Search Results
882 items found for ""
- Jeremy's Top 10 of 2024
Movies!! This is my ninth year writing a year-end listicle for my dear friends at Story Screen, and I am incredibly grateful that they continue to host my rambling opinions and conjectures on the past 12 months of contemporary cinema on their website, as I am grateful to call them my friends. They are an invaluable asset to film culture in the Hudson Valley and are just great people and I wish them nothing but success for their new theater. The American film and television industry has suffered a great deal of turmoil in the last year. Still recovering from two long and arduous strikes, many studios are now opting to greenlight fewer projects, move them overseas, or cut budgets significantly, leaving thousands of veteran film crews all over the country out of work, as well as the Los Angeles fires leaving crews out of their homes. I hope the industry can recover to a better state than it was left in, and that we can continue together to make films as innovative, original, exciting, and as introspective as the films I am about to list below. As is tradition, I would like to shout out honorable mentions of great films I would easily recommend that did not quite make it to my final 10. Consider these 25-11 if i were to make a more expansive list. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) The Last Stop in Yuma County (Francis Gallupi) Hit Man (Richard Linklater) Smile 2 (Parker Finn) Strange Darling (J.T. Mollner) Late Night with the Devil ( Colin and Cameron Cairnes) In a Violent Nature (Chris Nash) Kill (Nikhil Nagash Bhat) Snack Shack (Adam Carter Rehmeier) Trap (M. Night Shyamalan) Longlegs (Osgood Perkins) A Real Pain (Jessie Eisenberg) Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood) Nosferatu (Robert Eggers) Rap World (Connor O’Malley & Danny Scharar) Here are my final ten! I did not get to see everything I wanted to before I could make this list. As much as it feels like time is standing still when you’re watching a great movie, in reality that is, unfortunately, not the case. This list is spoiler free. 10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller) Nearly ten years after he finished his twenty year long production Mad Max Fury Road , George Miller follows up his masterpiece of metal and mayhem with a film that feels so strongly connected to its world and its characters, both on its own and in conversation with Fury Road , that the two films feel inseparable as one grand story of loss, revenge, and gasoline. While a bit more measuredly paced and introspective, Furiosa still delivers the goods when it counts. I felt like I was levitating out of my seat when those bikers activated their parasails. 9. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg) Like if Charlie Kaufman remade Vertigo , Aaron Schimberg’s tragic meta narrative of identity crisis and the line between truth and myth-making in art tells a wonderfully unique story, full of hilarious and eerie surprises, with the trio of Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson weaving together one of my favorite screenplays of the year. 8. Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve) Everything Dune: Part One set up is beautifully paid off in Part 2, making this duology one of the finest sci-fi spectacles of the decade. 7. Anora (Sean Baker) Sean Baker is a filmmaker that has the gift of balancing humor and heartbreak in a grounded spontaneity that feels so authentic and natural, and this skill reaches new heights in Anora . So much has been said about how terrific Mikey Madison and Yura Borisnov are, this film also features some of the best goon performances this side of a Scorsese film. I could have watched them stumble around New York City for hours. 6. Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier) Jeremy Saulnier’s filmmaking output over the last decade have deftly explored the humanity’s most dark and violent impulses (Hold the Dark, Blue Ruin, and Story Screen’s favorite Green Room) so it was so refreshing to see Saulnier tackle systematic oppression and de-escalation with the same precise tension and character driven set pieces that made his previous films so special. Don Johnson is on fire here and Aaron Pierre is a star in the making. 5. The Substance (Coralie F argeat) The Substance is every bit as gross, disturbing, and zany as you have heard and I am so glad to see a film as out-there and stylishly confrontational as this get the flowers and attention it deserves. I have been championing Coralie Fargeat since the beginning (read my essay on her previous film Revenge here ) , and it's so great to see her improve her directorial style to such great heights. If Revenge was a destruction of the male gaze, The Substance is an evisceration. 4. Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik) The little movie that could of 2024. Hundreds of Beavers is a triumphant tribute to Buster Keaton and Looney Tunes that made me laugh so hard it may have almost killed me. Bursting with so much more creative energy than many films 100 times its budget, you owe it to yourself to seek this one out. I mustn’t say more. I don’t want to spoil the surprises it has in store. 3. Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) Truly muscular cinema, both in its literal subject matter and its form. Love Lies Bleeding is a perfect little sleazy crime novel come to life with confidence that does not give up one ounce of its personality. 2. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun ) Growing up not too far out of the same generation as its main characters, the way the film explores our relationship to media and how we use it to understand ourselves at a young age felt as though it was reflecting a mirror directly at me. It has been nearly 10 years since we all collectively experienced Twin Peaks: The Return for the first time, and this is the closest film I have seen that matches its tone and vibe. That is one of the highest compliments I could possibly give. Rest in peace David Lynch, I hope this new generation of filmmakers can effectively carry the torch of exploring the surrealness of our lives the way you did, but Jane Schoenbrun gives me confidence in that being true. 1. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino) I did not expect my number one film of the year to be a psychosexual melodrama about tennis, but when it's loaded with this much creative adrenaline, the best soundtrack of the year, and a trio of deliciously toxic performances, you can’t go wrong. A perfect execution, I left the theater exhilarated in a way I haven’t felt in years. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Letterboxd! Jeremy Kolodziejski Jeremy is a long-time supporter of and contributor to the Story Screen Fam, as well as the entire Hudson Valley Film community, as a writer, filmmaker, film worker, and general film fan. You can find him sifting through the most obscure corners of horror, martial arts, comedy, noir, and crime drama cinema, always on the hunt to discover something new, strange, and exciting.
- Process as Advertisement
Set against the aesthetic background of midcentury modernism, The Brutalist contains multitudes in its thematic and dramatic meanings. This movie, the third from director Brady Corbet, was probably my favorite film of the year. It fuses intimate character work and an epic setting and timeline, taking us on an incredible journey of postwar immigration. The momentum of the story is captured on VistaVision film, which was last used in the 1950s. This fact alone has caused significant chatter about the film, divorced from the film’s content and themes. The Brutalist VistaVision is when the film is run through the camera horizontally, rather than vertically, resulting in a bigger negative and enhanced “resolution.” I am intrigued by the re-introduction of this format, mainly because no one has seen a new-release VistaVision movie since the sixties. Due to that fact alone, The Brutalist is automatically in conversation with cinema history. Eye-catching, new cinema formats like VistaVision and Cinemascope were introduced to the American public to rival the rapid rise of television in postwar America. These technological innovations, in conjunction with marketing campaigns, are not unlike the gimmicky popcorn buckets of today. Only now, staying home to watch TV has been replaced with lying in bed to watch TikTok videos. These issues of attention incite active Hollywood PR campaigns to keep audiences in theaters. Timothée Chalamet on Jimmy Kimmel Live! As much as it pains me to say, the process of creating a film in today’s media landscape has become almost as important as the film’s story for some viewers and “media consumers.” The act of shooting on celluloid film alone has become intriguing enough for writers to use it as content for internet articles. At a time when film has become increasingly expensive and out of reach for so many filmmakers, it comes as a marker of artistic integrity to certain projects during awards season. Last year, Oppenheimer used only practical effects for its subatomic nuclear reaction shots and its large-scale explosions. For a Best Picture Oscar winner, shot in IMAX film, that is quite impressive. The PR fodder from this process was impressive: there were many conversations about the film centered on this fact alone. The process of filmmaking in this way lends itself to an easy topic of conversation. You can ask, “Oh, did you read about how they shot that?” as you walk out of the cinema’s exit doors. This