I'm Happy That "Beau is Afraid"

Ari Aster is cashing in some sort of blank check for his latest film, which is a three hour art film about a deeply anxious man trying to visit his mother.  It feels very much like Aster is trying to do his own take on the Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry school of existential dread comedy, complete with constantly shifting frames of reality, a deeply damaged male protagonist, and painstakingly composed Surrealist frames that are packed with visual information.  Aster is not Kaufman, and unable to access the deeper wells of humanity and insight that make films like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so poignant.  However, he is a lot funnier and nuttier.

Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) lives in a miserable apartment in an anarchic, crime-ridden city, where every day is a battle against chaos and depravity.  He wants to go visit his wealthy mother Mona (Patti Lupone), but catastrophe after catastrophe prevents this.  We're clearly not meant to be taking any of this literally, but rather as an allegorical representation of how reality looks to Beau.  It's a dreadful existence, where monsters and maniacs lurk around every corner wearing human faces.  Every interaction with another person is rife with misunderstandings and terrible consequences.  Everyone seems to hate him or is hostile to him for no reason, and Beau's soft-spoken, mumbled attempts to explain himself just make things worse.  

I don't think that "Beau is Afraid" accomplishes everything that it sets out to do, and is way too indulgent for its own good.  However, I respect and admire its seemingly boundless ambition.  There's a long digression in the second act for a fantasy sequence, where Beau imagines himself living out another life in a stylized, animated landscape.  There are a couple of wild action sequences, the first involving Beau getting chased out of his apartment while stark naked, the second involving a kill-happy combat veteran named Jeeves (Denis Menochet) keen on annihilating him.  The ending involves a show trial sequence, which Beau attends in a rowboat.  A lot of the twists  and turns of the plot feel inane or arbitrary, but the talent involved is top notch, and deeply committed to the absurdity the whole way through.           

I'll watch Joaquin Phoenix in just about anything, but I adore him as Beau, this hapless, terrified soul who is constantly fleeing from one bad situation to the next.  He's constantly injured, always in some state of dishevelment, and perpetually uncomfortable.  Up against a world where everyone is yelling at him, disappointed with him, or sees him as a target to be obliterated, Beau is a deer forever in the headlights, too paralyzed with terror to do more than react instinctively in most situations.  He's incredibly sympathetic, because everything is against him, but at the same time there are a few little moments that suggest that we're not getting the whole truth from Beau's deeply subjective point of view.  There's an interpretation of "Beau is Afraid" that suggests that Beau is actually a malevolent, terrible human being who is seeing events in the most favorable light to himself, where he's the victim of everyone he's actually wronged.  Surrealist films are neat like that.  Watching Beau's total inability to deal with any situation is often also very, very funny.

The filmmaking is endlessly impressive, of course.  Ari Aster's oppressive visuals can turn ordinary places into horror hellscapes, and that's certainly true here.  However, the point of "Beau" is not only to frighten and disturb, but to explore many different corners of Beau's psyche, including flashbacks to a more idyllic boyhood with a younger, nicer version of his mother (Zoe Lister-Jones), and encounters with other strange people, including a seemingly kind couple played by Amy Smart and Nathan Lane.  Thus, the action moves from darkened forests to suburban homes to fantastical worlds - all lovingly designed and realized with great attention to detail.  The sound design is especially impactful, using layers of different sounds, some muffled and almost inaudible, to affect the mood and atmosphere.    

 

I don't think I would have enjoyed "Beau is Afraid" so much when I was younger, and I hadn't encountered this kind of film before.  I would have been more inclined to take Beau's terror at face value, and miss the way the jump scares frequently doubled as punchlines, and how Beau is clearly a very, very unreliable narrator.  I wouldn't have been inclined to simply enjoy the weirdness for its own sake, even if I can't shake the feeling that I've seen so much of it before.  (Is that a "Lisztomania" reference in the final act?!)  There is no reason for "Beau is Afraid" to exist, with so much nudity, with so much insanity, and did I mention it's three hours long?  But it does, and I'm glad it does.

