The Posts I Didn't Write Today, 2024

It's been a while since I've done one of these posts, but one feels overdue.  Here are some of the posts that I planned to write and tried to write over the past few months, but they never got off the ground for a variety of reasons.  

The Emmys and The Golden Globes - I used to spend a lot of time on awards season, but the behind-the-scenes meta has become more fun to write about than the awards themselves.  I actually did watch both ceremonies, but the races were dull and I didn't feel like I had enough to do full writeups about either.  The Golden Globes are officially post HFPA, and now fighting the SAG Awards and Critics Choice Awards for attention.  More people watched the ceremony than the Emmys, but unfortunately this outing was saddled with Jo Koy's now infamously bad turn as host.  Apparently he got the gig at the last minute, but it's hard to feel bad for someone who threw his writers under the bus.    

The Emmys offered no surprises, and were so late because of the SAG and WGA strikes that several of the shows they were celebrating had aired a full eighteen months before the ceremony finally took place.  That's right, "The Bear" won all those trophies for its first season in the summer of 2022, not its second.  Still, the Emmys actually put together a very good ceremony to celebrate its 75th anniversary, staging a lot of classic TV cast reunions throughout the night.  It's always nice to see how Meathead and Gloria are doing.  Unfortunately, it was up against football, FOX didn't advertise much, and the ratings were a disappointment.  However, I hope that Anthony Anderson and his mother are invited back to host in future years.  

State of the Superhero - I usually write these yearly posts as a little preview for upcoming superhero media, but the bubble has burst and there's just not enough to fill a whole post about this.  The MCU and Warners are only offering one movie apiece, while Sony somehow has three - none of which look any good.  Hype generating events were mostly canceled last summer and fall, and slates are looking mighty empty.  I could have written about the steep turn in the fortunes of the MCU, but I ended up folding most of that into a different post about Disney's wider troubles at the box office.  Honestly, it's nice getting a break from superheroes for a while.  The MCU badly needs some course correction after their awful 2023, and the DCEU coming to a close is definitely for the best.  I've been toying with writing some sort of "Rank 'Em" or farewell post for the DCEU, but I have no desire to revisit the earlier films.     

Honestly, the best thing about the superhero surge is that a lot of smaller, more niche properties got their turn in the sun - things like "Legion," "Watchmen," "The Sandman," and  "Invincible."  And now that superheroes are on the wane, unfortunately they'll be the first to go.  I expect that I'll still have opportunities to write more superhero related posts as the drama at Warners and Disney continues to unfold.  But since I don't feel the need to make much effort keeping track of superhero media right now, the feature will go on hiatus until the situation changes.    

"Joy Ride" and "No Hard Feelings" - Finally, I made a point of watching both of the raunchy comedies from the summer of 2023 that I had been avoiding for months.  However, I couldn't bring myself to write reviews for them, even short form ones.  I still dislike raunchy comedies and I knew I couldn't give either of these movies the fair shake that they deserved.  "No Hard Feelings" was pretty enjoyable, and features Jennifer Lawrence in the kind of funny, winning role that I wish she got to play more often.  She's taken a break from Hollywood, understandably, and I hope this gets her into a better groove.

Meanwhile, I liked all four of the girls in "Joy Ride," and desperately wanted them to be in a different movie than the one they were appearing in.  My Asian solidarity has its limits, and this is it.

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Inviting in "All of Us Strangers"

There's a certain kind of "what if?" story that the film medium is uniquely suited for.  "All of Us Strangers," written and directed by Andrew Haigh, presents the audience with a particularly heartbreaking one.  What if a man could walk into his childhood home, and meet his long-deceased parents as he remembers them from when he was young?  What if he could hash out all the lingering questions and worries he's had about his life since their separation, and maybe get some closure too?  

Adam (Andrew Scott) is a lonely gay man living in London, who is at the center of this particular fantasy.    His parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) died in an accident when he was eleven, but Adam finds them completely unaged and reacting as though he was simply visiting them after a long absence.  They want to know all about what he's been up to, so over a series of visits, he tells them.  Simultaneously, Adam falls in love with a neighbor named Harry (Paul Mescal), and we watch as their relationship progresses.  However, when Adam tries to introduce Harry to his parents, everything begins to unravel.

Certain viewers will inevitably get themselves tangled up in knots trying to figure out how the rules of this universe work, which is completely beside the point.  "All of Us Strangers" operates by dream logic, and it's hinted several times that many events in the film are only happening in Adam's mind, or perhaps are the subject of a story that he's writing.  What's important is the emotional reality of the characters and how Haigh is able to capture a very specific but universal sense of regret and yearning through this metaphysical lens.  Adam gets to relive parts of his past, address old issues that were never solved, and finally process some of the trauma that he's been carrying around for decades.  He comes out to both of his parents individually, and the conversations go in some unexpected directions.  The film is very small in scope, ultimately built on the four characters having soul-baring conversations and saying all the things they never got a chance to say.  It's the purest form of wish fulfillment, and absolutely wrenching to see unfold.

Andrew Scott's performance makes the film possible, establishing its quiet, lovely sincerity from its opening frames.  There are several scenes that would come across as ridiculous if poorly handled, such as Adam regressing back to childhood in some of the later interactions with his parents, which allows him to voice old fears.  However, Scott is able to be so vulnerable and so completely present in the moment, you don't doubt for a second that we're seeing a deeply buried part of Adam's psyche resurfacing at last.  There's always a danger in these metaphysically fluid stories of the characters being  lost as the existential questions pile up.  Here, fortunately, the emotional throughline remains clear and distinct the whole way through.

I've seen "All of Us Strangers" compared to "Petit Maman" because they use similar fantasy mechanisms to allow parents and children to meet on equal footing, but that's where the similarities end.  "All of Us Strangers" is far darker, and the sex scenes and depictions of drug usage aside, it's very much about an adult's reckoning with the past.  The mood is very nocturnal, very emotionally volatile, and it's also far more confrontational and raw in its depictions of Adam's grief.  There are some elements, including the ending, that are a little gimmicky for my tastes, but they feel earned.  I think it's not too much of a spoiler to say that there's some narrative trickery going on, but there's never a sense that the film is trying to be too clever.  Instead, when the shoe finally drops, it just adds another reason for why Adam is on this journey of self-discovery in the first place.

 

I love it when films make impossible dreams literal, especially when they're stories that are as small scale and intimate as this.  So many genre films are such outsize spectacles, when the best of them are often tiny ones like "All of Us Strangers," which boils down to a few people connecting and expressing their love for each other, while they still can.  This is Andrew Haigh's third film in a row that I've absolutely adored, and he's definitely found a place on my list of favorite contemporary directors.   

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Summer Movie Wager 2024

Thanks to last year's WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, there have been a ton of delayed films, and the summer movie slate is as bare as it was during the pandemic.  Still, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to do any better at guessing which ones are going to make the most money.  Following the rules of the Summer Movie Pool, I'm predicting the top ten domestic summer box office grossers of 2024.  I am notoriously bad at this game, but I still have a lot of fun with it every year.  I enjoy the chance to play box office prognosticator, and to hype myself up for summer movie season. 

