I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(me) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad. Or, maybe not so bad. Enh, whatever. It's what we do.
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Fire Island (2022, d. Andrew Anh - Disney+)
Gay romance is still a burgeoning force in mainstream media, and one that it seems Hollywood is still only backing with trepidation, as if they don't truly believe there's an audience for it. Recent years have seen a few big moves, with Love, Simon, and Call Me By Your Name, and holiday romances like Dashing in December, Single All the Way and Happiest Season. But this year the torch has been lit for gay romcoms with the theatrical release of Billy Eichner's Bros and Fire Island being released on Disney+.
Fire Island shot out like a signal flare announcing the arrival of comedian Joel Kim Booster as a force to be reckoned with. Writing and starring in this wreckingly funny and fiercely gay romantic comedy that takes its inspiration from Pride and Prejudice, no less, Booster draws from his own emotional well for his portrayal of Noah, the super-hot underemployed late-20something himbo who is still figuring out his place in the world. With his regular gang of multicultural friends, they take their annual trip to the Fire Island Pines only to discover that it may be their last trip as they know it. Noah makes it his mission to get his best friend Howie (Bowen Yang) laid, and vows not to have sex until he does. Meanwhile he keeps having heated run-ins with Will (Conrad Ricamora) who is a very successful individual with poor social skills, and while the personality clashes is what draws them to each other, the class differences keep coming between them.
Booster commands this film from moment one, with voice-over narration, with his body, and everything in between. He's in full control of Noah, attempting to act dumber and more vacuous than he is because it lessens the expectations others have for him, and by proxy what he expects for himself. Yang's Howie is riddled with self-consciousness made worse by his utterly shredded and confident BFF not understanding the differences between them. That they're both Asian-American and gay has its own deeply rooted impact on their senses of selves and, despite being a commonality, they deal with the prejudice and the complex it manifests quite differently. Fire Island is exceptionally smart and insightful, with richly drawn characters, and explosively funny situations that never get too unbelievably outlandish. I quite loved it.
--- The Conjuring (2013, d. James Wan - Tubi)
I knew James Wan from his incredibly proficient and joyously outlandish Aquaman and Furious 7, but I had kind of passed over his horror stuff (I think I watched Saw in bits and pieces once). But after last year's very, very wild Malignant, I realized that maybe Wan's horror keyed more into a comic-book sensibility than a grue and gore one. A friend had been trumpeting the greatness of the Conjuring series and I made a point to catch the first one once it hit a streaming service again (who knew that would be Tubi). Long story short, I liked it immensely.
Wan's incredibly smart set-up for the film builds a whole universe around paranormal investigator couple Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and he wants you to be aware of it. They have a past, they have a "treasure room", they have traumas, and they have a child which makes them vulnerable. Lorraine has some form of clairvoyance which is more burden than superpower. They are sought out by a family experiencing increasingly bizarre and threatening phenomena in their new farm home, including the seeming possession of their daughter.
The film is as much a procedural as it is a horror film. It follows the family and really leans into the intensity of the spooks and chills they experience, but it's the Warrens, their process, their crew, their affiliation with the police and their challenging of the evil that engaged me the most. It taps into a more grandiose look at the supernatural that feels especially heightened, as if the Warrens were John Constantine's parents or something. Even though I know a whole massive franchise of films had already been built out of this one film, one could sense that there were a whole franchise of films ready to be built out of what Wan constructed here. Pretty great.
One of the complaints levelled against Black Panther and its sequel is that for all its anti-colonialism stance, there's not really actually any fighting and/or killing of white oppressors. RRR, the epic international smash hit action film from India, has no such qualms.
The most expensive Indian-made film yet, RRR is set in the 1920s during the British rule of the Indian subcontinent. A British administrator and his wife (Ray Stevenson and Alison Doody) abduct a young girl skilled at henna from a village for their own private amusement. The village protector, Khomaram (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), takes on the mission of retrieving the girl. The admin is warned of a possible threat, and they task the ambitious officer Raju (Ram Charan) with quashing the threat. Raju infiltrates some anti-colonialist groups and catches the attention of Khomaram. The two forge an unlikely friendship, built on lies, but built all the same.
You would think that the film would be leading to Raju's betrayal of Khomaram, but it's really the middle of the second act with Raju's redemption arc rounding out the rest of the act, before leading into an all-out assault on the administrator in the third act, and there's no holding back.
RRR is a big, brassy, playful movie that deals almost exclusively in big swings and going over-the-top. It is dealing with a particularly fraught time in India's history, and it's dealing with it in a fanstatical way, a way that is more than just revisionist history, it's superhero fan fiction. The action goes huge, beyond insane a times, circling past ridiculousness and back into awesome territory. But it's also a heart-swelling, chest-thumping good-guys-vs-bad-guys story that's really quite simple to get behind, and yes, the pink skins are without a doubt the bad guys that you actively are rooting against. That the bromance is so loaded with homoerotic undertones is just kind of a bonus, with no painful machismo trying to disguise it. These two men love each other, and will go to such extremes for one another. It's a romp.
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Fighting With My Family (2019, d. Stephen Merchant - Amazonprime)
Prior to being cast as the new Black Widow, I didn't really know Florence Pugh from a hole in the ground. I hadn't really taken note of her in anything in particular and didn't really have much of an opinion on her replacing Scarlett Johansson (except to say that as thoroughly decent a job as ScarJo did as Black Widow, I still never quite felt she sold the "most dangerous woman on the planet" vibe). Smash cut past a couple appearances as Yelena in Black Widow and Hawkeye and Midsommar, I can say I'm quickly a fan. She is an incredibly compelling actress, always working on multiple different levels at the same time. She's an incredibly physical performer, as well as one of the most expressive actors of her generation.
Even still, a WWE-produced wrestling biography? Sure, it's got a pretty great cast (with Nick Frost and Lena Hedy as the British wrestling family patriarch and matriarch), and yeah, Stephen Merchant has proven himself over and over as a smart, funny writer (if not as known for his directing), but why? What makes this story any more compelling than any other wrestler trying to make it?
The answer is, it's got Stephen Merchant at the helm and it stars Florence Pugh. It's not that this story couldn't have been made without them, but it'd be much less of a thing. It adeptly presents us with a close-knit wrestling family, the resentment that comes as a result of Saraya being picked for WWE training and not brother Zak, and the tribulations one so young has to face leaving home for an entirely new world. It's a ridiculously cliche-filled tale, but one that has the truth to back it up, making it shockingly fresh. Pugh just owns the screen every second she's on it, in full command. It's the movie that made me realize I would watch her in pretty much anything.
The Great Race (1965, d. Blake Edwards - Criterion Channel)
Until a few months ago, I wasn't even aware this movie existed. It's a strange miracle of a production that is quite surely part of an era of cinematic excesses, but results in not another long, sandy Biblical/Historical epic or series of fanciful song-and-dance extravagances, but instead something particularly unique: a living cartoon.
Many filmmakers have tried over the years to make live action cartoons, mostly by taking a cartoon property and trying to replicate it in live action. The 90's were rife with these - The Flintstones, Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Yogi Bear - but none really all that successful, mainly because we have actual cartoons to compare them to. They're not films that are innovating but rather emulating.
The Great Race was inspired by an actual New York to Paris race in 1908, as well as director Blake's love of slapstick comedy of Laurel and Hardy and the Mark Brothers. But the result feels less like an homage to cinematic classic comedy than the live action embodiment of Jay Ward Productions cartoons (The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show). Jack Lemmon plays, Professor Fate, a literal moustache-twirling mad scientist villain in the Snidely Whiplash mold, with Peter Falk playing the more sensible, yet dutiful sidekick, Max. Everything Professor Fate and Max do is to get the better of his rival, The Great Leslie, which finds Tony Curtis at his most square-jawed, draped in the whitest of whites, the most manicured nails and primped hair, and a smile that literally gleams. The Great Leslie is the epitome of the cosmopolitan hero, the flawless man, an adventurer so great at adventuring he never gets dirty. It's clear why Professor Fate hates him so, but Fate's every effort to undermine Leslie backfires on him in spectacular fashion. So rather than attack him directly yet again, he sets out to best him at his own game, by beating him in a race around the world. I think worse for ware is Leslie barely even notices Fate, so all of Fate's actions tend to come across as a desperate cry for attention.
