KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. Well, two weeks. Time has been occupied.
This Week:
The Odyssey (2026, d. Christopher Nolan - 70mm projection)
Gail Daughtry and the Hollywood Sex Pass (2026, d. David Wain - in theatre)
Operation Avalanche (2016, d. Matt Johnson - amazonprime)
The Truman Show (1998, d. Peter Wier - in theatre)
Irma Vep (1996, d. Olivier Assayas - hollywoodsuite)
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After 20 years it seems like Christopher Nolan has earned the trust of his backers, and they have the confidence (if not courage) to feed him whatever he needs to make whatever he wants. $250-million dollar budgeted, R-rated adaptations of a 2000-year-old Greek poems aren't what's in vogue at the movie theatres these days, but Nolan is one of the very few, maybe even the only director who is given ostensibly free reign with each film, and it's paid off every time (the only asterisk is Tenet -- time-warping superspy adventure which is absolutely my favourite Nolan movie but a great many find utterly impenetrable -- which came out during covid and never got a proper test at the box office). I thought that, maybe, The Odyssey might break Nolan's incredible streak, that it might not click with today's audiences, but, just like with Oppenheimer and Dunkirk and pretty much every non-Batman related film he's made, it's a triumph and a spectacle and people want in.
My reservations were many, and a lot of it stemmed from my ignorance of Homer's poem. What relevance does something so old have for today? Will this just be spectacle without substance? And the cast speaking without affectation (you know, the usually British affectation actors tend put on for anything historical, foreign or needing gravitas) could prove disastrous. Well before the ten-minute mark of the film, such concerns had left my mind completely. It's hard not to be mesmerized by the sheer scale of the production.
Nolan doesn't like to tell stories in a linear fashion, and The Odyssey is no exception, but rather than being an exercise in form or a stylistic choice, it seems a necessary mechanic in order to present the stories of Odysseus' journey without making the journey the narrative. Instead, the tales of the lost king of Ithaca are told, either from the memories of others who were there, or from Odysseus (Matt Damon) himself as he tries to recapture memories from the void of his lotus-addled mind. He tells his stories to Calypso (Charlize Theron), who may, or may not, be his captor.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus' long absence, and lack of word of his post-Troy adventures, have cast doubt upon his continued claim to the throne. His wife, the queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has spent years fending off a gaggle of suitors who gather in her hall, consuming the state's food and wine in lavish feasts, all in mind of claiming her and the throne. The Prince Telemachus (Tom Holland) is small and doesn't have his father's physical strength or cunning, but he has heart, still inviting beggars and travelers into the feast, as Zeus' will demands. Telemachus lives in the shadow of his father, and while he doesn't desire the throne, he sees the suitors as boors and louts and not a one suitable to lead under the laws of the gods they worship. Penelope, though, hasn't given up hope of Odysseus' return, and herself doesn't see any need for a man to claim the throne where she currently sits. The suitors try to bait Telemachus into fights so that his claim to the throne can be "rightfully" disregarded if he's killed in an act of self defence. Telemachus leaves Ithaca to seek answers, but that just puts him in even more danger.
We see the fateful climax to the Trojan War from at least three different perspectives throughout the film. The first is the legend, the tale of the glorious victors and Odysseus' strategic genius in the ploy of the Trojan horse. The second is the harrowing tale of the warriors' time inside of said horse, the unglamorous reality of it all. The third is from Odysseus' own recollections, using Zeus' law of providing hospitality, of welcoming offerings of peace as a gateway for their own violent ambitions. Odysseus' men get the gates of Troy open, the waiting army of Agamemnon enter and slaughter the sleeping town with no discretion.
In leaving Troy, Odysseus opts to take the long route home, rather than follow Agamemnon, and this one ill decision leads to a series of misadventures which continue to cost him the lives of his men. The meeting of the cyclops is a horror show, but in managing their escape, Odysseus take a spiteful shot at the creature, a child of Poseidon. The men start to believe their journey is cursed as a result, the god of the seas taking his vengeance upon them. They are assailed by giants, turned into pigs, eaten by sea creatures, and their only way to get back on track, to finding their way home is to visit the dead. There, Odysseus has to face the men he left behind, the men whose bodies he didn't honour, and the predictions of the future, the choices he will have to make. Odysseus has defied the gods over and over again, and is punished for it.
