Call Me By My Name: Mortal Kombat Is Not Mindless entertainment, It’s Just Mindless.
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I don't know what to do, I don't know where I'm at. I feel at times like I'm in the Twilight Zone. I'm sitting in this this era, in this time where more in more it's becoming a regular refrain that when a movie is God-awful and terrible and clearly not even trying, it’s called fun, or mindless entertainment, as if bad movies don’t exist. It’s this idea that instead of witnessing a movie that sucks and is terrible we are watching a movie that is knowingly winking at me telling me "I know this aint sh** but we're having fun". Still others say that because the premise of movie is based in something inherently silly, then I'm supposed to give up on any form of story telling, forfeit the idea of character development, narrative coherency, common sense, amongst other things. Thing is I know what "winking" looks like, I've seen Joel Schumacher's Batman movies give a master class in it. Mortal Kombat is not that. It’s that viral video of the woman pouring tons of candy into a toilet bowl. It’s fatalities, and mediocre fights, on Nostalgia IP steroids. The feverish wet dream of execs who know all they need do is button mash certain criteria that meets with the ever lessening expectations of ravenous audiences who will eat up any version of their fave property on screen just so long as it’s faithful to the aesthetics of their love for it. I came into this movie expecting nothing but a good time. John Wick with Fatalities and Halloween costumes, hell even Hobbs and Shaw, but if I had a floor, in the words of Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction “N**** went through that".
The film started out promising enough. The first five minutes introduced quite possibly the two most popular characters from the long standing video game series; Scorpion ( The always great Hiroyuki Sanada) and Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim, one of the greatest on screen martial artist working today) in an opening salvo that gave you everything you could want: a dash of story, lots of gore, and blood, some bad lines, but with good acting, great choreography and a very solid set up. Then it all goes to hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a precipitous drop off in a movie. We are introduced to Cole Young ( Lewis Tan) a burned-out seemingly over the hill former MMA champion now fighting for 200 dollar backyardigan matches and mostly losing. We find out extremely quickly he is a chosen champion, why? Well because he has the tattoo and some bloodline stuff. Why is he losing so much, what has he lost, and truly how he can get it back is never really explored because this movie isn’t interested in like.. storytelling. It moves on…Fast. He meets Jackson Briggs “Jax" (Mehcad Brooks) who is special forces, that’s ’s pretty much it about Jax. Sub Zero shows up, Jax sends Cole to Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) and she has Kano tied up. Very quickly Kano, (Josh Lawson) Sonya, and Cole become friends learn about this tournament that none of them are gonna be in, because it never happens (which is a plot point, but also is part of the reason the movie drags, with nothing to build to it sort of takes the inertia out of it) anywho, They train terribly, make even worse jokes, form nothing approaching chemistry, and Jax appears again, with his missing arms carterized by the cold, but no mention of his severe head injury from being slammed through concrete head first before a long drop. Jax then appears with arms, no announcement we just suddenly see them on…okay fine. Shang Tsung (Ng Chin Han) tries to pull a Termimator move and stop the fighters before their even “born"…again as fighters. This “born again" (which is what I’m calling it) involves finding their arcana which is found by getting your aas whooped, or knowing yourself, or becoming very very pissed off, or something. In order to kill off these pretty God awful fighters, (who feel like they belong in the Keanu Reeves starrer “The Replacements") Shang enters Raidens training temple, and does so like he’s got his own personal key, Raiden apparently had never thought of securing this place until this moment and when he does its completely indestructible UNLESS Kano shoots a laser at its PBC piping, and then it’s totally worthless. Now why anyone trust Kano in the first place, why Raiden or anyone never decides to keep an eye on the guy whose whole history as stated through lots of exposition screams “DON’T TRUST THIS GUY WHOSE ONLY HERE FOR MONEY!” Well that's just one of the many many many mysteries and nonsensical plot holes that litter this movie and I gues you're a bad guy if you bring it up. I’m reminded of this Simpsons episode “HOMR" where Homer Simpson is kicked out of a movie theater after calling out a movies predictability and overall stupidity.
I did not expect this movie to win awards, or even make a run at this year’s best action film, (though whats wrong with that?) I just wanted it to be coherent in between the cheese, fun in-between the stupidity, it wasn't. It was beyond lazy, it was insipid and dumb. I detest the whole idea that because of the genre or the property you're using being considered lower forms of art or entertainment that your not supposed to try and make a good movie, or more to the point tell a good story. You don’t have to make Gosford Park here. 1987's action classic”Predator” is about as silly as you can get when you get right down to it, and ut doesn’t create characters so much as draws us in with the superficial nature of character. Same could be said for all those marines in “Aliens”, The idea that all you have to do is simplify everything down to the basic property of give us what we want chafes at me because it implies giving us what we want and telling great stories are mutually exclusive. I’ve seen well done movies about Lego Batmen, and Oscar contenders about Wrestlers, not the Olympic kind mind you you can do both. To go back to the winking” element for a bit, for me that “wink" is a phenomenon that occurs either when the director fully recognizes that there is something silly to be explored here and honors that gleefully but not disrespectfully. They see depth in the absurdity of it and explore and mine it for all its got, thats not this, and if it isn’t apparent in the movie it is in writer Greg Russo's own words…
Nevermind the classic misinterpretation of camp ( as if its inherently bad and not a stylistic choice) it’s telling on what's really going on here, but if you’re still not convinced, how about this…
Almost every last one of those moments in the film feel exactly like the very thing Russo says he was trying not to do. This is not, Mortal Kombat is not knowingly tossing us a wink, it’s a glaring through us into the abyss of the abysmal. It doesn't have very many interesting characters, because it believes that's taking away from spinning hat tricks, it jumps from scene to scene and still drags, and maybe if its fight scenes were as legendary as the stuff we’ve seen in John Wick, or The Raid, “The Night Comes For Us" or even some Marvel movies, I might be inclined to give it some shred of dignity, but they weren’t bothered and I am incapable of lying about this film. This isn’t the loving, but lacking vision of an Ed Wood, or the happenstance at the intersection of awful and effort that is Michael Schultz's The Last Dragon, this is just plain awful, and sometimes it’s okay to just call it that rather than reflexively propping it up as the very thing those who made it were trying so hard to veer away from. Saying so emboldens not only the creators, but the green lighters and by God the industry is in enough trouble as it is.
The Cognative Dissonance of McQueen's Cool in Bullitt
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When I first saw Bullitt I liked it, elements of it I loved, but it didn't stick. I watched it again years later, I was older I liked it even more but still there was some distance, it was more from a heady position than the heart, but something had shifted. There was this gnawing feeling to watch it again, like a call, a beckoning. I watched it again and I don't even wanna use the word love, I was engrossed, maybe even entranced by it, and then again, and again, and again, and then a sudden realization…I loved this movie. At the center of this continuing expansion of love, McQueen's steely eyed performance which has been mimicked many times, but in all honesty I don't think is in any way repeatable or touchable. It can be argued McQueen had performances where the “work" was better, but his understanding, the appropriateness of the character, the exactitude, is what makes this his best for me. Both Ryan Gosling and Ryan O'Neal in “Drive” and “The Driver" are so clearly spirtitual imitations of not only Bullitt, but of McQueen in it. There is to each, its own beauty, a similar vein of a charismatic, deadly, but intoxicating sort of detached masculinity, but ultimately both are in the performative shadow of what McQueen does effortlessly. They play/lean into what McQueen is in an active denial of in concert with Director Peter Yates. Each one works for, towards, what McQueen just presents, and what he presents is a constant and ongoing cognitive dissonance in not only the character, but in the way he sees him. There’s a scene where McQueen is taking a newspaper from one of those old newspaper boxes without paying, and he let’s this sort of “Yup" expression glide across his face. It’s so simple but it gives character to the role, adds layers the issue of Bullit's inconsistent ethics. With the others, while they are quite complex in the note they’re giving it’s still really one note, and it’s so earned, there is a belovedness to the performance. In O' Neal’s there is more of an austerity that takes some air out of our ability to expound upon this man’s foolishness. There’s not really a nod to the absurdity, it takes it on its face and its word and has fun with it, but it’s not knocking it. If you watch Gosling in the Diner in “Drive" telling the man to shut up, its a very precious scene. There is a love of the fantasy, shown in the performance-oriented feel of it, if Gosling did it in one take you can’t tell. Everything about the scene feels so worked upon, so fretted over you can almost feel the conversations between the two about it pre- scene. McQueen may very well have done the same, but it doesn't FEEL that way, and that in and of itself feels like a commentary. O'Neal and Gosling really went all out on the detached part and most of the humanity of their characters is lost. They're male created constructs no more than McQueen, but McQueen makes his more difficult to pin down than Goslings, more human than O'Neal's, a big portion of this because he’s so at odds with the men he plays (McQueen frequently spoke of the fraudulent nature of the men he played). Gosling and O'Neal ( especially Gosling) seem to understand but empathize and like their characters more. Gosling says that he thinks of the driver “as a man who watches too many movies, but also as a knight”. He and O'Neal make their own versions of the strong silent trope a cinematic four course meal, but McQueen's only offering snacks. In comparison to the others, he’s lobbing, they're pitching. Now that may feel like it should be inversed, but pitching/and meals are about force and preparation which are also generally good in craft. Acting is mostly no different, but again the less you see the craft, the better. It’s a spectrum, but the farther away from one and closer to the other you are, the higher and higher your performance. Beyond that’s its telling in the vision of the character. Pitching is something that involves much more force in action, it implies effort, lobbing is considered nearly the opposite, both your hand and ultimately what happens afterwards are nearly natural inertia. Inertia: “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force” - that’s McQueen's acting style, except of course he did work, but the appearance is that the man gives no effort or is playing himself instead of creating a conscious philosophy about these types of men especially Bullitt…
McQueen's back and forth with Robert Vaughn in the hospital is my favorite part of the film precisely because it’s so good and because in it is everything that made McQueen McQueen. It is also telling and reflective of what McQueen gets about the morbid and silly conceptualization of masculinity. The setup is that McQueen's Detective Frank Bullitt was put in charge of the protection of a key witness to Robert Vaughn's ambitious Walter Chalmers case. The witness ends up dead as a result of some funky goings-on and now Vaughn's Chalmers goes immediately after Frank. He asks him “What went wrong?”. Script wise Bullitt is not going to answer this question but give his own, and that produces a question of its own for both actor and audience.. Why doesn’t he answer this? The answer to that for the actor is going to color their approach, and that approach the performance. McQueen notoriously brought alot of himself to his roles, but in the context of what was needed for the character. Several times in interviews he would mention his dislike for compromise and being pushed around ( I think he saw alot of this going on ) and when he wasn't saying it in these interviews it still made itself clear and it bares itself here in this scene, not because McQueen merely acts it as such, but because he understands the assignment by way of his own nature, which was philosophical, and deeply moral, but also privileged and willfully inconsiderate based on his perception, a hypocrisy of self. Bullitt doesn't like the question, so he poses another one and McQueen sees it as deliberate. The way he delivers it, it’s a man built on code and ethics, but also bored with people, again a sort of hypocrisy. Taking his time to finish chomping on his sandwich, he nonchalantly utters “Who else knew where he was?” This is purposeful, he does this so casually that he doesn’t even bother with enunciation ( a frequent consequence of McQueen's uniquely smooth style) and Vaughn's Chalmers asks him to repeat (which feels like it was real) when McQueen repeats, the only actual thing that has changed about the delivery is the volume, (and not by much) he’s not raising his voice, it’s a rebellion, but it’s not morality, it’s ego, as the next few moments will reveal. When he later brings up the fact that someone leaked the witnesses whereabouts, and it wasn't the detectives charged with his safekeeping, Chalmers remarks that’s hardly the issue, and McQueen's response is incredulous disbelief, but it’s patient, just barely registers, normally this is bad, but with McQueen it’s apart of that constantly imitated percieved unflappability, something he saw in the men he consistently played, something he understood the audience pined for, but something he also seemed to have a healthy amount of disdain for. McQueen talking about his character Michael Delaney in “Le Mans” (1971) : “I said, “When you’re racing, it’s life. Anything else that happens is just waiting.” Now, that quote is meant to show the vacancy of Michael Delaney’s mind, to show you that he’s latched on to this ridiculous roundy-round race as a way of avoiding the hard questions. Like, has he ever loved anyone. Does he have a plan for the future. That kind of stuff.” What those who imitate McQueen often forget is the fissures, the breaks, the holes poked open for air in McQueen's men, and maybe more importantly the size of these holes, which seemed to be “just right"…At least for McQueen. Gosling is better at this, but contextually more is provided in his film, but I think McQueen's is much more suited to the reality of the man, not the fantasy. When Vaughn says to Bullitt, “don’t evade responsibility, in your parlance you blew it" take a look at McQueen's reaction his face drops..
That's a breath of doubt, of “you're ’re right, I did”, before Chalmers then says “You failed to take adequate measures to protect him" and its right back to himself. That kind of self doubt is not gonna last long in a man like this, he can't bound through life escaping all the things that hold the rest of us down that way. Even if McQueen didn’t understand these men or himself to the fullest, he understood unequivocally the fantasy of them. He played them so well because he understood the absurdity. The room here with Vaughn this hospital room became a ring for a sanctioned pissing contest and he grants its the exact seriousness it deserves, which could be summed up as the famous line from “The Social Network” - “You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount". That’s the driving force of this scene, treating it as if its boring, barely worth mentioning, it undermines these men, shows their pettiness. Not one line here in this scene is misplaced, misguided, under or over executed, not by McQueen or Vaughn for that matter. Its intentional too (McQueen famously paired down his dialogue for maximum effect and focus) an example of the mastery over himself and perfecting the art of creating an image of self that established McQueen as the ultimate ideal, even while he himself made fun of the entire concept or notion. An excerpt from another McQueen interview: (the film he is referencing is unclear) “I do believe that the very deal that this picture is based on, personal courage, that has nothing to do with what courage represents in our society today, and with some of the things I, or John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood, have done." The cool that emonates from Bullitt then comes not from the effort to try and create a man we could all desire, aspire to be, or commemorate, but from a desire to look at men like him plainly and construct their reality in a way that allows us to love them for their flaws, while squarely looking them in the face and saying “You're kinda sad". That feeling has a lot more in common with the themes at play in both men Neil Macaulay (Robert DeNiro) , and especially Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) in 1995's “Heat" than it’s antecedents of hard boiled detectives who are too cool for school and McQueen's work in it just as brilliant as those two. It’s a performance, a movie, an actor who found his brand of cool in his cool-ness about these men. A cognative distance as well as dissonance from the very ideal of manhood he seemed unable to escape. Something I think on some level almost any man can understand even if he misses the point entirely. This is the brilliance of this film, and McQueen. Undercutting the ideology in the guise of it, the effectiveness, well that’s another story but that, I deciphered- is what my ever creeping love of it and McQueen in it - is about.
Coming 2 America: Please Don't Ever Do That Again.