This battle of machismo is interrupted by Natalie Wood's Maggie DuBois, who could have just been the token damsel, but Blake and screenwriter Arthur C. Ross make Maggie a modern woman, a suffragette of the era, but also a 60's feminist, drawn in the mould of Nora Charles, a woman who can talk her way into (and out of) pretty much anything. Maggie is an aspiring reporter who talks her way onto the newspaper staff, and just as quickly onto the assignment of covering The Great Race by entering herself into it, and then managing to still carry on when she quite reasonably shouldn't continue.
The race takes the quartet of Leslie, Fate, Maggie and Max (as most of the other competitors do not last long) to curiously entertaining places, and, at one point, forces them to all come together to survive on an ice floe when crossing from Alaska to Russia. The film is perhaps over-extended by its third act, making a detour in the small European kingdom of Carpania, where the perpetually soused crown prince (Jack Lemmon in a second, utterly delightful role) is plotted against, as his backstabbing consorts seek to use Fate's uncanny similarity to undermine the crown. It's at once an utterly unnecessary yet thoroughly entertaining diversion in this 2 1/2 hour film, one that culminates in a ludicrously epic technicolor pie fight (you might be thinking "you've seen one pie fight, you've seen them all"...trust me, if you haven't see this pie fight you just don't know how epic a pie fight can get).
I watched Star Wars about 100 times as a kid. Had I known about The Great Race I probably would have watched it just as much. It's a delight from moment one (perhaps the funniest credits sequence besides Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and features a delightful Henry Mancini score.
--- He Laughed Last (1956, d. Blake Edwards - Criterion Channel)
While I've never been much of a fan Edward's various Pink Panther movies, after the joy of The Great Race I thought I'd second visit into Blake Edwards territory. He Laughed Last is one of his earliest films, and at 75 minutes, it feels interminably long, an elastic of an idea stretched as far as it can go, neither breaking nor returning to shape.
Who is this film's protagonist? The first 20 minutes are completely stolen by Big Dan (played by Fred Flintstone himself Alan Reed) who dies way too soon. He bequeaths his criminal empire to Rosie (Lucy Marlow), who was just a showgirl at the club Big Dan took a liking to. This puts her at odds with dopey wannabe mobster Max (Jesse White) who has aspirations of his own. We spend far too much time with Max and his lame scheming to the detriment of making much of a character out of Rosie, the ostensible protagonist,
That Rosie gets left all of Big Dan's estate makes thing difficult with her cop boyfriend Jimmy (Richard Long). But we don't really get much hijinks of out-of-her-depth Rosie trying to run the mob operation, most of her scenes deal with her toxic relationship with Jimmy...such a bad relationship.
Marlow is delightful as Rosemary in a turn-on-a-dime performance where she goes from ditsy to swooning to tough-talking in seconds. It would have been far better were the film more focused on Rosie and we could have gotten more Marlow. It's pretty hollow otherwise. It feels every inch like a studio-demanded production: "We've got this girl Marlow that we want to make a star, but we don't trust her yet, so don't focus too much on her. Build the picture around her, but let our stable boys like Reed and White do all the heavy lifting We got this crooner, Frankie Laine signed up, but he's a crap actor, but the dames love his, so make sure he's in here, but mostly singing, not talking. Bring it in over 70, but under 80, you got two weeks."
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Damn Yankees (1958, d. George Abbott and Stanley Donen - Tubi)
You know, Damn Yankees is one of those titles that has been circling around me my whole life, but I never really stopped to inquire about it. I kind of knew it was a movie that may or may not have been derived from a musical, or stage production of some kind. I think I assumed it was about the Civil War, but I just didn't know.
I've gotten more appreciative of musicals in general and having explored Bob Fosse's repertoire this past year, I was curious to see Gwen Verdon in the flesh (as opposed to being portrayed by Michelle Williams), so I dove into Damn Yankees and was shocked to find it was a basesball musical about a deal with the devil. I honestly didn't see that coming at all.
It's a trifle of a story, a flittering whimsy about wish fulfillment. An average middle-aged schlub, Joe Boyd (Robert Shafer) is tired of seeing his beloved Washington Generals lose and so he makes a deal with the devil (Ray Walston) to become the pro-slugger that he always wished he could be, and he's turned into the young, strapping, toe-headed Tab Hunter, under the guise of Joe Hardy. In doing so, he leaves his "old girl", his wife Meg (Shannon Bolin) behind.
He has immediate and massive impact on the success of the Generals, fame and glory are his, but he starts to miss his "old girl", and goes back to see how Meg is doing. Joe's pining for his "old girl", who he made an armchair widow neglecting her for basesball 6 months out of every year, threatens his deal with the devil, and so the devil sets his right hand temptress, Lola, on Joe. Meg, meanwhile, seems to have no inner life. Her husband just up and disappeared and she's just putting up a brave front. Then when Joe Hardy, the new most famous person in town comes and rents a room from her, neighbours begin to talk (if only the story delved into actual conceits of infidelity, with Joe being tempted by Lola, or Meg being very attracted to young Joe....)
But Joe is a good old boy, and in the end, he doesn't want his dreams, just the comfort of the woman he loves, leading to a most bizarre final shot of Shafer and Bolin embracing while behind them Walston jumps up and down in a tantrum that is direly undignified.
The story doesn't really delve too deeply into any internal conflict. It's not really a look at "settling down" or "lost dreams" or the "seven-year-itch" or any of that. It doesn't really ever let Joe revel in his successes, and it never lets us even imagine that he's going to stick with his new life. Almost immediately he wants to return to his old one. He's not even really tempted by Lola, and the production has to do a lot of summersaults in order to make you think the devil might actually win.
I didn't really care for any of the songs (though it was good to finally put classics like "(You Gotta Have) Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants" in context) and the dancing (for someone who doesn't have much appreciation for it) was fine, sometimes really great (particularly during Two Lost Souls). Yet, despite my griping, I did quite enjoy it. Verdon, a handsome woman with a dynamic form and huge presence, is easily the stand-out performer of the piece. I just think there's more possibility in the story than was actually executed.
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Confess, Fletch (2022, d. Greg Mottola - rental)
It's been a long, long road to getting a new adaptation of Gregory Macdonald's "Fletch" series, with many, many false starts (I recall a Kevin Smith-helmed, Jason Lee-starring Flech being positioned back in the early 2000's). Much of the old Chevy Chase Fletch has aged poorly, and Fletch Lives was always an abomination (like 20 novels to adapt and they went with an original story?)
But a new feature from Superbad and Adventureland's Greg Mottola starring Jon Hamm in the title role seems like a natural, sure-fire can't-lose starter to a new, better run of Fletch movies. However, the studio behind it, Miramax (wait, that still exists?), via Paramount, did very, very little to promote the film. I only heard about it from Jon Hamm appearing on a podcast. And by all accounts it sounds like Paramount even buried the film on their Paramount+ streaming service. It's baffling as to why there was so little confidence in the film. Did nobody at Paramount watch it? It's great!
Confess, Fletch is one of the most delightful movie experiences of 2022, with Jon Hamm playing the overconfident, utterly affable Irwin M. Fletcher, former investigative reporter-turned-golddigger/private investigator. He arrives at his rental home in Boston only to find a dead body in the place. With all the casualness of ordering a pizza, he calls the police (not 9-11) and informs them that a crime has been committed, and he grabs a drink, takes his shoes off, and puts his feet up and waits.
Hamm is a devastatingly handsome man which is only made more potent by his lack of ego and unfailingly playful comedic personality (he's been very entrenched in the L.A. comedy scene for decades, despite not being a comedian, improviser or sketch performer himself). He's had some incredible comedic turns playing vainglorious idiots and clueless buffoons in Bridesmaids, 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but no role has seemed so perfect for him to capitalize upon everything he brings to the table as Fletch. Hamm's Fletch struts around the world not as if he owns it, but as if he's immune to it. He's teflon, and nothing bad can ever stick to him. He thinks himself clever, and he is, just not as clever as he thinks he is, to the point that for all his swirling machinations in Confess, Fletch none of it actually truly matters, and even his solving of the crime is more about his refusal to not interfere in things than it is his deductive ability. Fletch skates through life as an only a super-handsome white guy can, on a cloud of unearned privilege that gives him the benefit of the doubt...or would have 30 years ago. Today, Fletch is challenged about his privilege at every turn, though he barely clocks it. He's not an offensive product of white privilege, as he does, for the most part, try to use it for good, yet Mottola is very savvy in how the lens captures the world's around Fletch's awareness of it.
