"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" With Spoilers

 Last warning for all the spoilers.

In other circumstances I would be a little annoyed that this was essentially a backdoor pilot to the new reboot of "The X-men," but how can I be mad when the execution was this good?  Easily the character that I was the most impressed  by in "Brand New Day" was Jean Grey.  I've never come across any version of this character that I've liked before, because she's so rarely allowed to exist on her own terms.  Even when she's Phoenix, she's more MacGuffin  than active protagonist.  Her being introduced in the MCU as a secret villain is great, because her powers have some interesting implications to explore, and nobody would ever expect it of this character.  And Sadie Sink is perfect casting, instantly giving Jean a whole lot of personality and passion that makes her a great match in energy for Tom Holland.

All the choices of MCU crossover characters were very good, subtly giving Peter potential role models to compare and contrast himself against.  He could suppress his powers and risk danger when they get out of hand, like Bruce Banner.  He could do the lone wolf routine and stay alone and miserable the way that the Punisher/Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) does.  He could let trauma and revenge consume him and turn him into a villain, the way that it nearly does to Jean in this movie.   Of course Yelena's just there to remind us that there's a new "Avengers" film around the corner, but I'm never going to say no to more Florence Pugh.  The filmmakers were able to have Spider-man exist in a universe full of other superheroes and still have it feel fairly grounded, because all of those other superheroes are actually here for a reason.

Peter is supposed to be living a solitary life in this movie, but it just means that he's having different interactions than we've seen previously.  The banter with the Punisher is a lot of fun, and their friendship turns out to be more important than it appears at first glance.  All is forgiven for making me sit through that terrible Disney+ "Punisher: One Last Kill" special.  I really like Liza Colon-Zayas serving as Spidey's liaison with the police and regular source of motherly advice.  By the time we get to those important conversations with MJ and Aunt May, it's clear that Peter might be struggling to reconnect and reconcile with parts of his past, but he's fundamentally the selfless hero we all know and love anyway.  The interactions with Tramell Tillman and Damage Control emphasize that he's still that naive do-gooder from "Homecoming" in a lot of ways.  It would be a shame to lose Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, so I'm glad that they left the door open for more Ned and MJ, but this would be a perfectly acceptable exit for both of them too.

Peter having trouble with his powers is a common Spider-man storyline, but I liked all the thematic stuff they did with it, and it was clever to tie it into the upcoming superhuman/mutant stories that we know are coming up soon with the X-men.  What's important, however, is that while Jean Grey had a great introduction in this movie, the movie was always still about Peter.  That's the major mistake that the last Ant-man movie made, which ended up being  a movie mostly about Kang the Conqueror.  "Brand New Day" was so good at being a Spider-man movie.  Spidey and Punisher teamed up to fight the Hulk!  Spidey fought a tank!  And had a very nice showdown with the Hand!  And the mutant spider DNA leveled him up with some new and improved powers!  Jean Grey's telepathy jumping from person to person is also so cool to see in action, and really made great use of the cast.  Jon Bernthal mimicking Sadie Sink's mannerisms is priceless.  

So, all in all I'm very happy with how the MCU is handling Spider-man, and look forward to whatever they have in store next for the character.  This is pretty much their last tentpole superhero left who is an unqualified box office success, so I know we'll be getting plenty more of him.  

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"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" Without Spoilers

This is the spoiler-free review.  The discussion with spoilers will be posted in a few days.

It's strange, considering how long Tom Holland has been playing Spider-man, but this feels like this is his first proper Spidey outing.  The switch in directors from Jon Watts to Destin Daniel Cretton is definitely an upgrade, especially the more grounded visuals and intense action sequences.  There's also the environmental shift, from the prior trilogy's chintzier aesthetics to a New York City that feels more like the actual city, with ordinary people everywhere that Peter Parker regularly interacts with.  Paradoxically, this is a very interconnected MCU movie where I can tell characters and concepts are being set up for future installments.  However, it's all done so well that I doubt anyone will complain.

It's been several years since "Spider-man: No Way Home" and the memory of Peter Parker was erased from the minds of everyone who knew him.  Spider-man is now a well-known and much beloved New York superhero, but Peter lives a lonely, solitary life avoiding human connection.  However, when Peter learns that MJ and Ned have moved back to the city after college, he is forced to contend with a lot of inner turmoil and unresolved feelings that manifest in some unexpected ways.  At the same time, he has to face off against a formidable new mystery villain, who can mentally take over innocent people and puppet them to commit crimes.  Several familiar MCU faces make appearances in this film, and their parts are not small.  Also, newcomers Sadie Sink, Tramell Tillman, and Liza Colon-Zayas appear in roles that I will not spoil until the next post.

I was a little disappointed at first that "Brand New Day" dispensed with so many parts of the original Spider-man story - no Daily Bugle, no J. Jonah Jameson, and not a camera in sight - but I quickly realized that the movie is doing this on purpose.  Cretton and writers Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers are reducing Spider-man to the absolute basics, removing all of his familiar relationships, signifiers, and safety nets.  This allows them to zero in on Peter going through a rough transitional time in his life that many young adults face.  And in the 2020s, what's a more relatable problem for Peter to have than loneliness?  I so appreciate that everything looks like it's going great for Spidey on the surface - the cops and the public love him - but underneath he's as sad and miserable as any of his predecessors have been.  Peter faces a very internal problem that takes a while to dig into, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the recent MCU film that "Brand New Day"  reminds me the most of is "Thunderbolts,*" which also had a big mental health component.

The action in "Brand New Day" is better than "Thunderbolts,*" however.  I don't think I realized how pedestrian some of Tom Holland's previous MCU Spider-man outings looked before now.  Visually, this is a big step up, getting Spider-man swinging from proper New York skyscrapers again, and engaging with more street-level crime.  I know that there's plenty of CGI being used, but due to the nature of the big bad many of Spider-man's foes this time out are regular people in fairly ordinary environments.  When the more fanciful comic book battles do ensue, however, they do not fail to impress.  There are some very entertaining clashes in this film that should make longtime comic book fans very happy. 

It shouldn't be overlooked that the performances remain strong - Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon have always been very solid in their roles, and continue to generate plenty of screen chemistry together.  The prospect of new Spider-man films was a little iffy after the previous trilogy finished, but I can easily see more adventures with the Tom Holland Spider-man following this one.  The more grounded, more grown-up direction for the characters is exactly what the franchise needed.

The spoiler post will be up in a few days.

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"Stop! That! Train!" and "Leviticus"

 Here are two very different LGBT films from earlier in the year that you might have missed.

