KWIF = Kent's Week In Film. A real mixed bag.
This Week:
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023, d. James Wan, in theatre)
American Fiction (2023, d. Cord Jefferson, in theatre)
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (2023, d. Kelly Fremon Craig, Crave)
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But I don't really want to rehash all of that, because this film doesn't seem particularly interested or concerned about the meta-reality of its existence. This film wants little more than to be the sequel to Aquaman, which you may or may not recall, grossed over one billion dollars at the box office, which was substantially more than any Superman, Wonder Woman, or Justice League film managed to do before it.
I was more impressed by Aquaman than actually liking Aquaman when I first watched, but a rewatch or two since, I've really grown fond of it's tonally schizophrenic nature, and it's you've-never-seen-this-before bonkers ambition. In some respects, "...Lost Kingdom" reaches for the same thing, and, in some respects, succeeds. But not always.
The he-bro energy that Momoa brings to the role is what held me back from liking the first movie the first time around, and it's working twice as hard at getting in your face here. It's like the character, rather than growing out of ridiculous, juvenile behaviour as sovereign of the seven seas, has doubled down on it. It's unfortunate that it's the title character of the film that I can least tolerate.
The story finds two pairs of odd-couple team ups. First there's Black Manta (Yahya Abdul Mateen II) and nebbish Dr. Stephen Shen (Randall Park) who are venturing in dark corners of the world looking for Atlantis and its powers, only to find something really dark and powerful, leading to accelerating earth's climate crisis (the very same crisis that the Atlanteans are willing to go to war with the surface world over, rather than expose themselves and try to collaborate on a solution). Then there's Aquaman and his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) learning to be brothers, amend their differences, and stop Black Manta's evil plot. It's basically a buddy road-trip movie, writ large.
Mateen's Black Manta basically is possessed by the Lost Kingdom's ruler, and he's acting irrationally in his quest for vengeance against Aquaman, and it's up to Dr. Shen to be both the comic relief and voice of reason. Park seems to be having fun in the role. Mateen has presence, but seems trapped by the plot which doesn't really allow his character to have much depth.
It's really Wilson's Ocean Master that brings the film to life, and clearly what Wan intended with his muse (Wilson is an integral part three of Wan's four major franchises). Just like Aquaman and Mera had a globe-spanning adventure in the first film, Aquaman and Orm have a not-too-dissimilar adventure here. It feels like the classic 80's sequel trope of doing-it-all-again, the-same-but-different.
The imagination, creativity, scale and design is all still on the screen, and boy did I delight in the ships and seadragons, and Cephalopod sidekicks, and big James Bondian-style villains lair, and henchmen and jailbreaks and anything but cliched superhero action out of this. Putting Mera and Atlanna and others sort of on the sideline did provide the film the ability to put the focus on its four leads.
It's 2 hours and 4 minutes long, which by superhero movie standards of the past decade, is on the shorter end of the spectrum. It feels like the opening act was rushed, yet still feels like it could have been further clipped. Same with the post script where Aquaman has to give a big rousing speech, which I barely buy into to begin with, and then he caps off with a big howl and devil fingers like he's leaving the ring at a WWE event.
On the one hand I wish Wan could do a third one of these, because I think there's something's utterly unique and wild about these pictures, but I also don't think I really want more of Momoa in the role. It never was a great fit.
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American Fiction is up for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best music, best lead actor, and best supporting actor. It's been a year where the roles of women had stood out immensely more than the men, and I had a list of favourite actresses, most of who got nominated. Of the men, I couldn't even think of a list... but Wright and Brown are so intrinsically watchable on screen, so good as to seem effortless generally, I understood their nomination before I even watched the film. After watching, both nods are well earned. (Plus, Wright has been one of my favourite on-screen presences for over 20 years, he's due for the recognition). I wish there was more Tracee Ellis Ross though.
Best Screenplay also makes sense, as I quite loved American Fiction's mix of satire and family dramedy, which deftly juggled both in presenting the story of Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Wright), an erudite author and professor whose sense of the world seems to be crumbling around him. Put on leave of absence, and unable to get a book published, he returns to visit the family he keeps at a distance, while also writes a novel full of trashy Black stereotypes as an exercise in parody but it immediately sells. As it becomes a sensation, spiralling wildly out of his control, he struggles with what it all means across many contexts, and it wrecks him.
Monk's wrestling with identity and race, shaped off the back of his upbringing is a pretty complex one that the film scratches at enough to draw blood. It's a character study, not a universal statement of Black existence (which doubles as one of the theses of the film), and Monk actually learns a lesson or three which seems to be a result of age and the well-masked trauma of facing his own mortality and thinking about his legacy.
There is so much to glean directly on the surface, but there's so much underneath as well. Where some may love the literary lampooning, others may gravitate towards the wry familial connections. To me, both are an integral part of this portrait of Monk in his mid-to-late 50's still coming to terms with who he is and who he should be, to himself, to his family, to the Black community, to the literary world, and to the culture at large. It's a lot for anyone to process.
Minor spoiler warning. The film's post-script is freaking hilarious, but it completely dodges the James Frey-esque fallout that you would think would happen given that it has actually happened. Of course Monk is a genius and could probably spin his deception right back onto his audience and have them buying into his experiment even further. But the film missed the opportunity for him to showcase his genius and really mess with the elistst crowd.
I enjoyed this film immensely.
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Her family relocates from New York City (away from Grandma, her best friend) to New Jersey, where she is immediately friended by her neighbour, Nancy, who's best described as the prototype for Cher from Clueless or Regina from Mean Girls. As Margaret tries to fall in step with Nancy and her gang (all who cannot stop talking about getting their periods and becoming women) she starts to desperately wish for hers. At the same time, she starts questioning her faith, as the daughter of a lapsed Catholic mother and Jewish father. Her mother's estrangement from her family also comes into play, as does a bit of boy trouble, and reckoning with being part of the mean girl crowd and the other girls she's bullied.
As a father of a non-binary child with ADHD and GAD who was the same age as Margaret at the tail end of COVID lockdowns and in the internet age where every child has a half-dozen screens at their disposal, I found AYTG?IM,M to be adorably cute and simplistic, and wished that my child could have such basic concerns as Margaret instead of the 2+ year coming-of-age shitstorm they had to wade through. I suppose that young, cis het, neuro-typical girls may still find something very relatable in this for-its-time revolutionary young-adult fiction, but it feels like like an ancient artifact to me. Beyond that, it's a very well told, charming picture for what it is, and yeah, I enjoyed the 70's decor, wardrobes, vehicles and everything else quite a bit.
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