  

---

Two Meg Ryan Movies

I watched a couple of Meg Ryan romantic comedies from the 90s this week, including two that were new to me: "French Kiss" and "Addicted to Love."  Neither are very good and neither made much of a cultural impact, but they form a fascinating time capsule of the way romantic comedies used to be, when they regularly made a nice profit at the box office, and were able to attract top drawer talent.  Meg Ryan was second only to Julia Roberts as the go-to leading lady of '90s romances, but I'd only seen three of her films that really fell into that category: "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" with Tom Hanks, and in "When Harry Met Sally…" with Billy Crystal.  And it's honestly been so long that I didn't remember much about her performances.

So it was a nice treat to be reintroduced to Meg Ryan as a movie star in her prime, who plays an uptight American neurotic in "French Kiss" named Kate (she's played a lot of Kates) against Kevin Kline's charming French rogue Anton, who seems to be doing an impression of Gerard Depardieu from "Green Card."  Ryan has wonderful comic timing and radiates charm and appeal.  In both "French Kiss" and "Addicted to Love" she and her love interest are initially hostile to each other, but warm up over time.  And in both films a major turning point is a wardrobe change for Ryan, involving a low-cut sleeveless dress that leaves her romantic partner speechless with admiration.  It's a common trope, of course, but few actresses have pulled it off quite so convincingly.  

Ryan has more to do in "French Kiss," as Kate is our major POV character throughout.  After being dumped by her fiance, she follows him to France, gets mixed up in a scheme of Kline's, and eventually the two end up together.  Lawrence Kasdan directed, from a script by Adam Brooks.  There are a lot of the usual pratfalls and physical comedy bits that modern romantic comedies rely so heavily on, but also a lot of time with Ryan and Kline simply spending time together and having pleasant conversations.  Kline's schemes with an illegally transported grape vine and a stolen necklace provide an excuse for him to have to stick close to the exasperating American, but it never feels like the point of the film.  And while Ryan is terrified of flying, is lactose intolerant, and has a lot of biases against the French, she never feels like a caricature.  Is she treading awfully close to Sally from "When Harry Met Sally…"?  Yes, but Kate is a little more prickly than Sally, which I appreciate.  

In "Addicted to Love," the directing debut of Griffin Dunne, Ryan's character is Maggie, a photographer, and I was surprised to discover she's actually a supporting character.  In all the posters, she's placed front and center.  The main character is Matthew Broderick's jilted Sam, essentially playing the role Ryan did in "French Kiss."  His fiancee dumps him for a Frenchman with a restaurant in Greenwich Village, so Sam tracks them down, takes up residence in the abandoned building across from theirs, and sets up surveillance equipment.  Maggie is the Frenchman's jilted ex, who becomes Sam's co-stalker, co-conspirator in revenge, and eventual lover.   Maggie lets Ryan play a more off-kilter character, a wild child type with thick eyeliner and a more colorful wardrobe.  However, it's still the sleeveless little white dress that knocks Sam for a loop.  

Both films have their charms, but neither are very strong.  I think it's telling that Meg Ryan really isn't at her best in either of them.  Kevin Kline acts circles around her in "French Kiss," despite the hammy accent, but then he tends to get the better material.  There are multiple scenes of him falling in love with her, but you blink and you miss the moment she falls for him.  As for "Addicted to Love," Matthew Broderick has at least as many scenes getting to know his rival, played by Tcheky Karyo, as he does with Ryan's Maggie.  She's a fun presence in the film, sort of a grungy precursor of the manic-pixie-dreamgirl, as she encourages Sam's meaner impulses, but pretty limited.  The director seems more interested in the revenge story than the budding romance, which is a shame, because Broderick and Ryan pair pretty well together.    

Meg Ryan famously became pigeonholed as a romantic comedy actress, and her career declined when her looks did.  I understand why the current generation of performers wants to avoid the same fate.  However, it's such a nice change of pace to find films like this - romantic comedies that are full of the old tropes and character types, but carried by really talented actors and filmmakers who are taking the endeavor seriously.  It takes real skill and commitment to do screen romance at this level, and it's such a shame that the whole genre's been so devalued.  We're down to a few bigger titles every year, but mostly combined with other genres.  It's almost always romantic-comedy-action films now.  And it's kinda sad. 