And if last year was any indication, there's plenty of room for surprises.  Anything released between May 1st and Labor Day is fair game. And here we go.

1. Despicable Me 4 - Frankly, I don't understand the appeal, but the "Despicable Me" franchise has been a very consistent moneymaker and my guess is that the latest adventures of Gru and family will attract their usual family audience.  Maybe the "gentleminions" will also make a triumphant return to theaters.  Online hype is clearly becoming a force that contributes to box office success, but it's very difficult to predict.  In any case, of all the family films competing this year, "Despicable Me" is an easy winner.  Viewers know exactly what they're getting by now, and they don't show signs of getting tired of it yet. 

2. Deadpool & Wolverine - After the genre essentially collapsed in 2023, the summer season is weirdly superhero free.  "Deadpool & Wolverine" is the only exception, the lone MCU film of the year.  Well, I'd be more inclined to characterize it as the last Fox X-men universe film, but let's not split hairs.  Hugh Jackman coming back to play Wolverine should attract some interest, and any remaining superhero goodwill will be concentrated here.  I expect that should be enough to overcome the film's reported R-rating.  In another year this would be much farther down the list, but the "Deadpool" films consistently made a certain amount of money, and no competition this year that may be enough to push it pretty high on the charts.

3. The Fall Guy - In the absence of the superheroes, I'm placing my chips on a star-led action movie about a stunt guy that is being directed by former stunt guy David Leitch.  Ryan Gosling has really made a case for himself as a leading man, but he rarely seems interested in being one.  Post-"Barbie," however, he really has a chance to cement himself as an A-lister.  It's a little strange that this is technically an extremely late reboot of a Lee Majors 1980s television show that nobody remembers anymore, but there have been wilder leaps.  I am, after all, talking about Ryan Gosling's post-"Barbie" career.  

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Everybody loves "Mad Max: Fury Road" but the trouble is that "Mad Max: Fury Road" didn't actually make that much money.  And while the whole creative team is back, including director George Miller, this is a prequel with an almost entirely different cast, led by Anya Taylor Joy and Chris Hemsworth.  Warners is putting it in the Memorial Day slot, so clearly they have some hope for it, but I think this will be a tougher sell than "Mad Max" fans realize.  Still, if this is as good as I think it's going to be, it'll get some repeat business and hopefully stick around in theaters for a while.

5. Inside Out 2 - PIXAR has had some rough years, and "Inside Out" might initially seem like an odd choice for a sequel, but the original was one of their better performers and did well with critics.  Frankly, I'm a little wary of this franchise wading into Riley's adolescence, but I trust PIXAR to handle it with all the sensitivity and creativity that they're known for.  The real question is whether audiences will turn out to see it.  "Lightyear was a bust and "Elemental" barely squeaked out a win.  My guess is "Inside Out 2" will do a little better, but not that much better.  So it goes into the middle of the pack.    

6. Twisters - The Superbowl trailer pushed this way up higher than I originally had it. Glenn Powell is surely headed for A list status after "Anyone But You," and with "The Hitman" coming up. I have no idea if Lee Isaac Chung will be able to pull off a disaster movie (good grief, what a wild follow-up to "Minari"), but watching Powell, Daisy Edgar Jones, and Anthony Ramos trading quips and running around in bad weather sounds like good, stupid summer movie fun to me.  And lest we forget, the original "Twister" was the second highest grossing film of 1996, right behind "Independence Day"!   

7. The Garfield Movie - I don't really know what to make of this one.  "The Garfield Movie" is a new animated film based on the Garfield character, helmed by animation great Mark Dindal.  I was not impressed by the trailers, but the colors are bright, baby Garfield is cute, and kids will surely be amused by all the CGI gluttony.  DNEG Animation, which made last year's "Nimona," is handling the animation, which looks perfectly fine.  But seriously, why is every major animated character being voiced by Chris Pratt now?  We couldn't find anyone with a better Bill Murray impersonation?

8. Bad Boys 4 - "Bad Boys For Life" was a surprise hit at the box office in early 2020, before the pandemic and before the Oscars slap heard around the world.  Will Smith clearly doesn't have anything better to do, so everyone's back for another round of buddy cop action shenanigans.  I don't see much else on the schedule for the black audience, so I'm betting that a "Bad Boys" installment will do well, especially since one of the directors promised something lighter and funnier than the last one.  I mean, the "Fast" audience has to watch something while that franchise is cooling its heels.  

9. Borderlands - This one is following in the footsteps of the the original "Guardians of the Galaxy," both in tone and with an early August release date. I don't know anything about the game franchise this is based on, and Eli Roth's track record is deeply troubling to me. However, the sight of Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis as badass space outlaws, blasting enemies with such gleeful abandon, is impossible for me not to root for. I'm expecting many others will have a similar reaction and give this one a try. I mean, it's got Jack Black as a robot! I gotta give it a shot!

10. IF - Here's where I'm really in uncharted territory.  Krasinski has never made this kind of film before and live action family movies have had a really mixed track record lately.  However, Ryan Reynolds is the closest thing we have to a dependable leading man and audiences have seemed more receptive to original premises lately.  It's also releasing early enough in the summer that it could rack up enough ticket sales to make it into the top ten by Labor Day.  On the other hand, a wannabe PIXAR film releasing when actual PIXAR films aren't doing well is a big risk.  

Wild Cards (for extra points if one of them does make it into the top ten)

Horizon: An American Saga

A Quiet Place: Day One

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

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"Ferrari" and "Napoleon"

Time to take stock of some recent biopics. 

I wasn't originally planning to write reviews for either of these films.  They're both pretty standard biopics, and deeply flawed in many ways.  However, Michael Mann hasn't directed a movie since 2015's "Blackhat," and "Ferrari" was better than I was expecting.  Ridley Scott continues to make the kind of epics that nobody makes anymore, and "Napoleon" is not one of the better ones.  However, it's ambitious enough to be interesting.  

First, "Ferrari."  Adam Driver plays Enzo Ferrari, the famous Italian race car manufacturer and enthusiast.  His Italian accent has not improved since "House of Gucci," and he's a couple of decades too young for the part, but eventually I got used to it.  Penelope Cruz as his wife Laura, however, is fabulous.  The film takes place in 1957, a year after the Ferraris' son has died, and while Enzo is developing a Formula One car and preparing for a race, the Mille Miglia, that he hopes will help change the Ferrari company's fortunes.  He also has to find a way to admit the uncomfortable truth to Laura that he has a longtime mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), and a young son with her, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese).  

Half of "Ferrari" is exactly what you'd expect it to be about - the race, the cars, the drivers, and all the sturm and drang of a landmark moment in sports history.  Mann does a great job of getting across how dangerous and how terrifying these races were, with cars that had no safety features to speak of, experimental vehicles, and all kinds of unforeseen hazards.  There are two major crash sequences in the film, both impressively intense and absolutely horrific.  The drivers, including Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), Peter Collins (Jack O'Connell), and Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey), have big personalities and plenty of competitive spirit.  As a racing film, "Ferrari" is perfectly satisfactory - exciting, suspenseful, and not too shabby with the historical detail.

