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Hit Man (2023)
So where do I sign?
Starring one of his stalwarts from the past two decades, Hit Man is the breezy new comedy from the people's philosopher Richard Linklater. Most will last recognise fresh-faced Glenn Powell from 2016's Everybody Wants Some!!, dubbed the ostensible spiritual successor to the ultimate Linklater joint of the 70s milieu, Dazed and Confused. But the later film was a glossy, sterilised update for a scene and generation that had long moved on; there was some heart there, but none of the soul (and why shoot it digitally??). It was a flick that Linklater could have made in his sleep, as placid and self-satisfied as its college protagonists, frozen in its own nostalgia. In between his typically meandering talkies and musings on time's arrow are the jolting black comedies that take a slice from the darker shades of our daily lives. Hit Man might best exemplify what the director was trying to crystallise in Bernie, a Jack Black-helmed faux documentary emerging from his close (and possibly problematic) connection with convicted murderer Bernie Tiede. But whilst that movie emblazoned its 'ripped from reality' label loudly and proudly in its opening sequence, complete with the trademark neorealism that placed audiences uncomfortably close to its source material, Hit Man is largely untethered, cheerfully revealing that "(we made that part up)" in the credits about its main premise of a bona fide hitman.
This parenthetical approach frees the film from its obligations of verisimilitude, and Linklater is able to find the right balance of action, screwball comedy, and dark humour. The funniest moments emerge early as Gary hits his stride as a professional fake hitman, with each stakeout a meticulous caricature or loving homage that gives Powell the opportunity to flex his acting chops. In a snappy montage of stupified mugshots, the film zooms (literally) into Gary's dorky devotion to his craft, a true thespian recounting his performances in a wry, Allen-esque voiceover. His narration is earnest and down-to-earth as if he is simply diarising the construction of a new birdhouse or a weekly schedule and belies the darker nature of these requests; this establishes the rest of the film's straddling of tone. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Powell looks the part of a leading man, and much of Gary is characterised by a tucked-in shirt and compact body language, so he slides effortlessly into Ron, the suave, sexy assassin from another world. I doubt his students only began looking twice simply because his lectures shifted from psychoanalysis to Lord of the Flies. Amidst the recreations (you can tell Linklater is having a blast here), there's a relatively grounded conversation with his ex-wife (how rare in media!) about the ideal of knowing one's true role. The self is a construction, and perhaps, so is Gary.
Hit Man skims the philosophical surface of the lake and veers into action-romance with the introduction of Adria Arjona, thankfully, perhaps, avoiding the pitfalls of true crime from its original script. With Powell's jawline and her coquettish femme fatale, their chemistry is undeniable and lights a fuse in the life of Ron/Gary (meanwhile, there were fizzled sparks in the rom-com hit of the summer, Anything But You). This screwball partnership hits its peak in their best scene together when the compromised Gary must return to Madison under wire, and in a classic case of pretend and dramatic irony, they construct a faux argument all whilst mouthing exasperation and throwing smirks at each other. You can see Arjona's eyes light up as Ron materialises right in front of her from within Gary, and all the wooing scene needs to tie the bow is for her to pull him back inside the door for a smooch. There's better chemistry on show here than in any of their physical trysts. Yet Madison never develops beyond the sex kitten that the portrayal radiates, and the pair remain a curiosity rather than something to either sympathise with or fixate on with grotesque. More vulnerability would have provided further depth for both; there's an ocean of subtext that remains unexplored here, on the illusory nature of domesticity or the seductive allure of violence, but an archetype she remains. Truthfully, I'd have preferred Linklater to veer the other way and press deeper into their psyches. The film doesn't have the darker edges of a genuine noir (stylistically, think something like To Die For, or Election for the lighter edition), so the ending might present a twisted subversion of the happily ever after, but it's more jarring than truly wicked. It half-heartedly commits to rooting for these murderers but elicits confusion rather than something more contradictory. Powell, regardless, emerges as a star in the making, able to capture a leading man's gravitas with the quirk of a character actor, or a half dozen at that. Hit Man is entertaining enough, but surely no one is having more fun than he is.
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)
Wanna know how I got these scars?
It seemed that with Netflix, auteur Zach Snyder had finally found his true calling and artistic avenue. Its distribution model meant that he could bisect his space opera epic Rebel Moon into an extended, two-part saga without sacrificing any of the meat of the story or going through the whole production process 3 years down the line like any old sequel. It meant that no shot was left unturned and silly discussions about optimal story length to entice audiences to buy into a - shock, horror, gasp - longer film were moot. Intermissions? Cut content? Bah. The canvas was his to paint. Indeed, this narrative freedom is markedly obvious in one of The Scargiver's early scenes where the heroes have returned to the quaint village of Veldt, and, in a classic 'the night before' sequence, proceed to unload exposition about their motivations for challenging the Motherworld. I say scene, but this is in reality a series of summaries about each of their backstories that occupies a good ten minutes, a ten minutes in which you ponder why Snyder didn't include this in Part One. Here's where us common folk won't recognise the genius of his storytelling dexterity; why waste time with tavern stories when you can use an entire second film as an extended flashback for all the characterisation you didn't do in the first? Laser swords and guns first, motives later.
Earlier on, in a similarly egregious moment, the band of ragtag heroes are heralded by the village they are to become saviours too, all before the actual deed of the final battle, quite literally presented with each of their character archetypes and attributes as if they were the latest players in a D&D campaign. Why not at least move this heartwarming sequence to the end of the film after they are victorious? It matters little because they all become a generic smear of fantasy tropes with little to differentiate them from one another. Remember that A Child of Fire was a movie that sought to subvert the appeal of Doona Bae's slick dual wielding sabres with the futility of revenge in a sobering monologue, only to then use the same desire of vengeance to recruit Djimon Hounsou's tortured general twenty minutes later. Of course she falls in line here, because having a true pacifist would mean her absence from the movie altogether, and we can't have that.
Let's not mind the fact that these villagers missed all their heroics in the first film and have only known them for a few days, so they're only closely acquainted with their grain harvesting skills (which are, to be fair, quite impressive). Snyder's always been, for what it's worth, praised for his visual finesse, and in what is so perfectly poised as a parody (but isn't), he spends ten minutes highlighting the heavenly harvest, or what seems to be an eternity when taking into account his liberal use of slow motion and exquisite close-ups of wheat trembling in golden sunlight. This is the director who mastered the aesthetic of cool via speed ramping in 300 almost two decades ago and has since refused to further innovate. He seeks the coolest shot because it's cool, so he'll shoot underwater from the perspective of a barrel of water because it looks cool, he'll have Jimmy make a dramatically late entrance and pose because it looks cool, and he'll have the edgy string quartet accompaniment of the Brutus-esque royal coup be literally just sitting in the background playing diegetically and reacting live to the action because...why? It's badass, that's why.
Snyder's Watchmen ranks as one of the worst examples of adapted media because he fundamentally misunderstood (or perhaps deliberately ignored) the inherent fascistic act of being a superhero and wielding god-like powers to enact your own brand of justice, seeking to instead visually elevate them like every one of his protagonists, speed ramping action shots to exalt their divine physiques. There's even a shocking shot of Staz Nair with a shirt on, which must clearly violate the Taylor Lautner clause in his contract. Now, you could level that critique against Nolan's Batman - one can't forget the penultimate scene of The Dark Knight where legitimate concerns about Bale's spyware are casually handwaved away in the name of justice - but Snyder doesn't even rise to that level of intricacy. He whacks actions figures against each other. Explosions and laser missiles are more for decoration and less for logical effect. Camp isn't even remotely in his vocabulary, so Rebel Moon's plot is humourless and self-serious, and every grimy close-up of the ragtag misfits and rebel commoners (salt of the earth types, people of the land, you know) merely remind us that this story has been told a hundred times before, and much better at that. But even Marvel have managed to, on some occasions, lift themselves out of this dreary, CGI palette of browns and greys. The Scargiver is ugly and incomprehensible.
In the end, The Scargiver's biggest sin is that it is flat out boring. What little intrigue Part One's premise conjured with its seldom original worldbuilding (and even that in question pending a lawsuit from the company contracted to create a tabletop RPG for the franchise and who claim their pitch bible was hijacked) dissipates here in an ending so deflating it beggars belief, minimising the prior battles' significance by revealing that the royal Princess Issa is actually alive ("So, the village of Veldt learned to function as a society. And eventually, the princess was rescued by... oh, let's say, Titus."), that they must rescue her, and that the story can continue being randomly generated for at least two more instalments. Oh, and it turns out that Netflix is not the optimal model for Snyder after all, announcing shortly after release that he has an R-rated vision in mind. Maybe one day he might gaslight his way towards a fresh Tomatometer rating for this series. If you can continue pretending that a few dozen sacks of grain are actually valuable to an evil empire that can warp through space and resurrect corpses, you may be able to persevere until The Scargiver's credits roll. But hope for Part Three lies in a galaxy far, far away. Wait no, that's a bit too obvious.
Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka (2023)
I'm not afraid of fire.
It is 1997. Hayao Miyazaki announces he is stepping away from the front line of animation after the release of fantasy epic Princess Mononoke. In 2001, after Spirited Away's worldwide success in conquering the threshold that was the West, Miyazaki announces that he will no longer produce full-length feature films. And in 2013, his formal retirement comes with The Wind Rises. But Miyazaki is 82 now, not 56, so it is no wonder that his final final final final film is infused with a sense of the elegiac. The Boy and the Heron is titled How Do You Live? In Japan and long-time Ghibli fans will be quick to notice how it echoes different aspects of his life's work: a countryside escape from the darker edges of reality in Totoro, the aged monuments and structures of Castle in the Sky, the use of portals to displace time from Howl's, and most notably, the Hero's Journey via descent into an otherworldly fantasy setting from Spirited Away.
TBATH retains the same sharpness in animation of any of Miyazaki's works, but in perhaps the most surprising (for better or worse) note of the entire film, it establishes Mahito's backstory through a flashback to an air-raid that led to the loss of his mother, and the animated flames quite literally threaten to tear apart the clean-cut lines of the key frames, disintegrating the backdrops as he struggles to the site of the bombing. Who says an 80-year old can't formally experiment? It recalls Takahata's Kaguya which physically resembled a traditional scrolled painting, dark streaks of ink bursting with anger and anxiety when its protagonist yearned for an escape. And yet these memories are fleeting in the overall runtime, and whilst visceral, have an ultimately diluted effect on our understanding of Mahito's repressed trauma. Another shocking moment, a rarity from Miyazaki that harkens back to some of the action from Mononoke: Mahito takes a stone and strikes the side of his own head, and this scar will mark him for the rest of the journey, a reminder of his pent-up grief and isolation. Blood gushes, but it is a brief punctuation of his fervour, the narrative affording him few opportunities to open up.
Perhaps that is the point. The final shot, too, is oddly hasty, a one-line summation of life post-adventure, and more importantly, post-war. This might be attributed to the slower pace of Miyazaki's work rate and relinquishing control of reviewing every single frame in his old age, but Mahito nevertheless feels a touch short of being fully realised, an outline of richer protagonists. The epilogue contains another oddity that I can't recall being utilised in any of his past work: voiceover narration to close. Again I am reminded of Takahata, of 1994's Pom Poko, which ended with a sobering summation in past tense of the fate of the tanuki. The narrator there speaks directly to the audience in the comfort of their seats; Japan's economic expansion has been at the expense of the natural environment and of the creatures that call these spaces their homes. Too late. Too late.
Scorsese said the same thing promoting his latest (but not last) film, lamenting on the cruel irony of only recognising cinema's inherent power at this age. Both have continued on the path, but whilst the former rues the stories untold and time slipping away, Miyazaki confronts the idea of letting go. The biographical lens is an obvious one; the venerable wizard was once reportedly written as the Takahata stand-in before his passing, at which point Miyazaki reshaped the story into something else, focusing instead on the connection between Mahito and the heron. Yet you can't listen to the wizard's ruminations about struggling to find a successor or contending with the chaos and imbalance of his creations without seeing the same withering of the Ghibli brand, the creative tension with Goro, the tragic premature passing of Kondo. His preoccupation with legacy and his own mortality is infused throughout, and retirement bluffing or not, it makes for a poetic final chapter for one of our greatest storytellers.
Mirroring this, Mahito must journey through his own Carroll-esque underworld, not in search of his late mother, but for closure. There is no outright villain here except time and change, no magic necklace to find or mythical beast to tame. The external inertia of his arc reflects the internal realisation that must occur for his malice to dissolve (Hisaishi's score, too, is more sparse than sweeping). The carousel of fantastical sights and figures Miyazaki drapes across the screen are as wondrous as ever, but less cohesive and binding (it is funny, though, and the fascist parakeets hit the right note conceptually and tonally, teetering between silly and menacing). One moment is memorable above the rest: Mahito, stern and stoic and brimming with internalised resentment, sits with his future mother and grins widely, face half covered with jam, blissfully ignorant to the outside world. Neither of them mention what they will eventually realise: that this is where she disappeared to that missing year of her life, that her powers function as a grim foreshadowing of her fate, and that to stop eating and leave is to face reality. But they part in the end, and Miyazaki underlines this fleeting sweetness (both literally and metaphorically) to make it all the more poignant when they do decide to let go and say goodbye. We must all grapple with that, at one point or another.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Can you find the wolves in this picture?
For some, the Osage murders was the fiery match that lit the bonfire of years of systematic disenfranchisement; for many others, a mere historical footnote. Scorsese's latest film covers a haunting period of the early 20th century where white exploitation of the native Americans of Osage County came to a murderous head. His mobster and quasi-mobster flicks hurtle along in consumerist excess, 2+ hours of dizzying highs and lows, but late-stage Marty has mortality more than anything on his mind; he drip feeds the narrative over three and a half hours, and as we saw in The Irishman, life is slowly squeezed out. Schoonmaker is not shy with punctuating the odyssey with those trademark splatters of violence, each cold and wordless and sudden, but the rest of the narrative is a classic slow burn, methodical and agonising. We feel the gradual suffocation as the wolves close in on the Osage community, with nowhere to turn.
It must have been for those in Mollie Kyle's position, who watches as each pillar of her family and community crumble one by one, helpless to halt the genocide. Gladstone wields inertia as her primary weapon: each stony-faced gaze is a peer into a guilty man's soul, and near the film's close, in a defining conversation that once and for all dictates the moral lines that have been drawn, it seems that she knows her husband better than he knows himself. One might only yearn for a clearer explanation for what Gladstone or indeed the historical Kyle ever saw in Burkhart. Was it truly love? Killers of the Flower Moon is a piercing historical excision, but it's still covered by Hollywood gloss, 200 million worth at that. The softening of the protagonist's bloodthirst and collusion is one overt symptom, with DiCaprio's moral quandary twisting and turning over the course of the narrative, his lined face becoming more and more gaunt, contorted in a tangle of guilt and shame. There are still remnants of that heartthrob. Meanwhile, Wikipedia contributors still argue whether the real Burkhart meets the criteria and definition of a serial killer.
If that is the price to pay for having this story reach the big screen, then so be it. Scorsese has been producing cautionary tales since the beginning of his career, but you might not recognise that given the hordes of admirers who turn a blind eye to the undercutting endings of Goodfellas or The Wolf of Wall Street (which quite literally call out and to the audience). The Irishman deconstructed that power fantasy over three and a half hours, the cinematic equivalent of a fizzling firecracker, a pathetic denouement that observes Frank Sheeran forgotten and fading out in a nursing home. William Hale is the straight villain here, the white supremacist who orchestrates the Osage conspiracy, almost plain in his ruthlessness. It's a role De Niro could have played in his sleep. There's a sequence early on that is vintage Scorsese à la Copacabana: the camera tracks DiCaprio as he arrives by train in Gray Horse, follows the automobile as they drive out to the Hale ranch, and, as the theatre is drenched in an intoxicating fusion of tribal percussion and bass-heavy blues rock, glides overhead to reveal the plains punctured with countless oil rigs. The contagion has begun. But the visual flourishes and slow motion tableus are far and few between, and Scorsese's restraint is evident for much of the rising action, so to speak. See the more subtle work he does with eyelines and silent gazes; watch how he shoots a POV shot of Gladstone disembarking a train, making it feel as if the entire county is scrutinising her small fortune and waiting to pounce. Watch Scorsese balance brutality with delicate moments where the Osage women find solace with their culture, as with the wordless passing of Lizzie Q. But is the final shot enough of a cultural legacy?