 There's no reason Zendaya and Anya Taylor Joy shouldn't be doing movies like these between their superhero and arthouse horror features.  And I'm very curious how "Ghosted" would have turned out if the filmmakers were brave enough to leave out the silly spy plot and all the action scenes - and just let Ana de Armas and Chris Evans getting romantic be the main event.      

      

--- 

Finishing "The Nevers"

This isn't a review of the last six episodes of "The Nevers," because after all the trouble I took to watch this show, I ended up not remotely interested in anything it was doing.  If you've seen the first half of the season, the second half is more of the same.  It's nice to have a definitive ending for these characters, but it's not a very satisfying one. I'm honestly a little relieved that "The Nevers" is over so that the talented cast can move on to better projects.  Laura Donnelly already has, having recently popped up in Marvel's "Werewolf By Night."

Instead, I want to talk about how difficult it was to watch "The Nevers," thanks to the regime change at Warners and subsequent cancellation splurge in the name of cost cutting.  The first half of "The Nevers" aired on HBO in 2021 and was made available on the HBO Max (now just Max) streaming service.  The second half was completed, but not released for nearly two years.  When the show was canceled in late 2022, and it was announced that the show would be removed from HBO Max, fans were worried that we wouldn't see the second half of the season at all.  Instead, the whole series was moved to the Fox-owned, ad-supported streamer Tubi, along with other titles like "Raised by Wolves" and "Westworld."  Problem solved, right?  

Well, the new episodes of "The Nevers" were aired mid-week in February, and have been re-aired several times on one of Tubi's linear channels, which is programmed like live television.  They weren't available on demand, and you couldn't purchase them through Itunes or other platforms, so you essentially had to watch these episodes live - if live was an option.  Some countries don't have access to Tubi's live channels.  It was several months before I was finally able to catch all the episodes. To date, they're still not available to buy or rent through any other platform.

I know I've made jokes before about streaming turning into linear television, but this is literally streaming turning into linear television.  "The Nevers" is an extremely unusual case, but it's indicative of streaming going through some serious growing pains now that the initial rush for market share is over.  Warners' decision to push several of their expensive, high profile titles to Tubi points to deep dysfunctionality in their streaming business model.  Of all the subscription based streamers, Netflix is still the only one that seems to be consistently profitable, though it's too early to tell for many of the others.

But since the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and traditional broadcast television seems to be doomed to obsolescence, we're suddenly seeing a rush to promote free, ad supported TV (FAST) streamers like Pluto, Freevee/IMDB TV and Tubi.  This is where a ton of older and more obscure media titles are ending up.  I've noticed a significant increase in the classic films I've been able to find on free services lately, including an obscure Melvin van Peebles documentary I was sure I was going to have to pay in order to view.  This might be the model that ends up making the most economic sense in the long run  - most of the other streamers including Netflix are adding ad supported tiers, and apparently Fox's CEO turned down multiple offers to buy Tubi. 

This is not a bad thing, especially if it helps our content producers stay in business.  A shift away from subscription services and toward FAST services will get more content to more people, avoiding some of the siloing problems that we've been seeing.  I expect that the flood of new content will also slow down on most services, especially the higher budget projects like "Westworld" that require heftier residual payments.  We'll also see more shows being produced with ad breaks in mind.  

Part of me is disappointed that HBO Max and other ambitious streamers are going to have to downgrade their offerings to stay in business.  Part of me figures that this was going to happen eventually, one way or another.  The hassle of trying to keep track of content coming and going on different services has been a constant, and the return of appointment television for "The Nevers" certainly beats never getting to watch those last six episodes at all.  The streaming revolution was fun while it lasted.

And the more things change, the more they stay the same.    

---

Podcasts Ahoy! 2023 Edition

Time to go back through my playlist and take stock of the entertainment-related podcasts that I've been listening to.  Below are a couple of new and new-to-me offerings that I've started following in the past eighteen-ish months since my last podcast post.