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I'm going to make this short and to the point. This was one of the saddest things I've ever had to endure movie wise. When it comes to sequels especially ones that are long in gestation I'm always leery and usually I can lower my expectations to a point that feels reasonable because I understand all of the things that they have to climb all over in order to be as good or better than what I originally saw. Many of those elements having to do with bias already set within me based upon the ties, strength, and power of nostalgia in and of itself. So it's not as if I came into “Coming 2 America” looking for one of the greatest sequels of all time, or to feel exactly as I had felt when I watched the previous film. I merely wanted to laugh, be entertained, and yeah imbibe on a little bit of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. What I got was a few cute chuckles, the worst kind of revisits to nostalgia, (which is the cynical and craven sort) and one of the worst scripts I've ever heard read aloud by actors. I saw quite a few folk tweet out some version of writer Kenya Barris should never be allowed to write again and though for the most part I hate that kind of sentiment for anybody out there making a career for themselves - I have to agree. That man should never be allowed to write again. He needs to be barred from ever looking at, breathing on, uttering the words pencil, paper, typewriter, stationary, or laptop again or risk assault and battery charges. Putting pencil to pad or iPad again should end with life imprisonment in a Siberian prison cell with a starving Bengal tiger. I don't want Barris doodling , I don't want him stenciling, sketching, or tracing, I don't want him near a stamp, because it might mean hes written something. This movie was bad. Its plot is muddled, its dialogue stiff, its plot points all over the place. So, Akeems father Jaffe Joffer is dying and wants him to “man up" by finding his recently discovered son by way of a shaman?? Now nevermind the final lessons of the original suggest this to be a bit off course for Akeem and Jaffe, its how we get them here. The sudden roll in role gives James Earl Jones none of that warm silly pompous regality he had in the first one, and fills it with some rather not funny bile and rigidity. The movie trudges on as Akeem goes out of his way to “man up” even though the entire original suggests he was not tied to being his father’s son, and rather rebellious if not in a passive aggressive fashion. To have this sort of change we would need to know more about what has happened since but this movie is not interested in that at all (more on that later). A nearby despot/general (Wesley Snipes) wants to attack Zamunda and by extension Akeem because he is not “man enough”, but believes by marrying off one of his heirs that will solve this? How and why if his entire nation is starving and on the brink of collapse as the movie suggest is he such a threat??? Large shrug*. When Coming 2 America is not being ridiculously confusing it segues from one aspect of the plot to another clumsily and handles its themes even worse. For a movie about misogyny and patriarchy it handles its female characters poorly, and gives them little to do except be wives, hoes, and badasses. None of which is bad, unless they're almost less than one dimensional, and barely seen, which they are. Worst of all it's not funny and the few parts of it that are funny I suspect - because you can tell by the fashion in which the actors speak - are improvised. It's lessons are corny, its themes are as outdated as it proposes it's characters are, and it's not really in touch with the original in much of any way that isn't connected to that same sort of vile commercial and calculated nostalgia that I talked about before. It never tries to connect us to these characters that we love and know in any way that is interesting, or wants to reframe how we see them, or even add a further compliment to who they are through some sort of growth and evolution. It is merely there to plant them directly from the time that we last saw them with an excuse of a plot for them to be here in the now as if very little has changed (even though we recognize physical changes in them) and say “here don't you remember these guys? You already know the story so here we go”. One of the great lines in the original came from the wonderful Madge Sinclair as a retort to King Joffer when he replied what he can do about years of tradition- “I thought you were the KING!” This could have been a story about how those words lived on, passed on, or were slept off by way of her death but the movie seems very apprehensive to even want to mention her, save for through a tacked on scene about her thoughts at the end that is again CLUMSY. The movie wasn't that long but it felt like it was 3 hours, I fell asleep several times and had to shake myself up and start back from the point in which I had fallen asleep. All the goodwill of the actors ( I believe every last one of them seemed like they enjoyed what they're doing ) is wasted because there's nothing fun about this movie or a very little at least and it's a sad sad tribute and connection to one of the greatest American comedies ever. Thing is I do actually like the story or the idea of a story that asked some of the things the old said and did to be reconsidered, and to try to bring these characters into an age they might feel disconnected with and thusly themselves. How awesome it might have been if the movie spent equal time showing (outside of just fighting) how ready and prepared his daughter Meeka (Kiki Layne wasted) already was to be Queen of Zamunda. To give her more of an innerstory, to show her wants and longings, desires and characteristics right alongside the clear foolishness in trying to groom a son he barely knew into being king. What if what happens to Vanessa Bell Calloway isnt further made into a pretty horrible and not funny joke and was instead both funny and a commentary on the socio political hypocrisy at play in Akeem and Zamunda? What if the movie didn't waste so much time being ad hawking hub for Crown Royal McDonald's and Ciroc and instead put that time into developing a story about how Zamundas policies hurt and harmed its neighbors and maybe fed off them, who knows, these are just ideas, but the movie throws away possibilities for something both funny and lingering if not at least entertaining for something dumb and worser still boring. The way it plays out leaves room for other installments of this…and sweet baby Jesus I hope not. I just want them to let this go. I want them to never ever breathe on that movie again just please let us remember it as it was.. this has done enough damage.
Judas and The Black Messiah: The Poltical is Made Impersonal.
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In Carol Hanisch's now seminal feminist essay “The Personal is the Political” she argues all the ways that therapy, (or the personal) and the political which seem to be mutually exclusive is in fact the opposite. That what women go through personally cannot be parted from what the group goes through or who they are politically, or at least that has been what I have understood it to be. “The Personal is Political” since has become a popular refrain and even grown some extra meaning amongst those who consider themselves “conscious” or now “woke", and it is a thematic refrain I believe the creators behind Judas and the Messiah did not incorporate into their film.
“It’s true we all need to learn how to better draw conclusions from the experiences and feelings we talked about how to draw all kinds of connections. Some of us haven’t done a very good job of communicating them to others” -Carole Hanisch “The Personal is Political”
One of my main takeaways from Hanisch's essay was and is that the importance of the personal is that it is ultimately the engine of the political, in that the political cannot exist in any genuine way without the conditions of the personal or the conditions that cause personal grief damage, harm, self destruction. Out of the abyss of the white eurocentric insistence of logic over emotion Hanisch in plain language makes clear how the personal can be lost, or in some cases treated as a distraction, or in this case treated as a subplot to the political, and how that does a disservice to the message. To put it in even simpler terms, what we do is the political, why we do it is the personal. Yes, Politics regardless of the fact that they extend forth from the personal can and have managed to extract many times the personal from itself, and even on other occasions it has pushed the personal above the political, but make no mistake these two are in co-dependent relationship. That is the matter of the social dynamic, filmmaking on the other hand and even more specifically storytelling cannot truly exist in any way that is meaningful without the personal and this is one reason why movies as political messages don't work. When newcomer Shaka Kings film opens it tells us not of the personal conditions which drive William O Neal, ( LaKieth Stanfield) but instead who he is as a political tool. In short William O'Neal is a thief, stealing and capitalizing off of his own people for his own profit. He's an individualist, and a capitalist, and as such he is used. Why he is the way he is, the movie isn't interested in - from when it opens to when it moves gradually and sometimes thrillingly towards its close. This lack of interest in the “why" outside of the political reasoning makes it so that many of the shifts and changes meant to provide emotional punch, never quite land for me. It also makes most of it seem erratic and out of nowhere. I would find myself asking why William was moving the way that he moved, quite a number of times while watching. Why he was one minute hanging up on FBI agent Roy Mitchell ( Jesse Plemons) after he - in an act of cowardice- leaves his comrades hanging in a shootout saying he's done with this s*** and the next moment, helping the Panthers fix the shop that was blown up by the police and STILL iinforming on them without much explanation as to what has changed to cause either one of those things to continue for him? There is another moment where Hampton after seeing the final product of their work in restoring the community center - personally thanks William, Bill (as they call him) begins to tear up, and it's one of the few moments where I was genuinely moved by and impressed with the acting in the movie, but its clouded because this inner turmoil, this conflict going on in Bill did not resonate beyond the moment. In Malcolm X (which still stands, towers, as the gold standard of any sort of biopic or historical storytelling regarding political people that actually lived) there is a scene later in the movie where Malcolm revisits one of his old Pals “West Indian Archie” as played by the wonderful Delroy Lindo. The moment, that strong sense of sadness and melancholy, and tragedy that extends out from the scene is made so powerful because it is not only a representation of Archie's current situation, but a representation of bitterness of time, and decay, as well as the arc of Malcolm's life. Us now having “been” with Malcolm during that time in the movie and seen what he was like in that time running with Archie serves as a reminder of the passage of time meant to both, and this is the power and building character of the personal and the private to a movie that is very clearly also political. Maybe because “Malcolm X" had/has as its basis an actual autobiography where in Malcolm and Alex Haley clearly understood that the personal and the political are co-aligned, that we got the bits of Malcolm (his family background, people whom he called his friends, his psychology which she gained from the streets) that we got, which ultimately provide not only unique foundations for why Malcolm is who he is, but gives Denzel an entry point into who Malcolm is, all of which gives contextualization, which in turn gives power beyond political to Malcolm's Journey, which all in turn provide the emotional and logical punch, and where Judas.. is missing its. For instance the scene in which Malcolm plays Russian roulette with a man, but actually never places the bullet in the chamber, (a nostalgic personal and anecdotal recollection from his past) is tense, funny, and politically and logically relevant as it helps you understand and backs up Malcolms tendency toward theatrics as a key part of who and how he works politically as well as something that can rub people the wrong way. Where is this type of moment in Judas?
Aesthetics can be very powerful covers, they can hide or make it difficult to see what a movie is saying. If they get too distracting they can obstruct us from visualizing or being able to tell just how thin the substance is, or even worse obstruct us completely from seeing or understanding anything else and that extends even to politics. Take for instance the garish make-up on Martin Sheen’s J. Edgar Hoover, its distracting in that it detracts from being able to imbibe Sheen's performance in any real way, and it distracts from the fact that there is not much to the character of Hoover, he like his makeup in this movie - is a cartoon, a caricature of white supremacy. The fact of the matter is you cannot hope to understand any political movement if you don't understand the people or the persons who drive it. The same goes for movies, you can't hope as a director, as a writer, as an actor to understand who your character is if you're not interested in what drives them. In Shaka King's direction there are some wonderful shots, that in and of themselves cause the heart to be stirred, the eye to be pleased, and even connect to a political message, but that is all it does. The same goes for the writing which is full of very clever ways of introducing the basic bullet points of the Panthers messaging, and outlining exactly why the labels they've placed on certain characters (especially the white ones) fit. None of this direction, writing, acting seems to understand or consider rather very much where those ideas sprang from, or why the conditions unique to each person that distinguishes each character from the next, each political actor from the next. When a character named Jake goes off on a bend for revenge, hurt by the loss of his friend, I barely understood it because I had figured out only THEN they were close friends! Where was the bond0, and what made these two any different? The personal and not just the political is exactly why Malcolm X differs from Martin Luther King, and Martin Luther King from Stokely Carmichael, and Stokely Carmichael from Angela Davis, and Angela Davis from Fannie Lou Hamer and so on and so on. The lack of the personal, the private in this movie is why I as much as I want to praise the performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield (who is one of my favorite actors working today) or even Dominique Fishback who plays Hampton's girlfriend Deborah Johnson - to the moon, I find it extremely difficult to praise them in the kinds of ways I think others have and will. All at certain points find interesting moments, but none are ever able to turn those into a full tapestry because there is nothing to which any of these threads belong, no spool of which to wrap themselves around. So then it all becomes all about aesthetics. Sure Daniel's movements can be interesting, sure it can be rousing when intensifies his eyes, tilts his head, mimics Hampton's cadence, but ultimately that's all superficial. None of it means anything if you can't connect it to a singular idea, or a “through line” as actors are sometimes known to call it - as to who Fred Hampton is beyond what his message is, beyond the fact that he's willing to die for his people. Fishback and Plemmons for my money give the best performances in the film, but A. that's not saying much, and B. is because they seem to have a little bit more of an understanding of who their characters are, free from the bondage of a social conceptualization brought about by historical fame or by physical evidence like video recordings, and thusly free from the simplified characterizations, and even that seems shaky at times. Acting cannot survive on physicality alone and that doesn't just mean physical movement but also THEE physical. There has to be some spiritual understanding of what it is you're playing, as well as who it is, to truly transcend, without it these actors seemed like quarterbacks who don't have an offensive line and no one to throw to wildly running around like a chicken with their head cut off, calling audibles, and furiously running from one side of the field to the next trying to make something happen. Many times in the movie I caught Lakeith making faces that were connected to nothing, that felt off and seemed totally out of place. He laughs and almost breaks down simultaneously as he's leaving in his car from yelling at the other Panthers about an informant and it doesn't feel right. It's not necessarily that you don't understand physically/mentally why he's doing it, it's that you don't understand spiritually why he's doing it. That there, is the story of most of this movie not just for the actors before the writers and actors, but for the director there doesn't seem to be a spiritual through line beyond how they want Fred Hampton to be viewed as compared to how they want William O'Neal to be viewed. If the story is truly about the Judas then we really shouldn't be seeing Fred in scenes independent of William. The need to force that comes from a need to force feed the audience an education, and indicates a lack of trust in the viewer or the audience to discern between what William O’ Neal thought of Fred Hampton and who Fred Hampton really was, or maybe even your confidence in being able to pull it off, but the story is there nonetheless. Here is the story of a man who not only was able to turn his back on his people for individual gain as the name “Judas” in the title implies, but also convince himself unconvincingly (as indicated by his suicide) that he was on the right side of History. This particular bit of self brainwashing is not shown to us in the movie mind you, but in the subsequent actual recording of the man from the 1987 documentary “Eyes on the Prize”. What happens there with the actual man is ten times more interesting than anything that happened in film where Lakeith felt the need to over act in order to make up for what the movie lacked in subtext beyond superficial artifice. How, (beyond buying himself suits and shades) did this man convince himself that what he was doing was right? How did he deal with himself in places where he wasn’t being watched? In Mike Newell’s 1997 gangster classic “Donnie Brasco" Johnny Depp's “Joe Pistone” (also based on a real life informant of sorts except he actually works for the cops) is conflicted about the work that he is doing moving between two completely different worlds. What is essentially the third piece to these worlds he's jumping in between that is his family and ultimately it's made very clear that this is the way he washes, and reasons with what he's doing. It's for them, but as the movie goes along we see the further he gets away from one family ( Home or cops) as he trades it in for the other, ( gangsterdom) the further he gets away from that tie and begins to lose himself, there is nothing of ths sort here for William, and nothing of the sort for Hampton who in some ways can be seen as this movies “Lefty Ruggiero”.
One of Judas and the Black Messiah's best moments, (which really even within the moment only lasted for a few moments) tells us of a movie that would have been a much better and more involving movie. Fred begins to read from Deborah's diary without her permission, especially the portion written as Fred was imprisoned. Deborah comes into the room notices Fred reading it and tells him it's private, but as they go along they begin to have a conversation that ask essentially does she regret conceiving his child because of the nature of his work and more specifically the possible consequences. This is the movie that includes or is about Fred Hampton we needed, a movie that would have detailed, and spoken to the strength and the fragility of the relationship between Deborah Johnson and Fred Hampton. A movie that would have contemplated and meditated on the strenuous but none the less clear relationship between the personal and the political. The personal being “I'm bringing a family into this world, I have to look out for my wife, I have to take care of her, and my future child, make sure she's properly cared for and she for me, part of which inherently includes my continued existence” and that with the political, which is that “I have to take care of my community, my friends within the community I've built and ultimately look out for the world in a movement that I'm trying to bring to attention possibly even beyond national borders”. If you must have the William O' Neal angle it should be interested in how he helps further disintegrate the already fragile co-existence of these two pillars of social dynamics. It is through these personal, very private, and in many cases more universal than we think problems that we find the message that politically we seek to breath life into. Returning to the essay, Hanisch goes on to say “It is at this point a political action to tell it like it is to say what I really believe about my life instead of what I've always been told to say”. This after she says “As a movement woman I've been pressured to be strong, selfless, other -oriented, sacrificing and in general pretty much in control of my own life. To admit to the problems in my life is to be deemed weak”. If you apply most of the words the adjectives that she used in this sentence to the movie you get mostly what the movie had to say about Fred Hampton. Take the opposite of many of them and you get William O Neal, but just as Hanisch posits that ultimately these are just ideas of women in the movement, caricatures but not the reality, so too is this framing of Hampton and O'Neal mostly just ideas about who these people were and not the reality, and ideas without the fullness of the human experience rarely make for complete or good movements or movies.
Malcolm & Marie: Levinson Giveth and He Taketh Away
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If there's one scene that sums up all my feelings in Sam Levinson's “Malcolm and Marie”( Out on Netflix Today) it would be the scene in the final act in which Marie (Zendaya) goes on a monologue to say all the ways that Malcolm could have and should have thanked her for the role she played in both his life and the film he's recently made. The scene is well acted by both of the actors, but especially Zendaya who confirms to the world the level of talent she has and the potential she's capable of reaching without necessarily reaching the peak of it. The scene is monotonous, and it's self-indulgent, and yet introspective in the way that knowing that the writer is having her speak about himself - if we were to assume that he is Malcolm, which he is - is brave but narcissistic in that it seems too showy, that he wants to let us know how much he can take it on the chin as well as he dishes it. The scene is self-indulgent not only in what was said, but in the length. After awhile it moves from revelatory and cathartic to unnecessary and that is an encapsulation of all aspects of this film which trades something interesting for something unnecessary, on a merry go round for it’s full near two hour runtime.