First, I want to highlight the very low budget comedy, "Stop! That! Train!"  It's essentially "Airplane" on a train, starring alumni of "RuPaul's Drag Race," with RuPaul Charles in the prominent role of President Judy Gagwell.  Our heroes are Tess (Ginger Minj) and  DeeDee (Jujubee), best friends and stewardesses employed by the lowly Stank Rail, who manage to sneak their way on to the fabulous Glamazonian Express.  Alas, they have to contend with the bitchy Glamazonian stewardesses, Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), Alli (Marcia Marcia Marcia), Ayshleiygh (Symone), train cars full of dramatic celebrities, and the impending doom of a massive "Stormaganza" headed their way.

Directed by Adam Shankman, this movie is a very shoestring affair, reportedly shot in only nineteen days with minimal sets.  Some of the exterior shots of the train and the storm were AI generated, which is unfortunate, but also weirdly fitting for a film where the schlockiness of the visuals is a vital component of the campy, low budget aesthetics.  This feels like a cross between the old "Naked Gun" parody movies, a Youtube fan film, and a "Drag Race" compilation special, and I mean that in a good way.  I admire the ambition on display here, where choreographed musical (Rusical?) numbers, ridiculous sight gags, and cameos galore are all crammed together for 90 minutes of silliness.   

Whether you enjoy the film or not will depend on your enjoyment of drag and spoof humor, and it turns out that "Stop! That! Train!" hits pretty dead on for me.  I'm missing a lot of the more recent references, and don't recognize most of the famous faces, but this is the kind of film where Rachel Bloom and Charo show up, just because, and someone shouts "Give it to me gay!" and then has to specify "Boy gay!"  Because of the gender politics involved, the humor is also extremely mild, even tamer than the content of "The Birdcage," which is thirty years old at this point.  This means it comes off as a toothless throwback at times, but also means it's very accessible to newcomers.  I appreciate this, as I have not been keeping up with "Drag Race."  But maybe I should.

On to "Leviticus," an Australian horror film written and directed by Adrian Chiarella.  This is an allegorical horror film about sexual identity and social ostracism with a lot of interesting little nuances.  A teenage boy named Naim (Joe Bird) and his overprotective mother Arlene (Mia Wasikowska) move to a remote town where some kids are being stalked and attacked by a supernatural force.  One of the victims is a boy named Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), whose parents put him through some kind of ritual because of his attraction to another boy, Ryan (Stacy Clausen).  As Naim and Ryan grow closer, they become the newest targets of the entity, which seems to become more violent and malevolent as their feelings grow.

 

I've seen a lot of comparisons between "Leviticus" and "It Follows," because of the mechanics of how the supernatural attacks happen.  However, the supernatural threats are a manifestation of the more concrete dangers that come with being LGBT in a hostile environment.  Naim and Ryan being together sparks opposition from those closest to them, even those who you'd expect to be sympathetic to their plight.  There's no reasoning with these well-meaning adversaries and no way to undo the persecution, leaving the boys with few options if they want to survive.  I appreciate that we never get much information as to the specifics of how the supernatural elements work, and the audience has to infer a lot about the adults' motives.  

I also like the portrayal of Naim, Ryan, and Hunter's relationships being very un-Hollywood in the way they develop.  It's clear that none of them really know what they're doing, and their attempts at affection usually involve a great deal of chaotic roughhousing before anything amorous happens.  The depiction of the religious community around them is also fairly restrained.  There are cult-like practices, but nothing so extreme as to be unbelievable.  The harms unleashed on the boys come with a considerable degree of deniability, which make them all the more insidious.  

Like "Stop! That! Train!" "Leviticus" is a small movie, one that doesn't offer anything exceptional in the way of horrific thrills or standout performances, but for its target audience it'll surely resonate.    

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"Supergirl" and "Masters of the Universe"

These two movies represent a lot of missed opportunities.

"Supergirl," the second major film from the James Gunn-led reboot of the DC cinematic universe, magnifies a lot of the concerns I've had about his approach to superhero material, not the least of which is that he doesn't seem to have  a good grasp on who he's making the movies for.  "Supergirl" was always going to be a difficult sell because it has a female lead who isn't as popular as the other DC heroes - though CW did manage to keep a "Supergirl" series on the air for six seasons pretty recently.  Director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Noguiera's approach is to give us a tough, troubled, rough-edged Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl (Milly Alcock), making her way through an unfriendly universe.

Based heavily on the Tom King comics miniseries "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow," we find Kara taking a break from life on Earth with her dog Krypto, on a planet with a red sun.  This means no superpowers and she has the metabolism to be able to get drunk.  Kara is then drawn into the revenge quest of a little girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who is hunting the brigand Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who killed her family.  Krem steals Kara's ship and shoots Krypto with a slow-acting poison that only he has the antidote for.  So, of course, Kara is obliged to go John Wick him into coughing it up.  Along the way she and Ruthye travel to several different planets, meet a bounty hunter named Lobo (Jason Momoa), and we learn all about Kara's tragic past as a survivor of the planet Krypton.  

It's no secret that "Supergirl" has way too much in common with James Gunn's "Guardian of the Galaxy" movies, with violence, language, and content that is more suited to adult audiences than family ones.  Milly Alcock is charismatic and talented, but this take on Supergirl as a roguish Han Solo-type, who prefers to find solace at the bottom of a bottle, feels wrong-headed.  I think the intention was to keep her appealing to the young male demographic, by making her messy and relatable.  However, in the process the filmmakers have ditched almost everything that would make her attractive to young girls, which should be Supergirl's primary demographic, right?  Also, nothing else about the film works.  The visuals look tired and derivative of all the MCU space operas.  The soundtrack contains some downright confounding needle drops.  Krem is boring, Lobo is really more of a cameo, and the dog is cute - but not that cute.  The story has potential, and the flashback sequences are a highlight, but everything about the execution is so underwhelming and derivative.  I really wanted better for Supergirl, and this isn't the total disaster I feared it would be from early reactions, but I have no idea who would enjoy this movie.

Meanwhile, over at Amazon/MGM, the new "Masters of the Universe" movie helmed by Travis Knight gives He-Man and friends another shot at big screen glory.  At least this one looks pretty good, full of bright colors and silly costumes.  I like that the filmmakers have embraced the ridiculous nature of the property, putting all the action figure heroes onscreen with a surprisingly amount of fidelity.  Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) of the fantasy kingdom Eternia, is sent as a child to Earth, after his kingdom is conquered by the forces of the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto).  He's obsessed with finding the Sword of Power that could allow him to unlock great cosmic powers and save his homeland.  In the meantime, he works in human resources and has a chill roommate named Hussein (Christian Vunipola).

