and coding is the standard.  He (as Goldblum says with piercing conviction ) "Wants to have his cake and eat it too". Climbing the stratified ladder of hierarchal oppression can cause the best of us to develop conscious and unconscious blind spots.  To pick and choose what we see and who we see based upon whether it first benefits us.  To prioritize our comfort as Tim Wise once said in a CNN interview over someone else's pain.  This in essence is the story of David Jason in Deep Cover as magnificently performed by Jeff Goldblum.  His journey is parallel, and in opposition, along its track to that of Fishburne’s Stevens.

Russell Stevens aka Johnny Hull (Laurence Fishburne) is one of the more unique characters produced in the 90's. As with any great character this is in part great editing, writing,  and direction.  The result of this collaboration is especially unique because of the results and the era in which they were produced.  As I stated before, Stevens is the rare hard boiled male whose journey is not about hardening but softening, and that journey of softening is not affixed to his introduction to a woman.  It is a softening to the woes that go on around him.  The movie is never about his slow descent into the acceptance of the violence perpetrated by gangsters, his own amoral superiority, or the apathy of his superiors,  but his growing intolerance of it.  Starting from his acceptance of his superiors behavior in the beginning, evolving, to his repulsion at a severe beating he is witness to in a pool hall...

Continuing through to his reluctance to kill a rival drug dealer, and the pain and hurt of watching a young drug addicted mother deteriorate with her son in tow.

Kicked in the chest

When the drug addicted mother of the young boys dies of an overdose it is not apathy but compassion and hurt that the film chooses to center. "I wanted to think about it,  I didn't want to look at her but I couldn't get up off the bed".  Fishburne’s Stevens says in one of the films many poignant voice overs.   There is constant talk about the pain and subsequent trauma of killing another African American man even if he was a sadistic drug dealer.  And of watching another father figure die in his arms in the same way his father did, as when an honest cop who has been tailing Hull throughout the film unaware of his cover is shot by the newly transformed David.  There is where Hull has reached his breaking point,  from the violence,  the avarice,  the apathy.  Here in the films denouement,  is where the film cements its fundamnetal difference in approach.  Fishburne cries profusely in a gut wrenching emotional release both for him and the audience " You shouldn't have done that David,  you shouldn't have done that"…

My favorite scene from the Movie.

It’s a resounding exclamation mark on both the depth of Fishburne’s performance (which was truly Oscar worthy) and on the films own unique niche in defiance of one of the most common, and defining conventions of the Noir film. Fishburne’s character finds a compass, and he accomplishes this through embracing his emotions not shutting them off,  or hardening them, and only moments after the murder of another black man he mutually respects,  he realizes what he has to do, as well as who he really is. This is in distinctive contrast to other under cover films like Serpico where Pacino's character knows who he is from the outset and it is the outsiders who struggle with the acceptance, or Donnie Brasco,  and the Departed which are about losing your compass on the way to the end.  It is cathartic in a way few noir films can be or have been, which I think was necessary in the case of the African American community as portrayed on film. The no-holds-barred fatalism, and nihilism that engulfed a great deal of not only noir films , but the explosion of black cinema in the 90’s as it pertained the hoods and barrios - were more than enough. A film that celebrated self growth, and a renewed vigor to not only reflect on ones self , but through one’s own emotional journey - to realize the inherent flaws of a broken system, and refuse to make allowances, or further the myth of a good FBI, that ends by most observable measurements happily for our hero? …That was something new for the time, and necessary.  Fishburnes performance like the film itself is a anomaly in the undercover detective genre,  in noir,  and in African American crime films of the time in how it reconfigured the hard boiled detective as a subversive counter to the idea that being tough is about excluding or containing emotion, and ends with a denouncement of the institution.   A man telling his secrets, talking about and confronting his past, looking out for others,  caring for others in an endeavor for justice,  rather than just doling out wanton violence as a stand in justice, was and still is refreshing.   Whether that be on crime or on an individual level as a man, Fishburne’s stark cool, and Dukes direction (political swagger rooted in the finest traditions of black music) enabled Deep Cover to remain appealing, engrossing, and thrilling, while it adeptly tackled and confronted various issues ailing men, the African-American community, and our justice system.  It's a film with many faces,  and layers as deep as the cover Fishburnes Hull is under and it is well worth re-consideration as one of the all time great Noir detective films in cinema.

You ever watch a film and feel bad that you watched? Shohei Imamura's "Vengeance is mine" is that movie.

There is a scene that takes place almost a third of the way into Shohei Imamura's  "VENGEANCE IS MINE"-  The 1979 film based on real life serial killer Akira Nishiguchi (Here called Iwao Enokizu)  that I think forms my own thesis around the film.  The killer (played with unsettling verve by Ken Ogata)  has met his next victim on a train ride back from a recent con in another city ( Nishiguchi was a confidence man as well as a serial killer) we know he has met his next victim because Masuru Baba's script provides unavoidable clues in dialogue and exposition that Iwao is plotting as much,  but Imamura's camera is doing the exact opposite.  There is no distinct close up of either predator Iwao or his prey, no foreshadowing cue in the music (in fact no music at all),  but we know,  and Imamura knows we know.  He cuts away to a completely different scene that doesn't involve Iwao at all,  and when we return Iwao is shopping.  We note that he's picked up groceries,  and then almost as an afterthought stops by a hardware store and picks up a hammer and then nails.  Imamura tarries here a bit,  he wants us to foreshadow,  " He's going to kill the lawyer...Here it comes".  When we arrive at the scene of  where we are sure a future crime will take place-  in a haunting reveal the crime has already taken place and the lawyer is already dead.  The nails and the hammer are so Iwao can shut the now-loose door of an armoire he's stuffed him in.  When it is clear what has happened we are left to wrestle with our own morbid desire and disappointment.  The combination of Ogatas coldly detached,  oddly warm performance,  the dark sense of humor depicted in Iwaos nonchalant tries at holding the door shut,  and Imamura's matter of fact way of shooting it ( a medium shot of Iwaos unbothered sealing of the armoire) makes for one of the most chilling scenes I've seen.

It also speaks to where I think the weight of Imamura's film lies.  Imamura's film  I think understands sociopathy more than other filmmaker on the subject besides Harron in " American Psycho" (Whom I think is not given enough credit for a finely crafted film about veneers,  and male sociopathy)  and more importantly it understands the audiences relationship with the behavior.  The film jumps out to an ominous opening, a setup to what seems to be an evenly paced deep exploration into the mind of a killer with the usual flourishes we're used to of grisly reenactments,  and high concept dialogue,  but then sets about taking its time to wander and meander around the edges of Iwaos chaotic life,  focused intently on some minutae flushed against the backdrop of flashbacks,  time stamps,  and abrupt restrained violence.   It dangles clues to some greater understanding, but Imamura is having none of it.  His film won't allow you to explain it away with a take on religion,  or greater society as a whole (though the film is clearly not a fan of the former) to blame mental illness,  or most importantly to escape the strange connection between the murderer and our own macabre voyeurism.  It baits us into a trap created by our own curiosity and each time switches garish ostentation for frigid realism.  As as the case with the murder of a woman with whom Iwao had seemingly grown close to.  Once again we know this is coming at some point, but when it arrives its so abrupt we have no time to even be shocked by it.   It's chaotic,  and impulsive, and it does not give you time to react or even more to the point to fake a reaction tying us to Ken Ogata's  Iwao as he tries to impersonate feelings near the end of the scene…

In many films of the genre we deny ur own craven desire for the very violence we claim to condemn. We secretly hope for, we await, we ponder where it might end for a high. Imamura's film is misguides us to a purpose.  It gives us the most insight into its disaffected killer by refusing to dress up what we are watching,  or why we are watching it.  It's an uncontaminated look at a mutual- though obviously not for the same reasons - disconnect that occupies much of the same tonal space as Mary Harron's American Psycho.  Both astute absurdist observations on the masks we wear. Calling bullshit on society's obsession with cultural piety,  and the look of things, the aesthetics, with an offbeat senses of humor.  One difference being Imamura's film is hyperrealism,  Harron's satire.  Vengeance is mine accomplished exactly what I thought it would,  just without the benefit of the heavy handed guided tour I've gotten used to for this type of film.  Haunting in its plainness, it's execution,  and the near flawlessness of its actors.  Affecting,  mostly because its so unaffected with itself.  The movie poses no questions,  gives us no answers, as affirmed in the final scene featuring Ogata, and Rentarō Mikuni (himself outstanding as Shizuo Enokizu Iwao's father)  yet another of Imamura's setups for some form of philosophical offering,  that instead turns into the equivalent of one of my favorite lines in Sam Mendes film  "The Road to Perdition"    When Daniel Craig's character is asked by Tom Hanks youngest son  why he's always smiling and Craig's character replies....

Vengeance is mines is a straightforward unornamented look at the detachment of a killer, taking his vengeance on a society he feels no kinship with,  and a director  willing to confront the absurdity of it all,  and the audiences own special brand of detachment, morbid curiosity and desensitization. A cinematic cousin of Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” that left me ruined, confused,  and astounded by its craftsmanship.  A masterpiece study in the absurd.

If Beale Street Could Talk: Barry Loves Us.

If Beale Street Could Talk :

Barry loves us.

Some time ago, while pondering our significant existence in this desolate wilderness of anger and violence called America, a large congregation of black people all at once shouted from our hearts “We are not a monolith” from beneath the shadow of the mountain of white supremacy.. or so the bard says. Sometimes I think of great political cinema in this way. Of course all cinema is political in some manner of shape or form, but I mean here that kind of cinema that intends with the same single mindedness and will one might see in a boxing ring, and with the same sort of craft, skill, beauty and violence. Black people are not a monolith, and try as Hollywood may, neither is our cinema. As the breadth, impact, frequency, and quantity of black creators and artist in front of and behind the camera expands black cinema to the top of, and into the mainstream conscious of American cinema , I believe we are witnessing maybe the most important wave in black cinema to date and Barry Jenkins is one of the people at the forefront of that. But my introduction is actually a digression. I’m not here to talk about the new wave of black auteurs set to engulf hollywood in black sensibilities and expression through the lens of film. Im here to talk about one film, one movie from this one director: Barry Jenkins…”If Beale Street Could Talk”.

It took me a bit to settle into what Beale street was, or rather what it was going to say to me. At first I must admit it felt rather stiltish. The one real threat that looms from Jenkins slow patient style as a director. The opening scene felt rather like a play, the rhythm felt much the same, the acting (save for Regina King) felt slightly off key. This kind of thing is something I’ve come to expect from Spike Lee. Spike and his chaotic, spastic, improvisational cinematic jazz, is always good for a erratic bridge or an off key intro. But judging from Moonlight , so affected by Moonlight, admittedly biased by Moonlight, I came in expecting every note to be properly placed, every section to feel its relation to the other.. I expected a symphony. In truth I feel I got both, I just had to settle into the experience, and more importantly I got a beautiful encapsulation of the black experience, one that made me feel as though I were on the inside of a snow globe of our past , present, and future in this country as it fell around my head, in my hands, and on my tongue.