Before I start in on what doesn't work I'd like to talk about what does work in the film. I like that the film is willing to assert itself, to assert its position, to ask difficult questions whether it be from Malcolm to Marie or in the more external sense from the creator Sam Levinson to his critics, by asserting his position. Unlike many of my peers I think criticism needs a good tongue-lashing. Be it white critics, (though especially them) or black, poc, men or women, I personally think many of us have gotten lazy and defensive in our viewpoint. Many of us not interrogating ourselves just interrogating the art and not the way that we see the art. In my mind as a critic it is my job to interrogate both. In order to properly contextualize and feel good about the authenticity or fullness of my opinion I have to first ask where these feelings are coming from and why or how they might serve the work I'm doing and where they don't serve the work I'm doing. I remember watching a Q&A with Ari Aster and one of the fans of his film Midsommer ( I believe) essentially giving him props for his film explain what they saw on film and they were so sure about it that you could tell that Mr Aster was reticent to tell them that they were pretty off base, but you could tell by his body language and his face what he was actually doing there. This is something not enough critics for my taste cop to. It's not that you have to walk around talking about how wrong you may be all day, but that in the work there should live a certain amount of humility in which you acknowedge the inherent dissolution of perspective in the transfer from how they feel creating this to how I feel watching this. This goes doubly so when it's a bad review because this is this person's child they birthed, that they went through the labor in the pains of putting out there into the world. That we can say we have no responsibility if and when we're going to come and tell them it's a piece of s*** when its exceedingly possible you don’t even have the right perspective, is an audacious take, and as nasty a take as some of the things said in the film. We as critics need a come to Jesus moment about how as people who move and feed ourselves on the idea of critique we have gotten pretty bad at taking any from anybody not titled a critic, and on certain occasions not them either. There's the other portion of the monologue where Malcolm goes off about the identity politics and the politicization overall of filmmaking and though there were definitely points that were said where I wanted to yell at him this isn't even hard, Google, it's right f****** there! You're wrong sir!” There were also times where I had to step back and say okay, actually you’re not exactly wrong there, as a matter of fact your'e spot on. Problem is as critics we’ve had enough conversation about the former next to none about the latter. I remember a while back when speaking about M Night Shyamalan to some friends I articulated that I believed after viewers saw enough of his films to expect that his films were going to contain some sort of twist they started to go into the film's reading them exactly for that, and sometimes that led to them basing the entirety of whether the film was good or not on the scale of how effective the ending was. This at least partially in my opinion is what made people so greatly screw the pooch on their reviews of “The Village”. In that same way I believe audiences and critics especially are going into movies these days reading them for their politics to an extent that misconstrues the idea behind the misnomer every movie is political. In actuality while every movie has politics that doesn't mean that the movie is meant to be political. I think that most creators or storytellers of any kind just want to tell a story ..that's how they start. They don't start with a political idea - I mean some do, but most people start with just wanting to tell a story, the politics come as a consequence of telling the story. The politics unravel themselves from and extend out of the story. Anyway we as critics of the art we act as $2 psychotherapist looking at the work and sometimes speaking to what it says about the creator to us. Now one of the most vital aspects to being able to do your job as a psychotherapist or psychologist is that the person whom you are analyzing tell you the truth, but what happens when that person is just telling you a story? Sure you can analyze what the way they're telling that story might say about them, but ultimately to get to any real truth they have to start actually talking about themselves in a way that is authentic and you're totally dependent upon them to do that. That's not what's happening here, and we are not psychotherapist or psychologist so the way in which we continue to discuss film as if we are right there with the creators with no humility about that disconnect is grossly out of turn at times. I as an artist myself understand that struggle and I understand the anger and the rage that develops behind it, and anybody not willing to engage with that in any real way and they're not doing their job as a critic as far as I'm concerned. It's that rage that pent-up frustration that in fits and starts I get in Levinson's film. Whether Levinson means it to be or not this is a great allegory for the nature of the coexistence between the artist and the critic. It is a relationship and it's as frustrating being in a relationship as an artist with critics and vice- versa as it is being in a relationship with another person. To do so you have to be willing to ask difficult questions and you have to be willing to accept difficult questions and in the script I think Levinson does a decent if not good job of doing both with Marie acting as a challenger to all of his or “Malcolms” frustrations and insecurities. Is there something grossly disingenuous and uncomfortable about using a black man as a sort of protective shield to discuss your insecurities and frustrations with the critical community.. YES, but calling out that particular bit of villainy doesn't erase ours.
Where the film doesn't work has a lot to do with its setting and how it unfolds. “Chamber films” (films that take place in one setting) are notoriously difficult to pull off because without movement from one setting to another it's hard to keep an audience engaged, so creators have to find all these inventive ways to move the action. Therefore it becomes extremely vital to understand at the onset of the undertaking whether or not your film can actually work in that environment. For a number of reasons I would say unless you intend to make this a short film or something around the running time of Steve McQueen's brilliant “Lovers Rock” then this is not the genre for a one setting film. It sometimes made me nauseous to watch two people verbally maul each other around various tables, couches, beds, tubs, and lawn furniture. There's an acting exercise wherein the actors are each given opposing objective, usually it's that one wants to leave the room and the other one wants the person to stay in the room - each actor has to act out or improvise based upon this premise. This works for an exercise and usually you'll get some amazing results, but you can only carry this on for so long and that's kind of the entirety of this movie. Many times points that were made within the first minute were carried on for further ten or more. Again it's a great exercise for actors but even then it starts to become grating, and also leads to actors creating, forcing things like some of John David's actions, for instance when he went outside and started fencing the air in the grass. Especially so for actors still struggling to find or know their boundaries, and still liable to force where one only need to allow. For all intensive purposes both Zendaya and John David Washington are young actors in different ways. Zendaya is physically young, John David though definitely not old is older but young in experience in the field, where Zendaya is older than he and it shows. Zendaya's “thank you” monologue gives her great room to explore what I like to call the power of repetition -where an actor can discover by repeating certain words the power of inferred meaning through changing and connecting to a different emotion for each time the word is said. She does on several occasions find something extremely interesting something that qualifies as magic, but I wonder if she lost interest at times? I did because though scene like that monologue and the movie could and at times did explore the power of as an audience member I was bored after the first number of times I seen a particular argument, and in the case after the first number of times that she said it, because again, pretty early on the point was made. The same goes for John David's volatile, mean, and cruel monologue that he gives to Marie when she's in the tub. It test the patience of an audience member to have to sit there and watch two people eviscerate each other for at least an hour and a half if you count the last 10 minutes as a sort of resolution - and not in a good way, even worse still if some of the arguements seem pointless and for the sake of argument itself. If the audience member is like me, they check out because ultimately it's tedious, and it's tedious because all of it , the repetition, the showiness, the constant yelling, rejects the immersion aspect of watching a film or play. You start to discover your'e in a room watching people stand around and play in between four walls or three, and that in this particular film you feel those walls because no one would stand around for this and no one should. As the aforementioned exercise goes eventually someone has to stay or go, otherwise it begins to feel like listening in on two lovers who no longer have anything to say to each other but keep talking amyway. Whether that is in love or in hate, it is not fun to be around and only interesting for them. As a big proponent of healthy conflict, of the idea that at least in this era we’re in, we’re maybe a little too afraid of combative discussion for fear it might turn into something ugly or any other number of variables and reasons, this even for me was too much. I needed breaks, it needed to show something else, and it didn't need (As Marie once tells Malcolm) to be so cruel. As Marie also explains to Malcolm you could have gotten that point across without doing it in that way. Though I could see that maybe that's a part of what he's trying to do with the movie, I feel he should have took a lesson from his own movie because it didn't need to be in there. Malcolm & Marie is a grand, wonderful at times and mind-numbingly frustrating at others example of “the lord giveth and the lord taketh away”, except its Levinson that giveth and he taketh away. He gives us the power of two actors in a common goal allowed a singular type of freedom to express and find their voice in and on film. Then it takes away from the power of that by putting it all in one setting with no real breaks for genuine moments of pure love, respect, and affection. Too in love with it’s own brand of male indoctrinated conflict, too in a hurry to get back to the expression of conflict to appreciate the healing power of love and the very gratefulness he seeks to find. That's not something that should be reserved just for an ending, that's something that should continue throughout the film. “Peaks and valleys, Peaks and valleys” used to be the refrain of one of my old acting coaches and I think it would have done Levinson's film some good to have a little bit more of the peaks to go along with his valleys in trying to have an honest discussion about relationships and critique. All in all what we're left with in the finished product of what we do have from Levinson is a work that is a challenging, messy, tedious, aggravating, self-indulgent, narcissistic, and brave actors showcase that I have no ability at the moment to really decide on whether I like or not. So maybe Levinson's done his job here, by having me and maybe a few of us think for a moment about what criticism is, have a discussion on how it works, when it works and for whom it's for, same as we are with his movie.
The Little Things, Doesn't Care about The Little Things.
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You've probably seen a movie like it, maybe even it's a TV show Let's say a procedural, let’s say “Columbo”. The antagonist goes throughout said episode believing they have been so slick so cool, that there is no way in which they can fail in their endeavor and yet as Columbo will inform us in the end, its the details he's missing that's leading him right into the cuffs of Columbo. In Colombo both from within the plot and externally from the audience it’s the little things that matter, and the writers, creators, and actors of that show made sure you knew and felt it. Interestingly enough John Lee Hancock's “The Little Things” has a somewhat meta thing going on where if it were an antagonist it would be in cuffs at the end because it doesn't pay enough attention to the little things. The story which is ultimately about a man drawn into a murder mystery that brings up his own sordid history as a cop - isnt very concerned with little details, like why a department official suddenly changes her mind about handing over paper work, or explaining in any way why Rami Malek's Sgt. Jim Baxter stares at Denzel Washington's Joe Deacon cross eyed when Deacon is doing nothing other than standing there and eventually talking. In truth it doesn’t even care about big things like character or really its own story. It would seem Hancock was far too involved with the twist to be concerned about anything else. I would add that I don't really think any writer or actor goes into their work trying to make a mistake such as this, it is merely that the execution makes it seem into the audience as if this is the case. Hancock's movie has drawn some unfavorable comparisons to David Fincher's seminal classic “Seven”, seeing as though they were conceived of around the same time And because they do share a number of similarities (this feels like Denzel wanting to make up for his one admitted mistake of turning down Finchers film) I'll use Seven to make something of a comparison of what works and what doesn't, which in The Little Things is just about everything.
The central relationship in Seven is set around Detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman)and Mills (Brad Pitt), it would seem that “The Little Things” wants to do the same. At the beginning its setting its central relationship around Joe Deacon (Denzel) and Sergeant Jim Baxter, (Rami Malek) but the relationship is poorly set up and poorly built upon, and so too are the characters. Baxter’s dislike for “Deke" as they call him (professional jealousy for a guy you dont know who as of yet poses no threat) and subsequent disciple-like behavior are just random and weird. Meanwhile Seven opened up showing us intricate details about the fashion of Somerset's routine which clearly showed him to be obviously very meticulous and detail oriented. His Kitchen and bedroom are minimalist and very clean, his bed extremely well made, his belongings set out in order before him. The clash between he and Mills is based in style, and objectives. Mills is very rushed, he talks a lot, even in his dress its clear hes the opposite of Somerset. Hes high on respect because hes young, and hes high strung, as well as impatient. Mills wants this case, ( most likely to prove himself) Somerset doesn't, (because hes been here before and he has an intuition) and pretty much all of this is established within the first 5 minutes of their meeting. When we first meet Sergeant Baxter in The Little Things he's having Deacon's truck towed because it was in his way and seemingly because he likes to do things by the book. He says “if you want special treatment go back to Kern County” where Deacon comes from, but There's nothing later on in the film that backs this rigidity to straight laced behavior up so the scene ends up feeling connected to nothing and random. Baxter will maybe three minutes later accuse Deacon of busting his balls when it seems that it's he that is bothered by Deacon, and again this isnt really built upon, sooner rather than later they are like besties. We then find out that despite all of these stares and challenges from Baxter, there was no inciting incident, history, or reason, because he has to ask who Deacon is, and the dynamics between these two quickly become disorienting and nonsensical. This will set a tone for the rest of the film as many of these characters just do things because the script seems to be bounding them towards it rather than a natural occurrence due to the characteristics of their make-up. Once we arrive at the reveal I'm not able to tell you why Denzel's character does the things he does, any more than I'm able to tell you what motivated Leto and definitely not why Malek's Baxter does what he does. If this movie seemed like it was going for a brechtian exercise in the limits of and boundaries of storytelling In the genre I might find this interesting but as it is it decidedly seems like it's not it's just devoid of any interest in anything but it's semi goofy plot twist.
If I'm writing a story I would feel I would have to know who my characters are very early in the process. They might not be the first thing, but they would be a very near second or third, because most everything I'm going to do with the rest of the story is going to extend from the decision-making of these characters whom I formulated. When it's good..then it feels like they're in the driver's seat. They may not know where they're going, but they're clearly driving. When it's bad, it feels like they're being dragged behind the muffler. In Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs it's Clarice Starlings background that provides such an ample canvas to play with in her interactions with Hannibal, in where they bring her going into the future, and how she's being challenged in the present by her peers and “Buffalo Bill". My great issue with “The Little Things is that it seems so disinterested in it’s own protagonist. It cares about Deacons past only in so far as it can keep its audience guessing, with characters cryptically referring to Deacon's past with no illumination provided by Deacon, by the script, nor by events in the film.. until the end. The movie is so concerned with hiding his secrets (For fear I guess that it may end up clueing you in to its great reveal at the end) that it throws poor Deacon under the bus. There is nothing to this man, and since there is nothing to him beyond this cryptic past Denzel has that much more work to do to create this character because it's a very superficial character in a certain way. He is simply a man with secrets and the secrets even when explained at the end are not built upon enough for him to really excavate something truly interesting and the same goes for the rest of the cast. I've seen a number of my peers comment on the performances in this movie it's very interesting. Some have said it's Denzel that does poorly in this film, some have said it's Malek, and a few have said it's Leto. Then there are those who've said that each one of these same men are the only ones performing in this movie. This bit of incongruence, this inability for any consensus not only as to who is good but which of them is bad or good, stems from the fact that all of these actors are clearly alone in their work. Sometime ago I remember reading a quote that I want to attribute to the great Gary Oldman where he said that “a bad script for an actor was like climbing a mountain, but a good script for an actor was like climbing into a warm bath”, whomever said it its incredibly accurate, and you can feel it here with these all very talented actors, ( I won’t hear any of this Jared Leto is not a good actor nonsense, he may not be as good as he sometimes thinks he is, but he is indeed very good) and Leto may have it the worst in that his character functions almost as a prop or a device. I for one actually congratulate him for finding the most interesting thing to do being so clearly enthusiastic about it, because Malek, who is also giving it a college try seems lost. His reactions his movements seem like he's hesitant or lacking in understanding of the words that he's even saying at times, and I get it! Then there is the Goat Denzel whom in my own personal opinion gives the first poor performance I've ever seen from him. Denzel seems completely disinterested, lazy and phoned in at times and at others also confused as to what is needed. The scene where he talks to the dead girl feels forced and disengaged I can't find it the least bit interesting, and it could’ve used some of the energy he brought to Roman Israel, but again you have to consider the material. There is no story here, it is a sad jambalaya of ideas borrowed from different films, and different ideas about those films, and from a man who most likely see's the world in the same light he saw it some 20 or 30 years ago when he came up with this in the first place, and conversely or inversely a world that sees his work differently than they saw it 20 or 30 years ago.
I remember the run of late-90s middle budgeted thrillers fondly. I loved quite a few of them. “A Perfect “Murder” “Don't Say a Word” “The Watcher”, “Kiss the Girls”, “The Bone Collector”, “Switchback” I found something to like intensely about them all. The great thing about those films is that even when they lacked the world building, the mood, tone cinematography, shocking twist and well ..Fincherness that made Seven the classic that it is or even other classic films that came before it or around it like “Silence of the Lambs”or “Manhunter” or “M", they found an approach that was interesting and they almost each and every last one of them had performers who are truly invested in what they were doing it because even when the story was simple or silly it seems like everyone was on the same page of what they needed to do, and how they wanted to go about doing it and that just isn't there in this film. “The Little Things” is convoluted it's ridiculous, and it doesn't even have the kind of inspired enthusiasm some of its peers had, I’ll give it some oblivious enthusiasm provided by Jared Leto, but otherwise its just drab, and morose and not even stylish. It's the second movie that I’ve seen this year that involves some version of digging up an old script for some form of sentimental reasoning that ultimately ends up feeling every bit not only of its age, but of it's authorial disconnect. The other film is David Fincher's “Mank" which trn times more interesting than this , and still so lost in its own sauce. Mank's disconnect is in its DNA quite literally father to son, The Little Things might be in the author and the change in the audience and what we expect differently from when he wrote it. Both of these films feel like a time-traveling Michael j.fox lost completely in an era and a time where its approach, mentality, and overall ineptitude make it feel like all of its “something that doesn't belong”. They're, it is, a Fish Out of Water story, where the story itself is the fish out of water except for this time it's not entertaining in the least. For that to happen the creators would've needed to lay .order attention to the little things beyond its title.
THE MANDALORIAN REFUSES TO TAKE FLIGHT.
