Category: Movies

Opus: Coda

One extra observation about the movie Opus. Spoilers for the movie.

It’s been a couple of days since I saw Opus, and my opinion of it hasn’t significantly changed — I still thought it was fine, and I seem to have liked it a good bit more than the consensus on Rotten Tomatoes.

But there’s just enough weight to it that it’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind. I still don’t believe that the finale hits as hard as it could have. Partly because it’s presented as if it were a haunting, final twist, even though it doesn’t give enough weight to the most interesting questions.

The movie acts as if the most compelling question is “what really happened?” and then gives a lengthy answer to that. The question of “where are all the bodies?” is raised but not given enough time for us to really think about it, and then we see the answer played out in montage, as if that were the key question. And the most important question: “why did you do it?” is answered in a fairly lengthy conversation about evolution through strength vs intellect vs creativity, that doesn’t really answer anything we care about in that moment. The ideas behind the cult should’ve been made explicit earlier in the movie; the thing I cared most about at the end of the movie were the ideas behind the plan.

Another scene that I thought was a missed opportunity was Ariel’s conversation with her friend/crush-haver, the thrust of which was that she’s too mid to be interesting. In retrospect, I feel like this scene was working too hard to establish Ariel’s inherent likability, instead of planting the seed of an idea that would make the finale hit home harder. Ariel’s motivations seemed perfectly reasonable, so her friend’s comments just came across as cruel instead of helpful “real talk.” We all want our work to be noticed and valued, no matter whether we “deserve” it or not.

I think what’s most interesting about the movie ends up being lost, because it lets Ariel’s most significant character flaw get muddled: she was trying to ride the coattails of more famous and accomplished people, instead of trusting in her own voice from the start. But the friend just essentially says, “there’s nothing interesting about your own voice,” which just reinforces what everyone else is saying throughout the movie. I can understand having a character who’s giving bad advice to the protagonist, and I can understand a character being a manifestation of Ariel’s self-doubt, but I think even a less-corny version of “I’ll show him!” would’ve been stronger. Or better yet, some actual self-reflection on Ariel’s part.1I admit I should allow for the possibility that this was the movie explicitly telling us that Ariel’s not as brilliant a writer as she thinks she is, and that the reason she’s writing about famous people is because she actually doesn’t have anything interesting to say. But I say that if “Ariel’s not that great a writer, actually” was the point all along, and Opus is on some level a horror movie about self-delusion, then it’s a mistake to cast someone who just seems to be good at everything, like Ayo Edebiri.

As it was, there was nothing in the screenplay giving voice to the idea that Ariel was essentially the same as all the other influencers, paparazzi, celebrity interviewers, and writers who’ve become famous for writing about the accomplishments of other, more famous people. And there’s a lot giving voice to the idea that she stands out from the rest because she’s got genuine talent that’s being unfairly overlooked.

Even in the finale, when the specific question of “why was I chosen?” comes up, the answer presented is that Ariel had written something that stood out to Moretti as a memorable turn of phrase. Not that it was her drive, or her ambition, or her willingness to write about other people before she was ready to write for herself. It’s frustrating, since this seems like it would’ve been the perfect opportunity to set up the reveal that was to follow. But the movie was unwilling to let a murderer implicate Ariel for her part in the plan; it had to insist that anyone with any taste at all could recognize Ariel’s unique talent.2Second-guessing again: I don’t remember the phrase itself, but I do remember thinking that it was nonsensical, like a teacher had an “unassuming chin” or something. At the time I just took it as a good-faith effort to write something that would sound like the kind of description a young, somewhat pretentious writer might choose. But if the movie is actually playing 4th-dimensional chess and I’m losing, then I suppose it could be an example of how Ariel was chosen not because her writing was good, but because it was memorable.

So the last shot has Ariel, on camera, looking haunted as she finally realizes what’s happened. But the movie makes it seem like her haunting realization is that the cult of “Levelists” is still out there, all around us! There’s one in the studio with me, right now! And she’s pointedly calling my non-fiction book a “novel” to discredit it! That makes it seem like she’s Cassandra, telling everyone the truth, but cursed by external forces so that no one will believe her.

But the most interesting idea of Opus, I think, is in how much Ariel had been complicit. It’s the idea that the media cannot comment on itself. Fame isn’t actually about being appreciated or even understood; it’s about being seen.

