KWIF=Kent Watches, Intermittently, Film. I'm just, like, too tired, like, all the time.
This post:
Black Bag (2025, d. Steven Soderbergh - in theatre)
Anora (2024, d. Sean Baker - AmazonPrime)
The People's Joker (2022, d. Vera Drew - Blu-Ray)
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Soderbergh's second release of 2025 (after Presence, which came and went so fast in January barely anyone noticed) certainly has the feel of this current stage of Soderbergh's career, marked by a curious use of different types of lenses (my knowledge of lens types and the effects they give is fleeting so I won't even attempt to elaborate any further) and natural lighting that give his digital movies almost the texture of film, while providing the filmmaker the tools to shoot fast, cheap, mobile, and prolifically.
The director "retired" from filmmaking in 2013 after his Liberace biopic went straight to HBO, skipping theatres altogether, and decided to focus his efforts on entering the golden age of television. Since "retiring" he has directed 40 episodes of television (across 1 series and 3 mini-series) and, oops, 9 more films before this one. That's Soderbergh in retirement mode. Since returning to film in 2017, he's become fascinated with digital technology, including shooting entire films on his iPhone. There are obvious limitations to that kind of exercise, and some of those productions wear their experimentalism quite proudly. This isn't one of those productions, but it's not a straightforward Hollywood-glossy production either. It settles in somewhere in the middle between daring and refined.
A large part of the polished feel comes from a script by veteran David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible) who has scripted three of Soderbergh's last four productions. Black Bag finds Blanchett and Fassbender as a long-time married couple who both work for British intelligence. It is a field that can be difficult for romantic partners to maintain trust in one another as they can bury any secret (including infidelity) under the "black bag" paradigm. But, Fassbender's George Woodhouse is utterly devoted to his wife, even more so than to his country (which he is very devoted to). When he's given a tip that someone in his circle of friends is possibly a double agent, including potentially his wife, he holds a particularly tense dinner party with the two other couples-from-work in question (Tom Burke, Naomi Campbell, Rege-Jean Page, and Marisa Abela).
The other couples provide a contrast to the pairing of George and Kathryn St. Jean, but also leaves the audience wondering if there are similarities too. After the party, the signs seem to point to Kathryn selling government secrets, and George's devotion to Kathryn is put to the test the more he investigates. The question the film asks isn't so much a "who's really the double agent?", but instead "is Kathryn as devoted to George as she says she is?", and conversely, "is George as devoted to Kathryn as he says he is?"
This isn't a big flash-bang Mr. and Mrs. Smith action movie, but something much more cerebral, and even more so emotional, despite George's steely, near-robotic demeanour when he's in dogged pursuit of his lead. As the film delves further into their relationship, and the intermingling of relationships of their colleagues, the intensity threatens to boil over. The metatext of the messy business of international espionage is only tangentially commented upon, this is more a relationship thriller than a political one, but it's also one laden with attractive people flirting and more. What's not to like?
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Baker won four Oscars for Anora, in the categories as director, writer, editor, and producer (the only other person to win four Oscars in one year: Walt Disney) and star Mikey Madison took home the best actress Oscar in a hotly contested year.
I have not seen any of Baker's prior films, because I've been afraid to. I have heard of the reputation of his films, and despite what they say about his fairly light touch, I still was thinking it would be a bait-and-switch and I was going to be challenged a lot more than I want to most of the time.
Anora opens in a strip club, with dancers strip teasing and lap dancing, tits out within seconds of the opening frame. I'm still that guy who gets uncomfortable with nudity in a motion picture (what's the appropriate reaction here?!?), and the first act of this production was pretty heavy duty with nudity and sex. To Baker's credit, his camera is never leering, it's pretty passive in its observation. Madison plays Ani, a dancer, who is pulled in to the VIP lounge to work the young Vanya since she's the only one who speaks Russian. The son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, Vanya is living in the States to escape the expectations of his parents. He and Ani hit it off, and he invites her out for a private gig, which extends into a weeklong, whirlwind gig as his girlfriend, and a lot of sex. A lot. But also, seemingly, connection. The girlfriend gig ends in an impromptu trip to Vegas, where they decide to get married, and a hard line between the very uncomfortable, sex-and-nudity laden first act and the rest of the movie is drawn.
As rumours of Vanya's marriage circulate, the family fixer gets involved, bringing in some goons to sort out the truth. Vanya fights for his marriage, tries pulling rank on the thugs, and Ani fights back herself. Things would feel pretty serious and pretty dangerous if Baker didn't really twist the physicality into something more akin to slapstick than brutal violence. Once Vanya hears his parents are coming, though, he, quite literally, runs, leaving everything and everyone behind (it's such a comedic moment, you could almost picture the cartoon trail of dust behind him). It's all kind of shenanigans thereafter, as Ani and the goon squad try tracking down Vanya in the clumsiest manner possible, and the third act brings Vanya's parents into the picture.