If Spike Lee is black anger and movement in image, then Barry Jenkins is longing and stillness. Or better still if a Spike Lee image says it all, then a Barry Jenkins image leaves a lot unsaid. Jenkins seems to be always be reaching for something larger, something more nebulous. It’s quiet but whats behind it is loud. With Jenkins, thus far into his career, its never obvious what exactly he wants you to know, but you almost always feel it. Start with something as basic as costuming, where Barry wants to be true to the era, but the costuming feels less clear, and subsequently it feels like it could be any number of eras, the 50’s, 60’s 80’s, it could even pass for now. He doesn’t seem to want you to get bogged down in time.

Its interesting, and indicative of the difference in style that both Black KKKlansman an If Beale Street Could Talk are set in the same era (The 70’s) and yet one is more assertive about which era its set in and the other (If Beale Street) is much less so.

This is a contrast not a competition. A declaration of the difference in style I see between two American artist speaking our universal language in different dialects, and through the lens of different emotions. Jenkins imagery, his language is minimalist, but the emotion behind them is strong, deep like a baritone, and it shakes the cobwebs and dust from feelings you may have forgotten about during your own experience here in America. There was a scene involving Tish (Kiki Layne) explaining her experience working behind the fragrance counter of a department store that you could silence without the dialogue and still come away with exactly what is being expressed in the dialogue. Layne gives a smile so layered, that as Jenkins makes the brilliant decision to move to an extreme close up I felt as though I passed through time experiencing the hurt, the restraint, the repression of years of the policing of black emotion. I instantly recalled my co-worker at a hotel I worked at being told she didn’t smile enough and that she had a “clear attitude” towards the guest, when all I saw her do is smile and try harder than she needed to, to meet the demands of this white couple who were all but too eager to project their misery unto my co-worker’s well manicured blank canvas and still her blackness offended their sensibilities. Like a javelin into the dragon scale of their private hurt. If they weren’t smiling why should she?

Watching Beale street I felt our collective sorrow, I felt our long suffering , but I also felt our ingenuity, our collective hopes and dreams, and our determination. I felt it in the montage depicting two black fathers as they stole from their place of work to provide a legal defense for a child so damned by society it may all be for nought anyway. In the longing, compassionate eyes of Regina King in an alley somewhere in Puerto Rico pleading for a stay of execution to a woman herself drowning somewhere in the middle of where the sea of white supremacy meets the river of rape culture and anti blackness. I saw it the beauty and the dignity of black style, and of black art that exists in our refusal to look down even as we are down. In our insistence on creating something out of nothing as was the case with Fonny’s (Stephen James) art. Barry Jenkins frames our community, and in doing so implies our isolation, our borders. He repeatedly uses close ups, drowning out the noise of the background. He reads us poetry from our dearest friends like Baldwin in our living room, reminding us of the best, and the worst of our collective self, of pain, and of joy. He sits us down and turns on any variation of jazz and classical music, and he paints us in colors so vivid we forget just how dark it is in this cramped space of dictated blackness. Watching If Beale Street could talk was the warmest of experiences, it was escapism in its highest form. Not thenmomd that acts as a soft or hard lie to get your mind off your troubles. The kind that takes you somewhere else firmly IN your reality but feels like a place only you have found, where everything just stops and for a moment its just us. Leaving by telling us we were never really here, never really just this, or that. We were always more, and so we always made the most out our experiences, and it is very intimate, and it feels like its just us, and when it ends, sad as it ends, it feels like love, it feels like care, even as it tells it to us straight and true, and I sat with this as the screen blackened and I sat there in its blackness welling up with alll the left over emotion this movie provides and as it ended I thought “Barry loves us” as most great black directors do, but it’s such a kind reverent love its something so different from what we have experienced to date its clearly his. Yeah Barry Loves Us.

YOU....It's Complicated.

If I were to describe my feelings while watching Lifetime’s “YOU”, (now on Netflix) I would say it's complicated.  Which I think would be fitting as a description for the narrative of this show,  as well as a description of the show as a whole.  Not since my days of watching soap operas have so many feelings and emotions been stirred up about characters, plot lines, and cliffhangers. Rightfully so, the show about an imbalanced,  murderous stalker,  who believes he's found the love of his life, slowly unravels over its episodes - truths about our main character, the woman at the center of his current affection, (Beck, as played by Elizabeth Lail) and the people in her life, in much of the same way as a soap opera. Using many of the same devices, just with additional depth.   Introducing us - quite cleverly - to a world where nothing is as it seems.  Complexity wrapped in aesthetic pleasure is one of the show's strong suits. If there's a weak point or week points to this show, it's in its favoring of a good reveal to great storytelling and in that very complexity of storytelling.  Much of which lies within our antagonist Penn Badgley because you are walking a fine line creating a character who is attractive, sexy, charming, intelligent and caring while at the same time being completely manipulative, violent and dangerous.  I personally consider walking the fine line between portraying evil and danger as glaringly obvious, and full of distinctive qualities we associate with our own societal phobias and able-ism - and glorifying it - one of the most difficult tight rope walks in narrative. Much of that difficulty lies in the sway charm and attractiveness holds over most of us in society. I for one can ignore an awful lot when there is a pretty face attached to it, if that face is also backed by charm and magnetism well then it’s very hard to be objective about what may be right in front of my face. In a glass half full, glass half empty dichotomy, attractive qualities have the ability to swing the pendulum towards half full on a regular basis so that whatever rain may appear on the horizon is sure to have a rainbow. Joe is the epitome of this, and when “YOU” is at its best and its worst, it’s when Joe is in peak form. Joe like any good devil , does not just deal in lies, and he is not simply a liar, or an abuser, or an stalker and a creep. The Devil does not make up your wants and needs and give them to you, although that can also be so, he takes advantage of your real ones. He doesn’t come to you pitchfork in hand, teeth bared, tail sweeping at the floor, he comes bearing gifts, and words of encouragement , stroking at your ego. Joe’s affection for Beck in my mind is a product of his narcissism which allows him to conflate obsession with love, his desire to have a human pet, with Beck’s need of him - but he accurately assesses Beck’s issues, and he is good at playing the role of caretaker. This is a fine line, but I think indicative of a harsh reality of human interaction. That being that being a monster is firmly within the spectrum of humanity. YOU’s depiction of Joe mostly does this astonishingly well.

  The show muddy’s the line even further by making Beck such an unsympathetic character. Beck is messy, she is needy, narcissistic herself and can gaslight with the best of them. Which leads to another another harsh reality…not everybody that dies or is murdered is sympathetic as a person. I recall multiple occasions upon which while watching some true crime television show like “Dateline mysteries,” conversations in my family assessing whether or not the victims were truly an “angel” in real life, because it was so oft- said. A morbid fascination that soon led me to wonder why it was necessary to say. Are our views of right and wrong so fragile that merely hearing that a person was a dick in life makes them less sympathetic as a victim of such heinous crimes? If our judicial system is any indication the answer is yes. This I believe is somewhere along the spectrum of platitudes like “Don't speak ill of the dead” except with the misplaced concern in reverse. One overly concerned with the victim in life, the other usually overly concerned with murderers and abusers in death. But here's the tea, sometimes complete assholes are murdered too, sometimes minutes before someone is cut from the fabric of existence, they are mid stroke into being an unconscionable idiot, or mean, or cruel. It's sympathetic that they died because no one deserves to die because they're an asshole, or because they're not a nice person, or because they are messy as fuck.  But that does not mean that they were nice or good or angelic while they were alive.  Beck shouldn't have to be a perfect girl, for us to sympathize with her over a petty, self congratulating murderer, but here we are.

The point for me when the show (Im guessing the book also) crosses the line is when it made narrative punch decisions like having Beck’s friend Peach Salinger (yes.. Peach Salinger) be a stalker in her own right. It’s not necessary. Never mind that both Peach Salinger and subsequently Shay Mitchell’s performance as Peach is one of the best parts of the show, but narratively it teeters a complex, but fun drama too much towards fun, and in the doing puts too many psycho’s in Beck’s kitchen, while ethically softening the blow of Joe’s toxicity, narratively backing his claim as protector. This when the story would have been better served by having Peach be manipulative, and cruel, but not wiling to kill, or a obsessive, making Joe’s claims just what they would be in most any real life case, exaggerated proclamations meant to bolster his own idea of self, as well a his role in Beck’s life.

Since the advent of social media, that particular mode of human interaction has played an increasingly large role in our dating and friendship circles for better and for worse.  The ways that YOU connects them at all these interesting intersections without taking away from the narrative, in effect, adding punch to the narrative is astounding.  It’s ability to capture, but not preach the fragility of friendship as contextualized in the modern age is magnificent. To acutely arrive where social media leaves us all feeling less than is handled masterfully in the arc of Peach Salinger. Peach acting as an avatar, quietly providing us with a twinge of jealousy for our friends successes, and a pinch of happiness in their failures. Beck’s friend Annika as the more obvious commentary on the nature of the surrogate self that we project into society through the avatars we use in social media, represented in her vile racism uncovered through the very same medium she used to disguise it. And finally the ways that social media can help us find connection or make us targets, or allow us to target others in ways previously not available. It’s ability to help us find the truth or make it even all the more illusive. The distorted reality of Peach Salinger, the covert racism of Annika - which Joe uses to manipulate Beck, the ways in which social media drove Joe crazy about Beck, but also allowed Beck to gaslight Joe. The ways in which it enables Joe and to isolate Beck, (typical of behavior for abusers) and in which Peach uses it to manipulate just about all of her friends. The show did this in a myriad of ways , both subversively and true to form.

“YOU” is a very complicated show about male toxicity, that doesn’t make it simple for the anyone else. It complicates its relationships, and leaves just about everyone from Beck to even a young abused boy as some version of complicit in its devilry. Just about everyone is a mess, and just about everyone is harboring ugly secrets, that they are willing to harm others to hide. If there is any person on this show remotely innocent, it is Karen, the only person in a non toxic relationship, being exactly who she is, confident in who she is with a keen moral compass. Outside of her, just about everybody in the show is at one time or another somewhere on the spectrum of messy to evil.  Joe being at the very top of the list, on the very far wrong side of the spectrum.  Overall, I admire “YOU” for being a show, willing to dive and tap into these grey areas of relationships and the complications involved. Brilliant because it dares to take the risk of walking some very fine lines to point a mirror in the audiences direction. To make us look at our own obsession with aesthetics. With what things look like rather than what they are. I didn't always agree with the narrative choices, and I'm still not sure about making a killer THAT charming, but do think its too easy to lay all the blame at the feat of the narrative for our own willingness to overlook Joe’s murderous machinations because he’s good looking charming, and like a dead clock every once in awhile lands on the right thing to do. I think the show is convenient scapegoat for our own falibility in the value we place around these aesthetics which is more responsible than anything for social media’s own peculiar but understandable reaction to Joe as a sympathetic character. I prefer making a killer charming, to the overdone trope of the killer who everyone recognizes is a killer, because that's not the way it works in real life either.  There are very few predators in this world that function by letting everyone know that they are predator. In the animal kingdom, a great deal of them have various and very distinct ways of fooling their prey or placing them in a state of ease so that they are unprepared for the attack.  With human interaction and all of the complex variables that come with it, I think it's important in any narrative medium, whether it be TV, literature, or film to discuss these topics and these interactions with exactly the amount of complication that is involved with their reality in as much as any of those mediums can. With “YOU”, I think we have as excellent a show as can be in laying bare those lines (considering that it's also meant to be entertaining) and that is always going to dirty or muddy the water just a little bit. What you does so well, so brilliantly is make clear to us that when it comes to finding the right one,  or avoiding the wrong ones...in general …it's complicated.  