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The first season of Disney’s The Mandalorian left me wholly unimpressed, and cynical. It was indicative of everything I have bemoaned about Disney, and everything I feared would happen since they bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas back in 2012. This season of the Mandalorian got significantly better for me, but ultimately still never fully left the ground, due to a myriad of issues around story and originality that plague an interesting idea and concept Matthew Zoller-Sietz spoke about in a piece on a “CERTAIN CHARACTER REINTRODUCTION” I link later on here. Where the first seemed lost in a ditch of multiple identities and seemed happy with repetitious cliché’s - underwhelming in just about every facet you could possibly think of - the second season really nailed down what it wanted to be and began expounding upon it by adding better storytelling and more of its best actors. Still, even after some improvements that made the show I think the show could and should do a lot more in some specific places, and that many of its problems are a combination of the flaws of Disney's philosophical approach as a production conpany.
What’s funny about this whole idea, especially once I started digging into how I felt - was that many of the problems I have with this show have to do with much of the same things that I found it clearly improved upon. When it comes to many of the facets that have to do with a great television show or a great film it still underwhelmed even while it got better. Save for the Ashoka episode “The Jedi” I found a lot of the cinematography to be bland. The direction was skilled and tight especially the Rick Fukuyama directed episodes, but never blew my mind. In a world where Marvel and John Wick exist as permanent examples of supremely well choreographed fight sequences and just how far that field has particularly advanced, The Mandalorian’s fight scenes for example seemed like paint by numbers. The ideas felt bland, stiff ( a problem with the suit?) and obvious. For instance we had seen Mando’s flare rockets many times throughout the show and yet they never do anything different but hit multiple targets. Other than a certain since of invincibility, the “Beskar” metal which made up most of his armor was never used in any way that felt fresh in the slightest, -think of Capt America’s shield (which I will get to later) - and Mando flies but never to do anything particularly interesting.
Considering Marvel is a subsidiary of Disney at this moment, I'm not understanding why they couldn't just go across the hall and bring some of those guys from the various Captain America films and have them do some of the stunt choreography for this show. The fight scenes just never connected with me. A lot of this is due to the fact that the actors felt like they were counting out, and as a consequence the fights felt too much like dances rather than actual fights. The movement, and the ideas just felt very okay. Again we're living in a world where we saw some extremely fantastic scenes, not only on film, but even on Marvel TV shows like The Punisher or especially Daredevil, ( God knows I haven't forgot those hallways or stairwell scenes) even outside of that you have something like Game of Thrones where Brienne vs. The Hound counted as maybe one of the greatest fights to ever be seen on television. For me fight scenes can be about several elements, making either a mix of all of these elements or focusing on one. There is story, there is style, obstacles, and degree of difficulty. Watch the opening to “Captain America: Civil War”, pay special attention to Cap a man with pretty much just a shield, finds all these interesting ways to use it, and strategize taking away or down opponents. He pulls a man’s gas mask down in the room full of gas as a deterrent from physical violence, (which demonstrates personality and story) he throws the shield, ricocheting it off several objects to stun an opponent then runs up and kicks him, (Obstacle) and then there’s him using Wanda as a trampoline, (Style) and this goes for all the characters, take all the interesting thing they do with Falcons wings. I have a lot of issues with the Marvel films overall, but their choreography is not one of them. It never ceases to amaze me how through nearly double-digit films as it concerns Captain America they have continued to find unique and interesting ways to use this man's one weapon, as compared to the Mandalorian who has several and can seem to find nothing particularly fun or eyebrow raising or titillating to do with any of them. I dont know whether it’s a lack of will or know how, but in a show that seem to want to plant itself in and around action it’s a rather large let-down.
The aspect of the show I may find the most trouble with was the writing, and even within that one particular aspect…dialogue/monologue/exposition. When it comes to plot and pacing, I found the Mandalorian to actually be pretty damn good, but when it came to dialogue that's where I found it to be incredibly weak. Admittedly dialogue is my favorite aspect of writing, and so many of my favorite films and TV shows are marked by it. In fact in my opinion a film or TV show having any number of quotable lines or bits of dialogue is very important to the legacy of a show or film. I don't think you can think of any show that is highly regarded to me television or film history that doesn't have a large amount quotes, or an important philosophy delivered by exposition. Things that you remember that people said to the another person or something somebody said in a monologue. Yet here we are in season 2 of the Mandalorian and I couldn't tell you one thing that sticks with me. I think it's important at this juncture to say that taglines are not the same as quotes. “This is the way” is not important to me because it's not really conversational, it is more like something you repeat in a way that resembles a slogan. The most important aspect of this being that it is intentional and is repeated over and over again as a way to almost push it into the audience's memory rather than something that just lands with the audience purely by means of delivery or its weight, and is almost never or rarely repeated. When I think of great dialogue I think of the opening scene in “Inglorious Bastards”, the conversation between Hannibal and Clarice in prison in “Silence of the Lambs”, or Cirian Hinds as Finn McGovern in Sam Mendes “Road to Perdition” giving a speech at the wake that compares Paul Newman's John Rooney to God. I think of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the Big Sleep going back and forth in numerous scenes but especially the one in the beginning were Bacall is sitting at the window sill. I think about Game of Thrones, (and there's a number of dialogues there) and the line “Power is Power” not just because of its surgical delivery by actor Lena Headey, but the context provided by and in “Little Finger” and Cersei's discussion about power…
This bit of dialogue not only moves plot along, or informs us of character, it informs conflict through the funnel of the former two. We learn just that much more about what threatens Cersei, where Little Finger’s vulnerability lies, as well as get a philosophical pov in class, sex, and power which deepens the conflict. Moments like this serve to make the more obvious conflict all that much more juicier because the stakes involved in the conflict feel weightier, stronger, more reinforced by steel than paper. It's the minor conflicts like this that almost act as a sort of training for the larger and more violent conflicts so that the constant repetition of these minor afflictions that don't actually involve violence train our minds to be prepared for it. By the time the actual violence arrives it barely has to hit, and in the words of Bruce Lee “it hits all by itself”. Dialogue and monologue empower characters, gives them vitality, they become their life stream. It's in the opening of Die Hard with Hans (The great Alan Rickman) back and forth with Takagi. This opening salvo (which ends with Hans shooting Takagi in the head) establishes who Takagi is as well as, and most importantly who Hans is, what hes willing to do, the lengths hes willing to go to get what he wants. Hans talks about Takagi's suit, says he has one himself, which tells us he likes the finer things as well. He quotes Plutarch a grecian philosopher, which implies he might be classically eduacted, and he admires Talagi's models for architecture, especially the details, which implies he is detail oriented. Again it’s very hard to find a great protagonist or villain who isn't set up very well in their opening salvo. Who doesn’t follow that up with more great quotes and small discussions, bits of exposition between themselves and other characters or other characters about them. In Game of Thrones the final moments of the first episode of the show end with brother and sister Jaimie and Cersei Lannister having intercourse, (which in and of itself is a helluva introduction) when one of the Stark boys ( Bran) climbing a tower accidentally spots them, Cersei asks Jaime to get rid of him, Jaime nonchalantly says the words “The things I do for love" and pushes the young boy to what could possibly end in death, and fade to black on the opening episode which would come to define in ways a staple of American television viewing for years to come. In director Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” series the hero Bruce Wayne/Batman and his Butler Alfred talk about Bruce Wayne's choices all the time the conclusion of which leads to Alfred eventually leaving, which tells us where their steadfast allegiances lie -Alfred to Bruce, Bruce to his idea of Justice. There is the Joker of course whom we are first introduced to by having him slam a member of an organized crime commission's head down on a pencil, and later on through exposition by Alfred we hear one of the more famous quotes to come out of Nolan’s series -“Some people just want to see the world burn”. A quote that not only tells us about the mentality of the Joker and what Batman is against, (maybe the rules at play here) but also serves as further reinforcement of Alfred's position in the trilogy as a sort of sagacious confidant. Great dialogue, monologues in and of themselves inhabit a sense of character and without them characters can become flat and unmemorable. In the case of either the Mandalorian or his enemy in the first couple of seasons Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) I can't think of any. Without this kind of writing it's hard for me just based on that outline that they gave us to really be moved in any direction by Moff Gideon when as a character he's a skeleton with no meat on it. Ultimately other than his name ( Which just rolls off the tongue so well) there's not much to Gideon. He mostly works on the pure presence Giancarlo Esposito's brings and not much else, hes great and terrible because the show suggest it but if you ask why we should believe it, the shows answer seems to be “Because we said so, now eat your food and shut up". The show clips the wings of many of its characters in the same way. In one of its best episodes - which contained Rosario Dawson as one of the characters from Mandalorian producer Dave Filoni's previous show “Clone Wars” Ahsoka Tano - a Magistrate (played by the daughter of Bruce Lee's orginal american student Dan Innosanto Diana Innosanto) once again has the bones of an extremely interesting extremely memorable character. This magistrate crucifies villagers right outside her fortress, she starves, and abuses them regularly, but why? Innosanto proves she has presence and chops, and the set up is maybe the most intriguing of any of the mini adventures Mando has been on, but the show bails out on every chance to tell us more. Even her right man (a wonderful reappearance of Michael Biehn) is a very interesting character set up, but not much is given to us either by the way of some sort of exposition, monologue, or dialogue about why this woman is the way she is, how she came to power in this city, what kind of things would make her abuse her position so. Nothing about why Michael Biehn is so loyal to her, or what any of his motivations objectives are, they're simply there to be evil and to be an obstacle and not a very good one in the way of Tano and the Mandalorians objective. Both in many of the Star Wars entries and the Marvel entries this has been a constant problem especially in Marvel's case with their villains it's one of a few reasons as to why they have such a Villain Problem they usually don't really provide enough of an interesting arc or angle, and it comes from the writing as much as anything we see visually. The Mandalorian is simply carrying on a time honored tradition of late.
The last and final part of the equation of what comes out to the Mandalorians “Just above average-ness” has to do with interactions in whom the Mandalorian interacts with, and to a much smaller extent casting. There are some great casting choices in this show, although once again it's important to say that many of these castings and these actors are failed by the previous issue I take with the show, but nonetheless actors like Timothy Olyphant Giancarlo Esposito, Ming-Na Wen, Temuera Morrison, Rosario Dawson and surprisingly Bill Burr, help liven up some of what ails the show, but then there is Gina Carano who is in far too many scenes dismantling already weak writing. Then far too much of Mandos interactions take place with alienoid creatures who barely speak, like Grogo or Baby Yoda as we have come to know him. Smaller character interactions with the main characters are important and they serve a purpose in the believability of the world as well as the stakes, or philosophy, or heart. Shows like Breaking Bad or even Curb Your Enthusiasm show the importance of small one-time interactive characters like a man whom with Larry has problem with at a shoe store in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Save for a couple of instances there are far too many cases where these kinds of smaller characters in The Mandalorian's world suffered from all of the things previously mentioned, with an added bonus of the fact that the show spends far too much time on alien characters with characters whose voices and mannerisms are extensively covered by makeup and gear, which then becomes further hampered by actors who deliver the line without any sort of strength or power. Carano in particular is devastating. The character on her face is pretty interesting, if we take what we are given about “Cara Dune", but Carano delivers every line in the same exact manner, with barely any difference or change in tone, attitude, and/or cadence. It's as hard to tell what's going on in her head as it is an Android and that is not in a good way. It's bad enough the character is already problematic, when shes not very talented except for in the shows mediocre fight sequences.. then what’s the point? Shows like “The Wire”, “Game of Thrones”, “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos” made their bones off of finding and hiring some of the most talented actors in the business many of these actors would go on to be Hollywood Darlings because of the talent they were able to exhibit in these shows. For a show largely borrowing from the western it doesnt seem to understand the improatnce of the background players. I mean Tombstone for instance used a then as yet unknown Billy Bob Thornton for a scene of all of two minutes , but it’s a great scene amd Thornton shows much of what he would become later in it. The scene establishes the wanton cruelty of the west and of the town, it also establishes Wyatt’s temperament, abilities, and complexity, all that while giving an unknown actor a chance to be seen. Save for those already on Hollywood's radar I don't see that for many of those who played in the Mandalorian and it's a shame because there are some good actors on the show, but if it's not bad casting, then it's bad writing, and if not that it’s being trapped in makeup with none of either, or being stuck delivering lines across from Carano. I want to reiterate that though I’ve deep dived into what keeps the Mandalorian from excellence, that this show is still a good show, and that I like it because I do. It's obvious to me why it's so many people like it as well. Mando is charismatic, and they’ve captured some of the magic of the “Man with No Name" series, but my issue with this show, is the same issue I've been holding with Disney material since they bought Star Wars and Marvel from Lucas, and its that they dont seem to see any value beyond the page they found. They never seem to want to aim higher and it shows. They're quite willing to just put a bunch of content on an assembly line and shove it out with very little concern as to the quality. That matters to me because many of these shows, these actors, these writers deserve a platform from which they can really show their talents rather than just becoming nameless entities connected to and in-service of a brand that gets alnost all the credit and leaves the rest over to its chosen ones like Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Kevin Feige. Much like the decision to reinsert a certain character back into the story Disney seems adamant about keeping it's material from reaching its greatest heights bye bolting it down to the ground with criminally conservative and commercially cynical and cyclical thinking that leaves the material mostly (save for a few exceptions) feeling extremely uninspiring and mostly somewhere in the spectrum of average. The Mandalorian, even with a story and a general and overall idea that gives plenty of room to be one of the best shows currently running, has yet to avoid that trap.
SYLVIE'S LOVE: I Needed This.
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How pure, how lovely, how cool and satisfying this movie was to me, is difficult to describe, much like love itself. It is exactly my kind of romance. Romance as a genre is to me one of the hardest to pull off on screen, because it conjures our most insincere sensibilities. There is no one way to do it, but my favorite is when love is treated as if it is complicated enough without our methodical tinkering for the sake of drama. To use a wrestling analogy I love romance without heels to hate, and faces to love, without cheating as a plot device, or gender battles born out of Twitter discourse and entertainment, and in particular of a certain black filmmakers favorite - black women's trauma. Sylvie's Love satiated my appetite for this exact kind of romance.
Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) is a young dreaming ambitious black woman who loves her father, listens to her mother and not only dreams, but follows through on a life where she is the captain of her destiny. So while living firmly within the codes, morals and conventions of her time, she still clearly sets herself as apart from it which is a wonderful argument against the idea that you cannot tell stories that take place in a certain time without planting the characters in all the worst and most reductive attitudes and rituals of that time. I digress, Sylvie meets a young similarly ambitious Robert (Nmandi Asumongha ) who spots her from outside the window with a help wanted sign, and instantly sees her. There is no meet-cute, no unnecessary or forced banter as we might see in something like the year's earlier black romantic offering “The Photograph”, just as organic a setting and a meeting of two people as a film can offer. Subsequently the first meeting in which they begin to fall for each other is created by a locked door. Which I love because don’t we all meet or have locked doors that can either trap us in our ways, or lead us to our love if opened? It’s also a better and more interesting stand in for the tired cliché of an elevator that gets stuck. This feels like something that could actually happen and not like another version of a plot device used to force two people who may not have their own volition allowed themselves to be in one room for this amount of time getting to know each other. This budding love of course is not without complications as no love story is, and we have been told earlier that Sylvie is actually engaged, but we're all pretty aware pretty soon that Sophie's real love is Robert. This engagement is not easily dismissed, not for Sylvie or the audience. It is a real complication with real consequences and real stakes, as it deals with a dilemma that’s real for many of us in this capitalist society, marry for love or for reality, balance, help, status. In this world neither is funny or easily dismissed. The film understands this pish and pull, and doesn’t pit these two against each other as much as show us the evolution of Sylvie’s decision. Sylvie’s “Love” takes its time both with Sylvie’s and Robert's relationship and with the eventual resolution of the agreed-upon marriage. The toughest part of this movie and what makes it so great for me, is that there is no real villain here. Husband Lacey is not the worst kind of man, but he is not the best either. He's not something out of a Tyler Perry movie, a villainous cheater, or an abuser, he's not sitting on his woman, he's just your average guy with probably the average moral standing of a man from his era. No, the True Villain if there is a villain or such a thing in this film, it is life, and just as life gets in the way in this film in the famous words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park - life finds a way - to continually bring these two back into each other's arms.