The Odyssey is weirdly a pro-religion film, one that talks about obeying the laws of gods, and shows the punishments that happen if you don't. Odysseus' point for so long was that his will, his strength, and his intellect were all that mattered. In the belly of war for ten years, he lost his heart, his compassion, his humanity, and in doing so lost almost everything. If the film is telling us anything, it's not that religion is good or that obeying the gods is good, but respecting your fellow man is good. That charity is good. That contrition and compassion is good. At the center of pretty much every major religion is these ideas of being of service to gods is to be of service to your community and fellow man. But rather than look at this as a film telling you to go to church, or synagogue or mosque or whatever, it's telling you to respect and empathize, and look outside your own needs and ambitions, to use your status for something greater, not for self.
As well, the tale of Odysseus is about the traumas of war. History like to create heroes and epic tales out of battle, but such history ignores the humanity behind it. By the time he returns home, Odysseus does not see himself as a great warrior, a hero or a legends, but a man with the burden of honouring those whose lives he cost. Accompanying him throughout the film is a spectre (Zendaya), a being that both haunts and guides him, setting him on a more righteous path, if slowly. In the end, when Odysseus says he needs to honour the dead, I don't think he's just talking about his men. What we never actually see in the film are the gods themselves, but there's enough fantastical elements to makes us feel their presence.
The production of The Odyssey is incredible. The lighting feels so natural, in a Barry Lyndon sort of way where all the indoor light seems to be coming from either torches, candles or windows, and the natural light outdoors is highlighting everything. I loved that there's minimal make-up in the film as well. The lines and freckles on Anne Hathaway's face weren't present in The Devil Wears Prada 2 but they make her stunning and captivating here. You want to study all the faces on screen, in a way glossier productions don't.
While most assuredly there's digital effects in the film, it seems largely a practical production. The ships look real, as does the beautiful wide shots and overhead views of them on the waters from ace cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. I don't really want the mystique of it all spoiled, but I also want to know how far asea they took those boats.
Back once again with Nolan is composer Ludwig Göransson. I'm a big fan of Göransson, his compositions usually are a highlight, often attention grabbing in their uniqueness while complementing the visuals. Here, for the most part, Göransson steps back, letting his compositions rest in the shadows, rarely calling attention to themselves, but nonetheless being fantastic and exactly what the film needs.
It's the first feature length film to be completely shot on IMAX cameras, but getting into one of the few proper IMAX theatres to see it is a challenge all its own at the moment, and given how in-demand the format is, there may not be enough time and enough seats to satisfy demand before (I assume) the latest Spider-man film takes them over.
I was rapt for the entire two hours and fifty-two minute runtime of the film. While the spectacle is what would normally entice me, my favourite moments were all two-handers, scenes between two characters. These moments of intimacy or intrigue are the film's greatest strength and what will have me returning to the film many more times. Try to tell my younger geek self that I'd be more drawn to people talking than fighting giants or men getting turned into pigs or massive battles, and he wouldn't believe you.
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The "Marvel Age" of cinema is over. We're in a new transitional state right now where all different types of films are hitting big, from horrors to epics to chick flicks to video game adaptations, but there hasn't been a blockbuster comedy in a long, long time. I can't think of one from this decade that jumps out to me, in spite of there being at least a few great comedies that didn't get a lot of attention or explode the box office (maybe the relaunches of The Naked Gun last year and this year's Scary Movie come close to blockbuster status?).
For comedies to be big they tend to need either an authorial voice (like a Judd Apatow or Taika Waititi) behind the camera, or a commanding comedic presence in front of the camera. The industry hasn't let either of these truly build over the past 15 years. Most of our former big names have receded to TV or their stand-up careers, and the good comedy filmmakers have moved into making more serious productions.
David Wain is a comedy writer-director who emerged out of the expansive comedy troupe The State in the late 90's, and director of the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer. That film was released in 2001 but seemed to take a decade or longer to grow in popularity. His biggest hit, Role Models, was in 2006, but it didn't share the same sensibilities of Wain's State/Wet Hot/Stella/We Came Together work. It seemed more a work-for-hire film that succeeded on the back of Paul Rudd's plentiful charms.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, co-written with Wain's The State mate Ken Marino, feels very much like a Wain work, but the difference here is that Wain and Marino and their State colleagues have spread out among Hollywood in the intervening years, establishing connections and embedding themselves into the industry. It doesn't mean their comedy style has been accepted and their films are any easier to get made though.