And Scene : The Social Network's Rousing Rowing Scene.

David Fincher’s The Social Network is one of my two or three favorite films of the past 20 years. Up there with other favorites like “A Separation”, “There Will Be Blood”, and “12 Years a Slave”. And while it is actually not my favorite Fincher film (that would be Seven) it is in my opinion his best work, and his finest achievement to date. In concert with Sorkin’s crackling script, the film feels, moves, sounds like youth, and takes a decidedly satirical approach to the biopic that makes the tedium of explaining away the wikipedia-like details of how Facebook was formed feel less cumbersome, and well…boring. There are a lot of reasons to love this film, from its classic one line Sorkin zingers to its spot on casting, to its fantastic cinematography, but my favorite part of the film, the thing I love most in one of the films I love most is the Henley Royal Regatta rowing scene. …

Crew

The Henley scene is just supremely pleasing to the senses. It is superbly scored by Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross, wonderfully shot, and the editing is masterful. The scene starts out with a title card to explain to us where we are at. Now I don’t know much about cameras, scope, or depth of field, but I do note here that the scale, and depth makes it appear as though this was a miniature. It reminds me of the opening of Mr Rogers in reverse. The same look in as far as scale, but the sharpening of objects in the foreground, the blurring of those in back instead of vice versa.

Rather than using close up to give you the truest sense of the tradition, opulence, and pomp on display here, Fincher scales it back , and since many of these objects appear as toys it feels fitting. Working in league with the rest of the tonal sensibilities of the film. That these events, these things, and to some extent these people aren’t necessarily real, that they are invented, as is their value. Aesthetic-wise it’s just beautiful. The water appears especially calm to the eye, the surrounding greenery especially green, and in both this world seems vast as compared to the tighter shots of the city where Fincher rarely uses shots with this far a field of depth. It is somewhat off-putting , but you want to be here.

After a few more establishing shots, comes the event itself. As Fincher begins to close in on our Rowers, Ross, and Reznor’s rendition of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Great Mountain King” begins to pick up speed. As it does, (thanks to editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter) so to do our rowers. It’s now becoming a dance. Movement , composition, and sound, working together to place us the audience into the mood of the event, to tell us a story. Take a look at how all three combine to signal how much this means to not only the participants but the spectators. In a span of two minutes Fincher and company fully encapsulate one of the most basic conflicts in sport..The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat -better than most two hour films on the subject. All with what I believe is a dash of satire. Keep in mind what I said about the opening shots, and the fact that both the chosen music, Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, and the play it was written for - Ibsens’s “Peter Gynt” contain elements of both satire and irony.

This shot of a man pointing at the team he’s rooting for and emphatically cheering them on..

A “Coxswain” coordinating the power and rhythm rather vehemently

One team celebrates their win…

The other laments their loss

There is an energy to these images, to the editing, to the manner in which he presents them . The oars, and the unheard grunts, the strokes don’t exactly move in exact time with the song, but they do compliment it. Each stroke seeming to put an exclamation point on each beat in the music. We saw a technique similar to this (although much more exact) in last year’s “Baby Driver”. Each image presents a small story, and when spliced together an even richer and fuller story. Without sound the images invoke sounds like the oars interrupting the calm of the water, and the grunts coming forth from the men. They invoke feelings without dialogue, admiration and even lust without exploitation, and again together they reveal a greater story.

This is sexy and it is meant to be.

Both David Fincher and Michael Bay are directors with backgrounds in music videos. Where sex sells, and quick cuts, and a rapid procession of images that contain a certain amount of verve and energy are almost prerequisite. Both bring a lot of that approach into their work as filmmakers, both are an example of style as substance, only Fincher executes it on a whole nother level. I'm bring the background up because part of the reason Fincher’s films, as well as this particular scene, appeal to me is precisely because it incorporates the energy of a music video. In fact, I would argue that these two minutes of the film function almost exactly like a music video. A treatment set to a particular piece of music, to tell a story in association with the essence of the song . It's also effective in energetically moving the story while informing the audience of the world the Winklevoss twins inhabit, what’s important to them, and subsequently the way in which Zuckerberg views the twins. Since the story is his, and in some sense narrated or seen from his point-of-view we’re made to see the twins as a bit dumb, and their lives as a bit pompous, and so this resoundingly epic-sounding piece of music played to in unison with such a self serious event that seems of little importance as a juxtaposition to Zuckerberg in the city “handling business” is an ingenious, and frankly rather cool way of giving us Zuckerberg's point of view while continuing to inform us of what kind of man he is. So this is not just style, this is a style that provides us the substance of clues as to the narrative. As to what it is Zuckerberg has to say as Fincher and Sorkin interpret it. Ambition, class, youth, power, loss, stakes, and sex. Some of the most important themes in this movie are all here in these entertaining, and electrifying two minutes of sound and image and I love it.

ROMA is a labour of love, not political treatise, and it's better not worse for it.

Not too long ago in a galaxy pretty much right here, (it was definitely this galaxy) I was an avid Tyler Perry hater. Mere mention of Tyler Perry's name around me, and my joints would stiffen. my bowels would loosen,  and my pupils would roll counter clockwise in opposing directions from each other.  As a self proclaimed cinephile blackbelt Z level.. (Okay, Okay! get off my back it was a brown belt, and I made up the last part) As a self proclaimed cinephile, having been introduced to cinematic history, and knowing through my own experience of how many times black people throughout cinema had been reduced to certain kinds of tropes all  too easily recognizable in certain attributes of Perry’s plays, I found Perry's films to be poorly directed, shot at best like a journeyman, full of platitudes, and more specifically, angled towards making white people laugh.  I know now that the latter half of that criticism is unfair. While I still feel Perry is a particularly bad director, (and feel in the future if he continues making films he should leave helming over to someone more technically gifted) upon interrogation, my feelings on Perry's movies we're indebted to my feelings towards white people. My fears more specifically.  Being a member of an oppressed class can tend to put an extra body, an extra voice inside your head. It’s a phenomenon particular to those of us who live under the hegemony of any dominant structure, class, or normative ideology. In this case the standardization of whiteness, makes everything else feel abnormal, this has the effect of causing one to alternate between voices, which in turn leads to genuine questioning as to which voice is actually your own as an artist, and as the consumer of said art . This double-mindedness spoken of before by DuBois, and Baldwin, and hooks, I especially feel in certain places, forums, or mediums. I could sit in a room surrounded by mostly white people , with another black person being in the room, and portions of my mind automatically place one of them inside my head as a silent narrator, nudging and telling me which words of mine, or of the other person in the room might work as forms of resistance, or forms of compliance. Informing my decisions as to whether this other black person is being acknowledged as speaking for me simply by being black, and whether or not I agree with the messaging, and anywhere in between that spectrum. The point being while watching Tyler Perry movies, I frequently criticized his films based solely on my fears of what it was that Perry was saying or who it was that Tyler Perry was representing, or who it was these movies were for, and how those representations played to white people, more than whether they were or were not a true representation of the people that Tyler Perry wanted to represent, and whether or not this was actually Tyler’s voice, his intent, never mind whether or not they were actually entertaining. I realized the fallacy of insisting that the way in which Tyler Perry sees black folk was inherently wrong without examining or even asking first, if it is possible that the opinion of black folk like my VERY OWN FAMILY (who enjoyed his films) was valid, or giving it credence. It was , is the very definition of condescension, as well as an erasure of those very black folk, and of the range and dimension of representation of black folk. It seems we might be arriving at yet another somewhat binary point in cinematic criticism, where due to a system, and mode of delivery which seems to impede upon our artistic sensibilities about the art form, we are insisting upon a very narrow way of filmmaking. I say “yet another” because this was the same kind of thought process that I believe brought about auteur theory, which I believe got a lot right and quite a lot wrong about filmmaking. After all any insistence of one voice in a process which is inherently collaborative is in and of itself a problematic pronouncement for various reasons, which is not to say that it is all wrong either. Insistence upon a very specific political vein in filmmaking as inherent to the films value or excellence is equally problematic. My point here is film and storytelling is rarely a-political, but it is also not merely political.  This is the crux of my argument against Richard Brody, and a few others who have written articles with a very particular point of emphasis in their critique of Alfonso Caurón's “Roma.” 

If there is anything I want to bring to my criticism, it is the sensibility of the artist, and a humility about what it is I do. Most of these critiques, actually all of these critiques (Brody being the most well known) seem to center around the idea of what Caurón owes the audience, but nothing of what the audience owes Caurón. What I believe the audience which of course includes us critics owes the creator or the artist is the willingness to decipher as truthfully and authentically as possible, what it is the creator intends to do, and from there decipher how well they did that, and to some extent determine in our opinion whether or not that intent is worthy of praise. I ask myself as much as is possible to discern, what is it Caurón’s film intends to do? I say that Cauron’s film is the cinematic version of a love letter, a poetic birthday card, or one of those social media dedications we so often see on our feeds. I do not mean this as a form of disparagement, but of appreciation for what it means to both Caurón, and to the subject of his love in his token of appreciation. In the Bible, when Paul would write letters to the various churches, these letters usually featured some sort of authorial intent. Some of them about love, some of them about the more technical aspects of what it means to be a church member. No one looked at the beauty that lies within these letters, and then questioned why Paul isn't, including definitive and specific strokes interrogating the social political strife that was going during the time. That is because understanding the intent of or motive behind something is critical to properly assessing its value. The film is a dedication, a letter , its impact meant to reside firmly in the romantic and the sentimental not in the realist examination of class struggle analysis. The cranky dismissal of the impact of this film reads to me like one of those rants about how those social media dedications are really about the person posting them, and not about subject of them. The recognition of the polished nature of the storytelling, only lends credence to what it supposed to be. It is Caurón using his craft, his skill, to tell his beloved how much she meant to him. It’s a cinematic scrapbook of his memories, collected and painted with love and no one wants to hear the guy in the back grumbling about how it didn’t have all the parts where she, and the whole of Mexico suffered to raise his little bratty ass in his dedication to her, or how it didn’t include any in depth examination of her interiority.

Portions of this critique and many of the critiques beyond Roma also seem to have a particular kind of criticism that seem to run clearly within the spectrum of that dubious claim that style, in an of itself lacks substance.  As i've said many times, style is substance within and of itself. Miranda from the devil wears Prada when she gives that a very famous line about how clothing comes to be.

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I say that the work in the expression that goes into declaring a sort of authorial intent is an art.  Anything, or anyone from within the realm of fashion would tell you that there is a difference between fashion and style, style being at the higher end of that spectrum, because it usually represents or says something about the author themselves.  Only in cinema and only of late, because in most of the early works of film style was very important, and many time these films style - be it expressionism or cubism were part and parcel to the substance of the story.  I take deep exception to any idea that things that speak to the aesthetic of something, or aesthetically of something mean less, when that could be very much so part of the authorial intent, or of what makes something powerful, of what allows something to speak to us.  For instance, what Mr. Brody, again writing for the New Yorker bemoans in Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” was a scene of magnificent poetry for me for all the reasons he found it dismissive…

““Brady’s knowledge of horses is remarkable; Zhao shows him putting his knowledge into action, and does so in scenes that are largely tightened, truncated, edited down to illustrative sidebars, and their brevity is governed by their silence. Brady offers a few calming, encouraging, or exhorting words to the horses as he trains them, but Zhao never gives him—never gives Jandreau—the cinematic space to say what he’s perceiving, planning, seeing, and doing. In the first display of his prowess as a horse trainer, Apollo’s owner asks Brady how he learned to do it. Brady credits his mother and father with teaching him everything he knows, then adds, “I’ve learned a lot looking down between those ears.” And that’s it—not another word, in the whole film, about his understanding of the ways of horses or the specifics of what he’s doing—why he slaps the horse’s flanks with the reins, why he gives a horse a gun to sniff, why he pushes a horse one way and then another. For that matter, when Brady teaches a friend to ride competitively (another scene with an intriguing documentary center), Zhao doesn’t bother to hear from Brady about the skills that he’s imparting, about his underlying understanding of what’s involved in riding a bucking bronco.””