There is lots of beauty in Sylvies love, cinematographer Declan Quinn Paints and reinforces the mood with deep saturated blue hues and lots of browns and plenty of great lighting. Costume designer Phoenix Mellow dresses up the characters lots of streamlined simple but lush colors, and all of it feels like a true ode to the era rather than the commercialist idea that came from the era, and of course we have our two leads themselves Nnamdi Asomugha and Tessa Thompson are both incredibly gorgeous people, but the most beautiful portion of this film is its naturalistic, patient, touching portrait of the ups and the downs of being in love and it's ultimate sentiment which is: If you love something enough you have to be willing to let it go, and if it comes back to you.. well then you know the rest. Sylvia is the first one to make this choice and the basis of this decision is because she wants to see him flourish and she knows the kind of man that he is. Robert will make a similar sacrifice next and again the basis of it is that he wants to see Sylvie flourish, not because he is a low-down dog, or a coward. I know that there are all kinds of truths existing about men and the reality of the things that we do and the way that we have created the world in our horribly misshapen image of masculinity, but even still it's nice to see a movie that centers in it a decent, loving, caring black man whose flawed but none the less a good man. As it pertains to love its nice to see a refreshing portrayal of the many times timing and/or our own insecurities get in our way and also how our and in the movie their insecurities factor into the flaws of their decision-making. The beauty lies in the fact that through this conflict of self and time the ultimate driver of his/her decisions, and the choice is still love and that's sweet and that's flawed and that's love. Love is hard enough to portray on screen, black love is even more difficult to even get to the screen. In a year that's seen some touchstones for black filmmakers, and seen the rise of some very interesting filmmakers this was a nice cap off. To finish out this tumultuous year with a story this rich, this gorgeous, this sweet. To see a film that has at its center a portrait of black love with a two people falling for each other not by or through the sacrifices they ask of the other, but by the sacrifices they ask of themselves and come together through it all. Nothing this year that came out made me cry and smile ear to ear as much. In moments it was arduous, and it hurt, and it felt oh so good, and in the end I was all the much happier that I went on the journey and that too is love, and especially in 2020, I needed this .
Soul/WW84: Fatal Attraction.
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Wonder Woman 1984 and Disney/Pixar’s “Soul" are two entirely different movies that suffer from the same problems, which is they anchored themselves to simplistic but sweet sentiments but took a very long and unnecessary route to get to the core idea. They fall in love with weak subplots or tired tropes and lose steam on movies built from strong if not necessarily fresh concepts and ended up with final products that underwhelmed, and underperformed as it pertains to what was possible.
Soul is a gorgeous movie. The animation is big and lively just like some of the movies ideas. The music is not only fun, but moving, and really acts as another character from within the film, and when one half of the double entendre in the title “soul” appears in the movie it is really heartwarming. It's not easy to describe the way it feels to finally see such intimate portraits of black life depicted in and from an animation studio that spent so much time ignoring it, but as brilliant writer Angelica Jade Bastien always says representation is not enough, and it’s the other half of the double entendre - the more strict definition of soul where the movie loses it's way. It swallows and envelops portions of the film like the one that takes place in a barbershop, which are in my mind far too few, and interrupted and consumed by a storyline of finding Tina Fey's “22”’s purpose. That entire storyline for me is a fault of the movie. Put simply I don't need it to get across the point that the film is trying to bring. What has happened in and to Joe's (Jamie Foxx) life is enough. There's a great story to be mined here about how Joe's obsession with his own purpose disconnected him from hearing and understanding anyone else's story of life, whether it was his Barber or his mother. We could have been introduced to other players from within his neighborhood as well. There's a character who seems to like to undermine Joe's ability that could have been explored a lot more, theres the friend/student that provides him an opportunity, but instead a large chunk of the movies running time is deviated towards a subplot about a character that though interesting belongs in another movie. It's not lost on me that in Pixar's first venture into black life, a character coded as white ends up bulldozing its way into the story. I understand that he's meant to see the folly of his own ways through her, but it’s this pull, this attraction to the typical, to the “done before” that upsets the “newness” of this film. Joe ends up helping her and once again we see another black man sacrificing himself for a white woman on film and most importantly it was just an unnecessary and distracting additive to a film that has a great premise going for it. Simple as the sentiment was, it's something that I think especially for a person like me I definitely needed reminding of, and I found it very sweet and in certain ways empowering once it found its way back into telling that particular story, I just wish they wouldn't have took such a scenic route this time to get there.
Wonder Woman 1984, is a strangely titled film, other than aesthetics the year makes no real difference to what the film does, says, or is, but more importantly it like “Soul” takes a scenic route tying itself to another character which takes away from its pardon the pun ..soul. Unlike “Soul” it anchors itself to a pretty goofy premise which even for comic books feels ridiculously silly. The plot which centers around wish fulfillment and ultimately the “Truth”, (which is an extremely broad theme) has some places it could go if it streamlined this into something more refined and less convoluted, but it stays with this, giving each of its players a wish they want more than anything, and never really exploring that in any interesting way. This sucks, because the actors are ACTING. With all their heart - Chris Pines charm, and new players Kristen Wiig (Barbara Minerva/Cheetah) and especially Pedro Pascal (Maxwell Lord) try to bring some life into this film, and in bits and pieces, fits and starts they do, but they can never quite get this Frankenstein to live. Still their performances, along with a wonderful Zimmer score, and what I thought were entertaining enough action sequences (until the finale which borders on despicable ) do make this a lot more watchable. Funny enough it is Chris Pine who is also obviously part of the distinct charms of this movie who has to do with a large part of what I didn't like about this movie or what I thought could have been better, which is that the character of Steve Rogers like Tina Fey's “22” in “Soul” is an unnecessary distraction. I don't think it needs to be there, I don't see why it needs to be there. I think it would have been much better if Diana had a better wish than to see Steve Rogers again. I know love is a powerful theme and draw, but I think it's the obvious reason. I understand the incentive to want to bring back Chris Pine because they're chemistry was so good in the first one, but as Jud Crandall once remarked in “Pet Sematary” “Sometimes dead is better”. Time spent on Steve's inexplicably silly “All of Me"- like resurrection, could have been better used digging deeper into Kristin Wiig's neurosis and trauma. Flashbacks and/or current timelines of how she's dealing with her newfound confidence in ways that didn't feel tacked-on or cliche. They take away from a great complex story sitting there about female companionship and/or love under duress of patriarchal vanity, mediocrity and mendacity. If it talked more about the god that created the item at the center of it all, and then tied it to that theme along with Max Lord I think you have something. Maybe even if you go along the lines of talking about their friendship forming and what lies behind Barbara having to choose between a new boyfriend prospect and a friend, or hell even lover like Diana and you have something there, and you can still tie in wish fulfillment to all of this. Instead we get Barbara cheaply despising Diana, jealous of her because shes pretty? Barbara quickly throws away Diana - the one, the first one who's ever noticed or really seen her for Maxwell Lord a man who only paid attention to her once she started to become, and again nothing is made of it . Then there is Diana choosing her own happiness with basically the ghost of Steve Rogers over the well-being of millions of people on earth and nothing is made of it! The movie has no commentary about it, or about her budding friendship, sexual tension between with Barbara. There is no commentary about this, no underlying theme. These are points that are worthy of some kind of notice from those making the movie but there is none. In fact there is no meaningful exploration at all. By the time the movie comes around to the end and we see the decisions and the rot that they have created and ultimately the peace and resolution the characters find, it doesn't connect emotionally. Nothing is given, because nothing was earned. Ultimately for both of these movies I ended up with the feeling of “meh". They both lost the better plot in favor of giving into tried and true cliche's and tropes. That attraction is harmful, some would say fatal to these films and it would serve the creators and folk behind it to remember to lean in on the difference and uniqueness of their characters in the writing. I didn't find either of these films to be bad, but they weren't great either. I don't know that I even want to say they were good, they just weren't bad. When I search for the words that I want to use to sort of summarize my feelings on both of these films I would say that they ended up missed opportunities which is a shame because admittedly I was rooting for both of these movies to be a whole lot better.
Misery: “This is So Good, Now Keep it Away”
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Misery is a movie I love to death and yet I find myself somewhat avoiding it, actually a lot avoiding it, just because when I think about it I can automatically recall the tension that comes in my body during the viewing of it, it’s absolutely fantastically miserable. There's the great performances in the movie that ultimately takes place in one setting for the most part and really between mostly two actors, and the way that the two work off of each other is almost a whole another piece I could write about in the “Actors POV” section of my blog. But this portion here is just to talk about the scenes I feel this movie does so well, and the way these scenes conjure up tension by giving us a protagonist who actually has what is commonly referred to as a brain, an antagonist who has the unflappable will of a terminator, and a closed setting that settles and unsettles. Also I want to kind of set up with some of my favorite and some of the worst things I see in horror. For example, I'm not as keen as I used to be on downing or judging characters in horror films for making bad decisions under what has to be considerable duress. You know that thing where a character keeps walking towards some strange sound in the night, and you yell “DON'T GO IN THERE!” and in your frustration begin to give up on the movie, because f*** this..Oh that’s just me? New me, I understand or try to understand that many of us on an occasion of meeting with things that do not jive with what we understand to be reality, would act as if that's not what's happening. In other words I’ve never seen anything resembling Freddy Krueger and/or Jason Voorhies and they would be the last things on my mind if things started seeming out of place in a real setting, whereas the audience in a movie is automatically in on the fact that this is a ghost story or story featuring a monster or some other terrible thing or terrible person, and additionally that even being in a movie theater is an agreement upon a break with reality. I have limits though as to how far I'm willing to deal with certain characters shenanigans and stupidity in film and this expresses itself in a very William Hurt “how could you f*** that up way. There's only so many times I can watch a person trip over s*** that ain't there, or put down a weapon after only stunning a person whose seemed nigh unstoppable and immovable in their desire to kill me, or reveal to an antagonist who obviously wants the worst for you and is already in a fragile place that you know what they're up to and you're going to get them when you don't so much as have a piece of broccoli in your hand to fight them with. Something else, (especially as I’ve gotten older I) I think about is the settings, the people, the environment. I like when films take place during the day instead of in the dark. I like when the antagonist is someone who seems charming or wonderful instead of instantly threatening and dastardly, and when the home it may be placed in is warm and inviting rather than dilapidated and rude. It does not mean that it automatically makes a horror films better that these things are there, but that when executed well it heightens the tension and fear to know that the places we normally deem as safe are not as safe as we have previously thought.
The Conjuring Rosemary's Baby The Shining and alien are examples of films that were sent in settings that weren't inherently scary or indicative of the whores that lighting either the places people or things. Shaking up our expectations that evil things are housed only in what looks evil.
In Misery writer William Goldman basically includes all of the above. The movie takes place mostly during the day and in an inviting town under the care of what initially seems like an inviting caring “Good Samaritan”. Much like that morphine Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) has hooked up to writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) we slowly start getting drips of clues that reveal Annie is not what she seems until boom the whole thing is open, the artery is spouting blood, and we now know that she's a full-on demon. The town Annie Occupies is small, scenic, You watch a lot of other horror movies you'll see some form of a foreboding entry into a foreboding town in the movie. It might come by way of a gas station attendant who's leering, or a strange sky, or townsfolk like the family and the gas station member we met in Tobe Hooper's “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” ( Drew Goddard's Cabin in the Woods is also a great example of a movie that understands trope exists and then plays on it). These are the kind of sign post alerts that set the tone and put the audience in a mood so that by the time the scares are coming the audience is pretty much already set to jump, shudder, and holler, but in Misery they work harder to make us feel like he’s saved, not doomed, this despite the existence of trailers that told us who Annie was. This is proof that fear and all of its cousins are less about what we see, and more about how we feel. We're introduced to Annie Wilkes as a warm sensitive caring woman who happens to be one of his fans.. Little strange, little lonely, but nothing more, so despite me having seen this movie a million times even I am still somewhat drawn in by Annie original and unique charms, Bates does an uncanny job of playing a character whose evil takes on the same shape as her good. Later we are also introduced to Buster and his wife Virginia who qualify for me as one of the most charming couples in the history of movies besides maybe “Nick and Nora” in the Thin Man. The fact that the captor is sweet and the so too is the town she occupies recalibrates our thinking about the suggestions of where evil lives. That it's not necessarily in the midst of impoverished scenery or amongst disfigured or disabled people, that it can be amongst those who seem absolutely loving, the able bodied, and the status quo, all of whom in fact have a great deal of rage and evil hiding inside them.
There are two types of protagonist in horror movies I abhor on opposite sides of a spectrum, type A. is the type of protagonist in horror films who as far as I’m concerned lives or find themselves alive at the end almost completely by will of the pen, they win despite themselves, as if basically they had no business living if it were any truth to the matter but a deal was struck that guaranteed them life as a protagonist, so the bumbling idiot who has been warned by the house and seen various incarnations of the ghost or the monster doesn't die even though they continually go walking into the closet after they saw the little doll hop up off the shelf and “Jesse Owens” their way into the closet cackling and whispering to them “Come here I want to play” (clearly I’m not over this particular trauma). The other type is the person who either through forms of intelligence, feats of athleticism (pulling the martial arts out of their ass) or things that just don't click with everything that we've been told about them, survive damage that would irreparably harm them, or do things that just cant even be explained. So that character X who appeared in the last scene being stabbed into a human cheese grating block will now appear to save the day, even though they should’ve bled out in five minutes. As it were Paul in Misery is my favorite type of protagonist, dead center of the spectrum. Resourceful , witty, but fallible. Every single bit of tension in this movie, every time we are held in suspense or clenching our seat it is due to the obstacles that Paul as a normal human being has to try and overcome. The film thoughtfully considers that he is foreign to his surroundings and on top of that temporarily disabled. Annie Wilkes is a great foil opposite Paul because she is an unmovable force, and though the movie suggest Annie may not be the most intelligent in a “classic” sense many of us have been typically raised to view it, she is clearly intelligent, intelligent enough to think of a number of variations on how Paul might escape and to deceive others quite adeptly. Paul too is a thinker, but not one that seems unbelievable. He wants out, but is also not so drunk with the idea of getting out of there that he starts stumbling and tripping over himself to get to his destination, alerting Annie to exactly what it is he wants. I love every scene (and the way James Caan expresses this) where Paul attempts to appease Annie Wilkes and to be friendly and on board with all of her mess, it feels spot on as to how you might overdo it a little in order to cover immense hate or dislike for a person who is your captor. Once he sees what Annie is about, or notes her triggers, he tries to sidestep or become avoidant, rather than to keep marching through them, but he's a perfectly imperfect at this and because Annie is imperfectly unbalanced (as obviously played to the absolute hilt by Kathy Bates) even when he's not trying he still accidentally lands on a mine which makes it believable. Around the third act Paul begins to hide away the pills that he suspects that she is drugging him, smart but not too “No Way” smart. He later sends her off on an errand to get the exact type of paper he loves, ( I’m still not sure whether this was a lie or thinking on his feet because it all fits in with what we have previously been told about Paul's very detail-oriented routine ) Annie has been so eager to please as it concerns his writing process this seems brilliant and infallible, and yet it it sets off one of Annie’s mines leaving an unsuspecting Paul with one of those “Necronomicon”thick books dropped on his still very tender legs. This is another vital aspect of the tension set up. Annie’s hair trigger emotional status. It is setup very early, that things that set Annie off don’t have to be connected to any theme. Its not the horror or thriller protagonist where if you tell them you’re not scared, or talk shit about their mama you’re going to get a reaction. Annie might get mad about cursing, or the appropriate name for trailers, it’s very much like being in an abusive relationship. All of this sets up maybe the most tension oriented scene in the film where a bobby pin that Caan's Paul has stowed away (again thinking on his feet) is now used to open the door so that he can somewhat explore the house and see if he can find himself some sort of defense against this woman or call out for help. The lengths that Annie has gone to make sure that no one can interfere with her plans, become even more evident here and we see how well thought out this was. As Paul's options are lessened so are ours. Then we are also introduced to a sort of “ticking clock” scenario where we know that Paul has a limited time do this, by way of cuts to show us exactly where Annie is at on her trip. The fact that he is disabled is not merely for effect, but it does have an effect as an obstacle to help intensify the tension in our minds due to the fact that we know any place he goes into this house its going to be hard for him to get back to that room in time if Annie shows up, (especially if he doesn't hear her) that is intensified to yet another level when his wheelchair can no longer fit through the door and we see that he now has to get up out of his chair and crawl over to pick himself up a knife, and at the exact time, the moment he secures it, we hear a car pull up and I wish I would have been in the theater to see this because I would have gathered that there might have been a collective gasp in the theater the moment those wheels were tracking up and we come to see Annie now getting out of the car knowing that this man has to get back in that chair and move all the way back to that room. I've seen that movie a million times and it still causes my heart the climb ladder 49 straight up into my throat every time I see it.