So far, so good, but when Adam's childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) shows up to bring him home, and we start meeting all the other good guys like the general, Man at Arms (Idris Elba), and warriors Fisto (Johannes Hauhur Johannesson), Ram-Man (Jon Xue Zhang), and Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), things start getting dicey.  The script by Chris Butler, David Callaham, and the Nee brothers, constantly feels like it's at war with itself.  While it commits to full bodied adventuring and derring-do, it's also full of little asides and meta moments that poke fun at how cheesy and over-the-top the "Masters of the Universe" franchise is.  There are a ton of little Easter Eggs for fans and when He-Man yells "I have the power!" it's all suitably epic and cool.  And sometimes the writing gets way too self-aware and self-conscious, to the point where it stops being fun, and starts feeling awkward.  Nicholas Galitzine is very well cast as Adam/He-Man, with just the right amount of earnest enthusiasm and lack of self-awareness to feel like a twelve year-old in an adult body.  Unfortunately, he always feels more like the kid playing with the action figures than the action figure hero the movie is supposed to be about.  Say what you want about the Dolph Lundgren version, but that movie never had this problem.

I want to caution here that I'm not the target audience for "Masters of the Universe."  I never had any nostalgia for this franchise, and I don't tend to enjoy media on a similar wavelength, like the "Transformers" or "Mortal Kombat" movies.  However, I am a fan of several of the actors involved, like Alison Brie and Morena Baccarin, who play rival sorceresses on either side of the conflict.  They don't get to do much except look cool in their fancy costumes, which is a shame.  And while there's a lot here for younger viewers to enjoy, I don't feel that the movie makes the best case for He-Man as a hero.  "Masters of the Universe" is so frantic with jokes and references and spectacle and meta to keep the adults engaged, it too often loses sight of the point - good guy fights bad guy, overcomes evil, and saves the day.  

You know, for kids.

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"The Invite" is a Delight

"The Invite" is one of the vanishing breed of relationship comedies for adults, a mature dramedy about four people in an apartment spending an eventful evening together.  As you might expect, it's based on a play - the Spanish "The People Upstairs" - which has now been filmed half a dozen times in nearly as many languages.  The American version is written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones.  Olivia Wilde directs and also stars in one of the major roles, doing a fine job at both.

Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) play an unhappily married couple in San Francisco.    Joe comes home one day from work to discover that Angela has invited over the couple who live upstairs, Piña (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton).  Joe wants to cancel, but Angela is very invested in the get-together, sparking a fight.  This is interrupted when Piña and Hawk arrive, but tensions are high throughout the evening as the four characters make introductions, get to know one another, and it turns out that there's another invitation on the table.

If you've seen any of the trailers or advertising for the film, you know that "The Invite" broaches the topic of partner swapping and discusses other titillating sexual acts, though nothing explicit is ever shown onscreen.  Piña and Hawk turn out to be very sexually open and adventurous, and offer some new possibilities to Joe and Angela that might help get them out of the rut that their lives have fallen into.   However, this in turn throws some of the issues with their marriage into sharper relief.  "The Invite" is built on performances, where the conversations are the set pieces, and the reaction shots are as funny as any of the dialogue.  Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen are both unusually committed here, very well matched as scene partners, and I would have happily watched them argue and verbally spar with each other for an additional hour or two.  

As much as I enjoyed "The Invite," it took me a while to warm up to it.  Part of it is due to the subject matter and part of it is due to the kind of film this is.  "The Invite" is very good at being a very talky, small-scale feature that I would have expected to be made by an independent director with a cast full of theater stalwarts.  I went into the movie mistakenly expecting something bigger and broader, and spent a considerable amount of time waiting for fireworks that weren't there.  "The Invite" is actually quite grounded and intimate, with some sentimental edges.  Also, as much as I liked Wilde and Rogen, I found Cruz and Norton pretty uninteresting - more like caricatures of what sexually adventurous people are supposed to be rather than the real thing.  Their performances are engaging and convincing when they need to be, but the characters are very slight.  There's a theory floating around that Piña and Hawk are not real at all and Joe and Angela just got drunk and imagined them, which I could see.

Though the comedic energy is high and the ending is hopeful, this can't negate the fact that "The Invite" is about the end of a relationship.  There's a bittersweet undercurrent running through the whole movie that really hit me when I realized it was there.  Part of the reason why the laughs are so big and hit so hard is that there's a lot of pain and frustration behind them.  I've never seen Seth Rogen in a role this serious before - and the more serious he is, the funnier he is.  As for Olivia Wilde, frankly, she has never had a screen role this good.  It's unfortunate that she apparently had to direct the movie herself to land it.  I don't think of these two as dramatic actors, and it was a nice surprise to discover that they are, in fact, capable of sincere drama when they feel so inclined.

And I don't think it would hurt if they were so inclined more often.  I'd really like to see more films like "The Invite," and Rogen and Wilde stretching their acting muscles more regularly too.

  

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The New Devices of "Toy Story 5"

It's been thirty years since the original "Toy Story," and it's interesting to see how the franchise has evolved over time.  It's become more and more clear that the toys, especially our most prominent major characters like Woody, Buzz, and Jessie, are really stand-ins for parents.  Their relationships with the children that they safeguard have become more and more explicitly parental over the last few movies.  And what are parents worried about these days?  Electronic devices.  It was one of the neatest tricks of advertising that I saw this year, putting the new tablet character Lilypad (Greta Lee) right in the middle of the poster, representing a massive existential threat to the "Toy Story" gang, and instantly grabbing the attention of every concerned parent who has had to wrestle with the screentime question.

Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) is now eight years old, as imaginative as ever, but having trouble making friends because it seems like every other kid is spending so much time online.  Her well-meaning parents buy her a kids' tablet, Lilypad, to the consternation of her toys.  Jessie in particular is worried that the "devices" make kids grow up too fast.  Initial encounters with Lilypad do not go well, and Jessie and Bullseye mistakenly end up far from home, in the custody of another girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).  Meanwhile, Sheriff Woody and Bo are called in as reinforcements, and there's a whole subplot involving a lost army of the newest generation of Buzz Lightyear toys, which come with some interesting new hi-tech features.  Conan O'Brien, Shelby Rabara, and Craig Robinson voice new characters, and nearly everyone from the older "Toy Story" films reprises their roles in some capacity.

The franchise is definitely feeling its age.  "Toy Story 5," directed by Andrew Stanton, has a lot of jokes about Woody being old and out of shape, a lot of freak-outs about technology, and a lot of nostalgic callbacks to earlier films, especially "Toy Story 2."  The voices of several of the actors, like Tom Hanks and Joan Cusack, have noticeably changed, and the performances have changed with them.  Moreover, it feels like the movie was marketed more towards adults than children, though there are plenty of elements in the film that kids will enjoy watching.  PIXAR finally gives into toilet humor in the best way, introducing a toilet training toy named Smarty Pants (O'Brien) to deliver several very silly and mild scatological jokes.  While the animation is as eye-catching and detailed as ever, and all the actors and artists clearly remain very committed to delivering quality entertainment, there's a safeness and overly familiar quality to the film that left me comforted, but largely unmoved.  There are no big set pieces, no feats of animation spectacle, or any innovations in animation or storytelling that we haven't seen before.  They also feel a little slower, a little gentler, and more tentative.