line of conversation begets only more attention towards spectacle and sometimes vacuous chatter. It can suck up all the air in conversations about a movie, negating any need for critical reflection or analysis of the story. Sean Baker filming Tangerine. When I was in film school (about seven years ago), I was surrounded by films that had been “Shot on iPhone,” creating a huge buzz around them at the time. It’s worth noting here that significant attention is being given to the fact that Danny Boyle’s latest film, 28 Years Later (coming out in 2025), was shot on an iPhone. Sean Baker, who is up for an Oscar this year for Anora , jumped into the mainstream with Tangerine ten years ago. One of the first pieces of information mentioned in articles or conversations about Tangerine was the fact that it was shot on a cell phone. After countless articles about the film’s production and technical techniques, Baker was put on the map for being an indie filmmaker who pushes the boundaries of filmmaking to create character-centered dramas. Like the seventies filmmakers who used 16mm film and available lighting, Baker was cemented in the industry’s mind as an iconoclast. Even today, much of the press coverage of Anora mentions that the film had no intimacy coordinator, at a time when on-set safety is increasingly in the mainstream conversation. (Worth noting that the actors in the film stated they were comfortable forgoing the intimacy coordinator, and said Baker created a healthy environment.) Nevertheless, these conversations make Sean Baker increasingly intriguing as a director, as much for his behind-the-scenes gossip as his films’ content. Mark Eidelstein and Mikey Madison in Sean Baker's Anora. I want to mention Marshall McLuhan here, although I am reticent to do so, because of how often he is quoted in any writing of cultural and media criticism. His famous maxim of “the medium is the message,” has just been taken to a new dimension in our current cultural landscape. The meaning of art is increasingly detached from the actual writing or “content” of a piece. No longer is the medium the most meaningful aspect of a piece of art, but the creation story behind that art. We care about how a film generates online buzz, which directly translates to its box office success. As filmmaking decreases its hold on the cultural landscape of Americans, the average American only buys 3 movie tickets a year , it’s no wonder that the marketing of cinematic events is increasingly important. Personally, I am a huge fan of the daring and cumbersome techniques used by directors Corbet, Nolan, and Baker. They are all true artists who utilize cameras to serve their specific stories and characters. But the wave of change in how we talk about films has changed drastically. And the “auteurs” of today increasingly need to advertise the use of their filmmaking techniques in order to remain relevant. Leo Gallagher Leo Gallagher is a New York based cinematographer and filmmaker primarily working in documentaries, commercials, and independent films. You can follow him on Instagram @leo.gallag
- 3 Reasons Why the New Wallace & Gromit Film is a Perfect Movie
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) When I heard a new Wallace & Gromit movie was coming out, I’ll admit – I was skeptical. Growing up, I’ve re-watched A Grand Day Out (1989) more times than I can count, and have spent hours dressing up Lady Tottington in the DVD bonus features of Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). However, it was hard to get excited about a new W&G entry in an age of cash-grab reboots of childhood classics, and I was sure that the 2017 passing of British actor Peter Sallis (Wallace’s voice actor) cemented that another film would not be made. But I was not about to let a new Wallace & Gromit movie pass me by, so I gave it a shot… and I am so happy and relieved to say that the magic of this series is still alive! Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl feels as much of a family classic as its predecessors. Longtime W&G fans will appreciate the long-running jokes, Easter egg nods to other movies, and how much the claymation’s quality has improved since A Grand Day Out while still retaining the charm and creativity that stop-motion claymation painstakingly and lovingly builds in every minute detail. The new voice actor for Wallace, Ben Whitehead, does an excellent job bringing to life an iconic voice that I thought would be irreplaceable. (And I’m happy to report that the internet rumor that there will never be another Wallace & Gromit film because the studio ran out of clay is false ). Vengeance Most Fowl ‘s high-quality animated storytelling leaves you very impressed and appreciative of the artistry behind it. So, here are three reasons why this feature, along with the rest of the series, is perfect cinema. The film is spectacular, with its attention to detail, engaging story, and how it captures the essence of the W&G universe. No notes. Give me fourteen more. (While the spoilers ahead are minor, please check out Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl on Netflix! Bonus points if you are prepped with a mug of English tea, a plate of crackers, thick cheese slices, and a re-watch of The Wrong Trousers (1983).) Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) It's movie comfort food, but you never know what to expect. Each film takes place at 62 Wallaby Street, with a few recurring quirky characters, so there’s a comforting nostalgic welcomeness to the W&G universe in Vengeance Most Fowl , no matter how long it’s been since watching the last film. I expect Wallace's absurdly complex wake-up and breakfast routines, high-speed chases involving the red motorcycle and sidecar, a small Yorkshire town shaken by a recent crime mystery, and, of course, Wallace’s unrelenting cravings for cheese. In each film, the duo usually have a new small business powered by Wallace’s inventions (e.g., an intricate bread factory, bungee cord window-cleaning services, or landscaping garden robots) and challenge Wallace and Gromit’s wit against bitter villains. Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave (1995) While these familiar elements are comforting, the film balances them with chaotic, action-packed comedy and fresh side characters (who doesn’t love an evil bagpiping garden gnome?) to keep things unpredictable and entertaining. Pulled together with the palpable emotions of claymation (don’t talk to me during Curse of the Were-Rabbit when the bunnies’ glassy, bead-eyes cry actual water), watching Wallace and Gromit is like being wrapped in a warm, cozy blanket of nostalgia. At the same time, the new mystery’s suspense and fun hectics will make you laugh, gasp, cry, and cheer within an hour. Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out (1989) The hidden puns. To my fiancé’s delight (and my friends’ chagrin), I’m a sucker for puns. Like watching The Simpsons (1989), Wallace & Gromit is full of hidden jokes—like Gromit's bedtime reading, 'Men Are From Mars; Dogs Are from Pluto,' or a Virginia Woof novel—making every re-watch a treasure-filled scavenger hunt. The silly newspaper headlines, punny posters, Easter eggs, and other minor references keep you amused, no matter how often you've seen these movies. Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) One of the joys of watching these films over decades is finally understanding a joke that went over my head as a kid after returning to it years later. Adults and youngsters alike can enjoy these films. I hope that new, young viewers of Vengeance Most Fowl will discover new layers of this movie as they grow older, just like past generations of fans have. Wallace & Gromit movies are movies you can watch a million times, at any age, and still be entertained and notice something new that makes you laugh. It puts the bounce in our bungees. Wallace & Gromit films surprise you with how much emotional depth they can pack within a short comedy. Their movies are experiences that leave a lasting impression on your heart and a smile on your face. Even though the situations are fantastical (though I’m not giving up my hopes yet of flying to a moon made of cheese), the films provide relatable, human situations that connect with all audiences. In A Grand Day Out , a misunderstood character fights to fit in and realize his dreams. In A Matter of Loaf and Death, multiple characters desire to be loved for their talents and flaws. Now, Vengeance Most Fowl questions our reliance on technology and reminds its audience of the value of maintaining personal connections over artificial interactions. While it’s hard to imagine Wallace doing anything but inventing, as he says to Gromit in Vengeance Most Fowl , he can live without technology but not without his “best pal.” Cracking Contraptions: A Christmas Cardomatic (2002) Vengeance Most Fowl is a brilliant movie that rekindles the magic of two of our favorite animated characters. It reminds us why Wallace & Gromit is still going strong after nearly forty years, and is a testament to the enduring power of Aardman Animations’ timeless storytelling. So grab your cheese and crackers, settle in, and enjoy another epic adventure – because this classic duo is still in style. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) Sophia Acquisto Sophia is an elementary teacher turned PhD student in Troy, NY, and has been a part of the Story Screen family since 2019. When not studying, Sophia loves rewatching with her fiancé episodes of The Great British Baking Show and Malcolm in the Middle .