On top of being so, so good looking, Hamm is also aging without fear, and even that is brought into his performance of Fletch. He's too old to relate to the youth, but not too old as to not try. His position as a post-Boomer/pre-Gen Xer means he's not old enough to be given a free pass for his transgressions against a changing society, but he's also old enough to not be self conscious about it. It's like he knows the world is still his oyster, he may never get the pearl, but it's always going to be in view.
I loved Confess, Fletch. It's not changing the face of cinema, nor attempting to, but it's just massively entertaining, and simply so, without big pyrotechnics or chase sequences or special effects. It coasts entirely along based off great performances from Hamm, Marcia Gay Harden, Roy Wood Jr., Annie Mummalo and more, weaving a convoluted mystery that is not meant to be solved so much as unraveled. We need at least another half dozen of these please.
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Alice, Sweet Alice [aka. Communion aka Holy Terror] (1976, d. Alfred Sole- Xumo)
This was a recommendation from the Roger Avery/Quentin Tarantino podcast Video Archives during their assessment of "American Giallo" (American films that best emulate the Italian hyper-violent murder-mysteries made famous by Dario Argento and Mario Bava)
Once you get past the awkward timing of nearly every scene, there's a rather gripping murder-mystery/suspense thriller here that starts with a child's murder for which another child is blamed. I knew going in that titular Alice wasn't the murderer, but I think if you went in cold, it would only be the first act, at most, that you would suspect Alice of the crime. There really wasn't a bigger plan here to deceive the audience.
The actual murderer is revealed at the end of the second act, which then spends time with them, givings us some insight into who they are and why they're doing what they're doing. It's a little disjointed from act to act, as the focus shifts from one character to the next, and sadly Alice is pretty much gone from the film's second half, but somehow it all hangs together quite well.
There are some surprising attacks and murders, and that great, soupy, bright red 70's blood is put to great effect (a great overhead shot of a body laying in the gutter as rain pours down, the blood pool expanding rapidly in the wetness. Director sole may not have been able to draw the most natural performances out of his actors, nor edit the film smoothly, but he knows where to put the camera. This film revolves a lot around the church, and I don't quite grok the exact message (except to say that religion creates murderous zealots) but it's obviously not one that thinks highly of Catholicism.
I have this list of films (& tv) I watched, and yet did not write a review for. I thought perhaps it was a list made up of films (and TV too) I watched in 2018 (the dark year), but in 2018 (the dark year) I actually did much of my film writing on ye olde Letterboxd account (no tv writings though). Letterboxd was a dalliance with dark app magic that hasn't really stuck... not like this hire trusty blogge. But I digress... the list below represents many things watched, mostly, in 2017 (maybe a little before, maybe a little after [the dark year]). Toast was keeping the blogge spirit alive back then, I was too mired in some bullshit or another to put thoughts to 1s&0s. I may have made comments in the blogge about such movie (und T.V.) thinges hence, but perhaps not. I am too lazy to do a search at this time.
Given the passage of time, most of these things will not have taken up much space in my memory, so I may not have much to say... but then again, I may have far more to say than I think. So in this grande experiment, I present to you, quick and addled musings of mostly-forgotten experiences of 2017 (and beyonde!).
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Fast & Furious Franchise - I got into F&F with Fast Five, and was quite taken with its rather brazen tomfoolery. It's big budget action filmmaking that started off as one thing, tried to morph into something else and then wound up becoming something much different, much bigger and much better than its origins would insinuate:
- The Fast and The Furious(2001, d. Rob Cohen - blu-ray) - it started off as a knowingly cheesy Point Break knock-off with illegal drag racing and substitute penises instead of skydiving and other extreme activities. Little wooden boy Paul Walker (RIP) goes undercover with Vin Diesel's criminal gang of souped up street race drivers as they steal truck loads of dvd players (yeah, it ages real well). There's lots of car porn in here and a lot of short shorts and halter tops. Cohen spends most of the movie using his camera to ogle tires and titties. Yet knowing where it's heading it's already got its stupid charms in place. It's all about family, bro.
-2 Fast, 2 Furious (2003, d. John Singleton - blu-ray) - yeah, fucking John Singleton directed this stupidly titled movie. I honestly can remember what happens in this one (and if I'm being honest, I can't really remember what happened in the first one...as with most of the entries in this entire post, I won't remember most of what I watched), but I seem to recall enjoying it more than the first one. I think it uses a lot more CGI, and the absence of Vin Diesel means the acting game is actually stepped up a little in this one (Diesel has screen presence, I'll give him that, but he's a terrible actor). It goes against the grain but I think I would watch this one over the first one.
-Fast and Furious(2009, d. Justin Lin - blu-ray) - I skipped the third one (Tokyo Drift) because it's not really part of the series. Not to get too stuck in the weeds but Tokyo Drift takes place after Fast & Furious 6, if you're trying to sort out the chronology. But really Tokyo Drift is kind of the Halloween: Season of the Witch of the F&F franchise, the one where they tried to do a standalone anthology type thing that just didn't work.... BUT, with his feet already wet, Justin Lin was (ahem) fast figuring things out and set the real prototype for the franchise to follow with the murky fourth entry Fast and Furious, in which he tries to bring together all three of the previous films canonically, while also pushing forward into globetrotting espionage type storytelling with a gang of streetracing thieves with a code of ethics and a strong makeshift familial bond. It's a messy, messy movie, but it certainly started something that Fast Five paid off like gangbusters (...you know, gang busting, like Paul Walker in the first film).
- Fast and Furious 6 (2013, d. Justin Lin - blu-ray) - Fast Five is a legit good time for anyone who has never seen any other F&F movie and it's the legit entryway into it all. Viewing order of F&F should be 5, 4, 6, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8. But anyone coming into F&F may immediately want out with F&F6 since it really ouroboroses it up. Lin just goes for broke and makes a crazy dumb (yet fun) spy movie that brings almost everything from the past right back up front, including resurrecting the dead and tying things back together from Tokyo Drift. It's a film that needs more out of Vin Diesel than he can give, and it overstretches itself with its universe building, yet still certainly enjoyable.
- Furious 7 (2015, d. James Wan - TMN) - And this is where the shit hits the alchemic fan and turns to gold. Jason Statham and Kurt Russell enter the fray of an already ballooning cast. Sadly, Paul Walker died while filming was ongoing and his specter looms hard over the proceedings, creating an honest to god sentimental moment about family in its finale. It's a big, big movie and it goes for broke quite spectacularly. Again it ties itself heavily with the previous three entries, but at this point this ongoing "family" thread is what gives these films connective tissue when otherwise it would just be ridiculously entertaining car stunts.
- The Fate of the Furious(2017, d. F. Gary Gray - TMN) - they may have lost Paul Walker but they gained Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren (yes, fucking Helen Mirren). Never one to let a good adversary stay a good adversary, the bad guy of the previous film (Jason Statham) is reformed as a good guy here (setting up the Hobbes and Shaw spin-off) and it's easily the Statham/Dwayne Johnson chemistry that carries the bulk of the entertainment factor here. Vin Diesel is blackmailed by Theron into being a bad guy who the rest of the team has to take down, and it's kind of a drag, because Diesel, the stunted bad actor that he is, can't play the character as a man trapped pretending to "break bad" but instead just plays a shitty heel figure in the proceedings.
These films, at this point, exceed James Bond levels of action set pieces, and this is the first one that takes major pains to kind of lose the car shtick.... to do other big action set pieces that aren't *only* about cars. It's another turning point in an ever evolving and expanding franchise. There's no way, looking back at that kind of dumb, DVD-stealing crew from the first feature that it would wind up in to the almost-superhero universe it's become. I don't blame anyone for thinking these things are totally stupid dumb and not worth the time. They are totally stupid dumb, but that's what makes them so entertaining. They have absolutely no pretenses about them which is why they are so successful. ---
It's been established that I'm not a big horror movie guy. I can dabble but I'm not very entertained by the cruel nature of horror. I don't get a lot of pleasure out of seeing people tortured or the gags of guts and viscera meant to shock and/or amuse. So when I say that these two films are the best horror films of the decade, you have to qualify that as, like, the sentiments of a guy who really hasn't watched that many horror films this decade. And yet, not only are these two of the best horror films of the decade, they are two of the best films, flat out, of the decade. Two masterfully crafted productions that will stand up for decades to come.