The treatment of the devices, for instance, turns out to be very even-handed.  Maybe a little too even-handed.  Though initially viewed as threats, Lilypad and a few other tech-enabled toys are eventually revealed to be just as concerned about the well-being of their owners as the toys are.  The negative aspects of too much screentime, and the dangers of online interactions are highlighted, but it's the human beings who are at fault, not the technology.  With an eight year-old at the center of all this, the examples of online bullying and irresponsible behavior are understandably very mild.  However, I still raised eyebrows at the amount of bad screen habits we see in the movie that escaped comment.  It feels like a missed opportunity for PIXAR to more definitely take a stand for toys and offline play over screens.

It's been seven years since "Toy Story 4," so I'm not as worried about the franchise being overexposed as I once was.  This is one of the rare cases where I believe that new installments don't get made unless someone has a really good idea for one.  However, "Toy Story 5" feels so remote from those first three films now, and the filmmakers seem reluctant to handle the characters too roughly anymore.  Maybe this is just a rare misstep that will be righted eventually, but I think it's more likely that "Toy Story" has inevitably plateaued, and may be on the decline. 

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My Favorite Andrzej Wajda Film

I don't think there's been a Polish filmmaker who has been as focused on Polish culture, politics, history, and national identity throughout his long career as Andrzej Wajda.  So though I was initially going to write this entry about "Danton," one of the great movies about the Reign of Terror, I feel it's far more appropriate to write about a Wajda film examining a period of Polish history through the lens of an investigation into the life of a fictional Polish hero.

"Man of Marble," like many other Wajda films, is about disillusionment and living in a corrupt system.  It follows a filmmaker named Agnieszka in the present day and her subject Mateusz Birkut in the past simultaneously, intercutting between their stories.  It emerges that Birkut was built up as a hero for propaganda purposes during Poland's Communist era, but once he actually undertook a heroic action in defense of a friend, he was brought to ruin by those in power.  "Man of Marble," made in the 1970s, was particularly notable for reflecting the social discontent of the Polish populace at the time of release, alluding to events that would be central to Poland's workers' movement of the 1980s.  "Man of Marble" would be followed by a sequel further exploring these themes, "Man of Iron."  Set five years later, it reveals the fates of several characters in "Man of Marble."  The political climate by that point was in such tumult that Wajda had to work outside of Poland for the next few years.

These two films are often discussed as a pair, but "Man of Marble" is more interesting for me for the way it engages with and is critical of Polish media.  The format of the film is similar to "Citizen Kane," with our heroine conducting interviews with people from Birkut's life, uncovering a little more about him with each encounter.  However, she is also working with researchers who unearth old films and newsreels about Birkut, many of them suppressed, censored, or never released at all.  The accounts of Birkut's life that they offer are usually deeply misleading.  Agnieszka even finds the director of the propaganda film that helped to lionize Birkut's image, who offers a more nuanced version of events.  However, there are also rare segments that contain fascinating glimpses of the truth.  Wajda created all of these archival materials himself in the style of the Communist  propaganda of the 1950s, highlighting their manipulative nature, and allowing him to contrast their narrative style with his own.

Wajda's frustrations as a filmmaker were also evident in the way he portrayed Agnieszka's struggles to make her film.  She has to fight for everything - funds, equipment, access to materials, approval of subject matter, and control of the project.  Agnieszka is played by Krystyna Janda in her debut role, this wonderfully modern, confident woman who struts through the opening sequence with determination and purpose.  I immediately sat up and took notice.  I appreciate that as much as the film is about Birkut, this forgotten hero figure who represents all the noble values of the Polish workers of his generation, it's also about Agnieszka, who resists the coverup and seems to embody all of Wajda's hopes for his country's future.  And it's her decision to keep going with her work, despite apparent defeat, that allows Wajda to end "Man of Marble" on a hopeful note.            

Andrzej Wajda isn't well known outside of his native Poland, despite being very highly regarded.  His work was a regular presence at the major European film festivals for decades, and four of his features nabbed Oscar nominations, most recently in 2007.  Many of his contemporaries like Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski, however, are far more popular.  I suspect that this is because the degree of difficulty that comes with watching Wajda's films is higher - they are more culturally specific, more political, more ideological, and often very lengthy.  I confess that I watched "Ashes and Diamonds" and "Kanal" a few decades ago and didn't finish the trilogy until this year.

Finally, I should acknowledge that 35mm.online featured Wajda in 2026 for his centennial, and put several of his films online for free over the summer.  Without them, this entry would not be possible.   

What I've Seen - Andrzej Wajda

A Generation (1955)

Kanał (1957)

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

Innocent Sorcerers (1960)

Everything For Sale (1969)

The Wedding (1972)

The Promised Land (1975)

Man of Marble (1977)

The Maids of Wilko (1979)

Man of Iron (1981)

Danton (1983)

Katyn (2007)

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Aang and Grogu Get New Movies

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to pair these two features together.  "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu" are both movies that are spinoffs from popular and beloved series designed for younger viewers.  They are both intended to be watchable for people who haven't seen their respective shows, so they both feel a little detached from anything else in their franchises.  However, getting the feature treatment means that the creators get to do things that they never could in a television or web series format.

Let's start with "Aang," which follows up the three-season "Avatar: the Last Airbender" Nickelodeon series.  A now adult Aang (Eric Nam) unexpectedly comes across another member of his nearly extinct clan named Tagah (Dave Bautista), who sends him on a quest to retrieve a magical relic.  This means reuniting with his friends Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Roman Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Zuko (Steven Yuen) for the adventure.  The voice cast is entirely new, and so is most of the crew, though one of the animation outfits involved, Studio Mir, previously worked on "Avatar" sequel series, "The Legend of Korra."  The series creators have story credits, but otherwise "Aang" feels a lot like the baton has been passed to an entirely different creative team.  The movie they've made looks absolutely fantastic, especially the epic scale action sequences with much more fluid and impressive animation.