Disniyversity - This has quickly become my favorite Disney podcast, to the extent that I'm hoarding the remaining episodes that I haven't listened to.  Film journalist Ben Travis and academic Dr. Sam Summers go through the Disney animated feature canon, film by film, starting from "Snow White" and working their way toward the present day.  Each episode is nicely structured, adding plenty of context and history, highlighting individual animators, and closing out with discussions of each film's cultural legacy.  I like that the hosts are both very familiar with Disney output, but are only watching some of these films for the first time, and can offer some fresh reactions.  I like that they're both utter nerds, and have instituted a pantheon of "Disniyversity Legends" for overlooked characters that include Lady Cluck from "Robin Hood" and Bill the Lizard.  My only, very mild complaint, is that the episodes are currently only being released monthly, and I'm getting through the backlog much too quickly. 

The Kingcast - Film writers and horror fanatics Eric Vespe and Scott Wampler host a podcast devoted to all things Stephen King, but primarily the media that has been adapted from his work.  Unlike Disniversity, this podcast is not trying to be comprehensive.  Aside from a few specific installments devoted to certain topics, each guest gets to pick what they want to talk about, so many films and stories are discussed multiple times.  "The Shining" and "IT" are the most popular choices by far.  The variety of guests has been great, and includes actors, filmmakers, other writers, and even Stephen King himself in one very special interview.  My favorites to date have been the two episodes featuring German comedian Flula Borg, who is much less familiar with Stephen King than most of the other guests.  Vespe and Wampler are always enthusiastic and entertaining, and I hope that they get their "Revival" movie someday.  

The Ringer-verse - This is actually a group of different podcasts, including "The Midnight Boys," "The House of R" and "The Prestige TV Podcast."  I primarily listen to "The House of R," hosted by Johanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin because Robinson has been one of my favorite podcasters for ages, but I check in on the others occasionally, usually depending on what they're covering in specific episodes.  These are all essentially pop culture discussion shows, focusing on the current series or movie or big geek announcement of the day.  "The Midnight Boys" and "The House of R" focus on genre fare like superhero and fantasy media, while "The Prestige TV Podcast" offers takes on more highbrow shows like "Succession" and "The White Lotus."  This is sort of working for me as a "Firewall and Iceberg" substitute, though I wish the coverage were more broad.  "Ringer-verse" only looks at the biggest titles and franchises in the pop culture conversation, which is perfectly fine.  They've produced some great, in-depth, nerdy rambles that I have enjoyed thoroughly.

The Problem With Jon Stewart - Finally, I haven't been keeping up with Jon Stewart's new Apple TV+ show, but I find myself tuning in to the accompanying weekly podcast more and more often.  This one snuck in via Youtube clips, which I often mistook for segments from the show.  I prefer Stewart in this format, just talking about the news of the day with his incredibly well-informed staff, or going more in depth on subjects that are Too Big for TV.  I rarely listen to the whole show, usually skipping the interviews, but I did the same thing with "The Daily Show" back when he was host.  

---

My Top Ten Episodes of 2022-2023

I didn't watch "Succession" or "Barry" and probably won't in the future.  I keep meaning to start "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," but it didn't happen this year.  Nonetheless, I watched a lot of television - more than enough to have come up with a Top Ten episodes list for the year.  

A quick reminder before we start that I'm a big genre nerd, don't watch enough comedies, and have a neverending "To Watch" list.  I use the Emmy rules for cutoff dates, which means that this list covers everything from the summer of 2022 to the spring of 2023.   Entries are unranked, and I'm limiting myself to one episode per show or miniseries.  I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum.

And here we go: 

The Sandman, "The Sound of Her Wings" - This is not the version of this story that I had been imagining in my head for twenty years, but it's the one that was right for 2022.  I couldn't have asked for a better Death in Kirby Howell Baptiste, and my biggest complaint about the season is that she only appeared in one episode.  I like the second half, with the adaptation of "Men of Good Fortune" even better, thanks to the new tweaks to the ending, and Ferdinand Kingsley's Hob Gadling.

House of the Dragon, "The Lord of the Tides" - Paddy Considine's King Viserys only grew more compelling as he became more decrepit over time, finally making his most memorable appearance during a fight over the legitimacy of Rhaenyra's children.  It's a fantastic reminder of how fragile the peace of Westeros is, and how much Viserys cares about his family.  The episode represents the calm before the storm  - and gave a great character a memorable sendoff.