It is because the scene spoke to me without words without these technical aspects, that I could appreciate it more. Too many times that's done in my opinion so that you can impress upon me the knowledge that you have of this particular field, when, most of the time I'm gonna dismiss that information anyway, to get to the heart of what I need to know about this character, about this emotion, and about the conjoining of both. You can throw all the Wall Street and F-14 Tomcat fighter jet lingo at me while watching ‘Top Gun” or ”Wall street,” but I will remember next to none of that, and none of it will matter anywhere near as much to me as some of the striking imagery, or the emotion behind some of the silence. Unless we are viewing an almost a completely different film with a completely different mission, we don't need to know what the political circumstances surrounding Cleo's abortion are, in fact I’m sure including them in this case ends one of two ways ; as a distraction, or as incomplete and underwhelming.

Just because we do not see proper representation in its fullness within the industry, it does not then become the job of individual directors to tell stories they are incapable or insufficiently prepared to tell.  I've seen a couple of cases recently this year with this sort of insistence that is very incomplete to me. This jamming of political ideologies into films or more importantly into filmmakers has the potential, ( and I do mean potential, this is not anywhere near something guaranteed to happen) to stifle the creative process, decrease variety, and make performers out of directors. I am one of the few people who disagreed with the idea that the character “Hattie” the african american slave from the book and the original film should have been placed in Sofia Coppola's remake of “The Beguiled” Ira Madison also wrote an outstanding piece saying much of the the same for the same reasons here. There is nothing in Coppola’s repertoire that said that she had the range to discuss that kind of story in any way that would have not ended in a disaster, so it was best to do exactly what she did. Never mind that the beguiled is not about the antebellum south anymore than Marie Antoinette is about the French Revolution. It's a story that chooses to sharpen its focus into the micro rather than the macro, telling a very specific story about women, and about power.  Insisting these movies dive from their own specific focus to extend outside of it to magnify what amounts to almost an entirely different movie , is I think the wrong message to send to future filmmakers and to current ones. It was not Tyler Perry's fault, nor his cross to bear that the industry around him refused to give proper representation to the diaspora of the black experience (something they are just now doing with people like Barry Jenkins, Ava Duvernay, Dee Rees, F. Gary Gray, and Ryan Coogler on the scene). I truly believe that had they been released today , Tyler Perry's films would have fit quite nicely into this current year, providing nice juxtaposition,  and a healthy depiction of the various forms of black families, of black love , of the black experience in America.  Every bit as important to a well rounded black cinema experience as is the work of Barry Jenkins.  I say this to say that the same thing goes for Alfonso Caurón.  Like Perry, Caurón owes us no debt to tell a story in a way that he did not see it. I think its incumbent upon the critic in order to be true to his /her/their duty to the art and to their own audiences to ask them to be realistic as to whether the problem their having is a problem of the film or one of the industry. In this case I think there is ample evidence that A. we barely have stories about Mexico at all, B. That when we do these stories are mostly tales of Mexico’s crime and corruption problems even when well intentioned. C. That maybe due to all of that, even a well intentioned, incomplete, but loving, romanticized, depiction of a working class maid, wrapped in moving images of emotional authenticity from memory might be a welcome sight. Saving the criticism of whether or not we have enough films that depict the struggle of the working class as faithfully as they do honorably for the various studios that have not green-lit or highlighted the work of the authors best fit to tell those stories. An argument made spectacularly here.

Director Sofia Copola opted out of telling a story she knew she was not prepared to tell, and instead chose to make us aware of the effect of the loss of social and financial currency gained in slavery.

There is a story of what middle class workers have gone through all around this world, and especially in places like Mexico to be told, and it most assuredly need to be told and with as much aplum, and consistency as is these kind of stories, but it shouldn't be told by somebody who clearly doesn't have the range to tell that story. It's not Caurón’s responsibility to tell that story. It's upon the industry to allow for other people who want to tell those stories and are frankly more equipped to tell those stories, who have lived that experience that it may be conveyed responsibly. The artist’s responsibility to me will always lean further toward the the personal, the political can be found in that expression, and politics can indeed be personal, and if the personal can be used as an aesthetic as it is charged in Brody’s essay than it is still worthy of pursuit as aesthetic is not inherently without its own value. So, then what we must be asking seeing as though even the lack of politics is a politic in and of itself, is to discern the source of this lack of politic. It is clear that some would suggest the source comes from a place of dishonesty, an attempt to avoid the more supposedly honest socio political constraints his maid lived under to assuage his own conscious. Cinematically purging himself of guilt by telling this more favorable story of the long suffering but stoic and noble servant . It’s a fair argument, especially outside the context of the art itself. We know there is a well documented tendency by those anywhere near the proximity of power to alleviate themselves of guilt from their role (be it covert or overt) in the systemic oppression of others. by offering such platitudes as a reckoning. It would be disingenuous I think to refute that this played some role in Caurón’s production here, and yet I argue that the source is still honesty. To start, that Caurón’s film is honestly personal. It is not a film that seems to desire to want to engage in social commentary and then haphazardly excuse itself from the important particulars. Rather it affirms itself not from a subjective standpoint, but objectively as more honest to tell the story you do know, rather than to trying to tell the one you don’t by neither experience, memory, or identity. When one critiques movies like Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit”, for reasons very similar to the argument made about Roma even though Bigelow’s approach is much closer to what it is Brody is asking of Caurón, it seems to me to obscure the obvious…

Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit” was roundly criticized for its erasure of black women, and fetishization of black pain.

Poverty, blackness, browness, queerness, womanhood, they are not altogether impossible to understand by those outside of it , but they are best understood from either a first person point-of-view or from a firm and level playing field. Demanding faithful and loyal authenticity is somewhat ridiculous to ask from a man who not only was a child during the time, but so firmly detached from her experience as a woman, as a brown woman, as a member of the working class, that even a genuine attempt to go research the details of Cleo/Libo’s life, jumble them all together, and then try to tell the story that includes the kind of minutiae of not only her experience but that of Mexico’s at the time would I guarantee come off as ham fisted. As an African American I've seen this paternalized brand of filmmaking before, and on a regular basis, most recently in The Farrelly Brother’s Th Greens Book, and Martin Mcdonagh’s “The Three Billboards. When well-intentioned well-to-do white people try to tell stories about black pain or the black experience, or anyone outside of their well curated bubble it rarely works out well. It's not to say that it can not work - again, there are no absolutes here, but that there are far more Amistad’s, than there are “Color Purple’s”, more “Glory”’s than “A Soldier's Story”. Usually the difference between those films is again authorial intent, and proximity to experience, because the true author of those movies, (the ones that work) are those who have lived the experience, in those cases Alice Walker (The Color Purple), and Charles Fuller (A Soldier’s Play”/Story). The experience can then be shuttered through the lens of somebody who then may somewhat understand that experience (as a jewish american for example) so that it's not completely diluted, but the original parts of that experience are filtered through the mind of somebody that is directly related to that experience.

Though Directed by white men of Jewish decent both “The Color Purple” and “A Soldier’s Story” maintained their integrity because of their authors direct proximity to the identity or experience.

The honesty in Roma lies in that I think it clearly understands what it is, that it is a film about memory, incomplete and filtered as such. It is a labour of love, and I believe sincere appreciation, based on an understanding that he cannot possibly have understood her experience but he nonetheless loves her for it. Appreciation is never all-encompassing, it is always respectfully distant, with the understanding that the craft, experience, identity, etc is foreign to the other. The idea here should be to provide a counter balance so that we are not only getting appreciation, but interrogation, and honesty in the macro of the industry, and on a case by case basis with the individual depending upon a number of variables. Anything else much like the accusations lobbed against Caurón, reeks of taking away agency, and honesty from those who you claim to want to empower by speaking for them, and erasing the fullness of their lives.

Creed II : Exhilarating, but dangerous.

Boxing was the sport I was introduced to the earliest in my life. it's probably the earliest memory I have of any sport. My father put gloves on me and my brother at a very early age, and to this day one of my favorite pastimes is sitting with him and my little brother, watching the fights.  Boxing is one of the last remaining bastions of some of the worst aspects of masculinity, but also it is representative of some of the best. I disagree with those who would merely reduce and dismiss it as a gross, bloodletting, savage event for the entertainment of the masses. but I also understand why they would feel that way. There is though, a science to boxing, there is an art. The training, the honing, sculpting of the body to turn it into an instrument capable of taking damage and inflicting it. An instrument designed to act when it needs to act,  to react when he/she needs it to react. Watching these two men sculpt themselves in order to eventually sculpt each other, interacting with each other in a dance with each other, becoming something wholly new in and of itself is truly art to me. As Bruce Lee once remarked it is a form of expression through the body, and its earliest stages, at its best the indelible Rocky franchises capture the best principles of the sport, of sport itself. Trail and error, baptism through fire, finding, testing, reaching, and then surpassing your limits. What it means to be these modern day gladiators, that put their bodies on the line for the sake of our entertainment. The original Rocky interrogated that place against the backdrop of a forlorn city and the people from within the city who have been forgotten, trying to make a name for themselves. From that point on though the iconic boxer and the franchise began the slow non linear path to losing its way. Sometimes this led to incredulously entertaining results (Rocky 4), sometimes to pure disaster (Rocky 5) and everywhere in-between.

Once it was announced that Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, and Sylvester Stallone would come together to tel the story of Apollo Creed's son Adonis, I was both intrigued and leery. The first Creed was both what I expected ( an uninteresting re-hash of tired boxing tropes) and some things I didn’t (some interesting exploration of some of those same boxing tropes). The second installment in the franchise without Coogler’s deft touch (Director Steven Caple Jr, takes the helm) turns into a two hour version of a music video. Mind you it’s one of the good ones, but much like a video it delivers its punches in shorthand. Much like Floyd Mayweather, there is very little power behind these cinematic punches, but they come fast and sharp. Mostly at this point the Creed franchise is a solid one, but a missed opportunity. A missed opportunity to discuss the current state of boxing, to subvert the toxic masculinity within the sport, to create an interesting character study of a boxer in the new era trying to navigate his way through the trauma of loss. Interestingly enough, one of those aforementioned punches engages in some of this, but it’s not our titular hero and his world weary trainer (himself formerly our titular hero) but rather his sworn enemy and his progeny Ivan and Viktor Drago.