Get Out (2017, d. Jordan Peele - In Theatre) channels so much racial tension, modern and historical, that it's at times unbearable and viscerally upsetting. It's psychotropic horror, a film that doesn't so much as startle you as keep you in a perpetual state of uneasiness. It's a masterful debut from Peele that may have been a big surprise to Key & Peele sketch comedy fans who weren't paying close enough attention to how often those skits descended into some kind of absurd terror.
It Follows (2014, d. David Robert Mitchell - Netflix), in the loosest sense, is about a killer STD. But that's way oversimplifying things. It's a metaphor for shame and guilt around sex, especially in teenage years. Mitchell crafts a film that feels like it's part of the 80's horror explosion, a saturated blueish hue and very specific styles, locations and vehicles all create a bit of a throwback aesthetic with a pulsating synth soundtrack that is brilliant on its own but even more effective in combination with the film. Yet for all its retro homage, it's still a very modern film, thoughtful, sensitive, yet still very, very frightening. An absolute classic.
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*Smooth transition from horror to children's movies*
Finding Dory (2016, d. Andrew Stanton - blu-ray) - Finding Nemo is a brilliant, beautiful, highly entertaining film with a huge heart, an animation classic. A sequel was probably inevitable but hardly necessary. While not quite the equal of its predecessor, Finding Dory does manage to hold up to Pixar's highest standards, delivering another beautiful, highly entertaining film with a huge heart. Dealing with Dory's forgetfulness/disorder and retracing her past makes for a different experience than Finding Nemo while holding onto its structure.
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie(2017, d. David Soren - in theatre) over the past dozen years of my kids' lives I've been exposed to the rather wondrous worlds of cartoonist Dav Pilkey. The Captain Underpants series is absurd humour for younger readers, but still quite entertaining for adults reading along with their child. The "First Epic Movie" has moments of real inspiration but exposes kind of how juvenile the concept is. It seems to aim for a sort of Spongebob or Lego Movie vibe but misses the mark.
Despicable Me 3 (2017, d. Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda - in theatre). I haven't actually seen any other Despicable Me movies, so perhaps this one was just lost on me without prior investment, but I find the animation ugly, the minions annoying, and the humour tepid. I recall asking myself frequently "who is this joke for?" In a word: inessential.
Moana (2016, d. Ron Clements, John Musker - netflix) There was a period there where my daughter was refusing to go to the movies, so we didn't see Moana on the big screen. We didn't even wind up seeing it together. She saw it at school or at a friend's birthday party, so I watched it without her. I rather adored it, but the vistas and scale of the picture would have been so much more impactful watching on a big screen. It's an absolute darling of a movie though, truly lovely and adventurous.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968, d. Ken Hughes - rental) I don't remember what the impetus was for watching this. I think the wife and I were talking about films that scared us as a child (see next entry) and she mentioned how terrifying Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was for her as a young'un. This is a weird 145-minute long (!) quasi-musical live-action children's film about a possibly sentient super-car that helps a family survive their ramshackle adventure through a despotic alternate reality. From James Bond creator Ian Fleming, adapted to screen by Roald Dahl, it's fucking bizarre. It's not great, but there's absolutely something surreal and captivating about it. I can see how that surreality was terrifying to kids, for sure.
The Peanut Butter Solution (1985, d. Michael Rubbo - blu-ray) There was no tit-for-tat in our traumatizing childhood movie exchange. I had to watch this one on my own. But I did so happily. To rediscover this film -- about a kid who goes bald after getting massively frightened when exploring an abandoned house, then receiving a mysterious recipe for hair-growth formula (the titular peanut butter solution) from a ghost, and then being kidnapped by his nefarious art teach so he can use his perpetually-growing hair to make the world's softest paint brushes -- was an absolute blast. I saw this film many times as a kid, as it was frequently played on Canadian television, and it was great to be able to fill in the gaps of my memory on it. It's a weird-ass movie, with typically Canadian production values which makes it almost more endearing. It's like Cronenberg-for-kids.
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I can't be bothered to sub-categorize the films any longer. Hot takes a-comin:
Oh Hello on Broadway (2017, d. Alex Timbers, Michael John Warren - netflix) Nick Kroll is responsible for two of the best shows of the past decade, the hilarious coming-of-age-and-sexuality animated Big Mouth and the reality TV satirizing sketch comedy of Kroll Show. The septigenarians New Yorkers George St. Geegland (John Mulaney) and Gil Faison (Kroll) emerged from Kroll Show (as well as other appearances online, in podcasts and elsewhere) as a fully baked comedic duo, telling ribald stories of past glories, and questionable decisions they've made along the way. A stage show on broadway was a surprising next level for these hilarious and unlikeably charming characters... I wouldn't think the mass appeal would be there to sustain such a run, but toss in a loosely structured script for Kroll and Mulaney to bounce around inside of, and bring out a surprise celebrity guest interview each show and it just started buzzing. If filming it for Netflix has a problem, it's that one wouldn't want to watch the same show twice, but instead see as many of the shows as possible. It was probably more fun live, but it's still a great time.
GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (2012, d. Brett Whitcomb - netflix) This doc cropped up on Netflix in the lead-up to their original scripted comedy-drama GLOW. I watched and loved the first season of GLOW and was intrigued to see what they actually took from the source. Not surprisingly, they took very little, beyond the comraderie, a few of the archetypes, and the sense of struggle. But seeing the real performers reminisce and then reunite creates for a quite enjoyable and emotional ride. It's a sweet documentary even if you're not sure how much wrestling matters in the grand scheme of things. Mountain Fiji's story is the centerpiece of much of the movie, as she's so loveable and her struggles so touching. There's never a wrong way to celebrate an absolutely endearing, wonderful, kind-hearted person like her, and where it could feel like it was focusing on her at the expense of the other performers, it actually brings them together and further exemplifies their sense of community.
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (2016, d. David Yates - blu-ray) I thought for certain that I had already written at least once, if not twice about FB&WTFT, but no dice. I only have a letterboxd entry for The Crimes of Grindlewald. I like Harry Potter fine, but I'm not a huge fan, magic just isn't my thing, y'know. And the first time around with FB&WTFT I thought it was trying too hard to be something different, and to be something bigger than it really was. But the second time watching it, I actually responded rather intensely to the characters and their journey, to the point that I was really, really, really looking forward to seeing them again in the sequel. Well, here's how that went. Anyway, I quite like this first one. It really grows on you.
Trump: The Art of The Deal (2016, d. Jeremy Konner - netflix) Johnny Depp plays Trump in this satire of the man's life and his business ethos. It's not as funny or scathing as it needs to be, and it's only clever by half. Perhaps if he didn't become president it would have been more amusing.
Girlfriend's Day (2017, d. Michael Stephenson, - netflix) A cheeky detective noir starring Bob Odenkirk about a down-on-his-luck greeting card writer who gets embroiled in murder and conspiracy around a new fake holiday, Girlfriend's Day. There's probably a good short film in here, but it makes for a bit of a slog at full-length.
The Polka King (2017, d. Maya Forbes - netflix) / The Man Who Would Be Polka King (2009, d. John Mikulak, Joshua Brown - netflix). Jan Lewan was practically a legend when his extravagent lifestyle and inflated ego started overtaking his reality. Unable to sustain himself with his music or business, he starts grifting his fans and his community with a Ponzi scheme. The Polka King is a lightly dramatic retelling starring a delightful cast -- including Jack Black, Jenny Slate,Jason Schwartzman, and JB Smoove -- while the documentary is a little dry but still heartbreaking when it affirms the reality of the hurt Lewan inflicted on people's lives (but also a little frustrating how trusting people were in giving him money to start with). Not essential viewing but rather engaging as a pair (the doc runs just over an hour)
Don't Think Twice (2017, d. Mike Birbiglia - netflix) Comedian Mike Birbiglia is a very gifted storyteller. He's a captivating and hilarious orator and author. It's a bit surprising then that he's rather far from that as a filmmaker, but maybe it's just the story he's trying to tell. Don't Think Twice is a story about an improv comedy troupe dealing with reality when one of their members becomes famous but the rest are left struggling. It's such a narrowly defined reality that even someone like myself, who loves standup, sketch, improv comedy in all its different distributions, could care less about this story or the characters within it. The cast is a great one, with Gillain Jacobs pulling the MVP role within it, but it has no real meat to it, not for lack of trying.