The power of Misery, the part of that dances up and down all over my nerves as a horror movie as well as a thriller, is the way it narrows the walls, gates, roads until the only way out is through. Paul being a clever protagonist who tries to outsmart Annie and eventually realizes he just has to play through her game, makes it so we don’t get to feel safe by knowing we have the answer to his freedom. Most things we might’ve thought of or considered he did, and beyond. We are left with only the face off. Who will come out? We don’t know til the end, and it’s an end that comes by way of a lot of suffering, that comes by way of nothing else but what some may refer too as just plain bad luck. If there was an insurance claim on Misery's type of horror almost none of us are covered, it’s an “Act of God”, and I always hate those. It’s why avoid this movie, and fall in love every time I watch it, it’s that horrifying to me, and its that good.
The “Chapelle” Revelation.
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Dave Chappelle's latest “Unforgiven” begins with his brilliance as a storyteller, and just as quickly with his fatal flaw which has possibly always been there, but made itself more apparent in these last years in which like Skynet on Aug 29th 1997 Chapelle seemingly became self aware, and again like Sky net, not in a good way. The first joke told (which is an announcer mispronouncing his name) presents Dave’s particular bit of genius- intuition for misdirection. Leading you somewhere and then upending you with a punchline you didn’t see coming like all those scenes in movies where a car hits an unsuspecting driver from the side. You dont feel like the punchline is going to be where its gonna be, and then it’s just all of a sudden there. There’s his observational technique, and his special brand of pop culture references. That's the brilliant part, the part that’s not so brilliant, the part that has forced me to parcel out my love, acknowledging his ability, but criticizing his blatant ignorance, is that Chapelle has become increasingly mean spirited, self centered, aware of how his audience sees him, and hypocritical, and hes dove head first into the act. Hes C-3PO amongst the ewoks. Hes no longer one of us, hes no longer catching for us, hes batting for them. The man who went on a brilliant tirade about listening to celebrities is now fully enveloped in that very mind and kind of celebrity.
Chapelle is now firmly in Jay-Z mogul/sage mode, he is very much like Ja Rule, giving his opinion on matters that lie well outside his range and unlike in the Ja Rule bit, hes chosen himself. It is he who is doing the asking not the news or the machine behind it. Chapelle like Jay and Ye before him is using his legacy, his status, and his stature amongst black people as leverage to gain traction and entrance into white spaces and opportunities that would be closed to him. In order to do this he must appeal to the plight of his base and their struggles via a stand up “New Slaves" in order to build a false connection. Once done he will take the results to white people in charge and demand his place, not ours at the table. First though, the bonafides, reminders of legacy. Every other line a reminder of his greatness, where he tells about how he was always destined for this (the chosen one is like one of the favorite gospels of the rich and famous), this by way gives him divine right as a Moses where he is the sage speaker of the black house and he tells us “we're past kneeling”, when it benefits him, but the actual truth and the hypocrisy in the ask is right there for anyone who wants to see past the past, not only in Chapelle's legacy but in the worshipped approach of centering black male leadership in grass roots struggles that folk like actual civil rights activist Ella Baker cautioned against nearly a century ago. That warning would go double for black capitalist male leadership, and guidance. Chappelle's Unforgiven strikes many familiar tunes, and reads to us from the bible of Celebritology and specifically to us black males. The chosen sermons are the aforementioned gospel of the chosen one, the gospel of capitalism, and the gospel of hypocrisy. Add to all this, that years of being told he is a genius have clearly made their way into his act. There's the “I just did that” drags from his cigarette he might as well trademark, the way he sits instead of stands alot more, the way his tone and chosen mode of delivery has changed into this affected cadence commonly taken on by those who desire to be seen as sages, derived from those who actually are ( at least Chapelle spared us the suit and tie act , though he has done that a couple times) , and then finally there is the announcement to the audience that something quite ordinary or basic is in fact brilliant. Chappelle goes on to speak about a game of three card monte he witnessed when he was young. He tells us how how watched it, noted what was going on and then angry after he lost his money announced to everyone the dealer is cheating and blows the entirety of the jig, ending up with what he calls “A profound” lesson.. “Never come between a man and his paper”. Problem is that this is not profound, it’s a very basic consequence of capitalism, and a derivative of survival of the fittest. Everyone knows it and have known it for quite some time, any profundity that might be left would come digging deeper into “why's" not stating the obvious “whats", but there is a point coming, not quite yet, but it's coming. What comes next is another likely story about HBO asking Chapelle rather cruelly “What do we need you for?” after he merely pitches what would become one of the most popular and beloved sketch comedies and television shows ever. You’ll excuse my wariness of this particular story, it doesn’t come from any loyalty to studios or other mechanisms of capitalism, and it acknowledges that these stories exist, it’s just rooted in and from my own personal belief that this story is repeated far too often by celebrities, and it’s far too convenient. It's a different version of the oft repeated male fantasy of the woman who dismissed him in high school asking him out on a date after she sees him in a Porsche. I believe it has rarely if ever happened with the social outcast, and I believe its happened only slightly more with celebs. Its merely a device employed to endear the audience to said entertainer by way of a shared fantasy many hold dear. The point of his show, (That he basically wants to “own his masters) the self centered-ness, begins to become egregiously clear as he explains his contract with the Chapelle Show and how HBO is now able to stream it without his consent and without paying him, and then comes the gospel of hypocrisy. Chappelle at around 13:25 seconds in gives an admission that the women of “Me too" were trying to say this very thing …
A man who not but a year earlier made fun of, and derided the Me Too movement, stomping all over the intricacies and nuance of gender, identity and - most revealing here - consent now seems to understand the idea of an industry, a “monster” that takes advantage of your desire to do what you’ve always wanted to do and make money, of their power over you to make that happen, and over your agency. So it’s clear as to how hypocritical this is, this is the man who suggested in “The Bird Revelation” that these women had a “Brittle Spirit". The man whom in “Sticks and Stones” suggested that trans folk and women “Shut the fuck up”, AND that there was no law or police that would and should take the particular women involved in the sexual conduct claim that “Friend” Louis C.K. masturbated in front of them seriously because no one left, and because they weren't harmed in his eyes. Oh but now he understands the idea that just because something is technically legal, it’s wrong. These women were largely unknown, they were still trying to get their foot into the industry, just like him when he signed that contract for Chapelle Show of his own volition, but like him they may have felt trapped between a rock and a hard place of their own want for a career in the thing they love so much, the thing they too felt destined to do, and being ousted on principle. Like him they decided to take a stand some years later, but unlike him they didn’t have a 60 million contract with Netflix for future product to leverage, and a large, devoted, and loyal fanbase to appeal to on their behalf, and they weren’t standing up for money, but for their ethical right to exist, and to not be masturbated in front of without consent. This is the revelation, not the inherent greed and parasitic nature of an industry built within the confines of structural exploitation and cultural hegemony, not even that Chapelle is like so many, not angry at the fact that hes found a nest of vampires as much as angry that hes not being allowed to drink blood as well - its the level of gall to base a whole not that funny show on that foundation, and ask his audience to sympathize with it, but then again, thats not much of a revelation either, and much of his actual audience at this point agrees. As for me, once a devoted and wide eyed admirer of his particular brilliance in the field, I find it quite fair to suggest that maybe it’s the 60 million dollar man, (nevernind whatever he gets from appearances and sets, and royalties from various films) who quite possibly has the brittle spirit, and that maybe just maybe, though you have a brilliance, and a mic, and a status, you should take your L and well….”Shut the fuck up”. I doubt it feels funny to him, he may miss the irony, but I wonder when will Chapelle and others like him revelation will come that top down patriarchal social movements based upon individualistic achievement dont work anymore than trickle down economics, and that none of us are free until the least of us are. At this point it’s the only revelation from Chapelle I wanna see, and his only path to forgiveness.
Lovecraft County and The Impossible First
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When the first episode of a show is the height of its popularity and execution with me ( as well as with many others ) that’s usually means I’m about to lay into something…hard, but with Lovecraft Country (unlike the treatment of the material) my feelings are complex. It was new territory for the characters in the show, new territory for the audiences, and in many ways new territory for black people depicted on screen genre, but was that new territory enough? No…but also yes, but also its alot. In many ways the show failed its audience in so many categories it’s a wonder it wasn't protested in the streets. The story was all over the place, ( there was a very common joke about how no one could explain what the show was about to anyone else) the pacing was off, characterization was weak, there were complaints of colorism, homophobia, transphobia, and the ending was as largely “WTF”as so many of its other memorable moments for the wrong reasons. The things is though that A. I would argue that none of that is stopping very many people from tuning into season 2, and B. Argue that the reason why is all of those things only happen because of the real reason the show didnt work ..It felt rushed. Every single problem this show has in my estimation extends out fron this source code issue. Nothing and I mean NOTHING was given time to bake, to sit and be still, to soak in. You look at a character like Atticus (Tic) and it was “Hey his Dad is dead, and Oops your uncle is too, and hey wait no your Dad is alive, and hey hes gay, but oh no he’s abusive, and then he was never really your father at all" and that’s just Atticus. That is way too much arc for one season especially when they're are several other characters in the show. Add that this would be the way backstory, arc, and representation would be for every single character in the show, and it became so much that I began to sing the lyrics to John Mayer's “Stop this train”.
“Stop this train, I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in, I know I can’t, but, honestly, won’t someone stop this train?”
Go down the line of characters whether they were at the top of the social stratification of black folk and other marginalized identities or near the bottom, and the one unifying aspect across the board is that none of them are given the space to grow significantly, and for us to know them significantly. If you asked me to tell you who Tic is, what makes him (pardon the pun) “tick” what his motivations are, why he embarks on this journey, I couldn’t tell you anything that isn’t or wasn’t superficial. He was in the military, but how did that affect him? Sure theres PTSD but what kind of man did it shape him to be ? This is a man who killed innocent people without pause, ( as we were shown in the shows best episode which took place during the Korean war during a flashback) and yet there was no meaningful scene in which we see the way that affects his mind later. Nothing meaningful is said about his relationship with Leti, his deeply traumatic relationship with his father is reduced to him yelling alot. Things with Tic and his father are shred apart and put back together with the kind of care Jim Carrey gave to that parcel in the opening credits of Ace Ventura pet detective.
Good characterization should tell us not only what motivates characters on an intrinsic level, but reveal the ways in which these intrinsic motivations and qualities move the script and bare consequence on their lives. In this case then it also becomes important for the writers to have a sort of clear grip on the type of show you intend to be and how best to become that. A simplified example could be the difference between a show driven by events, or a show driven by characters. One does not displace the meaningfulness of having the other but it does inform the foundation of your work - that being the place from where everything else receives its strength. To place it upon a foundation not well-suited for the type of building you intend to erect is to set it up for a fall. Big nuanced and complex narratives about the nature of various forms of “otherness” or traits and arcs that defy one understanding or perception cannot be built upon the same foundation as a show like “The Mandolarian” Where it’s less about character and more about the adventure itself and how it shapes the character. It should be like “Killing Eve” or “The Wire" where the characters shape the arc of the story, by way of their wants and needs. Every character in Lovecraft seemed to move based on plot contrivances in a form of authorial determinism. The characters ended up in certain places, and took certain actions because the writers clearly deemed it their fate. This is of course is always the way with writing but the idea should be to erase the strings so that it appears that the characters are moving based upon their own intuitions and instincts. With Lovecraft not only were the strings seemingly visible, but the puppeteers too. Take Ruby for example, who seems to have ended up where she ended up, because the writers said so, which then opened the writers up for the criticism that it was owing to her skin tone as a clear precedent and long history exists for that exact thing. Ruby's decision to wear white skin and to side with a white woman over her own sister is gross negligence not because it could never be a decision made by a black woman, but because considering the depth of the kind of betrayal of self hatred that would lead to such a decision, then you need that much more of an understanding of Ruby's history, mentality, and desires. This makes it clear the source of the problem happened before she even made this decision and it's in the fact that the writers never took the time to in any meaningful way inform the audience as to who Rudy is, or what she wants, and when we take a look at the other characters the same goes for them which at least in my humble opinion at least makes it more difficult to make this purely the form of being singled out that colorism is. To put it simply colorism and the other various “isms” maybe symptoms of the shows problem but they are not the virus that caused it. This being a problem because if we the audience tell the writers that the symptoms are the core issues then they end up providing what will be temporarily fixes like so much cough syrup to the common cold, only to have the virus still cause problems that will eventually lead to the return of a lot of these very problems or the creation of new ones.
None of this erases the fact that there were times in Lovecraft’s 10 episodes where it was clear that the writers had blind spots towards the identities that they were trying to give representation to, but blind spots are a by- product of the limitations of attention. Since our focus can only see within a limited range and depth of field the spaces just around the edges are holes waiting to be filled by our focus. Re-prioritizing focus provides a clear path to avoiding some of the dense brush and bramble that one could cut oneself up on while trying to write a show handling such complex themes, narratives, and identities. This upcoming season (provided there is one..it seems safe to assume so) writers should take advantage of the strengths of long-form storytelling and take a page from shows like “The Wire” and “Game of Thrones” which also dealt with similar complex teams like race, class, and systemic oppression in the case of “The Wire” or political intrigue and identity in the case of “Game of Thrones”. In long form storytelling its clearly about taking advantage of the time you have, and not rushing things to get to the next big event. The folly in the misrepresentation of the “Two-Spirit” character Yahima that caused so much controversy came as a result of not only a blind spot, but a lack of time and focus. It could be argued that its possible the lack of time caused the blind spot, (though most likely the two are inextricable) still, given more time to set up and bake the arc of let’s say a Yahima, that character ends up faring much better, and maybe the backlash ends up sounding more like fine tuning, rather than righteous disappointment by an audience already far too beleaguered by poor representation or the lack of any at all.
In looking back at the “The Viper” Oberyn Martell from GOT, we have a model somewhat similar to Yahima in the superficial sense that his death came suddenly and without warning. It would have felt relatively ridiculous to have his arc condensed into just one episode where his very sudden and abrupt death is the ending. Of course it would not have the added representational harm that came from Yahima's death, but it would have been terrible nonetheless. Instead with only 4 episodes the writers gave us enough background, objectives, and motivational understanding of Oberyn to know and understand why he died without feeling like we were cheated. Oberyn over the four episodes is proven to be charming, protective, proud, arrogant, and then finally skilled, but it was his arrogance and his pride that got him killed. What was Yahima's flaw? Did she have one? Is she a pure victim? If not where was she blind? What motivation did she have that might have as a point of pure objective consequence or karma played a role in her demise? We dont know, because we dont know Yahima at all. The unique character opportunity that she was, she was alive for all of a commercial break before she was brutally dispatched by Tic's surrogate abuser Montrose Freeman in the name of protection. We then arrive at the double-headedness of the problem because we also have to deal with who killed Yahima. Unlike with the Viper, it is not simply a mountainous scoundrel but a supposedly good character, and for reasons that again are hard to explain except by way of knowing the events calendar. With the character of Montrose you see again the failing of allowing the events or what has happened to the characters to be the sole explanation of who they are. The rather heinous killing of Yahima is wrapped up in the event Montrose is trying to stop from happening and what has happened to Montrose himself, but the issue is being abused is not an excuse of the act, nor a good explanation of the nature that would use someone to commit it.