Nearly every Scorsese film has been, more or less, about his Catholicism and inherently lingering guilt. Silence felt like the culmination of a entire lifetime, a story that must and will continue to grow in estimation as his most personal movie. Killers of the Flower Moon is as taut of a thriller as any of his dramas, and yet the penultimate scene deflates this tension by pulling back to a true crime-esque radio play, a goofy, flash-forward re-enactment of the Osage Indian murders complete with exaggerated foley effects and a sponsorship from Lucky Strikes. The choice is deliberately anachronistic and anti-climactic, a tone-jarring switch after the impending justice that had been accumulated and promised to the audience in the final hour, and initially it plays as an avoidance of dealing sincerely with the subject matter's historical baggage. After all, how can a Hollywood flick ever capture a true sense of what the Osage community suffered and still endure? Scorsese knows his film cannot, only zoom into a forgotten atrocity and hope it doesn't become resigned to a historical footnote. There was no closure for them, much less in a commercial retelling. In conducting his research for the film, Scorsese met with the Gray Horse community to discuss their concerns about representation and the unearthing of trauma, aiming to avoid a retread of past exploitation, and ended up rewriting portions of the script to better incorporate their culture. To lend those voices an avenue to speak was a great privilege, he describes. He plays himself as the final narrator, admitting his complicity and asking that the audience consider this for themselves. That he can humble himself at the age of 81 and continue to challenge and re-invent his craft over five decades shows a remarkable consciousness about the power, both to adovcate and undermine, of filmmaking. He knows the story isn't his to tell, but it still needs to be told, and that is as meaningful of a tribute to Mollie Kyle as there could be.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
I don't accept that.
A wise critic (me, right now) once said that action is the universal cinematic language, and Tom Cruise is living proof of that. If the startling revival of Top Gun in the worldwide box office didn't already signify this, then the Mission Impossible franchise, now 27 years long, all but cements it. There's an early scene in Dead Reckoning Part One that is emblematic of all that this series is about, stylistically: the American bigwigs sit in a room and unspool exposition for the audience after the cold open. A rogue AI is on the loose and threatens the national security of every world power. They're the heads of the CIA, IMF, NSA; you name it. It doesn't matter who they are, but what they represent: men (and sometimes, occasionally, women) who are all keenly aware of their near-approaching chance to seize absolute power, men who would sell their souls for that level of control, men who are, in short, not Ethan Hunt. What should be a simple group conversation is shot in the most maximalist way possible, with the coverage frequently breaking the 180-degree rule, pushing in and showing us every gleam in their eyes with extreme close-ups, tilting into a Dutch angle as much as the camera allows, and, when a certain suit slips in, always framing him in the background to practically draw a red arrow to his presence. Never has shallow focus been so in your face. The longer they talk, the more his statue-esque figure haunts the screen, and the more the tension simmers, until finally the scene pops, the mask comes off, and we audibly gasp and laugh and exhale. Not many action movies can make you feel all of those emotions, nevertheless simultaneously. Dead Reckoning then proceeds to do precisely that that precisely over and over again.
In a modern world of living computer programs sabotaging entire nations and drones able to invisibly execute from thousands of miles away, you'd think that plastic masks would have been discarded long ago for slicker, more advanced tech (remember when a dropping into a vault via cables was the peak of this series' stunts?). Not the case for Mission Impossible, which not only steers into the skid, but doubles down repeatedly, and those reveals hit every single time. It doesn't make sense for a sentient artificial intelligence, or, to be honest, any living person with eyes, to not notice a skin crease or stiff cheek. It doesn't have to. IMF sounds like and is a name made up by a 12 year old for the zaniest, coolest action sequences that take you to the limit, and then keep going. For years, the Naughty Dog's Uncharted franchise was heralded for their ability to capture movie-scale blockbuster moments on the smaller screen and let the player experience every explosion and death-defying stunt for themselves. Its second instalment literally drops you into a train carriage hanging off a cliffside in medias res, asking you to jump, climb, and dodge falling furniture to survive. Dead Reckoning more or less recreates this sequence in the midst of its climax AFTER the infamous motorcycle BASE jump, adds two more carriage cutscenes after you think it's over, and then makes Hunt escape from the train AGAIN in a skywing parachute. The theme music swells. We're onto Part 2.
Dead Reckoning is the franchise's funniest film, too, because of the sheer earnestness that it commits to each and every moment, unwilling for even a second to consider becoming a parody of itself. They shot it, so it is in the film. They shot it, so it exists and happens. The train carriages tumble over, and then again, and again. The entire chase in Rome is a masterclass of slapstick action ramped up to 100, high-octane stunts performed by Fiat and tactical jeep alike. Just see Pom Klementieff's maniacal glee as she squashes scooter after scooter in her pursuit; that's all of us, tracking the runaways by spotting the dented cars. I was giggling each time the pair of CIA grunts inexplicably ended up at the scene of the action, and then cheering them on because they're ultimately harmless and only want to witness it all with their own eyes like we do (it can't be a coincidence that one of them resembles Harry from Home Alone). When Hunt runs across the airport's roof in plain view whilst the two scratch their heads? Perfect. The train landing is improbable and hazardous and has Cruise's name stamped all over it, and when the shot reveals a convenient ramp-shaped rock formation, everyone knows what is about to happen. These aren't mere ironic subversions; the franchise has reached a point where it isn't afraid to poke fun at itself, so why hold back on anything? We're not laughing at it for being ridiculous and overwrought, but with it and along with every other member in the audience because it is delivering exactly what we want and are often too embarrassed to admit we want. In a media age where sincerity is poison and everything needs to be obscured by layer upon layer of irony and cynicism, there's a lot of value in that.
The plot and characterisation are often ancillary, although given the main objectives of the series, this isn't the biggest sin. Sometimes, one needs to serve the other. Listen to stunt coordinator and unit director Wade Eastwood sum it up: it's not merely about shooting what is on the script, but needing a character to go from point A to B, and devising the most entertaining means of getting them there. Newcomer Grace is breezily inserted as a small-time accomplice before very suddenly becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle that is the global arms race, and the script does as good a job as it can in endearing us to her as Atwell and Cruise sell us on her importance. If there's one casualty (perhaps self-inflicted due to her rising career, or for some, an instance of fridging) to this it is Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa, who has been as constant as a love interest in this franchise can be over the last three editions. I'm almost impressed at the ease in which they swap the old model for the new, as if the move was a pre-ordained, Entity-foretold sequence that needed to happen for Part 2 to come into fruition. It's a classic example of the plot prioritising fresh spectacle over emotional heft (I still don't understand why he had to make a choice between the two or how it came to be), and whilst the traditionalist in me should criticise this, my heart was already racing towards the next scene. Another example: Dead Reckoning Part 2 is reportedly the farewell to Ethan Hunt for good, and yet Tom Cruise has also mentioned that he wouldn't turn down an opportunity to return in another film. I'm kidding myself if I said no to that for the sake of the franchise's narrative integrity.
Let's be honest. The film is at its clumsiest when it is trying to round the story's edges; I thought I had completely forgotten about the pivotal scene where Gabriel kills the brunette from Hunt's past, only to realise that it's basically a retcon to beef up his tragic backstory. Given the former's proximity in the race for the magical Macguff-err I mean, very important key, it's hard to be truly frightened of his presence. The AI portion of the premise provides the script with enough convenience to ramp up the tension at a moment's notice, able to morph into any digital threat that the scenario requires. But what more appropriate villain for Ethan Hunt, for Tom Cruise? Much like the Entity itself, he has always risen to the challenge, described aptly as "a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos", and in an era where technology increasingly threatens the very existence of the movie star, he shifts and morphs and goes to another level. When we see Hunt hurtle off a cliff with only a parachute, it is an iron-clad guarantee with the audience that it is him on that motorcycle; you can use CGI to simulate any impossible stunt, but nothing replaces the natural and emotional edge of it actually happening before our eyes. When he runs, it is with every cell in his body, as if to stop running is to cease to exist altogether, the new age of filmmaking nipping at his heels. When Ferguson has been dispatched and Atwell herself seems to lack confidence in her own importance, Cruise looks her in the eye with the utmost reassurance. We can scarcely believe it a mere hour after her introduction, but he wills it into existence. When he says he will be on that train, we KNOW he will be on that train, one way or another. In the age of the cinematic universe and IP battles, you have to respect the work ethic, the sheer desire, of the last genuine Hollywood action star, the last leading man. Tom Cruise is his own brand. Sorry, Jeremy Renner.
Black Mirror: Demon 79 (2023)
You must be dreaming if you think you can pull that off.
Black Mirror returns to our silver screens in 2023 after a four-year absence in what is undoubtedly a very different cultural environment, a post-Covid, post-post modernism, post-AI explosion media landscape. Its first two episodes take square aim at the viewer itself, with the ad campaign for 'Joan is Awful' quite literally plastering the audience's own names and photos (consensually acquired, of course) in public spaces, reminding us of the slippery slope of big tech's increasing encroachment into our personal lives, but also our complicity in this process in the name of entertainment. 'Loch Henry's' found-footage horror is a neat little tale in itself, but pulls back in its denouement to award the episode BAFTA honours in a fictional ceremony, the meta twist affixing scrutiny on the exploitative nature of the true crime genre; content for the sake of content. The Streamberry branding emblazoned front and centre on both of these stories makes it clear that Brooker is turning on the hand that feeds. Some lament how obvious this is and would rather the episodes remain enclosed; others feel that they don't go far enough, ultimately indulging in the same pop allure that it critiques. For what it's worth, these narratives have more integrity than Bandersnatch, provoking thought beyond an absent press of your remote under the guise of interactivity.
These are more than gimmicks, to be sure. Much of the bemoaning from season 6's audience has less to do with the episodes themselves and more on the loss of the series' thematic cohesion, no longer a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of technology. But is that what solely keeps the Black Mirror name respectable? You'll notice that each of the five new stories take place either in the present, or in the case for the remaining three episodes, in the past. 'Beyond the Sea' is a taut, locked room of a thriller taking place in the 60s, its sci-fi aesthetic ripped straight from Kubrick, but its dissection of toxic masculinity and ego isn't dissimilar to how some still view woman in this day and age (something something Roe v. Wade). 'Mazey Day' instantly dates itself through a reference to Suri Cruise's birth, and while its surprise supernatural twist does pull the rug from under our feet, dispelling much tension and internal logic, the core message of resisting dehumanisation, even of the ultra-rich and privileged, still resonates. If this is the worst BM episode, then that's a pretty solid bar (I still haven't rewatched 'The Waldo Moment', but no doubt its prescience rings truer and a lot less cynical than in those halcyon days of 2013, which feels far longer ago than a mere decade). So whilst this new turn may not be predominantly speculative fiction, those reflections in the mirror still lurk beneath the surface of our current reality. Give me this any day over the easy caricatures of something like The Boys, satire so smug that it can barely conceal the congratulatory pat on the back that it offers its viewers for recognising its skewering of corporate commodification.
Sometimes, that mirror isn't black, but red. So begins 'Demon 79', the final, near feature-length film harking back to a time in Britain when folks were a bit more obvious about their racism, when you could push a man into the canal and the police would have no idea, and when danger lurked behind each cottage corner. Toby Haynes developed his period-piece chops with BBC and nails the visual 'texture' of the era from the opening shot: the flickering, grainy footage, the screeching sound design, the overly ornate title card that all but jumps at you, and those unnerving zoom shots (you might be reminded of British horror classics with similar moods such as Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man). When Nida, our meek store clerk protagonist, first experiences an imaginary moment of fleeting bloodlust, wishing to strangle a leering and inappropriate customer, violin strings shriek as the camera thrusts us up close into her expression, a vicious grin accompanied by gleaming eyes that wouldn't be out of place in some retro cartoon serial. She practically eats him up; delicious, delicious stuff. Upon being banished to the basement on account of not eating "normal food" (the first of a series of racial microaggressions against Nida, who shares a last name with Brooker's wife - surely reflective of real-life experiences), she discovers an ancient talisman and, pricking her finger and drawing blood, inadvertently summons a demon-in-training, Gaap.
Most of us have experienced these 'call of the void' moments before, and many have even imagined having a demon accomplice who will grant us the destructive power to wield and carry out our own karmic justice. It's not a new trope, but Brooker's take keeps it fresh because of how the script squeezes every bit of dark humour out of the premise (Nida's slap fight in the kitchen where both flail at each other, unwilling to fully engage - hilarious until it's not). The back-and-forth between Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu is an ironic delight, the latter first appearing as a stock-standard demon, complete with curled horns and an echoing, smoky voice, before settling for a more appropriate avatar for the mortal world: Bobby Farrell from Boney M. Never has hellspawn been so sexy, and in bell-bottoms and 6-inch heels, too. For all the talk of the dreaded Americanisation of Black Mirror after moving over to Netflix, his performance encapsulates the essence of British deadpan, his delivery bone dry (see how his call to hell's 'tech support' could be taken straight out of a Monday morning in the office). If much of contemporary spec fic is cynical and overly self-serious in its warnings, 'Demon 79' finds the right note of whimsy, recognising the inherent comedy in connecting with your own personal spectral assistant.
Vasan is crucial here, able to portray the introverted sales assistant who witnesses the dredges of society stroll in and out of the department store each day without completely obscuring the murderous potential that lies within her. Less subtle is David Shields as the episode's 'big bad', his character more or less representative of the rise of conservative neo-fascist politics masquerading as populism; see the imagery of his futuristic rise with its Orwellian branding and tripartite slogan (CONTROL. RESPECT. ORDER.). We've seen this allegory before, perhaps most explicitly in this context with V for Vendetta. We can identify when the narrative switches from Nida's individualistic acts of sanctioned violence to what is really necessary to make a difference: a hammer-delivered bludgeon to the skull of systemic oppression. It's no surprise that Nida's subconscious manifests Gaap as a PoC, or that he rolls his eyes when Smart and the department store owner banter over their familial connections; both are already enshrined in privilege, despite the former presenting himself as a man of the people. No, what's perhaps most novel about 'Demon 79' is that in its close we have unwittingly assumed Nida's role and warped self-righteousness, buying into the very evil (complicity, insularity) that she claims to reject. The episode's premise only works if we can recognise a hint of that within ourselves. I thought it would commit to that idea fully, given the disappearance of Gaap for about 10 minutes before the final sequence, but alas, he does return to give us a reunion. It's lovely, and maybe the glimmer of hope that Nida deserves, but I might have preferred that they kept it a touch more ambiguous, rather than letting her off the hook entirely (smash cut from that clock hitting midnight and a needle drop to Rasputin would have been perfect). What if Gaap didn't return? Or was he even real from the beginning? What if, in the pursuit of justice, we end up normalising the same tribalism and othering inflicted upon us? That final reunion is cathartic, but too safe. Yes, fascism bad, but other dangers might lie much closer to home.
Black Mirror is and will be fine. In a golden age of television, especially of anthology series, consistency is overrated. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities might be consistent to a degree in its tone, but I can barely recall anything that it wanted to say. What was the point, similarly, of Peele's Twilight Zone reboot? And yet, I still want them all to keep trying. Each new hour-plus episode of season 6 may as well be its own film, complete with production, shooting, and post. We should accept what is on the screen, rather than trying to define the series by what it is not. It might never shock our system as 'The National Anthem' did back in 2011, the frenetic, mockumentary style a tonic to conventional dramatic television, but it's still pushing the envelope. Look a little closer, because what's reflected in that mirror, black or red, may be closer than we expect.