Keanu (2016, d. Peter Atencio - TMN) The transition from sketch to feature has been hard for almost all sketch comedy group, Monty Python excepted. The more successful moves to feature-length scripting tend to find a coherent story formed out of what are effectively a series of sketches. Unfortunately, with Keanu, Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele's first foray into the cinemas as a duo, either the sketches were too restricted by the story of the film, or they weren't intended to be sketches at all. Either way, the film doesn't really work. It's attempting to be a buddy action comedy, and it hits those notes, but they're almost all fairly mundane and and familiar notes. Key and Peele aren't offering anything here that surprises or is memorably quotable, unlike so much from their sketch comedy. It's not a terrible movie by any stretch, but it's missing the sparks of brilliance we had come to expect from the duo.
The Nice Guys (2016, d. Shane Black - TMN) This is Shane Black's thing. Two kind of down-and-out professionals of a type, getting on each other's nerves but developing a respect and friendship along the way. These two guys are Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling... not exactly the dynamic duo on the forefront of everyone's mind, but it works so well. Both are quite into it and Black produced a hilarious and charming script about losers with more style and craft than any of his other outings. A great little movie, worthy of rewatching.
The Late Shift (1996, d. Betty Thomas - TMN) Based on the book, a dramatic retelling of the tensions between David Letterman and Jay Leno following the announcement of Johnny Carson's retirement from The Tonight Show. HBO has been investing in these niche stories for a long, long time, and while it looks painfully like a film made in 1996, it's still actually a very engaging watch. There's no reason anyone should really care about what went on behind the scenes of the Tonight Show any longer, and yet, there's something legendary about this fued which makes this sometimes goofy imagining of it captivating. Kathy Bates playing a ball-busting agent is worth the watch alone.
Arrival (2016, d. Denis Villeneuve - blu-ray) Villeneuve announces himself here as the next great director of big screen science fiction. Next he takes on Blade Runner and Dune, showing that he has little humility in the face of his ambitions. But he produces beautiful looking movies, cast with amazing actors who he draws out commanding performances. This is a procedural, of sorts, which finds linguist Amy Adams discovering how to break through and communicate with a very alien sentience that arrives on Earth. It's not an action film, but the intensity is high, and the depth of emotion is perhaps even more suprising than the aliens.
Fire & Ice (1980, d. Ralph Bakshi - Amazon Prime) This type of fantasy, swords, sandals, beards and crystal balls is not my thing. I find these types of stories tedious and dull. But beyond the tedious story is beautiful hand drawn animation which kept me in admiring awe throughout. There's a stiffness and lack of fluidity at times, but that's somehow part of its charm.
The Lost City of Z (2017, d. James Gray - Amazon Prime) Colonialist epics are a thing of yesterday, unless you can present a story that is absolutely aware of its place within modern cultural norms. The Lost City of Z does have its cake and eats it too, by telling a story spanning three time periods, three adventures in the the Amazon, where explorer Percey Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) discovers evidence of an advance tribe from eras past. The British aristocracy finds any intonation that any non-white civilation would have superior capabilities heretical, but Fawcett, more concerned with truth than politics obsessively forges forward to find further proof, with his family left behind to bare the brunt of his herecy. It's a very tranquil and meditative film, with moments of tremendous intensity, and a few moments of maddening truth regarding our forefathers' ignorance. Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Sienna Miller and Ian McDiarmid co-star.
Jim & Andy (2017, d. Chris Smith - netflix) Jim Carrey played Andy Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. It left him a little scarred. This documentary examines Andy Kaufman's life through Jim Carrey's experience trying to completely inhabit another man's skin. It's a fascinating if inessential documentary that provides interesting perspective on Kaufman, but also insight into the craft of acting and how it can be psychologically dangerous to pretend to be someone else for a while. Now all we need is the meta-movie that is the dramatic retelling of this story.
Black Panther (2018 [the dark year], d. Ryan Coogler - in theatre) Turns out I actually wrote a review in 2018 but never published it (all I had to do was attach some pictures). I corrected that and published it now. I've watched the film a couple times since, and it's in my top 10 of all time superhero films.
Creed (2015, d. Ryan Coogler - TMN) I saw at least some of Rocky III and probably all of Rocky IV when I was a kid, but I wasn't that big into boxing movies then, and I'm still not now. I don't really care. I skipped the chance to watch Creed for free on the big screen when it came out (well, actually, arrived late and was locked out of the theatre) but it was my hyped reaction to Black Panther that made it a must-see. I love it. It's a tremendous movie. I've seen it a couple times now and I'll watch it again. Michael B. Jordan is magnetic, his chemistry with Stallone and Tessa Thompson is incredible, and Coogler's direction is amazing (that seamless one-shot of the boxing match is viscerally engrossing). It's a story about legacy, something I love in superhero comic books, and this is really just a comic book superhero of a different type.
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018 [the dark year], d. Julius Onah - netflix) - You can look elsewhere on the internet for the backstory on how this project came to be, and how it came to be on netflix. My hot take is that its incredible cast - Chris O'Dowd, Gugu Mbuthu-Raw, David Oyelowo, Elizabeth Debicki, Zhang Ziyi, Daniel Bruhl - is kind of wasted on such an incredibly badly executed story about parallel dimensions. It's a film that couldn't quite figure out what it wanted to be, sci-fi or horror, not doing either all that well with split focus, and then got shoehorned into a film franchise that isn't a film franchise. There's a few inspired entertaining seeds here but it just doesn't come together. Can we get the cast together again for a do-over?
Ghost in the Shell (2017, d. Rupert Sanders - netflix) There's so much content in the world you have to make blanket concessions somewhere. For me it's books and anime. I've never seen the original GitS so everything in this film is new to me. I get the controversy surrounding it, and I do agree with it: ScarJo wasn't the appropriate casting choice. Moving past the whitewashing (if you can, understood if you can't), the film is quite striking visually and I found the story is very engaging. There's only really one scene, in which ScarJo meets her Japanese grandmother, where the whitewashing becomes so brutally flagrant, but otherwise it's not a constant offense throughout the film (unless to you it is, which is valid).
The Disaster Artist (2017, d. James Franco - rental) Is Franco now cancelled or can we still talk about him with some appreciation? I haven't been keeping up on all the cancel culture news. I know The Room mainly from podcast talking about it and a few clips I've watched obsessively online. Tommy Wiseau is a fascinating personality, and the story of his creation of The Room is bountifully as bizarre as he is. Franco takes one step past impersonation here, capturing Wiseau's strange mannerisms and injecting his own sense of his personality, trying to creating a flesh-and-blood living being out of such an enigma. Dave Franco then, playing Wiseau's de facto best friend and naive partner in crime Greg Sestero, has to do much of the emotional heavy lifting, but since it's a film based on Sestero's book of the same name, it's built for such a focus. It's a very entertaining film about a film that's possibly way more entertaining depending on your disposition. But it serves as a great entryway into The Room for the uninitiated and also a fun dramatization for fans of Wiseau (winking or otherwise).
I, Tonya (2017, d. Craig Gillespie - in theatre) If you were a teenager or older in the early 90's then you knew all about Tonya Harding. Or, at least, you thought you did. She was the "bad girl of figure skating", as the media liked to sensationalize her. She came from lower-class rural America, she liked to perform to hard rock and wore outfits that weren't as refined or standardized as other skaters. She was a curvy, muscular girl, with crimped dirty blonde hair that seemed borderline unmanageable. Everything about her flew in the face of the sport's typical pageantry. So she was stigmatized and villainized by the media, especially when compared to her chief competition, Nancy Kerrigan. Kerrigan was a Disney Princess come to life, long and lean, with flowing, shiny brown hair, doing everything by the book. Of course, as the story goes, Harding kept some pretty bad company (her domineering mother most extremely) and it eventually led to the legendary kneecapping incident that got Harding banned for life from the sport. This is a tragi-comedy featuring both the absurdity and the abuse in Tonya's life, with magnificent performances from Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan and Paul Walter Hauser.