However, I like "Ferrari" primarily for the domestic drama simultaneously playing out between Enzo and Laura.  Penelope Cruz's Laura drives so much of the action because she's not afraid to wield what power she has, and to ensure she gets what she's owed.  She doesn't actually appear much in the film, but when she does, everything else is of secondary importance.  Enzo may rail and struggle and despair over his legacy, but Laura is the one who sets out the terms of their relationship and what their path forward will be.  It's fantastic stuff, and only possible because Cruz's performance is so good.  Having very Italian characters being played by Americans with silly, exaggerated accents almost never works, but "Ferrari" gets away with it by having Cruz in the mix as the crucial lynchpin.        

Now on to "Napoleon," which has been roundly scolded by everyone who knows anything about Napoleon Bonaparte about all of the historical inaccuracies.  I know almost nothing about Napoleon Bonaparte, and moderately enjoyed the movie.  We follow the life of Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) from the start of his career during the French Revolution, through his famous conquests and reign as Emperor, and finally to Waterloo, exile, and death.  His political and military career is shown in counterpoint with his tumultuous relationship with Josephine  de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), his eventual wife and Empress.

Unlike "Ferrari," I enjoyed "Napoleon" mostly for its epic battle scenes and recreations of historical events.  The film really got across how good Napoleon was at conquering things, and how his power was tied to his facility in waging wars against anybody who dared to oppose him.  The scenes of battle as depicted by Ridley Scott are designed to look good, and I was very impressed with the scale of his ambitions.  I couldn't keep track of most of the secondary characters, though Rupert Everett shows up in the last act as the Duke of Wellington, but the whole point of the movie is that Napoleon was always the most important man in the room, and the only one worth paying attention to.  

So, I was a little perplexed that the depiction of Napoleon's private life was so chaotic.  Vanessa Kirby does fine with the material she's given, but doesn't seem to be playing the same character from scene to scene.  Josephine's attitude toward Napoleon swings wildly from seductive to fearful, from affectionate and happy in the marriage to depressed and desolate.  Napoleon remains obsessively in love with her throughout his life, but is unable to express this except in the most brutish terms.  Neither of them are faithful, ultimately.  Phoenix still seems to be in recovery from "Beau is Afraid" at times, and his Napoleon is often an awkward, loutish bully, desperately playacting at nobility.  Nothing else in the film suggests he's supposed to be a Trump stand-in, but I can't help but wonder.

So, this "Napoleon" is far from a great film, but I respect that Ridley Scott is trying things that a less confident director wouldn't.  I do feel like I've learned a lot about Napoleon Bonaparte - but unfortunately not much that's actually true.    

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"Rustin" and "The Color Purple"

My two cents on more prestige pics, incoming.  

"Rustin" is one of those films that I like the idea of more than I like the film itself.  It's a biopic of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who is best known for organizing the March on Washington in 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.  Rustin is considered a controversial figure because he was a socialist and a gay man.  However, being active since the 1940s for a number of causes, his influence on the Civil Rights movement was enormous.  The film focuses on Rustin's relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and specifically on the lead-up to the March on Washington.  

The film is designed for awards season, full of familiar faces playing important historical figures.  Chris Rock plays the head of NAACP.  CCH Pounder and Glynn Turman are in the mix as other organizers.  Aml Ameen delivers a very fine Martin Luther King Jr.  However, they're really just the backdrop for Colman Domingo's work as Bayard Rustin.  It's an instantly memorable performance, giving life to a character who feels incongruous to the way that the Civil Rights movement is usually portrayed onscreen.  Rustin is an out gay man who many of the rest of the Civil Rights leadership are uncomfortable with acknowledging.  But, of course, Rustin is unable to be anyone but himself.  He has to fight to be taken seriously, to get his ideas heard, and to do the work that he knows is possible.  I like the film best when it becomes a process story, and Rustin and his team are working out the logistics and PR for the March.  It gives Domingo the chance to really show off Rustin's gifts - his charisma, his persuasiveness, his unwavering commitment, and his ability to inspire.

All the right people are behind the camera.  Legendary theater great George C. Wolfe directs a script co-written by Dustin Lance Black and Justin Breece.  The Obamas' Higher Ground production company produced it for Netflix.  There's a new Lenny Kravitz song on the soundtrack.  However, in spite of this, "Rustin" doesn't feel like a big, important epic film, but rather something much smaller and scrappier - sort of epic-adjacent.  Though many famous figures pass through the frame, the scope of the film is limited to events that Bayard Rustin was directly involved in.  "Rustin," is about celebrating an overlooked man through all the work he did to make a historic moment possible.  And that's all it's interested in doing, which I appreciate.  

Now, on to the new film version of "The Color Purple," which I had a lot of trouble with.  I'd seen the 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, directed by Steven Spielberg, several times when I was younger, but at a point when I was probably too young for it.  It wasn't until seeing this version, adapted from the stage musical, that I finally worked out how all of the major characters were related to each other, and who was whose mistress or girlfriend or wife.  I also got a much better grasp on why there was controversy over the removal of a major LGBT relationship, and the negative depictions of so many of the black men in the story.     

I appreciate having a less whitewashed, more LGBT friendly, more nuanced version of "The Color Purple."  Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule and screenwriter Marcus Gardley certainly address all the criticisms, and have their own distinct take on the material.  The performances are very good, especially Fantasia Barrino as Celie, Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, and Danielle Brooks as Sofia.  Barrino and Brooks are both reprising their stage roles.  However, there are some fundamental problems here from the outset.  I haven't seen the stage musical of "The Color Purple," but I can tell there were a lot of songs cut, and a lot of story beats condensed.  At 141 minutes, which is shorter than the 1985 film, this version constantly feels rushed.  It feels like it's ticking off boxes, making sure all the important lines and plot points are accounted for, instead of letting the characters fully inhabit the universe and reach those moments organically.  I have no complaints about the songs or their energetic execution, but the added layer of unreality took a lot of getting used to.  

And while there were certainly improvements to some aspects of the film, I feel they could have been better.  The lesbian relationship is made more explicit, for example, but still rendered in very Hollywood terms with a fantasy dance sequence doing most of the heavy lifting.  The portrayal of Celie's oppressive husband Mister, played by Colman Domingo, is more sympathetic and complex, but the character ends up losing a lot of his impact as the chief villain.  It's also clear that the filmmakers were doing their best to avoid evoking the Spielberg version, and ended up undercutting some vital sequences.  The finale, for instance, makes the choice to have everyone in monochromatic clothing instead of the famous purple outfits, which is totally unnecessary and sacrifices a big thematic element.     

Points for effort, but the 2024 "The Color Purple" just doesn't work as a film as well as the 1985 one did, and I expect that it didn't work as a musical as well as the theatrical version.  It's fine as a showcase for some talented performers, and the discourse around it has been valuable, but I came away from the film itself with very mixed reactions.   