Beef, "The Great Fabricator" - The show's penultimate episode is where our protagonists finally hit bottom.  All the tensions between Danny and Amy have finally boiled over, and both characters are fully committed to destroying each other.  The situation keeps escalating and escalating, resulting in the show's most elaborate action sequences.  The whole series sometimes feels like rubbernecking a car crash, and at this point it's impossible to look away.

Andor, "One Way Out" - Jailbreak episodes are so much fun, and "Andor" has one of the best in recent memory.  The show did a great job of setting up the oppressive world of the prison, and building up the stakes over the previous episodes, so I was expecting something special.  I wasn't disappointed.  The production quality is fantastic, Andy Serkis gives one of the best performances of his career, and I completely forgot I was watching a "Star Wars" show. 

The Bear, "Review" - This one shot, incredibly tense real time episode sees a nightmare shift unfold at the Beef, where everything falls apart.  Several ongoing storylines come to a head, there's violence, there's truth telling, and several characters hit their limits.  This was the first episode of "The Bear" I saw, and it convinced me to watch the rest of the series.  And the second time I watched it, with all the context of the other episodes, was an entirely different experience. 

Documentary Now! "Trouver Frisson" - I only started watching "Documentary Now!" this past year, and found it to be one of the most delightful and most niche comedies of all time.  And who is going to appreciate the show's recent, spot-on Agnes Varda spoof if not me?  "Trouver Frisson" nails Varda's filmmaking style, her whimsical sense of humor, and her endless Gallic charms.  They even go so far as to create a parody of her Cine Tamaris production logo!  

Interview With the Vampire, "...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding" - They aged up the child vampire, Claudia, into a teenager, along with changing her race and circumstances, but to very good effect.  Bailey Bass is wonderfully unnerving as this episode introduces her - a spoiled, reckless brat who is denied maturity, pushing her to rebel in the most destructive ways she can.  So much of the story hinges on Claudia, and this new version of her couldn't be more perfect.

Rick and Morty, "Bethic Twinstinct" - Beth and Jerry's screwed up relationship is one of my favorite parts of the show, and it's been far too long since it's gotten the spotlight.  This episode throws Space Beth into the mix, who visits for Thanksgiving and ends up in a relationship with herself.  How the situation resolves with Jerry is one of the most delightfully awful things that the show has ever done, reaching a level of depravity that will have the Smith kids in therapy for decades.  

Fleishman is in Trouble, "God, What an Idiot He Was!" - I had some trouble picking an episode for this miniseries, but in the end I decided on the formally playful episode where Toby realizes that Rachel is in a relationship with someone else, as told through twelve individually labeled vignettes.  He goes through multiple coping mechanisms, fantasies, deflections, and finally unhappy acceptance of reality.  It's probably not the best episode, but the one I feel best exemplifies the show.

Better Call Saul, " Saul Gone" - Finally, my favorite series finale of the last year belonged to "Better Call Saul."  The cameos weren't the best idea, and I didn't need all the flashbacks, but Saul's final appearance in court to answer for his crimes, and the final meeting between him and Kim remain near and dear to my heart.  I'm very sorry to see this series - and this universe - come to an end.  

Honorable Mentions:

Star Trek: Picard  - Finally, it's pandering, it's repetitive, and it takes the easy way out, but it was so good to get a proper goodbye to the whole crew of the USS Enterprise D.  "Star Trek" still has the best shared universe of any of the current franchises, and this reunion was seriously overdue.  

Saturday Night Live, "Pedro Pascal" - 10/10. No notes.

---

Recalibrating for "John Wick: Chapter 4" and "Fast X"

I wasn't going to write anything about "John Wick: Chapter 4," having said more or less everything I had to say about the entire series back when "Parabellum" came out.  It's an admirable franchise that has contributed a lot to action cinema, but I don't count myself a fan.  "John Wick: Chapter 4" has plenty of good things in it, but like "Parabellum," I found it too long and too tedious.  Then "Fast X" came out, and I enjoyed it very much, despite my having no real interest in this popular action franchise either, which has never been to my tastes from the beginning.  And I guess that's somewhere to start.