Annihilation (2018 [the dark year], d. Alex Garland - in theatre) Perhaps the most intense and legitimately frightening film that isn't an outright horror movie. It's a bit of a puzzle that when pieced all together still requires some thought on behalf of the viewer to get to a resolution. It's got serene moments of beauty, and start moments of terror, with many emotional thoughts in between. It's a film that demands rewatching, but may be too intense for some to actually want to. It's wonderful, one of the best genre films of the decade.
The Shape of Water (2017, d. Guillermo del Toro - in theatre) My dirty nerd secret is that I don't really like del Toro's films all that much. The big benchmarks in his career, Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone are probably my least favourite entries in his repertoire. But Oscar darling The Shape of Water is a strange delight. It's as much a tribute to the history of cinema as it is about a deaf lady falling in love with a fish-man, which explains why the Oscar voters keyed into it so much. There's little else Oscar loves more than films about film. There's just too many beautiful, romantic even, moments in this film to not get swept up, even when it gets cartoonishly heavy handed (intentionally so) and it's so precise (as all del Toro films are) in its details that it's such a marvel to behold. Plus, it's basically an Abe Sapien from Hellboy spin-off in everything but name.
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OH NO! Unwritten about TV shows. Blerg.
11.22.63 (Hulu) - A mini-series adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a guy (played by J*cancelled*o) who finds a time vortex in his closet and goes back in time to stop Kennedy's assassination with disastrous consequences. Kind of fun in the moment, pretty forgettable afterward. The Night Manager (Amazon Prime) - A John LeCarre adaptation about a night manager (Tom Hiddleston) at a hotel who gets recruited into being a spy, infiltrating the organization of a previously untouchable global weapons dealer (Hugh Laurie). Olivia Coleman plays Hiddleston's handler. Elizabeth Debicki plays Laurie's girlfriend. It's a great cast and an interesting story, but it plays too rhythmically like a book, so it feels like it gets distracted frequently from the main thrust. It would probably have made a tighter movie.
The Defenders (Netflix) - Blerg. This was what five seasons and 65 episodes of TV was leading to, the uniting of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. But the most boring part of the Netflix Marvel was the ninja mob The Hand, and that's the main adversary of this series. The show relishes every scene where characters meet characters from a different series but Elektra and the Hand have them dragging their feet through the mud. Sigourney Weaver is also a main adversary in the show, but mostly separated from everything else going on as we get insight into her terminal illness and how it affects her...she doesn't ever feel like she belongs in this story. What a waste of time and effort. GLOW Season 1 (Netflix) I've written about Season 3 already, but going back to the beginning and remembering Ruth and Debbie and the gang as they were at the start, it's been a remarkable journey for them all. It's really a show about camaraderie, about unity, feminine spirit, and it all starts with Ruth sleeping with her best friend's husband, getting found out, and then having to face that person every day in a challenging, close-knit environment, where failure would be the last straw for all of their careers. There's comedy, which is great, and there's drama, which is even better, and there's wrestling, which is terrible, but in a very fun way. It's ridiculously charming, the cast dynamic is perfect, and it doesn't shy away from having difficult conversations. Its mid-80's trappings are painful reminders of a gaudy, ugly era of fashion, but it certainly gives the show a distinct feel as it leans heavily into the neon style. Ghosted (Fox) Craig Robinson and Adam Scott join a secret organization to fight supernatural entities. It was a rough start. I think I lasted four episodes. I'm certain it could have gotten better (and apparently it did) but a rough start more often than not leads to cancellation rather than patience as it finds its footing. The comedy wasn't sharp or original enough and the characters Scott and Robinson were playing felt like exactly that, characters they were playing. Both leads were better than the material.
Runaways season 1 (Hulu/Showcase) I don't even remember at this point if I lasted out the season. The joke about Runaways, now in its third season, is that it took them an entire season to become the titular runaways. The show got way too mired in the dynamics of the parents and kept harping on the squabbles between the adults, and the tense and/or awkward relationships they had with their kids. I loved the first run of the comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, and the show uses almost everything that was there but tries to build out and extend the story to exceptionally tedious results.
Mindhunters S1 (Netflix) I've already written about season 2, so looking back on season 1, I notice that we've completely dropped Holden's love life in the second season, which is great, because it had done all it needed in season 1. Season 2 did drop the ball a bit on Wendy, Anna Torv's character, who was a real highlight of the first season. Season 2 had a more focused story, but season 1's building of an entirely new method of investigation, of criminal profiling, through the gathering of data by interviewing serial killers was gripping television, specifically the interviews with Ed Kemper, a massively imposing man with impeccable manners and a complete emotional detachment from the horror of his crimes. It's not a show for the faint of heart, that's for sure.
Manhunt: Unabomber (Netflix) - a mini-series trying to fall into the American Crime Story vein, a modestly successful stab by the Discovery Channel to enter the premiere scripted television era. It's an engaging story if told a little bit cheaply. It's important to understand that Sam Worthington's character of Jim Fitzgerald is a bit of a lie...he is a real person, but in the show he represents a whole team's worth of activities, so a lot of the actions he takes and conclusions he makes in the show were performed by others in reality. That said, it's certainly bingeable watching and Paul Bettany's Ted Kaczynski is pretty riveting. It makes for a good pairing with Mindhunters, although the latter's production values are so much higher, making this look like a 90's TV show.
American Vandal seasons 1 and 2(Netflix) - I didn't know what this was until I watched it. I had heard raves about it but still thought it was yet another Ryan Murphy or Ryan Murphy-type season-long anthology project. While it is kind of a season-long anthology, it's also one of the funniest shows on TV. Taking inspiration from all facets of true crime documentation and investigation, this show embraces and exploits the tropes to maximum comedic effect while still actually managing to create some genuinely interesting and engaging characters and a reasonable amount of dramatic tension. The first season finds our intrepid duo of high school documentarians investigating the vandal who scratched dicks into the paint of every car in the school's parking lot. One student was suspended for it, but did he really do it? The second season revolves around investigating who put a laxative in the cafeteria lemonade, causing much of the school to poop themselves. These subjects are very silly, and it's the treatment of them with dire seriousness that only heightens their hilarity. It's a shame this only lasted two seasons, but at the same time it's better than none. Worth revisiting.
Black Lightning season 1 (Netflix) you know, I covered season 2 already and that pretty much expresses my feelings about the show overall.
Toast of London seasons 1-3 (Netflix) Have you ever had to ask the question "Can you hear me?" And did someone respond, rather oddly, with "Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango", leaving you quite puzzled? Watch Toast of London to find out why and laugh yourself silly. Matt Berry is the egocentric Stephen Toast, a thespian of ill-repute struggling to find meaningful work (or any work for that matter) in modern London. This is an exquisitely crafted comedic persona, Berry infusing all sorts of vocal quirks, physical mannerisms, plus curious psychological and emotional boundries into the character creating for truly off beat and bizarre but always hilarious and usually unpredictable scenarios for the character to fall into. He has a chief nemesis in Ray "Bloody" Purchase (the cuckold whose wife Toast frequently sleeps with), an apathetic supporter in his agent Jane, and a confidant in fellow aged thespian/flatmate Ed. It's hard to overstate just how commanding Berry is in this show, which offers the actor/writer/musician the luxury of a new song each episode to punctuate the emotional aspect of a particular scene but also to afford the show some sheer creative lunacy. There's frankly not another sitcom like this. It won't be to everyone's tastes for sure (just seeing Berry's whinnying sex face is enough to put anyone off who doesn't get the hilariousness of it) but it's worth it for the Jon Hamm episode in season 3 and every Clem Fandango appearance.
Jessica Jones season 2 (Netflix) Is there really a reason to continue watching a show where the lead character learns nothing and continues to alienate the people around her. I mean, most shows with a toxic lead tend to have characters surrounding them who either enable that toxicity, dismissive of that toxicity, or absolving of that toxicity. In Jessica Jones, Jess' toxicity does drive the people away from her and even though she could help it, she doesn't, and it's kind of heartbreaking but also extremely annoying. Season 2 dives deeper into Jess' troubled psyche, some of which has to do with her mother, who reappears with superpowers and is a total murderer. This causes Jess some more psychological distress on top of her already potent PTSD. I struggle to understand just what the show is getting at with Jess, what they want us to glean from her... is it that it's okay to still look for the good in someone who acts so awful? Season 2 was a real fucking bummer, with all the performers killing it in their roles, but creating an end product too unpleasant to enjoy too much. Jessica Jones is a great character, and Krysten Ritter excels at playing her, but the showrunners needed to find another note or two for her to play.