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"30 Rock" Year One

I decided I needed another sitcom in my life, since I was getting a little burned out on genre shows and whodunnits.  I settled on "30 Rock," which I had seen two or three episodes of during its original broadcast run, and remember enjoying.  However, back in 2006 I wasn't consuming much media, and I never really got into the habit of watching regularly.   I knew vaguely that it was based on Tina Fey's time as head writer of "SNL," and that she was essentially playing a version of herself, Liz Lemon.  Liz is in charge of the similar "The Girlie Show," or "TGS" and spends her time corralling her writing team, including Pete (Scott Adsit) and Frank (Judah Friedlander), keeping her cast out of trouble, including Jenna (Jane Krakowski) and Tracy (Tracy Morgan), and dealing with new NBC executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), her direct boss.  The rest of the time, she's trying to survive being a single New Yorker in her thirties. 

I remember liking Jack, Liz, and NBC page Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) when I first watched the show, and being a little put off by Jenna and Tracy, because they came across as selfish, self-obsessed celebrities that Liz seemed forever playing the voice of reason to.  The humor in general felt a little meaner and more cynical than what I was used to.  Now, after watching a full 21-episode season, eighteen years after these episodes aired, "30 Rock" feels positively cuddly.  Yes, Tracy and Jenna are outrageous and get themselves into all sorts of stupid situations, but they can be generous and warm, and do care about their co-workers.  Jack takes Liz under his wing and is genuinely concerned with her personal life.  Liz is also just as much of a terror as anyone else on the show, prone to letting her relationship woes run amok, and refusing to let little things go.  Everyone is absurd, everyone is out for their own interests, and everyone has to be brought to their senses regularly.  

"30 Rock" was fairly bold for its time, airing a show about working at NBC on NBC, and constantly having little meta nods about what was actually going on behind the scenes at the network.  The density of the jokes was unusual, with lots of wordplay, pop culture references, and self-referentiality.  There are "SNL" alums and other NBC talent dropping by regularly, sometimes playing themselves.  There's a running bit where Rachel Dratch keeps showing up as different minor characters, like a cat trainer and a hallucinated monster.  Tracy has to go on Conan O'Brien's late night show in one episode, and of course Conan is one of Liz's many exes.  The NBC/GE merger had recently gone through, so Jack is the "Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming." The inside baseball aspect of the show went down a lot better this time, and I suspect that it was partly due to nostalgia.  As someone who has found myself struggling to keep up with pop culture lately, it's nice to be watching a show where I get most of the references and recognize all the guest stars.  I'm dating myself, and I don't care.     

Because "30 Rock" is a network sitcom and has the resources of a major network in its prime, it can pull off some fairly ambitious episodes.  A clear highlight of the first season is the format-breaking episode "Black Tie," where Jack, Liz and Jenna attend a black tie dinner for a visiting European prince.  The prince is a grotesque pervert played by Paul Reubens.  Jack turns out to only be there to spy on his ex-wife, Bianca, played by a magnificent Isabella Rossellini.  Watching the escalating madness is a delight.  The caliber of the show's talent is consistently high, with a Nathan Lane or an Eileen Stritch showing up practically every week.  You can also spot up-and-comers in bit parts - Aubrey Plaza and Charlyne Yi both appear as NBC pages in this season.  "30 Rock" acts as a great time capsule for 2006, when network television was still a big deal, and streaming videos over the internet was still a very dicey proposition.   

  

It's nice to know that I have over a hundred more episodes of this show to watch, and from what I've read it hasn't even hit its stride yet.  

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Hashing Out "American Fiction"

I respect "American Fiction," the film debut of writer director Cord Jefferson, more than I enjoyed watching it.  It's certainly an ambitious film, but one that bit off a little more than it could chew.  On the one hand, it's a broad satire of the publishing industry, specifically the frustrations of being an African-American writer trying to get ahead in an industry when the public only seems to want a very stereotypical, very narrow kind of African-American story.  At the same time, it's a very specific story of an African-American family going through hard times, the kind that goes against the grain of so many other portrayals of African-Americans in fiction.  The two sides of the film don't always coexist very well.

Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), known as "Monk," is a gifted writer who has just been fired from his teaching job for being too challenging in the classroom, and can't seem to get anything new published.  After his mother (Leslie Uggams) is diagnosed with Alzheimers and his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) can no longer look after her, Monk has to move back to Boston to try and help out.  His brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) isn't quite out of the picture, but after recently being outed as gay and having blown up his life, he's very unstable.  After seeing the success of other authors like Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) in writing exaggerated black struggle stories, Monk writes a fake memoir called "My Pafology" as a joke, under a pseudonym, and insists that his doubtful editor Arthur (John Ortiz) shop it around.  Nobody is prepared when "My Pafology" turns into a monster hit.   

One of the reasons that I'm hesitant to embrace "American Fiction" is that I put "The 40 Year Old Version," about a black playwright confronting many of these same issues, on my  list of the best films of 2020, and I think that film did a lot better with a lot less.  I absolutely enjoyed the excellent performances by Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Tracee Ellis Ross, but those performances are in service of a film that I was never quite on the same wavelength with.  I thought that the satire was handled well, even if it was very on the nose.  I preferred the more personal stories playing out with Monk and the various members of his family.  I even got invested in his romance with a friendly neighbor, Coraline (Erika Alexander).  

However, when it comes to making one cohesive movie, the pieces don't all fit.  The scenes with the Ellison family feel sluggish next to the scenes of Monk struggling to keep up the pretense that he's a wanted felon named Stagg R. Lee.  The white editors and marketers who are so bullish about the book come off as cartoonish next to the much more grounded characters in Monk's personal circle.  I appreciate that there's plenty of nuance, and Monk's attitudes are constantly being questioned and challenged by intelligent, well-intentioned people.  Monk gets to vent and lay out his grievances, but he also has to answer for his own hubris and his own short-sightedness.  There are no easy answers and no elegant way to resolve any of the issues being raised.  

And I guess that's why the film chooses the out-of-nowhere, metatextual, fourth-wall breaking ending that it does (which oddly gives it something in common with recent Netflix animated film "Orion and the Dark.")  It doesn't feel like a cop out, but more like a very imperfect compromise ending, which left me dissatisfied.  The more emotional, personal storyline didn't feel resolved, and the satire felt like it had been undercut.  I don't know if picking one or the other would have helped, but the best thing I can say about "American Fiction" is that it's very, very close to being a much better film.  Its actually kind of infuriating how close, because Cord Jefferson has some great insights and great instincts on display.

I don't know if "American Fiction" deserved a Best Picture nomination, but of all the films about the African American experience that came out in 2023, this is one of the more original ones.  Like "Barbie," which I hold in roughly equal esteem, "American Fiction" strikes me as a very honest, earnest attempt to grapple with big issues through a different lens.  It may not have totally succeeded, but it certainly has plenty to say.  I hope the right people are paying attention.

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"The Zone of Interest" Examines Evil

If you've heard anything about Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest," it's probably that the film helps to illustrate the famous Hannah Arendt passage about "the banality of evil" she observed in the Nazis.  This is a very good place to start, but I feel that reducing the film to such a simple summation is doing it a disservice.  There's a lot more going on here, and the more I read up on the making of the film and the history of the events depicted, the more fascinating it became.  

Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) serves as the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943.  He lives just on the other side of the camp's walls, in a lovely house with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children.  We watch the Höss family live a seemingly idyllic life, but being in such close proximity to the horrors of the concentration camp inevitably affects all of them.  The camera never goes into the camp itself, but we constantly see the disturbing evidence of its activities on the edges of the frame.  More than that, we hear what's going on there with increasing frequency.   

Initially it seems like the film is making a case for how ordinary people could have ignored or excused the horrors of the Holocaust by showing us the Höss family in happy domesticity right next to Auschwitz.  The contrast between the scenes of frolicking children and the inhumanity happening just offscreen is certainly effective.  However, Rudolph Höss is far from an ordinary German citizen and we're shown many times that his wife is completely aware of what's going on.  There's a shocking casualness with which Höss entertains Nazi colleagues in his garden, and discusses building crematoriums in his parlor.  Hedwig's mother (Imogen Kogge) comes to visit, and Hedwig gives her a tour of the garden, barely even acknowledging the looming camp buildings on the other side of the wall.  Later, it's made clear that Hedwig loves her life as one of the privileged in Auschwitz, and is proud of the home she's created.  The Hösses aren't just ignoring the atrocities, but actively participating in them and making great efforts to compartmentalize them.  However, this way of life has its limits, and unintended consequences.

Jonathan Glazer's filmmaking feels like it's getting more experimental over time.  Here, his approach is very formalist, using long, lingering shots of carefully recreated environments and the characters carrying out their everyday lives.  However, the sound design works against the sense of normalcy, offering a discordant Mica Levi score and disturbing aural interjections that are harder and harder to ignore.   There are also the occasional narrative breaks.  There are a few scenes of a young Polish girl (Julia Polaczek) who sneaks out at night to leave food for the Jewish laborers.  These are shot with thermal cameras, creating sinister, seemingly inverted black and white images.  An even more severe narrative break occurs in the final act that I will not spoil, except to admire Glazer's use of truly unique Holocaust imagery.  The most striking and effective cinematic inventions, however, may be the scene transitions.  Occasionally scenes will fade to black or to screens of a specific color, while the sounds of the concentration camp come to a crescendo.  These serve as reminders of the constant, inescapable pain surrounding the Hösses, no matter what else is going on in their lives.        

There's so much careful, deliberate work that went into every part of the film, from the performances to the art direction to the sound design.  I appreciate that the slow pacing really let me examine the frames and consider the director's choices.  Everything the camera focuses on is beautiful and pristine, reflecting the warped view of the Hösses and their friends.  I've never seen a more pleasant depiction of the Nazis outside of a Leni Riefenstahl film.   Friedel and Hüller got me invested in Rudolph Höss's woes over his career prospects on a personal level, and then, of course, reminded me what the consequences of his success meant for every non-Nazi in Europe, in the most chilling way possible. 

More than any other film I've seen from 2023, there's a weight to "The Zone of Interest" that is unarguable.  The subject matter is so dark, and handled with such deftness and fearlessness, it utterly defies any conventional categorization.  I have no choice but to declare this a masterpiece, and one of the very best films I've ever seen. 

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My Favorite Ida Lupino Film

I really wish I could write this entry about one of Ida Lupino's film noirs.  They're what she was best known for, along with several socially conscious dramas about taboo subjects that she directed through her company, The Filmakers Inc.  Lupino had a remarkable career behind the camera, and racked up a lot of superlatives and firsts, simply because she was a rare independent female writer/director in the classic era - the only woman to direct a film noir in the Hollywood studio system after starring in several.   A lot of her rare clout came from having established herself as an actress first - and honestly, I like her better as an actress than a director, with memorable performances in "They Drive By Night," "Moontide," and many more.  However, once Lupino started directing, it became her passion.  

I should probably be writing this entry about "The Bigamist" or "The Hitch-hiker," Lupino's most well-known and widely praised films.  Unfortunately, she also directed a Hayley Mills comedy at the end of her career, one that I absolutely adored as a small child.  It would not be honest of me to write about any other picture than Lupino's last theatrical feature, "The Trouble With Angels."  It is completely unlike her other films - gentle and sweet without a single murder or felony.  Lupino took the job in the 60s, when she had transitioned to directing "blood and guts" television westerns and thrillers.  It's much easier to think of "The Trouble With Angels" as a Hayley Mills film than an Ida Lupino film, because it's exactly the kind of family picture Mills was known for making in that era.  For years I thought that this was one of the Hayley Mills Disney comedies, because the tone is similar to "The Parent Trap" and "That Darn Cat!"

Taking place in a Catholic boarding school, "The Trouble With Angels" is also a nun movie, a troublemaking kids movie, and a coming of age movie.  Told from the perspective of two mischievous adolescent girls and the ever-patient Mother Superior who keeps them in line, we learn all the ins and outs of life at the fictional St. Francis Academy.  The cast is almost entirely female.  And despite all the nuns in their habits, and the girls in their gray school uniforms, I think of the film as a very colorful affair - swimming pools, art classes, Christmas decorations, marching band outfits, and a brief episode with Gypsy Rose Lee as a wiggy dance instructor in bright purple.  As a kid, of course Hayley Mills as Mary Clancy, with her "scathingly brilliant" prank ideas was the coolest girl ever.  As an adult, however, I have far more appreciation for Rosalind Russell's stern, but deeply loving Mother Superior.  A big part of the film is Mary learning to view her as a role model rather than an antagonist authority figure.           

The film was based on a best-selling memoir, and the movie uses a very episodic structure, covering three years in the girls' lives, from arriving at St. Francis as fourteen year-olds to graduation day.  The transitions between one event and the next are often unclear, and there are a lot of time jumps to skip the girls' vacations and trips, so time always feels very fluid.  You don't notice that Mary and Rachel are growing up until suddenly they're on the brink of adulthood.  Likewise, I always loved how Blanche Hanalis's script slowly introduces more mature elements into the film, bit by bit, from the visit to the elderly home to the passing of one of the nuns, until Mary Clancy reaches the point where she's ready to make a very grown-up decision.  It's obvious why Rosalind Russell took the part of Mother Superior, as she's allowed to transform from a cartoon villain to a shining example of humanity by the end of the film.  And she gets to have an awful lot of fun in the process - getting pranked, outfoxing her charges, bantering with her fellow nuns, and forever soldiering on in the face of crass modernity and youthful chaos.  It's one of her best roles.     

Why did Ida Lupino direct "The Trouble With Angels"?  Maybe she needed a break from her stories of violent men and desperate women.  Maybe it was because she had a teenage daughter at the time and wanted to make something that she could watch.  Her third marriage hit the rocks roughly when the film was released, and maybe she just needed the distraction.  For whatever reason, Lupino directed almost nothing after "Angels," which was a hit.  Instead, she spent the rest of the '60s and '70s working as a character actress.  Her directing career was brief, but highly influential and her work remains a touchstone to this day.

What I've Seen - Ida Lupino

Never Fear (1949)

Outrage (1950)

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

The Bigamist (1953)

The Trouble with Angels (1966)

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"Dream Scenario" is Not Ideal

I think I expected too much from "Dream Scenario," the recent existential comedy from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli and A24.  It stars Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews, a rather ordinary, somewhat dull biology professor.  He's married to a woman named Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and has two young daughters.  One day, out of the blue, Paul discovers that he's been randomly appearing in other people's dreams, and soon becomes a celebrity.

