Ray Harryhausen: Respect for the actor.
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Monsters have always been at the corner of our imaginations, cuddled up in a gnarled personification of not only our fears but of our nature, our identity, our suffering, and our preoccupation with suffering. Good monsters the ones that truly terrify us as well as capture our imaginations- deal with this preoccupation with the shadows of the world and ourselves in the form of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, and beyond. The job of the actors who played these cinematic monsters from stormed into our collective nightmares from the pages of literature, or the imaginations of filmmakers was not simply to imply or animate horror or terror, but to animate our human soul and the human soul from within these creatures as reflections of our own darkness. Physically and thematically they tell us as much about ourselves as they do themselves or our heroes. These motivations , perceptions, even the physical characteristics are what makes playing monsters such a powerful draw for actors as well as directors, writers, special effects, and other such artists and creators. Very rarely the two been married in one person, George Méliès, and Frank Oz, and one One of these practitioners as well as one of these greatest creative minds ever as it pertains to the creation of monsters was Ray Harryhausen. It was not just the imagination of the monsters themselves, but the detail not only in application, but function that made Harryhausen unique in his time. Alot of that thought process was no different than the one an actor goes through thinking about how to live in a character, how to embody their physicality, and to think about what motivations given them. Actors must live in their creations and make no mistake Harryhausen lives in his. Harryhausen never spoke to any desire to have been an actor, but the instincts are there just the same. He gave his alien saucers a flight pattern indicative of the life inside . He gives a bronze statue stiff movement and creaky sounds to give it the feel of life but trapped in a metal not made for human flexibility. Every Harryhausen creature had personality, every one had objectives, and every one had instincts, but here I just want to identify five of my faves and share not only why I loved them, but where the actor in this master craftsman shone through.
5. Prince Kassim (Sinbad and the eye of the Tiger)
“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” is probably my least favorite of the Harryhausen projects directed or special effects managed, and Prince Kassim is not a monster, but rather a man put under a spell, but hell, I was under a spell too watching then and may very well still be under one now via some incredible work by Harryhausen . The arc of Kassims transformation ( he becomes more animal like as the movie goes on ) gives the movie a very unique version of the “ticking clock” and it really is something to watch stop motion from so many years ago (with nearly a one man crew of himself) do the work of creating a character whose movements and facial expressions begin to denote a growing vacancy, and loss of intelligence. Rage and beastial simplicity take the place of complex emotional cues, and acute personality traits. Its clear even before doing research on Harryhausen that he had done his research on how and these animals move, and interact. The complex gears in the face of Kassim's cursed new form allow the performance to be convincing, and the less he uses them the more it seems the human is taking on the form of his curse. It’s a recocurring theme in Harryhausen's work attention to detail and an actors sensibilities in concert to create uniquely empathetic characters that would provide the foundation for later creations like Jack Skellington and Coraline. In Eye of the Tiger it simply makes Kassim without a doubt the best part of the movie and far more interesting than anything the rest of the movie had to offer. By the time Kassim is transformed again to human form it makes little difference, we've already seen the best transformation and actor in the movie
4. “The Snake-Woman” (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad)
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is arguably Harryhausen's best , the crown jewel of his achievements not only in the special effects work, but the film overall itself. It is a dedication to wonder, adventure and fun, in the same spirit as classics like “The Thief of Baghdad,” or “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. Bernard Herrmann's score rumbles and dazzles throughout each and every scene, scheme, conflict, and resolution providing temperature and temperament. Its a beautiful whimsical work of music by another master in Herrmann which lends weight to Harryhausen's belief that “the music was very important” that it was “Fifty percent of the success of a fantasy film, that heightened the emotion and made the whole thing bigger than life”. The acting dome by breathing actors is mostly missable much of it alerting you to the irksome white washing of the era, (though Torin Thatcher's scheming sorcerer “Sokurah” is the best villain featured in any of these films largely due to Thatchers wild eyed dedication to the spirit of the character though a visually pleasing histrionic performance which fits the overall scale of the movie) but this is a film about Harryhausen's abilities. In fact most of Harryhausen's films were really this more than anything else. As the movie hums along ( credit must be given to Nathan Jurans pacing which is magnificently brisk ) there are many Harryhausen delights to choose from, two of which seem to be the trial runs or prototypes for two of his most well known creature effects. A skeleton that fights Sinbad to the death, and my favorite of the film- The Snake lady. In order to charm the king at a celebration in which the sorcerer Sokurah wishes to gain some favor for a mission of his own, he throws a snake in a pot with a woman and using magic, bakes them together to create a unique Harryhausen creation that stands up even to later movie incarnations like the snake woman featured in Eddie Murphy's semi surreal magical comedy “The Golden Child”. The effects may be slightly more crude but again what Harryhausen understood was the power of the effect as a performer. The snake lady is part snake, part handmaiden one (The Handmaiden ) seems more than happy to be a part of Sokurah's act than the other, the two function more like siamese twins than some form of a hostile bodily takeover…at first. In this early conception we can see the groundwork laid for Sam Raimi's treatment of Doctor Octavious, in Spiderman 2. Indeed Raimi as well as mnay of his horror fantasy peers share ancestry with Ray. Harryhausen allows this conceptual interpretation of what this magic might look and feel like to invoke and inform the effects. This is not the stiffness of Talos the statue, or the stale vanity of Kassim, this is pure joy and a bit of ecstasy. The woman ( now part creature ) moves with immense flexibility. She caresses and careens, her hands and arms flailing and wiggling with exuberance and confidence, as she feels on and engorges herself in delight, which prevents her from paying attention to the mutiny of the new landlord in her body until her tail (the whole time acting in defiance of the act) reaches up from behind her and begins to choke her. Save for a few close-ups all of this is embodied by Harryhausen's craftsmanship. He uses a combination of the actresses face and his animated representation of it to give the dance the approximation of humanity, it runs surprisingly close and with clever editing even the aging of the technology disappears into the limbo of fantasy where the magic the viewer wants to see allows the erasure of any distraction from the fantasy. It’s the most elegant of Harryhausen's monsters and the most fun, pronounced once again by a impossibly complimentary score by Herrmann. Harryhausen recognizes this as a performance within a performance, and that effect needed to pronounce as well as announce the love of the dance, and the evil within the magic. These are separate bodies, and eventually one attacks the other. Harryhausen just as an actor does, uses the tools available to help aid him into the shape and craft a performance that wos not only thw Sultan , but us the audience and thus showcases Harryhausen's abilities as an actor just as well as a director.
3. “The Skeletons" (Jason and The Argonauts)
Perhaps the most famous of Harryhausen's films and arguably his most famous creation, the bewitched skeletons in “Jason and the Argonauts” are amongst the greatest special effect in movie history and count as one of it’s most memorable moments. Even by today’s standards they are something to behold. More than just an effect they are a feat of timing, choreography, and detail and desire for not truth but honesty. The fight with Jason and his soldiers is furious, and the soldiers with no dialogue, no back story, and only movement seem to relay a similar tale as those long dead ghosts in “Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein's “Return of the King”. Here for one last mission, resolute, hungry, and focused from beyond the grave on the one task, annihilation. When risen they still move like soldiers, in formation, in precise marching order, and under strict orders. They stand at the ready until their new captain orders them to kill. They fight with a fury, not finesse, there is no sense of valor or glory just a deadly myopia on the targetin front of them. The lack of intent, the purity and simplicity of their objective, the way Harryhausen plays them, they are in effect zombies some five years before we were all introduced to Romero's terrifying undead in “Night of the Living Dead". Harryhausen's approach to these characters was not to simply animate bones, but give each a distinctive personality and trait. There is no story in animated bones they are simply moving skeletons that exist to be a wonder in and of themselves which never has any quality of memory or memorable-ness, which is why no one really cared that much about the attacking “wights” in the Game of Thrones episode “The Children”. There is no animus there ,no holding of past memory of the body or its past, just the threat of an undead horde. When acting, the past is of great consideration, what might your body be like, what might it act like if raised undead? Jow might one be pulled, or how might they be slowed if only bones, these are the considerations of a mind concerned with bringing forth not only magic but some reminder of the human condition and its employment here means that of the varying incarnations of zombiedom I argue the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts amongst the best ever, because much of the inherent fear lies in the fact that they have the same laser focus, but carry the haunted memory of their military past , the creeping dead now equipped with martial ability…..Yeesh.
2. Kali (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad)
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad maybe a little underwhelming in comparison to favorite The Seventh voyage, though I think it boasts maybe the best Sinbad in John Philip it lacks the personality I feel some of the other Harryhausen works did, (such as 20 million miles to earth) but Kali is a defining creature of the film is also at the top of the list of Harryhausen's best performances. Kali is a ancient relic of a time even before Sinbad and crew arrive. She is awakened from a slumber and given life reanimated by evil. Harryhausen gives her movements that imply both a sense of surprise and wonder. A bit of restraint, and a performers sensibilities. She appears twice in the movie.. once to perform a dance, once to fight, and there is a clear difference in energy between them. When to dance, there is more energy, less thought. The statue seems more comfortable here. Here she is a performer, a thespian eager to engage with an audience. Its one of a few roles the “Exotic woman” played in films of the day, and even as the statuesque incarnation of a goddess her status is reduced to exotic charm and charmer. When to fight? the statue seems to be surprised as the swords appear in her hand, and though she fights easily, there is not the same vigor and relish as when you watch say the skeletons fight. This is not what Kali was here for it seems. Intentional or not this this seems to be a perversion of Kali's purpose, and a cursory reading of Kali in south Asian mythology proves as much. Kali is a warrior, she is not surprised in valor or by weapons, she is one in a certain fashion, but she is meant to destroy evil not work for it. As presented Koura the sorcerer is a foreign interlocutor, and externally so too is Harryhausen, foreign bodies that have possessed the goddess tainting her. It is all most interesting to me because of all Harryhausen's statuesque creations (Talos, The Kracken, and the statue of thetis in Clash of the titans) she has the most interesting story and there is a cultural clash, an orientalism, that seems to live contextually in the scene, and since Kali is one of the least discussed of Harryhausen's works, there is an air of mystery there that leaves her open for interpretation. Which is all the more fun. She is a technical wonder every bit as precise as the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, and all the more dangerous as a warrior due to the height, weight, and limb advantage. She is further proof of the horror of being disembodied by way of foreign interference and that the most terrifying adversary is the most mysterious, and I think the one of the most representative of Harryhausen's instincts being of the sort that he just has a natural inclination towards understanding acting and building characters, by way of preparation or thought process. Even when he’s wrong.
1. Medusa (Clash of the Titans)
Medusa is one of the most appealing, controversial, and engrossing characters of any mythology, both as a monstrous figure and a representation of patriarchal disdain for womanhood as a consequence of our fear of their beguiling effect upon us. Harryhausen was nowhere near concerned with the latter, but within his own desire to make Medusa more dramatic and terrible, he unconsciously reinforces the latter. It makes his Medusa to this day the most aesthetically effective and the most philosophically interminable. Harryhausen properly noted that up until his Medusa in the 1981 film, she had been in movies depicted as a beautiful woman with snakes in her hair, this to Harryhausen's mind was not effective enough aesthetically, and from another perspective it could be argued previous representations were a half measure on what is unconsciously the root of male panic regarding feminine allure, anger, and power. What it produces in us, how we have reacted to it, and how we have depicted it historically. Harryhausen's Medusa is this terror personified, but she is not necessarily terrible. Even if he did not understand the realities that undercut the myth ( such as the fact that Medusa was raped by Poseidon) Medusa's rage is depicted in her face as not just the rage of a blind erratic Predator, and not just by the physicalscales, (which are a consequence of Athenas jealousy) but in her eyes. When she catches one of Perseus's guard with one of her arrows, and then sets upon him with her gaze Harryhausen gives her eyes an animated rage which if you understand her true story only but makes sense. In her opening reveal her silhouette rattles signaling her arrival as her shadow meanders, never making it above the halfway point of the wall upon which it is cast. Harryhausen gives her an actors life, a sense of the similar execution as one might have noted in the featurette on Benedict Cumberbatch's motion capture performance of Smaug the dragon in Peter Jackson's the Hobbit, ( itself no doubt influnced in many ways by the very same scene) except Medusa is not interested in conversation in the least. She is accursed, doomed, indicted by men to serve a petrified existence in the ruins of mens imaginations. She has to propel herself across the floor by dragging the rest of her body in a low crawl, slithering rather than walking upright. Once again we see snakes and women connected in mythology, in Christianity the story goes a snake convinced Eve, who convinced Adam to disobey God, the implication being she used her feminine wiles. In the Medusa mythos she is punished for much of the same, even the exorcism of rape leaves Medusa as a woman attacked and cursed for merely being the object of philandering gods affections. The mythology of Medusa is the type of demeaning punishment that could only cause rage, and produce terror, and her eyes reflect that terror back at us, Harryhausen ensures it. Harryhausen only did it simply because he wanted her to appear more snake-like, even as he admitted shes another one he felt for, but it is this intersection of empathy and detail that gives actors their power and like many long standing performances construced in the faithful attention to building characters, they take on a life of their own in discourse and criticism. The idea is to animate them to have an approach that seeks to give any person or living being a sense of life through objective and motivations the audience can read and react to. Harryhausen is meticulous about this. Each detail is meant to give the character more life, and to provide the audience with similar sense of foreboding terror as the protagonist., but most importantly to humanize them. A key to understanding Harryhausen's approach is understanding he abhorred the idea that any one would think he was making horror films, and that he empathized with monsters deeply, by way of the effect King Kong had on him. He said he felt sorry for Kong even after the knowledge that he had leveled New York City in the movie that inspired him to do his work. He spoke of something pitiable in the eyes and it had lasting effect on his interpretations. The snakes in Medusa's hair live in his depiction, and they seem to personify her detestablity to men, but they also have a life of their own so they are not only a living accessory but something she cohabitates with. She has a focus, an intention, unlike any of the other creatures in Harryhausen's career, because she is unlike them. She is not an animal, or a statue brought to life. She is probably most like Kassim from Eye of the Tiger, but even then while Kassim is fully the animal with a personality trapped inside, Medusa is more a combination, much like her pre-cursor the Snake -woman in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”. She is a human and she is something other. She is not just a passive actor in someone else’s scheme, she enjoys the kill, and even moreso the use of her power, she is an active hunter. She does not possess the flexibility of her antecedent the snake woman, she does not move easily or with a flow. Each contraction of her muscles feels compressed, her movements feel restricted. There's a sense of surprise and a certain glee when she believes she has noticed Perseus in the reflection of his shield. The thrill of Ray's most recognized scene is in the thrill of the hunt for both Perseus and Medusa and it is in Harryhausen’s creation that that we find just how attached to that thrill Medusa is, as well as how skilled she is at this. It's all there in the face and the composition, and the movement. She is revenge personified, she is mens power, reduction , and cruelty , as an avatar tuned back on them, and they and we cant stand it. Harryhausen's effects reinforce, and add to Medusa's legacy in our collective imagination because of his desire to truly give things life, and his ability to execute by way of living in and through his creations. In the same interview as he mentions his affinity for monsters Harryhausen is told by his interviewer - a gushing Tim Burton - that the flying saucers in Earth vs The Flying Saucers had more personality than the actors. In many cases his creatures and other creations made this true, after all no one went to Harryhausen movies to watch the actual living actors, They went to watch Harryhausen's acting creations live, or rather watch Harryhausen live through his actors. Harry Houston's legacy and effect extended well beyond special effects even as it obviously influenced folks like Rick Baker ( who also acted through his work) and Stan Winston. It extended beyond his effect on future animators like John Lassiter or Henry Selick to include even directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Guillermo Del Toro, and yes actors like Doug Jones and Andy Serkis. Such is the effect power and influence of Harryhausen's work, That throughout his career he laid foundational groundwork in the collective imaginations of a vast variety of Hollywood collaborators and role players. And while largely he will be remembered rightfully so as a special effects and animation hero, he should also be remembered as an actor's hero if not in one particular movie than in all. Because in all his films the animated actors existed and performed well enough that often times in his movies (which regardless of who was directing them they were almost undoubtedly his) His creations, his acting avatars, functioned as the stars of the movies while the living breathing actors merely provided supporting roles. In the Medusa scene, his craft had more personality and performed better than any breathing actor's incarnation or interpretation of the figure and better than any actor on the set, she is the movies star, the reason we all remember the film at all and in a nutshell that is a major part of Harryhausen's legacy as not only a creator, and an artist, but as an actor in every sense but being paid specifically to do it.
The Hustle of “Hustle”
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Fifteen minutes into Netflix's latest version of “Here's something to watch while you knit” “Hustle”. I knew what the movie was about and where it was going. Matter fact I knew what it was about and where it was going from the trailer and none of the movies surprises or its comforts were able to make that work any better for me. It opens with an “Up in the Air” like montage featuring Sandler looking like a portable bag of laundry dropped into one strange bed after another, in one strange city after another to watch one player after another break his heart. We see isolation, loneliness, a man constantly away from his family. We also see personality, perseverance, “hustle”. When he comes back with his report on what he has saw - specifically a player named Haas everyone else is high on save Sandler's Stanley Sugerman - we know hes a scout, and not to soon after that he is a very put upon scout. There's a nice subplot story to be told here about the cogs in the NBA corporate machine and the abuses they endure and/or the combine and the way it treats players like livestock, but it/they become the first casualties in an ongoing extermination of any idea that might make this story interesting. Capitalism, race, the loss of craftsmanship and fundamentals these are all interesting approaches to discussing basketball today obvious and yet still unexplored in the history of basketball movies save by Spike Lee. It borders on criminal to me to make a basketball movie in 2022 and have the best idea you can come up be a “Rocky” movie starring Adam Sandler.