The Turning (2013)
Because I do not hope to turn again
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
These immortal lines from T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday open Tim Winton's collection of short stories penned in 2004, seventeen tales which circle the small, Western Australian town of Angelus. The anthology concerns a handful of recurring characters and families which dip in and out of the narrative across generations and time periods, but which always return to that beach-side setting. More so than brothers Max and Frank, Rae the single mother, Bob the policeman, Bob the drunk, sober Bob, Strawberry Alison, Gail, and Vic Lang as a boy, teenager, son, and lawyer, Angelus becomes a character in and of itself, the lurking shadows of the outback, the salty surf and spray, and the rusted roofs of the local fibro shacks as much a constant in these stories as its inhabitants are. They are defined by the rural location as much as they are defined by what they make of their lives after departure.
If there is a definitive effect of the 2013 filmic adaptation, it is that it stresses the achievements of Winton's narrative voices. His prose alternates between different perspectives and is strictly confined to that of a masculine worldview, even when told from the point-of-view of their female counterparts, but there is a consistency in their unspoken yearning that can only truly be verbalised through internal narration. Voiceover simply doesn't cut it. One of the poster children for this, the opening story in 'Big World', sees the unnamed narrator come to a gradual recognition that his high school best friend is destined to spend the rest of his days salmon trawling on the shores of Angelus, and what's worse, is content to do so. Yet Thornton compresses this realisation into an afterthought dispersed over a mere ten minutes of clipped voiceover, lines lazily spooled out over a few impressionistic moments of their mateship - in slow motion, no less. The visuals confine what imagination we might ascribe to the final, fatal flashforward that he experiences in envisioning reciting Robert Louis Stevenson at Biggie's funeral, his relatives uncomfortable shifting over a reference beyond their working-class roots. What might our lives look like in a year, in five, in ten? The short extinguishes that, but not in the same agonising manner that Winton did, freezing time as three teenagers are enveloped by the enormity of the wide world that awaits them.
Similar disconnections plague the other shorts because of this switch in form. Winton's often-nested flashbacks necessitate that we imagine different versions of these characters both within a story and across the anthology, but through the separate productions and casts we are forced to contend with shifting faces and isolated in physical locations. 'Damaged Goods' is clever in its attempt to address this temporal dislocation by segmenting the frame into different sections, one for Gail's probe into her husband's past through dusty old photos, and the other for the actual memories. But ultimately it's little more than a visual gimmick; Lucas can't genuinely replicate the sense of lost time and longing, even with that prophetic opening sentence, and even resorts to needing to show Gail's eyes darting back and forth in close-up as the final image of the short, as if the audience couldn't grasp the epiphany themselves. There's no sense of her existing beyond those frames (which, in a way, is a limitation of Winton's focalisation as well). 'Aquifer' must expel literal tears from its adult protagonist for a similar narrative purpose.
It's unsurprising, then, that one of the more coherent stories is so because of the tale's inherent interiority, where Vic and Bob Lang reunite in 'Commission'. The original short is perhaps the only one of Winton's that might be considered a tad overwritten; the filmic form's limitations are appropriate here because two men tangled up in trauma are withdrawn and reticent by nature. Their clipped dialogue and subtle body language do more to tell the story than any internal monologue ever could. The premise rests on the idea of untold words too late to be uttered, and the spaces that exist in-between their conversations; if anything, parts of their delivery are somewhat rushed. Their story's tragic irony is having all the time in the world and nothing to fill it with. The final shot is pitch-perfect in its lingering silence: a man both entrusted and coerced with secrets. Nothing more needs to be said. We know Bob Lang for who he was, and who he is.
Some of these stories, conversely, are content (or perhaps, constrained) to end on a note of ambiguity, such is the sparseness of their imagery and narration. It's as if the film stock abruptly ran out, and the audience are left to surmise what might haunt these characters beyond these moments. 'Small Mercies' and 'Fog' excise the symbolic 'turns' of their original stories to close on almost arbitrary notes, and 'Long, Clear View' guts the rich tension of a young Vic Lang's backstory for a whimsical take on his childhood. Swapping the distinctive second-person narration for neat visual metaphors where the camera stares down the barrel of a rifle or through his glasses, the short is tonally cohesive but dilutes an important chapter of connective tissue joining the tragic arcs of father and son. These endings succeed best when they are uncompromising in their presentation; Rae's titular 'turning' is birthed when she fantasises of Jesus Christ shrouded in angelic light as a way of shielding herself from an ugly reality. Her character is brimming with Angelus vernacular and rural flavour, and this final shot is a bold creative decision, resolute storytelling to match the uniquely dark twist of her fate. Because McCarthy's direction is assured (and how important a female director is here), the audience is made assured of Rae's own choice, something remarkably difficult to accept when we are used to being conventionally positioned from the saviour's perspective in Sherry.
The most eye-catching of them all is 'Boner McPharlin's Moll', which must be commended for actually drawing on the strengths of its medium rather than simply replicating the third-person format of Winton. In this way, its inventiveness builds on the premise of the original story, which fills in some (but not all) of the gaps of the life of Boner McPharlin, a small-time crook suspected of falling foul of the corrupt police force from which Bob Lang fled. Rather than fixate on one female protagonist's curiosity (the ostensible 'saviour'), Kurtzel turns the roving camera towards the residents of Angelus, layering his imagery with snippets of interviews to gradually trace the outline of a person through hearsay and small-town speculation. A penultimate shot inches its way toward a spectral figure with his back turned to the camera, as visually arresting as it is impenetrable. Whilst it does cut out much of the backstory of the anthology's longest piece, Kurtzel has achieved a rare thing by elevating the tale beyond one of mere human misunderstanding, imprinting the ghost of Boner McPharlin into the fabric of Angelus itself. His interpretation is then, ironically, the most faithful to Winton's tapestry of the Western Australian milieu. If there's anything novel to be gained after reading the original, it is in this segment.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Sorry. What did you say?
See the vivid portrait that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert paint with the opening of Everything Everywhere All At Once, of how language barriers can be used to intentionally and unintentionally wound others, of how first generation migrants strafe that liminal space between work and home, of how code-switching becomes a means of survival. Some might argue (and have) that narratives of intergenerational trauma and conflict have become trite, that the overbearing matriarch of Asian origin clashing against the modern, youthful world is overplayed. But these stories are still happening, and as time passes our artists will turn their attention from the journeys of second-generation migrants to their children, and theirs after that. Let's not be too critical of a slice of representation that's still in its infancy. We can have those other stories too; it's good to normalise them. Not everything has to be situated at the point of multicultural crisis, but in the same vein, we don't have to tear down one pillar to raise another.
There are other minute details of this milieu which may seem insignificant but will resonate with those in the audience who recognise them. The tangled cacophony of overlapping Cantonese, Mandarin, and English that Evelyn wields to navigate another day in the life. How she crudely masks a semblance of care with insults in order to bridge the generational gap that keeps her daughter Joy at an arm's (and then some) length. And then there are other, more universal struggles that are glimpsed, like how she zooms from one situation to another with barely a glance or nod of recognition towards her husband or daughter (so distracted even divorce papers merit a mere half-glance), a toxic blend of unrealistically high expectations and disappointment that hints at the catalyst for the rest of the film's complications, in both her own world and in the Alpha Prime. And that's just the first ten minutes.
In Michelle Yeoh, the Daniels saw the perfect actor to centre the narrative. While early drafts had none other than Jackie Chan as the protagonist, he's been the bumbling goofball before. Yeoh's always had the perfect poise, an international action star and beauty icon for decades. Placing a former Bond girl in a run-down laundromat was an inspired choice, drawing on all the wasted potential that bursts at the edges of the multiverse. One of Evelyn's alternate timelines has her living the Yeoh-esque celebrity archetype, a renowned film star who spurred her husband for a world of glitz and glamour. "He (Waymond) needs to know how good my life could have been," she blurts out in almost desperation, coming to the realisation of all she has missed out on. To see Yeoh finally given the opportunity to demonstrate such range is fulfilling in itself; to see her melt into the role and give depth to the character, have her live out every possible life and outlandish existence she could ever imagine or aspire to and still choose to return to that laundromat, makes it all the more meaningful.
In a more subtle meta-twist, Ke Huy Quan's turn as the unassuming husband, a side character in Evelyn's life, resembles his own career, a Spielbergian blockbuster high and then years of Hollywood neglect. Witnessing Waymond snap into action and take centre stage doubles as Quan's own return to the big screen, occupying that Jackie Chan slot himself in an spirited rendition of the daggy dad. Watch how costuming and props combine to accentuate this in his early action sequences, wielding a bumbag as if it were a deadly weapon (it's meant to resemble the Bruce Lee nunchuck). What better object to represent the Waymond worldview? He fights with kindness (and disarms with cookies), cares little of what others think of his appearance and naivety, and manages to find the glee in the everyday, whether it be dimension hopping or laundromat meniality. Evelyn's symbolic acceptance of the Waymond way in opening up her third eye, googly-style, is a bizarre promotional shot, but placed within context perfectly encapsulates the film's blend of silly sentimentality. Eat your heart out, Doctor Strange. It was the Daniels' masterstroke to lure us in with the grit of Alpha Waymond (quite literally an alpha male), only to swerve sharply and promote a different brand of masculinity. Quan switches almost effortlessly between the two, and sometimes crouches on their very edge; the chapstick moment is but one example. He gives life to the narrative, grounding it firmly into something to return to.
Everything Everywhere All At Once's style is punchy and direct, a no-holds-barred approach to its brand of absurdist humour. What other film would unironically list 'proud father' as a skill for one of its characters? The same weight and earnesty is afforded to each line of dialogue in its Matrix-esque set-up, from "She's off the grid!" to "She's gone home to finish the taxes!" The action is given its snappiness through edits that enlarge each blow for impact: widening and shrinking the aspect ratio to signal shifts in timelines, dolly zooms to push in and exaggerate, visual puns and match cuts to link the worlds together (see Evelyn being 'pulled away' from his argument with Waymond, or the pizza spinner superimposed over her riot shield heroics). One of its biggest laughs sees the film literally pause in a record-scratch moment as Jobu Tupaki expresses her disbelief that queerness, not mass murder, is Evelyn's most pressing initial concern amidst all the chaos. But more than simply layering callback upon callback (the pinky becomes the cookie becomes the symbolic kindness of Waymond), the jokes are natural extensions of the script's philosophy, of the messy, zany possibilities of the multiverse once we (and Evelyn) realise the ramifications of reaching rock bottom and the potential that lies within. Every one of us know that yearning for lives unlived, opportunities missed, choices not taken; it is, pun intended, a universal concern. The Daniels merge that into their filmmaking, pushing the narrative alongside these sequences. I appreciated hearing the kung fu Evelyn's steps timed to Clair de Lune, and then later could barely hold it together when it returned in the climatic montage via sausage fingers to bring Evelyn's epiphany full circle.
The story flirts with the avant-garde in its sub-climax which strips away all of the multiverse gimmickry to place mother and daughter atop a metaphorical cliff, conversing as rocks. Joy, whose arc has been smattered with imagery of depression and suicide ideation, elects to jump off and into the everything bagel, and Evelyn finally allows her the agency to do so. But the crux of the issue highlights choice as a key motif; even as Joy sits on the precipice of self-destruction, she still yearns for her mother's acceptance. In turn, Evelyn must come to terms with who her daughter is alongside all of the other apparent 'disappointments' of this universe, to find fulfilment in the laundromat and doing taxes. It was never really about Gong Gong but her own misgivings of a wayward path, which subverts what would be a conventionally uplifting moment because she's wielding her daughter's personal life for her own self-actualisation. Some have derided the script for its bite-sized exploration of nihilism and its end goals. Admittedly, the depth of the storytelling here isn't cavernous; for its 142-minute length, I would have liked it to have fleshed out Joy's angst further to give her decision to stay more weight at the expense of perhaps one of the timelines. Nevertheless, Evelyn's choice to stick by her family, and subsequently the Daniels' choice to situate the climax in a parking lot, resonates. The film's value in an ever-evolving cultural landscape might lie predominantly in how hard it is to define. We find worth in its uniqueness. Is it a kung fu action romp, or a domestic drama about the struggles of marital life? Is it an absurdist comedy about the meaning of life, or simply an allegory for a mother pushing her child too far? Yes, it's all of these, and more. All at once.
The Boys: The Instant White-Hot Wild (2022)
I stopped him. For you.
The Boys has evolved into a series which believes that scrutinising online Twitter discourse stands for social commentary, that protest mobs and political rallies are the most authentic cross-sections of the wider American public. Underneath it all are remnants of a narrative's beating heart, of some scarce human moments within a premise which once sought to expose the artifice and eminence of modern superhero fare. But what it fails to realise is that distorting and amplifying the loudest voices from either end of the political spectrum does not make for interesting television. Yes, Gal Gadot's 'Imagine' anthem was a painfully tone-deaf portrait of how out-of-touch the rich and elite are, especially during global strife. No, we don't need the exact same rendition but with The Deep opening the serenade. Of course Kendall Jenner's infamous Pepsi advertisement spoke volumes of how corporations will attempt to win consumerist clout but avoid taking hard-line stances for fear of upsetting profits (we see it each year with companies weaponising Pride Month, and the in-universe Maeve media reflects the same). Having A-Train deliver the exact same empty ideal doesn't mean anything. If you consider it in context, it's a much more intricate dilemma. I was one of the many who believed that his apparent death after his revenge killing of Blue Hawk was a fitting end for such a conflicted character, caught between his position of privilege and a nagging commitment to the community of minorities from which he originated. But witnessing the reunion with his now-paralysed brother conveys precisely the comeuppance he deserves: having regained his super speed in a cruel twist of irony, he has his own selfishness thrown back in his face, confronting with the truth that all the power in the world can't mend his very human traits of egotism and irresponsibility.
You see the same recognition in his confrontation with Hughie, too, earlier in the season, where the latter is flabbergasted by the surprising sincerity in A-Train's apology, and having had that moment of satisfaction and superiority taken from him, resorts to violence in an attempt to recapture that feeling that had always placed him one step above these supes. So yes, power corrupts. Hughie's arc in season 3 isn't the most novel, but that progression from helplessness to wielding reckless strength to finally accepting his role is relatable because it's human, and that's when The Boys shines. So many have felt that same emasculation; it's why we have Todds. Kimiko's narrative is a cruder version of the same arc but in inverse (her and Frenchie's function diminishes by the episode, so the inconsistencies are mostly trivial), whereas Butcher's own crisis manifests in his inability to protect his younger brother and the current proxy figures in his life. Hughie's anecdote about his own father's strength in the wake of divorce captures how Butcher is ultimately and tragically unable to diverge from his pre-conceived notions of masculinity to be the paternalistic figure that Ryan requires.
But just how far can these dilemmas stretch? Butcher's now on borrowed time. Homelander's deal was mummy issues, and then daddy issues, and now it turns out all he wants is love and affection, to find a real family. Clearly, we're way past that point. Countless times, he's taken to the very edge of losing it all and then relents for some reason or another. I might just snap Homelander-style if I see one more iteration of him committing a social media gaffe or faux pas only to make amends by appearing on his universe's Fox News spoof and waxing lyrical about liberty and exceptionalism to be gobbled up by some caricatured, MAGA-loving slice of the American public, while the writers shout in our ears about how the 4th estate's integrity is in ruins. It's barely satire, and these lazy parodies of our own reality are starting to wear a little thin. That leads us to the season's most embarrassing moment in its close, where it smugly leans hard into some leftist fantasy of Homelander quite literally murdering a civilian in cold blood and being cheered on by a raucous crowd, all while Ryan grins devilishly into the camera (I know he's a boy and vulnerable to manipulation, but now he's suddenly sociopath junior? Come on). In what universe, fictional or otherwise, does he get away with that?