However, as someone who has seen a lot of this series, because I have multiple younger relatives currently obsessed with it, "Aang" comes off as a little bland.  There are a couple of good character moments, and I have no complaints about any of the voice cast, but it's difficult to connect these versions of the characters with the ones from the show.  By making this a stand-alone adventure, the movie takes place well outside of the original narrative and sidesteps any potentially difficult questions about dangling plot threads and what's happened since the series finale.  Everyone is feeling a little adrift.  If this is the first time they've been together in a while, shouldn't they all be catching up?  Maybe resolving a few cliffhangers? And where is the rest of Aang's friend group?  Notably, all the secondary characters, including love interests, evil sisters, and beloved uncles are completely missing and never remarked on.  

The new Tagah storyline is also exactly the kind of throwaway, one-off plot that makes for a lot of great spectacle, but offers little in the way of expanding the "Avatar" universe, or offering any compelling stakes.  Aang learns an important lesson, but it's a lesson that we've seen him learn before, and there's none of the character growth and interesting worldbuilding that the franchise is known for.  Adult Aang seems nice, but he doesn't get much of a chance to display much personality.  Neither do any of the other heroes, except in the broadest terms - Sokka's still dropping one-liners, of course.  The "Aang" movie is lovely, and might be a good starting point for another series, but I didn't get much out of it.

 On to "The Mandalorian and Grogu," which I was happy to discover is firmly a "Star Wars" children's film.  Well, it's for children who are okay watching the hero constantly fighting sci-fi monsters and shooting enemies for over two hours, but still.  This is a creature feature full of aliens and robots and travelling around in cool spaceships to a bunch of different planets.  It's also got an incredibly simple plot.  The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, with doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder) and his adopted son, the green toddler Grogu, hunt down baddies for the New Republic, represented by a nice administrator played by Sigourney Weaver.  There are some complications involving hidden villains, double crosses, and Jabba the Hutt's angsty son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White), but for the most part we're just watching this duo travel the galaxy, getting into and out of trouble wherever they go.

This could be a short arc from the "Mandalorian " television show, since there is absolutely no change to the status quo or any character progression, except for Grogu being slightly better at controlling the Force.  Like "Aang," you could absolutely watch this without having seen the series at all.  However, amusingly, the movie does assume you've watched "Return of the Jedi" and know who Jabba the Hutt is.  Classic movie fans will also notice the influence of the "Lone Wolf and Cub" samurai adventure series is more pronounced than ever.  Director Jon Favreau and his collaborators seem to have decided to use this as an opportunity to do some of the more expensive characters that they couldn't justify appearing previously, like the Hutts, and experiment with the format a little.  Ludwig Gorransson's soundtrack gets the space to expand a bit, with the theme music getting a new electronica remix.  There are also noticeably a lot of puppets and practical effects being used here, especially little Grogu getting the spotlight for some major sequences.

And it's all very charming and very much in the vein of the "Star Wars" that I grew up with, but the film has been ignored by most audiences because it's definitely not the kind of "Star Wars" movie people have come to expect.  Between the lackluster marketing and the reluctance to deviate from the existing formula of the show at all, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" feels too much like an extension of the series that everyone can watch at home.  There are no ties to the rest of the "Star Wars" universe, but also no attempt to deepen the characters, or give them any new challenges. And aside from Sigourney Weaver and Martin Scorsese lending his voice to a new minor alien character, there aren't even any big names dropping in for cameos.  "Aang" has a more star-studded cast list than this!

I'm not worried about the state of the franchise, because the budget here was fairly modest and "Stafighter" is coming next year, but I still feel compelled to defend "The Mandalorian and Grogu." It's very slight, but perfectly fine for what it is, and I enjoyed it.  I expect that it'll work especially well for younger viewers looking for an entry point for "Star Wars." The youngest kids, who might be scared by little Grogu being menaced by scary aliens, and loud blaster fire, however, should stay home.

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Getting Through "Disclosure Day"

Spoilers ahead, but the big ones will be clearly marked.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is my favorite Steven Spielberg movie, and one of my favorite movies period.  When I learned that Spielberg was making a new movie about aliens and conspiracies, I was excited but also full of trepidation.  I haven't connected to many of Spielberg's most recent films in the last few years, especially the genre efforts like "Ready Player One" and "The BFG."  Was "Disclosure Day" going to have any of the old Spielberg cinematic magic from his older classics?  Was I simply too old and jaded?  Were his filmmaking sensibilities now too nostalgia-driven and schmaltzy for me?

I'm sorry to report that "Disclosure Day" is a deeply mediocre effort for a Spielberg film, one where every issue I've ever had with Spielberg's work feels magnified.  As advertised, "Disclosure Day" is about a group of people trying to reveal the truth about alien activity on earth.  It turns out that all significant evidence and information about aliens is being suppressed by a government contractor, Wardex, led by the ruthless Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), that has grown into a malignant, unchecked entity with too much power.  One of the employees, a cybersecurity expert named Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), steals information with the intent to release it to the public.  He and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) go on the run, with help from another Wardex defector, Hugo (Colman Domingo).  Meanwhile, a Kansas City weather lady, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), mysteriously starts speaking in different languages and displaying strange powers.  She and her skeptical boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) also start being chased by Wardex operatives.

Written by David Koepp, who has often collaborated with Steven Soderberg in recent years, "Disclosure Day" feels like a film of a much older, less cynical era.  There are earnest declarations of wild concepts ("sometimes they take the forms of animals"), plot holes everywhere you look, and big, important questions raised without much expectation of trying to answer them.  Most of the plot boils down to getting characters from point A to point B, juggling Macguffins, and getting into improbable action set pieces.  And some of those action set pieces are very good, like one involving a car getting dragged alongside a train.  An extremely effective suspense sequence in the first act involves Scanlon using a mysterious device to eerily interrogate and control Jane from a distance.  Spielberg has always been good about creating images we haven't seen before and I loved some of the individual shots here - soldiers crashing through an invisible window, or a throng of camera lights through a windowpane looking like a starfield.

However, the storytelling is often very heavy-handed, with every emotional beat underlined by a far too noticeable John Williams score that is not doing the movie any favors.  The main characters were so credulous in such a mannered way that it kept taking me out of the picture.  Every time Emily Blunt did a Jedi mind trick, I wanted to roll my eyes - not at her, but at the overly reverent presentation of it.  I sat through two hours of "Disclosure Day" knowing how every single scene would play out, admiring the committed work of all the actors and crew involved, but being completely emotionally unengaged with anything onscreen.  I was ready to throw in the towel and write this off as a handsome, well-intentioned disappointment.

And then the last fifteen minutes of the movie happened, and suddenly everything worked.  Here I will spoil the ending, because I can't talk about it unless I do.  The news broadcast production control room sequence, where we watch the footage being sent nationwide, is absolutely extraordinary.  Suddenly we're in a room full of strangers, reacting to this stream of images that everyone is seeing for the first time together.  The mood shifts.  An NBC news presenter played by Courtney Grace offers live commentary, her stunned and emotional reactions accompanying the montage of audience reactions we watch unfold.  And I realized Spielberg had orchestrated a beautiful moment of shared global viewership and unity that I hadn't felt in decades.  I knew it was fictional, but it hit me so hard.