- It's 4:30 Somewhere
In an essay on the history of astronomy, Adam Smith drew a distinction between three ideas that often get conflated: wonder, awe, and surprise. His subject was our relationship to the heavens, but he took the distinction he was making to apply to all aspects of human life. Wonder he took to refer to the feeling we get whenever we encounter something truly new or novel. That feeling of ‘I didn’t know that was possible’. Awe we feel when we encounter something especially grand or beautiful, even if we’ve experienced something like it before. We may have seen waterfalls, but there is presumably something awe inspiring in seeing Niagara Falls. And Surprise is reserved for the unexpected. For those situations where we are confident about what is happening, or about to happen, but we are instead met with something we are wholly unprepared for. The way these feelings work, they can occur individually, or in combination. Perhaps the first human to encounter Niagara Falls felt all three at once. But, over time, the surprise would wear off, then perhaps the wonder, and given enough time and exposure, maybe even the awe, though that should be the most resilient feeling of the three. The same was probably true when people first saw The Wizard of Oz or 2001: A Space Odyssey ; feelings of surprise and wonder that might fade over time, but as long as we don’t rewatch these films everyday, we should be able to retain some measure of our awe when we come back to them. I mention all of this because I wanted to talk about a movie I just saw and unexpectedly loved, but I was having trouble pinning down why exactly. I’m a pretty big fan of Kevin Smith as a person. I listen regularly to a couple of his podcasts, and I’ve greatly enjoyed some of his IP work in comics and TV, but I’m much more hit and miss on his films. The only one of his that I have really ever revisited is 1999’s Dogma (perhaps more on that in a future article), and I’ve skipped most of his output over the last 15 years. Despite that, I was intrigued when his most recent film, The 4:30 Movie , was first announced. The film is an all-in-one-day story, set in May of 1986, built around a young teen boy trying to take a girl he likes on a first date to the movies, and all the misadventures he and his friends have along the way. It’s a fairly conventional premise, but the initial hook for me had much more to do with how it was going to be made, than what it was about. In a time when there is so much uncertainty around the movie theater business, Kevin Smith and some of his friends took over the theater from his hometown. And, in doing that, Kevin realized that because there had never been money to update the theater in any major way over the years, it was already period perfect to tell a low-budget story about his young experiences as a burgeoning cinephile and eventual filmmaker. I love the let’s-put-on-a-show spirit of a project like this. “We have a spot we can use for a couple weeks, let’s see who’s around and make something.” This was something of the same spirit of Smith’s breakthrough, Clerks , where he maxed out all the credit cards he could get, to make a film with his friends after hours in the convenience store where he worked. If there was ever going to be a project to recapture the spirit of what initially brought Smith to the attention of the film going public, The 4:30 Movie seemed perfect to be it. And, at least in my case, my goodness did it deliver. I LOVED this movie. So much so that I’m still kind of grappling with it, because it isn’t something built to wow an audience. It’s a simple story, sweetly told. I’m not really digging too deeply into the plot details here because ‘Young boy tries to see some movies with his friends and a girl he likes, and hijinks ensue’ does basically cover it. This is very much a case where it’s less about the tale here versus how well it’s being told. Smith’s young cast is incredibly charming and completely believable as high school kids. Other reviewers have mentioned this, but it’s startling how much better Smith’s dialogue works when it’s coming out of the mouths of younger performers. If Smith wanted to spend the whole next act of his career making John Hughes pastiches, I would be here for it. His grown up supporting players are a lot of fun. Ken Jeong is great, chewing scenery as a theater owner who hates kids and movies. Sam Richardson has a delightful turn in a scene as a knock-off of 80’s wrestler Sgt. Slaughter, named Major Murder, who has some important advice for one of the kids. Logic and Diedrich Bader are having a blast in the schlocky film-within-the-film the kids end up watching. The real selling point of the film for me is how well it balances sweet and funny. The kids tell jokes, but they feel natural, not overly scripted. The kids tease and fight with one another, but never so much so that it strains credulity that they would actually stay friends. Things work out with the boy and girl, but in a way that makes sense for two kids who are still just getting to know each other. Nothing too grand here. This isn’t a big budget production marvel like Oppenheimer that will fill you with awe at its scope and execution. And this isn’t any kind of form-breaking storytelling like Everything Everywhere All at Once that will make you wonder at how it all comes together. What it is, though, is surprising. Endlessly so. I didn’t know a film so simple and sweet could hit as hard for me as it did. I didn’t know that this was somehow exactly what I wanted at the moment. And, I didn’t know Kevin Smith had this in him. This is unexpectedly one of my favorite movies of the year, and I hope you check it out. Perhaps you’ll be in for a surprise, too. Damian Masterson Staff Writer Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and three children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th-Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- PODCAST: The Blair Witch Franchise w/ Scotty Arnold
Mike Burdge is joined by Scotty Arnold to discuss what we've all been up to for the past few months, as well as diving into the decades spanning franchise of The Blair Witch , including The Curse of the Blair Witch, The Blair Witch Project, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and Blair Witch . Topics include liking movies that some just straight up detest, the Wingard/Barrett onslaught on horror, found footage as a horror sub-genre and the timelessness of certain films that just feel cursed. Listen on....
- The Life of Doctor Shining
Two things can be true: (1) Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, The Shining, is an undeniable horror masterwork, and, until recently, (2) it had never really worked for me. I grew up a Stephen King kid. I picked up a copy of his book, It , from my parents bookshelf in 5th grade, and read almost nobody else until high school. By the time I first watched The Shining , I had read the book about a half dozen times, and was well aware of King’s own criticisms of the film. I may have been too primed by that knowledge to see the film in any other way, but I’ve always come away with the same impression when I watch it: it is truly dazzling to behold, with iconic performances from Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, as Jack and Wendy Torrance, yet I find the film to be hampered by how empty Kubrick’s takes on the characters are, particularly, how little agency Kubrick gives to any of the Torrance family in the story. King faults Nicholson’s Jack for being crazy from the start, which I believe overstates it a little, but I do think he does start out so wanting as both a husband and father in the film, that there is no real surprise when he becomes violent towards his own family. Short of a joke about cannibalism on the drive to the hotel, you never see a shared moment between Jack and his family to indicate that he still has any real emotional bond with them. Jack Torrance’s character in the book loves his family, despite his numerous screwups; he’s an alcoholic sincerely trying to stay on the straight and narrow for their sake. The Jack Torrance of Kubrick’s film doesn’t seem like he especially needed a haunted hotel to convince him to fall off the wagon and kill his family. Narratively, Jack being like he is in the film does establish a sense of dread and inevitability to the story early on, so that when you hear a naive Wendy describe how a drunken Jack broke young Danny’s arm not all that long ago, you know that the whole idea of anyone spending five isolated months alone with him would be a terrible mistake. But, for King, that also makes it a fundamentally different story than the one he was trying to tell. For King, he was telling a story about his own recovery from alcoholism and working through his own fears about what his drinking might have done to him if he hadn’t gotten it under control. In the book, Jack is a clear stand-in character for King, and the sympathy we have for him because of that means we mourn what he’s lost when he accepts his first ‘drink’ from the hotel. And also, because the core of the novel is so overtly about addiction and recovery, there always remains some tension about whether there is still something resilient in Jack that can lead him back to the path. Kubrick is telling a different kind of story and evidence indicates that he was right to do so. In 1997, Stephen King got the chance to script his own adaptation of his book for a three episode miniseries that would be directed by Mick Garris. This time, with Garris, King would get to tell his story exactly as he’d always intended, and it was…fine. It was a perfectly acceptable diversion, that faded into obscurity almost as soon as it had finished airing, and all the while, the legacy of Kubrick’s film adaptation grew, further cemented with each passing year. It may not be what I wanted, but Kubrick had an undeniably better handle on how to turn this material into a film. At least that was my take until I finally saw Mike Flanagan’s underseen 2019 film, Doctor Sleep - the adaptation of King’s 2013 sequel to The Shining . Written more than 35 years after the original book, Doctor Sleep , recounts what happened to Danny Torrance and his mother after they escaped the explosion of The Overlook Hotel. That detail alone makes it an unlikely candidate for an adaptation, as the filmgoing public, more familiar with Kubrick’s take, might struggle to accept that fate for the hotel. It’s also a fundamentally different kind of story, which I hesitate to talk about too much because of how underseen it is; That said, the theme the sequel borrows most explicitly from the original is that it’s a book about alcoholism, but one that leans much more heavily on the idea of the possibility of recovery. Young Danny struggled mightily with the trauma of what happened to him and his mother and he spent a long time lost. However, he finds his way back to the path, and is presented with the chance to help a young kid in danger, much like he once was. Mike Flanagan, has become something of the principle adapter of King’s work these days with 2019’s Doctor Sleep, 2017’s Gerald’s Game, the eagerly anticipated, The Life of Chuck, coming next summer, as well as his announced multi-part adaptation of King’s Dark Tower series. Flanagan may have been the only person that could have gotten a credible version of this film made, because he may have been the only person who both had the standing with King to sell him on the idea that any successful adaptation would have to find a way to get along with Kubrick’s film, and who also had the writing chops and handle on King’s voice to craft a compromise that King could live with. Flanagan didn’t just convince King, but his narrative compromise also saved the Kubrick film for me with the addition of one key scene. King’s novel already provides an example of what recovery can look like with Danny’s journey, but Flanagan is able to bring that arc back home to Jack by creating a scene where an adult Danny goes back to the still standing, if abandoned, Overlook Hotel, and has a conversation in the Gold Room bar with the version of his dad that has became a part of the hotel. There isn’t a lot of Jack left, and he mostly tries to deny it whenever Danny refers to him as his father, but for a moment, the old Jack peeks through. Danny tries to confide in the bartender about what it was like when his mom, Jack’s wife, finally did die, but the bartender just nudges a drink towards Danny. “Something warm, to push away such unpleasantries.” But, in trying to encourage Danny to take the offered drink, what also slips through is more interiority into Jack’s character than is contained in the whole of Kubrick’s film. He says: Medicine. Medicine is what it is. Bonafide cure-all. The mind is a blackboard. And this is the eraser. A man tries. He provides. But he’s surrounded by mouths. And a family. A wife. A kid. Those mouths eat time. They eat your days on Earth. They just gobble them up. It’s enough to make a man sick. And this is the medicine. We only have subtext to read into what affection Danny ever had for his father to make him care about even having this conversation in the first place, but this blunt articulation of Jack Torrance’s addiction and resentments retroactively enlivens his character all the way back to the original film in a way that finally makes him make sense to me. And, while we don’t get the notion of recovery that King originally had in mind as part of Jack’s story, the way this scene bridges Jack’s addiction with Danny’s recovery creates the arc I always wanted, just spread out over two films. Just as Jack has always been at the Overlook, Kubrick’s The Shining has always been an undeniable classic, but now, thanks to Mike Flanagan, it’s also become something of the story I always wanted it to be. Damian Masterson Staff Writer Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and three children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th-Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- PODCAST: The Pattinson Stuff - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Hosts Bernadette Gorman-White and Mike Burdge embark upon a brand spanking new filmography series: The Pattinson Stuff, covering the movieing of one Robert Pattinson. Up first, a dive into the actor's first three features: Vanity Fair, Ring of the Nibelungs and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Listen on....