Action cinema, like the "Mission: Impossible" and the James Bond movies, function by their own set of rules.  Horror movies are built around scares, comedies around laughs, and action cinema around chase and fight sequences.  You can have plot-driven action films, of course, but you can also have good action films where there's almost no plot, no dialogue, and very minimal characters.  In some of the best action films, like "Oldboy" or "Kill Bill," a good amount of the storytelling happens through the action.  This has been absolutely true of the "John Wick" and "Fast" franchises, to varying degrees.

I preferred the "John Wick" franchise to "Fast" franchise at the outset, because it offered some elements that I enjoyed in addition to the action - fun worldbuilding, wry humor, a few neat pop culture references, and a variety of interesting actors making appearances.  "John Wick: Chapter 4" offered some great action, but I felt it was pretty disappointing on every other front.  The humor was almost totally gone.  Worldbuilding elements from the previous films were simplified down to a few basics, and it felt like the scope had narrowed down again.  Donnie Yen appearing as the new blind antagonist, Caine, is great, but Keanu Reeves as John Wick just looks exhausted the whole way through the film, and ready to be done.  It doesn't help that "Chapter 4" is nearly three hours long and feels interminable.  

The biggest problem here is that after three films, we expect John Wick to be invincible, and the stakes of the story have become less and less compelling.   "Chapter 4" is designed to be a possible ending for the franchise, but it's not a climax.  It feels more like a denouement, inevitably running out of steam by the time we come to a predictable, drawn-out final showdown.  The action scenes are great, but we don't learn anything new about John Wick, his survival no longer feels particularly necessary, and Caine is actually a more interesting protagonist. I'll happily watch the spinoffs like "Ballerina" and "The Continental" that have been announced, but the story of John Wick himself feels well and truly played out. 

As for the "Fast" films, I don't think I've written a proper review for any of the "Fast and the Furious" movies on this blog.  I can't tell one from the other, never cared enough to track down the first four movies, and keep watching the new ones because they make for good palate cleansers between arthouse films.  I think they're extremely entertaining and dumb as rocks, the very definition of disposable.  And I'd watch any of the "Fast" films again before I'd watch "John Wick: Chapter 4."  I went into "Fast X" expecting a disaster after director Justin Lin walked off the production.  Instead "Fast X" is just like the previous entries: there's a minimal story with a lot of crazy action sequences, too many characters to keep straight, and even more cameos on top of that.  However, "Fast X" is perfectly coherent, moves along at a brisk clip, and is executed very well.

There are at least four different sets of characters operating separately, but all of their goals are so simple that confusion is unlikely.  Jason Momoa plays a wonderfully over-the-top and overpowered villain, who fits perfectly into this universe, and seems to be having a ball.  Brie Larson and Alan Ritchson are the newbies this time out, playing a new antagonist and a new baddie (does it matter which is which?)  I've seen enough of these films that I don't even bother asking why former villains played by John Cena and Charlize Theron are still hanging around.  What's more important is that "Fast X" offers a smorgasbord of car chases, gun fights, hand-to-hand fights, disaster sequences, and death-defying escapes.  There's a scene where a giant mine bounces around Rome like a pinball.  There's a scene where our hero, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), escapes a fireball by driving down an aqueduct.  It makes no sense, but it's undeniably a great time.    

And I have to remind myself that it's okay to like this film in spite of its total disregard of so many elements that I assume a good film is supposed to have.  It doesn't matter that there's only a very basic revenge plot holding this together.  It doesn't matter that the main McGuffin is Dom's son, Little B (Leo Perry), who is there to look cute and elicit a basic emotional response from the audience.  It doesn't matter that after five films, I still don't know the name of Ludacris's character.  And heaven help me, I'm actually starting to find him and Tyrese funny, because they're the most self-aware characters in this franchise. The action scenes aren't as technically strong as the ones in "John Wick: Chapter 4," but they're deployed with great skill and a sense of gleeful anarchy that I cannot resist.

I continue to hold the first two "John Wick" films in pretty high regard, but "Fast" has won this round over a too self-serious final "Wick" entry.  It easily could have gone the other way, (and it very well might when the inevitable rematch happens), but today the "Fast" family has come out ahead.   