It's hardly believable that some initially saw the show as politically centrist, poking fun equally at both sides. These superhero deconstructions have always been about exposing the inherent fascism that comes with having the power to cave in one's chest cavity with your fist, or control another's mind, or sprout tentacles from your mouth. But Watchmen the show is not. Moore's original graphic novel remains immortal, and there's more political intrigue and examination of sociocultural hierarchy in the singular episode 'This Extraordinary Being' from Lindelof's television spinoff than in the entirety of the series. With each episode and CGI spectacle, The Boys draws closer to resembling the power fantasy that is Snyder's cinematic adaption. The show is too busy revelling in its own irreverence and cynicism, plotting how it can craft the next gratuitous wrinkle on our own world. If superheroes existed, they would also be on OnlyFans! They would have their own depraved orgies! They would start their own Scientology-esque cults! They would be Hollywood figures and musical celebrities! There would be reality shows dedicated to capturing their rise to stardom! A few throwaway lines about how media corporations need to cater to the narrow and prejudiced worldviews of their target demographic doesn't absolve it of the fact that it has run out of things to say. And what are the fans even discussing? Whether Maeve's power levels are consistent? The fidelity of the energy blasts and the action sequences? Whether Soldier Boy is a decent guy (seriously)? The Boys is so enamoured with the apparent intricacies of its worldbuilding that any actual critique has the heat of a late night show host's opening monologue, as if we're back in 2017 and lobbing lukewarm softballs to an eagerly nodding audience. We've lived it already. We're still living in it, and we don't need a reminder.
When The Boys pulls back from its Amazon-backed production values and budget and actually considers the moral predicaments that it could place its characters in, it might be valuable as a narrative, let alone social critique. Compare it to the other 'adult' superhero series that it is often held up against, Invincible (spoilers here). If you wade through all of the cartoon gore, you'll find that far from being a deconstruction or satire of the genre, Invincible is a straight story of a teenage protagonist, Mark, coming to terms with his emerging powers. In its finale, Mark's father, revealed to be from a race of genocidal, tyrannical aliens, pummels him into submission before hesitating at the final blow. His fists, which can demolish planets, can't bring themselves to kill his only son, because his time on Earth has made him realise his humanity and his love for Mark. He sees himself more of a father than of a titan amongst insects. So he flies away, tears in his eyes. I'm still waiting for Homelander to experience something that complex or affecting.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Trying to do better.
Tobey Maguire's trilogy remains indelible, from its origin story, the pitch-perfect sequel, and the messy conclusion. It has Raimi written all over it, and even at its worst moments, the least you could dub it is memorable. The follow-up series doesn't have that same appeal, but Garfield's charisma shines through, as it similarly does here. Conversely, Holland's rendition has always felt a little cut-and-paste from its surrounding universe, unable to separate itself from the whimsy and bathos of the MCU. This Peter Parker's one-liners are drawn from the same snarky persona as Iron Man, Star-Lord, War Machine, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man...the list goes on. I've made my peace with it. It isn't a new criticism, and could be levelled at most films post-Phase One. But it's always felt limiting in terms of crafting distinct character (and filmic) voices and undermining attempts at sentimentality. Let's start with Cumberbatch's Strange. He's stepping into the mentor role post-Endgame but he's never been given a meaningful opportunity to develop his own philosophy on the character, let alone a voice. Sans his solo film, the premise of the Sorcerer Supreme makes him a convenient plot device to facilitate the adventures of other superheroes. Listen to his dialogue here; it's always delivered at a distance, drenched in cynicism, as if it's afraid of fully buying into the idea of a connection. Cumberbatch seems to be constantly setting up the next punchline, and so even if this abrasive back-and-forth elicits laughs, it never builds to anything genuine, rendering the climatic callback (obvious from a mile away) into a deflated attempt at growth and recognition. Yes, RDJ addressed Holland in the same way, but there was history and a relationship there. There's an inherent self-consciousness to the way that Feige and co. Craft the MCU's humour, so relentlessly wary of losing the audience for more than a second that they keep sincerity at an arm's length. Observe how the entire film just grinds to a halt for the Spidey's stand-up routine atop the Statue of Liberty scaffolding; the trialogue isn't written for the characters, it's written for the fans to play spot the reference ("You're amazing. I want to hear you say it."). Marvel would never in a million years allow their Spider-Man to be the butt of the joke, or freeze-frame on his goofy smile over 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head'. He's too cool for that.
This universe's Peter Parker and his defining Spider-Man moment is how he reacts to losing his Uncle Ben, but the crux of its emotional impact rests on what has already been established. What do we really know about this version of Aunt May, anyway? No, not what we surmise and assume based on the previous actions of the mentor archetype, but her as an actual person. How much screentime has Tomei been afforded here and in the first two films that isn't delegated to punchlines about her hotness or her apparent fling with Happy? You need to earn the right to drop that iconic line about responsibility; the words don't hold any weight in and of themselves. What does follow her death works in pushing Peter into newer and darker territory for this Spider-Man, and Holland is finally asked to consider the interiority of his character and how these circumstances might actually damage the psyche of a teenager. After all, what was the complication of Far From Home beyond mopping up the external mess of an Avengers-level threat? Here, Peter must contend with the consequences of his actions (the film initially made me balk at the idea of resetting the universe just so a few teens could get accepted into their college of choice, and then cleverly flips that on its head) and ultimately assume the burden and emotional baggage that comes with being a superhero. The rooftop scene where Maguire and Garfield confess of their own failures and futile quests for vengeance is unlike anything even the MCU is capable of; it's not merely a crossover, but a character speaking across generations to itself, pleading for this Peter to avoid repeating their past mistakes. It leans pretty hard on the audience having that pre-knowledge; you need to know the stories they refer to in order to buy into the emotion, but for those who do, it's genuinely affecting.
So Peter completes his mission and manages to do justice to Aunt May's final wish, but what of the 'villains'? The other core theme of the film, beyond Peter's grappling with his grief and the value of revenge, is the idea of second chances being afforded to those who deserve them (who, in Aunt May's world, is everyone). Yet how much of this actually rings true for each member of the Spidey rogues gallery dragged in from the multiverse? Norman and Otto are afforded the most agency as a result of their characters' redemption being more or less pre-ordained. They don't need 'fixing', just a removal of that corruptive influence and a reversion to their original selves. But what of the others? Electro is stripped of his powers and therefore his bloodlust, makes a brief quip referencing Miles Morales, and then is returned to live life as his pre-superpowered, nerdy outcast self. What lesson does he learn? Sandman, as one of the relatively more sympathetic villains of the Spideyverse, was already redeemed at the end of his chapter and never even died at the hands of Spider-Man, so his appearance here is puzzling, reduced once more to an angry CGI spectacle that hits things (Thomas Haden Church receives all of 20 seconds of screentime, with the rest of his stay in sand form). Peter may take responsibility for mistakes made and change himself for good, but how much of this change transfers over to those he impacted? It's a little too neat of a thematic bow to tie all these different arcs together in the name of redemption. The action itself is fine, inoffensive; the climactic battle starts off poorly for the Spideys, before Holland gives a pep talk about teamwork and they then execute a series of pre-planned, carefully choreographed moves in front of a blue screen, only this time it works! There's nothing actually revealed about leadership or teamwork here, but we don't care; we just want that master shot of their superhero landings. It's screensaver material.
Legacy is key here: that of this live-action universe across three generations of the webslinger, of the characters within their worlds, and of the films themselves. It's now nigh impossible to engage with this franchise without consuming each and every chapter of its storytelling, an increasingly mammoth task that grows with each phase, miniseries, and cinematic event. You can't just view them as one-offs; you need to buy in and subscribe and devote time to tracking and keeping tabs on its chronology. Your reward is the payoff for this dedication; you know that character, you know the event that they are referencing when it comes up on the big screen. Garfield's Peter is forced to relive the same moment that led to Gwen's death during his rescue of MJ, and fans can recognise the trauma it induces and how significant and moving it is for him to be able to save her this time round. Other fans, however, from the looks of internet reaction videos, seem to be cheering in recognition of this. Is that not emblematic of the two camps of MCU takes in conflict with each other? I'm unsure whether they can or should be conflated. In 2012, when the MCU was still in its infancy, Ebert wrote this of The Avengers: "It provides its fans with exactly what they desire. Whether it is exactly what they deserve is arguable." I think we do deserve these films. We've supported the franchise from its early rocky beginnings, and we've been there every step of the way in its evolution into a cultural giant. I experienced my own payoff, as millions around the world did, seeing Avengers Endgame almost a decade later as each character stepped out of their portals, the goosebumps on my arm as close to something quantifiable for that feeling of awe and yes, recognition. What lies in future for this franchise, and what is (if there are any plans for, commercial or otherwise) its endgame? I didn't feel anything of that calibre watching No Way Home, but I think it still sticks its landing. Having sacrificed his own relationships to fix the mess that emerged from his faults, Holland returns to where I think Peter Parker truly belongs: in a run-down apartment, landlord berating him for the rent, once again alone with only his suit for company. But there's a reason why the most important scenes are always shot with the mask off. This is where the core and heart of the character resides, and what Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Verse understood so well: the power was never a choice, but accepting the responsibility that comes with it is. Holland's Peter finally makes that choice, and in doing so unveils the human behind the mythos of the superhero. No nanotech or Instant-Kill Mode could ever make up for that.
Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
If a comedian makes a joke and no one is around to hear it, is it actually funny?
One of the early segments in Bo Burnham's Inside has him in a familiar set-up: sitting at the piano, the source of much of his musical comedy, he delivers a slow ballad interspersed with the odd f-bomb, a performance that gives the impression he is just commencing another show. But he's in lockdown, and he's singing to a static camera, not a live audience, and must resort to hitting a button that spits out pre-recorded giggles. A laugh track: the final shame of any stand-up artist. The facade slightly cracks, and then he launches himself into the opening number, a meditation on the necessity of a navel-gazing comedian's spiralling thoughts while the world burns, the figurative and objective value of sardonic one-liners, and though he momentarily falters, the strobe light assault on our eyes more than makes up for that slight hesitation. Then, as suddenly as the spirited rendition began, it ends with an abrupt smash cut to a more sobering version of Burnham, just a man and his camera, explaining to the mirror the premise of his latest project. "Welcome to, uh, whatever this is."
This can't have been many viewers' first taste of Burnham - it's not really something you just happen across while browsing Netflix - but for those of them who do get through that opening, it's more than likely that they'll stay. The bit could function more or less as a microcosm of the ball of angst and energy that is Inside, an electro dance track blaring from a speaker, bouncing off the looming shadows on the wall, and then back at its creator. He begins by entering from the back door of his guest room, a symbolic return to the comedic stage after he had exited via the same door at the close of his previous special almost five years ago. In the grand finale of Make Happy, the portrait presented was of a creator who, amidst jokes about Pringles cans and scarecrows, was no longer able to uphold his end of the bargain: the audience pay to come and laugh, not to hear about the performer's declining mental health and anxiety. Burnham's real-life panic attacks lead to his sabbatical from the stage, and in a cruel twist of irony, having found the stability and confidence to return to live tours, the pandemic forces him inside.
The feature continues his examination of the twisted and messy relationship between content creator and audience, the latter an ever-expanding and diverse group in comparison to the infancy of his musical comedy and skits on YouTube. Interspersed between his tracks are anecdotes and bits filmed in quasi-documentary style, mimicking the apparent intimacy of these creators when they invite their fans into their lives; sitting on the floor speaking to the camera (in Burnham's case, playing piano on the floor, equipment strewn all over), or leaving in bloopers and flubs in the final cut. In one segment, his persona 'reviews' a recent production of his own, before the video continues to run and he's suddenly reviewing his own review, setting up a meta Matryoshka doll-format of self-deprecation in which he lays bare the insecurities of his creative process. In the casually glib delivery he has become known for, he confesses that a fear of criticism has resulted in a tendency to levy these potential critiques at himself before anyone else can. All artists nod in acknowledgement to this habit. But does the self-awareness in this acknowledgement absolve him of these appraisals? He knows the answer.
Burnham has been dealing in irony for a very long time. He smothers his music with it; both the opening number and 'Problematic' are about wrestling with his privilege as a white male and position of wealth and influence amidst a global pandemic that has devastated economies and communities worldwide, and the latter quite literally arranges his body to be hung up and crucified. 'Bezos I' is a funky, 50-second tune sarcastically applauding the prosperity and coolness of the richest man in the world, king of the billionaires, the leader of an exclusive group whose riches have only grown in the past two years. 'How the World Works' has him deliver these condemnations of the status quo via an aggressively cheery argument with a sock puppet. Consider the segue from his half-asleep ponderings of the exploitative nature of the for-profit entertainment industry to 'Sexting' ("I'm horny."). All of these songs are catchy and slickly produced, a sign of Burnham's evolution as a performer, but the target of 'White Woman's Instagram' is so glaringly dated low-hanging fruit. It's impressive from a design standpoint, of course, especially given the nature of his solitary set-up at home in lockdown, with soft-bokeh lighting and a squared aspect ratio to capture all the faux cosiness of these social media facades. But that merely renders it a decade-old joke with higher production values. Its saving grace is a brief moment of actual vulnerability amongst the aesthetic paraphernalia, the frame opening up to give a young woman mourning her mother the space she deserves.
That tiny slice of life, of a brooding Burnham in drag and cashmere sweaters played straight, rings truer than the entirety of the folksy 'That Funny Feeling', but these moments of genuine sincerity are but occasional. The former is bookended by the 'real' Burnham watching a recording of the entire skit on his laptop, hunched over and illuminated not by overheard string lights but the harsh glare of the machine. His expression is disapproving: it's the literal manifestation of his later confession of self-critique. Is this hiding from emotion, or a true expression of his inner turmoil? How carefully curated is this persona, given the nature of the special's recording? The genre has witnessed a small ripple in its reputation in the past few years, for better or worse. Perhaps Hannah Gadsby's Nanette didn't end stand-up as we knew it, and though I regarded her monologue as "no performance" in my review 3 years ago, rumours of her quitting comedy were greatly exaggerated (seen in her equally penetrating follow-up, Douglas). The show, in a nutshell, still consisted of a woman on a stage telling stories about her life. I don't need revolutionary boundary pushing of the format; Drew Michael wasn't dull, but it certainly got a little lost in its own gimmick. Perhaps the longform comedic special can become more than just a string of one-liners and rehashed anecdotes, but a medium for performative storytelling and the building of a narrative (Mike Birbiglia is another name that comes to mind). Seeing Jerry Seinfeld in the year of 2020 sporting a corded mic and grumbling about the evils of mobile phones was embarrassing: an icon firmly stuck in the past.
Every well-meaning audience demands growth from its artists. Burnham clearly has a talent for storytelling; stepping away from the stage, he directed Eighth Grade, which is sure to remain a coming-of-age staple for the Internet era, if not a timeless one, for many years. Inside is his most cohesive work yet, a knot of contradictions as tangled as the cords and wires strewn across his floor. As whiny as the pained artist can come across (the self-awareness schtick is starting to get a little thin), there are also slivers of sincerity peeking through here and there, an ever-valuable resource in an age of artifice and irony. Is it 100%, bona fide authentic? No, but perhaps it's too much to expect a performer to bare every fibre of their personal life for us to see. I don't need those thirty seconds before the midnight of his thirtieth birthday to be the real thing; it already resonates to all of us who have had milestones pass by whilst in quarantine, already speaks to that universal feeling of temporary stasis that sees listless days turn into weeks turn into months...
I write this in lockdown. It is past 9pm. This time last week, I would have not been able to legally leave my home on account of a curfew, so at the very least I can relate physically to Burnham's plight. Where else might I have been? Stuck inside, the pandemic has made us flock to our screens, but how much of our attention did they already hold? I am reminded of Ray Bradbury's prophetic short story, The Pedestrian, in which an ordinary man enters into the frosty November night to simply take a walk, his strange venture making him a criminal. Like the sobering moment when Netflix's black mirror displays your own reflection after ninety minutes of inactivity, accompanied by an innocent 'Are you still watching?' message as if pretending your slothful binge isn't what keeps its machines and profits churning, Burnham's Inside asks these questions of himself, and therefore of us all. As in the beginning, we wonder, what value does a comedian hold in a world that hasn't had many laughs in recent times? It's something. It's everything. It's nothing. It's a distraction.
Hamilton (2020)
What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.