- Not Quite "Being the Ricardos"
I’ve never seen much virtue in writing a negative review of anything. Making something is hard and missing the mark is the most common outcome for any of our ventures in life; but, that being said, there is some merit in trying to figure out why something doesn’t work. Aaron Sorkin’s most recent directorial effort, Being the Ricardos, is a behind the scenes look at a week in the production of an episode of I Love Lucy. The film boasts a Sorkin screenplay, an all-star cast led by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as well as an interesting and largely untold story about an iconic figure in the history of tv and film. Despite all that, the film just doesn’t really work, and I’m pretty curious about how that happened. It would be going too far to say that Being the Ricardos is a bad film. I still found it engaging and watchable all the way through. But, of course, I did. I’m basically, for good and ill, the stereotypical embodiment of Sorkin’s exact demographic. Many of the key scenes and sequences hit me the way I believe they were intended to. After decades of breaking stories on stage and screen, Sorkin knows how to carry an audience along. Just the same, I can’t point to any part of the film where I had a clear handle on what the intended tone of the film was supposed to be. In the lead-up to the film’s release, there was significant backlash over the casting of the film. It turns out there was a ravenous, pent-up demand for a film about Lucille Ball, but that prospective audiences revolted at the thought of her being played by Nicole Kidman. People were generally skeptical that Kidman had the comedy chops to play the star of I Love Lucy, and, well, they were right. Kidman was fairly decently cast for the film Aaron Sorkin wrote, but that wasn’t at all the film this audience wanted to see. Sorkin has taken great pains in interviews around this film to make clear that he was telling a dramatic story about Lucille Ball, not a comedy starring her character Lucy Ricardo. Sorkin’s mistake may have been in thinking he could do one without committing fully to also do the other. The story of Being the Ricardos is: during a particular week of production of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball is contending with three off-stage crises that are all coming to a head simultaneously: an exposé about her husband’s infidelity, a battle with the network, and sponsors of her show about being the first pregnant character on a television show, and the breaking news that she had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee about having once registered as a member of the communist party. Sorkin takes some creative license by placing these events all in the same week, but these are all things that happened during the run of I Love Lucy. Sorkin does manage to weave these disparate elements together like they’re the A, B, and C plots of an episode of one of his shows, where each thread is highlighting the tension between Lucy’s career and her lifelong desire for some kind of stable family life. And, structurally, they do all tie together in the end. When Lucille’s real-life husband, Desi, comes through the door of the I Love Lucy set as his character Ricky, calling out, “Lucy, I’m home,” we watch Lucille struggling to respond, and we understand that all of her efforts to hold her show and family together have been for naught. Throughout the film, the growing narrative is that Desi has been coming home less and less, ostensibly staying up late playing cards on his boat with friends to blow off steam, but clearly getting up to more than just that. The irony is that the whole motivation for Lucille agreeing to do I Love Lucy in the first place is so that she and Desi would finally have a way to both have their careers and be able to spend time together. Desi’s infidelity, her pregnancy, and her growing red scare are each conspiring to destabilize the show that ties together the life the two of them have built together. They manage to save the show. They strongarm the network into letting Lucille be pregnant on television. They get the FBI to make a statement publicly clearing Lucille of any suspicion of un-American wrongdoing. But, coming off these historic wins, it feels jarring when the then-what-happened text at the end of the film tells us they would go on to get divorced anyway. The core problem of the film may be that it’s overstuffed. Sorkin ties together threads that don’t really get along well together. There’s surely something to the story of a young Lucille Ball checking the registration box for the communist party to please her grandfather, as a contrast to the story of a young Desi Arnaz fleeing Cuba because of a communist revolution. There is surely something to the contrast between the iconic housewife character of Lucy Ricardo and the trailblazing media mogul that portrayed her. There is surely something interesting to the contrast between the happy friends of the TV show I Love Lucy and behind the scenes squabbling of the actors who portrayed them. There is surely something interesting to how groundbreaking I Love Lucy was just as a technological feat that would go on to transform how tv shows would be made from then on. There is surely something to the story of the serious behind the scenes work it takes to create effortless-seeming comedy on screen. There is surely a worthwhile story to be told about anyone standing up to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and managing to come out on top. There is surely something to the story of the first pregnant mother character that American families saw on TV and how her co-star and real-life husband was cheating on her in real life the entire time. All of these stories are interesting, just not when you try to tell them all at once. A secondary problem for Being the Ricardos is a similar issue that Sorkin had with his show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin is capable of writing comedic situations for his characters or writing enviably naturalistic witty-banter, but he gets utterly hamfisted when he tries to write a character that is trying to be funny. Studio 60 was his much-maligned show, looking at the behind the scenes of a show like Saturday Night Live. Canceled after one season, a lot of it was much better than it got credit for at the time, but the core criticism of the show was as true then as it is now: the central premise of the show demanded adept comedy writing, and Sorkin just doesn’t have that talent in his otherwise ample toolkit. There is a version of Being the Ricardos - both film and screenplay - that may actually lend itself to a stage production, something where the audience is more primed for witty speechifying, and on a platform much further removed from the medium in which the audience is most used to seeing Lucille Ball. For how many stories Sorkin is trying to tell, there may have also been an even better version of this story if it were told as a limited series. Give each story thread its own episode with its own theme, rather than try to force them all together. In its current form, I can go, so far as to say, that Being the Ricardos was a perfectly fine use of my time, but also an unsuccessful mess in that, having seen it twice now, I’m still not at all clear what it’s trying to say about anything. Damian Masterson Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and two children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- Damian: My Favorite Films of 2021
I’m not entirely sure if it was something about me, or just something about this past year, but there was a great deal of theater kid energy in the films I most connected with this year. Like with David Byrne’s American Utopia from my list last year, two of my top ten were filmed versions of stage shows. I do consider it a high bar to clear to consider a stage show on par to a traditional film, but the two I have on my list cleared that bar for me. Another is a very filmic reconceptualization of a stage show. Another three are so stagey they could probably be ported over to a theater with little to no changes. Of the remainder of my list, a common theme is that there was little to no grounded realism. With one exception, I wasn’t seeking out or connecting with, anything working with big, visceral, negative emotions. Like many, I’ve had enough cortisol in my life these last few years, so what I’ve needed more than anything was escapism and big, singing, dancing, flights of fancy. Thankfully, this year’s films delivered on that. Honorable Mention - Lapsis Noah Hutton’s Lapsis was one of the more interesting surprises of the year for me. It wasn’t a film I had heard anything about, but I was so struck by its poster that I couldn’t get it out of my head until I finally checked it out. Because of how little attention it’s gotten, I’ll be sparing in my description, but I can say that it’s a soft-touch sci-fi story about exploitation and workers' rights in the gig economy. It feels a little low budget at times, but in ways that actually make the world feel more real. It’s not slick and shiny, but that actually serves the premise by making it feel like the world of this story is not only possible, but could be just months away. #10. Dune Denis Villeneuve’s Dune appears to be the first 50% of a masterpiece. I knew going into the film that it was only going to be the first half of the book, so I didn’t have an issue with the film’s abrupt ending, but I haven’t been able to treat it like it’s a finished work, yet. It doesn’t feel like the first in a series of standalone stories, but one story that’s simply been stopped to pick up again later. If the story is eventually completed, Dune has the potential to be something like my favorite film, but, were something to stop the story from being finished, I might be too disappointed to return to this first film ever again. I was a modest fan of David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune. It was a mess, but with more than enough in terms of ideas and visuals to be worth watching. I forgave it a lot of its shortcomings on a belief that it actually was an unfilmable story, but Villeneuve, albeit with the benefit of more running time, manages to seamlessly build the worlds and assorted intrigues of Dune without having to lean on clunky exposition, all while delivering generally more impressive visuals and much better performances. It’s master craftsmanship, and I look forward to eventually seeing the finished product. #9. The Green Knight David Lowry’s The Green Knight has a special spot on this list because it was the first