Adam Sandler ends up the movies greatest strength and it's greatest weakness. There's something to be said about how much Sandler resembles Sylvester Stallone in quality of self deprecating nature. They both have mastered this hang-dog look, even moreso as their age is accompanied by wrinkles and bodies that feel every bit of their age. They understand that rage that desire to want to prove without being loud while simultaneously being loud with a profoundness very few people could ever understand. Meagerness/Meekness these are qualities of the underdog in cinema. The guy who doesn't want any trouble but can cause immense trouble has been a on screen favorite since the Golden age of westerns. Sandler posseses this quality like Stallone naturally. In fact natural-ness could be argued to have been a defining trait of Sandlers since he started dramatic acting. Unlike many of his comedian contemporaries who so clearly TRY in both choices of roles and films and in choices in acting - Sandler just seems to move towards what moves him and when he arrives, he arrives ready, open, and willing to let the story and what is there take him to where he needs to go. To use a basketball phrase ; He let's the game come to him. It shows here in all his choices. When hes going to raise his inflection, when hes going to slide back into that old familiar scrappy energetic Adam Sandler, and when hes going to snap out of it. It's in his walk, in his ownership of his body and his insecurities, its all on display in increasingly vulnerable and bare performances. I may not be as high on Sandler as others, but I recognize a blue collar like approach to the work that's endearing and in and of itself an attractive quality as it pertains to his stardom and career, but Adam Sandler is still a white man. Any basketball movie featuring a white man in this very black but also very anti black world, just cannot afford to wash over that as if it doesn't exist by meeting aesthetic quotas in regards to representation. Having black people be featured dominantly where they are dominant in service to a scribe who writes a story about an two underdog white men who will beat the odds -one in particular against yet another cocky black player is defeating to any goodwill I may have towards the rest of the story. It's not as much Sandlers and Co's fault( Lebron James and Maverick Carter co-produced this ) as much as it is the fault of exhaustion. Exhaustion with nearly a century of cinema where white men are centered in stories that beg for the consideration of the people it treats as background.
White men have long had an issue taking a back seat, when everything they've told themselves says that seat is reserved for everyone but them. I’m not specifically talking about Sandler, more a generalized sense of the history of cinematic and other forms of narrative storytelling. Any chance white men have to place themselves at the center of it all they will invited or not. Their resilience in this regard should be matched by our collective vigilance, but many times it eventually gives way to exhaustion. After all, the resources, the keys, the gates, the real estate is mostly owned by them, and they can deploy all of them to overwhelm on multiple fronts. It becomes tiring countering everything everywhere all the time, especially when it's so cool and saccharine and non-threatening as Adam Sandler and stories about underdogs. Throw in a charming and willing to try and make it work Latifah as a one dimensional housewife, a bi-racial spirited child, a legion of old and new black hoopers and analyst as also charming props and maybe you might forget how hollow and old hat this all is in the sense of story. The gymnastics “Hustle” has to do to avoid even its most basic and plain truths hurt it's story and its characterizations. Ben Foster's Vince Merrick an entitled son to Robert Duvall's compassionate owner ( A trope that needs to die see “The Replacements”, “Blue Chips”, and the ghost of a father in Any Given Sunday ) looks lost as his hijinks feel completely unconnected or tied to anything tangible. There's implications of a Gladiator/Road to Perdition type deal where Merrick might be jealous of Sandler's Sugerman as a surrogate son who has a better relationship with his father than he does, but that is woefully unexplored, and in that case Sandler's character being black would lend understanding and relief without words needing to be spoken. Many of these situations would explain themselves with a black character being an outisder in this same strange world where black people are almost only on the playing side and not the organizational or operational side. As it stands, Merrick's hate (and its very hateful/spiteful) is just arbitrary and weird, especially since all of his actions actively hurt the team. With any background on him this would make sense, but the movie isn't interested in that either. Kermit Wilts (Played by actual NBA player Anthony Edwards ) has no visible traits other than shit talking. No other personality, defining or driving motive other than to be a black foil for our white hero. At least Apollo Creed had some version of interiority. The movie cares so little about its convictions that even when it repeats over and over again that Bo's main and seemingly only weakness is his lack of a developed thick skin (which Kermit exploits by getting under it) it abandons that theme unceremoniously when the big comeback scene happens. In their final battle Kermit says nothing to rile Bo the whole time and so even in his victory the question must be asked what did he learn? This is a double sin as its simultaneously hobbles Juancho Herangomez's character development, and disappears even Kermit's one defining trait leaving him nothing but a loser at the end.
I really do understand why folks find this movie appealing. It's a steady Adam Sandler ( himself a bit of an underdog considering how most people categorize his career then and now) continuing to grow right before our eyes becoming one of the more fascinating and interesting actors of our time. It's Queen Latifah getting to play just a bit outside of type and doing it with a certain kind of wilful glee that brings a smile to one's face. It's the beat down man, a scout, a small link in a great big chain driving around in a Chevy Malibu somehow able to fund all these various basketball “doctors” and hotel stays by himself without the aid of a basketball team and their corporate money because he's a doer, and a humble man, the great sweet spot that is the underdog. Last but of course not least it's basketball! “We love this Game” is the NBA's slogan, and very few slogans are as simple and true. I love this game, I love it a little too much to watch a movie that centers it and the aspect of scouting and doesn't really talk much about how to deploy actual skill, how to define it in a player. A movie featuring a scout finding a phenom that has no interest in talking about things like whether or not Bo is a traditional center who needs to learn to play more of an outside game with more finesse, or ( more likely ) a player that has a lot of skill behind the three point line, and moving with the ball that needs to learn to play more traditionally under the rim, or get tougher under it. When training there is no talk of what they're trying to train him for or what they want him to do as hes clearly in shape and looks the exact same after all this training. These are details that add to authenticity and engage us further into the story. I was frequently confused about Bo's level. Is he a phenom or a great rotational player? Would you fight this hard for a role player? If he's a phenom, there'd be no way anyone would be dissuaded by the fact that he gets a little ruffled when it gets hot, and truthfully if he was, while it may show up in regards to the loss, he would still be ballin regardless. How many phenomenonal talents have we seen who have weak constitutions or a soft personality, no one denies their talent. Why are we still talking about or allowing the white conservative talking point that being a trash talker is synonous with being a villain, especially when movies almost always make that type of villain black? While I wanted to like or maybe even love this movie I was deterred constantly at every turn by a movie which jettisoned almost every single interesting or fascinating plot point or direction for another that was tired and familiar. Like the way it ignores its interesting female characters be it Queen Latifah or Heidi Gardner as Kat Merrick the daughter of Rex, Sister of Vince - in a way that leaves so much on the table it makes her interactions with Sugarman weirdly off key. My issue with hustle is not just tied to it's impoverished approach to representation, or it's centering of a white man, or it's lack of follow through. It's in its hollow attempt to resurrect a story that had already been told and told better years ago. In essence this movie's “hustle” is not in any workmanship or craft sense, but it's willingness to try to hustle us by selling back to us a story we shouldve long ago discarded.
“Marvel, The Way Out is Through”
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The first time I saw Iron Man 2 I saw a Marvel film with an inherent desire to be taken seriously by those in a certain class of filmmaking and the very vague and general perception of what a critic looks for in “high art”. The longing was apparent from the jump when reports surfaced that Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau and Co were going to adapt the “Demon in the Bottle” series from the books. The idea was mostly nixed and there was a righteous and some unrighteous reasons for that, but the effort in and of istelf is indicative to try and get serious and the more buzzy words; “darker” or “grittier” which are directly linked in an indirect sort of way to our generalized misunderstandings about what is expected of singular directors. By the time I actually watched it it was clear. This divide is the divide of most of the films coming out of the MCU ; to lean into their own identity, or try and be “respected” while appeasing the wide assortment of people that enjoy their movies. Marvel's desire is the desire of many studios and streaming platforms ( Netflix, I'm looking at you ) to be everything to everybody. I'm using the word “respect” very broadly, but I really just mean it to be an umbrella under which concepts, terms, and traditions like “prestige”, “high art”, “Oscars”, Peer love from the canonical autuers and so forth gather under. In that sphere you have certain ideas that signal, signify, and relay the general ideas of prestigious filmmaking. You know, that oft imagined kind that gets you Oscar nods, and festivals in your name, and frequent homages in other people's films. The motivation and/or causation for the desire differs from person to person, studio to studio and is a whole nother story, I aim to identify one, but there are many and my point here is to identify it as an issue that punctuates the issues Marvel is having today and what Marvel should do to get what they want, the summation of which is “The way out..is through”.
The opening scenes of each of the first two Iron Man's reek of aspirational elevation. The first film opens with little dressing. It's shot very straightforward with jovial humor and a surprise. It's emotional quality is strong but not heavy and is based in tension and some anxiety, some confusion, but not the sadness, pain, and theatricality so prevelant in the sequel. The second is much of the latter and it's more ostentatious. Wide shots, and slow ponderous panning signify this is the comic book version of “elevated horror”. It's signals the difference in the films tonality as well. A turn from the fun, but stern characterization of Iron Man with some emotional punch, to heavy on the political and serious, with some fun of course. Problem is the tension between what Favreau wanted, what he might be able to execute, and what Marvel wants is clear. Favreau's venture into exploring his alcoholism was turned into a problem with the tech that keeps Tony's heart going, and only one scene with heavy alchohol use was explicitly shown because having him be an alcoholic would've affected….Toy Sales. Barely any dialogue mentioning his usage is featured and what is is clumsy and awkward and the same treatment is given to its political thrust. Ivan Vanko’s ( A hammy Mickey Rourke) interogaion of the truth of Tony's legacy is mostly left to a few sharp tongued words, and nothing in the movie confirms its veracity even a little. It wants so bad to remain fun it stifles any decision that in any way would cement the self seriousness it strives for. It's important to note that Iron Man and Christopher Nolan's “The Dark Knight” came out the same year and the effect the ubiquitous popularity the latter had on the industry and by proximity the former's sequel - can't be ignored. Marvel would course correct to some degree, but the push to be taken seriously would continue in the choices made from directors like Kenneth Branaugh to eventually straight up media blitzes to try and secure Oscar recognition. An inferiority complex agitated by the noticeable difference in treatment of genre films and directors fuels the fires of a somewhat complex issue in that Marvel is right to feel that genre films are unfairly treated as inherently less than, but that Marvel has rarely been invested in actually making them, because of their formulaic insistence on being megazord crowd pleasers, something genre filmmakers and films cannot be obsessed with. The John Carpenters, David Cronenberg's, George Romero's Gordon Parks, Ana Lily Amanpours, Miike Takashi's, Brian De Palma's, Dario Argento's, Kathryn Bigelow's, Seijun Suzuki's, Walter Hill's and so on in the history of genre wanted to make money of course, and they wanted people to like their films, but how much they wanted or needed their films to be major box office and whom they were aiming for is vastly different from Marvel's needs and wants which is understandable on some level. It is also necessary to mention that those films and filmmakers are well regarded but also noticeably left off “Best” lists, as are many of their films. When story, race or gender ( both of maker and subject ) is not playing a role then its also and sometimes combined that the aesthetics lack the sensibilities audiences and especially the governing bodies and gatekeepers of “Prestige” associate with the concepts around prestige like autuerism. This is I believe a motivating factor behind the silly idea to try and rename horror movies “Elevated” not the awards, but the respect, the want to move these films out of genre ghettos and into the same neighborhoods as the Coppola's and Fords, Scorsese's and Hawks. Where maybe “Halloween” and “The Thing”, “Shaft” and “The Learning Tree”, “Scanners”, “The Fly” and Videodrome”, “Predator” and “Die Hard” are counted amongst the greatest films if not necessarilyby number than by being able to move in and outside the vacuums of the genre so that you don't have to add the genre as a precursor to the “greatest” like “Die Hard is the greatest ACTION film of all time.
The problem of it is though, that Marvel makes tentpoles which can be genre films ( Spielberg for instance has been doing it for years ) but in the current environment is extremely difficult to do or be allowed to do. Then they further discombobulate themselves by hiring genre filmmakers and cuffing their instincts so that while they may snatch a few genre lovers and a few of those who think a movie has to be X or Y to be an important or vital piece of filmmaking, they get no truly passionate fighters save for their core audience of comic book geeks. The others may love the movies but recognize for the most part that they are neither genre films, Oscar material, or genre films that are Oscar material. If you hire Sam Raimi to do a Dr. Strange movie and then hinder greatly his true personality, then his core audience instantly recognizes the mediocrity and tepidness in the movie instantly, and the gatekeepers.. well even when you reach the heights of various aspects of filmmaking quality in genre ( Hereditary, The Dark Knight, Terminator 2 ) you're still not guaranteed of getting into those circles…The way out is through. As times have started to change in this regard, as more and more folks stand up for genre films and for a more inclusive idea of what qualifies as important or great filmmaking, the few examples of genre films that have made it into that place that Kevin Feige and some of the other talent at or working for Marvel want to be in so bad, provide some insight as to how it can be done and the Marvel films that have done it do too. The Lord of the Rings films may be the most resonant example we have to date.
Huge in scale and scope, Jackson's penchant for a strong attention to detail and a sincere sense of love for the material shown through in the detail and in the love expressed in the actual characters. Genre filmmaking simplified could be said to be about obsession with certain ideas, subjects, people and style. With Peter Jackson its our ability to love through the most fantastical opposition, be it death, or the ultimate evil, or greed in King Kong, the fantasy is meant to be a stand in for size and size meant to show the power of our bonds. That size is also part of his style as well as a warmth that shows up everywhere from his chosen cinematographers to dialogue and blocking. With John Carpenter, its dissidents and evil, and the idea that least of society be it Snake Pliskin, or “Nada” (Roddy Piper) in “They Live” shall be the first when things get hot. These are boiled in his style which is extremely subtle which, a subtlety which aids the creation of a paranoid and anxiety ridden environment in all his films punctuated by the very sound of his movies. These are the type of filmmakers wherever they may exist that Marvel needs to go after, the movies they should try and make. Prestige and the honorifics around it are very hard to receive not in any sense of inherency, but because it's mostly about perception and Marvel has an incredible uphill battle against them because a they are already have a set perception about them, A; Due to the combination of the formula and the house style. B. Because the regularly exhibited phenomenon amongst social groups as it pertains to forced hierarchies is that the harder you try to belong the more the group you're seeking to belong to seems to want to create distance. The way out is through.
Marvel has always split its audience. The folks that love comic books on one side the folks that love movies on the other. It's a bit of an over simplification but it serves the purpose of my argument here. Out of 28 films to date in the MCU only two have worked on anywhere near that goal of being Oscar nominated; “Black Panther” and “Captain America: Winter Soldier”. While the latter is very highly regarded in that specific conceit relative to MCU films, it still didn't get didn't get a nod in any other category but special effects. Meanwhile the films that have aligned these two groups while maintaining being well regarded films in the MCU it could be argued are the films that got the closest to being genre films. “Thor: Ragnarok” is arguably the closest of all films to being a straight up genre movie. Not only does it display certain elements of a buddy action film but more importantly it is the Marvel film which arguably most allowed its directors personality into the blood and bones of its creation. The other films that have an argument are James Gunn's “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies but even with Gunn's films I would argue that there is a sense of the reigns being tugged a little bit . Whatever the issues with these films and their problematic directors are ( a lack of congruency in style, Marvel's need to set up the next film ) I actually don't think they at all overwhelm their personality. Ragnarok, Two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Doctor Strange, “Captain America: The First Avenger” all of these movies have in common not only a pretty damn good to all world reception when they came out but even more importantly they have enjoyed a deep and rich post life in the minds of comic book lovers and film lovers alike. Even with “Doctor Strange part 2 it could be said that the disappointment with that movie lies in the fact that they didn't let Sam Raimi put all ten of his horror genre toes down into that movie. All of this..All of this to suggest that maybe the way for Marvel to get that Oscar attention they so desire or at least that recognition they so desire, is not to keep hiring directors from indie films in the broadest of sense, regardless of whether or not they actually have any sort of love, any sort of obsession, any sort of desire to make these kind of films on their own, but to to hire folks for compatability to the house, to the characters, and to the genre that
may best represent them. They need less Chloe Zhao's - who is an extremely talented filmmaker but one who so very clearly did not have a true vested interest in these films - and more Ana Lily Amirpour who at least showed an influence from genre and comics in her sensational debut “A Girl Walks Home at Night”. Zhao's efforts in “The Eternals eschewed its extremely weird elements for things more grounded in the ethereal functionality and romanticism of her work. She may have had an idea for what she could do with this particular film, but you can feel that distance, that coldness. It's also not by hiring cutesy indie directors like Jon Watts or Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, The former who has made some extremely profitable “Spider-man” movies but also extremely forgettable ones to anyone who isn't raging about the appearance of the three Spidermans. These people may be able to work with you and on a certain spectrum of varying possibilities, and they may do well in spots, but the consistency and that deep affinity that lasts comes from being able to see the compatibility between the director’s vision and style, and the medium of comic books and their characters. What those folks do is so clearly incompatible with Marvel's house style that inevitably one gets swallowed by the other and that's usually the personality of those directors. Never mind that with Fleck and Boden it could be argued that their previous movies didn't have a connecting vibrancy of personality in the first place. No, just hiring those directors who are indie ( and frankly maybe easier to control ) because their movies earn them entree into the sphere of prestige is not the answer, the answer is to acknowledge who Marvel is and which category of American filmmaking you most closely resemble and that is without a doubt genre films. Each one of these things even just by the identity and personality of the character lend themselves over to a different genre. In a generalized sense Thor seems to have found a comfortable fit in comedy, Dr Strange is clearly more horror than anything, Guardians of the Galaxy is very specifically a team up movie, think Predator ( By the way Shane Black was a much better fit for a GOG movie than Iron Man, just putting that out there ) and if Marvel dived into them, they could keep the overall sense of connection while not losing not only the personality of these directors, but the personality of each of these characters and what makes them different. The movies previously named have done that to some varying extent. Each one of them has come the closest to escaping that sense of one style for everything, one personality for everyone, and so stood out to inform the audience as thoughtful, fun, and intelligent as to why those particular heroes matter, the only thing that has kept them in my opinion from what Marvel may see or want is that they didn't get to go all the way. It is Marvel's restraint from being what best suits them that is holding them back from the kind of glory they seek. As it is these awards ceremonies are pompous and blind and because of it and its long term effects are now desperate themselves to latch on to some kind of relevance in a time where their main audience is becoming increasingly dispirited, and their casual audience no longer cares or finds them that interesting. They're in a very vulnerable state right now and reaching for that relevance, so IF ..IF it will ever happen, now IS the perfect time to start investing into who you are. To start paying attention to the way that those genre directors are starting to now be treated. The growing narrative amongst cinephiles who are now of varying ages that all were coming of age as children, or critics, honors profusely directors like David Cronenberg. John Carpenter is credited as a major influence amongst new directors, and Gordon Parks is recieving the Criterion treatment. Those still living and working are now enjoying the best of both worlds; they can make movies like “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” that still reflect their personality and chosen themes and garner prestigious attention and respect and still makes movies that go all the way into their bag like “Crimes of the Future”. All of these filmmakers and films got to where Marvel and Feige want to be by acknowledging fully whom they are and living in it, bathing in it, because consciously or not they understood that concept that thus far has escaped Marvel..The Way out is through.