Hamilton fever swept America, and now the world. To say its wide release is timely would be an understatement. Hamilton plays a deliberately political hand, if not provocative, by casting non-white actors to re-create an era where minorities were kept in chains. Its music, whilst brimming with tributes to classics of musical theatre, riffs mostly on hip-hop, a genre that whose origins lie in the fusion of African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants (with a dash of soulful R&B). And in releasing the recording on Disney+, the story is no longer an exclusively upper-class experience for the highly cultured, finally readily available for the masses to consume and experience. Viva la revolución!
Most have accepted Hamilton's premise, but some have realised that its show of representation may be skin-deep rather than truly progressive. We watch a Puerto Rican actor spitting rhymes about the formation of a nation founded by white men; does this constitute a valid thesis? Is colour-blind casting enough to justify turning a blind eye on how black citizens were actually treated during these historical rap battles? I'm not sure it's an easy, straightforward answer. Consider two of the most prominent, show-stopping lines: Hamilton and Lafayette's dual cry of "Immigrants, we get the job done!", and Anjelica Schuyler's proclamation "I'mma compel him to include women in the sequel!" Both are manufactured as obvious crowd-pleasers, practically ripping apart the fourth wall. Werk it! It doesn't help that the definition of an immigrant in Alexander Hamilton's case is so far removed from what a 21st century audience cheers for (Miranda specifically wrote in two bars after the line to account for their rapturous applause).
Listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda rap to himself in 'Cabinet Battle #3' (which was eventually cut from the show) is to witness a creator's internal conflict as he treads a tenuous line: how beholden does art need to be towards historical fidelity? If it's a story of America then told by America now, why leave out such a messy and unmistakably large piece of the puzzle? Perhaps for narrative purposes, then. Miranda knows that this moral quandary clashes with his overall arc of the scrappy underdog. While the musical lionizes its titular hero from the very beginning (Burr is the "damn fool who shot him", and trembles with jealousy at his every achievement, in a magnetic performance from Leslie Odom Jr.), it isn't exactly afraid to spotlight his failings, either. More musically-inclined critics have noted that of the original cast, Miranda is the least vocally proficient. But far from this detracting from his performance, it adds a tender fold. He's as close to an everyman in this narrative as we can get, the little guy standing amongst historical giants. Watch as Christopher Jackson's Washington is introduced as if he's the final act at Wrestlemania, a larger-than-life showstopper with unmatchable stage presence. Every other actor treats him with such reverence that it's nigh impossible to engage with him as a person rather than a founding father. Listen to him croon about the nation he's forged, and about noble aspirations like hope and justice and liberty via lines we have read in history textbooks. And then listen to Miranda strain as he sits in the eye of a hurricane, fifteen years old again. Listen to him plead and wrest with his conscience in his final frozen moments as the hip-hop beat drops out and he stares down the gaze of a bullet, alone.
I returned to Hamilton a second time after the initial hype had died down to see if it held its own as a pure narrative, and discovered more and more to appreciate. Knowing the tragic close makes each hint and set-up hit harder, as we chart the dual arcs of Hamilton and Burr creating their own history. Listening to 'Non-Stop' as just another track on the original recording, I found it catchy enough, but seeing it in the context of the rises and falls of his early life and as the climax of Act 1, Hamilton's frenzied re-commitment to his life's work as foolish crushes and trivial rivalries are brushed aside, it becomes the show's musical centre. I can track and hear the leitmotifs that criss-cross and converge in its core and as the characters do themselves throughout the story; Aaron and Alexander, after jostling for their spotlight on the centre stage, sit side by side as they serenade their newborns. Their words shape an idea of a country not yet in existence, and they pledge a common goal for it to come to life. Yet while Hamilton seizes every opportunity that arises, Burr laments his own reputation as a footnote in the founding father's story, watching his fortunes stumble at every step. We've all wanted to be in that room at one point or another, and we've all felt what Burr feels. If 'Dear Theodosia' humanises the former vice president through the common goal of raising a daughter and a nation, 'Wait For It' establishes him as the perfect foil for Hamilton, piano arpeggios that begin with a secret affair and explode into a fatalistic confessional about how his own restraint will ultimately reward him with what he deserves. The final confrontation turns the pair's lifelong mantras onto themselves: Hamilton throws away his shot, while Burr finally seizes his, and in a twist of cruel irony, neither end up with what they desired.
Thomas Kail, the show's director, declares that hip-hop has always been the "soundtrack of defiance" and the "music of ambition", and thus that Hamilton's reclamation of the Founding Father's mythos transforms these figures and stories from tools of oppression to liberation. Again I wrest with the idea of the play as pure rebellion, and wonder how truly transformative its narrative appropriation is, and if releasing it on a day of celebrating independence while Americans march in the streets protesting for that same notion constitutes real change. You can see these tangled knots and contradictions throughout: Daveed Diggs makes his flamboyant (re)entry as Jefferson waxing lyrical about liberty, while members of the chorus scrub the floors and fetch his luggage. Hip-hop might be the medium for rebellion, but theatre's class exclusion works in direct opposition to this. I see how predominantly white its admirers are, and wonder about Hamilton's long-term cultural legacy, whether it will endure as a piece of art or simply as a feel-good narrative designed to assuage guilt from an audience viewing comfortably from a position of privilege. The show is used as a punchline designed to expose this phony righteousness in Knives Out, and in a way it reflects a similar comment from Jordan Peele's Get Out; it is the manifestation of 'I would have watched Hamilton for a third time if I could'.
And yet, I also ponder if this story needs to be the one to single-handedly shoulder this radical burden. While it's true that Miranda sidesteps several contentious issues rather than acknowledging them ("We know who's really doing the planting" is a mic-drop moment that is then quickly waved aside), re-writing the history of America to conform to our modern sensibilities isn't a solution either. The story takes some liberties with historical accuracy that results in some dramatisation, but that hasn't stopped us from excusing this in the past for storytelling's sake. The one-two punch of 'Helpless' and 'Satisfied', aside from being an intricately orchestrated set piece, lays bare the angst of an intellectual woman trapped in a time where she does not have the agency to express this, and while this love triangle never really existed, the song can easily be interpreted as a universal struggle. I don't see anyone lining up to poke holes in the fidelity of the award-winning Amadeus, with a premise rooted in exaggeration that heaps praise on far more prominent historical giant. These misgivings seem to continue a recent trend of holding representation of minorities to an unreasonably high standard simply because it is scarce; we saw this with Black Panther, and Crazy Rich Asians, and more immediately when a black man needs to be a saint for us to rule his death an injustice. We can celebrate Hamilton for spotlighting performers of colour whilst also being conscious of our historical faults.
Miranda's most significant oversight, then, isn't failing to address the story's lurking racial politics, but rather succumbing to the hype of his own historical appraisals. He pens the musical as a tribute to the first Treasury Secretary, foregrounding legacy as the primary motif, but neglects to live up to its most important adage: death doesn't discriminate. It isn't Burr or Hamilton who receive the final word, but Eliza, who, having erased herself from his life in fury at his affair in 'Burn', inserts herself back into the narrative for the sole, selfless act of preserving her husband's legacy, ensuring that his story can be told today. If Miranda wanted to be a true advocate for the forgotten and downtrodden, what greater story is there than that of Elizabeth Schuyler's? Contrary to the bravado of the men around her, she is never one to "try and grab the spotlight". For all the talk of legacy and greatness and leaving your mark on the story of America's founding, Eliza is content to stand to the side, raise a family, and work towards bettering the future. As Emily VanDerWerff puts it, there is immense value in greatness, but even more in goodness. There won't be a hit musical written about her life; she's just a supporting character. But like so many Elizas of the world, she knows what she has left behind is more than enough.
Community: Remedial Chaos Theory (2011)
Throw this case out of court. It's dumb. That is all.
Remedial Chaos Theory is the greatest Community episode. It represents the show at its creative and narrative peak, with a denouement that could potentially serve as the endpoint for a series that began with a fraud lawyer enrolling at a wacky community college. If Modern Warfare ushered in an era where Greendale became Dan Harmon's conceptual playground to experiment in, and season 2 pushed these silly sitcom boundaries to new heights, then 304 ("No, 303. I wrote it down twice.") is the apex of every narrative thread and arc that began with a fake study group formed under the guise of getting with the "hot blonde from Spanish class".
In the background, the group's dynamics had been gradually evolving from Pierce's brief spell as the show's villain, culminating in an explosive, paint-splattered, two-part finale that had the black sheep of the group finally admit that he had outgrown their friendship. It was a sobering, introspective moment that was disappointingly rendered obsolete when Pierce casually strolled back into the frame come the season 3 premiere. But you can imagine and then observe how age and maturity play a complex role in how the group bounce off each other. Jeff takes a leadership role in the extended struggle with Pierce's manipulation throughout the second season, and these are excellent episodes that could excel even without their conceptual frameworks; after all, they're just sitting around in a hospital or playing an imaginary fantasy game at a table. His outbursts towards Pierce's attempts to ruin a feel-good game of Dungeons & Dragons or at being emotionally dragged through the slender hope of reconciling with his father are justified yet thinly-veiled cover-ups of his own insecurities and hypocrisies ("I don't like being excluded, Jeff. Do you? YES!"), and they also function as examinations of what happens when one of the group go rogue or missing. In Remedial's timeline number 3, Pierce is chosen to get the pizza, and so Jeff defaults to being the oldest male, and lashes out at Troy's youth as a way of compensating. The entire premise of the episode itself is a classic Winger gambit, the same manipulative con that he accuses Pierce of daily.
Pierce's redemption occurs when he realises that Troy has found his own happiness independent of his wealth (a common guilt-tripping tactic of his), but Troy's own growth comes as a broader step forward for his character. His own timeline may result in the most elaborate punchline of them all (the slow zoom into the troll's face gets me every time), but it also speaks to his increasing importance in the group's dynamic: without his lovable goofiness, they descend into chaos. Moving into his own apartment signals a step towards maturity that threatens Jeff's authority, hence all the snide shots towards his and Abed's hijinks. We had already witnessed Troy's coming of age in Mixology Certification, one of the most understated pieces of character work in Harmon's oeuvre. In that episode, his transition into adulthood comes not at the stroke of midnight, but when he assumes the role of parent after the study group's mum and dad end up in a drunken squabble. Discovering that the pair have been arguing over the same bar all night, Troy realises that two of his main role models are faking it as much as the rest of us.
Remedial gets the Britta of it all right: a headstrong activist who isn't nearly as smart as she wants to be, but is a lot kinder than she will give herself credit for (see the resolution of her internal moral crisis in Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking). I've been pretty critical of the show's treatment of her in the past, in her slow descent into a running punchline, and in how her arcs are mostly inconsequential in the later seasons until they just...end. Being so defiant in her self-reliance that she would rather ostracise herself from her parents than receive their charity sounds exactly like a Britta move, but why would that lead to her mooching off her friends? Here, she is the right mixture of goofiness ("Pizza Pizza, in my tummy!") and wisdom, bonding with Troy by pointing out the value of his own brand of masculinity. It's a compliment she wouldn't afford herself, which makes it all the more meaningful.
Abed's Winger speech at the close reminds us of what each character brings to the group, and how their pizza trip shows us what life would be like without them. Annie's the most driven and the one who takes her responsibilities seriously, and so she fetches the pizza without a hitch, and none of the chaos ensues. Shirley's storyline at best emphasises her caring nature, although it nevertheless begins a trend of Harmon winking at her lack of development without ever taking steps to actually address it (baking is her identity, and later on her two kids). Abed himself is the metaphorical glue that holds them all together; without him, old tensions re-surface, characters are mismatched (the kiss being delivered to shippers in the worst way possible), and it all goes wrong like a bad sitcom crossover.
It all returns to Jeff, to that hotshot lawyer who arrived at Greendale hoping for an easy pass and a fast-track back to his old life. Britta's carefree attempts at belting out Roxanne speak to how comfortable she in the group, so why isn't Jeff? I distinctly remember picking up on the fact that Jeff had slyly excluded himself from picking up the pizza the first time I watched the episode, and had hoped it would pay off. It does, karmic style. The lingering shot of Jeff smiling at the goofballs in the living room dancing to The Police is the culmination of every set-up in the broad story circle that is Dan Harmon's Community; caring is a lethal disease around here, and he's finally caught it. He might not admit in that moment how much he cares about them, only spelling it out in the season finale, but he doesn't have to. We already know.
Community: Modern Warfare (2010)
Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes.
Every Community fan remembers the first time they watched Modern Warfare. For teenage me, it was sprawled out face down on my bed, in standard definition, on a high school issued laptop. Blockbuster it was not. The episode began like any other, with the study group's bickering and hijinks, and a lackadaisical Jeff retreating from the drama for a nap in his car (in classic Winger fashion, he puts immense effort into looking like he doesn't care). Roll title sequence; another day at Greendale, right?
But Jeff wakes up in his car to a very different community college, with the sky tinged an apocalyptic orange, and the camera craning up to reveal a campus in ruins. That's when I stopped lying on my stomach, and sat up a little straighter; was this really the same modest sitcom about a study group of misfits? Abed's mafioso turn in the Goodfellas-inspired tale two weeks back, Contemporary American Poultry, had given us all a taste of the boundaries that Harmon was willing to push, but Modern Warfare had us immediately, hook, line, and sinker. Looking back, it's no exaggeration to say that this was the concept episode that kick-started it all. Its success ushered in a new era of storytelling for the series, with season two the show's creative and aesthetic peak, the two-part paintball sequel its adventurous finale.
Harmon enlisted Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame to direct, and the result is bold, in-your-face action, a striking departure from your normal sitcom camera set-ups. Right from the get-go we witness this in Abed's slow motion wall-jump as he leaps to Jeff's defense, screen emblazoned with his calling card and title. The episode is packed to the brim with allusions to action classics, which serve to both underline the insanity of the melee (Chang brandishing his machine gun one-handed ala Tony Montana) as well as poke fun at the entire farce (Jeff's McClane-esque final confrontation and bullet barrage directed towards the dean). The pastiche is effective on both a broad and specific level; listen to how the music swells and see the relief plastered on Troy's face when he is reunited with Jeff in the beginning. I couldn't for the life of me pinpoint that moment to a specific movie, but it's instantly recognisable as how comrades react after seeing through a long battle. Glover sells it with all the boyish charm he can muster; it's been all of sixty minutes since they've seen each other, but it might as well have been an endless string of hellish weeks.
As seen here and in its sequel, many of the laughs stem from the story's complete commitment to the bit, maintaining a solemn tone throughout ("I thought it was paint, but I'm just bleeding. Talk about luck!"). The gang steer into the absurdity of it all, as if it's just another one of those daily Greendale happenings, which precisely identifies why we all fell in love with the show in the first place. See Pelton's desperate cry of "They'll think I'm a bad dean!", which works on both a comedic level when you consider the absolute state of the campus' day-to-day affairs, but also on a general empathetic level. Dean Pelton's the glue that holds this ramshackle shack together. He may be a bad dean, but he's our bad dean.
Modern Warfare is more than just its spoofs, of course, a statement that rings true for all the best Community episodes. Between all the mayhem and the blockbuster appeal of sex, violence, honour, and betrayal, characters are once again forced to confront the cracks in their facades, and ponder on how to deal with them. The plot gradually whittles down the cast until only Jeff and Britta remain, a minor symptom of season 1's journey as the show tried to find its voice and grow beyond the premise of the pilot. The Britta we see here is not nearly as guarded as she initially was, grappling with her insecurities of pretending to be a good person ("My deal is, above all else, honesty."), while Jeff is the inverse in that his deal is pretending not to care, but his rare moments of generosity strike truer. I think we've all been on either side of that coin at some time or another. In this case, both sacrifice their own selfish wishes for Shirley, who needs the prize more than either of them. So there's that character growth for you, and a dash of paintball to go with it. Community at its best.
Tiger King (2020)
Hey all you cool cats and kittens!