film that I got to see in a theater since the start of the pandemic. In this adaptation of a 14th-century Arthurian story, Gawain is a nephew of King Arthur who accepts a challenge from The Green Knight. Gawain can deliver any blow he likes to The Green Knight, but The Green Knight can return that same blow a year hence. The focus of the film is Gawain’s quest to find The Green Knight to receive his agreed-upon blow. Dev Patel is incredible as Gawain, and the world that Lowry creates is incredibly sumptuous, dreamlike, and meditative. Taking place at two successive Christmas times, I expect this to become a holiday staple for me. #8. Psycho Goreman Steven Kostanski’s Psycho Goreman isn’t a film I’m recommending to anyone. It’s a strange little gem that seems to have been made solely for me. Maybe if you share my preference for Army of Darkness over the other Evil Dead movies, this might appeal to you. Or, if like me, you have absolutely no interest in horror movies, but a deep fondness for gory, horror-comedies, this might appeal to you, as well. Even then, I don’t know, I really think it’s just for me and the cast and crew of the film. Consider yourself warned. Psycho Goreman is in some ways the E.T. trope of young kids finding and befriending an alien, only in this case, the kids are kinda sociopaths and the alien is an imprisoned evil menace bent on destroying all life in the universe. It’s a film I was never ahead of the first time I watched it, and, on each rewatch, I’ve continued to be tickled by all of the bizarre choices it makes. #7. Come From Away One of the projects that was lost to the pandemic was a planned film adaptation of the musical Come From Away, telling the story of the 38 planes that were unexpectedly forced to land at the Gander International Airport in Newfoundland on September 11th, 2001, and how the surrounding community came together to take care of their nearly 7,000 surprise guests. Instead, what we have here is a filmed version of the Broadway show, made 14 months after Broadway was shut down by Coronavirus, and 4 months before shows would reopen again to general audiences. In recent years, we’ve gotten high-quality filmed versions of Hamilton and, one of my favorite films of last year, David Byrne’s American Utopia. This filmed version of Come From Away doesn’t have the visual flair of either of those others, but the show itself is such a feat that it more than makes up for it. In some sense, the show has the feel of being one continuous take. There’s no intermission, and everyone in the small cast plays multiple characters without costume changes and rarely even leaving the stage. Each scene feeds quickly into the other, giving the show an incredibly propulsive feel. I can imagine a more traditional filmed version of this story that would be good, but not one that could easily retain these elements of the stage show that make it so unique. I do hope that film is someday made, but I would be very surprised to see it turn out better than what has already been captured in this version. #6. Annette All hail the big swing! I don’t know for sure if I would have connected with Annette if I hadn’t seen The Sparks Brothers documentary first. Having thoroughly met musicians Ron and Russell Mael, and gotten some sense of their unique approach to the world, I started their musical, Annette, as open-minded as can be. I was enthralled with its opening number and was able to adjust when the rest of the songs in the film were serving a far less straightforward role. I was entirely on board when I discovered how the character of Annette was going to be handled and thought the final culmination of that character choice to be just breathtaking. I found it perfect from first frame to last. #5. Mass I’ve long been a fan of Fran Kranz. He’s the only figure in the one movie poster I have on my wall, from when he played Claudio in 2012’s Much Ado About Nothing. I thought he was surprisingly great in both Cabin in the Woods and the TV show, Dollhouse. I was looking forward to Mass as his writing and directorial debut, but I was in no way ready for the film he’s made. It’s possible to see this film and be unaware of its central conceit, so I’ll tread lightly. It’s a devastating film, which is not a feeling I generally seek out, especially not this year, but it’s so empathetic and open-hearted about its subject and characters as to make the devastation worth it. It would work just as well on stage as it does on film because of how stripped down it is, being almost entirely a conversation between four characters in one room, trying to help one another recover from the central catastrophe of their lives. #4. Nine Days Edson Oda’s Nine Days is a very good movie that sneaks up on you as a great one in its final scene. It’s a meditation on what it takes to cut it in the world, against what we wish the people in the world were actually like. Like an inverse of Albert Brooks’s film Defending Your Life, instead of someone defending the life they had led in order to prove themselves worthy of moving on to the next plane of existence, here we see numerous souls interviewing for a chance to be born into life for the first time. As a pitch, it feels like it could be a lower-tier Pixar movie, but in execution, it winds of being something more patient, contemplative, and wonderful than that, before blossoming into something truly electric, that will stick with you for a long time in its final scene. #3. Derek DelGuadio’s In & Of Itself I got to see In & Of Itself during its theatrical run in NYC. It was an experience that stuck with me, and I was looking forward to revisiting it when I heard there was a film being made documenting the final performances of its run. Live theater doesn’t generally translate well to recording, and magic translates particularly poorly, so I didn’t have the highest expectations for how this would turn out, but working with Director Frank Oz, Derek DelGuadio made something truly special. By working in some multimedia elements, the show was expanded beyond what was possible on stage, and by working in audience reactions and participations the way they did, sometimes including a dozen different audience members from different shows in the same set-piece, the show was expanded beyond what it could be in any one performance, creating a unique feeling of immediacy that translates wonderfully to the audience at home. Separate from its execution of documenting a live performance, the show actually does have something very interesting to say in how it interrogates notions of personal identity. Through storytelling and magical set pieces, we see DelGuadio push against the various ways he has seen himself in his own life, push the audience to examine how they see themselves and others, often bringing volunteers up on stage to either bequeath an identity or transform one. #2. & #1. Bo Burnham: Inside & tick, tick…BOOM! I grouped together my top two films because they’ve become inextricably paired in my mind, and, taken together, they almost perfectly capture my feelings about this past year. Both are about a young central protagonist, struggling with their first anxieties about growing older and feelings of failure, but with diametrically opposed messages Based on its absence from most of the year-end best-of lists that I’ve read, it seems like Bo Burnham: Inside has either been somewhat forgotten since this past spring or stopped being considered a film after Netflix submitted it for Emmy consideration. That is a shame because not only is this one of the more impressive films I’ve ever seen, that actually seemed to be the consensus view when it first came out. There are only a handful of people credited on Inside because Burnham wrote and directed it, is the only performer in it, composed and recorded all of the music for it, and handled all of the cinematography and film editing for it himself. For a film looking to capture, among other things, the feeling of being trapped inside with your own thoughts during the pandemic, it helps that no other hands were involved until post-production. That said, and for as great as I think it is, I had been very resistant to having it wind up as my top film for this year. I had started a review of Inside shortly after it came out, but could never motivate myself to finish it because of how acid and hopeless it is as a film. Somewhat like watching late-career George Carlin, you can laugh and be entertained while you're watching it, but the view of people and the world underneath it all is so caustic that it can be depressing to interrogate what is being said too closely. On quite the opposite end of the spectrum is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut, tick, tick…BOOM! There is a light, popcorny feel to tick, tick…BOOM! that also made me briefly hesitant to give it the top spot on my list for this year, but if I’m being fully honest with myself, this is already the film from this year I’ve rewatched the most, and the one I expect to return to the most in the years ahead. tick, tick…BOOM! is about the early career struggles of Jonathan Larson, who would go on to write the phenomenally successful musical Rent, but pass away right before its off-Broadway premiere. It’s an adaptation of an autobiographical musical written by Larson, that he performed while he was still alive, and has been staged in different forms since his passing, notably in 2014 with Miranda playing the role of Larson. This version mixes together Larson performing tick, tick…BOOM! with depictions of the events being recounted in the performance. Thematically, tick, tick…BOOM! takes a lot of the opposite, and more hopeful, positions to those taken by Inside. Both films deal with the pressure to make your mark in the world, anchored on the main character turning thirty. But while Burnham jokes(?) about killing himself if he lives to see forty, Larson’s arc is to make peace with simply doing the most he can with whatever time he has left. Where Burnham attacks the value of making content at all, Larson takes the position of creating art as being one of the most important human endeavors. tick, tick…BOOM! is also helped by one of the best lead performances of the year with Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson. Garfield trained for a year to handle the singing in this film, and his handling of the songs is better than any other production of the show I can find, even those by Larson, himself. Along with that though, Garfield is just incredibly likable as a leading man. In some sense, that likability captures the biggest difference between Inside and tick, tick…BOOM! for me. Inside is the more impressive artistic statement, but tick, tick…BOOM! is just a more likable and enjoyable film, and this year, that’s what I’ve been seeking out more than anything else. Other films considered for this list: A Glitch in the Matrix; Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar; Benedetta; The Card Counter; Clerk; CODA; The Courier; The Dig; Finch; The French Connection; I’m Your Man; In the Heights; Judas and the Black Messiah; Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time; The Last Duel; Listening to Kenny G; The Map of Tiny Perfect Things; The Matrix Resurrection; Minari; The Mitchell’s vs The Machines; No Sudden Move; Nobody; The Paper Tigers; Pig; Quo Vadis, Aida; Riders of Justice; Small Engine Repair; The Sparks Brothers; Summer of Soul; Val; The Velvet Underground; Werewolves Within, Zola Damian Masterson Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and two children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- Deadly Male Fragility