---

"Reality" and "Blackberry"

I didn't know the story of Reality Winner, the NSA translator who leaked Russia's 2016 election interference to the media, until I saw this movie.  Because of the highly charged political atmosphere and the misinformation surrounding the election, the film's title seems especially pointed, while also being a lucky coincidence.  Director Tina Satter adapts her own play, which began as a piece of verbatim theater.  Every word of dialogue is taken directly from transcripts of Winner's recorded arrest and interrogation, and it's fascinating to see them play out.

Winner (Sydney Sweeney) is arrested at her home and questioned by FBI agents Garick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis) in 2017.  The process is not violent, and for nearly the first hour it's almost humdrum on its surface, as Winner makes arrangements for her pets, gets her groceries put away, and makes small talk with the eerily patient FBI agents.  They keep asking her if she knows how she may have mishandled sensitive information at her translation job, but don't start questioning her in earnest until halfway through the film.  This results in a terrific buildup in tension that is unlike any other thriller I could name.  The filmmakers strive to do right by Reality (and reality), doing their best to recreate the arrest and interrogation without sensationalizing them.  The actors do a lot of wonderful, subtle work, especially Sydney Sweeney, who maintains Winner's rock-solid composure throughout.  

"Reality" is low budget and not especially ambitious when it comes to the filmmaking, but there's one bit of screencraft that I found very effective.  Whenever the film reaches a part of the transcript that is redacted, not only do the characters become muted, but they disappear from the frame entirely, accompanied by an oppressive buzzing sound.  It's jarring and disturbing every time that it happens.  Despite offering no opinion about Reality Winner's guilt, "Reality" nonetheless does an excellent job of humanizing her through this brief encounter, and prompting the viewer to seek out the rest of her story.  That's certainly what I did, the moment the film was over.            

Now, on to "Blackberry."  If this recent wave of films about products and business deals has brought us nothing else, it's brought us a legitimately good piece of cinema in "BlackBerry," about the rise and fall of Ontario-based Research In Motion ("RIM"), the company behind the BlackBerry mobile phone.  Written and directed by Matt Johnson, and co-written by Matthew Miller, "BlackBerry" is a profile of two men - engineer Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), and executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) - who create the dominant smartphone of the early 2000s.  The first half of the film is an underdog story, where the odd couple pairing of a mumbly perfectionist and a rage-prone bully recognize each other's strengths and form a lucrative partnership.  The second half shows how that same partnership, facing subsequent crises, comes to disaster. 

"BlackBerry" absolutely takes its cues from "The Social Network," but rather than just charting the dawn of the digital age, it presents a whole history of the Silicon Valley startup era in miniature.  Lazaridis and his partner Doug Fregin (Johnson) initially lead a group of brilliant, but stereotypically nerdy engineers, who have the knowhow to create the BlackBerry, but not the business acumen to sell it.  A bad pitch puts them in contact with Balsillie, who recognizes the potential of the device, and tries to buy the company outright.  He settles for being co-CEO with Lazaridis, after contributing a major investment, and proceeds to transform RIM into a corporate giant, with a far more aggressive, institutional culture to match.   

I know Howerton and Baruchel primarily as comedic actors, but they're both very strong here in dramatic roles - or roles that are so darkly satirical that  it's hard to tell the difference.  Howerton exudes intensity and self-loathing in a way that's hard to look away from.  In the last act he's primarily concerned with a deal to purchase a hockey team, a deal that has nothing to do with the Blackberry, but everything to do with Balsille's downfall.  Baruchel is saddled with a crummy wig, but his Laziridis never feels like a caricature.  There's something bitterly sad about him choosing the money over his principles, and realizing the true cost of his ambitions.  

The production is very Canadian, very nerd-literate, and very nostalgic - but only up to a point.  Where "Air" reveled in its '80s milieu, Matt Johnson keeps the classic media clip montage contained to the opening titles, and all the subsequent references are either narratively or thematically relevant - sometimes in surprising ways.  The whole film was a pleasant surprise, and at the time of writing might be my favorite film of 2023 so far.

---