It’s an idea that’s especially relevant when authors are timing their shocking exposés not for when the truth matters the most, but when book sales would be the highest. Bob Woodward has gotten the most attention (and vitriol) from people looking to him for his President-destroying abilities, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we’re living in a “post-truth society.” And even oblivious to the fact that All the President’s Men has arguably become at least as notable for its place in popular culture as its place in journalism or American politics.

There are two scenes in Opus that communicate this idea really well: first is when Moretti is peeking at Ariel’s notebook, and he only comments on her spelling of “sycaphants.” (i.e. He doesn’t actually care whether she’s writing anything defamatory, just as long as she’s writing about him). Second is when she finally gets her one-on-one time with Moretti, with explicit permission to ask him freely about anything at all, and she chooses to ask whether he really bought Freddie Mercury’s teeth. It was a wild piece of random gossip from earlier in the movie, it’s possibly the least relevant piece of information to everything she’s seen in the compound so far, and yet it’s the one thing that’s stuck in her mind. Because as much as she thinks of herself as a journalist, she’s still captivated by what’s evocative more than what’s necessarily true.

That’s the interesting realization that gets lost at the end of the movie: that her motivation hadn’t been to spread the truth, but to use the truth as the hook to make herself be seen and heard.

Oh, and also one other thing I liked about Opus was the title card. It finally gets sprung on us after several minutes of introduction and setup, and I thought it was excellently timed.

  • 1
    I admit I should allow for the possibility that this was the movie explicitly telling us that Ariel’s not as brilliant a writer as she thinks she is, and that the reason she’s writing about famous people is because she actually doesn’t have anything interesting to say. But I say that if “Ariel’s not that great a writer, actually” was the point all along, and Opus is on some level a horror movie about self-delusion, then it’s a mistake to cast someone who just seems to be good at everything, like Ayo Edebiri.
  • 2
    Second-guessing again: I don’t remember the phrase itself, but I do remember thinking that it was nonsensical, like a teacher had an “unassuming chin” or something. At the time I just took it as a good-faith effort to write something that would sound like the kind of description a young, somewhat pretentious writer might choose. But if the movie is actually playing 4th-dimensional chess and I’m losing, then I suppose it could be an example of how Ariel was chosen not because her writing was good, but because it was memorable.

One Thing I Like About Opus

Opus undercuts its own messages about fame by casting a bunch of really talented people

The best thing about Opus is its casting. As soon as I heard “A24 horror movie starring Ayo Edebiri,” I was on board before the trailer even finished.

And it delivers on the promise of “A24 horror movie” just fine. It’s got an overall message that lands well enough, although it lands with a feeling of “okay, I get it,” instead of being as stunning and impactful as it was probably meant to. That’s true of the rest of the movie as well. It all works in context, but nothing punches through as an image or a moment that demands to be vividly remembered.

Now that I’ve got an Apple Watch, it means that I watch everything with a heart monitor attached, and I can tell that Opus was suspenseful because it was buzzing about elevated heart rate every few minutes. It’s a testament to the maturity and confidence of the filmmaking that so many of the horror movie moments are suggested rather than shown.

But the perfect casting throughout is really what stands out. The protagonist is so in line with Ayo Edebiri’s public persona that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it was written specifically for her.1Especially if you noticed that the character’s initials are the same as the actress’s. Like I didn’t notice for two days. She has to be grounded enough not to fall for all the trappings of fame, but still enough of a nerd to find famous people fascinating. She’s got to read as driven, ambitious, and under-appreciated, capable of far more than she’s allowed to do. The overall message only works if she’s a superstar in waiting. And she’s got to be movie-star beautiful, but it’s something that she can put on and take off; it’s not her identity.

(Is it too obvious that I’ve got a crush on Ayo Edebiri? Even if she is a nepo baby).

John Malkovich is, obviously, excellent at being a menacing and unsettling cult leader, as well as seeming like the kind of actor who’d love the chance to play an aging glam rocker. Murray Bartlett is great at being unctuous and self-absorbed but mostly sympathetic. Juliette Lewis is Juliette Lewising the hell out of things.