The Northman: To Be or Not to Be.
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The Northman is the kind of movie that signals itself to you over and over again, and not necessarily in a bad way. It's a boastful kind of movie, the kind of movie that if it were a person you'd like their confidence up until the point you discovered there's not much else there at least in first light, (subsequent viewing may reveal more to me) but in this initial viewing I found a movie that revels in its accuracy and “realness” and accepts the magic its subjects believe in on a “responsible” level that simultaneously loves on and passes no judgement on their beliefs while still serving its grounded feel, but also a film that never truly committs to its higher goals of social commentary on whiteness and masculinity. It's touts its realism everywhere as all director Robert Eggers movies do. In its use of language, in the costumes, the attitudes of its people, and their cruelty and even in the title cards. It boasts an noticeable but not yet gross admiration for hyper masculinity in ways that are more articulate careful and interrogating than movies it borrows from like Gladiator and most closely “Conan the Barbarian”. A Scene featuring a group of muscular alpha men murdering and pillaging carry on for what can seem awhile. A pre battle ritual where they act as close to exactly like the single minded animal like predators they will become in battle- hangs on for sometime bathing in its night air, allowing its actors to fully immerse themselves into the mentality and space these men gave themselves over to, but the scene does not give istelf over to it. It passes no judgement, engages in no emotion, and that could be said of the entire film. It's so engaged in the currency of the real it reduces the power it most needs to emphasize its goals..emotion and point of view.
I do not at all kid when I talk about how much this movie borrows from John Milius's hyper masculine operatic fairy tale “Conan the Barbarian”. The chords and notes all pretty much match. In tonality, in its brutality and wildness, and in certain cases scene for scene. The way Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård ) finds and obtains his sword is almost frame for frame the same as in Conan, ( when he meets “Crum”) but the other scene that strongly resembles one from Conan also tells on the difference between these two and why The Northman just missed my heart.
There's a rich sense of emotion in the opening of Conan where the inciting incident for revenge occurs that is not present in The Northman. Milius's movie fully embraces the operatic elements. Every moment feels outsized, larger than life, drawn out, and overplayed just as it might be in the mind of a child who watched his father and mother be slaughtered right in front of him. Basil Poledouris's soaring melodrama by string is a large part of that particular magic, doing much of the emotional labor for the scene drawing attention to the trauma of this moment. The music in “The Northman” ( Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough) is in unison with Eggers approach dutifully true to the time, ( or at least what we envision it would sound like) but it too lacks the more sensitive emotions, or the confidence in its softness as a magnifier of where it and it’s characters are hard that Poledouris's score has. That aspect of the music; confidence in what it has chosen too is in unison with the movie which never truly feels settled in its times of sensitivity. It’s a bit off putting in a film that seeks to be a reclamation of the worser aspects of the singular infatuation of this culture in particular, and with toxic masculinity in general. Conan bathed in the glory of its Viking heritage and other such civilizations it borrowed from, almost to the point of drunkenness, but it found its purity in that openess to something so ridiculous. Giant Snakes, Snake arrows, and cult leaders who turn into snakes, and it’s all like “hey, that’s what happened man I swear!”. It didn’t just give credence to how real the mythology felt to its people, it played it as if its supposed to be real to us. The Northman let’s us know it’s engaging with mythology on the terms of the people but the use of drugs and near death experiences as the portal to these visions and places lets us know this is not a reality. That is an example of the constant need for this movie to be “realistic” or true as possible to its historic background. Another is its centering of men, when in many ways from who comes out as the most fully realized character to who Amleth's journey is going to announce the coming of the movie signifies this should've been a film centering the women. That commitment would be the exact energy to invigorate The Northman with the radical but entertaining ferver it tries for.
As it stands “The Northman” ends up a an animated body with no spirit, an ancient epic with very little soul. Like all Eggers projects to date it keeps the audience at a distance with its stoic masculine filmmaking with no dressing to mask that distance, unlike The Witch and The Lighthouse that doesnt suit the films ambition, leaving these issues bare. Thematically the movie wants to have a conversation about a certain kind of masculinity and whiteness and the falsehoods of both, and in ways it does and does not commit enough. Nothing about the whiteness of our ideas around of Viking culture is said loudly enough or profoundly to notice, same with its dealings with. The lack of commitment is seen in its casting and choice of leads. If Eggers film truly wanted to be the tale of male excesses and debauchery it sought it wouldve been told from the pov of one of its main women in either Nicole Kidman's “Queen Gudrún” or Anya Taylor Joy's “Olga”. It wouldve gave Olga more fight, not just in physicality but in word and action, because in truth Olga is not all that impactful beyond having Amleths child in this movie. Queen Gudrún has a scene where she gets to really spill life into this theme of the outsized egos and narrative manipulations of men, but its undercut by the films need to disguise a plot development. This is a major theme of this film, this conflict of desires both in and out of context that show themselves in the form of ineffective and effective guises. Robert Eggers is very much a director in the same spectrum as Nolan, and Mann, their filmmaking is very straightforward and restrained, save for in these hot culminating moments of exstacy still dedicated to a grounded sense of cold realism, but Mann has raging currents of emotion under his characters and layers them brilliantly, and Nolan disguises the lacking of character and warmth to the best he can in his films with magnificent set pieces/sequences and puzzles. Eggers tries for the former but it fails in all but one character that is aided pretty magnificently by a fierce performance from Nicole Kidman, the rest of the characters lack the gravitas to match the movies ambitions. The latter, those inventive action sequences that have pushed Nolans blockbuster career to the forefront of the genre ( that also stylistically borrowed from Mann or at the very least 1995's “Heat” ) are not present in The Northman. That is not to say The Northman doesn't have some great sequences, but it is to say they aren’t wild enough, imaginative enough to distract one from the fact that these characters aren’t necessarily three dimensional, and this story, has been told before. So we are left with a film that doesn't have the spirited excess of its previous incarnations, fails to in any serious way challenge the excess of patriarchy and toxic masculinity and still wants to be pleasing to its core male audience, and since the former might require a more peaceful ending, or a more disappointing one it balks. No one can serve two masters is the saying..and it seems that Eggers struggled serving the audiences lust for blood and spectacle and the films desire to challenge and critique our collective ideas around the culture. The two ultimately stalemate in this movie, and then leave a movie that should’ve been a fizzy pop sensation with fresh indie flavor stale and somewhat flat. A movie that manages to be a swing for the fences that ends up a base hit, which is fine, but not fit for the outsized expectations the film might have brought with it…but who knows maybe those expectations too have something to do with biases and beliefs about that culture.
Bel-Air has an Issue with Class
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Television and black television in particular has always had a fascinating relationship with class. While there most certainly have been shows that seek to depict with a degree of nuance and warmth the lives of the working class, and or middle class (Good Times, ROC, and to some extent A Different World and Atlanta) far more shows have been devoted to the depiction of black uplift through the lens of upper middle class folk and the wealthy. Enter the latest crop of black television shows in this new black TV renaissance like “Empire”, all the “Powers”, “Our Kind of People”, “Sistas”, “Greenleaf”, “Black-ish”, and “Dear White People”, hell even shows like “Insecure” by the time they're finished moved from working class depictions to rigid definitions of success by way of aesthetics buried in wealth and luxury and now comes the latest ..“Bel Air". A re-imagined version of the beloved “Fresh Prince of Bel Air" the show seeks to take a more serious dramatic approach that delves into some of the issues that were present in the original but limited by the 30 min run time and its comedic lean. Of course one of those is class..the problem is in that regard Bel Air is a regression.
In the first episode we see Will (Jabari Banks) arrive at Bel-Air enamored as anyone would be by the Bank's wealth. He is taken on a small tour and then brought to the event Uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes) is holding in the backyard. Uncle Phil is put off by Will's gregarious usage of slang and lack of etiquette, (so far so true to the original where Phil also had some funny respectability politics) after being introduced to some of the other family members and announcing that he is hungry, he is told he can order anything that he wants from the master chef who is catering the event. Longing for anything resembling home he orders a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Initially wary of the chefs ability to reproduce the the famous cornerstone of Philadelphia's cultural cuisine, he takes a bite and is instantly pleased. Now, In the original the family stops by a fine dining favorite and seeking to give will a taste of home, brought him back a philly cheesesteak sandwich as envisioned by this fancy restaurant. Will took the sandwich out and immediately asked “what it is” noticing that in no way does it truly resemble a philly cheesesteak sandwich save the fact that it has sliced steak and cheese. He further goes on to elaborate the distinctive qualities and traits of a good philly cheese steak sandwich. This is a valuable truth about the culture around food that made Anthony Bourdain so beloved. Fine dining cuisine is not superior to the creative prowess of the working class, and we all know that Po' boys, Cheesesteaks, and Soul Food could hardly be recreated by fine dining because they would try and class up the food when the heart of it as Will says is in some of the culture around the unique palate from things the upper class deem as unsavory like flavor and grease. In this version its what makes Ashley’s arc around food work so well. The problem with this difference is not that it is different, it is in the dichotomy of the representation of these two worlds from one show to the other. This tiny event is a recreation from the original episode titled “homeboy sweet homeboy", but the entirety of the episode will be recreated later in “PA to LA". The plot goes like so, Will's best friend from back home “Ice Tray” (an uncanny resemblance in Stevonte Hart here as Don Cheadle in the original) comes to visit Will in order to ease away some of his home-sickness, in both episodes Will and Tray reminiscence, and then discover their newfound differences, but in the new version that discovery is violent and paints Tray in an unfavorable light because most of what troubles Tray seems rooted in jealousy. The original tray wasn't bothered at all by the fact that Will decided to stay in Bel-Air, it barely registered. Sure Cheadle lended a slight bit of sadness to show that Tray was indeed disappointed, but Tray almost immediately shrugs it off and wishes his friend well. As a matter of fact one line in the beginning of the old school version from Tray is “You've got a good thing going here Will don't mess it up”, but here in this version Tray becomes livid at the idea of Will staying here mostly because he is leaving him behind to poverty and lacking. This suggestion of a certain kind of jealousy from the have-nots is a continuing theme in this rendition of Bel-Air. We see it in word when after visiting some fairly tame and aesthetically middle class looking friends Ashley is warned by Geoffrey that there are “unsavories” who would like nothing more than to basically hold her for ransom. In light of where she was at it's a ludicrously extreme statement that is delivered as if it is a matter of fact. We then see it again in a much smaller context where Will, Tray, and Uncle Phil go to a concert and and being VIP walk straight through the line. The camera suddenly makes sure to capture several folks who don't have this access commenting and asking “who are these N!&&@$?” . I can tell you having lived in Los Angeles for 13 years I can't recall one single moment where anybody didn't understand the idea of VIP lines and back entrances that are made available for those who have more money than others. It would be quite a rarity to see this kind of carrying on because it is a widely accepted aspect of life in a place like LA that caters to the wealthy. The most it would garner is a “damn I wish” sort of response. The show's lack of desire to want to discuss the differences in class with any sort of nuance and it's lack of desire to want to do anything with the working class save to portray them as as inferior, small minded, and vulture-like (Rashad Denton for example) is troubling especially when compared to the way they were depicted in the original. Wills defense of Ice Tray to Aunt Viv in the original is poignant, and heart warming and when placed against Aunt Vivs fair criticisms of Ice Tray’s lack of ambition makes for a nuanced understanding of the value of their friendship and of people beyond what they produce.
The show's problems with class continue in the decision to change the the core meaning in the episode titled “Yamacraw” which is a loose translation of the original episode titled “Not with My Pig You don't”. In this episode in the original Uncle Phil's mother Hattie visits him, and excitedly reminisces with Will about Phil's youth on a farm. It's a funny and sweet depiction of Uncle Phil's working class roots, but Uncle Phil in the midst of receiving an award for his help in the black community, takes exception to that part of his life being brought up, his mother hears this and tells him he has no resason to be ashamed of his roots and even though he denies he is, its clear some part of him is ashamed. The most consistent and persistent theme of that episode is that Uncle Phil has nothing to be ashamed of regarding his background, and that there was love and beauty in his upbringing, it was an important distinction because far too many of us do not make a distinction between hating poverty and hating the impoverished, between painting poverty as somehow noble and painting the people in it as having no value whatsoever. Bel Air's “Yamacraw” doesn't villainize anyone but it jettisons an important aspect of Uncle Phil's youth and changes it to a story about him losing ties with his community and and his brotherhood in the fraternity, which again is not in and of itself a problem.. Where it becomes a problem is in its resolution. Uncle Phil had had a serious problem in the way he was dealing not only with his brotherhood but with the community and the end of that episode the resolution of this very serious conflict is not to apologize and claim his connection to the community but to literally “Step" his way back into the brothers good graces. By the time Phil finally starts to take steps towards re-ingratiating himself to the community he has left behind in a later episode it feels like the damage is already been done.
To be clear Bel-Air is not at all a terrible show, it has plenty of elements to keep anyone just entertained enough to keep watching, some of the re-imagings are fairly creative ( Geoffrey -Jimmy Akingbola ) and others give far more character and depth to the characters like Hilary and Aunt Viv ( Coco Jones, Cassandra Freeman ) But both aesthetically and thematically the show can be far too uniform in it's depictions, and its continuance of the worst traditions around storytelling are too reminiscent of Cosbiness, wherein a “talented tenth”are our saviors and the rest of us just fodder for their fears and props for their PR. It's not like the original was particularly good at this either, but it makes no sense for it over 30 years later, with hindsight available to be worse than the original in this regard. It is not wrong to ask a show whose goal is to be more dramatically effective and socio politically charged to spend more time on and around those it claims to care about even while some of its main characters may not. It would behoove the show to give characters like Will's mother Viola Smith a hard working woman more of an inner life, beyond face time. To either make Tray's arguments more nuanced by showing the audience the way Will has maybe lost his way in all this in something more then wearing nice clothes, and having nice things (which no real friend would begrudge a friend) or by just allowing that one aspect of Tray being supportive to remain the same. There is nothing new about reducing the working class poor to the vulture class, when in fact that is the wealthy. We see enough of that in black and white television, what we are missing are the wonderful depictions of the working and middle class present in films like “Car Wash" (1976) and “Friday" and TV shows like “Sanford and Son” “Martin" and “The Jamie Foxx Show" and though black people have reason to want to see ourselves draped in luxury and comfort in film and television there is nothing fresh about that coming at the cost of the other classes, there is enough of that in real life.
Kimi is mostly just smart fun and I miss that.
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A tech thriller as a commentary on the state of our surveillance state…sure. A fine piece of Hitchcockian subliminal filmmaking with a subtext about workplace harrassment and the built in protections for men that harm women, oh yeah, but mostly what makes Steven Soderbergh's “Kimi” work so well is where it succeeds most primarily, which is at being a taught, sleek, surgically tight thriller with a great performance at its heart.
At this point in his career Soderbergh seems alot more interested in straight storytelling than parading out on the pageantry of his own past in filmmaking. Some of his peers seem to be trying to relive the ghost of their reality, while Soderbergh just keeps exploring with curious glee new fun ways to tell a good story. Kimi doesnt conjure up any of the postured sheen of his Ocean's movies and only faintly recalls some of the washed out cool of “Out of Sight”, its not the raw provocative cinema of “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” but it is raw, it is cool, and it covers a familiar territory in movies with love and craft around telling a very good story. Every turn, close up, movement of the camera supports both the genre and David Koepps tight script. In fact Soderbergh is becoming a bit of a rangy director dedicated to making the best in every type of movie. His movies show a range that mirror that of folks like Wilder, Robert Wise and Michael Curtiz. His choices remind me of people whom I respect who decided to opt out of trying to live up to the phenomenon of their career heights ; Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant. People who others thought would not be able to wave goodbye to the things that catapulted them into the realm of the ubiquitous, but who seamlessly transitioned into new realities using and evolving their own particular style. While others shake their fist at the technology from which a film can made, or bemoan streaming to worship at the altar of the movie-going experience, Soderbergh is skipping down the streets making fantastic movies on his iPhone and releasing all kinds of fun unique fare like this on streaming sites like Netflix and HBOMax. The ease to his approach, this adaptive strategy extends itself towards and supports the movie and in a sort of spiritual way empowers it to be exactly what it is, a movie that understands the times and creatively finds ways into it rather than fight against it, and does it with a simplicity that makes me remember when movies weren't a choice between massive money making machines, and ornate self aggrandizing all important political treatises, but a smorgasbord of variety and when middle tier movies with thrills could just be well constructed good times without being insipid examples of filmmaking.