It was as I heard it was, a surprisingly entertaining, light on its feet drama that basically sits on the Pretty Woman trope and farts quite loudly upon it. It's not a rousing or uplifting comedy, it's still a drama, but it's much much lighter than what I was expecting and the laughs come more from performance than situation (as the situation remains pretty intense for Ani). Madison's Oscar winning performance at the front of the film require her to craft a character who is comfortable with her profession, and knows how to handle herself in pretty much any situation. The second act finds her taking a back seat (sometimes literally) to the goon squad and much of her role is reacting to her increasingly desperate situation, quietly assessing the level of threat to her, and contemplating what her connection to Vanya really is. What Madison is able to get across in these quiet moments is, at least for me, the more impressive part of her performance. Saying a lot while saying nothing can often go under the radar, but the film absolutely hangs off it through the latter 2/3s of the film.
I'm not going to debate whether Anora was the best film of 2024 or even the most deserving of the Oscars best picture nominees...awards do have meaning, but they are never unimpeachable (and the categories are so subjective to one's particular tastes anyway).... I will say I have no problem with its successes at all, I think Anora earned them. I will work my way back through Baker's filmography at some point. Anora has confirmed the expectations that were set for me.
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On the blu-ray menu screen, writer-director-star Vera Drew, in her "Joker Harlequin" guise, introduces the menu, and then proceeds to vamp for near upon five minutes before starting to launch into reading the letter from "an unnamed media conglomerate" and also to read from the multi-paged legal review of her film from a battery of lawyers she hired to ensure that her use of the characters fell under the fair use and parody banner. (Drew does mention that she was told the menu screen can handle up to 20 minutes of recorded content, and she seemed intent on pushing it all the way).
The People's Joker is a very personal tale for Drew, who starts off as a young boy (whose dead name is bleeped out whenever it is said, save for one choice moment) in Smallville, rural nowhere America, feeling lost in her skin, with a mother whose expectations for her child are utterly conformist (and a father visually absent from the story despite still being around). Young Bleep upon expressing her feelings of discomfort is taken to Arkham Asylum where Dr. Crane (not Frasier) assesses the child and prescribes Smilex, which chemically helps Bleep get through the next 20 years of life by numbing their everything with a smile.
Bleep becomes fixated on Lorne Michaels (voiced by Maria Bamford) and his UCB Live sketch comedy show, and its star Ras Al Ghul (David Liebe Hart of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! of which Drew was an editor on), and ventures to Gotham to be a part of the UCB, only to find it's a multi-tiered system requiring a lot of money to progress through.
Bleep meets the Penguin and the two start an outsider comedy club which brings in more outsiders like Bane and Poison Ivy, and also the Joker, a trans man who Bleep immediately falls head over heels for.
The film is an exceptionally personal one for Drew, pretty much an autobiography told through a superhero filter. A scene between Nicole Kidman and Val Kilmer's Batman in Batman Forever was the key that unlocked Drew's gender awakening as a child, and her relationship with a trans comedian contained the combination that finally opened the vault.
It's also a film about Drew's experience in the comedy scene and the various institutions that cowtow to profit-driven expectations rather than art (though Drew is the first to admit that her comedy, and that of her collective, is also pretty out there in its experimentalism, and often not very good).
This intersection of comedy and superheroes is certainly two of my big pop culture interests, and having trans and non-binary people very close to me in my life makes trans film a gateway to helping understand their experiences better without having to be totally invasive about it.
I found the story of The People's Joker very compelling, even if I did spend a lot of the run time doing mental gymnastics trying to translate Joker Harlequin's experiences in the film to maybe Vera Drew's real-life experiences with Lorne Michaels and the UCB. It's all the more disappointing then that I found much of The People's Joker to be somewhat painful to watch, especially when I have so much respect for the creative effort that was involved in its creation.
Drew's primary visual vehicle for the film is green screen acting in front of digital backdrops. The effects is not much different than the backdrop you might have on a Zoom call, and the weird fading and halo effects it causes. It's a style of production that was clearly one Drew was familiar with from her Tim and Eric years (as well as her many low budget and public access projects beyond that), but what's maybe entertaining for a 2-minute sketch is just rather ugly to sit through for the better part of a 93 minute runtime of a movie.
There's a heavy dose of mixed media throughout, including extended fully animated sequences in different styles (as well as animated sequences inserted into TV screens), some stop motion and experimental visuals. It's a visually dense production that regularly and brazenly shifts styles that it embraces in the editing rather than feeling like a patch. It's pretty scrappy, and, as I said, admirable, but it doesn't make it any prettier to look at. (I should note that some of the costuming and makeup is pretty terrific...and also some of it's pretty bad). Drew's editing though, bridges it all into something quit legible.
But it's that personal story at the centre, with Vera Drew's writing, editing and acting talents carrying the film past it's less than appealing aesthetics and into key trans cinema, and its wild experimentalism, not to mention it's barrage of multimedia asides (like the in-world "Suicide Cop" TV show) that is certainly what has already made it a cult classic ready for midnight screening rotation.
(I should note the blu-ray comes with a low-budget pilot, a full 20+ minute production of Suicide Cop which felt like ready-made Adult Swim programming and I enjoyed quite a bit).
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