So many of my podcasts (both film and comedy podcasts) are celebrating the release of Wain's latest, and trumpeting its comedic delights. There's a real desire from the film nerds and comedy geeks to try and make original comedies successful in cinemas again, and it seems they want Wain's latest to be a part of that. The only trouble is, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn't good, and it's certainly not great. It's fine at at best.
The story of the film is narrated by Frank the mailman (Fred Melamed), a casual acquaintance of the titular Gail Daughtry, and sort of the outside observer of the events of this film (which makes no sense since he's in Gail's midwestern hometown and not in L.A. where the majority of the film takes place). He regails us with the brief history of Gail (Zoey Deutch), a super-upbeat, congenial, likeable, kind and slightly naive hairdresser who is keen to get married to her childhood sweetheart Tom Soursap McNoodleman (Michael Cassidy, putting in every effort to channel as much Paul Rudd-ness as he can). A salon conversation about "celebrity sex passes" spills out into Gail and Tom's evening out where Tom immediately answers "Tilda Swinton". But after attending a bookreading from Jennifer Aniston (who is doing a reading of her new cookbook, a solid joke), Tom muses that he might change his answer from Swinton to Aniston. Next thing you know Gail's catching him boning Jennifer Aniston.
A fortune teller tells her the only way to save her upcoming marriage is to balance things out. So Gail decides to join her salon-buddy Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley) on a trip to a hairdressing convention in Los Angeles, with the intention of find Jon Hamm, her celebrity sex pass, and getting dirty with him.
Upon landing in the airport, two mob-coded goons (Jo Lo Truglio and Matthew Jason Cwern) come across Henry Winkler and ask for a photograph (the joke here is they think he's John Travolta from Welcome Back Kotter). Gail offers to take the photo and puts down her suitcase, which is, of course, the exact same type that the goons just put down, and of course the cases get mixed up.
At this stage I thought the film was going to fully dovetail into Gail and Otto on the run from the mob to the point that we forget about the sex pass until a late third-act intervention of one Jon Hamm, leading to the reminder of the film's title, because that would be a good joke. But no, the majority of the film is about Gail and Otto collecting people on their quest to get Gail laid by the star of Mad Men while largely unbeknownst to them, the mob is after them.
They're joined by junior talent agent Caleb (Ben Wang) who gets fired for helping them, Hamm's down-on-his-luck Mad Men co-star John Slattery (John Slattery), and hard-up nice-guy paparazzo Vincent (Marino). Their adventure starts with looking for Hamm, finding Hamm, getting turned away by security, but with the promise of a meeting if they pitch him a great movie. They find the mixed-up suitcase with all the nefarious mob plans and it spells out a big-time spy movie plot, only then the mafia get in their way, and the third-act becomes a silly, hyperviolent escape scenario before the inevitable climax (pun intended) and coda.
Like I said, The State crew have proliferated in the industry, made some friends and contacts, and so there's a lot of resting on the mere appearance of a Jennifer Aniston or Jon Hamm or other celebrity cameos in this film to sell a joke. That would be fine if the film didn't transport the story into L.A. where so much of the humour rests upon inside Hollywood or L.A. jokes. Of course the movie podcasts I listen to love this, they're obsessed with Hollywood, and the comedy podcasts from L.A. types love jokes about their city. Put them together and this film has its head up its own ass for most of the production.
It seems like the product of people who don't have any other frame of reference to devise comedy from. It's not that there's not funny ideas, performances, or even good jokes, it's that the majority of them rest in this very narrow realm of interest, and rely so heavily on the audience to be invested in that very narrow realm of interest.
It might just be that I was not in the mood for this movie when I watched it, but a good comedy -- a good movie -- should transport you out of whatever you're feeling and into the world of the film, and so much of what I was thinking about was how insular and annoying Hollywood and Hollywood types seem from the outside. Perhaps in a few years this will unveil itself in a Wet Hot... secret success kind of way, but Wet Hot... had a pretty transcendent conceit (an 80's-style summer camp sex comedy where full grown adults are playing the teens). I don't see such a conceit here.
In a more robust comedy ecology, this would be just another satisfactory offering among many. Since there's not really any other comedies dropping, there's almost too much pressure for this little niche comedy to succeed. Also, not for nothing, the title is an unruly mess.