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness has become the world's new plaything as we flock to Netflix for the next binge or two. It's easy to see why the series has become a viral hit: on the surface it's a closer look into the world of big cat owners and all their eccentricities, before plunging us into a deeper pit of chaos, betrayal, and attempted murder. The first episode presents the three main zoo owners in Joe Exotic, who dubs himself the eponymous Tiger King, Carole Baskin, CEO of the Big Cat Rescue sanctuary, and Bhagavan Antle, who runs the Tigers wildlife preserve, ostensibly presenting a good-natured rivalry, before dangling us a key clue: Joe is currently in prison for a murder for hire plot against Carole. Oh, plot twist!
So what really is Tiger King about? Take a gander at the internet's responses and you'll pinpoint the appeal: Episodes 2-5 are where it really gets crazy; these people are insane, but I can't look away; it just keeps getting crazier and crazier; turns out real life is more unbelievable than any fictional story!; and I thought my life choices were bad. The docuseries leans hard on the mania and volatility of its characters (Joe, mostly) rather than any real sense of engagement with a narrative or a thesis. All you have to do is keep the cameras rolling, and the cast will do the rest. Rick Kirkham wasn't wrong when he bemoaned the loss of thousands of hours of Joe Exotic TV footage, because the zoo and its ruler is a veritable goldmine of drama and conflict. Who needs a script when Joe incriminates himself in his own recordings? Why plot out an arc when he's done the work for you; the next relationship and murder attempt is already in the pipeline of that addled brain of his.
So there's next to no plan, and it shows. There's seven 40 minute episodes plus a few bonus interviews, but little to no coherency amongst it all. The editing is all cobbled together; the final line of an episode will dangle a cliffhanger (Jeff stole the zoo. He stole it!) before the next veers completely in a different direction, and the series spends a good hour dipping its toes into true crime, but not with any real conviction or sense of diligence, let alone the authority of proper investigative journalism. Tiger King is exploitative and voyeuristic at best, parading around a carnival freak show of attractions for clicks and views; why else would a popular and recurring take be 'I just can't look away'? Representation is key here; if your show results in the public openly condemning a woman as a murderer, despite her not even being ruled as a suspect in a police investigation, there's an ethical quagmire.
These cases encourage internet detectives and armchair experts to dissect every sideways glance, every instance of avoiding eye contact, and every laugh and giggle, not realising that the material presented has already been carefully selected to generate a reaction in the first place. Even from an reasonably objective angle, the style is amateurish and transparent; slow-motion shots of a fiendish Carole, lingering close-ups of a fed's unrelenting gaze, openly provocative smash cuts. The series' addendum, in which Joel McHale attempts to insert awkward one-liners while exploring the very real trauma of the cast's experiences and how the show's boom in popularity has affected them, reveals further inaccuracies and perhaps deliberate omissions on the creators' part (the directors have also claimed that Joe is categorically racist, adding another piece of dirty laundry to the ever-growing list).
The endnote to this tale is a brief look into Eric Goode's background, which provides some answers, but raises further questions. He seems to be a dedicated animal conservationist, as the founder of the Turtle Conservancy, which lobbies for the protection and awareness of endangered turtles and tortoises. His past directing credits include seven nature documentaries filmed for the not-for-profit organisation. These are gentle, observational pieces no longer than thirty minutes each, intimate slices of life with with minimal directorial intrusion. Tiger King is his first long-form docuseries, and may as well be a completely different species, more reality television than documentary. Instead of exploring some of the more engrossing stories of this whole affair, like the lasting imprints (pawprints?) on the psyches of Saff or Barbara Fisher, it latches onto the charisma and shock value of its more 'colourful' characters, fueling sensationalism and misogyny, and lionising (pun intended) its protagonist. In the eighth episode, Joshua Dial surveys the aftermath of the clash of the Tiger Kings, and laments that all that time and money could have gone towards actual conservation efforts. But what a morally bankrupt stance for the creators to hoist this up as its finale, as its closing statement, when the series itself has done nothing to contribute to the cause? You cannot claim to speak for animal activism and simultaneously liken a legitimate accredited sanctuary to the personal zoo of a man who admitted to executing his fully-grown tigers for more living space. You cannot pretend that both sides are equally evil, and then simply lament the situation while throwing up sobering white text on black screen. How sad that a noble cause became so misguided, but we're all the audience is doing is just giggling at Joe's corny music videos and sending him fan mail.
The Cat in the Hat (2003)
I'm not so good with the rhyming, not really, no.
To this day, I am still frightened of Mike Meyers in The Cat in the Hat, an adaption that had Dr Seuss spinning in his grave from the opening credits. If you read my Grinch review, you'll see an overview for this planned Seuss live action cinematic universe and my main problems with it. Undeterred by the largely negative reception to its Iron Man, Universal Pictures saw the dollar signs and locked onto the next children's picture book that they could ruin. The movie may begin with with a tribute to the storybook aesthetic of its roots, curly font and all, and may be officially titled as Dr Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, but it most certainly takes the name of its creator in vain. In lieu of the original's simple charm and short and sweet life lesson, the movie is a 82 minute (bloated and feeling longer than that) mishmash of crude skits, and inconsequential diversions. The tonal disaster can be summed up in a series of questions directed towards the creative team behind it:
Why does it seem that everything in this movie's aesthetic and visual style is designed to make me upchuck? Why did the makeup artists not learn from the creepy dog-human mutations of the Whos, rendering the Things equally as creepy? Why does the Cat's hat spring up after seeing a picture of Joan (this part seems to be cut out of the Netflix version, which indicates some common sense but also the unstoppable nature of this trainwreck)? Why does he take on the persona of a redneck mechanic who isn't shy about showing off his behind? Why is he so scared of litigation, and why is there an implication that he's already ruined other children's lives when they skimmed the fine print? Why is his laugh so unsettling? Why do the Things play gridiron with Nevins? Why does the Cat continually mock Conrad, get his name wrong, and joke about ditching the pair after each mishap? Why does he keep casually suggesting murder as a viable option? Why is he such a sarcastic jerk? Why is there an underground disco in the middle of Anville? Why does the Cat start breakdancing in the middle of the disco, and why is he making googly eyes at Paris Hilton? Why is the previous acronym for his car a swear word, when this is a PG rated, family-friendly flick? Why does the movie pause to shill Universal Studios, and why is this product placement money unable to be detected in the budget?
Admittedly, there are a few chuckle-worthy moments of lampshading ("We even managed to work in an up-tempo pop tune for the soundtrack. That's important."), and I'll always giggle when Easy by The Commodores chimes in as the Cat's private parts get obliterated by Beans. Even I can rhyme better than the titular character from an iconic book written by an author whose main claim to fame were his couplets. That joke might encapsulate the entire catastrophe's most cardinal sin: that it completely and utterly ignores the key appeal of its source material for an adult jokeathon. For every clean, child-friendly gaff, there are ten which break the 4th wall or wink loudly at the adult audience accompanying their children to what they think is a fun family film. A whole panel of executives signed off on this, but obviously none of them had read the book. If they had, they would realise that the Cat shouldn't be gyrating across the screen, licking hoes, or sporting a coconut bra. If you take a glance at the footage that didn't make the cut, you'll get an even clearer picture of the nightmare fuel that traumatised an entire generation, including three different iterations of a scene where the Things cause a flood to slow down Joan (where them blowing up a dam is only the second most disturbing scenario). Predictably, the film has gained a cult following in the age of the Internet, where irony is second nature and sincerity is poison; how could it not, when the same kids who first experienced it are now old enough to actually understand its potty humour? I can't deny them this sort of macabre enjoyment, but let's not be so hasty in its critical and cultural reassessment. Tommy Wiseau's The Room is such a monumental disaster that you just hitch along for the ride, like being mesmerised by a burning house. There's an artistry in the way its creator's megalomania destroys it all from the inside. But this is just sad. A genuine blockbuster effort that misses the point.
Matilda (1996)
I thought grown-ups weren't afraid of anything.
Revisiting Matilda after a long time, I pondered its stake as the quintessential Roald Dahl adaptation. Which of his stories transformed for the big screen have aged the best? Is it the films which lean into his darkly comic vision of life, like the bewitched stop-motion creatures of James and the Giant Peach? Or is it the relatively lighter whimsy of Fantastic Mr Fox, rendered through Wes Anderson's trademark form of dollhouse twee? Could it possibly be the cult classic Willy Wonka, which gained considerable esteem in the wake of its garish remake? The late author disliked the original interpretation, disappointed that Wilder's magnetism stole focus from the child's worldview, the inherent kindness and goodwill of Charlie. The tale of Matilda is a typical prototype for Dahl's children's fiction, with the eponymous protagonist a magical force for good, banishing the greedy adult for their evil deeds.
So if the original novel had simple, clear cut guidelines on how people must behave in order to reach their happily ever after, the 1996 film adaptation is its counterpart, relatively conventional Hollywood fare in comparison to those other twisted Dahlian tales. In spite of it being DeVito's fifth directorial effort, it has the broader appeal of a blockbuster, not an auteur's showing. Case in point: DeVito chooses to play the narrator himself, seemingly to draw on the audience's familiarity with his work, but his narration lacks the omniscient, all-knowing power of Dahl's prose, which was whimsy and playful, with a dash of didacticism and just the right streak of mean when villainy stepped out of line. DeVito's one of these misguided villains himself, as the full-time car salesman and part-time father who continually improvises shortcuts to success as he neglects his daughter's ingenuity. He can't pull it off while simultaneously hovering above the story as its wise overseer.
Matilda is at its zany best when she is forced to contend with the carnival freak show that is the Wormwood household. Rhea Perlman is the ditzy housewife who inhales a daily coating of cosmetics, looking as if she was an extra stepping off the set of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. She must be the home's decorator because its interiors are likewise tacky. The production design team must have cobbled together six different sets from six different architectural periods when constructing the house; you could pause at any moment and see a whole off-brand colour wheel represented in wide shot. It's all clutter and chaos and ugly wallpaper, an unnatural look that seems almost too pristine, as if the whole effect could be replicated in an art exhibit (it's altogether much more unnerving than the polar extreme, the hyper irony of a Edward Scissorhands or god forbid, The Cat in the Hat). There's a moment where Harry clutches Matilda's head and forces her towards the TV, where a reality show has a sticky man catch dollar bills with his body, and we slowly zoom into the cackling Wormwoods while her own face is contorted in fear and disgust, and you'd swear that DeVito was riffing off A Clockwork Orange. That's where he's having the most fun, where you feel he really embraces the formal advantages of a medium to capture the dread of suburban greed in a way that Quentin Blake's scrawlings simply cannot (not a knock on the art at all). Between that and shooting Pam Ferris, the standout terror as Trunchbull, almost always at a wide and low angle to distort her warty mug and make her loom over the audience, Matilda's certainly got a lot to run away from.
Yet boldness, whether it stems from stupidity or genius, runs in the Wormwood family. If there's one major slight in the story and its mostly faithful adaptation, it is that it all seems to come too easy for Matilda. You'd never accuse adorable little Mara Wilson for being smug, but the way the story is painted, in broad, easy strokes, she practically skips hand in hand with Miss Honey to the happy ending. That's where Tim Minchin's musical adaptation comes in. In many ways Minchin is a natural successor to the Dahlian method of storytelling; with his penchant for mischievousness, an ear for wordplay, and a knack for smuggling sentiment and life lessons between his notes and rhymes. The musical format allows the whole cast their own brief spotlight; the Wormwoods get an exuberant solo each, Trunchbull lays down the law, and Miss Honey finally gets her due, instead of having Matilda spell out her trauma while she stands on the sidelines. She's given a wistful, bittersweet ballad in 'My House', and in the show's cornerstone, 'When I Grow Up', which examines the paradoxical condition of being an adult, she wrestles with her conscience pleading with her to confront her childhood demons and rescue Matilda. You only have to listen to Minchin's commencement speech upon receiving his honourary degree from UWA to recognise the respect he holds for teachers like Jenny Honey. She gives Matilda the recognition and push that every little girl needs once in a while, and Matilda answers with her own brand of mischief. 'Naughty' might best encapsulate how Roald Dahl saw the world; sometimes, you have to deal the villains a dose of their own medicine. In a way, Jenny and Matilda save each other, and that is where the real magic of the story lies.
Gisaengchung (2019)
Well, lots of people live underground.
Parasite comes to us in an age where the intersection between art and politics seems to be reaching fever pitch; the moving screen has become a battleground for representation and polemic, and the arguments that stem from the validity of just that become their own dogfights. Films wrest for their spotlight via the award season. The media chimes in with their own ceremonies and ribbons. Every man and his dog and his dog's twitter account has a voice, and those tweets may well qualify for Rotten Tomatoes critic status. And at times, the noise surrounding a film can impair our ability to discern its true qualities.
Todd Phillips' Joker made the biggest splash throughout 2019, with an array of voices vying for control of the narrative. Some critics derided its dangerous allure to the Arthur Flecks of our time, ticking time bombs waiting to pull their own talk-show stunts, whereas the director himself bemoaned the 'woke culture' that had ruined the comedic genre. While he's not wrong about the disconnect between imagined violence and real crime (in the end, no clowns armed with AR-15s showed up at the premiere), surely Phillips has to realise the slippery slope of interpretation that his film endorses. As a straight-forward character study of Fleck's descent into unhinged derangement, it's sympathetic enough, if not clumsy in its social commentary, mimicking the aesthetic of its Scorsese inspirations from the New Hollywood era in exchange for diluting its contemporary relevance. But as serious critique it's laughable, simplifying society's sickness to a scattershot of seriously specific symptoms. These range from a gang of teenage hooligans hunting clown sign holders (and only clown sign holders) to a pair of cruel Wall Street bankers who coinkidinkily happen to know a full verse and chorus of Send in the Clowns, a song that has zero relevance to the scenario other than its title - that's Glee level, Todd. While Scorsese's camera turned away out of embarrassment for Travis Bickle, Joker revels in its final triumph, consoling its audience's edgiest sympathies. A brief glance at the YouTubers serenading the 167th Street stairs confirms this. It's brand store nihilism, broad enough for anyone to latch onto with their worldly angst.
Relatively, Rian Johnson's Knives Out is more consistent in its overall delivery, spinning social parable from the familiar yarn of a classic whodunnit. The moral is solidified in the final frame, where the immigrant carer surveys her new estate (a labyrinthine, Clue-esque mansion) from its top balcony, towering above the former employers who held her family ransom. But although its interactions strike truer (it's gratifying to see the Thrombey clan cajole Marta as 'part of the family', only to sharply change tack when she is granted their entire inheritance, exposing their actual priorities), the story places the othered outsider on such a pedestal that it feels obligatory to side with her. Marta can't even tell a lie without vomiting, wielded by Johnson as a clever plot device, and yet also a characteristic approaching noble savage levels of patronising. The spatial metaphor isn't dissimilar to that of the staircase in Parasite, but you wish that it had a shade more nuance, and that she wasn't just the straight character in a pulpy film where the rest of the ensemble seems ripped out a 21st century version of Clue. In this edition of the board game, Marta wins by playing the moral high ground at every turn. But real life isn't that easy, or that simple.
As far as Bong Joon-ho is concerned, politics has always been entwined with the big screen. Because the latter is designed to captivate the popular audience, surely it must be a reflection of their general wants and needs, universal concerns and priorities. Some of his more pointed 'monster movies' take direct aim at the injustices of the world: the ramifications and pitfalls of American exceptionalism in The Host, and the cruel disregard for animal rights by multinational conglomerates in Okja. From his worldview, profit rises above the rest, leaving all behind. But Parasite isn't as straightforwardly didactic, or as easy to summarise. Just when you think you have the film's measure, that the Kims have beaten the system by assuming their mantle on the throne of the Parks, it swerves violently to the left.