The mid budget thriller of the 90s was a thing to behold and really part of a fun era of movies. They could be masterful as was the case with “The Fugitive” “The Game" and “Thelma and Louise”. Pretty damn good as with the John Grisham trinity of “The Firm", “The Client" and “The Pelican Brief" or just “take your thinking cap off” fun as with “Dont Say A Word" or “Fallen", but what they all had in common was that the engine was star power. Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Tom Cruise, Nick Nolte, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Jodie Foster, and so many others headlined these movies, matching their lovably outlandish plots with lovably outlandish performances, or lending them a grounded authenticity, and many times both. We've been without real stars to carry these movies for some time, and so we have been without these movies, but two of Soderbergh's most recent in “No Sudden Moves" and “Kimi" while maybe not necessarily having the galactic pure star power of those folks, definitely have had the comfort of acting prowess and magnetism that matches the movies. In Kimi Zoe Kravitz shows shes teetering on crossing over into that realm as it is constructed today. The devices, strictures, and vehicles that make movie stars are just now there anymore but we do have these synthetic types like Kravitz who with a great turn in Batman could end up being that. That is a person who doesn't have the raw power of old Hollywood, but can certainly lead and carry a movie, has a portion of that “It" factor, and can actually act at a very high level not just provide a distinctive personality that can like the demon in “Fallen" leap from body to body being essentially the same being with no meaningful or soulful difference. Kravitz continues showing off the impenetrable vulnerability that has given her a place in the industry, but adds layers of effective physicality and depth that brings a very potent and watchable magic to the movie. As “Angela Childs”- a tech genius whose agoraphobia has been triggered by a vicious attack in he past, she shows a firm grip on the need for stillness, and the power of her face and body as it pertains to movement. A chase scene that comes to a conclusion in her apartment features some brilliant physicality to skillfully portray what a heavily drugged body high on adrenaline being pumped in by “fight or flight” would look like. In moments like the one pictured above she penetrates the camera even when her eyes arent fixed in its gaze. Its extremely hard to take your eyes off her and that's important in a movie that is about that kind of voyeurism and one in which thecamera moves like it's been placed on the rinse cycle. It does exactly what its supposed to do and Kravitz never reaches for anything beyond her reach while still clearly stretching her muscles. It's really good stuff, from an actor beginning to peel off her pedals and bloom, concise, agile, and straightforward in a movie that is as precise, exciting and flexible and both are fun to watch in symbiotic concert with each other. Co-conspirators in a plot to make movies good solid fun that can still be smart again.
The Matrix Resurrections: Sometimes Dead is Better…Sometimes
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The resurrection of dead things is an impossibility in the life of human beings, and if we’re being honest a near impossibility in our works as well. The great horror philosopher ( I say that somewhat ironically) Stephen King once wrote the words “Sometimes Dead is better” and in the reality of the creation of art this feels especially true. The current Hollywood landscape feels like a graveyard haunted by the visions, grandeur, creativity of it's past. Having long sacrificed itself to the gods of profit incentive and marketing, it spends an ungodly amount of time walking around its own cemetery in mourning looking for bodies it can excavate, and it seems in this case the Waschowski's latest effort is a rumination on that. Like old Judd Crandall, they are both hesitant and willing, but unlike the rest of that story what comes out does not feel dead, vile, and regretful, nor does it feel completely like a resurrection, and it provides a fascinating approach to this conundrum of bringing back something we and they loved, and something that maybe was best left dead.
The first and maybe most noticeable way Waschowski deals with this resurrection is to vent. Vent about their own frustrations with the work, about their own happiness and unhappiness, about their own loathing with the current job at hand, they do this rather brilliantly through the meta-conversations made through the avatars of them and us. After all this is not merely an IP to them, it has to bear some form of personal investment seeing as through it was so clearly a piece of their own transition into being, and to do it now missing your partner in crime feels even more personal and it feels that way in the movie. Neo's therapy sessions bare a kind of personal tension that transfers and registers on a level beyond that of a unique way to set up stakes, themes, and parameters. Keanu, so clearly an evolved actor adds to this a taut anxiety that makes us as unsure about this as they are, ( there is a very interesting through-line between Neo and Kohn Wick about a man who as deadened himself only to have to resurrect said self ) but then, through that tension Lana and co-writers Aleksandar Hernon and David Mitchell concoct a brilliant way into this. They do not fully resurrect their brilliant characters, its a mixture of possession and transference, they are them and they're not them. The matrix itself is both the same and different, it’s machinations have involved, it’s processes have changed, it’s inhabitants have aged and some have moved on, and it all meshes into its own unique experience culminating in a beautiful recognition by Lana and Co for a different POV into the “One” and subsequently Neos and Trinity's relationship dynamics. What comes out is a fresh feast for the eyes, and mind, one that seems almost as poised for revisits as any of the originals. What hurts and still haunts the movie is that deep sense of grief.
I have always contended that in the Matrix franchise Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus functioned as the soul of that series. Both in-and-out of the context of that franchise he was our gateway into the faith as well as a fundamental grounding rod of all of the film's large and sometimes confusing themes. Without him that series does not exist in any way -in the way that it exists to us now. It is in that lack of presence, of power, of earnesty, of love, that something is lost in this film and you can feel it again, both in the context of the film and out of it. Lana knows..there is a meta recognition of this loss in the film, it’s as if even before they sat down to write, before they saw the first dailies they felt that loss and it is written into the film, and into its imagery, and it hovers above every action, every sequence. Yahya Abdul for his part gives it a brave try, and fares damn well in another wonderfully creative resurrection, but it is no fault of Waschowski, Yahya, or the idea, it is simply the fact of the power, resonance, the massive brilliance of the actor that made the character as much an icon of cinema as is its lead and arguably more. In that way, the loss of Morpheus represents the ghost of the central tension of this film not only in how do we resurrect dead things, but how do we live with their death. What Lana gives us is a fun, funny ( this movie is actually really really funny) well thought out action movie that doesn’t bother trying to answer this, and instead deals with it, and what we get is this side of Mad Max Fury Road one of the best resurrections of a seemingly dead franchise we've seen, and proof that Judd Crandall was right sometimes dead is better..Sometimes.
The Last Duel: When Right is not Right.
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Some movies are just hard to put a finger on, and sometimes thats a natural consequence, sometimes it’s a fault within the storytelling, and sometimes it's hard to tell which is which and that is where I came out on Ridley Scott's “The Last Duel”. This is now my 2nd time seeing this film, the first time I was admittedly high, and though that usually aids my experience maybe this time it made me too focused in a singularly myopic way that hurts a movie that you need to be as open as possible about, not only because of its subject matter, but in a tonally different way because of its actors, and those actors are both the joy and misalignment of this movie. They’re casting, their performances tell on where it was I fell off of this movie as they do the bits I liked. Overall..the verdict this time around was “Meh” rather than “Oof” and I discovered details that awakened its brilliant bits, as well as more exactly where and how it went wrong for me. The entire time I watched Scott's latest of his two-fer ( House of Gucci will come soon ) I sometimes sat in this place, and sometimes was moved from this place, into various other modes of either elation or disappointment, but always I returned back to this place of disjointedness, or being off-kilter, and I was engulfed or immersed only in fits. There were too many distractions to keep me fully engaged in not only the place, but the time, and the actors well they did not help…
There is something both fascinating and off putting about the performances of the three major men in this movie, especially when set in contrast to Jodie Comer and the rest of its deep and brilliant cast. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in this movie are somehow pitch perfect and off key, and Adam Driver has good pitch that rings hollow, and I wish I had better more definitive words, but I will attempt to explain them around these things. Damon, ( Jean de Carrouges) Affleck, ( Count Pierre de'Alencon ) Driver, (Jaques Le Gris ) and Comer ( Marguerite de Carrouges) were all in different ways anywhere from decently to sublimely interesting but only Comer was also consistent and complete. What bothers me, having seen it these two times and watched and listened to the conversations around the movie is to see regard for these performances swell to such a degree and then in that swelling leave Comer of all people sitting on the bench while “Stars” Damon, Affleck, and Driver consume most of the “hoorahs” I hope this is just a result of whom I interact with, because otherwise this conversation is criminal to a degree that literally causes fire to combustibly burn through my insides, BUT before I get into that, I want to digress a bit to lay the foundation by talking about a constant phenomenon that has been happening in the way that we discuss certain certain peoples performances. This phenomenon tends to be activated when people whose main jobs exist outside of those of this industry - Athletes, Comedians, musicians - leave their own respective career fields to try and bear fruit in this one. The act tends to leave them ripe for a specific kind of hyperbole around their performances. For me it was a musician who caused me to first notice. It was back when Justin Timberlake was getting a lot of accolades for his notably good performance in David Fincher's “The Social Network”. The talk around how natural he felt was fine at first, because he was. Timberlake seemed to really feel comfortable in his own skin, in a way very few non actors do in their first performance. Im sure his childhood helped him there, but I'm old enough to remember that all of a sudden a small push started to happen to have Timberlake's name mentioned in Oscar talk, and I had no idea why anyone would say such a thing! It was a bridge MUCH too far for me, and thankfully for most, but I theorized that what was at the core of that phenomenon was the fact that people didn't expect him to be good and when he turned out good, it turned to “great" by way of surprise, and to some extent that is what I suspect is going on here. One or two of these things should've happened in the head of folk upon seeing the trailer; A. “Matt Damon, Adam Driver ( maybe less so ) and Ben Affleck in a period movie?..Hmm.” or B. “They are so crazy for putting these three into this this particular period movie where they clearly stand out, I think is gonna be great!” , which is still at least a cousin of the original prognosis. The truth is there are actors whose faces and spirits evoke a certain timelessness, there are actors who feel as if they come from another time, and then there are actors who feel extremely contemporary. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck both look and feel like definitively contemporary actors, and they’re brand is extremely recognizable, Adam driver is more readily capable of belonging to an era other than his own, but spirit-wise he too is a very contemporary actor, making all of their placement in a period peice from a medieval era an instant form of anachronism. To place them like this feels very deliberate within that and bades the question “why?”, especially when they are the only anachronistic things in a movie that otherwise feels deliberately authentic? Maybe this is on purpose, and the purpose does to some extent lend a bit of strength to the inherent falsehood of these men, but it also leaves a discombobulated effect on this movie. It never seems to have quite the control on tone that it's seminal narrative antecedent “Rashomon” had. It comes out of the wash as a mixture of Sofia Coppola's “Marie Antoinette” and Scott’s own “Kingdom of Heaven” and while to some that may be an appealing mixture I found it troublesome. Now, I am not completely unimpressed with the choices, the allure of what it is the big three bring does come through in part. What they are doing is vital to the themes in play in this story, when you're telling a story about the minutae of male behaviors and interactions with each other and women reinforced by the socio political lens through which womanhood is viewed that is “Rape Culture” - You could find no two actors more suited to present one of the most recognizable archetypes in this culture and style and key of “bro” than Damon and Affleck whose shot to fame was playing a version of these kind of men that at the least expressed their ability to play them, and the parts of their characters that have to do with their "essence" are staggeringly effective. Take Damon for instance, I see how well suited he is to the job of Jean de Carrouges - a man who thinks he’s good but in fact is blinded by his own vanity ( Whether a conscious decision or not) through the lens of Damon’s own career moves and high profile missteps all of which provide a fascinating way into the character whether he gets it or not. Ben Affleck's own playboy lifestyle in his early career provides another (though somewhat less direct) parallel. This is why subsequently out of the male actors in this film it is Affleck who reigned supreme in my mind as the male actor of the three who is most intriguing, most fascinating, most interesting to watch work. Though there might be shades of this kind of character in previous roles he's done whether it be “Armageddon” or “Good Will Hunting”, there is a perfect balance of weight and airy-lightness baked into a more profound understanding of this character that makes this far more appealing than any of those roles, and far more affecting. Despite an accent that mostly goes out and the aforementioned contemporary nature, Affleck embodies the type of man the Count is supposed to be with such a precise and shap incision of glee, audacity, charm, and stupidity that he should also try his hand at surgery. He seems to by far be the one having the most fun with this role and it in return frees him up quite a bit to take some interesting choices in all of his scenes right from the start where a slight twinge in the neck and cutting look of the eyes provide an early look into Pierre's disdain for Jean (Damon) that told me right away “this is going to be entertaining. This wasn't “surprise”. Affleck has been on on a streak of good acting since he started directing himself, and now what he must have picked up from working with himself has made its way into not only his choices of characters but how he works within them, WITH other people. No, this was plain ol “I can tell he’s having a ball, and I can see it works and Im going to enjoy it”, particularly the scenes that take place in a dining room and his bedroom, continued the trend and proved me right, but he is also the cast member of these three that spends by far the least amount of time acting in scenes across from those who feel as if they are tailor made for the time, which is what causes the others to stick out in varying degrees. Matt Damon is secondarily effective as he brings his standard honorable commitment and honesty which in turn help make his perspective believable and just enough to fool more than a few audience members, as well as make them aware of where the cracks, crevices, and pitfalls of Jean's self deception lie, but there were moments where I found his flailing about disingenuous and unnecessary, like “Heaven and Earth!!” followed by a ornate twirl of both his finger and body when Carrouges penchant for ironic drama had more honest depictions in statements like “Can this man do nothing but evil to me!” ( this after he finds out his WIFE was raped and not he ). The parallels in Damon's career are obvious and fascinating to watch in this particular role. It’s not his first time, Damon has leaned into his own internal self dishonesty specifically in movies like “Interstellar” and “The Talented Mr Ripley” where he played something very akin to this kind of man, and it can be argued he did it better then, still it is very compelling work but especially so once we see him from Marguerite's perspective. Here Damon's real life and actorly predisposition towards a certain display of oblivious obtuse-ness, combined with a child like sensibility bring home so many of the brilliant talking points brought forth about “Nice Guys” which I dont think Carrouges fully embodies but definitely touches upon an aspect of in his dedication to chivalry, misogyny, and pouty martyrdom, all while believing hes the righteous one. For both Affleck and Damon ( though in varying degrees ) the notes and the highs of their performances pierce and pass through a stratosphere of exactitude in characterization that very few performances and actors have in the last ten years, and they appear to be having fun doing it, But make no mistake artifice matters too. When acting, the highest goal, the goal that should always be desired is a mastery of both artifice AND spirit/ essence in your character, So that even while Denzel clearly nailed down the essence of Malcolm X in Spike Lee's phenomenonal biopic, the essence is also fundamentally and foundationally aided by the fact that he also mastered much of Malcolm x's artifice, How he carried himself, how he spoke- the cadence, beats, the gestures he tended to be prone to repeating, this all emboldens, shades, and details the outline. It is enough that neither Affleck nor Damon can seem to get ahold of the accent or even decide which one they're doing, but it is even further injurious to add to the fact that there is no real sort of decisions about how these characters might walk or present themselves that says anything to the time, period, or in truth the characters, and that is a flaw that distracts and deters from full immersion. Watch a clip of John Malkovich ( who doesn't even really seem to try and develop an accent even if he did ) but look at the way he walks, the precision in his movement, right down to how he runs and of you watch, this is full bodied and integral to the character Vimcont Valmont as well as the time and space he occupies in Stephen Frear's “Dangerous Laisons”..these details are where Damon and especially Driver come up short..
Adam Driver represents the worst of this even while being arguably the most capable of these three, because he is the reverse of their work, the artifice is more readily available, but interestingly enough the character is not ( Driver worked alot this year and I dont care what anyone tells you, anyone working this many roles round the same time as an actor, it is a guarantee that one of the roles is getting less of themselves consciously or not ) but I can say nothing else about Adam Driver in this film until I state that for me he was miscasted. I understand the temptation and it's not all bad, there are parts of this where you see exactly why someone would fall for Driver in this part. There is something in Driver that makes him juicy in roles that ask or call for seedy, passive aggressive ambition. He has an incredible and uncanny balance of both repulsion and attraction that I think is perfect for this role if based purely on artifice, but he rarely finds the profound in this movie, in fact only once was it that he seemed to find the marrow of this man and that was in his reaction to the accusation. The rest of the movie Driver is just Driver, there's no sense of the sort of deeper objectives that don't come from the script itself, and the very distinctive cadence and tonality to which Driver can’t seem to escape overpowers what seems to be the most concerted effort of the three to sound the part. That too though lives in that space of repulsion and attractiveness, and it's the attractiveness that he as an entire entity occupies with ease. It's powerful, engrossing and compelling in and of itself, a self sustained support system for the rest of his body, But it also limits Drivers range. To this point in his career Adam Driver is being treated like he is a shape shifter, when in reality he’s more presence and emotive power than transformation. More Robert DeNiro than Joaquin Phoenix. The role of Jaques Le Gris requires presence, and charm, and in that Driver hits very capably, his holding court is quite believable becaue of this, as is the superficial nature of his class and meager upbringing, but though it’s not necessarily an emotive role when it does get emotive it calls for a different energy, a more potent version than what Driver offers for the most part and when it seems the moments are rife with it Driver brings no profound insights from his class into the essence of Le Gris. It’s not that his is terrible, it’s just not as powerful as it could be. I would love to have seen what a James McAvoy, Jonathan Rhys- Meyers, or Nicholas Hoult might've done here, especially after seeing the latter's underrated work in “The Favourite”.