Yes, there's a lot about the movie that doesn't make logical sense.  And it's unapologetically hokey and bright-eyed, and don't think that I didn't notice the cutesy "Snow White" references paralleling the "Pinocchio" ones from "Close Encounters."  But I had a Spielberg moment with this film, a real taste of cinematic wonder for the first time in I don't know how long.  And my head says the movie fundamentally doesn't work and is a terrible slog, and my heart says that the last fifteen minutes was still worth it.

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"Minions & Monsters" and "Backrooms"

I guess we're grouping the movies by color today.

I've had a contentious relationship with Illumination Studios' "Despicable Me" series.  Being frequently in the orbit of young children, I've watched nearly all of them over the years.  My tolerance of Gru has waned with time, but I always had a soft spot for the wacky little yellow minion guys, all voiced by Pierre Coffin speaking their own peculiar dialect made up of about 20% Spanish, 10% English, 10% Japanese, and 60% drunken karaoke vocalizations when you can't remember the words.  They're proper cartoon characters, who do all the physical gags and wild takes that are too often missing in the modern cartoon milieu.  And it kinda makes sense to let them pay homage to the origins of screen comedy.

In "Minions & Monsters," which has received the franchise's highest critical scores in a long time, they've spun off a group of new minions for a totally separate adventure set in the 1920s.  Among them are an artsy little storyteller who doesn't quite fit in named James, his best pal Henry, and their ASL-using friend Ed.  After multiple failed attempts to find a "big boss" who they can serve, this bunch lands in Hollywood during the silent film era.  After a few brushes with fame and fortune, James comes up with the idea to make his own monster movie, and to summon up some real monsters to star in it.  Hijinks with an all-star cast including Trey Parker, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, and Jeff Bridges ensue.

Much has been made of all the classic film references that have been included in the "Minions & Monsters," from an opening sequence that sticks the Minions into early Edison and Muybridge film images, to a rollicking chase scene that manages to involve Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Lloyd, to Gort the alien robot from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" playing a major part in the third act.  As a film, however, it doesn't cohere together all that well.  The story is constantly switching gears from one thing to the next, and we're forever getting bogged down with digressions.  It takes too long for the actual story to kick into gear, and while the minions are great for individual gag and action sequences, the movie suffers for not having stronger protagonists.  "Minions & Monsters" is very watchable, but it's still very much a glossy entertainment aimed at small children, and it's best to go in with modest expectations.

On to "Backrooms," based on the web series of the same name created by Kane Parsons, and the famous internet creepypasta images that inspired a shared universe of dingy yellow liminal horror.  So, one day in the 1990s, a troubled furniture store owner named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers we can walk through a wall in the basement and enter a seemingly never-ending series of interconnected rooms where the rules of reality seem to have gone haywire.   For me, the appeal of "Backrooms" is all about the unsettling vibe of wrongness that comes about when spotting an imperfect copy or a missed glitch.   The best part of the film is the early scenes of exploration, where Clark makes his way through rooms with increasingly deranged architecture, containing collections of disturbing objects.  There are a lot of jump scares as some of the rooms' secrets are revealed, and the movie reportedly plays much better with an audience.

"Backrooms" reminds me of "Annihilation," despite bearing absolutely no resemblance to that film stylistically.  It's another one of these stories about exploring a strange forbidden zone, where some unknown force is making copies of places, objects, and eventually living things without really understanding anything about their function or purpose.  It would be a nice metaphor for anti-AI anxiety if "The Backrooms" were more ambitious.  However, director Kane Parsons is content to just unleash some scary monsters and have a few characters go insane.  The plot is secondary to the vibes, which works, but it's disappointing that actors like Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, who plays therapist Dr. Kline, aren't given much to do beyond the usual funhouse scare sequences and a few bits of shallow psychoanalysis.  The imagery is memorable, though, and there are plenty of nightmarish concepts that might keep you up at night.

The moody vibe of "Backrooms" is enough to sustain this film, but if we travel back to this universe again in the inevitable sequels, Parsons is going to need more help to keep his audience's attention.

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On "Obsession"

Half an hour into "Obsession," I was not impressed.  I'd spent what felt like an interminable amount of time watching the lead, a mopey twenty-something named Bear (Michael Johsnton) pine after his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarette).  The two of them work retail jobs at a music store with their friends, including the boorish Ian (Cooper Tomlinson), and artsy Sarah (Megan Lawless).  Bear has been in love with Nikki for years, but can't bring himself to actually tell her he has feelings for her, even when she asks him outright if he's interested.  I didn't find Bear sympathetic or interesting.  Fortunately, "Obsession" is a horror movie and not a romantic comedy or coming-of-age story, so this was not a problem.

How "Obsession" became a word-of-mouth driven box-office breakout has been the subject of much interest.  Writer and director Curry Barker is having a real Cinderella moment, having made a horror film for less than a million dollars that went on to outgross major studio summer tentpoles.  And after seeing the film, I understand why.  "Obsession" offers a very good time.  It's a horror film that has genuinely surprising shocks, a good amount of nervy suspense, and some deadpan comedy too.  It's similar to last year's "Weapons" in that some of its most horrific moments are also wonderfully funny and absurd.  It uses a simple fantasy premise - Bear makes a wish on a novelty item called a "One Wish Willow" to have Nikki love him "more than anyone else in the world" - and takes it to twisted extremes.  

The movie really kicks into gear when Nikki becomes the post-wish "Freaky Nikki," the utterly obsessed and increasingly deranged version of Nikki who will do anything to be Bear's perfect girlfriend, but maybe doesn't have a good grasp on being a functional human being any longer.  Inde Navarette's performance is absolutely bugnuts insane in the best way possible.  She's a nice, normal girl one minute, then a creepily fixated freak trying to pretend that she's normal.  Whenever the mask slips, it's always a surprise as to how she's going to lash out next.  Will she start screaming in the middle of a restaurant?  Will she start telling you about her disturbing Hansel and Gretel incest fanfiction?  Will she just pull a comedic frown-y face at Bear in a way that defies description?  Freaky Nikki is a fabulous addition to the modern female monster pantheon, right up there with Monstro Elisasue and Aunt Gladys.