The under written, but best storyline in this movie is not that of Adonis Creed which sets up (a lesson that Creed will never learn and yet overcomes anyway) but Ivan and Viktor Drago. Their father son dynamic, Drago’s forlorn hopes and dreams gnarled and entangled in a great ball of pent up and toxic anger and frustration that lives within his son who lives and breathes to avenge his fathers defeat, provided both of the most memorable moments to b found in this film. One takes place at a dinner hosted in honor of the rousing beat down Viktor hands Adonis in their initial match. When a surprise guest shows up it becomes all to clear what the source of the Dragos trauma and frustration is. It is also where (for the first time I’ve ever seen on screen) Dolph Lundgren flexes some serious acting muscles. The second takes place in the exhilarating finale. Both are welcome respites from the toxic form of masculinity that goes unchecked in this second offering. These are genuine challenges, displays of affection, and cathartic release of the hurt and pain that brought them this far, that if explored more effectively, rigorously, and consistently throughout this film could’ve made it an Oscar contender.

“Creed II’s lack of desire to interrogate the worst of the sport, cuts short its ability to effectively interrogate and challenge our hero adonis. I remember watching “Star Trek II Into Darkness”, and amongst other things being entirely disappointed that I was played. An intriguing plot line was introduced that suggested the movie was about Kirk learning to be a captain by learning to balance his tendency to fly by the seat of his pants, allowing his emotions and unchecked ego to get the best of him. Kirk spends the rest of the movie doing everything but and being rewarded..(Insert face palm here). I see the same problem in Adonis’s arc in this film. Adonis begins the film as much to toxic a man to ever be a good boxer, husband, friend, and if we we’re being honest in this movie - father. He is selfish, impulsive, and guilty of that all too common tendency of men to suppress their pain. When Adonis utter the words “Im Dangerous!” I though to myself “Yeah to yourself and everyone around you”. All of this plays out to disastrous physical results in his first fight with Viktor. Adonis is pulverized by his own refusal to confront his pain in ay meaningful way and if not for all the razzle and dazzle of this film, it would’ve crushed the movie too.

Creed 2 hits many of the right beats to make it an intoxicatingly cool, if not emotionally manipulative (rarely authentic) but spirited sequel. Sylvester Stallone is still the best actor in these movies, and I’d easily hand him another Oscar nod for his portrayal of Rocky in this film. Stallone takes some really interesting beats, and continues to surprise me with some of the inspired choices he makes on screen. The movie is extremely well paced, which ensures you won’t feel a moment of its over two hour runtime. The fight choreography is some of the best and most realistic Ive seen ever, but the fights themselves are some of the most over-the-top and ridiculous in the entirety of both franchises since Rocky III. Creed II fetishizes pain to the detriment of its other characters, (especially if they are WOMEN ) the story, and the authenticity of its fights. Adonis does not learn anything by confronting both his physical, and more importantly psychological pain, he merely heaps more on and finds his way out after a corny after school special pep talk. The punishment he takes in this film is beyond brutal, and would have real life ramifications that would end at the very least his career, and they are not interrogated in this film nearly enough, instead they are glorified. This coming from a person who has watched boxing for almost the entirety of my life. The movie is still a good time, and manages to leave you buzzing once the final bell rings, but it also left me with a queasy feeling about the poor messaging it might leave for future boxers, and ultimately unsatisfied with the way it sidelined some of its more interesting characters, and plot points (Russell Hornsby’s shady promoter, and subsequently what he does to or for the sport is also thoroughly under explored) like Tessa Thompson’s Bianca and the Drago’s in favor of a retread of a kind of heroism that needs to die.

IN THEATERS NOVEMBER 21. Life has become a balancing act for Adonis Creed. Between personal obligations and training for his next big fight, he is up against the challenge of his life. Facing an opponent with ties to his family's past only intensifies his impending battle in the ring.

Widows: Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn Keep the Rules, but Change the Game

The heist film is one of my favorite sub genres in movies. The hard boiled (usually male) lead, the crews made up of assorted personalities , with varying skills and crafts, the technical aspect on display both in the story and behind the camera in the good ones. The capers usually involve a high level of difficulty which require the lead have a high degree of intelligence, and thusly an intelligent script. The lead is usually unflappable, although not always (Al Pacino’s Sonny from “A Dog Day Afternoon” comes to mind) there is usually a betrayal, and some element of a “ticking clock. ” These movies are about time, relationships, and craft. When done well, they explore the humbling nature of the former, the importance of the middle, and the beauty of the latter. What these films don’t usually explore (save for F. Gary Gray’s criminally underrated “Set It Off” which is much better than “The Italian Job” remake ) is any perspective not firmly within the realm of a very familiar hyper masculine ethos. What director Steve McQueen and master craftsman Gillian Flynn have done with “Widows,” is take the very masculine heist film and inject it with some much needed feminine perspective and energy.  I've seen a lot of comparisons of this film with Michael Mann's 95 classic “Heat.” On some superficial level I agree that this film does have some elements in common with Mann’s oft-imitated heist caper. However, I don't agree with any oversimplification that would label Widows as a female “Heat.” Most of its similarities are due to the fact that it also a heist caper, but outside of that these films aren't truly that similar. It's not just “Heat” with women in it, or comparable to “Ocean's Eight” (the other comparison I’ve seen).  Widows is truly its own thing.  This is not a buddy caper film, or a cops vs robbers caper film. Most of its key characters don't really know each other and the movie is not really about their coming together, or an intricate game of cat and mouse. “Widows” is not even about the caper coming together, it's about what makes the caper important to these women. Then extending from there, it plays with all sorts of themes and motifs about its titular widows, the men that abandoned them, and the city they live in. It gets to have a conversation with us from within a very well done heist film. A conversation about the institution of marriage, the oppression from within it and the freedom one can find without it. It's about these women reclaiming their lives.  Lives spent living in the shadows of their husbands worlds.  Lives spent building and erecting their dreams on the foundations of their husband’s lies.  Lives spent putting men first who never placed near the same importance on their lives.  The heist is a means to prove to the world and to themselves that they have worth beyond what was predestined and assigned to their gender. Through plotting, crafting, and training, they learn to demand respect from themselves, each other, and ultimately from the world. The same kind of men that are usually at the center of a film like this. That same male world that has ignored them, that has told them to sit it on the sidelines and be content with cheering as these men formed the world into their own without any attention as to what any of these women think or feel. Gillian Flynn's crackling whip smart script in combination with Steve McQueen’s soft touch makes sure to punch that ticket so that the audience can see the ways in which these men deal and interact with women. We understand what it is ultimately these women are fighting for because it is captured in the way Daniel Kaluuya looks at Colin Farrell's aide the entire time they're talking. It's in the way Robert Duvall dismisses this same woman.  I think it's partially the reason the women who catches them in the act of the robbery ( probably some abused aide herself ) closes the door.  It is in a conversation that takes place between Elizabeth Debicki (Alice) and a woman at a gun convention. These women refused to be sidelined anymore. They step out into the game, and with the stakes properly set, this film sets us up for the 4th quarter touchdown, and it scores.

Secondarily there is the politics of the Broken city, and the broken men that run it. The white legacy family, and the working class black men are both criminals extorting the least powerful in this ward of the city. As it slowly decays, its mostly black constituents are treated as pawns in a chess match between men for power.  Much like the husbands of these women, men like Colin Farrell’s Jack Mulligan and Brian Tyree Henry’s Jamal Manning feign being caretakers of their city when in actuality all they seek is their own upward mobility from within the institutions they work for or against. They steal from their city,  they lie to their city, and ultimately they kill in their city to amass more power. Convincing themselves along the way it’s about using that power to help the city.   The film extends out from these women’s lives and paints a portrait of the city in moral and physical decay. Of the haves and the have-nots, of what the designs and machinations of the boys’ club do to all of us, and of the outlaws who decide to take what is theirs. 

Steve McQueen is currently my favorite director working. He understands decay, whether in a man in “Hunger,” or morality in “Shame.” He also understands our will to ascend beyond our current circumstance or an institution. In both “12 Years a Slave,” and “Widows” the leads find themselves in situations not of their own making and it is through sheer will and determination that they find a way out. McQueen sets the stakes, the danger, the emotion, and the desperation though a bevy of interesting shot choices. These shots are never just for the sake of style and any argument to the contrary is incomplete. The shot choices are political, and are not meant to manipulate emotions, because they are emotion. Represented in a whirling shot around Daniel Kaluuya as he intimidates a cohort in the gym. Cemented in the choice to shoot from outside the vehicle straight into a black driver as the white people he drives around for a living (Colin Farrell) engage in a pointless and covertly racist conversation about whether or not his aide has ever slept with a black guy. It’s in point-of-view shots he uses during the heists that reinforce the emotion of his actors when they cant speak. Steve McQueen in collusion with Gillian Flynn’s script crafts one of the great heists thrillers in movie history. “Widows” not only plainly plays out the state of these women's live while setting up its superbly realistic caper, but delivers punch in-between with the sharp, clever, highly intelligent dialogue that has become Gillian Flynn's signature in many of her books. It is superbly acted from top-to-bottom (Viola Davis should be in heavy contention for an Oscar as ell as possibly Elizabeth Debicki) and the wardrobe and costume design is also magnificent. In the doing both McQueen, and Flynn have woven something entirely unique to the story type and I think setting its own standard. Placing itself quite snugly alongside films like Heat, Thief, and even A Dog Day Afternoon.  Centering the women in it, and proving both from within the celluloid and from outside of it why they deserve to be there.

Get Tickets Now: http://www.WidowsTickets.com From Academy Award®-winning director Steve McQueen ("12 Years a Slave") and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn ("Gone Girl") comes a blistering, modern-day thriller set against the backdrop of crime, passion and corruption. "Widows" is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands' criminal activities.

The Rider: Chloé Zhao's film Reinvigorates the Western with Curiosity and Heart

“I hope they don’t forget about this film come Oscar season.” They’re going to forget about this film come Oscar season.” These were my thoughts only moments after watching Director Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider.” I thought these things because I genuinely felt the impact of this film that strongly, and I genuinely felt that way. I felt that way, because Zhao’s film is the kind that always gets ignored come Oscar season. It is too under seen a film, with too early a release date. It possesses the kind of beauty and craft that that hangs on to you but never stifles ( in my opinion the academy likes being stifled). Zhao’s film is patient in every possible way. It wants its story of a Rider permanently impaired by brain damage stemming from an accident dialogue, its picturesque landscapes, its characters to soak, to permeate the deeper portions of your memory…and it does.

One of the more interesting aspects of Chloé Zhao’s film is the way it mines common preconceptions of the almost folkloric type of masculinity associated with the Midwest (more specifically Cowboys) for something more flexible, something more inviting to the audience. All the typical sign posts are still there, the emotional restraint, the use of aggression as a tool, the isolation, the unsaid regulation of behaviors not in keeping with “being a man”. They are all there, but they are each of them softer, subtler, and more endearing. It can be noted in the interactions between Brady and his compadres, the attention - and care given to Lane Scott ( - another rodeo great impaired by a tragic injury), or to his beloved real life sister Lily. I would venture to say that quite possibly the most beautiful, interesting and engaging proof of this lies in relationship between Brady and his horses. Unlike in other films where this is used a s a prop to show the cowboy’s skill or to impose upon us his level of attractiveness (especially as it may pertain to an object of his affections) this is just about their relationship. I don’t need to hear how Brady does it. For me, it holds no pertinence beyond informing the rest of us how much he knows. Zhao is interested in the love, the feeling , the patience Brady possesses. The attraction she desires is more more natural and less forced through dialogue meant to “ooh” and “aw” the rest of us. Zhao is almost as interested in the horses as she is Brady, because she wants us to see how the horses react. That is how she informs the audience he knows what he is doing. It’s how she conveys to us the relationship, and the love within. Various close-ups on the eyes, - cuts to various body parts, and intimate shots affirm this. There is a scene where Brady has to put down a horse who escapes its paddock and seriously maims itself. There is a deep sadness to the scene that goes beyond Brady’s pain, because Zhao is not content to merely center Brady’s emotion. Whether its anthropomorphic or not we are given cues to empathize in a distinctive manner with this animal. To be made to feel as though this animal senses its end. That the horse is afraid and unsure of what to do. We find it just standing there, but it’s not laying down, it hasn’t given up, but it also is not running, because he’s too badly hurt. The horse wants to go on doing what it is meant to do, what it wants to do, but can’t. In providing this parallel between horse and rider , it humanizes the horse allowing for a deeper empathy than normal. It is romance in the most classical sense, and it’s one of the better displays of the relationship between horse and rider, man and beast, I’ve seen on film.