A Look at Lost Highway David Lynch’s Lost Highway turns 25 this year. By most measures, this was the least successful film of David Lynch’s career, struggling with audiences and critics alike, disappointing his most diehard fans, and going on to recoup less than $4 million of its $15 million budget at the box office. In his review at the time, Roger Ebert described the film as a cold and nonsensical shaggy dog story. Harsh! Despite that, I’ve long had a soft spot for Lost Highway. It was the first of Lynch’s films that I had seen, but even I have found the film hard to champion as more than an interesting, but messy, experiment with a cool Trent Reznor-produced soundtrack. That changed for me recently though, and I’ve finally come to a reading of the film that I think does tie it all together in a way that elevates the film for me to something a bit more on par with the other well-regarded films of Lynch's career, like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. As I see the film now, I think it does have something interesting and timely to say about the lengths a certain kind of man will go to in order to self-mythologize away their sins, trying to protect their place as the hero of their own story, and control the narrative around the women they’ve wronged. Before making the case for my take on the film, I think it will be helpful to look at where I think Lynch may have gone wrong in how he presented this film to audiences. Lynch largely avoids explaining his films, preferring for them to speak for themselves. However, one of the details that Lynch had let slip in the years since Lost Highway came out was that, at the time he and Barry Gifford were writing it, Lynch was fixated on the OJ Simpson trial - specifically how the mind of a murderer protects itself when they know they have done something truly awful, something that doesn’t fit with the more heroic image they have of themselves? What allows such a person to smilingly go about their daily life, seemingly unaffected by the terrible thing they’ve done? Co-writer Barry Gifford was more forthcoming than Lynch in interviews, but never describes this particular bit of Lynch’s inspiration. Instead, he talked about their initial idea being a story about what would happen if one person were to wake up as someone else - a story about someone experiencing some kind of psychological fugue, but told in the spirit of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Were either of these threads more straightforwardly laid out for those initial audiences watching the film, it might have been somewhat more clear that Lost Highway is supposed to be a film about a man failing to reconcile his conception of himself with the fact that he has murdered his wife. The story of Lost Highway, at least initially, is that Bill Pullman is a jazz musician named Fred Madison, and Patricia Arquette plays his somewhat distant seeming wife, Renee. Over the course of the first act of the film, a series of videotapes show up on the doorstep of their house in unmarked envelopes. The first tape shows a slow pan across the front of their house before cutting to static. The next tape shows the same but then moves inside the house before it too cuts out. The third tape moves further inside their house, into their bedroom, showing the two of them sleeping in their bed, but from a seemingly impossible overhead angle. And the last tape, Fred finds and watches alone, seeing himself on-screen, kneeling next to his wife’s mutilated body. As he realizes what he’s watching, he stands and calls out to his wife, but the film crash cuts to his being beaten during an interrogation about her murder. This is quickly followed by Fred’s conviction and sentencing to death by electrocution. Before Fred can be executed, though, he starts experiencing a series of increasingly severe headaches; he’s found to have vanished from his death row cell one morning, and been replaced by a different person: a confused young man named Pete Dayton, who doesn’t know how he got there. From here, the film shifts to a mini-noir subplot about Pete Dayton. After being released from Death Row, Pete gets mixed up with an overtly archetypal femme fatale named Alice, also played by Patricia Arquette. Pete very quickly falls into an affair with Alice, despite his own girlfriend and the very dangerous man that Alice is involved with: Mr. Eddy, played by a menacing Robert Loggia. In order to escape from the wrath of Mr. Eddy, Alice convinces Pete that they need to rob a guy named Andy, so they can get together enough money for the two of them to run away together. Pete goes along with the plan but accidentally kills Andy during the robbery. He and Alice leave for a cabin in the desert where they will meet the man they will sell their stolen goods to. They make love outside on the ground, lit by the headlights of the car. Pete tells Alice how much he wants her. But, Alice tells Pete that he’ll never have her, then gets up off him, and walks away. When the camera comes back to Pete, we find that he has turned back into Fred. Fred takes off in the car to track down and kill Mr. Eddy. After he kills Mr. Eddy, the film ends with Fred driving down a highway at night, leading a police chase, and starting to violently convulse before the credits roll. On most interpretations, Fred’s convulsions during the chase in the car are when he is being executed in the real world. My understanding of what happens in the film is that Fred Madison murdered his wife, but is unable to accept the idea of himself as a murderer. His break doesn’t happen when he is on death row, but has actually already happened by the film’s first scene. When we first see Fred, he has already killed Renee and is trying to process it. We see him sitting by himself in the dark, smoking, withdrawn, and agitated. He’s suddenly lit as if a window curtain has been opened. Very out of focus through the doorway behind him, we faintly see a bed with a red and white coloring that does look like bloodstains. We’re in closeup on Fred Madison, but then there is a cut that jumps the line to show him from the reverse angle as their door buzzer rings, with the lighting of the scene also brightening significantly. This cut appears to be the point where we first enter the psychological fugue of the story. Considering we’re only about 45 seconds into the first scene of the film, it makes sense that audiences may not have been ready to make such a leap on their first viewing. Because the entire film occurs in the fugue state, it’s hard to know how to view Fred, because everything is mediated through how he wants to see himself, first as himself and then as Pete. There is an interesting scene in the first act after Fred and Renee received the videotape that showed them sleeping. They call the police to report what happened. When the police arrive at the house, both Fred and Renee feel different. The lighting in their bedroom is much brighter, and neither of them is dressed as stylized as they’ve been to this point - almost as if the presence of the police causes Fred to picture this scene differently. There’s also an incredibly telling exchange between Fred, Renee, and the two detectives: Detective: Do you own a video camera? Renee: No. Fred hates them. Fred: I like to remember things my own way. Detective: What do you mean by that? Fred: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened. The whole film is an expansion of this idea. We’re never getting at what happened, just at what Fred has decided for himself happened. Where the film gets really interesting for me, though, is how it contends with Patricia Arquette’s characters. On the reading that Fred is already entering a fugue state when the movie first begins, we never see a version of Renee that isn’t mediated through how Fred sees her. Her entire presence in the film is filtered through Fred’s male gaze. In Renee’s early scenes, she is distant from Fred, uninterested in the show he’s performing on that first night, preferring instead to stay home and read. But Renee seems to light up at the party they attend when she is drinking and talking to her friend, Andy. Here we can see the seeds of Fred’s jealousy. When Fred transforms into Pete, he creates for himself a new version of Renee, in Alice. Alice is aggressive and sexual in the ways Renee isn’t with Fred, falling for Pete at something like first sight. Alice is also mixed up in shady sex work with Mr. Eddy and his pornographic business. While Renee is largely withdrawn from Fred, Alice is the driving force behind coming up with the plan to rob Andy, manipulating Pete to participate by dangling herself as his reward if he follows through with the plan. Alice is also duplicitous in ways we don’t see Renee being, as we can see by Alice first going behind Mr. Eddy’s back with Pete, then setting up Andy for them to rob, and then abandoning Pete as soon as their job dealing with Andy is done. Pete appears to be a victim of manipulation, while Alice is the one pushing Pete to steal and inadvertently kill. Alice is the inverse of Renee, and, in Fred’s mind, a temptress responsible for everything that would ultimately go wrong. It’s Alice, Mr. Eddy, and Andy that are the villains of the story, not good old Fred. As he sees it, he’s a blameless angel. That Patricia Arquette is able to portray all of these facets of Renee and Alice is a wonder, considering the film never gives her any clear and objective ground to stand on. Arquette has said in interviews that Lynch, though he worked with her and created a safe place for her to do some incredibly vulnerable work, never gave her