Lady Dynamite season 1 (Netflix) With this new golden age of television, so many comedians are being given the opportunity to create a television show with their own unique vision. Too often those visions are too limited by what's come before, and there's a lot of redundancy or familiarity in the outcome. But Maria Bamford's vision is so uniquely her own that it's amazing that Lady Dynamite was even a thing allowed to come into existence. Bamford's comedy is one that explores the diverging topics of mundane life and mental health, and her show is a representation of that kind of schism. It's a quasi-manic time-bounding story that takes place in at least three different time periods, one being the present day with a semi-successful Bamford finding love and cohabitation rather challenging, another time frame being her return to Los Angeles and the cutthroat world of acting and comedy after having a mental breakdown, and the third time period taking place at the tail end of that mental breakdown where she's in and out of the hospital and dealing with her well-meaning-if-not-always-helpful parents (a wonderful duo in Ed Begley Jr. and Mary Kay Place). It's a hilarious but also challenging show to watch, as the time jumping isn't always obvious so it's left to the viewer to sort out what reality we're in, but I think that's a deliberate move on Bamford's part, just a simplified viewport into her brain. It's also got one of the best title credit sequences of the decade. I've been watching this very slowly over the past few years, most of season 2 remaining, but not for lack of enjoyment.
Collateral (Netflix) is a murder mystery mini-series starring Carrie Mulligan as a sleepy London detective inspector trying to navigate a sticky web of intrigue after a pizza delivery driver is murdered. I remember next to nothing about this story. I recall I was somewhat engaged with it at the time, but even then I found the story overly complicated with not enough meat to Mulligan's character to get totally invested in it. If it were any longer than four episodes I probably wouldn't have continued watching past the first episode.
Star Wars Rebels season 4 (Disney XD) - if there are people out there convinced that Disney killed Star Wars, then they haven't watched Star Wars: Rebels. What started out as seemingly a kiddie-fied cartoon set in the pre-A New Hope days evolved into a glorious action adventure drama starring a makeshift-family that grew and grew and grew in scale to something glorious. If there was any burden for the show it was the expectation that it would ultimately dovetail into established Star Wars canon, be it Rogue One's climax or A New Hope's Battle of Yavin. But it found its own path, and its ties to established canon ran much deeper than just, say putting the crew of the Ghost in conflict with the Death Star. The character building reached its apex in Season 4, with each character continuing to evolve, or fulfil their ultimate destiny in exciting or heartbreaking ways. The journey with the cast of Rebels truly is an epic one, as much the equal of any Skywalker or Solo family memeber, and perhaps even more rewarding. This season continues to build upon the understanding of the force, as well as providing insight into the scale of the fight the rebels have against the empire. It comes full circle, bringing together things learned in previous seasons to show that liberal fluidity is more powerful than conservative rigidity. It's a show that further bridges the prequels to the original trilogy, it reinforces the importance of the Clone Wars cartoon in the pantheon, and it gives us some of the franchise's best characters (in a franchise already full of great ones). Thanks to Dave Filoni and the creative crew for this amazing ride.
Star Wars Resistance season 1 (Disney XD) As one series ends, another begins. This time however, it's set in the era of the sequel trilogy, season one ends colliding with the events of The Force Awakens. But unlike Rebels, which seemed to have a mission to further explore the nuances of the galaxy it inhabits, Resistance is a small show with small dreams. It's still spearheaded by Dave Filoni, but Filoni's interest here seems to primarily be channeling George Lucas' love of slapstick and physical comedy. It's central character is Kazuda Xiono, a bumbling Jack Tripper-type who bumbles his way through his espionage mission aboard an outer rim refueling station that the First Order is courting influence with. The selection of Kaz as their spy is the first of hundreds of absurdities that this show asks its audience to believe in. The supporting cast features few likeable figures, and it gets so mired in its sitcom-like setups each episode that it never feels high stakes. The show works best when Poe Dameron shows up, Oscar Isaac's confident performance as an actual competent agent elevating everything about the show, and lending it its only air of authenticity. The First Order is full of threats, with scattered appearances of Captain Phasma, but the only actual menace they actually generate is when the show dovetails into Starkiller Base's destruction of an entire system. The show, it's bad. It's a bad show. The animation is weird, but not unwatchable, which is more than I can say for the rest of the show. I don't like it. Season 1 basically ends where, all things being equal, it really should have began.
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And that's it. The long list of 2017 (and a bit of 2018) in the bag. Some good thoughts, but mostly half-hearted ramblings about things I've mostly forgotten. But that's not all that unusual for this blog now is it.
(some minor spoilers below, but if you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for)
2018, d. Ryan Coogler
Black Panther, simply put, is exciting, important, and so long overdue.
It's not just that it's a blockbuster film that features mostly an all-black cast, but it's also a film written by black writers, and directed by a black director. It presents a perspective not normally seen in films of this scale. It's easy for entitled straight white males with a twitter account, blog, youtube channel, or Fox News talk show to undervalue that when, for one's entire life, almost all creative narratives has catered to one's sensibilities (whether conscious or unconscious). But anyone with a shred of empathy can understand why this means so much, since it's not playing to the common big blockbuster straight white male sensibilities. This is a Marvel movie, part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a studio that has grossed literally billions upon billions of dollars from its films. This is the big time. People of all different skin tones and backgrounds, languages and cultures, are going to see this movie just because it is a Marvel movie. That type of exposure could have led to more of the same Marvel-style filmmaking, but Marvel wisely tapped writer/director Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole to craft a movie that just couldn't be told in the usual mold. They tell an accessible superhero fantasy tale, but it's one that's loaded it with characters and perspectives that will be many people's first experience with seeing things in such a way, or exposed to the viewpoints it presents. To be honest, it shouldn't be a film that means so much just to black people, but to people everywhere.
The film opens with a narration and the images formed by CGI sand relating the history of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, how a meteorite fell from the sky bringing with it vibranium, a rare and precious metal found exclusively within Wakanda's borders. Over time, the people of Wakanda learned to harness the many unique properties of vibranium, creating a highly technological, futuristic society, one they hid from the world under the guise of a poor farming country keeping the world at an arm's length away in order to protect their utopia, and to vibranium out of the hands of colonials who would most certainly abuse it's properties for militaristic-- rather than beneficial-- purposes.
T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home for the first time immediately following the events of Captain America: Civil War where his father was killed. Now crowned the new King, he faces the challenges of other tribes and the pleas of his former lover, Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) , to change their secretive ways, to join the world at large and use their intelligence and technology and attempt to make a difference for people who are suffering. But T'Challa's biggest challenge comes in the form of Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), a lost relative with a grudge against the royal family, and against the nation of people who turned a blind eye to all the suffering people in the world who look like them. Erik wants to take the crown by force, and change the world with force.
These are the major threads of the film. How does one help the world? Is it through dominance with technological and military might, or sharing knowledge and science, and compassion? Some of the more narrow-minded people who have commented on the film called either take in the film "anti-white", but again they're viewing from their own perspective of privilege and entitlement, and how this challenges it. This is really a statement about "anti-oppression". That it so happens that the oppressive systems in real life are largely favourable to white men is an extrapolation of that commentary, and the fact is, in the reality of Black Panther, the Wakandans have the capability to usurp that, and no doubt with some ease. But T'Challa's standpoint is that defeating oppression with oppression gets humanity no further. The hope, I think of the film, is to provide inspiration that through intelligence and technology as well as embracing culture and heritage, that a difference can be made, albeit unfortunately not as radically as having vibranium in your pocket.
There's a sequence in the 2017 film The Lost City Of Z (review coming...eventually) where the British explorer Percy Fawcett tries to explain to the Royal Geographical Society that he found evidence of a lost culture in South America, advanced pottery and statues. Now this being set in early 1900's Britain, this crowd of old, rich, white men laughed and mocked Fawcett for the very suggestion that native cultures anywhere were capable of advanced thought. Britain at the time was at their tail end of colonialism and still had to justify their missions of "bringing civility" to "primative" people... racing and fighting other European nations like France, Portugal and Spain along the way. The perception of other races and peoples as being both intelligent and cultured was counter to the colonial's narrative and threatened the moral validity of their rather heinous actions.