Zhao’s work is deliberately paced, has an arc, but its subtle. You’re not always aware of just where you’re going because much like the characters in the work of Director Asghar Farhadi, they seem to be figuring it out as we are. I would gather by conjecture that Zhao is the type of director that doesn’t necessarily map out the entire stories, and that she sort of allows them to tell their own story from inside her head. I don’t know that this is actually the case, but the magic of Zhao’s film is that it gives the appearance of such. Like Fahardi films, it has the feel of a documentary without taking a documentary’s actual form. It never once feels like a sprint upon a well paved track, but rather a walk along an unpaved road. At first it’s cold, you’re unsure and you wonder where it is you’re going. Sometimes you interrupt the conversation wondering how long you’ve walked thus far, but once you’ve arrived there is this intense emotionality tied to you, lingering about your person. You’ve been on this quiet, staggered, picturesque walk and you’ve learned something about everyone involved. You’ve learned about Zhao, Jandreau, and cinematographerJoshua James Richards. You’ve rediscovered through their eyes an aspect of Americana that has almost been reduced to myth and legend, here redeemed and reinvigorated by newfound curiosity , and an outside perspective .

THE PATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS: Why Agent Ray Nadeem was the most interesting character in Daredevil S3

[This post contains spoilers for Daredevil Season three]

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men” - Jules Winnfield

It’s the oft misquoted, but definitive line from Pulp Fiction’s most celebrated character; Jules Winnfield. It is also an apropos summary of what is at the heart of the story behind Daredevil Season Three’s most interesting Character, Agent Ray Nadeem. Though I don’t see it as a problem (Mostly because most heroes in film and television are the least interesting aspect of their own story) Daredevil/Matt Murdock has never been the most interesting part of Daredevil. In Season One that was Wilson Fisk. Season Two, it was The Punisher and Elektra. Season three, it’s undoubtedly Ray Nadeem. What makes Nadeem so riveting is not just his flaws, but the forces that have conspired against him, and his sincere nobility despite them. Unlike the titular hero, or his cohorts, Agent Nadeem’s nobility is not steeped in condescension, self-righteousness, or stupidity. It is an authentic, practical form of the quality. I’ve never thought of nobility as perfection, and found that those who aim too high and radical an ideal themselves waver between extremes much like Daredevil. Matt Murdock tends to set way to tall a standard of righteousness for himself and others. Then spend entire seasons stomping around in his all black Osh Kosh B’Gosh’s throwing fisticuff tantrums throughout the city, because his standards were unrealistic. Whereas Murdock in my mind plays too long a game, Nadeem seems to understand nobility is about the short game. Taking whats in front of you and dealing with each problem as it comes. To be more concise, like that of Solomon Northup in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, Nadeem does not “Fall into despair, he keeps himself hardy until the moment is opportune”.

It is Agent Ray Nadeem who I found to be most sympathetic as a character, because he was the only character in the show believably acting in the interest of someone other than himself. Which is what made me laugh indignantly when of all people Matthew Murdock tried to give Ray a dressing down for his “role” in the Kingpin’s scheming. When tracing back all of Nadeem’s wrongheaded decisions, it is not difficult to assess at their root a genuine desire to fend for and provide for his extended and immediate families. Nadeem was targeted, and drawn into Kingpins trap through financial pressure that threatened not only his family’s financial wellbeing, but his Sister-In-Laws life. He clings so hard to the idea that his arrests are “legit”, because - A. He’s gunning for a promotion (mostly to help procure some financial stability after aiding his sister-in-law’s recovery ) and the fact that he was being duped would completely undermine the one shot he had worked so hard for. B. His own ego. The Kingpin knows this, because thats what the Kingpin does throughout this season; Identify people’s weaknesses - and then apply immense pressure. Despite a tyranny of evil men and women who act as proverbial walls closing in on Nadeem and his family, Nadeem is never always looking for a way to do the right thing. He is rarely acting in self-interest, which is more than I can say for any other character in the show. For instance, Matthew Murdock is too busy having his own pity party and mostly acts out on his own hate and desire for revenge. Karen Page spends the entire time trying to redeem herself for past sins that reside in shaky logic in the first place. While Foggy spends his portion of the season trying to prove his own worth by incredulously suggesting (despite all evidence to the extreme contrary) everyone rely on the same system that acted in collusion with the Kingpin. While Nadeem and his family are mostly placed in harm’s way by the Kingpin’s machinations, Daredevil and his cohorts mostly place themselves and others in the way of danger unnecessarily (Karen Page is especially good at this- [See her visit to Kingpins home to instigate him killing her] ).

Karen reveals to Fisk that she killed James Wesley. Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 Episode 8 "Upstars/Downstairs"

Though the show spends a lot of time obviously on its titular hero, it is at its best when its focus is Nadeem. The season as a whole becomes more claustrophobic, relatable, less insipid, when we watch the slow burn of Nadeem’s increasingly strained arc. His psychopathic co-worker, his compromised, (though in a similar situation) boss, and of course Wilson Fisk himself - shrink Nadeem’s options moment by moment, scene by scene, until he feels he only has the one. Nadeem acts as the true heart of the show it’s conscious, and its a good thing we continue to see him until nearly the very end, because a lot of the shows air bottomed out upon his death.

Clip from Marvel's Daredevil Season 3 Episode 13 Enjoy Have a great day May the force be with you This channel is 100% non profit. All content in any ways whether its music or video is owned by their righfully owners, Marvel Studios and Netflix.

The other factor aiding in making Nadeem the most relatable character in the show is actor Jay Ali. His steady, measured, but assured performance as Ray Nadeem is quite possibly the best in the show (my only other possibility being Wilson Bethel as (Agent Pointdexter/Bullseye ). As an actor Ali embodies all the qualities needed to endear us to Agent Nadeem in spades (Identifiable in the clip above). Ali was adept at conveying in small, subtle expressions; the look and feel of moral compromise, indecision, as well as that overall feeling of being trapped - and most importantly, fear. His reaction to the shocking murder of another agent in front of him by his boss made for one of the more memorable scenes in television this year in no small part due to his work . His expression of the shock on his face after the pivotal betrayal, was one I’ll never forget.

Daredevil Season Three was one of the better Marvel seasons - but it did suffer from a bit of magical writing - and placing shock value over script logistics. The characters this season were especially annoying, and Daredevil continues to be given “Wolverine-like” healing abilities despite the character having no such ability in the Marvel canon. For me Agent Nadeem did a lot of the heavy lifting especially when some of these gripes conspired in unison to turn me off to the season. Nadeem was “The Righteous Man” Jules Winnfield spoke of in Tarantino’s mash-up of made-up and actual bible verses. Beset on all sides by tyranny, yet sturdily noble and true to reasonable and steady principles throughout. The character was a well-acted, well drawn and executed hero, and THE best part of this season. Quite possibly the best side character introduced into any of the previous Marvel television efforts. Bravo to the writers, and especially to actor Jay Ali.

Revisiting: Angelina Jolie's ethereal, enchanting meditation on the ruins of beauty.."BY THE SEA"

“STYLE AS SUBSTANCE”

Call me a Stan, but By the Sea (or moreso the response to by the sea in my own opinion) is proof positive of implicit bias and the uphill battle women and minorities face in art while trying to demonstrate their own ability to create important works.   From Oscar Micheaux to the Hughes Brothers and Kasi Lemmons, Shaft to Friday, and in this particular case Angelina Jolie - we have seen the struggle for them to have their work properly validated, and critiqued. By the Sea as directed by Jolie is a jarringly patient and accurate portrayal of the ways in which a relationship can become an exercise in cruelty and tedium.  But critics lambasted it as merely a “Vanity project” to show off how good she and Brad could look in various couture. Since the beginning of this medium women and minorities have had to suffer the petulant dismissal of their work as inferior under the guise of coded language like pretentious,  crude,  some version of incomplete or in this case the " Vanity project". A term especially reserved for those folk who sought to rise above their station in our collective perception of them and create a body of work independent of the niche carved out for them by the industry or the audience. Like most slights these words tell us more about the mentalities of those writing them than they do their subjects.  With Jolie’s luscious By the Sea, It seemed to upset a great deal of reviewers that these two gorgeous people (Most especially Jolie as director)  dared to try and make something of substance.  As far as I'm concerned it was perhaps even more upsetting that Jolie was successful in her endeavor. The consistent use of a term like vanity as a descriptor involving a woman with whom the public largely considers one of the most beautiful women in the world is just strikingly lazy.   What ever would lead one to make such an assumption considering…I wonder ? There has long been a kind of bias implicit in society that pretty people should and can only be pretty.  That trying to do anything else is merely a pursuit of vanity linked to feelings of invalidity outside the realm of the superficial. Now while on some level this may have SOME truth it ignores the flip side of that coin. That we the bourgeoisie,  and peasant class of white patriarchal standards of beauty also seek validation through the insistence and persistence of this kind of labeling and sorting.  Style without substance is a phrasology itself rooted in this kind of prejudice.  Because when used so ubiquitously without interrogation it denies the fact that as one friend said to me in conversation “in many ways style itself can become a substance - or of substance”. 

“bullitt” , “the warriors”, “drive”, and “mad max” are all examples of style as substance, and of course all directed by white males.

Jolie's film was routinely accused of that very overused and under interrogated sentiment, and then dismissed as vain and self serving because “look at her”. I would ask how much of this is our fault? I think its fair that as critics we admit our own biases, our own prejudices. Admit that even though we have studied film, and criticism for varying amounts of years, and generally act in good faith - that we too can be obstructed from taking in a movie the way we should. Would this common critique be the same with anyone else in the role in this same ostentatious attire? Would we be talking about eye shadow and not the eyes themselves (which I believe Jolie puts to great use throughout much of the film)

By the Sea movie clips: http://j.mp/2eHsB9R BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/2ewGUAy Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Vanessa (Angelina Jolie) wakes up Roland (Brad Pitt) in the middle of the night to interrogate him about his feelings towards the girl next door.