The unappealing intro is actually doing a lot to set the audience up to expect a certain kind of story with certain types of characters that are all going to be subverted.  We all know how this unrequited romance plot with the dorky guy and the hot girl is supposed to go, right?  "Obsession" feels very Gen Z in a good way.  There's casual drug use, mumbled line delivery, and Bear is a version of the increasingly common trope of the toxic "nice guy."  Thematically, the story touches on a range of relationship and mental health issues, and has sparked some interesting discussions online about Bear's degree of culpability for what happens.  Aside from Navarette, the performances aren't great, which actually adds to the verisimilitude of this film.  It's easier to accept that this insanity is happening to a regular group of people, all flawed and familiar in believable ways.        

Barker also does a great job stretching a limited budget, orchestrating some excellent creepy shots of Nikki with a few basic lighting tricks.  His editing choices and the sound design play a big role in the effectiveness of some of the reveals.  There are relatively few traditional jumpscares, but several shots that are more disturbing and uncomfortable the longer you look at them.  I don't know why the image of Nikki holding a bouquet of flowers over her face like a Matisse painting is so striking, but I couldn't look away from the screen.  And this is before anything really violent happens - a lot of very violent things do happen, by the way.  I worry that I've made this film sound lighter and more frivolous than it is, because the horror is absolutely dark, nightmare-inducing horror, and sensitive souls should approach with care.

For those of you who regularly enjoy such depravities, do seek this one out.  It's a keeper.

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"I Love Boosters" and "The Devil Wears Prada 2"

It can be exhausting to watch Boots Riley's output, and "I Love Boosters" left me feeling like I'd run a marathon.  It is two hours of big ideas, frantic exposition, eye-popping art design, political activism, over-the-top performances, and the most outrageous fashion choices that you've ever seen.  This time the heroes are a trio of shoplifting "boosters," the Velvet Gang.  Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naoimie Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige), snatch clothes from boutiques like Metro Designers, run by the unscrupulous Christie Smith (Demi Moore), and sell them at affordable prices.  "I Love Boosters" has a lot on its mind, using the fashion industry as a jumping off point to offer commentary on unsafe working conditions overseas, capitalist abuses of retail workers, the commodification of art, dialectical materialism, and what to do if your latest romantic partner turns out to be a demon who sucks people's souls out of their vaginas.  Eiza Gonzalez, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, and Don Cheadle are also part of the ensemble.

Riley has gone all in on the visual gags and lavish productions design previously seen in "Sorry to Bother You" and "I'm a Virgo."  Why not have all the Metro Design stores each feature a specific distinct color, which changes from season to season, forcing everyone who works there to wear all lime green in one scene, and canary yellow the next?  Why not have Christie Smith live in a tilted skyscraper where everything has to awkwardly exist in a space with a steep incline?  Why not have the girls meet a newcomer named Jianhu (Poppy Liu), who has a stolen machine that not only acts as a teleporter, but can also deconstruct, or accelerate matter on a conceptual level?  At one point one of the characters is accidentally deconstructed, which replaces them with their parents having graphic sexual relations in the same spot.  There is so much going on that it can be difficult to keep track of it all.  The ambition is wonderful to see, and I admire that Boots Riley makes every movie like he's sure nobody will ever let him make another movie again.  However, the chaos wore on me the longer the movie went on.  Riley's work is well meaning, but not all that deep, and he favors flash and dazzle over coherence.  As good as the cast is, they couldn't get me to care about any of these characters.  And viva la revolución, but the message is rendered in such cartoonish terms that it feels like activism via coloring book.   

"The Devil Wears Prada 2" is also criticizing an industry, but it's journalism rather than fashion.  This movie is a whole lot less ambitious than "I Love Boosters," despite all the expensive lifestyle eye candy, and a lot more cynical.  Twenty years after the first movie, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is an award-winning reporter who finds herself out of a job after her whole newsroom is fired via text message.  Fortunately, a scandal over at Runway magazine means that they need a new features editor.  Andy is brought in to help the floundering fashion publication, and butt heads with her old boss Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) again.  Her right hand man Nigel (Stanley Tucci) is still at Runway, but former assistant Emily (Emily Blunt) is now working at Dior, and there are new characters played by Simone Ashley, Helen J. Shen, and B.J. Novak to contend with.  

Along with the main cast, the most important returning contributors are director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who give the sequel a real sense of continuity with the original, and even some real stakes.  I was pleasantly surprised at how even-handed the film is, taking a realistic view of the fortunes of a once iconic  fashion magazine like Runway as it struggles to survive in the 2020s.  Andy is once again in the role of overeager newbie, trying to be an optimistic team player while everyone around her is scheming and making backroom deals in order to stay afloat.  And once again, she has to buckle down and work smarter to stay ahead of the competition.  "Prada 2" has all the celebrity cameos, product placement, and callbacks that most sequels of this kind do, but I appreciate that there's some substance to go with it.  Meryl Streep's performance as Miranda Priestley has evolved wonderfully.  She can still tear someone to pieces with a few dismissive words, but she also allows herself to be a little softer and more vulnerable as she contemplates the inevitable end of her career.  

 

I think the only major issue I had was that some of the humor is too broad.  Justin Theroux plays an eccentric billionaire who is dating Emily, and could be a possible savior of the magazine.  His performance is bizarre, and frankly took me out of the movie more than once.  Patrick Brammall and Kenneth Branagh are also on hand to play disposable love interests in disposable romantic subplots that didn't work for me at all, but at least they didn't eat up much screen time.  I highly doubt anyone was here for the romance anyway.

There's an unfortunate sense that this movie didn't really need to exist, but most of these nostalgic reunion-special type sequels are in the same boat, and "The Devil Wears Prada 2" succeeds better than most at convincing us that it's worth a watch anyway.  The pleasures are modest, but substantive enough that you can understand why everyone said yes to coming back.

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2026 Summer Movie Wrap Up

Here's the domestic box office rankings for this summer:

1. Spider-man: Brand New Day

2. The Odyssey

3. Toy Story 5

4. Obsession

5.  The Devil Wears Prada 2

6. Backrooms

7. Minions & Monsters

8. The Mandalorian and Grogu

9. Moana

10. Disclosure Day 

Here's what I predicted back in April:

1. Spider-man: Brand New Day (10 pts)

2. Moana (1 pt)

3. The Odyssey (7 pts)

4. Minions and Monsters (3 pts)

5. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (10 pts)

6. Toy Story 5 (3 pts)

7. The Mandalorian and Grogu (7 pts)

8. Backrooms (5 pts)

9. Disclosure Day (7 pts)

10. Supergirl

Wild Cards: Masters of the Universe, Scary Movie 6, Mortal Kombat II

53 points!  I don't think I've ever done this well before.  Only one of my predicted titles wasn't somewhere on the final list, and several of my iffier guesses came much closer than I would have thought, like "Disclosure Day," "The Mandalorian and Grogu," and "The Devil Wears Prada 2."  For the record, "Supergirl" ended up being 13th after "Scary Movie" and "Mortal Kombat II."  However, probably my best move was correctly pegging "Backrooms" as one of the big horror titles this year.  I regret not paying more heed to the pre-season rumbles about "Obsession" being a possible breakout, but I don't think anybody predicted the heights it would reach.  