This type of narrow thinking is still way too prevalent today, which is why the Afrofuturism represented in Black Panther is so important, because it challenges the idea of white supremacy on film on such a grand scale for, really, the first time. Until now, the visual challenge to the idea of white supremacy in cinema, particularly with regards to Africans or African Americans, has been in small physical victories, or moral victories, or with the assist of white savior archetypes. But to see an entire African nation -- one that dons clothing, jewelry, make up and/or face paint that is inspired by actual African cultures -- be the most advanced civilization on the planet, producing technology that is so far advanced from Tony Stark's Iron Man and rivals that of the "gods" of Asgard.... that is absolutely groundbreaking, absolutely important.
Of course, I'm talking a lot around the film, not so much about the film. That's because the cultural impact and significance (especially since Black Panther has become so successful -- already in the top 30 all-time Domestic Box-office and climbing) is undeniable. But, you know, none of the cultural aspects of Black Panther would really matter if it weren't a film actually worth watching. The reality is it's a damn entertaining, thoroughly engrossing movie.
The opening narrative sequence is pure homage to Disney (corporate owners of Marvel Studios), and subsequent scenes in the first act have a similar feel, like the fly-over introduction to Wakanda (it's framed like any number of Disney or Pixar fantasies which swoop through unfamiliar terrain providing some of the texture and culture of this new world that is so eye popping you want to stop and explore a while before you continue on with the film) and the triumphant, colourful, musical ceremony of T'Challa's crowning. The outright blend of both advanced technology and African-inspired traditions are enticingly full of wide-eyed discoveries and vibrant imagination.
The second act begins with T'Challa heading out to South Korea with Nakia and his head of security, Okoye (Danai Gurira) in search of Ulysses Klaue, a nefarious mercenary who is the only person to successfully steal Vibranium out of Wakanda (as seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron). He is Public Enemy #1 in Wakanda, and they want him back, dead or alive. The sequence is no doubt inspired by the Bond films (Skyfall in particular) but substitutes the superhero for the superspy once the action kicks in. Shuri (Letitia Wright), T'Challa little sister, acts as Quartermaster, ergo, the Q to Black Panther's Bond. The capture goes awry (thanks in no small part to Killmonger) an T'Challa returns home to more problems than when he had left.
The third act shifts its core focus to Killmonger, enlisting support from the Wakandans in the most devious and ruthless of ways, challenging for the throne, all while using the techniques he learned from US special forces training in usurping and destabilizing countries to his full advantage. How will T'Challa overcome when his very foundation is shaken with Killmonger's truths?
In a few short weeks, Jordan's Killmonger has already become a legendary villain in cinematic history. He rivals Heath Ledger's Joker for sheer command of the screen, but exceeds thanks to Coogler's immaculate unveiling of Killmonger's history, tragedies, and motivations. In a film absolutely loaded with fantastic characters, the tragic Killmonger stands a head taller, and I don't know if it's one thing... you can point to the writing, the performance, the directing, editing, or score, but it's probably the masterful combination of them all. The film's called Black Panther but Jordan as Killmonger is the headliner. He is a character you want to love and embrace, but he's so ruthless and at times heartless in how driven he is, he pushes you away. It's glorious, an epic performance.
Wright plays Shuri as the most brilliant ray of light in an already vibrant movie. Wright's broad smile and beaming personality are so damn endearing, you can't help but love her, and melt into a little puddle every time she's on screen. She's effectively conveys being the smartest person in a country that consists almost solely of smart people, not through any sort of affectation or overly technological jargon, but through confidence and glibness. The sharpness of her wit is the greatest sign of her intelligence, especially since she's still so young.
Okoye is perhaps the most striking figure on screen. The costume design alone, the vibrant red, ornate armor of the Dora Milaje, is extremely attractive, coupled with the shaved or close cropped hair, jewelry and weaponry creates a look that is ferociously tough, yet decidedly feminine. Gurira handles the action sequences tremendously well, an intimidating presence. Her character, as the royal guard, is steadfast in her honor and duty. She serves not a person, but the crown and her country. Personal opinion has no place in her role. It makes relationships tough. At times I found Gurira struggled with the Wakandan accent, some line readings falling flat, but even the occasional awkward line delivery can't bring down how imposing her presence is on screen.
Enough heaps of adoration cannot be given to how utterly, dementedly delightful Andy Serkis as Klaue is. If there's a concept of a mustache-twirling super-villain in the modern age, Serkis has mastered it. Filled with utter childish glee at whatever it is he's doing, Klaue seems to be a man of no fear, endless invention, and a real love of 90's dance music. Usually Serkis' performance is buried behind a CGI character, but here he gets to show that it's not animators that turn in those brilliant roles like Gollum or Cesar (in the Planet of the Apes films), it's all in his face and tone and voice, just with fake images skinned over him. This is the only film I can think of that manages not one but two great on-screen villains.
One great character I haven't brought up yet (in a film quite loaded with great characters) is M'Baku as played by Winston Duke. M'Baku is perhaps the best discovery of the film. While the character in the comics at times is...problematic at best, racist at worst...here he's given a real personality, some real motivation, and a couple of the best scenes in the picture. If he's a villain, ally or neutral figure, we can't be totally sure... he's a wild card. In any regard he's a massive, imposing, and dangerous figure...and yet Coogler and Cole's script manages to find humanity and purpose in what could have been a very one-note side character.
I haven't even talked about Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, or Daniel Kaluuya who all have solid roles in this deep, deep film. That's because this film is so damn packed it'd take me hours to write about them all (and it's already taken me hours to write this far). Hell, I haven't even talked about Chadwick Boseman who's in total "Batman" mode here...really being the foundation upon which the rest of Wakanda is built. Boseman's T'Challa was a standout in Civil War but here, like Michael Keaton in Batman or Batman Returns, he's required to do what's needed of him so that the rest of the cast can shine. I don't think I can ever get tired of the soothing tone of his manufactured accent, he imbues it with such sophistication and authority, but a softness and comfort. He obviously mastered the dialect, and all other players in Wakanda are trying to catch up. Nobody's accent quite measures up... maybe Winston Duke's.
It should also be noted that Martin Freeman is in the film, returning as Everett Ross from Civil War, but only because he is very pointedly in the "token white guy" role, the usual role the "token black guy" would be in were the scenarios reversed. He gets stuff to do, he has a little bit of a purpose in the story, but overall he's there to satisfy the "token white guy" role, which seems to be an absolutely purposeful -- and fantastic -- meta commentary within the film.
As wonderful as Black Panther is, there are some nit-picks. If there's a flaw here, it's in the over-reliance on CGI in a couple of major action sequences. The Korean car chase, has some great moments, but a lot of it is bespoke. Likewise, the big final battle has a couple of inventive elements, but most of is somewhat underwhelming in its choreography and animation. I struggle to think of many big land battles that have turned out very impressive since CGI took over. These types of scenes seem too generic for Black Panther. It's a special film, and it deserves better constructed action sequences. What's more, I would have much preferred spending more time with the characters than on these sequences. The one-on-one battles for the crown are spectacular, with Coogler having cut his teeth ably on mano-y-mano fighting with Creed, they feel personal and dangerous in a way that the in-costume Black Panther sequences do not.
But beyond that, there are so many layers to this onion, so many great performances, and so much to take in. It's a bold and different movie for Marvel, the next step in the line they've started with James Gunn at the helm of Guardians of the Galaxy followed by Taika Waititi on Thor Ragnarok, which is trusting the creative talent to make this kind of picture their way.
Playing to the "middle class" white male basically drove North American cinema for so long, but it should be apparent from the undeniable success of both Wonder Woman and Black Panther (and even the Fast and Furious movies) that there's an audience need and desire to satisfy beyond that narrow studio impulse, and also money to be made from it. It's going to take the voices of the women, people of colour, and LGBTQ creators, speaking from their own perspectives, presented on the biggest platforms, to show everyone new ways of viewing the world, ones that are no less enticing and magical. And by seeing and accepting the world from different viewpoints we can empathize, understand, unify and grow, making for a better world.