From the very beginnings of his career, Joon-Ho has been taking genre films and twisting them into social satire, and while the first half of Parasite could operate as a straight thriller on its own, the latter half upends its foundations beyond a merely literal sense. The cast is uniformly excellent, and it is through the Kims that Joon-Ho begins to form his thesis; that class is performative, that being is a constant state of code-switching, and that anyone could find themselves at the bottom of the basement or the top of the stairs, at one point or another in the twisted prism of capitalism. There is an entire wealth of nuance in the formal and informal registers of Korean that will be forever lost to foreign audiences, but their body language and tone tell a whole story of their own; how Ki-woo is seduced by the allure and esteem of a university tutor and in turn seduces Ji-so, feigning aloofness while in awe of her status, or how So-dam's dialogue pokes through upper class formality (while her father fails to bridge this gap), or how Chung-sook swells above the former housekeeper when she talks down to her, scolding the unemployed for not knowing their place. When the new head of house nudges the old aside as if she were nothing more than a pesky mosquito, our laughter is smothered quickly by the crack! of her head against concrete, a testament to both the film's careful drip of dark humour and the lateral cruelty inflicted at the bottom tier of society, driven by a desperate yearning to ascend and escape.
Joons-Ho's visual style is a slick, almost insidious thing, willing you subconsciously in the direction of the narrative and to where the power resides within the scene. Consider the opening shot of his debut, Barking Dogs Never Bite, which pulls back from an idyllic forest line to trap the protagonist within the frame, imprisoned in a cage of unemployment and yelping neighbouring dogs. The closing shot pulls the same trick, presenting his success at scoring the coveted title of a university professor, before pulling back to replace the old bars of his apartment with a new set. He has won, but at what cost? Parasite begins literally below ground level, showing you the world as the Kims see it, the veritable vermin of the underground. The camera squeezes in with them hunched around their dining table, the long lens compressing the planes, evoking a feeling of claustrophobia. When Ki-woo makes his initial ascent, the frame expands, dwarfing him in the gated community of the Parks, bathing him in angelic natural light. Only when their gambit is exposed do they scurry back into their murky sewers like rats, flushed out by the same waters that preserve the pristine pastures of their employers. And yet, they commit the same sins, and are guilty of the same transgressions they scorn the Parks for.
Parasite finishes with a door slam of an ending, exposing the elusiveness of social mobility as absolute. In truth, I prefer the agony of the close in Burning from compatriot Lee Chang-dong, which achieves the same order of anguish that Joon-ho tapped into with Memories of Murder (its impact somewhat lessened by the recent revelation of the real-life perpetrator). In the end, it is infinite obsession which reigns over the resolution of the plot's puzzle, laced with the poison of class envy; it matters not who Ben really was. Parasite more or less deals with a similar crisis of identity, in which the working class protagonist eventually succumbs to the lure of the nouveau riche and their shiny new world. If you pull back, you'll see that this doubles for the broader anxieties of a country coming to terms with its rapid economic and social growth after civil war. Winning the nation's first, second, third, and fourth Oscar in one fell swoop is a significant boon for Asian representation in the West. And as for working class representation? Perhaps not in the gilded, gated halls of the Academy. Even in fantasy, Ki-woo's triumph barely nudges the status quo. He merely wins by joining them.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
We are what we grow beyond.
Having witnessed TROS a week ago and realising that it required a moment to process, I went about re-watching its predecessors. I had never really registered the prequels as anything more than schlocky fun, but putting myself into the shoes of ardent fans waiting with baited breath at the turn of the century, TPM becomes more than just a disappointment. The political discourse aims for complexity but its conflicts are resolved with laser swords, the dialogue's delivery gives a fresh meaning to the word monotone, the ethnic stereotypes are at best irritating, and the visual effects are downright ugly. While the podracing sequence has aged relatively well, it's symptomatic of another issue - whoever thought it was a good idea to devote an entire third of Vader's origin story to his dopey pre-teen self? No matter his midichlorian count, the plot itself is inconsequential; the galaxy lies in precarious balance between the light side and the dark, but here he is playing with action figures.
Then there was AOTC, with its messy concoction of teenage angst and a side of detective mystery, in which George Lucas learnt to address his critics by throwing more lightsabers at the screen. ROTS is admittedly the best of a sour bunch, partly because it always had the benefit of Vader being the eventual end of its path. Whilst clumsy overall, you can't really mess up the reveal of the iconic mask with Williams' Imperial March on your side. But think again: what was the audience's favourite moment from Rogue One? The origin of the topsy turvy direction of this sequel series lies with JJ Abrams himself, who, with a completely empty palette and the Big Mouse's blessing to blast off into a new era, decided to press the reset button instead. Watching TFA again, it's little more than high budget fan-fiction, a glossy update of a galaxy far, far away, and yet so strangely familiar. The film emblazoned what we recognise as Abrams' trademark blockbuster stamp: zippy, lighter-than-air dialogue, zippier action sequences with sparks and explosions galore that never seem to kill anyone of importance, and a decidedly unpretentious giddiness in unveiling the fact that the Star Wars universe was returning to the big screen once more. And at the time, in the naive, innocent epoch of 2015, that was enough.
Oh, my sweet summer child. But who could blame us? We were just glad that the path ahead was course-correcting, that we could forget about Hayden Christiansen's pickup lines, that Star Wars, yes, the real Star Wars, was back. It didn't matter that we were circling back to the days of the Jedi order, even after Lucas' unintentional highlighting of the code's inherent hypocrisy and megalomania. Every Abrams misstep in Episode 7 is exacerbated in TROS, but it all began with TLJ. In more ways than one it is the Empire of the new trilogy; provocative in asking deeper questions of the franchise's status quo, transformative in its tonal shift away from the genre film. I had somehow mistakenly remembered Del Toro's character achieving redemption by coming to the rescue of Finn and Rose aboard the ship, as if I didn't trust the most popular film franchise of all time to be a little braver with its morality. But no, he sells them out, takes the money and runs, leaving behind his realpolitik take on all these wars in the stars, "They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow. It's just business."
He's wrong, of course, but in the wake of the final episode it's frustrating to see these crumbs being dropped and not picked up again. On a literal level, Finn and Rose embody the many scattered citizens of the galaxy that are just waiting for the call to rise up and rebel against evil. That's why Rey receives the necklace from a child on Pasaana, and that's why Canto Bight happened - the Force is a currency for hope across the galaxy, and our protagonists are its messengers. There's an entire character devoted to this in Jannah, but instead of grounding the story, she's reduced to being a plot device to get Finn from point A to point B. Zora Bliss suffers a similar fate, her ongoing 'will they won't they' with Poe a larger priority than her actual grievances against the Empire. Lando miraculously emerges with an entire battalion of rebel starships ready to take on the Final Order, yet we're left scratching our heads at where they were when Leia last sent out a distress signal. The surprise reveal is especially pitiful in the wake of Endgame sticking its landing in that department, indicating that these moments need to be earned. Without any stakes, they're just a cheap, faceless deus ex machina. On a more philosophical level, DJ's not the first to point out that the light side of the force isn't as pure and virtuous as advertised. This was TLJ's sub-thesis and the first thing that everyone, myself included, latched upon. Rian Johnson sought to unshackle the franchise of the baggage that is the unquestionable reverence of the Jedi order and its mythos, going beyond the simple binary of blue = goodie and red = baddie.
You'd presume that after a prequel series which prioritised lightsaber choreography over moral nuance and intricate characterisation that audiences would appreciate this. But the fan response to Luke's midlife crisis and the resulting amendments in TROS confirm the worst: that Star Wars fans would rather bury their heads in the sand and remain hopelessly devoted to their nostalgia-infused memories than confront a newer, more complex age of storytelling. Their version of these films has Luke striding out like a hero, flipping around like geriatric Yoda, and wielding a minimum of four lightsabers. Lucas forgot that a battle is only as engaging as the clash of characters behind them. Compare of any of his incoherent glowstick brawls to Obi-Wan or Luke's last stand, the latter of which prioritises the culmination of an emotional arc over the physicality or choreography of the actual duel. We recognise the significance of the mentor confronting his mistakes and placing his newly-found faith in the next generation. Where's the intrigue in facing Darth Maul, or General Grievous? You can't stage a meaningful fight against an opponent whose sole appeal is in how menacing they appear or how many lightsabers they have.
But who cares about all that? Rey unlocked dual wield, baby! The climatic clash of TROS is pitched at a juvenile level, the auditory equivalent of the cavalry arriving at Geonosis, ripped straight out of every shounen manga ever. Abrams' insistence in necessitating this for Rey's triumph over Palpatine removes her agency and strips her victory of any individual achievement, advocating instead for a crowdfunded effort bolstered by figures she has no personal connection to. The connection personal for only the audience, and this is what the film sells. Again and again, Abrams favours fan gratification over storytelling. It's so blindingly obvious that he wanted to finish on the iconic duel sunset, and so he forcefully engineers the plot towards this conclusion at the cost of any thematic logic; Tatooine was what was holding Luke back from his hero's journey, and Leia's never even set foot on its sandy plains. The sum of it all resembles a laundry list of moments where the overhead 'clap now' sign flashes to the audience, ushering in cheers and whoops, as the characters breezily lightspeed skip to the next dot point.
The most egregious of these betrays the film's lack of confidence in its characterisation, in that no one can really be significant without a significant past. Its predecessors set up a neat duality between Rey and Kylo, the former having every reason to become jaded and bitter at the world after being abandoned by her parents, and the latter given every resource and opportunity to take on the mantle of the next Jedi Master. To take Kylo's story and transfer it over to Rey, and to have the source of that conflict be a strained connection to a character we thought long dead is both disappointing and expected of a franchise so obsessed with its own legacy. Abrams leans on the 'surprise!' factor of the Palpatine twist more than its repercussions, and in doing so invalidates Rey's genuine struggles with being nobody by taking the easy way out. Whoops, just kidding! You have to be a Skywalker or at the very least a Solo if you want to be anything more than a disposable background character. The film's opening hurtles at lightspeed, hoping that we don't think too hard about these developments, while the protagonists engage in what can only be described as a grotesque version of Sorkin's ping-pong dialogue. Let's not stop and breathe for a moment, and spend some time unpacking some of this subtext or growth.
The Rise of Skywalker reveals that Star Wars is going through an identity crisis. These films meant a great deal once, and they can mean a great deal today, but they can't be the same thing. The days of the space opera riffing off pulpy serials is over. Look at the Stormtrooper helmet; it's goofy, and the updated sheen of the new Disney renditions doesn't change that. Chewbacca is literally a tall British guy in a bear costume, roaring nonsense. Captain Phasma is given roughly the same screen time and agency as the legendary Boba Fett, but none of the reverence. No one has never aimed the criticisms of her character towards him, because there's nostalgia involved, and that means the stakes are personal. This kind of attachment isn't a bad thing - the open scrawl and fanfare transports us all to a galaxy we've cherished for decades, but nostalgia is fleeting in its comfort, and eventually the story must evolve. THAT was the essence of The Last Jedi, in the immortal words of Yoda. We are what they grow beyond. Burning the sacred Jedi texts doesn't mean erasing the past, but embracing its mistakes and learning from them in looking towards the future. The Rise of Skywalker is a regressive move. It runs in the opposite direction.
El Camino (2019)
Put things right.
Breaking Bad dealt in the drug empire business, while El Camino deals out bite-sized, re-packaged nostalgia. Re-visiting the universe more than half a decade after Walter White's final demise, there are familiar traces that immediately come to mind. There are callbacks to the same brand of humour, some gratuitous (Magnets!), and some revealing (I totally graduated high school, d**k - Walt's faux-praise deflating into condescension). And there is a brief trip into the desert that recalls the magnificent photography of the original, the dusty vistas and desolates landscapes of Albuquerque setting the tone of the neo-western, a landlocked den of crime and filth. In fact, it's a little too brief; El Camino teases glimpses of Breaking Bad at its peak, but fails to understand that what made the show great couldn't possibly be re-captured in a two hour Netflix special.
The original had a measured, almost glacial pace. You don't just watch one episode of Breaking Bad. Sure, they may have been self-contained, but the story unfolded gradually as a slow burn, allowing us to witness the full measure of man transforming from high school chemistry teacher to drug kingpin, the finale expending six years of nervous energy and gut punch after gut punch. Here, Jesse ambles from location to location at the same pace, but the runtime works against him. Gilligan's style is ever present, every scence punctuated with tension (see the match cut in the shower where Jesse's PTSD suddenly strikes), with the soundtrack promoting an ambient, anxious churning, but it's too little and too soon. The feature resembles two episodes clumsily squished together, with excessive screentime devoted to flashbacks that press Jesse to relive his trauma, but barely enough for him to be able to drive off into the sunset a changed man (Jesse Plemons' casual sociopathic shtick wears a little thin as it eventually did in the show, and pales in comparison to some of his work post-show, now that we recognise his talent from Fargo and Black Mirror).
Only one fleeting moment bursts with the original Breaking Bad DNA, a never-before-seen recollection of the aftermath of 4 Days Out, immediately following Walt and Jesse's return from the dilemma in the desert. It only takes a second for the audience to re-calibrate, and then we know exactly where the pair stand. The flashback is a great cross-section of Walter White on the precipice of Heisenberg in late season two. Cranston is pitch perfect as always, still stuck in his early teaching mannerisms, a stilted attempt at small talk and college aspirations masking his deeper desires; he is on the verge of greatness. And Jesse? He barely registers the ambition and ego brimming from the man across the faded diner booth, too busy chowing down a salad. He assures Walt that his family will get every cent that is coming to them, and we believe him.
Where did that Jesse Pinkman go, anyway? A true fan recognises that Walter White died well before the final season, but for Jesse it was a much bumpier ride. Where is the Jesse so consumed by his own conscience that he berates a support group willing to absolve his sins? One life taken - Gale Boetticher - was enough to torture him over multiple seasons, but the Jesse of El Camino is okay with gunning down welders because they have been set up as sleazy and complicit in his imprisonment (actually, only one of them). How could the writer who penned Walter White's rise and fall resort to this? The show would weep at this lazy moralising, as if hiring a Hummer full of strippers condemns you to murder by protagonist. The final showdown, steeped in classic western iconography, is more cool than compulsory, turning him into a veritable Man with No Name. You almost expect him to spin his duel pistols around his trigger fingers and holster them with a tip of his cowboy hat, and then drive off without so much as glancing back at the explosions (oh wait, he does do that). Breaking Bad was never 'cool'; Walter was meant to be feared, not admired, although a large portion of the fanbase never truly realised this. In El Camino, Jesse finally gets his chance of a fresh start, which was the very least he deserved, but not like this.
Rio Bravo (1959)
I said I'd arrest you.
Angie Dickinson may get all the best lines in Rio Bravo, but John Wayne is the one that she surrenders to in the end. She is the prototypical Hawksian woman; witty, sharp as a knife, wielding her sexuality with provocation. Her drawl is the antithesis of Hawks' earlier screwballs and their mile-a-minute dialogue, overlapping and building to a comedic climax. When Feathers sashays and suggests a strip-search, and when she dangles her arms around his neck and pulls him in for a second kiss after a lacklustre first effort, you'll see a rare glimpse of a John Wayne character flustered.
By slowing it all down, Hawks was able to build his scenes from the ground up, filling them to the brim with tension. See the iconic opening, a wordless 5 minute sequence that renders a simple bar scuffle into an operatic showdown. Dude enters from the back door a sweaty outsider, lurking in the shadows and pacing back and forth, eyes darting towards the drink. The camera doesn't rush him; you can see why Kurosawa drew inspiration from the American western, where Mifune got his steady, measured shuffle from. Dean Martin, the disgraced star, crawls to the ground for a coin, only to usher in the entrance of the town sheriff, Wayne towering over his failed protégé. No more than a minute later, they are holding a murderer at gunpoint together.
It was filmed at the Old Tucson studio backlot, so there are no expansive vistas of the west ala John Ford. The daytime exterior shots do little to hide the appearance of a set, reflecting a campy western aesthetic (see the bickering over dynamite throwing in the climax), but the interiors of the homesteads and taverns, particularly at night, come alive. Russell Harlan's lighting is sparse, throwing long, hard shadows across the rooms; one striking shot captures the standoff between Dude and a group of tight-lipped men on Burdette's payroll from an overhead view, the stare-down framed by the shadowy recesses of the ceiling, and a bloodied man waiting behind a pillar with a gun. Patrolling after sundown, the pair find danger and menace lurking around every corner, with sudden noises (a neighing horse, or a gunshot) punctuating the nervous energy in the air.