Looking at the bigger picture, it was a very good summer at the movies.  Lots of good movies did well, while the more mediocre programmers, like the live action "Moana" and the "Mandalorian" movies, underperformed significantly.  Several titles I didn't expect much from, like the new "Spider-man," "Toy Story," and "Minions" movies were much better than I expected.  Even "The Devil Wears Prada" sequel was actually trying to be about something.  It was a great surprise to see "Obsession" and "Backrooms" climb the charts, signalling a new generation of filmmakers coming in, and proving that movie theaters are not dead.  Sure, inflation is a big reason why the box office numbers were up, but lots of smaller films like "The Invite," "Hadestown: The Musical," and even "Coyote v. ACME" did well.  And while "Obsession" and "Backrooms" got so much coverage for being the work of internet creators, we also shouldn't overlook the finale of webseries "The Amazing Digital Circus" racking up over $36 million worldwide over its very limited run.  The theatrical experience lives on, and this means that there will be many summer movie seasons to come. 

Five decades after "Jaws," it feels like Steven Spielberg is finally reaching the end of his cultural relevancy.  I appreciate the big swing that "Disclosure Day" was, but I'm not surprised that it didn't connect with audiences.  "Supergirl" was a strange beast, a movie that seemed deliberately pitched at the sensibilities of twenty-something men, and wound up alienating the younger superhero audiences that James Gunn's "Superman" managed to win over last year.  "The Mandalorian" and "Minions & Monsters" both took some risks that were not rewarded, sadly, though I expect that their respective franchises will be okay in the long run.  "Star Wars: Starfighter" is one of the big titles being readied for the summer of 2027.  And though the live action "Moana"dramatically flopped, a live action "Rapunzel" is on its way in 2028.

"The Odyssey" is easily my favorite film of the summer, which came with a significant amount of culture war controversy from multiple fronts.  I guess this is to be expected in the age of the outrage-loving social media algorithms, but it was also telling that the movie's box office performance seemed entirely divorced from the online vitriol.  "Obsession" and "Backrooms," on the other hand, seemed driven primarily by younger, very online audiences who finally had movies that aimed directly at their cohort.  And though the superhero genre is definitely seeing an ebb, "Spider-man" movies always make money, and "Brand New Day" was no exception.  Though there are currently no plans for future installments, I expect that Tom Holland will be swinging back to our screens soon enough, regardless of whether the rest of the MCU remains viable.

 

Finally, I was happy to be proven wrong about the "Toy Story" franchise still being able to generate so much interest.  I feel like I've slipped out of the target audience for this series over the past few years, but it's nice to know it's still having an impact, and PIXAR is still handling it so well.

Next year, Bluey, Shrek, and Superman will be in the mix.  Until then, happy watching!

   

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My Favorite Oscar Micheaux Film

There are directors I write about because I admire their talent, and there are directors I write about because I want to examine their impact on film history.  In that second group, there are a lot of the early film pioneers that I've been trying to figure out how to best feature, and today I'm going to try and check a big one off the list.  

Oscar Micheaux is arguably the most important black filmmaker of the twentieth century, the first major African-American director with real artistic freedom.  He formed his own production company based in Nebraska in the silent era, and produced dozens of films with black casts, featuring the talents of many of black filmmakers behind the scenes.  Though Micheaux successfully transitioned from silent to sound films, it's his silents that have best stood the test of time.  Of the few surviving ones that are still in circulation today, I find "Body and Soul" the most watchable, a melodrama about a mother and daughter pair who are deceived by a phony reverend.  The reverend and his twin brother are both played by Paul Robeson in his first screen appearance.  

To modern eyes the story and performances are unremarkable at first glance, and the filmmaking falls short of the technical sophistication of Hollywood features.  However, if you're familiar with silent films, Micheaux's work is a stark departure from the kinds of features that were being made at the time about African-Americans.  They totally eschew the grotesque stereotyping of the black characters that was popular in the era, and the performances have a dignity and poignancy to them that white directors' attempts to portray African-Americans too often lacked.  Even Robeson's monstrous convict in disguise evokes sympathy as well as scorn when he meets his tragic downfall.  One of Micheaux's major goals in creating these films was to help uplift black audiences, as well as entertain them.  He used plenty of the tropes common in Hollywood films at the time - biracial coded characters were always having miraculous last-minute revelations about their parentage - but to his own ends.  He was also determined to show black life as it really was, reflecting his own experiences.        

Many of Micheaux's plots center around the plight of unfortunate women in some fashion, who fall victim to a terrible crime or injustice, or occasionally choose the wrong path in life and have to face the consequences.  "Body and Soul" stands out for centering the mother and daughter relationship, with the ignorant but loving mother, played by Mercedes Gilbert, unwittingly orchestrating her own unhappiness by pushing her daughter to marry the false reverend instead of the man she truly loves.  Neither woman is idealized, which grounds them wonderfully.  The daughter, played by Micheaux's sister-in-law Julia Theresa Russell, is mousy and awkward.  Her mother is rough and overbearing -  at one point the daughter timidly chides her for using a racial slur.  All the performances in the film are very exaggerated and theatrical, which was typical of silent films, but they also feel unusually modern.  These women wouldn't be too out of place in a Tyler Perry movie made today.  

Because of the unflattering portrayal of religious elements and instances of violence and vice, "Body and Soul" encountered some controversy from both black and white audiences.  The original version of the film, now lost, was nearly twice as long as the surviving edited version.  Many of Micheaux's films were similarly challenged, as he often explored themes of crime, corruption, and racial unrest.  In his quest to show that African-Americans could be better, he also showed the darker sides of their lives.  And he was never one to shy away from confronting social injustices as he saw them.  Micheaux's best known film is an earlier silent picture, "Within Our Gates," which has often been characterized as the anti- "The Birth of a Nation" for portraying KKK members as destructive villains.

I prefer "Body and Soul," however, which is smaller scale, more focused, more intimate, and gives the three leads the space to create more emotionally complex characters.  Micheaux was obliged to give their story an unreasonable happy ending, but manages to depict a few moments of heartbreak and humanity that are right up there with the cinema greats.  

What I've Seen - Oscar Micheaux

Within Our Gates (1920)

The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920)

Body and Soul (1925)

The Exile (1931)

Ten Minutes to Live (1932)

The Girl from Chicago (1932)

Murder in Harlem (1935)

Underworld (1937)

God's Step Children (1938)

Swing! (1938)

Lying Lips (1939)

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