straight answers on what exactly she was playing. That actually helps the performance because the film is never giving us the reality of who Renee was. Fred has already taken that from her and us before the film begins. Something else that feeds into the energy of the film, is the presence of Robert Blake and Marilyn Manson. Neither were quite as infamous at the time of filming as they’ve gone on to become, but both would go on to be credibly accused, and even convicted, of crimes that are of a piece with the themes of Lost Highway. In his last acting credit to date, Robert Blake plays a character called Mystery Man, a malevolent character that seems to represent the murderous impulse hiding inside Fred. He would next enter the news in 2002 when he was arrested for the murder of his wife. He would be found not guilty in the criminal trial but found liable for the wrongful death of his wife in a civil trial. Marilyn Manson made his acting debut in the film, appearing briefly in a snuff film played in one of the climactic scenes, and he also featured prominently in the film's soundtrack, notably a scene where Arquette’s Alice is forced at gunpoint to strip for Mr. Eddy. Over the last 18 months, a number of women have come forward with accusations against Manson of physical and sexual abuse. The presence of both figures in the film is distasteful, but they are cut from the same cloth as the character of Fred Madison. Lost Highway isn’t a complete success. It still took me over two decades to come up with a reading of the film that worked for me, and that’s asking an awful lot of any audience. That said, I do now think it has something much more interesting to say than it’s been given credit for. It’s not especially interesting as the story of a man who killed his wife, but it is fascinating as the story of a man who would unmoor his entire reality rather than accept the fact of himself as a bad person who has done a reprehensible thing. Damian Masterson Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and two children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- Long Live Smoochy!
For a very long time, I didn’t know that Death to Smoochy was supposed to be bad. For me, Death to Smoochy was just a strange movie I liked, one that I never heard anyone talking about. I didn’t know it had been such a huge critical and commercial failure. And It’s interesting how much of a difference that ignorance made in my relationship to the film. It was never a guilty pleasure for me. It was just a strange little film that happened to match my sensibilities, one that I got to enjoy watching without any of the added baggage of what other people thought about it. I now get how it might have struggled to find an audience. It’s a really big swing of a film. It’s a high concept, silly, dark comedy set in a surprisingly violent world, played like an extended Mr. Show sketch, that also just so happens to be a film that is sincerely concerned with the importance of education and positive messaging in children’s television. Who is that for? Me, I guess. The funny thing about Death to Smoochy is that it’s kind of a surrealist Frank Capra movie. It follows something awfully close to the plot of 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but instead of being set amongst the machinations of the U.S. Senate, Death to Smoochy is set in the dark and seedy world of children’s television production. In both films, a young idealist is unexpectedly plucked from obscurity, and installed into a position of great public importance, because the people making that decision believe someone so naive would be controllable in a way that will make it easy to protect the grift they’re engaged in. However, our hero’s idealism happens to resonate with the public far more than the backroom dealers anticipated, making this idealist more challenging to control than they would like, so his downfall is quickly orchestrated. The plan backfires, though. In the end, our hero is saved by the children who believed in him all along, and by a formerly cynical woman who had been reluctantly shepherding our hero through this new world up to now, and had her own faith and idealism restored by having met someone so sincerely noble. In the end, goodness triumphs over evil, paving the way for a brighter future for all, while the bad guys all get what they deserve. All that said, when you get into the finer details of tone and plot of these two films, they diverge about as wildly from one another as one could imagine. Spiritually, though, they’re so close to the same story that the resemblance feels like it has to be something more than an accident. Death to Smoochy opens with a very brief flash-forward to what appears to be the murder of our titular hero, Smoochy the Rhino, in his costume, backstage at his show. Then, flashes back to the beginning of the story, where we see how a different beloved children’s television host, Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams), loses the job that will go on to become Smoochy’s. Randy is a beloved and popular host, but he gets busted in an undercover bribery sting in which he is found taking a suitcase full of cash in exchange for plum spots for children of parents desperate to see their kids on TV. To get over the scandal, the executives at his network, KidNet, need to immediately find a children’s entertainer who is, if nothing else, “Squeaky. Fucking. Clean!”; bringing them to Sheldon Mopes (Ed Norton) and his purple, foam-suit character, Smoochy the Rhino. Like Jimmy Stewart’s Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Sheldon Mopes seems like someone too good to be true, a “harmless, ethical cornball”. We meet him performing at the Coney Island Methadone Clinic, in costume and playing songs for the patients. It may seem at first that we’re seeing a struggling Sheldon, but even here Sheldon fully believes he is doing good and useful work. Nora Wells (Catherine Keener), a young executive hardened over the years from dealing with her cynical and duplicitous coworkers in the children’s entertainment industry, has been dispatched to find Sheldon and offer him his own show at KidNet. Over a dinner of organic gluten-free soy dogs, with his homemade spirulina and almond butter sauce, an elated Sheldon pitches Nora on the kind of show that he has always wanted to give kids: An educational and entertaining show, with integrity, and a positive message, but without all the overly-commercial “bells and whistles and ricketa-racketa.” Sheldon gets the job but is rudely awakened when he discovers that he and KidNet are not at all on the same page about how to educate children. What Nora and KidNet are looking for is someone who can capably fill a timeslot, but primarily they just want someone to bridge the gap between commercial breaks. Additionally, Sheldon discovers that there is an expectation from scary, local, mob-like charities, such as The Parade of Hope, that he will make himself available to perform for their charity events, which themselves are little more than vehicles for selling kids cheap toys and sugary snacks, while the organizers skim all the profits they can off the top. As the film unfolds, the story turns ever darker as agents, executives, gangsters, and former kid show hosts, are all plotting to bring Sheldon down, even fatally if necessary. But, through it all, Sheldon perseveres, guided by an unwavering mission to help educate children. It’s this last bit that is the key feature of how a film like this works as much as it does. Whether it’s Frank Capra, Aaron Sorkin, or even Death to Smoochy, an audience will only forgive a message this schmaltzy, from a fundamentally good protagonist, if they really believe that the message is of actual importance. We can forgive some of the sentimentality and idealism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or The American President, or Dave, because good government and selfless public service are evergreen things that people actually do want to see more of. We can forgive the uncomplicated goodness of a character like Sheldon Mopes, because we have no trouble accepting the importance of his mission to teach children in a loving way. The film also gives Sheldon more dimension than, say, a Mr. Rogers, which helps us better connect with him. We learn that Sheldon started on his path toward becoming Smoochy because of a court-ordered anger management class he had to take in college. We also see Sheldon pushed well past his breaking point, to a place where the audience could even accept him caving in to do a just but terrible thing, but he is fortunately rescued from the situation by his friends just in time. Sheldon isn’t perfect, but neither is anyone else. He’s doing his best every day and trying to teach kids how to do the same. Tonally, the movie does get incredibly dark, but that helps underscore Sheldon’s message throughout. The thing he says the most often in the film is “You can’t change the world, but you can make a dent.” It’s meant to be a bit of a joke that Sheldon is initially performing at a methadone clinic, but they double down on the idea when that is the organization he ultimately chooses to donate all the proceeds from the charity ice show he ends up putting on himself. This helps underline the idea that literally everyone is worthy of a helping hand. Also, with Rainbow Randolph, It’s way over the top with the amount of awful things that he tries to do in order to bring down Sheldon, so much so that it does strain credulity when Randolph is redeemed and forgiven by the end of the film. Even the actual portrayal of Rainbow Randolph is frequently hard to take in the film because of how Robin Williams plays him, leaning into some of the more grating parts of his schtick from that era, particularly an uncomfortable amount of gay panic jokes. But all of that helps highlight the idea that anybody who is truly sorry, and sincerely tries to do better, is actually worthy of forgiveness, even someone as deplorable as Rainbow Randolph. The core of Death to Smoochy, despite the numerous horrific people that populate its world, is about someone trying to do good in a world that can make that hard, while also advocating for something that does truly matter. In the long view, the lasting impact of a character like Smoochy, or the real world character he is meant to represent, is in teaching the next generation of children not to give in to darkness and to find a way to make their own dent in the world. Damian Masterson Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and two children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.