Returning once more to Westeros, when Tyrion killed his longtime girlfriend Shae, it was a terrible, ghastly, and heartbreaking moment, but by then not only did we have the fact that they allowed this relationship to bake and grow over a few seasons so that we understand the power and the meaning of her betrayal to him, but we were also given more than enough insight into Tyrion's character and what ultimately forms his makeup over several seasons in a number of nonviolent decisions that he makes and even more still in dialogue and monologue that informs us as to what drives him, what he's willing to do, what his place is in the world is, and how he sees himself and others. So that we understand that class ,misogyny, pain, ego, and love all play a role in the act. The mission that the writers have of trying to gather the audience to empathize somewhat with Tyrion as a character is accomplished, despite the fact that we know he is capable problematic and at times cruel behavior. The same could be said for “Omar” from The Wire (another character played by Michael K Williams) despite the fact that we see him murder, snitch, and betray those close to him, like Tyrion he ends up one of the most revered and beloved characters in television history. The character of Montrose in Lovecraft Country received none of that care or craft, representationally he mattered, but nowhere else it seems, and since we know the capabilities of the actor, and we also know that no one is arguing that certain identities are incapable of bad poor behavior, then ultimately what we are left with is the fact that the anger is due to the poor characterization and the abrupt and at times sadistic behavior of said characters. This is where I come back to the “Impossible First”. “Firsts” are often influential, salient, and symbolic, but they are rarely as exceptional as what comes after them. They don’t have the benefit of having those who came before dig a clear pathway, or falter by way of unseen boobie traps and pitfalls. I use the word impossible because it speaks to the tenuous relationship between being the first, the meaning of being the first to do anything or represent anything, and the inherent complications and failings of being the first to represent or do anything. Often times Firsts are intentionally too measured (Obama) and may become paralyzed somewhere between doing too little and too much, or (as is my own personal theory for Lovecraft ) caught trying to do too much and be everything to everybody all in one go. In this way it becomes like the basketball player on the free throw line realizing He/She/They've got one shot left with the weight and the implications of the past and the future right there in front of them in one basket. Pressure causing him/her/they to either put too much on the ball or put too little. As many of those former and present greats who performed exceptionally under pressure have said, the best place to be in your mind here is focused on technique and execution, and nothing else. This is why I think it is a mistake to focus so much on the pitfalls of proper representation and am always of the mind that the two most important aspects of filmmaking and telling stories to either the medium of television or film are simultaneously story and collaboration. If you're not focused on the execution, the technique, the authenticity (which comes from and extends out from the collaboration aspect ) of the story that you're telling then the very thing you intend to do by way of representation will always fall short, and the weight of being the first will hobble and potentially cripple you. Right along side story and inextricable from is collaboration. It is maybe first and foremost beginning with collaborating in the writers room with those of the identity with which you wish to represent via Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney in the case of “Moonlight”, and then subsequently to allowing your actors of various identities to shape and form by weight of their inherent self add weight, depth, and understanding as to who this character is. I may very well be overly optimistic in my belief that the creator and writer of this show truly lost their way and misstepped in the first season and that most of these problems are very correctable, but I also believe it's fair to look at some of the obstacles that might have made it difficult for the writers to hone in on exactly what it is they wanted to accomplish not only with the idea of being the first, but then the weight of trying to be the first to introduce representation of various peoples and folks in a genre that they previously had rarely if at all been invited to in the middle Peak television where so many are competing for the eyeballs of a extremely distracted audience. I understand the temptation and the desire to make a show where every episode whizzes and bangs so that the audience is always left gasping, shocked, and in awe of what happened especially when you know that in your inaugural season you don't have the kind of rope that those shows with well-established white creators and/or built-in IP's may have. So I for one will be waiting and holding out hope that they will now having at least accomplished the fact that they are a hit now get to the business of focusing strapping down to give these characters and this story the space, the time, the care to breathe and ferment into a fine wine, now having graduated beyond the impossible first and into the very possible next.
Are You Watching Closely? How the “Prestige" in M. Night Shyamalan's films might be affecting his legacy.
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M Night Shyamalan is as much a conundrum as he is a force in Hollywood. As a director for nearly thirty years he has put together one of the most fascinating careers quite possibly because as fast as his filmography became legend it also became one of the most derided, polarizing and difficult to define careers in the history of the medium. He went from a darling seemingly poised for the kind of appreciation Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino (Pre- Uma Thurman/Weinstein) recieve, to a man thought of in nearly the same vein as Michael Bay, (without the misogyny) and maybe even more accurately Zack Snyder. What makes Shyamalan fascinating to me, is specifically the way the audience for his movies went left on him, ( even while Snyder has always enjoyed a raucous and fiercely loyal fanbase, or while Michael Bay has people willing to accept his works as what they are) and the various possibilities for this rather abrupt change.
Very early in his career Shyamalan endured a couple of rather disappointing duds in the purest sense of that word. These “failures” as with most people were as important to what made Shyamalan as his succeses. Shyamalan would then burst onto the scene with “The Sixth Sense” a film still highly regarded as one of the greatest films of the aughts, and a classic in the horror genre. It was an emotionally chilling tale of a child who sees ghosts that acted as an allegory for how to deal with being different, as well as being concerned with our interaction with the otherworldly by way of faith, both of which are common themes in his filmography. The movie broke records, spurred a Hollywood fetish for films about ghost with twist endings (The Others, Stir of Echoes etc) and flung itself and Shyamalan into the cinematic lexicon. The audience was floored, the movie was one of the most ready made examples of the power of word of mouth, and subsequently of the twist ending. In short it was a phenomenon and the rest of Shyamalan's career can be looked in a couple of different ways from that point on..
Chasing the Phenomenon
In an interview with the Aspen institute M Night Shyamalan tells an audience that “The more specific I was actually made me pop from the rest." Its informative as to what might have become a mantra for Shyamalan. Many of our beliefs are informed by our failures, codified by our successes.. through them, if we experience success doing one thing, we may tend to lean on it as a foundational aspect of our success. All of a sudden we are the baseball player who believes he/she has to wear the same socks for every away game in order to have success. If Shyamalan believes his specificity is vital to his success it offers an explanation as to the why his storytelling so frequently involves something as specific as a twist, and or why his stories dont vary in the way so many directors do. Why stray from what worked, or “If it ain’t broke dont fix it become common refrains in this mindset. In an article titled "The Science of Plot Twist" cognitive scientist Vera Tobin talls about a tendency known as "the curse of knowledge" in it she says.
“Information we encounter early on influences our estimation of what is possible later. It doesn’t matter whether we’re reading a story or negotiating a salary: Any initial starting point for our reasoning – however arbitrary or apparently irrelevant – “anchors” our analysis.”
Here Tobin is discussing the audience but I also find it to be an intriguing analysis of Shyamalan's approach or any artist for that matter as well, especially concerning where this self conditioning harms, by way of bias. If his initial starting point to success is ultimately a phenomenon, ( and I think it's important to state here at this junction Shyamalan's work being a phenomenon is not meant to take anything away from the skill and craft in the work, merely meant to state the fact that once the art leaves from the inside of your head, from the intangible to the tangible it is now outside the realm of your control ) how important is this crossroads in his mind if he felt it was not merely a phenomenon outside his control but an event as a direct result of the factor that was most readily attributed to the films success. I believe one of the most difficult things for the artist to accept is whatever happens after the work is released, and subsequently to deal with how people recieve your work on the terms within which it is actually occurring. Which in shorthand just means that much like a quarterback after throwing an interception or a touchdown the good ones learn to forget. In an interview with author JK Rowling Oprah Winfrey tells a wonderful anecdote regarding trying to recreate the success of a phenomena when talking about repeating the legendary success of her show as well as whether or not Rowling should try to repeat the success of her own phenomenon in The Harry Potter series.
The Prestige
I dont think Shyamalan forgot. I don't know this either, but it is at least intriguing to me to look at his first two films - see that these films did not in any way involve plot twist or major misdirection, see that these films were huge failures and huge disappointments to Shyamalan, (also part of his Aspen institute Q&A) and then see that his first taste of success is not just successful, but a behemoth, and that it features one of the great plot twist in cinematic history, then subsequently deduct that maybe chasing that phenomenon whether consciously, or subconsciously in my opinion is integral to retrospectively discussing Shyamalan's filmography. If this is indeed his final analysis of his success it is the kind of binding thought that places limits on your storytelling, - where you can go with it, and the possibilities of what you can do with it. If I were to make note of the two movies in his filmography the two movies that I think best exemplify and display the problematic or limiting nature of anchoring your style or signature to plot twist it would be “Unbreakable” and “The Happening”. One presents the way the thought limits the artist, but also the way mostly straightforward storytelling might be a better look, the other the limitations of the audience as a result of the former. Unbreakable is a great film about recognizing ones own ability, deciding what yo do with it, and the power of belief, that like many Shyamalan works builds up extremely well, takes the leap of faith, executes some beautiful narrative flips, and sticks its landing somewhat awkwardly, sticking it nonetheless. The ending was always a bit abrupt to me. Like Shyamalan had spent so much building up to the reveal, he had nothing left after it, and simply let title cards explain the epilogue, but since the movie doesn't hinge itself on this it doesn't come tumbling down in the reveal. The Happening feels alot the same, except by now it seems the awkwardness of the landing is more pronounced. The ending is hinged on the reveal and it seems to be part artist, and part audience, but the magic is gone. It's as if the audience can now see a leg out from under the slip, a card out from under the sleeve. After all filmmaking is like magic, though the two have obvious differences, the vital similarity is that people are in some sense looking to be fooled, but also want to know everything. In fact it can be argued that especially when dealing with plot twist certain types of movie goers are looking to figure it out, while simultaneously wanting in equal parts to be left in the dark.
In film as well as in magic you are exploiting the audiences desire to be misdirected, and their desire to be in the know. You are walking a tightrope where you want the audience to actively be engaged, but only in the direction you lead them in, any straying and they might catch onto something you don't or didn't want them to see, but all this intention and detail to misdirection and this build up can backfire. In Mrs Tobin’s piece she talks about the audience simultaneously wanting to know what they've signed up for , but not wanting it to be predictable or silly. In Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige", (another Nolan film not so secretly about the magic of filmmaking) Michael Caine's John Cutter discusses the three steps of an magic act: The Pledge, The Turn, and the titular Prestige he also mentions the audiences desire to be fooled. The leads in “The Prestige" go back and forth over the importance of the act itself leaving the ordinary, - make note of this I will return to this point. The "Bringing it back" part of the "three steps" is vital to discussing why plot twist are difficult, and shaky ground for any artist in this particular role of this particular career field to base a career on, as well as where Magic and filmmaking part ways. The shakiness of tying your career to something as fragile as a plot twist lies in both the audience's growing expectations, and the craft itself. In Magic the audience has a willful subconscious desire to be tricked that I believe is stronger than the desire to know. This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that magicians remain notoriously guarded about the secrets to their craft and that over the entirety of the existence of magic this has remained intact and vital to the craft. It is not the same with filmmaking. The craft itself has produced in people a desire to know as much as to be fooled that has increased over its time. DVD commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, interviews, podcast, all serve to satiate the audiences need for knowledge about how the craft works. We are shown the green screens, the motion capture balls, the various ways lighting creates certain effects, we even read scripts. Much of this being done before a film even comes out, which has led to certain directors who are interested in preserving the magic and the mystery for the audience going to extreme measures to protect their films and their sets from the insatiable hunger of the audience to be in the know. It's important to say here that another key difference between the two art forms is that unlike with magic, in filmmaking knowing what goes on behind the scenes to create a work of art does not necessarily cripple our ability to enjoy that art, this is an important set up in understanding my theory on what happened with M Night Shyamalan's audience. As "The Prestige" showed, the major important factor in Magic is to bring it back and in the quality that it was first seen, now the quality does not have to exact, just give the appearance of it (I.E. it does not have to be the same rabbit). In filmmaking the quality of the bringing back is less about physically making something reappear as it is. It involves making sure that how you brought about this reveal, and whether it all connects makes sense. With film its necessary the reveal makes sense within time, places, physical plausibility. In magic no one cares because..magic. To my prior point about ordinariness, both magic and filmmaking involve making the ordinary extraordinary, and I would say that when Shyamalan's work is/ was at its best its when that's what his films did and do. His most effective films didnt lean on slight-of-hand anymore than great sci fi or fantasy leans on CGI, they used a combination of sleight of hand, powerful emotion, and misdirection to make that very ordinary thing seem extraordinary, whether it be a troubled kid, ( The Sixth Sense) a baseball bat, ( Signs ) or a security guard, ( Unbreakable) AND that when he failed it was because the answer was ordinary like its just a glorified Scooby Doo episode about folks trying to keep a group of people ignorant to the the terrors of life in the “real world” ( The Village ). Add to this that if you make this your calling card, after a certain point the audience begins to have expectations and from the opening scene may begin trying to figure out what the possibilities for an ending are. You have also an added layer of problem solving, nevemind the odds that the audience member could randomly fall upon the reveal by simply guessing, there is also the strange psychological phenomenon of disappointment with the reveal not being what they expected or desired. Which means that once the audience becomes aware that any movie of yours is going to have a reveal, they are likely to be disappointed by the reveal altogether, or by the way that reveal came together I.E. a deus ex machina or the like. A great example of this tendency can be found in the audiences response to "The Happening" Nigel Floyd commenting on the film for Time Out magazine says ..
“Since the surprise success of ‘The Sixth Sense’, Shyamalan’s ambitious but increasingly frustrating films (‘Unbreakable’, ‘Signs’, ‘The Village’) have been all build-up and no pay-off. ‘The Happening’, likewise, has lots of clever cinematic sleight of hand but no actual magic trick.”
Watch Closely
I personally think it's fair to ask the audience whether or not it was that an actual magic trick did or didn't happen, or that we are disappointed with what the trick was, that it was ordinary. Was the audience aware the whole time that the cause of all this was nature? Or was the disappointment that after all this big-to-do and build up it was "the trees”, when in their fantasies they had conjured something wilder, BIGGER. It’s easy to see the source become entangled.. contorted in a web of convoluted feelings that confirm our own biases. The same goes for "The Village" which now has a very active revisitiaion audience whose assertion is it was better than previously acknowledged. Subsequently or maybe even simultaneously it is also fair to ask M Night whether or not it is prudent (knowing of this effect on your audience) to simply wholesale blame the audience, or to look at whether or not it is effective to anchor your career to, to keep being so dependent upon a technique that inherently creates a fatal flaw in repetition. The mess that was Avatar: The Last Airbender does nothing to aid my feeling that Shyamalan should stick to more straightforward storytelling, but I think "Signs", "Unbreakable", and even "The Village" are great examples that this would be better for him. I want to be clear, in my opinion Shyamalan is a great storyteller, and among the best versions of "Actors directors" in that he really leans on emotionality in his films and seems to be able to conjure a lot of the best out of his performers. His characters seem to encourage creativity in the actors, and allow them to play very strongly to their individual gifts, but without making them predictable, something vital to the magic of actors. Predictablility is key here, and the more you show the more they know. Films like "The Visit" and "Split" may have restored some of Shayamlans good favor, and definitely reinforce the idea that Shyamalan films are actor showcases, but also still serve as a reminder of the fragile nature of hinging your movie on its ending repeatedly, all while posing fascinating and intriguing question about the role and conditions of an audience in the quality of that pursuit. For me the idea here should not be to identify what counts for your success, (this is nebulous, and complex) but to identify what you're good at. Shyamalan is a storyteller, maybe one of our greatest. He understands the power of lore, of belief and in many ways he understands it with some of the childhood magic of that belief in tact. The power of "The Sixth Sense" is in its ability to allow us all to see all of this from the viewpoint of this child even while it starts off in Willis's hands. Much like Steven Spielberg's “Hook” it is about that child-like connection to belief, and the ways that as adults we are conditioned out of it for better and worse. It's a string of conpeting and cooperating narratives of interrupted and stunted lives that argue even after we die we cant let go of the need for a good story to have some version of closure, something Shyamalan may have forgot along the way..or remembered all too well. Either way, all of this makes Shyamalan a quality candidate for a revision of his career retrospective either by Shyamalan himself, the industry, or a willing audience at a latter date, in a latter era, by people with a different mindstate...maybe children...if we ever make it there.
Going Back: "Harper" A Blockbuster before Blockbusters that reminds us of what we go for
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About five minutes into my first viewing of this Paul Newman film I knew at the very least, I was going to like Newman’s performance. In an opening scene he is in conversation with Lauren Bacall’s Elaine Sampson, ( Bacall's essence is elegance here, and it begins acting out in front of her as she Marionettes it around skillfully) and her character says something rather cruel about her husband (or at least revealing) and Newman just looks away, he adds a clearing of his throat and nervously digs in his ear. All signs of his discomfort, not necessarily with the morality, but with the circumvention of the facts. Newman adds all sorts of little cues and tics all throughout the film in a performance so well constructed and then inhabited, I ended up genuinely and completely baffled as to how I hadn't heard “Harper Harper Harper” blaring throughout the large compound of takes that is film twitter. Director Jack Smight, in league with writer William Goldman, ended up pulling me out of the doldrums of yet another uneventful movie season further compromised by our lockdown. Watching it though, I couldn’t help but wish I was in a theater laughing along with an audience at the cadre of quirky, clever characters, and Newman’s tag huer comedic timing. Johnny Mandel’s roaring jazzy score blaring in dolby surround, munching down popcorn, and wiping butter off under the tail of my shirt. Harper was released in february of 1966, well before summer time, and well before the term blockbuster would become a thing, but it would have done well being released in one and termed the other.