On the surface, Rio Bravo is a pure, red-blooded American western, a full-bodied tonic for the patriot in the wake of High Noon. While Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot pushed against the boundaries of the Hays Code in the same year, Hawks' film represented a return to normalcy. The rules of the game are clear cut and simple. Shoot a man and it's murder, unless he has a gun, in which case it's upholding the law. A man's worth is determined by how quick he is on the draw, and his life, mere gold pieces. Women? Window dressing, unless you're Feathers and as stubborn as a mule, in which case you become an honourary member of the posse. But even she yields to Wayne eventually.
Chance, unlike Gary Cooper's Will Kane, does not ever admit he needs help, nor does he make an overt show of asking for it. Wayne, at the height of his career, was enough; strutting around with a glare and rifle, he was the living embodiment of the dutiful sheriff, the heroic figure, reaffirming his moral authority with every growl. But look who answers the call anyway. A old timing cripple, a kid gunslinger, the local drunk, a Mexican innkeeper, and a gambler; an endearing band of misfits if there ever was one. They sing and smoke together (whether it be cigarettes or villains), and have each other's backs. Wayne's tough exterior never truly cracks, but he comforts and protects in his own way. Look at his sneer of disapproval at Dude quitting and running back to the bottle; it's almost enough to force the whiskey back in. And during the film's most tender moment, the narrative pauses while three cowboys sing along to the soft strumming of a guitar. In an era of tough men and political divide, as Mark Cousins puts it, this might be the closest thing to a family the western frontier had. Chance is there, too. He does not sing, but he just might be humming along.
About Time (2013)
You did, Dad. It was implied.
There is a feeling one gets when watching a Richard Curtis film. The warmth starts from your middle, and then spreads out gradually to the tips of your fingers and toes. These stories are cinematic chicken soup for soul. It's that involuntary "aah' that escapes whilst clutching a hot mug, as Wesley Morris puts it. Fine class dining it is not; merely a few ingredients tossed into a bubbling broth, but what could be better on a chilly Friday night? Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill made us believe we could slide right into the gang, or that we were laughing along right there at the Thacker dinner table, another etching into their modest, working class tapestry. His directorial debut Love Actually doubled down on this ensemble approach, beating audiences into submission with schmaltzy sentimentalism. And isn't that what Christmas movies are for? If you're going to commit, you might as well go all in. Roll that montage.
About Time isn't about any ordinary British family, but it's endearing enough that it almost could be. The Lakes live by seaside in Cornwall, an idyllic childhood peppered with tea parties on the beach and projected films in the garden by moonlight and rain, their umbrellas unfurled in a Wes Anderson-esque tableau. The well-meaning Uncle Desmond is the film's sounding board for the level of affection that connects them, a life-sized teddy bear who offers warm words when you squeeze his palm. (Kit Kat is the only misstep here; she's everything you'd ever want in a sister, but she's not real, every pixie skip and tackle-hug straining the realms of authenticity). And the wonderful Bill Nighy is the heart of it all, able to distill philosophical tenets that might sound heavy or on-the-nose when spoken by others into bite-sized wisdom that can be offered over a game of ping pong. He's so grounded in his presence that he never lets the film get lost in its twee.
Is that too strong of a word? About Time is not shy about its quaintness, but leans into it gently and invites the audience to pull up a chair. The Lakes are well off, but the phrase 'rich' would never drift into your mind during your viewing. The wedding could have been an extravagant affair, yet Curtis introduces a torrent of rain to wash away any pretense or fanciful notions, and in the end the speeches take place in a cramped little tea room with the guests crouching or standing or squashed next to each other on sofas or folding chairs, all a bit damp. It would be hard to see Americans be this self-deprecatory, or not play it for laughs. And there's never ever a thought of jumping back in time for a redo.
This is low key sci-fi at its best, the time travel element almost accepted as simply magical realism. That this mechanic is never quite properly explained may irk some more hardcore fans, but I think it's beside the point. I've spoken before about Curtis' little touches but they are worth a mention here, a style so light and soft that you feel welcome immediately. His cinematography is cozy personified, shallow focus and warm, diffused light tracking the pair through the streets of London as if they were the only two people alive in the city that night, the universe still as they fall for each other. This is the meet cute at its optimal cuteness, with the preceding dialogue on their (literal) blind date a textbook on how to write dialogue for said meet cute, hitting all the right areas: some humour to lighten things up, a smattering of self-deprecation, and just the right amount of chemistry. See how Mary emerges from the restaurant and reveals herself to Tim for the first time, stumbling slightly on the step, backlit as if a halo hovers over her head, and a hint of smile framed by a fringe. I bought it at once. No amount of time travel could make Charlotte love him, but for Mary it was just a matter of time.
The Square (2017)
Pick the onions out yourself.
"The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it we all share equal rights and obligations." So utters the artist's statement of the provocative new piece from the X-Royal art museum in Stockholm. It comes from the brilliant mind of chief curator Christian, a suave figure who glides between business meetings and official functions, hair slicked back, suit pressed. How fitting, then, that the film premiered at Cannes, with its protagonist a mirror image of the contemporary cultural elite it was unveiled to, having to witness Östlund skewer the very demographic they were part of.
The opening takes aim squarely at this new target; in setting up The Square, Christian has a construction crew remove the rusty old war memorial that previously adorned the museum's plaza, only for the crane to clumsily decapitate the poor general. This initial blunder has the comedic poise of deadpan master Roy Andersson (a fellow Swede) at his peak, a decisive barb at the self-centredness and pretentiousness of the upper middle class. You almost expect them to simply leave the smashed statue as is, erect a rope barrier, and declare the scene their newest exhibit.
Christian begins the film struggling to explain the complex, almost nonsensical jargon of the contemporary art world to a journalist who sees through his whole charade. Simultaneously, he is preparing for the unveiling of his new exhibit, itself an intricate performance complete with a precisely timed dummy call that gives him the opportunity to restart from a more 'authentic' level. Clearly, The Square is at its funniest when Östlund exposes the phony self-importance that this elite bubble is powered by, and the absurd lengths they will go to in order to preserve it. A museum cleaner is bewildered by how he must tiptoe around piles of pebbles, which results in the subsequent conversation a frantic Christian has with an assistant on how to reconstruct the exact make-up of these piles, with a worlds-away Moss (said journalist) none the wiser.
But this pointed condemnation runs mostly through Christian himself, and that's when the film loses a bit of steam. Intent on setting him up as punching bag, the comparisons are nothing but overt. The irony is clear; Christian chides his surrounding citizens on their lack of conscious empathy, erecting The Square as a means of reinvigorating our shared social responsibility to behave. There's even a space, if you choose to place your trust in the collective, to leave your phone and wallet at the mercy of other museum visitors. Yet Christian can't relinquish these himself, or behave himself. A spark of impromptu bravado becomes the catalyst for a furious quest for his phone and wallet, no longer the well-dressed curator wielding the 'hammer' of justice, but an unhinged man stuffing angry notes into an entire apartment complex's letterboxes.
Claes Bang does more than just pull his weight. His moment of triumph in the pedestrian square is his humanising moment, one to galvanise the audience into siding with his cause. And even when that collapses, he is unwavered; he is in the right here, doing his wider social circle a kindness in unveiling the magic of The Square. His deluded self-belief, even as the campaign self-destructs around him, is the performance's saving grace. The reveal of a family and his two daughters is treated almost as an afterthought, and although he drags them along to his moment of redemption, ostensibly to model how to take responsibility for one's actions, it becomes a narcissistic monologue, a one-man-show of deflection and shifting blame. What a weasel.
Östlund's centrepiece, however, is performance art stretched to its limit. The ape act, posing the same questions that Pierre Brassau posed, pushes the audience further and further, inflating a moment of tension and discomfort until it bursts. The civility in the room is transformed from black tie banquet to one of primal instinct, the Christians of the room stooping to the same ape-like level. But what else are they supposed to do, sit there and watch the assault unfold? The scene is a microcosm of its whole, as confronting and provoking as Force Majeure, but with none of the subtlety. That it then abruptly cuts away to the streets of Stockholm, lined with the homeless bedding down for the night, is only further proof of this.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
He's...just a kid.
Spider-Man 2 is the greatest superhero film of all time. Entire cinematic universes have come and gone since its release in 2004, but what are cosmic challenges to the daily dilemmas of a kid who is the city's heroic web-slinger by night, and a mere pizza delivery boy by day? Its predecessor gave legitimacy to a new generation of big screen hero flicks. Spider-Man was hewn from obvious, in-your-face storytelling, the kind perfect for fans flocking from page to screen. The choices were as bold as any all-caps comic book title: save the woman you love, or a cable car full of screaming kids? Spider-Man 2 more or less resumes that moral quandary in the life of Peter Parker, who is heralded as New York City's protector, but can barely afford his one bedroom apartment's rent.
The best stories about superheroes realise it is what is behind the mask that makes the man (or woman). That's why Mask of the Phantasm is a better Batman movie than The Dark Knight (despite the latter being the best Michael Mann picture not directed by the man himself). Bruce's most defining moment in the former comes not in beating down thugs and villains, but during a tearful soliloquy kneeling at his parent's gravestone, pleading for permission to remove his cowl and begin a normal life. Peter Parker makes the same plea here.
Tobey Maguire finds the right note for this role, perfecting a look of astonishment that he returns to again and again. When he pays for a bouquet for Mary Jane, but realises he can afford only a trio, he accepts the fact with quiet resignation. And when he is refused entry into the play on account of lateness, he is speechless; he's just halted a high speed police chase, saving how many lives in the process? Working as a freelance photographer, his own scoops slander himself, but alas, the bills must be paid. Another of his assignments is to capture the moment another man proposes to the woman he loves. The story bashes and bashes him into submission until he is at his lowest point, undoing the mythos of the red and blue mask. Why put it on, when no one will give him the recognition or time of the day? Maguire allows us to understand his selfishness, about why he chooses to walk away. Superpowers made the high school punching bag's dreams come true, but they could never replace a chance to live a full life.
Doc-Ock must be mentioned as the film's mentor turned villain, given plenty of gravitas via the sunken eyes of Alfred Molina. The character is ostensibly a human mecha-octopus, and on paper it shouldn't work as live action. Its camp potential is never milked more than in his 'origin' scene, where the robotic tentacles arise from the hospital bed, reincarnating in their fully fleshed, HAL-9000-inspired forms. Raimi shoots this with utter glee; you can tell he's riffing off his Evil Dead work, from the urgent push-ins to the blood-curdling shrieks. These robotic limbs move with a life of their own, whispering words into the Doc's ears, seducing him with promises of glory. That he is eventually given the opportunity to right his wrongs, and takes it, sets the film's ethos apart. There's no muddied misanthropy here, no ambiguous swathe of grey; rather, figures are bestowed power and given the chance to do the right thing.
Here lies the core philosophy of Spider-Man 2, that anyone could be struck by lightning or bitten by a radioactive spider, but that true heroism lies in the choice to take up the responsibility of the mantle. It is Peter that does this; Spider-Man is just an alter ego. Raimi reaffirms this belief by stretching him thin (quite literally) in the climax of the film, where he must stop a runaway train from crashing over an unfinished track. Close-ups stress the punishing physicality of being a superhero. The suit rips from the exertion of his efforts, and unmasked, his face is contorted in agony, teeth gritted, and eyes scrunched up. Would Superman ever be shot in this way? Even when the Man of Steel is straining, he looks a million bucks. But Peter Parker is the furthest he can be from self-conscious. All he asks is for the same human spirit and bravery in those he saves, and those he opposes.
Love, Death & Robots (2019)
Wow, so badass
Much of Netflix's Love, Death & Robots may take place in the near future, yet it feels curiously retrograde. The anthology series doesn't lack variety, for sure; over eighteen episodes ranging from six to seventeen minutes long, there's 3D and traditional animation ranging in style, a dash of live-action, and a splatter of genres. But these all seem like masks to a common problem; that the profanity, violence and nudity filter has been set up by a twelve year old boy. And it's 'graphic' violence and nudity, too (some call this adult, but that should be a thematic designation, not a visual one), in the sense that they don't just throw up full-frontal onto the screen, but have naked bodies splattered with blood, or gyrating to flashing neon lights, or have Hitler in a throng of flailing limbs and lady bits, screaming LOOK AT ME.
Don't mistake this for a prude's objection; I'm just as maligned towards the opposite end of the scale, where big blockbuster studios sanitise and sterilise content for the sake of appealing to the broadest audience possible, to ensure that anyone who wants a seat in that movie theatre opening day can do so without having to whip out some ID. But there's explicitness for edge and realism, and then there is explicitness just for the sake of it. You don't expect this from Fincher, but discovering that Tim Miller, director of Deadpool, is the helm of the series, things begin to make a little more sense. Running through the series is the same juvenile glee shared by that hooded merc with a mouth, a carefree attitude of 'we're doing this because we can'. Yes, but did you ever stop and think about whether you should?
With Deadpool, at least the dialogue matched his personality, so it wasn't improper to throw in a f-word (or a dozen) because that's his shtick. But Love, Death & Robots acts as if this is a universal perspective, a swearing, hacking, free-for-all sexathon, scrubbing away any individual edge or character. An early example of this occurs in episode three where a robotic trio wander the ruins of a city in the wake of nuclear war, musing on the state of human nature and their silly affairs. But while they puzzle over the usual, overdone jabs at humanity's pitfalls (Why do they harm each other? Why do they hook themselves up to these buzzing screens? Why do they need physical nourishment?), it's glaringly obvious their mouthpieces are human. The one-liners are pitched at us, written at the level of human comedy. You can't have your cake and eat it too, and as they attempt to, the episode's premise falls flat on its back.
In Love, Death & Robots, the focus is either on gory, testosterone-filled action, or titillating (pun intended) in-your-face nudity (usually female, to the delight of this particular subset of viewers), or it's both at once. Even when the story attempts to have something interesting to say, they get in the way. Such is the case for both 'Sonnie's Edge' and 'Shape-Shifters', which both have compelling dilemmas thrust upon their protagonists, asking questions of bodily ownership and identity, of external physical appearance and its wavering value. These characters push the boundaries of the hegemonic structures that surround them, and the narrative should be exploring that, but ultimately the main attraction of these episodes is the blood-sport, the CGI monsters brawling and ripping each other's throats out. It's cool stuff, video-game trailer worthy. Why not just make an entire series of paranormal gladiator duels, as some fans so earnestly plead for after the opening?
Other episodes dip their toes into the strange and otherworldly, setting up a collision of our own sensibilities and the twisted forces beyond our recognition, but resolve conflict through simple murder in the bloodiest degree. That's true of both 'Fish Night' and 'The Dump', which present engrossing premises but seem to cut off halfway into the narrative, as if needing to squeeze in the credits somehow. We're left grasping thin air, wanting further development, if not explanation for unanswered questions. What of 'Ice Age', a time-worn concept updated with flashy new visuals? The earliest iteration of this may be Edmond Hamilton's short story 'Fessenden's Worlds' way back in 1937, and even that had tinges of cautioning humanity against megalomania and wanton wielding of the powers of science. What lesson is learnt here, eighty years later? The two humans are surrogates for nothing, empty vessels that will forget the whole ordeal and buy a new fridge the next day. Why even go to the effort of getting Winstead and Grace?
Ironically, it's the more conventional episodes that pack a punch in their allotted time, not messing or straying from formula. 'Suits' is Pacific Rim but on a rural scale, pitting farmers in mech suits defending their homes against invading (or are they?) aliens. It has all the bits and pieces to satisfy the viewer: small-town camaraderie, a heroic sacrifice, and a happy ending. 'Helping Hand' is a straight thriller taking a leaf from Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity, a taut (which would describe the tether-line she should have had), tense affair. And 'Zima Blue' may be the most intriguing of them all, a unique angle on an age-old question. But the rest? It's all sex, blood and robotic characters. Good sci-fi should teach us, warn us, hold a mirror to our present selves. But if all your audience is preoccupied with is grabbing a machine gun and joining in the alien slaughter, then you've got an issue.