Driver may be the more interesting of these men for something that feels just outside of that paradigm type choice, but you already ran that up with Damon and Affleck, and here Driver just feels like more than was necessary. Especially since it was his line readings in this film that I found the most disinteresting. Out of ALL actors in this movie I really didn't walk away with any particular scene that I felt he necessarily carried, even with actors that were supporters, there were many moments where it felt they were more interesting than anything Driver was doing, for instance when hes being spoken to by the man of the cloth (The always good Michael McElhatton) about the nature of his predicament. Le Gris is a social climber, a man who is an outsider only by the default of his birth but for all intensive purposes he functions the same as many of these others in that he feels equally as entitled in this life as any, and from what we’ve seen in films like” Star Wars”, “Logan Lucky”, “Frances Ha” and definitely “Marriage Story” Driver has that energy to pull this off, but he has to be completely committed and here I just don’t see it. He takes most of his scenes to the precipice of discovery and never leaves the cliff, when this role requires some leaping to truly find something subtly but devastatingly dastardly, I shudder to think how a young Jeremy Irons wouldve crushed this into dust. Driver's lack of transcendent intensity leaves me with and to Jodie Comer…
As Marguerite de Carrouges Jodie Comer borders on revelation if not exactly that. She brings that same thorough complicated layering she brought to Villanelle in the outstanding initial seasons of “Killing Eve” opposite Sandra Oh. She is a complete actress giving a complete performance and it puts the boys to shame while also in a funny way exacerbating, or actually better put - bringing to light the inconsistent tonal problems in this movie. Comer plays her role with an adeptness and brilliance that is hard to articulate save to point out where it shows up at. Such that it is she that ends up the most believable not only through narrative details but through the details in her varying performances as she plays each of these men’s fantasy while maintaining the through line and essence of her character. Damon and Driver are inconsistent in this regard and float in-between character and caricature especially in the chapter where they definitely should feel completely authentic..( Affleck is not in the movie enough and his perspective is not a factor ) which is Marguerie's. When they replay what she was actually feeling or how she actually responded, Comer plays it hauntingly authentically, like something that still existed right there even in the men’s fantasy, and this is important so as not to dilute the narrative and overdo your job in fooling the audience. Though mostly minor there has been some discussion about the idea that some people can't tell whether or not Marguerite's perspective is meant to be the definitive one, and while I agree with Scott and others that this is mostly pretty obvious, I don't think it's as obvious as they might have you believe. In a movie that's 3 and a 1/2 hours long with the ongoing theater problem of hearing dialogue, without aid of subtitles, and with alot of details to focus on, I think it’s quite possible when adding the ways in which Driver, and Damon’s acting muddles up the point, for some people… some people to come out of a one time viewing not sure as to if this movie might not be about how perspective can differ and these things can be tricky, rather a clear statement about the precarious nature of womens lives in the cruel thicket of patriarchy and misogyny, especially if the viewer is a man. And because in this male society its possible someone would as director take that political view, especially in light of the way so many have responded to #metoo and in light of similar treatments to race in movies like Martin McDonaughs “Three Billboards” and The Farelly Brothers “The Green Book” - I gotta be honest, though I have pretty good faith in Scott's sensibilities in this regard, his “Muhammad such and such” statement alone is enough to prevent me from having air tight confidence in his inability to be that goofy. No, what let me know that “The Last Duel” was clearly about confirming Marguerite was the fact that it spent that much time on her perspective and more importantly Comer’s acting. To me when you want to know the truth look for the most consistent pattern, especially in a story like this and also in this case the most consistent acting. Because Comer's performance had such a distinctive through line it enabled you ( when paying attention to it) to understand and see clearly and without a doubt that it is Marguerite who is telling the truth. It is communicated in her eyes, in her body, in her line readings, and in all the layers she provides underneath those, many times by way of those wonderfully interpretive eyes. It is Comer's performance so central to not only the movie's quality but the movie's morality that should've set tone for the others, and thus her casting should’ve been the initial, basing the casting of the rest off how to compliment and counter that energy. I find it telling as to those initial missteps I spoke of at the top - that she was casted after Damon and Affleck, and that sums up my issues with this movie. It’s a movie that plays too much of a back and forth game with a subject that needed to be very clear even while the events take place in an opaque manner on purpose. It’s a movie filled with contradictions and they're not all the good kind, and THAT unfortunately becomes the duel at play that knocked me off my horse and left me not necessarily cold but indifferent to a movie that could've been powerful even as it upholds and confirms Jodie Comer ( A FAVE of mines ) as a real..well.. Comer.
The Harder They Fall Gave us something we’ve been in dire need of in Black Filmmaking.
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I want to start with a quote from a 2014 interview with Chris Rock from The Hollywood Reporter ; “I think they’ve been better in the last few years, too — a little more daring, a little funnier. But look, most movies suck. Absolutely suck. They just do. Most TV shows suck. Most books suck. If most things were good, I’d make $15 an hour. I don’t live the way I live because most things are even remotely good. But when you have a system where you probably only see three movies with African-American leads in them a year, they’re going to be judged more harshly, and you’re really rooting for them to be good a little more so than the 140 movies starring white people every year.”. I start with this quote because it shaped my feelings around the latest Netflix offering from newcomer Jeymes Samuel “The Harder They Fall”. For about maybe the first fifteen minutes of the movie I found myself grading it by the standard of its peers, “Moonlight”, “Get Out”, “Widows” , “Miss Juneteenth” …Thing is those movies arent this movies peers. Its peers are films like Tombstone, The Quick and the Dead, and Posse, and Django Unchained. I bring this up because I believe its important that black movies be free of the shackles of having to be great. That they be allowed to be irreverent, experimental, and anything from pretty good to only decent to just dumb fun. The Harder They Fall, wasn’t about much, it featured some elements about black capitalistic behavior that could be easily construed as critique. There is a bit more potent conversation about generational trauma, the fruits of past sins, and true accountability, but none of those are strong enough, last long enough or are repeated enough to stick. What does stick when it comes to Jeymes Samuel's western are its images, it's music, it's performances, it's stylized action. The point of this movie is not necessarily in any political thrust, it's in the ability of its imagery in and of itself to conjure a certain power that revels in its blackness and the love of its predecessors in a genre that could use a good comeback into the mainstream, and this is what people who lean towards needing some sense of poignancy or political ideology, always end up tending not to like in certain directors, this stylized emptiness for them is too much, and that particular lack of connection to these kinds of stores I understand . I also do think there are certain kinds of movies that don't in any way seem to connect with him to any particular aspect or philosophical principle in any fully realized way, that still maintain a primal and visceral power in their constant and consistent use of imagery and language that appears on the surface to be superficial but finds a rather deep power in the beauty of “Cool”….See Tarantino.
Two movies immediately shot to my mind or rather one immediately sprang forth and the other one came more as an after thought. The first is of course 1993's “Tombstone”. George P. Cosmotos violent re-telling of the events that led up to and came after the Shootout of OK Corral, had as its kickstand a story of deep friendship and some interesting revisions around classical ideas of good and evil and righteousness, but Much like “The Harder They Fall, this isn't why you think of that movie, this isn't why we love that movie, that mostly extends from its ability to be a riveting, visually powerful yarn about the good guys and the bad guys, and that done through potent characterization and acting. The thing you connect with most in both of these movies is not story but character. It’s Ike Clanton ( Stephen Lang) Johnny Ringo (a bit of a wonderful departure for Michael Biehn) its Trudy Smith ( Regina King ) and Bass Reeves, (Delroy Lindo) these characters and the actors who breathe life into them are the driving force of the story along with its visual language. There are some very interesting parallels here as well, they are not one for one but they are nonetheless pieces of unconscious connections and bits that make you feel like one movie stood as a sort of antecedent for the other. There is not only the fact that between the sides the most interesting characters, the deepest bench per se comes from the bad guys ..That's somewhat par the course, but there's also how these bad guys act, and what they represent. Though Idris Elba's Rufus Buck has a lot more of a motivational impetus then Powers Boothe's William Brocious who is much more of a sort of agent of chaos flying by the seat of his pants - both of them bring a similar sort of sly charisma to some extremely dark deeds that calls back again other people that preceeded even them like Jack Palance in “Shane”. The gun slinging rivalry between RJ Cyler's Jim Beckworth and LaKeith Stansfield's Cherokee Bill bares some commonalities with that of Doc Holiday and Johnny Ringo. Though executed differently there is for instance a similar sort of setup and method for both Beckworth and Ringo in the not necessarily non confrontational, but non combative reaction they get from their rival upon first meeting. Ringo in the infamous “tin-cup” scene, Beckworth in the middle of town, when Cherokee Bill walks away. Though tombstone was obviously more factual in that it does stick to and keep to the events as they unfolded, it does take a lot of dramatic license and plays a little fast and loose with the facts. Buy, it was the usage of real historical figures to non historical ends that reminded me so much of Tarantino's “Inglorious Bastards” . It's not only the use of an incredible dramatic license to unjail the story of real players in history, from their actual history and push it to a more satisfying bloody and wildly violent end, There were stories and visual parallels there. For instance you have the marking of the forehead, and inversion of the normally accepted connotation of the symbology. In this case the swastika becomes righteous, the cross vile. Story-wise you have two stories that begin with a childhood trauma, both openings a bit of a slow burn before we get to wanton violence, which set up a tale of revenge. The build up of certain moments whether in the opening, or later on with the “bear jew” or Rufus Bucks town beating of Wiley Escoe (Deon Cole) show similar taste for for power of anticipation and stern faced violence. Ultimately though, what stands out on all these movies is the way they make style substance. Still images hold power, they commute messages, and speak to us unconsciously. So too for moving images, and great performances, they hold power, commute messages, and speak to us unconsciously, and it’s perfectly okay for those images to be smuggled in a vehicle that is more than anything else a good time.
This is my main take away from the film. In an era and especially a year now where we have seen in multiple films featuring mainly if not all black cast the failure and in some cases catastrophic ( Two Distant Strangers anyone?) of some of these films to get across what they wanted to get across because of an insistence on a thrust especially in this particular time and Zeitgeist - of messaging towards racial politics from Queen and Slim to the most recent re-telling of Candyman, I think it's important to acknowledge a feeling and experience that “The Harder They Fall has given us exactly what we've been asking for and needed in this time as these stories have worn and grated on us with consequences I think beyond just disappointment. The Harder They Fall is a welcome reprieve from that, it's ultimately more than anything else a popcorn movie where we can sit back and just watch a bunch of talented people from the director to the musicians involved in some of the music, to the actors, spin us a good old fashioned yarn involving some historical figures that many of us knew very little about but not tied to telling that deep dark and sometimes difficult history. Rather, just taking them and giving us a wild good time. Its allowing us to enjoy that freedom of just seeing great black characters on screen interacting with each other on screen for no other reason then propel a tried and true story about good and evil, the guys in the white hats and the guys and the black hats, in one of the most popular and in recent years underused genres of film. We may very well be in our 4th iteration of a sort of black Renaissance on film, and hopefully this is one that actually sticks, but something that its frequently lost in these Renaissance's most especially from a historical perspective is all of the movies that were made in these times that were just meant to be a good time that we're just meant to be potent forms of entertainment not lazily constructed bits of profiteering, but good times. Sure there was “Coolie High” and “The Learning Tree” in Blaxploitation, but there was also “Let’s do it Again” and “Three the Hard Way”. Sure there was “Menace to Society” and “Boyz in the Hood”, but there was also “The Inkwell” and “Friday”. Black people could use a “Neverending Story” or “The Goonies”, every bit as much as a “Daughters of the Dust” or “To Sleep with Anger” . It's not important we all like these movies but it is important that we don't get into the trap of value hierarchy's and creating genre ghettos, where certain types of films that provide certain experiences are dismissed off hand in favor of others. That to me is the importance of the harder they fall and subsequently the importance of so far the good cheer and love the film has received from our community. It leads me back to the Chris Rock quote. it's very important that we continue to make space for those movies even even if we don't necessarily celebrate them all. That we allow and continue to push Hollywood to believe that there are wider spaces for black entertainment than just that that relies upon our socio realities and it is for that, that I’m grateful to see a film like Jeymes Samuel's and hope it’s a beacon for others to create experiences similar to it.
Dune: Fear is the Movie Killer.
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Upon initially hearing that Hollywood was taking another shot at “Dune” Frank Herbert’s definitive epic with none other than Denis Villanueve I was elated, this even while I still had a very small pocket a reservation based upon my timid disappointment with Blade Runner 2049, and a lack of confidence, better yet ..a fear in Hollywood's desire to do what I felt was needed in order for this story to be told right. What that “necessary” was is that white people in this film be reduced to the background, (and to The Harkonnen especially) and that the main characters be Middle Eastern and North African (MENA ) with Black folk and various POC representing the books several distinctive houses and the Attriedes various house powers. This would leave us to proper focus purely on the ecological, political, and philosophical power rather than the white supremacist quagmire that the book - TV and films especially fell into. It was bad enough in 1984 to watch the erasure of all of Middle Eastern aspects, but to a young mind like mines I won't pretend I was aware of it then, what I was aware of was how jarring it was to watch this tale of even more blue-eyed people that felt like the story of the uprising of a master race.. I was shocked then to the read the book and find it was pretty opposite, and when I became older what was interesting was that Lynch's vision (somewhat like Stanley Kubrick's version of “The Shining” ) not really quite an interpretation of the book and not really its own, and its whiteness sort of turned on itself and fed upon itself and thus left some satisfaction in combination with its age and knowing the time and era. It didn't take away the pain of erasure for me and I’m sure for people of Middle Eastern decent, but it acted as a light balm of sorts. The miniseries which again like “The Shining” sought to make up for the sins of the film, made it more plain how trifling and ridiculous this endeavor was without the proper acknowledgement of the what is right there in the text, the more it stuck to the script the more painfully evident it was that this story told as if the obvious did not exist could easily become a grossly white supremacist text that followed in the vein of the “hearts and minds” infused with “The Hero’s journey” that many stories of the day did. For the uninitiated “Dune” is a story much like Lawrence of Arabia and less like but still close enough Avatar ( that former which is an inspiration, the latter of which was inspired by ). It’s central themes are about centralized power, political and ecological revolution, and freedom. The eventual revolution of the “fremen” folk is vital to the story and so too is the attention placed on their leader and his conscience interrogation of his role, but all iterations of this story were flawed in conception. The white len’s from which they're told is inextricable from its flaws. If you center white people in this story as the power not only in force in the book, but externally to the audience, you not only reinforce the very allure of centralized power Herbert sought to interrogate, but you all but sterilize the story's radical possibilities.
It feels a good time here to state that casting is not the only issue with Dune, so too is the continued trend of robbing this story of any emotional underpinning. There is nothing in the original story to suggest that the emotions of the people involved don’t run deep and over, in fact quite the opposite. Knowing this, the decision for instance to continue the continued omission of any decisive or engaging emotion in Dr. Yueh is startling, especially when you know why he does what he does, and what it means to him. With that context, the casting of actor Chang Chen as a representational win is mooted and spoiled. When you take out the emotive power of what's behind and what motivates his decisions and leave the consequences of them, then you inflict a mortal wound on the power of that representation, because not only does this character now become unmemorable, but you cut a very talented actor off at the knees in a role that inherently contains the kinds of challenges that push an actor to excel and use the parts of his/her/their imagination that would propel he/she/they into our imaginations. This theme will continue throughout this part one of the story as characters of color are placed with with no real motivations or objective seemingly to follow. Isolated to the realm of moving the plot forward, after which they will be killed off, all ( like one who starts a duel ) end up merely cardboard cutouts as stand-ins for a diverse society. The closest any one of color comes to being evocative of emotion is Jason Momoa whose Duncan Idaho runs off with the movie with his only competition being Rebecca Ferguson. The lack of emotion in these characters of color helps to reinforce a framework, that belies where the power lies not only in plot but in actors, a hierarchy of whiteness already invoked by the casting. The whiter you are the more central of a figure you are, the more a central figure the more you are allowed to wield some emotive power (mind you no one is really doing much ). At the top of this hierarchy the two whitest people in the movie Rebecca Ferguson and Timothee Chalamet.. The Madonna and her Christ figure like child, at the bottom Middle Eastern and North African people a sect of whom aren’t even here.