- Bottle Up and Explode: Pixar's "Turning Red"
I’m a little late to be writing about Pixar’s most recent film, Turning Red, but I worry that its straight-to-streaming release may have resulted in this extraordinary film not garnering all of the attention and praise that it deserves. Now, of course, it’s no surprise that the best stories often work for any audience, but for a film whose themes are so overtly pitched towards young teen girls, I was astounded by how much Turning Red resonated with me. Throughout, I was very clearly reminded of my own experiences contending with the bubbling cauldron of emotions that come from being that age, as well as my current experiences watching my own younger children come into their own emotions. For so specific and fantastical a story, it’s impressive how universal this film manages to feel. Meilin Lee is a thirteen-year-old girl living in Toronto with her mother and father. Her family runs the Lee Family Temple in Toronto, dedicated to honoring their family’s ancestors, especially their most revered ancestor, Sun Yee. Sun Yee was “a scholar, a poet, and defender of animals. She dedicated her life to the creatures of the forest. Especially the red panda.” As Meilin would soon discover, Sun Yee loved red pandas so much that she asked the gods to turn her into one, and they complied, giving her the ability to harness her emotions to turn into a giant red panda. And Sun Yee passed this ability on to all of her female descendants, something Meilin first discovers one morning, via a very well-worn film trope, when she looks in the bathroom mirror and finds a giant red panda staring back at her. After the initial shock at discovering her metamorphosis, Mei is a little relieved to discover that at least the change isn’t permanent. By forcing herself to calm down, she can slowly transform back into her old self - aside from her now permanently red hair. And, as long as she can keep herself from getting too emotional, she won't unexpectedly change back into the panda. Soon, she even learns that with practice, she can change back and forth between her human and panda forms at will. Now, an untold number of stories and films have tackled the changes kids go through at this particular stage of life, moving from adolescence into puberty, but what Turning Red handles so wonderfully while showing how tumultuous these new roiling emotions can be, is that this isn’t a blip in our lives we’re supposed to get past, but one stage in the lifelong emotional development everyone goes through. The story places Meilin in an intergenerational context with her mother, grandmother, and aunts, who all share having gone through this same experience and, to varying degrees, are all still contending with the constant reminder of having experienced this to the present day. In one sense, Turning Red is something like my favorite kind of X-Men origin story. Mei is a young girl who finds herself unexpectedly transformed by entering puberty. She’s going through powerful and terrifying changes that fundamentally alter her relationship with the world, her own life, and the people in it. And, to a great degree, what is unleashed by this change is shaped by having the right people in her life to support and mentor her throughout this transformation. Part of how Meilin relates to her new superpower is shaped by her family. Her mother knew this was going to happen to her someday because she had gone through it all herself, but she kept it a secret from her daughter, thinking it was something to be frightened and ashamed of. Meilin’s grandmother and aunts are on the same page: this power is something dangerous to be eliminated with a particular ritual at the first opportunity. Importantly, though, the greater part of what shapes Mei’s relationship to her power, the element that makes her experience so different from that of her relatives, is the unwavering support she gets from her friends and peers. When Meilin first transforms into the panda, she panics. Her mom hears her and comes running. Meilin manages to hide in the shower, and through the curtain, her mother wrongly intuits that what’s happened is her daughter has had her first period. It’s interesting that her mother goes immediately into crisis management mode. She has a large pile of pads and remedies and is smotheringly amped to manage the situation for her daughter. Conversely, when her friends knock on her window and discover that the reason that Mei hasn’t been to school is that she’s now a giant red panda, they aren’t the slightest bit scared, or embarrassed for her; they are thrilled. Mei’s friends so embrace this new discovery about their friend that she feels so safe with them that she changes back to her human form without even trying. When her parents later test her ability to control her emotions and control the panda, it’s thinking of the love and support of her friends that grounds Mei enough not to transform. One of the interesting quirks of human beings as a species is how helpless we start out. Unlike some creatures that are self-sufficient at birth, humans are incredibly helpless for a very long time. Part of the peril/benefit of this is that humans, though starting out with many fixed traits, are incredibly responsive and adaptable to our environment; and the biggest element of our environment is that we are each uniquely shaped by the social features of our world: our friends, our family, and our neighbors. We get to see this in how much Mei’s friends shape how she processes the things she’s discovering about herself, but we also get to infer how much the absence of that kind of support influenced how Meilin’s mother and grandmother processed going through the same experiences. The finale of the film is a fairly impressive battle that occurs when Meilin’s mother, Ming, gets so upset with her defiance about giving up the panda, that her own panda bursts free from the pendant she has it trapped inside. This is not made explicit, but her mother’s panda is vastly larger than everyone else’s, seemingly because of how tightly Ming has had to contain her own emotions. While Meilin’s panda is larger than the average adult, Ming’s panda is larger than most buildings. It also would be a bit of a mischaracterization to characterize the ending of the film as a battle, per se, as the conflict between Meilin and her mother is fairly brief, stopping when Mei realizes that what Ming needs from her is the kind of support that Meilin got from her friends. She isn’t powerful enough to handle her mother alone, so Mei's grandmother and aunts break the pendants containing their own pandas, giving them the strength to help perform the ritual that will allow Ming to transform back into her human form. The thing that most makes this a battle is that Meilin is both trying to help her mother, and fighting to also assert her new identity as something other than the perfectly obedient girl that Ming wants her to be. Part of the ritual that contains the panda involves traveling to a magical bamboo forest where they meet Sun Yee and are given the choice to relinquish their panda power, trapping it into a pendant. What first caused the conflict between Meilin and her mother is Mei's refusal to relinquish her power. After performing the ritual again to help her mother, Ming, Meilin, her aunts, and her grandmother, are all transported to the magical bamboo forest again. Once in the forest, Mei goes searching for her mother. She finds Ming, but she doesn’t find her as an adult. Instead, Mei finds her mother as a girl, the same age she was when she first went through the ritual herself. Ming is a young teen girl, laying on the ground, sobbing over getting so angry that she accidentally hurt her mother right before going through the ritual for the first time. Mei hears her mother, now a girl her own age, recounting the exact same struggles she is going through now: Feeling like she has to bottle up her emotions, that she has to be perfect to please her mother, that she’ll never be good enough for her, or anyone. It’s amazing how empathic a moment this is. Meilin gets to discover that her mother actually understands exactly what she’s going through because Ming has been struggling with the exact same feelings her entire life. Additionally, Mei gets to gain a new perspective on those emotions in herself because she sees someone else who is struggling with them and needs help right now. In a fantastic visual, Meilin takes her mother’s hand and walks her through the bamboo forest to meet Sun Ye, all while Ming slowly calms down and ages back to adulthood as they pass through the forest. The film has the most wonderfully nuanced take on emotions, understanding the important difference between managing our emotions and the dangers of simply bottling them up; and the film understands how important the people in our lives are in our figuring that out. Lastly, and most importantly, everyone leaves the bamboo forest on the terms that work for them. Meilin’s mother, aunts, and grandmother accept that Mei is going to keep her panda, while they all choose to once again relinquish theirs. Mei is proud of what she’s become, and her mother has now come to be proud of whatever makes her daughter happy. May everyone be so lucky, as to be able to find themselves, despite whatever trials they may meet, and may everyone find themselves surrounded by people in their lives who can unconditionally love and support them for who they are. Damian Masterson Damian is an endothermic vertebrate with a large four-chambered heart residing in Kerhonkson, NY with his wife and two children. His dream Jeopardy categories would be: They Might Be Giants, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, 18th and 19th Century Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, Caffeine, Gummy Candies, and Episode-by-Episode podcasts about TV shows that have been off the air for at least 10 years.