Jolie is almost always distracting in some way which is all the more reason for us to get over our preoccupation with her “otherworldly beauty” and focus on her actual performance, as well as her direction. Yes “By the Sea” is a gorgeous,  sumptuous,  mesmerizing, and at times meandering film, but so was Godot’s Breathless. But go beyond all that physical beauty and you will find a film doing quite a lot more than being statuesque and beautiful. You will find something that peers through the veil of otherness from within a couple’s tragedy. A deliberate and pensive visual study into style over substance. The hypnotic allure of the aesthetic.  The austere view from a distance, ostentation as banal, beauty as devastating, and familiarity tediously played out as the exact tragedy between two lovers .    The gross luxury, the scenic fantasy, the long excruciating beats all aided in telling a stirringly bleak story about the ways in which wounds are inflicted, get infected, and then fester in the dead space between desire and possession. The lack of communication is not meant to be merely an stylistic choice,  it's a narrative decision meant to illuminate the amount of damage done. By design, the artifice of beauty takes the edge off the “in your faceness” of the hurt. The depression, the anger,   the discomfort. And if this was some pigeon faceded white male, drenched in self depreciation, and faux "aw shucks- ness"  we might be discussing the intentional space between objects, words, and between the couples. Or the purity of the melodrama and it's effective utilization as a narrative device. Or acknowledge that the set design wasn't just some left over shoot from a forgotten cover story in Architectural Digest,  but an intentional focus meant to make us aware of the sterility, and of what isn't there in the relationship. Instead critics were content lobbing our own insecurity out over the plate and letting our egos drive a shot over the fence for a home run of the same kind of vanity Jolie is accused of. 

Jolie’s film consistently explores the distance between things.

To dismiss By the Sea as simply and only vain is so low hanging a fruit,  so ugly and vapid a take away, it'd boggle my mind if I was given to flights of fantasy about critics being some new group of human impervious to fits of bias and pettiness through baptism of literary integrity.  The story of this couple, of their trauma,  their scarring,  their love and disdain for each other, exists in many of our own relationships,  and yes it tough to watch,  and it might've felt laborious ( if not for some of that very same beauty so vilified by the films many detractors)  but it is one of the more dynamic, authentic portraits of relationships put forth on celluloid in some time.  These kinds of couples exist and chances are you've seen at least one where you've remarked "Geez why don't they just end it!"...But they don't.  The tedium, the repetition, and yes the gloss is part of Jolies examination. Because part of them wants to, has to believe they can call back the ghosts of what they had.  By the Sea is the ultimate love story in that it doesn't manipulate, or lead us as much as it allows us into a relationship. Angelina Jolie gave us an extravagant long form vignette of grief, and voyuerism as a lived in experience.   Its what I imagine goes on behind the curtains of what we might see on an Instagram, or hear in a retelling of a vacation. The lush beauty of  the background hiding the picturesque ruins of not only brick and stone but love and friendship. It’s beautiful subjects the dressing, the gauze covering the scarred and fragile wounds common in human bonding. And what the hell was so vain or superficial about that? 

HALLOWEEN IS A FUN RIDE BACK TO THE ROOTS OF WHAT MADE THE ORIGINAL SO GREAT.

Halloween is just one of those movies that originally and now in this latest iteration knew exactly what it wanted to be, and it’s one of the highest compliments I can pay it. I've recently been discussing with my friends this age where so many people want to do so many things and try to be so many things to so many different people and subsequently how that affects various arts. When you have people making tentpole movies, almost all year round (especially of this sort ) aiming marketing towards trying to be a little something to a great deal of various crowds it creates quite a few films where you can feel the hodgepdge of ideas running into and coagulating into a bloody mess. What I feel like I’m applauding when I'm applauding films like this year’s “Mandy” and Halloween is a kind of laser focus on the crowd that you know you want. On the audience most likely to appreciate your art on its face.   You may end up getting a larger base to come around and appreciate it too, as is the case with Halloween, or you may only reach that exact niche as was the case with Mandy , but either way you find success. 

Halloween has always been one of those movies that can please  multiple audiences.  It's both a cult movie and a movie with a clear mainstream audience.  But I would venture to say one extends from the other. Fully acknowledging that this isn't a new argument at all - I still think great art comes from a place that ultimately seeks to please oneself first and by extension of the self…Others. I think we've made the mistake of dichotomizing the issue of art for arts sake or for entertainment when the answer is both.  Artist like John Carpenter understood themselves firstly and then instinctively understood that others who may see the world in similar ways to them would probably like to share in the delight of seeing this vision come to life. But as expressed by Carpenter in interviews he had no way of knowing it would become as popular as this. And when this sentiment is genuine (as I believe it is in this case) it belies the fact that the artist was most likely not considering a massive audience and what they might like to see, but rather a small circle of friends and imagined like minded folk. As Long as you don't get caught up in the awe of your own imagination. You'll always want the mission to be to use what it is you have, your gift as a tool to connect with others .   But first you have to find your unique voice. That's the way to legacy.  The way to legend, the way to becoming a classic, to becoming something unforgettable. 

John Carpenter interviewed by Mark Kermode for Halloween's 21st Anniversary. 1999. Part 1 of 3.

Carpenter's films, but especially have always been simple, but effective. And I mean to say that there's a precision, and concise power to the kind of horror that galvanizes or acts as the engine behind Halloween and ultimately, Michael Myers. A forcefulness that is big enough, deep enough to create a space for the kind of commentary that you might get around something that has a lot more existential or philosophical questions surrounding it, like this years earlier horror entry Hereditary.  This latest entry - as conceived of by the duo of Danny Mcbride and David Gordon Green - Understands that, and it also understands the power in exploring the dynamic in the relationship between Michael and Laurie Strode. Much like my other beloved horror entry this year - Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House - this Halloween explored the trauma of the kind of event bound to have a ripple effect on the life of someone like Laurie Strode. And that we see again also represented in hereditary, lingering memories of suffering, pain, and stress that finds itself seeping into the lives of our spouses and our offspring.  The focus is not quite as tight, It's not quite as broad or as in depth, but it is there. And when combined with the core understanding that the power of Michael Myers is not in who he is, or the sight of him, or what might or might not be behind the mask, but instead his anonymity. The idea of him as this almost spectral construct of sheer will and pure evil incarnate, that makes him so scary... That THAT is the driving force behind this series, then you have what makes this movie work so well. Once again it caters to both of its audiences, whereas previous installments like h2o cast too wide a net, and others like Rob Zombies Halloween were far too niche (and in truth lost sight of the actual core tenets for even its core audience) this Halloween delivers to both the crowd that will always be there for it, even when it’s bad, and that more fair weather audience.

This is a well done, sharply executed horror film with a strong central performance (as I think any horror film movie has to have) by Jamie Lee Curtis. Just from a physical aesthetic standpoint Curtis comes prepared. In so may ways Laurie hasn’t changed, her hair, her body in general resembles some semblance of itself. It is only her hair color, the glasses, the wear of years of hurt, a map of her trauma all along the lines of her face - that betray how much has changed. This stagnation, this staticness is represented not only by her mental state, but by the forlorn fortress that she's turned her home into. The decrepit nature of anything in or around it that doesn't have to do with home security. It's represented in her inability to seemingly function at even a dinner party. To allow herself the space to be happy for even just a moment and it's all Curtis - working in conjunction with what ultimately is a great script - that really provides us with the clues as to just how ripped apart, how beaten and weathered Laurie Strode has become, but in the same sentence how she's also turned that energy into a crystallized will of her own.  Laurie strode has become the perfect mirror image for Michael Myers in that she too has now steeled herself to become a force of nature, fashioned herself into a creature made up of anger and rage, who will not be stopped, who will not be beaten, who will not go down. And as such has set herself up for Mano y Mano battle of good and evil. 

Halloween also features some strong supporting performances from the likes of Judy Greer. And will Patton, but ultimately, this is Jamie Lee Curtis's movie and of course Michael Myers. It’s gruesome (apropos to the genre and franchise) its scary, and I found the tension built well over the running time of the movie, which really you do not feel at all. The pacing is extremely well done, and your kind of in there and out of there before you know it. Something akin to a great rollercoaster ride. Much like the Panos Cosmotos indie project “Mandy” I just really enjoyed myself in this film. I settled right in to it and was immediately reconnected with the characters, with the tone, with the town, (which is something that I sort of took issue with In the latest remake of “IT” where I felt like in the town of Derry, I didn't feel how these events had really settled in or affected the town),  but in Halloween I did. Haddonfield and the people who live there some 40 years later still feels like a town that has the residue of these grisly murders on its structural, and cultural conscious, it's on the kids lips, and it's in the police department, it's in the homes and sort of in the air, you just feel it, and I think the filmmakers did a great job of creating that. Ultimately I highly recommend Halloween, I think it's a great movie for the season, I think it's one of the better horror films to come out this year, and ultimately in some weird kind of way as horrifying and terrifying as it is, it's a feel good movie. I came out of there like “Yeah, I got to escape for a little bit”. And thats very valuable as something I think we could use more of right now.  

MANDY IS JUST MY KIND OF MOVIE

Couple of things you should know about me and movie going.  A.  That I tend to grade on a curve whenever I feel someone who is trying to deliver something truly (keyword truly) unique.  And I'm not talking about that kind of person that seeks to be smarter than their audience or surpass their colleagues with something way more clever than they believe their peers ever could have dreamed of. And definitely not that person that seeks to only arrive to us with merely a unique concept and clearly no follow through on that great concept (and Yes, I'm talking to you hotel Artemis) .  No, I'm talking about that person, with whom while watching their film you can almost feel that childlike energy,  that kinetic,  furious,  passionate,  barely contained fire, - if at all - that drives every one of us whenever we stumble upon an idea that will not loosen its grip upon our imagination. The kind that makes me imagine the writer director of this film being possessed sitting there at their desk, eyes jittering from side to side, just scribbling away incessantly,  unable to stop themselves from leaping from word to word,  sentence to sentence,  page to page,  action to action - whether or not that's what actually happens.  B.  I'm an experience type of reviewer and movie goer I'm big on my experience, I'm not necessarily a technical movie goer.   I understand film theory, I understand the importance of structure,  and often times I can see the lacking of it in a film in which my experience is already a poor one.  But as I said before, if I am already immensely enjoying my film experience in your movie I am a teacher grading on an immense curve.  All of a sudden willing to toss aside how believable your film might be,  how riddled with plot holes your film might be, how detestable your characters might be, how lacking in technical proficiency your film might be. Because ultimately I was too enamored with how beautiful your film was,  how much your film wooed me, how much it made overtures to my various senses, how much it enchanted me.  How your actors mesmerized me, how scared I was, how much I may have laughed,  how much I may have cried. If my experience feels more like a positive one than a negative one, I can forgive cardinal sins in structure, and I can somewhat put to the side - let's be honest maybe “a lot of what” put to the side - film theory for a second and just bathe in the glow of being thoroughly entertained for a couple hours or more. Mandy was such a movie.

Panos Cosmotos's wild blend of nostalgia,  video games,  fantasy,  and rock and roll,  with a committed Nicholas Cage front and center.  Cosmotos movie does not nail it for me politically. In fact, in many other cases, I probably be sitting here writing about how it's just another woman in the fridge type story using its woman, the namesake infact of the movie as a convenient excuse to take us on a journey of male aggression, gratuitous violence,  and anarchy.  But I'm not writing about that because the story was too wild, the colors too gorgeous,  Nicholas cage's performance too balls to the wall insane and committed and vainglorious. All of this in a two hour heap of dismembered bodies, exaggerated over the top monologues,  and primal screams.  Cosmotos brings us both something we've seen before, or at least know of  and yet something wholly original. A movie where I ultimately knew what was going to happen within the first thirty minutes of the film and yet I also was made to feel like I had no clue as to what would happen next from one sequence to the next through the entire duration of the film, right up until the ending,  it's typical and yet wholly unique.