The lack of MENA representation in a film so deeply mired in the culture aesthetically and philosophically of that region is APPROPRIATION . Yet even more disturbing than its absence maybe the lack of conversation around the absence. This is not some minor infraction, it does a major disservice to any of the work we do as critics to watch an entire group like this be shutout of a film damn near buried in their culture, and collectively shrug it off in favor of what I can’t even say. I cannot say this loudly enough this is a continuation of a tradition in Hollywood and those of us who spectate , where protection becomes more important than correction, and that particular aspect is why we continue to see so much of the same thing constantly recycled in front of our faces. When frequently the framing around a story like “David Lean’s” Lawrence of Arabia seeks to deflate, to buffer against as if already prepared for the legit criticisms about the lens from which that story is told in favor of protecting a legacy which is or has never been in question, It stands to reason that it's fictional cousin could get away with propping up that exact same story and then erasing the people at the center of the conflict and it’s foundational religion. Before you hit me with “this is not a real story or a real people” keep in mind that I know that and that nonetheless the story is based and steeped in unquestionably the history and culture of a very real people. Worse still its arguable Dune does not improve upon any of LOA’s problems and falls short in certain aspects that Lawrence thrived in. It's a regression to me to go from Omar Sharif to Javier Bardem, (who is Stilgar if not a version of Sherif Ali ) to lose that voice of the people who would act as at least somewhat of an insight into the mind of the oppressed if not merely by the conjuring of his own ancestry, even while he is a character written from a white perspective. It’s a regression to make a movie that riffs on this material some 50 or 60 years later so engorged in revolution and the power of a people in story and not give that power over to the people who are it’s inspiration. How great might an actor like Payman Maadi ( A Separation, About Elly ) have been in a role like Stilgar, or even as Leto? How great an asset might an actress like Narges Rashidi (Under the Shadow) be to play the role of Paul’s mother? How interesting would it have been to introduce the audience to a newcomer from the region as Paul? How great might it have been to see Shoreh Aghdashloo ( House of Sand and Fog, The Expanse ) as the Reverend Mother of the Bene- Gessserit. This kind of casting that would've put MENA actors at the forefront, keeping the array of actors of Black African, and Asian descent, and leaving the Harkonnen's and the emperor as white? The story of Dune would become the knotted complex tapestry of oppression and idolatry rather than a hobbled poorly disguised tale of a white benevolence. Far more correct, far more insightful, far more poignant and from the only proper lens. Now it would get to perform as the allegory for the world we live in, in a way that acknowledges and loves on the books inherent radicalism and we'd get a powerful look at the interrogation of saviors free from the interference of white supremacy as an authority. Done any other way including the way that I have just witnessed it twice now, It dilutes the story, waters it down to some extent, whitewashes it and in combination with the movie's lack of almost any emotional power and range it ghosts the movies intentional brutality making it a candy coated shell. If you go back and watch “The Lord of the Rings” maybe the only competitor to the legacy of Dune as Sci fi/Fantasy literature and see the way that movie steeps itself in emotional power while doing all of the same things that this movie does well whether it be cinematography, or world-building or providing a rousing score with skilled actors, you cannot say with a serious face or conviction that this is not the way any blockbuster film should be. Even Nolan's Batman’s for all their brutalist male dominated, dreariness contained more emotion. The lack of it drains the film of any of the power it's natural scope and vastness seeks to give the audience. Dune is a good movie but it's not a great one. It appeals to us deeply on the aesthetic levels, its structures, its environment its sounds, costume design, creatures, Those things appeal to our mind and to some extent to our imagination but to our hearts and to its own cause it is an utter failure, and a lack of imagination. We don't need white meditations that circle around their own guilt with the havoc that they've brought on the world without ever really facing that in a meaningful and stern faced way. I don't care if Paul acknowledges what his people and others have done to ravage Javier Bardem's people ( feel free to laugh) If the next thing we know we're going to watch him kill a Warrior of African descent in order to make a sign of his ascent. Especially when that Warrior’s skill is made a mockery of in order to show the level of elite that a young Paul is. It's disheartening to see a black woman be cast in a role that feels like something of an awakening only to watch her be sacrificed again for the ascension of this white man in story or not, If we must be sacrificed let it be for a cause that rings true to our own and to one that looks like us, or exist somewhere within the spectrum of oppression that we live in. It bothers me to watch Thufir Hawat ( played by the great Stephen McKinley) be yelled at in a way that is supposed to show an underbed of beloved devotion but fsils because the relationship like most isn't properly set up..it makes him look like a beloved Caddy rather than a powerful asset in again both his regard as a character and actor. Dune had an opportunity to use its powerful invocative aesthetics to enforce and empower the radical ideas of change and revolution in the book and for change in Hollywood, By providing people of color and black people with the epic with which to see themselves through and in, instead of that oasis it remained in that dry barren desert of white supremacy and appropriation only this tike offered in a “Lite” version, leaving that story once again to be told unfaithfully, and without trust in its power regardless of whom the face of it is. All it had to to do is let go and be brave enough to believe in the power of that that has already been demonstrated by Shang Chi, and Black Panther, and Crazy Rich Asians and double down on it, but alas fear ( and on this case a true lack of imagination ) is the mind killer.
Was Squid Game Too Violent?
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Time is constantly moving ( feels like even faster these days ) so that it makes the memory of someone like me who already suffers from poor memory even worse off, that being said I can’t remember the last time anything on television caught fire the way Netflix's “Squid Game” (A Korean drama directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk ) did since HBO's “Game of Thrones”. Thing is though that Game of Thrones had HBO's considerably better marketing arm behind it, and it still took a little while to cook, while Squid Game ( born knee deep into the binging era ) took off like a Rocket immediately with almost none I’m aware of besides word of mouth. Barely a few weeks into its release the show has been discussed and talked about ad-nauseum as its steam has picked up over the last couple. The show is engrossing, and was never short on surprises. Almost everytime I thought it would go one way it went another. It was extremely well acted and when there wasn’t star making or star type performances by folk like Seong Gu-hun, Oh Young-soo, and Park Hae-soo, then there were star making character performances by just about everyone else including Ho Yeon-jung, Anupam Tripathi, Heo Sung-tae, and Kim Joo-ryung. The games themselves are invenntive even moreso I’m sure if you’re outside the culture, and the stakes well you can’t get any higher, but they're also tied to a rather large and vast amount of violence and there’s enough of it to give anyone pause, but is it too much? Is it gratuitous, excessive, does it desensitize the audience?
Firstly, I think it’s important to establish a difference between what we feel and what is intended by the authors of any given form of entertainment. Also think it's important to correctly identify and define the words that we're putting in use in regards to a critique, or emotional response, especially when it comes words like gratuitous, excessive, or desensitized. Something feeling or actually being excessive by way of the amount or the number of people that it's happening to is not the same as it being excessive in regards to the story. For example in a film about war it stands to reason that a large amount of people are going to die, that in and of itself doesn’t make the death excessive, or gratuitous, it also doesn’t grant the storytellers carte blanche to be reckless with the lives that are snuffed out on screen. The latter part is something I think is vital to having this conversation. The treatment of the lives that are taken on screen. What the camera focuses on, how long it stays there, The language in the composition, the set up before and after are just some of the variables important to the task of discerning gratuity, excessiveness, or disheartening desensitization. Watching “Squid Game” I paid a lot of attention to the violence, I couldn't help but to. In the first place violence to me is something that I immediately catch onto anyway in film, but also this show could feel relentless and though I didn't find it as graphic as I was told going in ( especially as compared to shows like “The Walking Dead” ) the constant and consistent death gave me a very palpable sense and feel of anxiety. Then I got a chance to further look at it after seeing this show the initial time, and since, I think in actuality the show takes great care to care for ( in as much as is possible given time constraints ) and about various depictions of violence. It begins with the setup itself, 456 contestants arrive at a vast warehouse awaiting the games, and through the stories of the main characters and the time taken to explain their lives and the importance of it, we can extrapolate out that every person here has something worth living for, and a story of their own. The reason the violence is so striking in the first game is because you are intended to care about it. You watch the opening games violence ensue and you pay attention to how the camera's moving and where it stops and where it pauses and how long it chooses to stay in a certain moments around the violence, you can see that this is not just shock for shocks sake, this meant to make as much of these people as can be done - feel like they’re people!. Conpare that to a film like 2008's “Rambo”…
You watch how the violence is displayed in portrayed in a movie like Rambo. and the framing device around it- especially as it pertains to enemy combatants- and it is almost as if these bodies are meant to be dead before they're even actually dead. They are on the other side of Rambo's righteousness so who cares, they're human confetti now. In fact I would argue that the framing devices of good and evil and collateral damage are two of the most insidious contributors to the desensitization of death especially in comparison to a show that takes care to say that these people's lives actually mattered, and that they are not bad or evil people despite the fact that they may do acts that hurt in harm others. To watch large scale violence go on in big box office films like “The Avengers” and “Man of Steel” and know that there is no way in a downtown metropolis without any evacuation signal ( and even with) that there weren't buildings full of people that are now being smashed, broken, cut in half but the damage there isn't gonna be on a catastrophic level to human life ..human life is a desensitization. The framing device of the zombification of human bodies that allows them to now be so disposable that hacking, dismembering, disembowling, them becomes an almost fanatical joy is the true form of desensitization to death as far as I’m concern especially as usually human bodies are also being treated the same way who are actually living. My argument here is that it is these framing devices and these ways of dehumanizing the act of killing are the worst kinds of gratuitous where I’m concerned, and that maybe one of the reasons why we we are so hyper aware, and why so many can look at this show and have a commentary around its violence or feel viscerally its violence is because the creators took the time to make sure we felt each bit of that violence, that they didn't throw it away and toss it in a corner in boxes marked “enemy combatant” or “invaluable human to the story”. There were very few times in this show if any where it felt like the tactics being used, the functions at use weren't absolutely there to make you feel the death, that somebody was losing their life here, from how the camera is posed to the music, to the sounds of the guns themselves. I have been a action lover basically since I was a child. It is pretty much by far the genre I go in the most for when it comes to my movie watching. Many of my favorite films that I grew up on and still love come from the height of the action era in the Eighties with films like “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Lethal Weapon”, “Die Hard”, “Commando”, and “Aliens” right up into the Nineties with “Starship troopers”, “Hard Boiled”, “T2”, and"The Rock”. Having watched all of these films and much more I've always noted something about the sound sound of weapons - guns especially - in these films take on a rhythmic quality, there can be a sesne of gravitas to the sound, that gives it a sort of a lower allure, makes it sort of a draw something that you almost can't wait to hear. Pay attention you'll definitely hear it in films like Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills,Cop, Die Hard, or John Wick, the sound design is for all intensive purposes cool, and sets you ina trance that acts as an anesthetic to the ensuing violence they cause. This is in massive contradiction to the soumd of the weapons in Squid Game, rarely have I heard a sound as consistently off -putting as the sound that came from the guns in the show. I never got used to that sound, I never got to settle into it’s rhythm, every single time one of those things fired it settled in and discombobulated my spirit and I believe that was done intentionally.
Another aspect of care I noticed the director in storyteller's involved, was that they seemed to notice when enough graphic violence whether in the form of sound or in the actual display - was enough. After already having so much gun violence, scenes where other forms of particular violence against the body took place were stepped back from in a way that allowed you to still note what had took place but not feature the violence itself. In another show, with different caretakers that cared less about the bodies than the morbid nature of bodies being destroyed I could totally see the scene from the tug-of-war game featuring the bodies falling and watching them hit the ground with an almost fanatical glee in the explosion of bodies, heads cracked open, bodies contorted, but Squid games folks merely showed the bodies from afar, in the dark, the conversations that take place afterwards about these deaths, and what they just did to these people in rhe elevator and back in the warehouse are telling as well. I don't think any show that took as much care as this one did in telling a story ( where they could easily have been lazy and stepped back on the premise of a capitalist machine that consumes and spits out bodies as if they are nothing ) can properly be construed as reckless or gratuitous in it's depiction of violence. Not in any objective sense that moves beyond your own subjective feelings about violence and depiction of it in itself. What that becomes is an argument for a depiction of violence, a shiny violence that desensitizes us by telling us certain lives don't matter when it comes to mass violence like this. That there are certain kinds of people who we’re meant not to care about so we don't have to avert our eyes, we don't have to put our hands up over our face and gasp out loud because these are ghost bodies, deserving carcasses, collatoral to a massive story about alien invasions, and superheroes duking it out in the name of these every people who are of course less than. Despite the fact that the true villain of this show is meant to be capitalism a machine invention where it is not as much about the people functioning as tools for the machine than as it is the gears and laws around the machines process. Despite the fact that the people wear masks that make them look as if they are a mechanical arm, a playstation controller that is connected to the hard drive in Squid Game even when those people die their lives count. Save for a few times these tools of of state masks were taken off to reveal a human being, so that even as a person who can be looked as a villain, it did not become vis a vis they're worthless. How to depict violence on screen and what goes beyond the pale, is inherently a difficult ask, and my thoughts here are far from above reproach or rebuttal, but in my mind we need to be asking more film and television to mimic this care, mass violence is always better if not depicted at all, BUT, if you're going to have this much violence be depicted because you're doing a war film, or whatever it is in a story that you're telling that may require a mass amount of people to be die, if this must be done in the first place then this is what we're asking you do, not this roundabout way of placing first and foremost our comfortability above a sensibility about the realities of what happens when a person loses their life, because funny enough it was Squid Game that never treated life as if treated life as if it was just a simple bad role of the dice in a loss of the game and it's many of our other forms of entertainment that have actually started to convince us that bodies should be treated as a form of fodder just as long as we don't have to focus too long on what just transpired.
The Value of “VAL”
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There is a moment in “Val” The Autobiographical documentary from Val Kilmer ( available on Amazon Prime) That became a sort of nexus point from which for me everything else extended outwardly from. The moment not only encapsulated Val Kilmer the person, but also Val Kilmer the actor. It takes place early on in the film when Kilmer takes us back to some of his footage from Juliard. He’s learning from the great acting professor Peter Kass, who at the moment is watching him perform a monologue of Hamlet, Kass sits there almost completely and perfectly still until Val finishes his monologue. I’ve been there many times as an actor myself. In the eons of suffocating time that existed between my final words and the teachers first words I felt besieged with anxiety almost instantly. Being in that particular position is one that I still find far more daunting than being in front of the camera or an audience. It is there that Val's and “Val”’s journey began for me, because it’s the authentic beginning of almost every actors search for validation. This is one of the more poignant subtle points the doc makes. Once Kilmer is done, Kass barely takes a beat and then unleashes a barrage of fascinating and controversial words in a sentence about acting. Words that would come to define for me what the issue with Val Kilmer's career would end up being. Kass asks kilmer for a summarization of what he was doing, what he was going for, what motivated him. Kilmer answers something to the effect that because he didn't have this experience that he then relied on something akin to it to try to bring some truth. Kass's reply is as swift as it is sure; “ Yes you have had this response” - Kass says, “There are no limitations to the actor’s capacity to create a capacity to have experienced even that which is not a conscious experience in your life”. Kass would continue that it is because of his belief in these words that he does not align with the (Uta Hagen) school of thought around substitution. For the uninitiated “Substitution” is the acting philosophy that when you have not experienced the exactitude of a certain experience (let’s say death of a dear friend) you substitute it with something akin, so that you may not have lost a friend but you have experienced varying forms of loss in your life and you may use and lean on that in the stead. I don't agree with Kass's assertion without boundaries. The assumption that even on a some conscious level you have experienced every single experience lacks empathy and is a problematic assertion inside and outside of the school of acting. To make a quick example involving race, if a white person believes there is no experience that is foreign to them that a black person could experience, then problematically, outside of acting it could lead them to lack empathy towards a number of situations that are specific to black members of society, and in the school of acting it could lead to them believing that they could take on roles that they absolutely shouldn't have any business taking on. Regardless of what side of that school of thought you fall on, Kass's words do hold importance, and betray a certain truth over the rest of Val Kilmer's documentary. Because as you watch the rest of his life and career unfold through the length of this documentary it starts to become apparent that the the bulk of the issues that seem to have stalked a good number of Kilmer performances as well as the issues that marred his choices sprung forth from the fact that the lesson that Kass tried to impart to Kilmer was never fully absorbed.
Kilmer's documentary as one person's attempt to try to be honest with us the audience about what their life was and how it quantified itself and who they'd like us to see them as in “Val” can sometimes ring hollow, pale, and underwhelming at points. There are many moments that betray it as a piece of work that tries very hard to convince us of who Val Kilmer thinks he is, but is in that very last sentiment as contextualized by an actor searching for meaning things and of them from within a documentary in combination with its very personal look into the mental struggles of actors as people who are in constant need of validation that “Val” finds immense power and is endlessly fascinating in a way that many docs I don't think are. Haunting every single inclination in this narrative of what Val Kilmer wants to convinces us of - is this longing and sense of dread (that grows as the movie goes along ) that hes not connected to the thing which he most desires in his heart. It is no small thing to acknowledge the vastness of capability self doubt has to harm actors careers both before and after they are established. Working consistently in an industry that holds validation like some very treasure it becomes imperative at times that you carry yourself with an exaggerated sense of surety around your abilities. In my experience actors who were assured of themselves and their ability despite all logic pointing to the opposite, or an exaggeration go farther than actors who have all the talent in the world but do not feel assured in who they are and in what they bring to the table. Peter Kass's words, contextualized another way says to me that Val Kilmer the actor, and Val Kilmer the person never trusted that either was enough, so much like he did in that monologue he has constantly resorted to creating all these exaggerated and performative over corrections to a non issue. In essence Val Kilmer is a very gifted actor who because he was insecure about that ability over corrected by constantly trying to “act” his way into the pantheon of the actors that molded him. I see it as much in his choices here as in his career. Whether in conversation about his brother, or his bits on other actors, “Val” in terms that maybe the doc itself doesn't understand is the story of a man who couldn't reconcile the fact that he was in fact a character, and a character actor and not the next Marlon Brando. He claims at the beginning of the documentary to have understood that there is no such thing as a small role but there is a palpable sense of regret and covetousness to the way that he talks about Tom Cruise. As with the lesson Mr. Kass tried to impart upon him he never really internalized that idea that there is no such thing as a small role, it’s merely something he said to avoid actively looking into the truth of that statement. So much about acting is choices both in your actual work and about the work as in the business. A video from Will Smith's YouTube channel has been making the rounds and it speaks exactly to his acumen while demonstrating a self awareness that made Will Smith Will Smith, and Val Kilmer Val Kilmer in juxtaposition, hell it even involves Val..