"Dream Scenario" chronicles what happens to average, ordinary people when they go viral.  We watch as Paul and his family first enjoy the newfound attention and take advantage of it.  However, Paul's expectations of fame are unreasonable, and he quickly hits the limits of his influence.  And, of course, he goes too far trying to live up to other people's perceptions of him, and experiences the equivalent of being canceled.  I was frustrated with Paul throughout, because he makes such basic mistakes interacting with people, and is often such a blunt caricature of a narcissistic intellectual.  However, it's the fame and resulting entitlement that make Paul so insufferable, and his mistakes are the same ones we've seen play out online over and over again.

The dreams themselves are strange and surreal, and Paul has no control over his inexplicable connection to them.  This was the part of the film that I felt the most unsatisfied with, because "Dream Scenario" is thematically so much like the work of Michael Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jones in the early 2000s, but lacks the same fluency with dream imagery and experimental film language.  There are some interesting visuals, but these are very limited and not as absurd or inventive as I was hoping for.  I don't think I'm on the same wavelength as the filmmakers when it comes to the film's humor in general.  The satire is spot-on, especially when it comes to Paul's encounters with a marketing company led by a passive-aggressive, buzzword-loving exec played by Michael Cera.  Otherwise, there's a lot of cringe and a lot of awkwardness, which I found hard to sit through.  I've seen this described as a comedic horror film in a few places, which I can see, but if the horror was intentional it didn't really come across.  Ari Aster, who did this sort of thing much better in "Beau is Afraid," is listed as an executive producer.  

Cage delivers a good performance, as he dependably does, by turns highlighting Paul's banality and his ineptitude.  The filmmakers get a lot of mileage out of sticking his dumpy professor figure into incongruous surroundings.  However, Cage is so good at playing someone so boring that I'd had enough of him well before the film was done.  Even watching him getting shunned and bashed on by the fickle universe felt tiresome after five minutes because his reactions were so obvious.  I'm not sure if going full, over-the-top Nicolas Cage would have helped, but it would have made "Dream Scenario" more engaging.  Similarly, while I like the themes and ideas that the movie explores, it all feels very obvious and surface level.  It was so disheartening to find Carrie Coon in a wife role that barely gives her anything to do.  The cast is full of interesting actors like Tim Meadows, Dylan Baker, and even Amber Midthunder showing up in a bit part, but the material just doesn't live up to their talents.

"Dream Scenario" is the kind of weird, ungainly, high concept film I usually enjoy, but the execution here fell flat.  It's a shame, because we don't see these films come around too often anymore, and similar A24 efforts have bombed regularly enough that they may give up on this kind of filmmaking entirely.  It's nice to know that Nicolas Cage is still capable of screen schlubbery when necessary, but we're very far from the days of "Adaptation," and Kristoffer Borgli has a ways to go as a filmmaker.  He's on the right track, but here's hoping his next film is more ambitious and feels less like a minor retread of other, better films.  

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Catching up on "One Piece," Part II

Mild spoilers ahead.

Well, it's been another few months and I've watched another five arcs of the anime, from Punk Hazard up to the beginning of the Wano Country Arc in 2019.  I'll probably take a break here, because Wano is notoriously long, having taken four years and over 200 episodes to finally finish airing.  That's nearly twice as long as any other arc in One Piece.  But, let's get to the episodes I actually watched - Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, Zou, Whole Cake Island, and the Reverie (Levely).

I think taking a fifteen year break from "One Piece" was the smartest thing I could have done as a "One Piece" fan.  There's absolutely no way I would have had the patience to watch some of these stories week to week.  The big, 100+ episode arcs, Dressrosa and Whole Cake Island, had tons of minor characters to keep straight, endless fights, and often dragged on interminably.  I know there were issues with the anime catching up to the manga repeatedly, resulting in lots of padding and filler.  I swear I fast-forwarded through the same flashback in the Dressrosa arc a dozen times.  I occasionally wished I was watching the live action series tackling these arcs, which could have easily reduced a hundred episodes into four or five, hour-long installments.  Just dropping the tournament from Dressrosa and the wedding cake rampage from Whole Cake Island would have probably saved a dozen hours apiece.  

And yet, Dressrosa has one of the best villains in "One Piece" so far, the sadistic Donquixote Doflamingo, who has a fascinating history and a great sense of style.  It has a super satisfying Usopp subplot and made Trafalgar Law everyone's new favorite character.  Whole Cake Island is built around Sanji, who is currently the only character besides Luffy to get a second chapter to his backstory, and it's a doozy.  He and Luffy also get into a full-blown fight, the first instance of real inter-crew conflict since Luffy and Usopp butted heads in the Water 7 Arc, 500 episodes earlier.  Both arcs, and several of the earlier ones, follow the same pattern of liberating the inhabitants of an island or kingdom from an evil oppressor, but the worldbuilding is good enough that they all feel significantly different.  Punk Hazard has a dystopian sci-fi mood, Dressrosa features gladiator games and a Spanish-influenced setting, and Whole Cake Island is made up of "Alice in Wonderland" and rubber hose cartoon imagery.  Looking ahead, Wano is a whole lot of jidaigeki and samurai tropes.  I love spotting the weird little references to everything from historical pirates, to a recently introduced character modeled after Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People."       

"One Piece" still has a lot of bad habits , especially when it comes to pacing and repetitiveness.  We're essentially getting variations on the same plots and character types over and over again - tragic heroes, self-sacrificing mentors, cute kids in peril, misguided or ill-fated villains, and a couple of true bad apples.  However, the endless creativity in those variations has kept my interest.  And "One Piece" has been very good at balancing its silliness with a gigantic heart and entertaining action.  It's a universe where everyone is essentially an overgrown or overpowered kid, reflecting its young adult audience (all the romances are one-sided and played for laughs).   Yet it also touches on darker subjects - child trafficking and drug addiction in Punk Hazard, abusive families in Whole Cake Island, and so many examples of terrible leaders oppressing their populations.  As "One Piece" inches closer and closer to Luffy finding the One Piece and becoming Pirate King, it's also setting up a massive revolutionary uprising against the corrupt World Government.  The too-brief Reverie Arc is clearly its prologue.

I like the way that future storylines have been laid out.  The Wano Country Arc will pay off character arcs and plot arcs that started hundreds of chapters ago.  Key players include the samurai Kinemon and his son Momotaro, who first showed up in Punk Hazard.  We'll also see the final confrontation with Big Mom, who was the major antagonist of Whole Cake Island, and introduced way back in Fishman Island.  Despite mangaka Eiichiro Oda's claims that "One Piece" will be ending in the next few years, I'm doubtful.  He's set up enough for another decade of stories at the rate he's been going.  I, however, won't be taking a break from "One Piece" that long again.

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About That Wonka Prequel

I write this review as a fan of the 1971 "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" musical.  The Roald Dahl book was fine, but I don't have the attachment to it that I do to the film adaptation.   When the "Wonka" prequel was announced, I was cautiously optimistic, especially when I heard that Paul King was writing and directing.  The man behind the "Paddington" movies sounded like the right fit for the material, and I liked the idea of a prequel better than another remake.  For the record, I didn't enjoy the Tim Burton attempt - too garish and off putting. 