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While Blackberry is a very different film than Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, Johnson's style is very specific. He has a preference for handheld cameras, he's seemingly disinterested in precise framing or lighting and he likes things to feel in vérité style, as if it were a documentary. In Blackberry Johnson didn't attempt the conceit of a documentary film crew, but in Nirvanna the yadda yadda, Johnson who acts and co-stars with Jay McCarroll, is keenly aware and often mugging directly to the camera. The cameraman is indeed a third-party in the film.
I knew Operation Avalache had something to do about faking the moon landing, but I had no other expectations from the film. I was surprised to find that, much like Nirvanna the etcetera, Matt Johnson is playing Matt Johnson, and working with a documentary crew, only in this case this alt-reality Matt Johnson works for the CIA in the 1960's and is posing as a filmmaker in NASA trying to root out a Russian spy. In the process Johnson and his crew discover that NASA can't actually land their lunar module on the moon, putting the U.S.'s success in the space race in jeopardy.
So, Johnson decides to pivot, at first without the knowledge of his superiors, and then with the aide of, to fake the moon landing. The launch and orbit will be real, but the landing will be pre-recorded and transmitted from the spacecraft. The ploy is known as, naturally, Operation Avalanche.
It's a fun movie, but a bizarre one, especially in the metatext. The angle of Matt Johnson playing a character with the his own name, and Matt Johnson behaving in a not-too-dissimilar fashion to how the Matt Johnson character in Nirvanna the blah blah behaves, camera mugging included, it has a weird effect in confusing the audience about how they're supposed to feel about the tone at any given moment.
For the most part, the first two acts of this film are comedic, and so when it tries to frame a serious and/or meaningful conversation between Johnson and his CIA colleague Owen Williams (played by Owen Williams) it's hard to really settle into the drama of it. The third act takes a semi-logical pivot into conspiracy thriller, but it is a pretty wild tonal shift that doesn't fully hang together when Johnson can't stop mugging for the camera even when he's not really trying to.
There's an immense amount of creativity and wonderful visual trickery in this film. In the film itself the characters are trying to perform, ostensibly, a magic trick with their production, and the film we're watching is doing the same thing. It's never not entertaining even if it doesn't all hang together smoothly. I do have to wonder what the fully comedic version of this would look like, just as I wonder what the fully conspiracy thriller version of this story would look like. The film itself doesn't satisfy either of these curiosities, but does largely satisfy on its own terms.
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The Truman Show is not one of my favouritest movies... far from it. I watched it once in theatres back when it was released and I don't think ever again. It further cemented the fact that Peter Weir movies AND Jim Carrey movies just really weren't my thing. My favourite podcast, Blank Check, just finished going through the Wier filmography and they were pretty vocal about their admiration for their film. I mean, it was nearly 30 years ago, and I view films much a lot fairly a bit differently now than I did back then. I'm certainly a more experienced film-goer at the very least. Perhaps, just maybe, there's some secret sauce to The Truman Show I didn't appreciate before. Maybe the Blank Check crew taking me through Wier's films in such depth will have me appreciating his work in a way I certainly didn't before.
The answer to these hypothetical is "nope". Didn't happen.
The lingering impression of The Truman Show was primarily how Carrey -- at the time attempting his first transition out of rubber-faced physical comedian persona -- was all wrong for the part. With fresh eyes I know I was wrong on that assessment... he was mostly wrong for the part. If the Jim Carrey of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Man on the Moon were in the role, then I think it would have played for me much better. Instead, the Carrey of 1998 was still in extreme mugging and overly gesticulating mode. Yes, he reigned it it for The Truman Show, but it's also evident that he didn't know how to perform without it. He seems like he's fighting his true goofy nature every minute on screen and, much like watching Matt Johnson in Operation Avalanche above try to not mug for the camera while in conspiracy thriller mode, Carrey can't help himself even though the titular Truman is a really dramatic part. Truman was a role he needed to break him out of the mold he put himself in, but I don't know that it served the film the best with him in the part.
Weir, I've probably mentioned before, is not a director whose work I have much affection for. I struggle to find the specific film of his that resonates with me, mainly because the ones I have seen (most of those multiple times and involuntarily) don't engender me to watch any others. Even the Blank Check recap didn't entice me to follow along, week-by-week, film-by-film. (I rewatched Picnic at Hanging Rock and that's it... I would like to reassess Fearless). Here, I find a solidly made, solidly executed film, but a real lack of style.