You go on enough auditions and on those auditions talk to enough actors you get the sense that a lot of people go into roles either looking for how it may maximize their career or looking for how it may maximize them as an actor. Both of these involved an immense ego, so that even when they say something as philosophically sound as “the roles spoke to me” this is the way in which they perceive that and it is funneled through that ego and that rigid imagining of importance. “I want to be a star because I want to be important” or “I want to be an actor's actor because I want to be important”. Val Kilmer doing everything within his power to go after roles like “Full Metal Jacket” ( not a bad fit ) and even more so Henry Hill in Scorsese's “Goodfellas” (Not remotely a fit) is far more powerful a statement on why Val kilmer's career ended up as it did, and insight to who Val Kilmer is and what motivates him than anything else he could say in the documentary as well as any of the myriads of stories we've heard as to why Kilmer's career didn't end up where his talent said it could. Listening to Jack Nicholson discuss his reasons for turning down “The Godfather” and “The Sting” to make “The Last Detail” and “Chinatown”, you hear an actor who is very confident about his abilities but also one who is very sure of what is for him and what isn't for him, it would seem like decisions that one might regret end up being the same decisions that powered a legendary career. When you watch the audition tapes Kilmer turned in for these roles he so coveted it is very clear just how magnificently talented Val Kilmer is and that in every possible interpretation and iteration of the word “Stage kid” Val Kilmer represents it. That constantly “on” energy, that joy, the actor version of that annoying but talented singer who will not only sing but over sing a made up song about your being stopped at traffic light for too long ( yes this is an actual experience of mines ) never disapated and it's fun to watch when you love actors. The problem isn't that Kilmer can't “sing”, the problem is that he didn't know the importance of finding the right tune. Kilmer took the most superficial and wrong headed aspect of what Peter Kass had to say, the part that says you can play anything, and left behind the deeper meaning to be excavated; that instinct to want to act everything doesn't need to exist, when you truly understand the emotion and understand the role then you can just allow yourself to exist within it and relax. The roles that Kilmer became most known for, Tombstone, Heat, Top Gun even, the ones he is most hailed for (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is also in there ) curtailed that instinct to ACT as loudly and overtly as that famed Jon Lovitz character from SNL for quieter, bone marrowed acting that showed the well and depth of Kilmer's talent when he understood and trusted in his own natural presence and power. They were also almost none of them (Save the Doors) starring roles.
In a very interesting segment of Variety studios “Actors on Actors” feat. Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow, you see Kevin Bacon admit to and discuss some of these very same anxieties that Kilmer talks about and it becomes even that much more fascinating when you see how Bacon is mentioned by Val Kilmer as one of the people who took a role he desired. You even see Bacon discuss much like Kilmer, the very specific kind of actor he wanted to be ,and those aspirations definitely live in the same zip code of the ones mentioned by Kilmer. So begins this sort of trajectory of two actors who were in fact very close and near in terms of skills and where they could have gone ,and landed, but then you watched the trajectory split as Kevin Bacon discusses what his final analysis was. It starts at around the 25 minute mark…
Bacon settled into who he was as a person, and what he meant to Hollywood in ways you can tell Kilmer still hasn't made peace with. Once Bacon did that, he had the kind of career he wanted without the iteration necessarily aligning with he original idea, this kind of flexibility is ideal. I think most actors struggle to some extent with the competing ideas of what kind of actor they came into the game to be and what kind of actor Hollywood may see in them and I consider the sort of self awareness needed to actually be able to match yours with Hollywood's one of the most difficult but defining characteristics of movie stars, which is one reason there are so few of them. Not all or even most character actors struggle with themselves as accessible, valuable, and desirable in the marketplace of Hollywood, but that is by far the pool where you will find most of them. In Capitalism your productivity within the marketplace is tied to your value as a human being it stands to reason that many actors fall under the weight of this very specific and very persistent purgatory. So what “Val” does is speak to us on an unconscious level - of all of Kilmer’s deflections, protections, and vulnerabilities in constant and inconsistent conversation about his brother, in the usage of his own son and daughter in in home videos, in reflections on still guarded jealousies of other actors, and especially in his acting. It speaks to us consciously of all the things that Kilmer himself was never conscious of during the active parts of his career, and the profundity of those things is the value of “Val”.
Midnight Mass: Thats Fine, but Where are the Scares?
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I only just recently spoke to it, and yet here I am yet again stating that for me in the final analysis genre film and television are first and foremost responsible to do the thing implied in their categorization. If you are in action from then it stands to reason that I expect good action, Though a bit over simplified if I am watching Science-fiction I expect to have some science along with my fiction, if I watch fantasy I expect it to be fantastical, and if I am watching a horror movie I expected to be horrifying or terrifying first and foremost, and here lies my main problem with he recent trend of supposed “Prestige” horror. The bad ones and there are more than a few, seek out prestige ( which many times means boring and incongruent ) as some sort of honorific end unto itself to gain some flawed sense of esteem amongst movie goers of a certain type and in the doing lose the plot and leave the horror and terror behind. Now I'm not one to be rigid about what horror or terror can look like it can take on many forms whether it be eerie, or unsettling, a flat outright physical scare in the form of something ghastly looking, or even a well timed jump scare but I do expect at some point to be terribly afraid (The Descent) or unsettled in my spirit ( The Witch ) or feel a mood or tone of eerieness ( The Empty Man, The Invitation ). Here lies my problem with director Mike Flanagan's latest offering “Midnight Mass”. I found myself acting like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park smugly asking the horror version of “Ah now eventually, You do plan on having dinosaurs at your, your dinosaur tour right?” because for the bulk of this television show it was not scary in any sort of interpretation or conception of the word. A great deal of the shows 7 hours for all intensive purposes is a drama. It takes about 4 episodes to actually get to the heart of what this story is and much of that is wasted on diatribes, overly long monologues, and bits of dialogue that are philosophical and emotional in nature, and don’t really connect to the scares. It drags and lumbers the pacing making some hour episodes feel like two. The frights themselves average out at about one per episode and they are very brief so that I never really settle into that mood of horror until the fourth episode and four hours is far too long to wait for any real feeling of fear in any horror format. It led to an anxiety that wasn't at all rooted in any sort of fear but in “when is this thing going to fucking get started?”
None of this is to say that Midnight Mass isn't good, it's effective as an emotional philosophical drama dealing with hefty themes such as grief, trauma, and addiction. There were certain bits of dialogue that mined actually profound territory and not just cutesy quotes like “What is grief if not love peseevering”. A back-and-forth between Father Paul and central character Riley Flynn was particularly interesting not for any one thing said before it was before how it was presented and the objective and fair in the way that it treated and validated each point from each of the characters, something increasingly rare in film and television when it comes to faith. The actors were mostly all some version of good, especially Hamish Linklater ( Father Paul ) Alex Essoe ( Mildred Gunning ) and Samantha Sloyan (Bev Keane ) who is a revelation! As Keane a devout Christian zealot of a very familiar archetype Sloyan sets herself apart through an uncanny pit of fire that burns beneath her eyes that so encapsulates the type of fervor, whimper, and anger behind a being like Bev it might have been the scariest thing about the show. But on that same tip about the actors there is a very interesting sort of paradox within a paradox where I found very few of the actors to be bad and many of them to be very good but also none of them save for a few to be great and only Samantha to be revolatory or as interesting as the dialogue wanted to suggest they should be. The show reminded me a lot of two of Stephen King books and it is clear by bow he is a major inspiration for Flanagan. Salem's lot and pertinent to this particular point Needful Things, but in their film adaptations what carries a story like needful things thstbis missing a sort of unsettling or feeling of fear and feels more closer to Stephen King stories like the Shawshank Redemption than it does His more clearly horror stories like “Cujo”or or “The Shining”, Is that those films had and Needful Things particularly in this case had actors who transcended even at certain the dialogue. It's important to have those kind of deeply fascinating and interesting actors like Ed Harris, Amanda Plummer, Max Von Sydow, and JT Walsh to carry and give power to the words that extends amd carries the load in the stead of fear. The same could be said in Dolores Claiborne where you have Kathy Bates Christopher Plummer, and David Straithairn. Those kind of sparks, those kind of fire starters are missing in Mass, and it makes the lack of actual scares and the lapses in tone and mood all that much more noticeable.
I like Mike Flanagan as a director quite a bit when he is at his best, at his peak in things like “The Haunting of Hillhouse” and “Doctor Sleep” he allows fear and his weighted themes to coalesce and congeal, combine and cohabitate the story. Genuine reflections on memory and traumatic experiences are consistently followed by genuinely scary haunts and scares. Mood and tone are set in and built upon in ways that engross and propel you into the story to such extent that makes it ripe for these scares and these haunts, But he can fall in love with his own bouts with exposition and philosophy to the point he goes on tangents that take him so far outside the space of actual horror, that you forget that's what you’re watching and that is a cardinal sin of any genre show or film. If I just wanted to watch a show on the themes presented in Midnight Mass I could watch Intervention, I visited this show to be scared out of my wits as well and those moments came far too sparingly. What I was left with is a show that still ended up being just effective enough to make me like it, especially as it pertained to what it has to say about faith, the fair way it discussed that and and it's contemplations (some of them at least) on addiction, grief, and suffering and how that connects and disconnects us. A show that had some powerful moments of imagery that was truly unsettling and interesting approaches to storytelling like when we are shown Father Paul's story with a combination of flashbacks and these wonderful wood carvings. Flanagan has a knack for certain imagery and much like Guillermo del Toro his creature effects and designs for haunts are always supremely well crafted, but the shows true capacity for greatness was undone by its lack of love for what brought it to our attention in the first place …the desire for a good scare not a college lecture on God and the after life. If the two had been married properly it would have made for an absolute killer of a show to be held up in the very eternity it concerns itself with, as is with the two quite clearly separated and scares only allowed weekend visits, it’s merely another strongly decent addition to prestige horror that won't hold up past the next weekend for me.
The Believers: The Horror of Repulsion.
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Some movies problematic as they may be, just get the job done. As a moviegoer I tend to be on the fence about the importance of the political thrust of movies. I care about what they say, but I care more about where the movies good or whether it accomplishes what it’s supposed to. If it’s a comedy I expect to laugh, Romance I expect to be swept up off my feet, and if it’s horror I expect to be horrified. This is painfully oversimplified but you get the point. I bring all this up because it’s so much of how I felt seeing 1987's “The Believers”. Directed by John Schlesinger ( Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man ) and even adapted by Mark Frost who would go on to work with David Lynch in Twin Peaks you’d think this movie would at least have a cult following but it does not and I find myself somewhat thankful for that, but make no mistake this movie is startling, fascinating, and dastardly and the last one is most important. Behind a movie that loves its subject matter and seeks to both inform and horrify is a very anti-black film. When I say anti-black I MEAN anti-BLACK. It doesn't like black statues, black snakes, black spiders, black coffee, black shoes and damn sure not black people. In a movie that heavily features and focuses on the power of belief and religion, only the black practinoners are portrayed as ominous and dangerous, an unidentified threat seen but unseen, and to some extent what makes it worse is as a horror story this movie is frightfully effective. Great performances, wild visuals ( one woman ends up with the urban legend about a nest of spiders in one’s face as a fright ) and it’s mood and tone create a distinctive feeling of anxiousness and foreboding-ness, it’s too bad much of that is rooted in a sort of knitted grotesque mysticism around Africa and blackness itself that plays on tropes of Africa the dark continent, and frames black practinoners of Hoodoo/Santeria as polluters of the religion even though it’s origins are owed to us. The 80s had a small window of time where the subject matter became somewhat popularized by a few films that were centered around the practices of Hoodoo / Santeria . Angel Heart, Serpent and the Rainbow, and this one ( There was even an episode of Miami Vice that did the same. Most made ths same mistake or did it on purpose depending on whom you’re talking to, and that us demonizing the native religions of black folk and conceptualizing blackness something in and of itself to be feared choosing actors like Zakes Mokae, Clarence Williams III or here Malick Bowens ( one for the most underutilized faces in movie history) and republishing wonderful faces for the white gaze and more specifically to be feared.
Schlesinger's film starts out quite literally milk white and the first form of insidious danger we see brought out the black conspiracy theorist in me….because it was black.. coffee..Black and then a close up of it dropping onto a white surface whee it is foreshadowed harm is about to take place and it does. From that interesting note there we are swept across to an unknown black land where a white couple sits in the middle of a sea of black folk performing a ritualistic dance, the dance by from what little my research could produce on a scene from a movie very few people have seen is actually a healing dance, but this is where the intrusive nature of the white eye contaminates and taints. Schlesinger and composer J. Peter Robinson are not going for a match in tonality here. This is not meant to look like help, the dance much like that coffee signals foreboding, the forbidden, the savage, and the menacing and if the way Schlesinger’s camera invites us to look up on certain faces doesn't tell you that, Robinson's score will definitely make it clear for you. The white people in the midst are looked upon as naive travelers, people messing around and something they might not fully understand and though the movie somewhat backtracks on this by the end it's still nonetheless suggestive of the idea of the idea of assuming control over powers you cannot understand and it doesn't correct that to make those powers of that danger not be directly attached to blackness. Especially as it pertains to Malick Bowens and his face which the movie is clearly in a love/hate relationship with. I want to be clear here this is not the entire plate of the movie there is much interesting work here around discussing the hold belief has on us and it's sort of what of canonization amongst and across various people as compared to others as well as the sort of contagious nature of willful and hard fast faith in things we can’t see. The tangible effects of faith, religion, and belief outside of those whom even follow it and onto those who have no belief is always ample grounds for storytelling to me and especially in the world of horror and and it is mined for quite a bit in Schlesinger’s film. Alot of the same paranoia featured in “The Marathon Man” is presented in the same fashion here but the problem is on this plate there's a sort of juice seeping and surrounding all the rest of the meal, and whether you want it or not it’s apart of it now.
Right dead smack in the middle of Schlesinger’s film, yet another dancing scene serves as a centerpiece of all that makes this movie horrifying both within the context of a film and outside as a black viewer. Malick Bowens character whose name is “Palo” enters a party it’s one of those well to do, networking type parties where Sheen's character has been brought to further investigate the case of these murdered children, (because that’s what savage cultures do) now this is a “multicultural” event and by that I mean white people will be invited to gaze up on and and reflect upon their own whiteness as opposite of other cultures who are merely used as a sort of background to their own lives so there is this African music that begins to play as a means of entertainment to which Bowen steps into and begins to dance and the dance is instantly mid It's phase and and and eventually he starts to plant his gaze Upon some of these innocent whitefolk and one white woman in particular the 1 with whom Martin Sheen is in a love affair with it becomes sexual there is an undertone of a rousel and a tension between between he and this white woman and as he comes from her neck the neighborhood expoyet the nape of it exposed and her eyes also beginning to roll back but much more so an implication of arousal she has no control over than it's a application of harm though that undergirds it by proximity. It’s very vampiric the whole way the scene is executed - so that when he snatches the necklace off of her neck it is almost as if he bit her, The ritual was interrupted and stopped by a bruja who practices Santeria, (throughout this film presented as a good force with no other reason that I can perceive here other than its superficial disconnection from blackness. ) They have a bit of a face off and the scene is over, but it is the summarization of everything that makes this movie fascinating and grotesque. The power it has to convey and put on display what makes us fearful of people whose vested power of belief seems to go beyond the threshold of the natural is there. It’s everything that makes those videos of televangelist Kenneth Copeland so eerily terrifying..
These are not non Believers putting on a show nonsense or not they have an unrepentant assurity and confidence in their words that hold a over of their own and often times is repulsive, Schlesinger captures that, bottles it up and releases it through the lens of his camera which acts as a ventilator. It’s just as shame that Malick Bowens face and the face of anyone who looks like him is his chosen mode of transportation, worse still that he was not the only and not the last. The vilification of religious practices outside the context of those which sprung from Western civilization is bad enough, the vilification of even the faces of black people in and of itself, the horror and the repulsion being tied to those features distinctive to us is bordering on criminal and that much more when it is done so effectively and by a master craftsmen of paranoia. Now I'd love to have the answers to this of what to do and what to say about a film like this something distinctive, something hard lined, that summarizes with a thrust the reason to avoid this movie at all cost, but truth is through all this that I've said I actually enjoyed “The Believers” it stayed with me long after the revisit for a number of reasons. Schlesinger’s works have been underrated for their ability to convincingly ground what seem like implausible stories and relationships, and that continues here. Malick Bowens is a draw, an impossibly deep canvas, who effortlessly presents through his body and small subtle expressions- the power to be believable as the source code to all this catastrophe and chaos, and Jimmy Smits gives a banger of a performance as a Santeria practitioner who is also a cop who is first impacted by Palo's ( Bowens) work. It’s a tight, well paced thriller, that accomplishes everything it's supposed to do, but I found myself asking over and over at what cost? “The Believers” is a film that wants you to both question faith but also in a funny way believe in it, and reinstates and reinforces that belief. In a way I see that and feel that about movies themselves, my criticism is sometimes a form of a questioning of my faith in the power of movies especially when they come at the price that a movie like the believers ask me as a black viewer to pay for entertainment. That line at least for me is not clear many times. I think if someone was listening to me for a long enough time they would find contradictions along the lines of what it is I choose to direct and focus my anger on, and what it is I don't, and that in itself is a certain kind of horror at least for me and it's the horror I most readily identified intrusive film, the horror of being thrilled by something repulsive, which I guess is a major part of horror.
Malignant: A Welcome Trip back into “What in the Hell?”
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Movies in the recent era at least the last 10 years if not more have been dry. Many have been souless, repetitive, lacking in any sort of sexual energy, and a damn sure lack for audacity. So my philosophy when I see something that swings for the fences while doing a Casey double twist at bat is even if it strikes out, even if it's a single, or a double or a triple, I like to give it sincere props for trying to knock the hide off that very recognizable ball ans place that SOB right outside of the park… Such a movie is James ’s latest “Malignant”. I don’t know if it will land with most folks but they will definitely feel the wind from the swing. This is a movie I believe it's best to go and blind so I will not be giving away not one single detail about the film save to speak on it in broad strokes. It is silly, it is..it’s preposterous, At times I don't know that it necessarily made sense and yet it did, The acting is only serviceable, and as I've said amongst friends many times I'm not a fan of that particular colorization that is taking ahold of horror films lately where they're painted in grays and greens and grains and colors so dark that even in the daytime it seems to still be dark. I think it's important that audiences know that terrifying things and horrifying things can still take place even in the daytime in fact I find it scarier when they do. “Rosemary's Baby” “The Shining”, “The Omen”, “Jaws”, “Hellraiser”, “Phantasm”, Many of our favorite horror films had the scares and the settings for fear take place in the day, and daylight looked like daylight.