Those viewers who liked the "Willy Wonka" story for its mean streak and psychedelic imagery will probably be disappointed.  "Wonka" is a very old fashioned musical affair, with a nostalgic tone closer to "Oliver!" and "Annie" than the '71 film.  It's totally kid friendly and parent friendly, featuring a naive youngster named Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) who is newly arrived in the big city, full of dreams to open his own chocolate shop.  "Wonka" is very much a Dahl pastiche, but one that has put Willy Wonka in the role of the creative, pure-hearted young hero, who has to overcome a lot of adversity. Unlike the previous screen Wonkas, this guy may be a little offbeat, but he's also totally harmless.  There's never a sense that he could have it in him to turn naughty children into blueberries or fudge. 

 

Young Wonka quickly finds himself blocked by a sinister chocolate cartel, consisting of established chocolatiers Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Ficklegruber (Mathew Baynton), and Prodnose (Matt Lucas).  They have a chocoholic police captain (Keegan Michael Key) and the local priest (Rowan Atkinson) on their side.  Then Wonka is tricked and ensnared by the greedy Mrs. Scrubit (Olivia Colman) to work in her laundry alongside several other victims.  One of them is a girl named Noodle (Calah Lane), who becomes Wonka's first friend and ally.  She's much savvier than Wonka, and soon helps him make and sell his magical chocolates in secret.      

There's a lot about "Wonka" that shouldn't work, but somehow it does.  Chalamet isn't much of a singer and all attempts to homage Gene Wilder's performance fall flat.  Nonetheless, he's got the right wholesome energy and the right earnest delivery to sell this version of the character.  The story shamelessly relies on references to the '71 "Willy Wonka" musical for big emotional moments, including two of the familiar songs, and appearances by an Oompa Loompa named Lofty (Hugh Grant).  However, the writing is very good about setting up these elements properly, and doesn't overuse them.  Neil Hannon's songs aren't as catchy as the Bricusse and Newly ones from the original, but they're good enough.  The humor is aimed at kids and very silly, but having so many sterling British comics and actors in the supporting cast, fully committed to the silliness, leads to great results.  Olivia Colman and Paterson Joseph playing typically nasty Dahl villains is delicious.  

I've tried to play it cool here, but the truth is that I loved the movie.  Paul King's colorful, beautifully orchestrated frames show a thoughtfulness and attention to detail that sparks so much joy.  The running jokes about escaped flamingoes and lovelorn security guards would have been cut for time in another movie, but not this one.  It's hard to imagine that somebody poured this much sincere passion and creativity into a "Willy Wonka" prequel, but that's exactly what Paul King has done.  Another movie featuring Willy Wonka was going to be made one way or another, because that's how Hollywood works these days, but "Wonka" feels like the best possible take on the idea.  It's homaging Dahl but doing it's own thing, puts on a full throated musical, and is totally unafraid of being an uncynical children's fantasy movie.  I was won over by the end of the first scene.

"Wonka" will not be for everyone.  There will be viewers who find it too twee and too childish, viewers who can't stand musicals, and viewers who won't be able to put aside memories of Wilder or Depp or the original Dahl novel, and I totally understand.    However, for me it's a relief that this kind of movie is still being made, still able to connect with audiences, and still making money.  I'm not saying I want more "Wonka" movies, but if Paul King wants to make more prequels, he should go for it. 

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Truman Capote's "Feud"

I skipped the first season of Ryan Murphy's "Feud" anthology, but I was curious about the second, which is about a scandal involving Truman Capote (Tom Hollander).    Murphy managed to assemble quite the cast, including several actresses who we don't see much of anymore.  Capote is a celebrity from before my time, and I didn't know anything about his "Swans," the group of high society women that Capote was friends with.  Listing out all of their credentials would take a higher word count than I'm willing to spare, so let's just call them Babe (Naomi Watts), Slim (Diane Lane), CZ (Chloe Sevigny), Lee (Calista Flockhart), Ann (Demi Moore), and Joanne (Molly Ringwald).  Babe, Slim, and CZ are the most important, and only Babe really gets close to the same amount of narrative emphasis as Truman.    

Because despite the title, "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" is all about Truman Capote.  We move backwards and forwards in time, but the inciting incident for the feud is the 1975 publication of chapters from Truman's in-progress novel Answered Prayers in "Esquire," spilling the secrets of the Swans, and driving one to desperate acts.  Most of the eight-episode miniseries is spent charting Capote's downward spiral, from the break with the Swans to his death in 1984, Answered Prayers still unfinished.  We get to know his romantic partners like John O'Shea (Russell Tovey) and dear friends like Jack Dunphy (Joe Mantello).  We learn an awful lot about his relationship with his deceased mother (Jessica Lange), whose phantom occasionally drops by to have uncomfortable conversations with Truman.

Some of the story is told from Babe's POV, because she and Truman had the closest friendship, and she suffered a particularly tragic end.  Naomi Watts gives one of the better performances in the show, as the fragile, lovely Babe, who wavers about burying the hatchet with Truman, and seems the most hurt by his absence in her life.  None of the other women in the show are given quite enough attention to make me care about them, despite some good narrative hooks.  Ann might be a murderer.  Slim is wrathful and betrayed.  CZ maintains friendly relations.  Lee - well, Lee is so underwritten that I had to look up who she was in Wikipedia.  "Feud" isn't really interested in these women outside of their relationships with Truman, and it's a pity, considering the caliber of the talent recruited to play them.  

However, "Feud' is pretty successful at being about one the most famous gay American men of the twentieth century self-destructing under enormous pressure and scrutiny.  Tom Hollander has no trouble with Capote's accent, mannerisms, or ability to switch from charming, loquacious raconteur to petty, cruel muckraker.  We see him at his best and his worst, from the peak of his celebrity in 1966, after the publication and success of In Cold Blood, to his final days as an alcoholic and drug addict.  There are some interesting conceits here, such as a totally fictional meeting between Truman and fellow gay writer James Baldwin (Chris Chalk).  The two discuss Truman's work and relationships from a more critical angle, giving the events some historical context, and offering some explanations for his ruder behavior.  And then there's the finale, which can best be described as a collection of fantasy interludes that allow Truman to go out on his own terms.   

Ryan Murphy didn't have much to do with the production of this season.  Gus van Sant directed six of the eight episodes, and Jon Robin Baitz wrote all of them.  However, "Capote vs. the Swans" has all the usual hallmarks of Murphy's work - opulent production design, fabulous costuming, and a focus on gay narratives and women's stories.  The particular focus here is on the friendships between wealthy women and gay men, and how those relationships can go as sour as any other relationships.  While there's some of the expected lionizing of Truman Capote and his work, I respect that "Feud" gives us a pretty balanced portrait of Capote.  He was wildly talented, but also deeply troubled, and despite winning the friendship of so many influential, powerful people, managed to alienate just about everybody in the end.       