It reminded me of so many of those books I used to love as a kid. Books inspired,  and clearly influenced by and from authors like Tolkien,  or Herbert,  or Robert E Howard's Conan pulp.  But nowhere near as good in the execution. They usually grabbed me with a well illustrated cover,  and an eye catching title (Im making all of these up) like ; The Gates of Baldermoor,  The Dragons of Huron,  Time and Shadows volume one.  I also gleamed portions of the film as being inspired by Ralph Bashki's underrated animation film heavy metal or at that least aesthetically influenced by it.  It harkened me back to a time of cult leaders and a time when devil worshipers were the worst of us.  And while it had me on an IV drip of nostalgia,  it fed me on a, steady diet of arresting visuals,  outstanding camera work,  and a manic,  unpredictable,  rabid performance by Nicholas Cage, and Linus Roache, that kept circling two words around my head, tigers blood and dragon juice. Because that's how bat shit crazy and amazing it was. 

I'm writing more about the experience than the technical aspects of this movie, because I believe that that ultimately is what Mandy is...the movie going experience.   Rather than a movie you go into toting your experience.  I really couldn't tell you how technically proficient, it may or may not be because somewhere along the road I just got lost in the proverbial sauce.  It was fun, it was outrageous. It was visually poetic. It was nostalgia based,  without using the nostalgia as a crutch.  There were some pacing troubles near the end there, and Mandy, the movie's namesake was unfortunately not truly apart of this film in any meaningful way beyond being a prop for Nicolas Cage's unhinged rage fest.  That was maybe the only real disappointment and I don't want to minimize it.  Mandy did a lot of things really really well and while I thoroughly enjoyed myself watching it. I felt like this movie could have moved beyond a cult classic to an actual masterpiece had it featured more about Mandy and rooted her to the story in more than name.   Not only would it have begotten more interesting narrative choices,  but considering her condition,  I think you would have had a movie with some very interesting, even if accidental commentary. And something, ultimately, that I think would have moved beyond its sort of superficial in all the best ways, cult feel, and right into pantheon of Film making. 

As it stands Cosmotos film is a movie that raises an eyebrow and makes you sit up and forward in your seat. I think if he builds upon this, this may be a director to watch in the future, and although I can't recommend Mandy for everyone those of you who like me, like it when you stumble upon something so interesting and so one of its kind, that you tend to grade the movie on a curve and never mind the devil in the details,  then this is also definitely your movie.

Check out the new trailer for Mandy starring Nicolas Cage & Andrea Riseborough! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Watch Mandy on FandangoNOW: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/mandy-2018/MMV495A8D3D5C42B5ED2888FF3743C0852D2?cmp=Indie_YouTube_Desc US Release Date: September 2018 International Release Date: October 2018 Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache Directed By: Panos Cosmatos Music Composed By: Jóhann Jóhannsson Synopsis: Pacific Northwest.

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE: HEART, SCARES, AND THE TRAUMA OF NOT BEING HEARD.

The experience of watching Netflix’s latest – an adaptation of Shirley jackson’s legendary Gothic horror classic The haunting of hill house –  beyond being a wonderful horror series that anchors itself in emotional pull just as much as it does terror – is also one of a fantastic exploration into the terrifying nature and experience of not being heard.  One I have directly experienced, and one many of and especially especially those of us who live within the margins have experienced first hand.  That fear and that terror that took up residence in my being over that very lonely couple of weeks some time ago,  where literally nothing I said mattered,  where no one listened, and because no one was listening,  that maybe it didn’t matter,  or that maybe I didn’t matter.  The blackness it descends one into,  the trauma that extends from that particular kind of invisibility,  the loss of hope,  and of confidence.  The residual damage that follows from person after person either gas lighting you, condescending to you,  or infantilizing you. This was the power of Hill House to me.   Repeatedly we are shown characters doing one or two or all three of these things to another in order to pacify them,  or to deny a truth they themselves don’t want to face. We see the subsequent effects of it,  the reopening of old wounds,  emotional lockdowns,  or breakdowns,  and ultimately the eventual loss in some cases. And we are reminded of our experiences and it’s both enraging and terrifying.

Using ghost and ghouls as avatars The Haunting of Hill House paints a very clear picture of the weight of shame,  guilt,  and the secrets and lies that spring forth from them as protections from facing what we fear most,  what on some level we don’t think we’re prepared to see,  or from disrupting what we think we know.  It’s a constant and oft repeated theme in the show from one siblings refusal to acknowledge another’s preternatural or supernatural abilities,  to another’s denial of the inciting incident of the entire series.  It’s in a pivotal sequence where one sibling hears but doesn’t listen to a young girl who tries to explain to her a horrifying secret which she misses because she’s too busy trying to explain it away instead of really listening.  The holes these things leave,  the continued abuse it might allow,  the harm it causes to the Crain family –  who are just as decrepit, in disrepair, and disintegrating every bit as much as the house they once occupied –  makes for maybe this shows most frequently disturbing images which is saying a lot because there is a plethora of terrifying and disturbing images in this show.

The Haunting of Hill House is not one of those shows or films that can be described as not particularly scary,  but packing a wallop when it comes to it’s intensity,  and suspense.  No…This is an old fashioned ghost story, the kind that puts your head on a swivel in the dark,  the kind that asks you to take a small break and allow your eyes to imbibe something flowery and light after, the kind where you’re sitting by the camp fire and a chill begins to sink into your bones, despite the fact that you are sitting next to fire.  Your fear so laser focused that the heat from it now boils your nerves, and the storyteller now instinctively realizing that your focus is now singularly narrow (and thus properly prepared)  that they can literally make any form of misdirection,  or movement and cause you the audience to pop and instantaneously move from out of your seat.  It’s a fear rooted in identifying and relating to these expertly drawn characters.  Seeing so much of ourselves within them that we begin to see their journey as our own.  So that when they are scared, we are scared,  and when they jump,  we jump.  This in particular is not atypical to the genre –  especially if it’s a well done member of the genre – what is atpical though, is the level of execution.  Whether on TV or film, as is the case in almost any genre, but especially ( I believe) in horror, there’s always some character who is not as well drawn as the others someone who seems two dimensional,  who is difficult to understand,  whose motivations may be paper thin.  For example, in hereditary (one of my favourite films of this year) Gabriel Byrne’s character I never quite figured out (which admittedly could just mean it flew over my head)  I understood his preliminary motivations sure, and to some small extent what drive his insipid silence,  but beyond that he seemed to be much less deep, much more superficial than Toni Collete’s beleaguered Annie Graham, or Alex Wolff’s moody Peter Graham,   and that household was just three members deep.  Hill house has no such issues. Every single member of the Crain family is so well drawn out,  so well defined, so crystal clear in both their conscious and unconscious motivations. that it hands this show a depth and weight I don’t know that i’ve really ever seen in the genre – especially again in a show that is this jam packed with actual frights and scares.   I don’t claim to be a horror expert, and while I’ve watched a lot of horror films, I don’t think of myself as necessarily academic in the field.   So I can’t claim the kind of confidence to make this feeling to be in stone, but out of the number of horror films that I have laid my eyes upon, (Which is quite a number)  this is unlike any other.

Flanagan and the writers have really kind of set the bar for the genre, especially as it pertains to TV and long form television in particular.  Through these family members, and their stories – each told with a level of understanding into not only what motivates,  and drives them, but a gift or unique skill for storytelling even amongst actors by actors like Gugino, Hutton, Gish, and Siegel, – we explore trauma and memories and the way they shift and distort our perspective.  Twisting and gnarling it so. that we can’t even see even what is directly in front of our eyes.  It’s a show that finds heart in horror,  terror to make us lose heart, and horror to find heart again.  A masterpiece of television now on Netflix.

On October 12th, you're expected. The Haunting of Hill House is a modern reimagining of the iconic novel, about 5 siblings who grew up in the most famous haunted house in America.

APOSTLE: NETFLIX'S LATEST REALLY HOLDS THE DARK.

You ever just know a movie is for you?  You watch a few images flash before your eyes and all but know for a scientific fact you're gonna love this film or television show?  This was pretty much the case from the first trailer for Netflix's "Apostle".   I was sold that this movie was going to be one that would engrave itself into my psyche, and it didn't disappoint.  An unnerving, spellbinding, violent,  knot turning in your stomach kind of suspense horror thriller,  that doesn't let go once it gas you in its grip - the film is as unforgiving as it is visually arresting.  Our story begins with the troubled Richardson family and more specifically a brother Thomas (Dan Stevens)  sent off to rescue and bring back his kidnapped  sister from a cult holding her for ransom.  What ensues from there on is the tale of a man who will slowly become reinvigorated with the idea of connecting back with the one tie he has to this world,  and thusly back to the world and eventually his faith but only after confronting the darkness corroding the town from within.  Though the film comes off at first as an attack on faith and religion on the whole rather than fanaticism it is not.  There are very clear signs that this is in fact a film about faith, and maintaining it when surrounded by men and women who have either forgotten, or perverted it's central tenets.  But those are not central to the experience of Apostle as much as they are subtext.   What anyone going into this movie needs to know is that it taxes the hell out of the  senses - through imagery, gore and suspense.  Medieval torture devices,  camera angles,  and brutal depictions of torture and murder are deployed to maximum effect for mood and tone corroborating with the greater themes of the film.  And it can be exhausting though never gratuitous,  and plenty exhilarating while also grating the nerves.

 What tells me that I love this movie is not the fact that I ignored many of its possible flaws, but that I just didn't notice them at all, at least not in this first viewing.  One thing I don't want to lose as a movie viewer, and even as a critic, is that ability to want to enjoy a movie and not necessarily to approach the experience from a sort of clinical position where I am simply looking for what it isn't doing, or how well it adheres to film theory.  I want to first just enjoy it on the level of being a person that enjoys movies,  as a patron who just wants to be taken on a ride.  For me, that is exactly what I got from Gareth Evans dark grisly fable.  I was thrilled,  put on the edge of my seat,  treated to white knuckle tension, gifted characters that I could relate to on some level, but more importantly, characters driven by marvelously committed actors that I didn't have to like to want them to win, or to root for them or hate them.   By the end, when the final events started to unfold, I noticed my shoulders dropping,  the air leaving my chest, the tension held for what seemed like nearly the entirety of the film being relieved, and I noticed how invested I was in the action unfolding before me because of the way my legs shifted,  fidgeting about.  The way my heart dropped in certain parts of the movie where it seemed that the cruelty was unrelenting informed me, I was immersed,  told me I was being engrossed,  and enthralled.

In these dark times I'm not one of these people that wants to be treated to something that makes me feel better, that assures me of my safety, and reminds me of good, I think I naturally have that buffer within.  I like being reminded of just how bad it can get, just how unjust the world can be, how unflinching.   A movie like the apostle is a great reminder, because it keeps a person with my natural temperament  vigilant,  sharp.   I don't think I have to recommend it for everybody but I do recommend it for those that always leaned a bit towards the dark side of themselves, who enjoy the tension and release horror gives maybe even on some masochistic level,  if only but to keep the guard there and keep the dark at bay.

The promise of the divine is but an illusion. From Gareth Evans, writer and director of The Raid franchise, comes Apostle. A Netflix film starring Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen - premieres October 12.