If ever there was a film that needed style, it's The Truman Show.
Here we have a fantastical future reality where the TV and social landscape has been transformed by 24-hours-a-day coverage of Truman's life, all of it a manufactured reality around him, built inside the only other man-made structure to be seen from outer space other than the Great Wall of China (which you can't even, but nevermind... it's all flights of fancy anyway, so why fact check anything). The world Truman lives in is sort of a retro-50's/early-60's aesthetic which never evolved, but the production had the capacity to go really weird alt-history future in Truman's world and it's so sad they didn't.
Beyond just boring choices in costuming and sets, Weir doesn't effectively use the pov shot nor experiment enough with different aspect ratios or camera formats to most effectively tell the story. So very often in the movie it is absolutely unclear whether we're watching Truman as a viewer would watch from home in the world within the world (or perhaps the editing booth) or if it's the meta view from Weir's actual lens. There was such opportunity to do something really different there (I had just watched Backrooms again, and We're All Going To The World's Fair in the days before, both films which use different lenses to view the protagonist, as if we watching through different screens, and then, at times watching people watching screens... these films really get how to use media in a way Weir was only kind of thinking about, but didn't seem to put his full effort into it (unless the studio shut down the idea for being to "out there").
The Truman Show came out just when reality TV was taking off in North America. It certainly hadn't taken over most of the networks and account for the majority of TV programming like it does today, and the internet certainly wasn't a think for videos like it is today. The point is, there's a case to be made for rebooting The Truman Show and examining the attention and fame economy as a result.
The film is moderately enjoyable, but I found myself more frustrated than entertained. I'm sure others might find it charming or conceptually intriguing, and I can't deny that it has its charms and that the concept isn't strong. It's just not executed to my desired tastes.
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Smash cut to the pandemic times when director Olivier Assayas decided to remake Irma Vep into a TV miniseries starring Alicia Vikander. It was only at this time, over 25 years later, that I really knew what the plot was about. In the 1996 film, the great Maggie Cheung plays a fictional version of herself. She's come to France to appear in a remake of the classic silent film Les vampires, playing the lead role of Irma Vep.
Not really speaking or understanding French, Maggie is a bit lost amidst the conversations around her, and can only intone the chaos that's taking place around her on the set. The director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is having a meltdown, a crisis of confidence, and wants Maggie to be his muse for the project, which she just kind of rolls with. Meanwhile Zoé (Nathalie Richard) in makeup befriends Maggie and is really smitten. Things get a little awkward at a dinner party Zoé brings her to. Maggie one night dons her character's cat suit and heads out into the night on her own adventure, sneaking around the rooftops and through hallways, thieving like Catwoman. And there's much fighting on set, the production seems troubled, and every reporter just wants to talk to Maggie about how awful and pretentious French films are compared to American films.
The film is Assayas trying to resolve where French cinema was in the 1990s. The new wave was far enough in the rear view mirror to not even be relevant anymore, and, at least in the film, nothing meaningful had taken place in the country since. There's a crisis afoot, about whether French film should be populist, or expand its appeal beyond its borders, or stay deeply and truly artistic and extremely French. It never really resolves these questions it asks.
It is in the cinema vérité stile, but really keeping with the single camera, and minimizing edits. It's not documentary style, it really gets intimate with its cast, getting right in their faces at times. It's a brief-ish movie at 99 minutes, but at times is a little naval gaze-y. It seems loosely plotted and perhaps unscripted (minimal research says it was loosely scripted and shot with only one take per shot) and it feels very run-and-gun. The performers are all charming, but the general idea of the film, to fall back on my critique of Gail Daughtry..., is up it own ass. It's a filmmaker making a film about how hard filmmaking is, and most of the film's commentary is about how hard it is to make a film. Hardly earth-shaking stuff...but maybe a little more unique in 1996? If this had been truly about viewing things from Maggie's perspective, then it would have been a pretty fascinating film, but she's only occasionally our central figure and the lens never really settles on her like it does for director Rene or Zoe.
My intent was to go straight from the film to the HBO miniseries, but the film was such a nothingburger of a story that I couldn't be bothered. One's mileage may vary.