           

This probably could have been six episodes instead of eight, and I wanted more of the Swans, but the series eventually won me over.  I'm a sucker for high society scandal, literate dialogue, and impossibly well-dressed characters, and "Capote vs. the Swans" is rife with all of them.  It's not the best take on the material, but it's good enough.  Those who don't have an interest in the subject matter might find it slow or repetitive, but for the right audience, this one is a treat.      

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The Great Directors 2024 Update

In 2023 I decided to conduct an experiment, one I didn't announce beforehand because I didn't know how it was going to come off. I decided to see if I could write a whole year's worth of "Great Directors" posts limited to female and non-white directors while still sticking to the arbitrary guidelines I'd set out for this series ten years ago when I started.


To be featured, I had to have seen at least ten films from a director, or half of their output if they were dead. Unfortunately, female and non-white directors tend to get less opportunity to direct than their white male counterparts, which makes the list of eligible directors pretty short. Among the most prominent female directors, for example, Jane Campion has directed nine films, Sofia Coppola eight, Ava Duvernay seven, and Elaine May four. This has been getting better over the last decade, clearly, but not as quickly as I would like.


Still, I was able to write six of the ten entries I posted last year about female directors: Chantal Akerman, Kathryn Bigelow, Penny Marshall, Lotte Reiniger, Clair Denis, and Mira Nair. Nair is also an Indian director, so she's the first non-white female director on the list. I also wrote entries for two more black directors - Ousmane Sembene and Melvin van Peebles - plus Guillermo Del Toro and Keisuke Kinoshita. There were several others that I couldn't manage to pull off. I've seen five Lina Wertmuller films now, enough to realize that I'm never going to be able to write a "Great Directors" post about Lina Wertmuller. My problem, not hers.


Why did I want to conduct this experiment? I've been trying to be more mindful of including female and non-white directors for a while now, and haven't been doing a great job. The first female director I featured was Agnes Varda in 2017, and there's only been one other, Dorothy Arzner, with an entry before 2022. Spike Lee has been the lone black director represented until now. I decided that I had to get serious and commit more fully to the idea.


This challenge ended up being one of the most fun and rewarding things I've ever done for this blog. I found myself in corners of the cinema landscape I'd never been to before. Chantal Akerman and Osumane Sembene were the only directors I actually planned on covering when I started, because I'd been prepping for their entries for a while, and had already watched a lot of the films. Clair Denis was someone I'd tried getting into in the past, and this was an excuse to make another attempt. This time I found some of her films that I liked and could connect to. Melvin van Peebles was someone I came across just researching every black director I could find, and I barely made it work because his later films are so difficult to get ahold of. Mira Nair was a last minute replacement for Lina Wertmuller. I did a frantic marathon of all her films, which was fantastic and has made me a lifelong fan. Lotte Reinger feels like a bit of a cheat since she only made one feature, but she was one of the pioneers of animation, and had a fascinating career. I've seen a good amount of her work in short forms, and I was glad to finally be able to write about her.


And yes, the renewed attention on some of these directors due to recent Criterion releases is not an accident. Having the Chantal Akerman entry publish right after the 2022 Sight and Sound list dropped, however, was just good luck.

Moving ahead, I have no definite plans for the "Great Directors" series for the foreseeable future. I'm tracking several directors and tallying up the numbers of films I've seen for them, but there are no nagging omissions I'm keen on correcting. I finally stopped being indecisive and added William Friedkin in January. Others in the queue include Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ida Lupino, Douglas Sirk, Claude Chabrol, John Woo, Lars von Trier, and Terrence Malick. And Quentin Tarantino might release his tenth film this year and finally become eligible. You never know.


Finally, I've decided to incorporate two more previously written posts into the series:

Nobody Knows for Hirokazu Koreeda
The Grand Budapest Hotel for Wes Anderson

Happy Watching.

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The Worst 2023 Movies I Bothered to Watch

I've written before on this blog that I don't generally write "Worst of" lists because I go out of my way not to watch or pay attention to the media that ends up on "Worst of" lists.  I'm not a professional, and am not obligated to subject myself to the horrors of "The Exorcist: Believer" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3."  However, there's been some debate this year about the utility of "Worst of" lists, and I find I'm firmly on the side of those who are for their existence.  Our working critics deserve to have a release valve if nothing else, and these lists can be a fun way to criticize the wider failings of Hollywood.  

Still, I don't feel qualified to write this kind  of list because I just plain haven't seen very many of the usual suspects.  So, this attempt will be my yearly April Fools post.  It's a few months until I can finalize my "Best of" list for movies, but I'm pretty much done seeing all the mainstream releases.  I'm limiting my picks to five this time out, to avoid making this too long.  Minor spoilers ahead. 

And now, without further ado, let's get mean.  

"The Sound of Freedom" - So, remember when a serial grifter named Tim Ballard managed to make himself the subject of a biopic that portrayed him as some kind of badass, righteous crusader against child trafficking in South America?  And the film made millions through a shady pay-it-forward ticketing scheme and relentless fearmongering marketing among religious communities?  And now Ballard is being sued into oblivion for multiple claims of sexual assault and grooming?  Yeah, and the movie's terrible too.  

"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" - I'm not mad at the MCU.  I'm just very disappointed.  It was incredibly frustrating to hear that the people in charge of the film thought they'd made a crowd pleaser, and it was only when the reviews and reactions rolled in that they realized how much trouble they were in.  If you want to pick a point when the MCU really started to fall apart, it was "Quantumania" spending the whole movie enthusiastically showing us all of these things that nobody had any interest in seeing whatsoever.  It's a talking slime!  And MODOK!  And… Bill Murray?      

"Magic Mike's Last Dance" - This was a straight to streaming project that was given a theatrical release at the eleventh hour, and it shows.  I think we've found Steven Soderbergh's worst movie, friends, and it's not pretty.  Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek-Pinault are certainly easy on the eyes, but they're obliged to go through the motions of a truly tedious "putting on a show" narrative and avoid being in an actual relationship.  The other dancers are kept in the background.  Instead, we have a precocious teenager narrating the whole story for some reason, who makes no sense even being in this film.

"Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire" - So, doing the "Seven Samurai" plot in a "Star Wars" -ish science fantasy setting sounds like a lot of fun.  And it was!  When Roger Corman and Jimmy Murakami made "Battle Beyond the Stars" in 1980!  Zack Snyder's attempt is, alas, far, far worse.  Everything looks gorgeous, but the writing is abysmal. The whole thing is built on tropes borrowed from other sci-fi media.  Everyone's self-serious and glum, with only Ed Skrien showing a few signs of life as the villain.  I'm going to watch the forthcoming second installment of "Rebel Moon" purely out of spite, so I can continue to mock it with the voracity it deserves.    

"Freelance" - Has Pierre Morel gotten any better behind the camera since the last time I saw one of his movies in 2012?  No, he has not.  I don't understand how you have actors as charming as John Cena and Alison Brie in an action comedy together, and nothing about it works.  There was a lot of hate thrown at "Ghosted" this year, but "Freelance" was so much worse.  It's not funny or romantic or even exciting to watch.  How on earth do you make Brie grating and Cena boring?  And I you just know that Alice Eve and Christian Slater are hoping nobody notices that they're in this movie.  

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