The film has all the ingredients of not only a blockbuster, but more importantly of all the reasons we go to the movies. I think it's important to state here that I personally feel Blockbuster filmmaking (when done right) to be maybe the peak of filmmaking abilities . To make a film that can appeal to a wide audience, without sacrificing the integrity of the elements of great filmmaking is an extremely difficult task . A major middle aged star, surrounded by a cavalry of talented actors, in a stylish well paced, all around entertaining bit of escapism based on pre existing material, helmed by a virtual newcomer with a hunger and a clear vision can be an extremely intoxicating mix. A common misconception around blockbusters is that they must involve heavy special effects, and high concepts , but obviously most know Jaws, Indiana Jones, and Get Out as Blockbusters. These movies need only have the ingredients of an easy-going, fun, but well told story relayed as an experience. For instance, John Wick chapter 3 (The only blockbuster movie since summer I’ve seen that I consider memorable) like Harper features some very stylish directorial choices, striking neon cinematography, some flashy supporting performances from its committed actors (Huston, Fishburne, McShane) and another committed performance from it’s star Keanu Reeves who like Newman (though for different reasons and to different degrees) has been underrated his whole career. Like Newman Reeves operates on a frequency of cool, and I think a complex and self interrogating representation of it that exists on a frequency that doesnt register until anywhere from five minutes to ten years after you've contemplated what just happened, and Newman for his part, is on an entirely different level in Harper. A level that in that time or this this should’ve been an Oscar nominated performance. Newman weaponized his charm, activates his dark side, merges the instincts of a physical character actor, and a leading man, and most importantly employs his signature blue eyes in work that goes beyond emitting sexual desire , cool, and veracity, and into a remarkable variety of ingenious concoctions. Like in a scene where he argues with an out his depth sherriff who wants to give him the business over not reporting to him all his findings. The Sheriff remarks “Now look if I wanted to get ugly….” and before he can finish Newman’s eyes have widened, and with a furious matter of factness he quickly remarks “You are ugly!” This in combination with the intonation which never gives itself over fully to either mockery, or cruelty, induced a laugh so hard, and heavy I almost embarrassed myself even while being completely alone.
Both the evidence of what Newman was going for and the finishing move that sent me over came just after when Newman reads the cops face for signs the cop knows as if to say “Surely you’re aware of this?”. This isn’t a great line delivered by a great actor it’s a line made great by a great actor. There are several scenes where Newman as Lew Archer has to imitate different types of people, and Newman slides in and out of these characters within the character as if he was being manipulated by the morphing technology in Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video. This is Newman at the height of his powers an agile, honest, deeply instinctive actor who hid tons of work behind crystal blue eyes, and an adamantium charm. Today Newman would be among the exceedingly short list of actors who can carry a movie to box office success based purely on name (Denzel, Meryl). The Kind of actor whose a guaranteed good time in anything their in (Will Smith, Keanu, Angela, Octavia Spencer) and the is almost assuredly a key component of a great blockbuster film.
Harper is a reminder of everything we go to the movies for and most importantly that just because its escapism does not mean it has to be mediocre. There has been a somewhat troubling trend of a sort of benign acceptance of the mediocrity of film especially as it pertains to the blockbuster. Escapism in film has always been unfairly treated as if its impoverished version of filmmaking, so people who never gave the blockbuster its proper due, don’t seem to mind if it lives up to what is “expected” of it. Never mind that some of the greatest blockbusters of all time are also quite clearly some of the greatest films of all time. The difficulty in making a great and extremely loveable film on a the near universal spectrum of blockbuster doesn't mean we should allow studios to cynically disavow any of the art, the craft, the big ideas involved in blockbuster filmmaking in exchange for hordes of interchangeable actors and remakes, reboots , sequels to unremarkable films. I love films that contain that sort of abstract intangible nature born of their creators mercurialism. I love silly films that dive deep into the absurdity of what they are, I love politically and emotionally charged indies, but none of these types of films would be what I categorize as the reason, the core of what I think when I think about going to the movies. We all go to the movies we love, but “This is what we go to the movies for" is an altogether different statement. It’s an art crafting this blend. The other types are either too intense or messy, or indulgent, and so forth to what is optimal to just sitting back and enjoying the experience. Films like Harper remind me of the magic of a really charming film that’s as easy to get into as a warm bath without relinquishing intelligence or craft. It’s the ambitious challenge of mixing just the right amount story, action, dialogue, themes, pacing, and performance to get something that oscillates between taking away , and giving back. Getting us what we want, and getting on our nerves. Repelling, and attracting us in that way that makes the experience so much like the most romantic idea of falling in love. Films like “Harper”reminds me of the power of the megawatt star who can also A..C..T. It reminds me of the importance of pacing, and most importantly that “The Fugitive”’s, The “Get Out"'s and “Lethal Weapons” (especially those because they are mid-budgeted, and light on visual effects) are still possible. Also Paul Newman .. that is all.
A Chungking Expression of a Better Idea of Love.
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Master Auteur Wong Kar-wai's Chunking Express is widely considered one of, if not his most brilliant film. It has fervent fans amongst those who have had the pleasure of seeing it. Up until just recently, I had not. Watching ChungKing Express and this now being my third movie of Wong Kar-wai's, I was struck by how well it moved despite the non linear storytelling, and the audaciousness of his chosen narrative techniques, BUT what most stood out, what I loved more than anything was the way that Kar-wai frames love in general. It's a most sincere, thoughtful, sweet, all at once and you're also across time type of framing that seems to have been all but forgotten in cinema of late, given way to a simplistic dichotomy between paint-by-numbers meet-cutes and devastating glares into a more cynical look at not only love but its fleeting nature via “Revolutionary Road”, “Blue Valentine”, and most recently “A Marriage Story”.
By a standard evolving over the past 30 years, the dissolution of love or romantic relationships is almost by necessity an ugly business. Possession, evolution, and time( to name a few) induce rifts, rifts that are answered with anger , frustration, despondency, and rage. These things exist in Kar-Wai films as well but it’s what they end up saying, how they say it that differs. Wong Kar-wai sets love to a Kahlil Gibran mood, tone, and understanding which allows for the shifting , inconsistent, wave like nature of love. It's important to note here that I feel (like I sense that he may feel) that love is not particularly constant, in fact too many times I feel as though that consistency has become if not synonymous, a word commonly and often associated with love. My feeling is that love is the exact opposite of this and that what we refer to now as love is the result of a confusion of the way that we navigate the waters, the waves of love with the ocean itself. It’s a very patriarchal domineering approach. So that if something goes wrong if the wave doesn't crash in the direction we expected it to, if it doesn't flow or guide us to shore in the way that we desire, if it doesn't provide the sustenance WE feel WE need... Then something, or someone has to be blamed. We conquer the seas we dont give into it.
This is in almost total contrast from the way the bulk of Kar Wai's stories display a patience, a compassion a resoluteness, to the divide between people's designs and the actualities of love. That is not to say that the characters don't have designs or that they stop designing once they discover this divide, but that regardless of the fact that, those designs are based upon hope. Take for example He Qiwu ( Takeshi Kaneshiro) stocking up on cans of pineapple juice that expire May 1st in hopes that they will hold some kernel of a Fortune as to the fate of he and May the ex with whom he is infatuated with.
Once they have arrived to the destination of reality, then many of Wong Kar-wai's characters are peacefully resigned as to their romantic fate without any malicious will or attitudes towards their loves. Throughout the Wong Kar Wai movies I've seen, there are very few " I hate you, I hate I hate you, I love I love you I love you moments via “Baby Boy". Very few vitriol riddled standoffs wherein two partners lob a myriad of curse words and obscenities at each other. Very little of the mind of toxicity in amarriage story going on in his films, and I must say it's refreshing.
One of my favorite scenes chungking Express takes place between Tony Leon and Valerie Chow and a small convenience store where they coincidentally meet after a breakup and which Leon received relatively little closure as to why the relationship dissolved in the first place..
Smiles are exchanged , not glares, fighting words or even forced pleasantries. There is a genuine love for the love they once shared, and though there is clearly a longing for what might still be, they are both resolved to live in the present. Whether it is "Days of being Wild", or "In the Mood for Love" this is Wong Kar Wai. What I love about what I see or feel watching Wong Kar Wai films is an appeal to our better natures in love. An appeal to understand love and the loss of it in a deeper way that connects and bonds us rather than tear us apart, a greater ideal of love that flies high above rage, control, blame, and possession even when those things are present within his films.
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey and My Emancipation from Monotony.
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Comic Book movies I believe have peaked, reached the summit, seen the promised land, and much like the story of Moses in the bible it is only down from here. Or at least this is where I settled. Sure a few cases might tumbleweed through what used to be a teeming boomtown, but looking across the horizon, with Marvel's insistence on knowing what drives comic books with very little regard for what drives cinema, and DC's disregard for talent and decision making, and every other studio turning in their own version of Marvel movies ( even when they're about street racers) I thought the days of seeing anything as interesting as Blade, emotionally stirring as Logan, or philosophically intriguing and polarizing as TDK trilogy was over. Marvel's strict adherence to coexistence, (due to a symbiotic universe) made their heroes interchangeable, their villains bland. DC's new plan despite their new paint job isn’t much different than the old one there's just less insistence on connectivity. Their desire to give their movies personality based upon the unique vision of talented directors was the better strategy, their problem was in the folk they chose for the mission. It’s an issue that makes itself joyfully clear in Birds of Prey. No film is more emblematic of what went wrong before, what Marvel hasn't done, doesn’t do, and maybe can’ do under the current credo than Yan's energetic, all over the place, colorful, genre piece.
Cathy Yan's film so painstakingly builds its world around its themes and most importantly its central character (extremely unique in the landscape herself) that it can only but stand apart. Yan's choices, Robbies transformation, and the sheer amount of fun every seems to be having both in the context of the film, and behind the scenes, coalesced to make it for me one of, if not the most unique comic book film I’ve ever seen on screen. Deadpool most certainly and readily comes to mind, but while the film certainly understood its character, it did not accomplish the type of world building this film did. The cityscape in the film was as unremarkable as its villain. Todd Phillip's Joker film was so busy trying to wrap the Iconic character in a dubious political statement, while Joaquin focused on actorly objectives, it forgot much of the unhinged joy the character takes in his work, and damn sure lost his central impetus which I promise you is not being misunderstood and consistently victimized. Blade surprisingly has quite a lot in common with Birds of Prey as to what made these films work. These films both hinged on building a world around their central character that both obstructs their objective, and constructs their personalities. They both feature on paper a fairly uninteresting villain that finds magic through inspired performances by the actors involved, and both their lead actors, feel as close to irreplaceable as is possible because such is the level of their comfort with the character. Birds is a movie with character about a character and Yan and Margot Robbie, understand exactly who Harley is, and many of these traits become the traits of the movie.
Near the beginning of the film Harley is talking to the audience in her own head (of which we just happen to be eavesdropping) raving about her favorite breakfast sandwich and the man who produces them , Sal. She has been in her head this whole time , but she stops and says “I mean it Sal “ as if she has been talking to him this whole time. It’s brilliant and funny and totally emblematic of the feeling of this movie. You're in on what’s going on, but the movie, nor Harley care whether you are in or out. This is the beauty of Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, its independence. It doesn't care that the comic book film has mostly lived by the use of drab morose colors despite the fact that the books are anything but. It doesn't care about leading us down the road to some overall reflection of our society, tho it clearly points them out. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey looks out for Harley Quinn, or rather it springs forth from her, and Margot Robbie's uncanny understanding of the character. The passion, the energy, the essence, the erratic breaks in train of thought. Robbie so gleefully and brilliantly embodies the traits it’s like she becomes encased in the cells of actual comics, and the movie followed suit. In fact , one of my favorite, maybe my actual favorite moment in the movie is when Harley forgetting one vital aspect of the story, abruptly breaks to go back and explain a missing portion of a story she is telling. The film could've easily done a montage, but it goes through near a half hour of an actual act to follow Harleys tangent, (making me at least temporarily forget we were on one) and then popped right back in place with such a rhythmic ease, it felt akin to Hendrix going off to wherever he went on the national anthem, only to return us right back to where he left off as if we had already been there. Yan throws a number of colorful, spastic images that reflect Harley's mind, not only in how she thinks, but how she sees Gotham. The supporting characters (all of whom are as fantabulous as Harley’s emancipation) ride the supremely difficult line of feeling completely independent of, and somehow apart of Harley's fever dream-like perspective. They’re outside her dream actually doing something akin to how Harley sees them , but yet not exactly. Much like when Harley goes into a Diamonds are a girls best friend like hallucination after being nearly knocked out by a brutal slap from Ewan McGregor's “Roman Sionis”. The men that actually surround, her and even some of the actual peices of decor make their way into Harleys fantasy taking on different incarnations of themselves, each player now designated a different role in Harleys boundless imagination.
It’s this type of fun, escapist, sometimes maniacal , detour that makes Harlequin such an interesting character and the film gets it. What separates it from recent supposedly more important fare is the way that throughout all this garbage pail glam, charisma, and destruction, it holds Harley accountable. Both the Joker and Harley films presented characters who see the world in a unique way, arguably a very cynical way, but one went out of it’s way to support its central characters delusions, the other acknowledged them as toxic and at least partially responsible for not only her enemies, but her lack of friends. I’m a huge fan of the Dark knight films, and completely disagree with the notion that there was some landslide of films trying to copy its tone, (while Marvel was right there) but I do think the movies that did try to copy frequently got it wrong and made joyless messes that felt as though the thesis was a lesson could only come through agony and pain. Cathy Yan's visionary film proves that you can have the socio political bend of a Joker in the wrapping of a fun, colorful, witty , collection of action scenes like Marvel, and I think it’s an important landmark in comic book films. It cements Robbie as one of the fully realised actors of this era, and Yan as a visual director who doesn't become a prisoner of her own style, which is not easy even for good directors. Birds of Prey is the kind of film that I dont know gives me hope for the genre, (though I want to believe), but it definitely provides me with hope that the comic book film can still find ways to evolve, or reset, or refresh. Emancipating the form from its tedium.
Forgotten Gems: King of New York
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Abel Ferrera's King of New York is a fascinating watch for me. It’s fascinating to sit back and take note of just how fascinated, how entranced I am with this film. I love other gangster films, but I wouldn’t say I’m entranced or even enchanted by them. That distinction is reserved for films like “Only God Forgives", “Melancholia”, “The Shining” or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". That feeling of a spell being woven over me, of complete surrender, (Save for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, there is a common thread of substandardly paced films with an air of the supernatural). Goodfellas makes gangsterism detestable, but cool. Donnie Brasco makes it powerful, but tragic. New Jack City sexy but cruel, but King of New York explores gangsterdom as a drug fueled fever dream drenched in audacity that takes place in purgatory. Unlike any other Gangster portrayed on film, Ferrera's and frequent collaborator Nicholas St John's Frank White (Christopher Walken) is not just an ambitious, violent, ne'er do well in the vein of Tony Montana from “Scarface", but a similarly myopic ambitious, violent, ne'er do well whose ultimate ambition is to raise the profile and living conditions of the less fortunate along with hinself- If you're watching. What was interesting to me, was to wonder what and if the movie wanted to say something in particular about the ultimate effect of this kind of ambition, as well as to parse the places in which the movie functions as a white savior movie, and the ways in which it unconsciously (most likely) subverts that trope by merely unraveling in the way in which Ferrara films did at the time. So that if Frank’s ambition is at the heart of all this self and outward destruction, is the ambition itself the root? Is it identity focused? Is it the intention behind the impetus? If his ambition is to help underserved communities and people, ultimately what does this say about white saviors?, or at least these are the thoughts that crossed my mind.
The underpinnings of the argument are not to be found in any overt finger-wagging, or plot points, but in implicit happenings and the natural outgrowth of thought that branches out fron underneath its groundwork. Namely by way of watching the police work. If there are enemies in this film, ( for my money there is not, there is simply Frank and New York) they are the police. Ferrara's film is not a glowing account of police work. Cops are not protectors, or saviors, or particularly heroic. For all intensive purposes they are a rival gang. Especially as headed by Dennis Gilley and co-chaired by Thomas Flanigan (played with furious agitation by David Caruso and Wesley Snipes as Flanigan??? ). I say headed by, not because Caruso is their actual leader - that would be Victo Argo's mostly level headed Roy Bishop, - but because it is Caruso who is their spiritual leader. They're dark Fletcher Christian leading them on (all bluster and fervor) into oblivion. The Police should be much more invested in everything Frank is, (opening hospitals, hiring diversely, doing their job with a directive that serves the community they have placed themselves in charge of through little more than will and nerve and whiteness ) they are not. They’re interested only in returning Frank to prison or placing him snugly in a body bag. Their police force is white hegemony with tokenism.
On the other hand, Frank is nearly the token in his own crew if not for whomever Steve Buscemi is. This dichotomy provides no neat answers to the questions posed earlier. This is not “American Gangster” a film that in my opinion took a aggravatingly simple moral position that philosophically sided most decidedly with its police, and aesthetically with its subject - It's an unrelentingly hyper-violent deconstruction if not a referendum against a very specificly capitalist contextualization of ambition (at least in the subtext) and a stubborn refusal to dive into moral superiority that finds an almost predestined path to futility that calls to mind the eye opening frankness of ecclesiastes 1:2
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.”