What Malignant may lack in details like “Why is it midnight in the afternoon” and “Why are the police such freaking idiots” it makes up for in sheer out of its mind insane audacity. Something I feel we have lost in horror for quite some time. Sure on the smaller indie circuit we have gotten some bizarre films like The Void” or “Baskin” or “Color Out of Space” but those are more trippy than ridiculous and loony, and they're not mainstream. This is more in the realm of Cronenberg in his heyday with stuff like “Scanners” and “The Brood” and add in a little bit of Argento, and a pinch of some of those grindhouse films from the 70s, but sold to the same audiences as “Poltergeist”. Its moody, it has presence, and it starts off feeling like most of what you’ve seen out there and THEN…it devolves into something much more delicious and absurd. It’s setup leads you to the water but not to drink just yet, that’s saved for the reveal, which in and of itself is creepy enough on its own invoking terrors seen in sikw very well known sci-fi films, but it refuses to settle there goes still even further with an all out martial arts extravaganza that has to be seen to be believed. There's a Stephen King short story that was transformed to a mid budgeted semi cult movie that Malignant reminded me of heavily, nevermind a few other films that are in it’s sub-genre, but I won't say because I feel as though it would give the entire thing away. I definitely don't know whether it will be for everyone, but I think if you know going in what to expect in regards to how off best it turns you may be able to enjoy it a little bit more and I also feel as though its presence was sorely needed on the field right now. Movies in general are having trouble with variety the risk-averse nature of the industry is keeping them from having output that isn't almost a direct mimic or a copy of what has already been successful, so it's fun when you see somebody who has been as successful as James Wan constantly mess with the formula a little bit and move out of the range of what you might expect him to do because I personally did not see this coming at all and I am in a lot of ways happy for it. Malignant was a fun trip because while I did have in mind the destination the path getting there was as much of an adventure as one could ask for with a final act that is as WTF as anything Ive seen in awhile and again not the Richard Stanley “I’m confused” WTF, but the Cronenberg Videeodrome TV set kind of WTF, and you know what? we're not getting much of that in the movies these days so to that I say thank you Mr. Wan . Enjoy your bowl of batsh** insane folks.
CandyMan: Say My Name.
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Who doesn't want to in one way or another have their name ring out? To be heard, recognized and seen.. It’s the motivation behind James Cagney's primal scream in “White Heat”, the fued in Christopher Nolan's “The Prestige”, I suspect it’s woefully behind many of Kanye West antics, and it underlies the story of infidelity in Destiny Child's “Say My Name”. If anything in particular stuck out and reached out to me from Nia Dacosta and Jordan Peele's reincarnation of “Candyman”..it was the words “Say my name”. It stuck out because it was said quite often and repeated in various iterations ad-nasuem, I believe it was even used in the trailer. It also stuck out this because in and enough itself for me it held a certain power. I think anyone who feels voiceless, who feels unheard, unseen, unrecognized knows the power of these words. Being hurt is one thing, being silenced as well is insult to injury. Much of this colors and undergirds the themes in Candyman. These few words also represented my problems with the film. So much of what doesn’t work about Candyman was there in an obnoxiously repetitive habit of being on the nose. Preachy to the point of inducing laughter. The movie never fully trust itself, all the best parts of this movie and I think there are a few more than there are bad ) existed when this movie trusted the story to tell itself. Trusted the actors, trusted its own writing, trusted the imagery. The worst parts of it were when it felt it the need to repeatedly call out its themes and it's commentary directly to us through tired, weak exposition that it then has to step back and raise his hands up and say “Hey we all know this is a little corny but nonetheless here it is AGAIN”
The opening of the movie is very effective. A genial, but misunderstood man hides in the walls of the Cabrini Green projects, the police suspect he is the man behind razor blades appearing in children’s candy, they also didn’t care until it was a white child who was hurt. Sherman Fields ( the black man the cops are after) is instantly a empathetic figure, one might branch out beyond what they see and think that the inner sanctity of those walls present may be the only safe space for this man and that maybe it was the previous iterations of the candy man that softly spoke to him and suggested this be a place he come to, the movie misses an opportunity to show it, but it feels probable. When two grown women were down there he stays hidden, but when he sees an opportunity to speak to a child, he comes forth offering the gifts that made him famous, ( alot of this movie speaks every so slightly to the importance for doing what’s for you it just never congeals) the kid initially taking aback by a man coming out of the walls suddenly screams.... This scream is heard by the police they enter into the building and they do what police are known to do. Its a very effective opening because it instantly and without a lot of heavy imagery or exposition calls back to the fragility of black life in this country, the idea that anything as simple as as falling in love or bringing joy to children can end with your life being taken away it's tragic enough on its own add to that that this child had to grow up most likely believing that in some way he played a role in causing candy man's death is yet another form of tragedy.
We are from here introduced to Yahya's Anthony McCoy and Teyonah Parris's Brianna Cartwright as a young aspirational black couple, and then to Brianna's brother Troy and his boyfriend, They join Brianna and Anthony for a light dinner and some wine (mostly wine) and here is where the movie shows its first flaw and what will be a continued theme, and that is the constant need, the impetus to want to beat the audience over the head with its central ideas and themes and the clumsy ways it finds some of its storytelling. It happens here with Troy giving us the backstory to the original candy man as a way of inciting incident for Anthony to begin his journey by way of a candlelit ghost story..It feels very “we were looking for ways to find Anthony’s way into this and got bored”. It's also one of those things where the movie understands what it's doing and so again it steps back from it almost with a sly smile saying “I know this is silly but we have to do this”, but the thing is there appears readily to be a number of ways you could have had this happen without doing it in such a hammer it to a nail type of way. That being said with much in this movie for me many things that it did wrong it almost instantaneously came back with something that is good and what was interesting about that initial interaction was the way that Anthony responds to it as compared to everyone else, especially when you look at everyone else's situations everyone seems to be. All the others in the setting seem happy with where they're at in their life and their positions they seem to have found their way and found themselves and know themselves in these ways and it's said in various ways in the in the script that doesn't feel heavy or spotlighty. Anthony is immediately grabbed by the story because he feels its power, and he longs for it, it's power the fact that it's going on this long, that it lasted this long ..this story, the fact that it's actually real and that there's information behind it which suggest it’s legacy he feels and fills it it and you can see it on Yahya's muscular and angled face.
An essential part of this movie It's Yahya's detailed nuanced performanc. While it’s not not greatest I’ve ever seen it's not just some run of the mill horror performance either. The layers he adds in the ability to convey both vulnerability and rage and sometimes in the same place is stupendous. There is the scene in the apartment with the white critic where Yahya stunningly plays in this very strange place where he is both possessed and still fully himself in a limbo of recognizing what hes doing while not completely recognizing what he doing. When he suggest that the critic saying Candyman's name it is emblematic of all the things the movie wants to say about the nuance of the relational hurt, pain, and rage behind not only black people and white people's relational dynamics but the artist snd the critic. You see a childish glee but also some pull back, and it’s ever so slight…I marveled..he will continue this kind of work and other types throughout this movie I cannot talk enough of or about. His performance alone is enough to give this movie a lot more credibility than it deserves and it isn’t the only one.
Vanessa Williams is in this movie five minutes,, it is a very very good five minutes. It continues the films trend of it’s best storytelling coming not from it’s constant cueing to messaging and heavy exposition but it’s actors. It was every bit as good as the trailer usage of her implies, its only flaw being she isn’t in there more, especially since it really would make more sense to focus on her aspect of the story so it feels more earned. Coleman Domingo is another who has a very similar story in the flaws of the movie, for his part also adds an important aspect to the vitality of a story. His speech at the end is magnificent and he eats up every scene he is in. Actors and imagery are what combined to make this movie for me work on some level. The body work is absolutely sensational and Dacosta understands the importance of pictures and poses to terror as well as the importance of rhe body.. How people move through the world has alot to do woth how we see them as does decay. There are alot of great shots of shaking hands, long shots of a particular expression, the willingness to hold it to let it retain its power. After all imagery both in lifeless things and people is just as much a part storytelling as the words, and DaCosta for her part understands the power of both actor and Image to get across a message in certain ways and the ones that work WORK, especially in combination with Robert A A Lowes music. The imagery and the exposition and dialogue that don't are the reason I didn't come away feeling like this was a new horror classic, but merely a good horror movie. The Horror and or Terror in this movie as with all movies is subjective, and for me most of it was highly effective. A lot of the shots and images meant to horrify or terrify us were well done because they lived in this space of somewhere between light and shadow, between good and bad, sweet and repelling twisted, gnarled, and beautiful. The usage of artist Kara Walkers work is the light snd shadow, as well as the gallery space where Candyman darts in-between. There is Colman Domingos William, whose connection to these themes I'll leave out for the sake of spoilers. There is the Candy itself, sweet but with razor blades, and Sherman Fields the latest iteration of Candyman who is also sweet but repells even when he doesn't mean to, and there is Yahya..one half of a very distinctive and good looking body and face scarred, picked at, bleeding and festering . This particular works because it's not a commentary that expoits a zeitgeist and deals on tropes about certain kind of people and these are the parts of the film that work. These are the parts where the movie seemed to trust what it does enough to just be and existas a horror movie that finds the political through the persona, but they're constantly interrupted by tacked unnecessary speeches about gentrification, and what black people “don't do, and murders of white people that seem to be purely for the enjoyment of watching white folks get theirs. I too like watching white people especially get their come-uppance but it has to be in a situation like Wes Cravens “The People Under the Stairs” where that come-uppance has story and build-up its not just random teenagers and self important critics who also happen to kinda be telling the truth about certain types of art. Many of the killls here are empty, they looked good, I like the mirror shots and such but with nothing behind them its just mechanics gears and bolts with no emotive power and no terror or horror. The terror in this movie comes from things like the acting and from the bones of the story and the power of suggestion earlier spoken to in tapes that feature the voice of Virginia Madsens Helen Lyle. From the wonderful usage of space lies the elevator where and inverted Candyman looks down on Anthony, and from the body horror of rotting flesh.
The power of the suggestion lies in the invocative power of legend, that is the summoning, Had the creators stuck to that and believed in that I think you'd have and excellent film, as is it's pretty good but also pretty flawed, but in my opinion so was the original. I must say there has been a strange but fascinating revisionist look back at Bernard Rose's original film that acknowledges rightfully what works in that film, but also maybe exaggerates some of what it did and how good it was. While the original and it’s sequel (Candyman: Farewell to The Flesh) are beguiling, haunting, and sensual films as well a a couple of my favorite horror films I still see them as very very flawed and sort of incomplete. I find the storytelling to at times be disjointed, the dualogue to be weak in many places and its depiction of Helen flirts with white saviorism though it never commits to that in anyway that endangers it. Rose's Candyman is just effective at what it's supposed to be doing which is in different ways the same as I view this movie. Another time I might have to have this conversation about the ways in which we look at current black art and the ways that connects back to a cyclical condition of black people being hardest on our own artist, especially in comparison to the way that we look at our white counterparts and in an essence (even though not necessarily on purpose) end up giving them passes for the same things that we come down hard on our own artist for, but that's a conversation for another time for now I'll say that the reason why that Rose's works slightly better and ONLY slightly better than this one for me is because it unlike this rendition, the 1992 version did believe in the invocative power of legend and it did believe in the power of saying a name and it led with that. This one felt that it had to add further ingredients that the people involved weren't really in a position to tell in this particular way just yet ... I think anyone can understand the want and desire to be heard to have one's name called out over time and it's an effective tool to use and an interesting tool to use to flip on its head and say what happens when that urge goes too far and what happens when that urge is never answered and becomes too hungry and what is that rage turned into - and that was the more interesting movie…. For now we're left with something that merely lives in the name of it but doesn't quite conjure it.
Kathryn Bigelow and the Art of one of the greatest chase scenes in movie history
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The point break chase scene is a seminal work in the art of creating that particular type of scene. In my opinion it’s one of the ten or so greatest ever. The choreography, the editing, the adept use of pov for heightened realism, and depth of field which is connected to the pov of either the person running or the person giving chase allows us to see the specifics of the environment, and to ask questions pertinent to the tension, where are they? Where are they going? And most importantly “What’s going to happen? “. I’ve always thought of great fight scenes or chase scenes as little films within themselves. There has to be an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, falling action and an ending, same as in the rudimentary understanding of dramatic structure. From the French Connection to Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon, to Die Hard, and more recently John Wick you can find this kind of structure and storytelling in the great action sequences.
The Inciting incident in the classic “Boulder action Sequence” in Raiders of the Lost Ark”
The Rising action and climax takes place when Indiana finds out Satipo has betrayed him and subsequently escapes a trap door, and a falling wall.
Quite literally falling action…
The End.
In the beginning of the portion where a foot chase ensues, Keanu is entering into an alley way from the street and the camera quickly cuts from a medium- wide depth of field to a shallow, which gives a sense of the width, space, and ultimately freedom of the city. The field though, becomes increasingly shallow as Bigelow zooms in while simultaneously moving the camera backwards. As Keanu comes towards us and into the narrow and shaded alleyway Bigelow’s camera marries the audience to the same sense of danger the subject of her camera might feel, something akin to the feeling one might get watching a mongoose entering a snake hole, simultaneously allowing us to conflate our experience with the character, tying us to the stakes, and providing a shared sense of experience through manipulation of simulacra.
The Alleyway entrance is getting…
smaller…
and smaller…
The tension is built from the scenes before the alleyway, and it is bi-focal. Bigelow wants us to feel this scene from both the POV of both the protagonist and antagonist. We see the world around them in multiple cuts and assume at some point either can enlist some help from their partners, but from the alleyway on there is a sense of foreboding.. because at this point both are on their own, and both have no clue where they are going, and neither do we the audience. In many films featuring chase scenes at least one of the three ; Audience, Chaser, and Chasee - knows exactly where they’re going, (maybe all three ) for example in Michael Mann's seminal Crime Thriller “HEAT" many of the chase sequences are about prediction and entrapment, and in the finale both Pacino and DeNiro know where DeNiro is going and we know where they are going through exposition.) This is not to imply there’s no drama there, we still want to know how it’s going to end. But that the drama in those chases is extracted more from a macro sense (The ultimate stakes) with some micro (The immediate objective) involved. In Bigelow's point break it is mostly the micro, the immediacy, the moment is what both Johnny Bodhi live for and that drives the action, this is underlined by the use of a hand held camera, concise editing, and POV shots that provide a very limited depth of vision. The greater stakes more related to the plot and driving force of the film in its entirety act as a foundation. And then there are the obstacles. Obstacles are a precursor to conflict, conflict a precursor to drama. Drama can be looked at in the macro – “undercover” cop joins a gang falls for both the leader, and the girl, but must still do his job – or in the micro – cop must chase and detain robber who happens to now be his friend. Make it the reverse for Swayze, and these are the stakes. The obstacles to each of their goals are physical as in most chase scenes, and take place not in space in a galaxy far far away, on a forest moon, or in a cavernous boobie trapped temple, but in a small quiet beach neighborhood, and therein lies that beauty of the scene.
Chaos Taking place in the peaceful setting of beachside burbs is part of the brilliance and long lasting appeal of point breaks chase scene
The ability to make the things we take for granted, or things we associate with anything but danger, and make them feel perilous and fraught with danger is ingenious in my opinion. To have them become a core part of the drama by creating tension through using particular qualities as obstacles is art. This particular skill was most recently captured in the Netflix film “The Ritual “. The woods and especially the indistinguishable nature of the trees in this particular wood are normally associated with things like serenity, peacefulness, the idea that nothing goes on here. Homogeny is typically interpreted as safe not ominous. But director David Bruckner turned that on its head and that “sameness" became part and parcel to the terror and dread the audience now shared with the characters who slowly realize they are hopelessly lost. The underlying thought being “It all looks the same, there’s no way to tell which way is out! “. Akira Kurosawa was a definitive master at allowing the most basic elements to provide not only the mood but an obstacle to be overcome, from the Heat and Rain in Rashomon to wind in Yojimbo. This technique also has the effect of grounding us to the reality of the situation. Kathryn Bigelow takes a simple residential setting and turns the mundane existence of fences, wading pools, swings, sliding doors, housewives, children, garbage truck men, and even dogs, into thrills, obstacles to be negotiated, broken, maneuvered around or through. Now anything, and anyone appears as an impediment to the possibility of our charming Zen Bank robber getting away, or our cool cop catching his man. I don’t know that anyone will ever see a neighborhood as ominous, or dangerous because of this film (As they did the ocean after Jaws), but there is instead a continued subtext of the story of these men who refuse to live in the margins of uniformity. The neighborhood one of the prime mental indicators of civility, and docility, – whether true or not – is a friend to neither Johnny nor the thrill seeking Bodi, and both have no problem breaking the rules, but while Bodi is willing to destroy it if need be, Johnny is adamant about its protection- despite his disdain for them- all of this is present in the physical action.
Bodhi/Patrick Swayze surprises and throws down a woman watering her grass while on the run. Johnny jumps over her.
Johnny/Keanu Reeves does however grab a potted plant to break the window of a locked sliding door… another obstacle in his pursuit of The Robber. Telling of his willingness to break the rules , but not to the damage of people or living things
Bodhi throws a full grown pit bull at Johnny. Notice it is Bodhi creating a lot of the obstacles for Johnny, a typical trait of villainy that would further inform the audience (beyond the mask) of who the intended bad guy is.