Even with the smaller parts (in terms of overall screen time), it becomes clear by the end that they were played by the perfect person, the only one who could immediately read as exactly the role they’re playing. This guy looks like mostly-silent, creepy henchman but can also read as a basically normal guy who’d become a fanatic. This woman is a bad guy but is somehow still trustworthy. And so on.

I was excited to see Amber Midthunder’s name in the opening credits, because I felt like she’d proven her star power with Prey and was going to get the chance to show her range. So I was initially disappointed that it seemed like Opus had wasted her for a thankless part. But put in context of the rest of the casting, though, I think they needed exactly what she brought to the part. Even without speaking, she gives off a sense of intensity and makes it immediately clear that she could mess you up without breaking a sweat.

In fact, there seemed to be an interesting age divide across the cast. For the most part, the older actors seemed to be capital-A Acting, while the younger ones were more grounded and naturalistic. I interpreted this as subtle reinforcement of the idea that younger generations would be savvy enough to see through the bullshit, while the older characters had been pursuing fame for so long that they’d stopped second-guessing it. They all speak as if they’d seen it all, but they were the most eager to get swept up in it, and even see it as a reward.

Nile Rodgers and The-Dream are credited for the music in Opus and also as executive producers, although I couldn’t tell if that were just the featured songs, or the overall score. The score is excellent, driving home the unsettling feeling of a creepy cult. But for the songs, it feels like another case of choosing exactly the right people. They have to come across as being brilliant enough to inspire rabid fanaticism. While I didn’t fall in love with them as much as the characters seemed to, the moments when the movie turned itself over to showcasing the music seemed the closest to punching through and becoming unforgettable.

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    Especially if you noticed that the character’s initials are the same as the actress’s. Like I didn’t notice for two days.

One Thing I Like About Black Sunday

An entirely unacademic take on Mario Bava’s classic gothic horror

Black Sunday (originally The Mask of the Demon) has been on my to-watch list for years, partly because of its place in horror movie history as Mario Bava’s official directorial debut, but mostly because of its amazing poster. I finally watched it last night1As is a common theme lately, as part of my break-up with Amazon, as I try to watch as much as I can on Amazon Prime Video before my subscription expires, and it’s easy to see why it was so influential.

I’m by no means enough of a movie buff, especially when it comes to classic horror, to be able to put the movie sufficiently in context. Honestly, I’m more of a fan of the overall aesthetic of classic horror than the movies themselves. Often, it feels like trying to dig through the detritus of censorship, dated performances, and special effects that are still in their infancy, just to find a few moments that feel relevant to modern audiences.

(An exception is The Bride of Frankenstein, which I’d always dismissed as another famous-for-being-famous relic of the classic Universal Monsters days, until I actually watched it and realized that it’s a straight-up masterpiece).2Not to mention being even more of an influence on Young Frankenstein than the original Frankenstein, like I’d always assumed.

But despite all of the aspects that make Black Sunday feel too dated to be relevant — the melodramatic and often nonsensical plot, the weird dubbing throughout, the makeup that sometimes seems more comical than horrific — there are several shots and scenes that stand out like nothing I’d seen before.

Notably, its gruesome opening sequence, which shows an unrepentant witch cursing her inquisitor brother before having the spike-filled “mask of Satan” nailed onto her face. It suggests far more than it shows, but what it shows is brilliant: the brutal spikes coming straight for the camera, a POV shot of the executioner wielding a massive hammer, and a side shot of the hammer pounding the mask into place. I found a pretty good video from the “History of Horror” channel putting Black Sunday in context with the rest of Mario Bava’s work, in particular pointing out that the more shocking moments were part of Italian cinema reacting to a long period of censorship under Mussolini and after WWII.

To me, it set the tone that anything could happen, especially when I considered that Psycho came out in the same year, and I’ve been hearing for years how shocking and scandalous it was for that movie to even show a toilet.

Not to spoil anything, but the rest of the movie feels much more conventional. We discover that its pseudo-vampires need to be killed via a spike through the left eye, which is never shown explicitly but is still traumatic for those of us especially sensitive to that kind of thing. For the most part, the creatures just seem to have some kind of skin condition. One of our vampires can only be recognized as such because his hair has turned white and he’s got a five o’clock shadow. I’d been expecting it all to be much more lurid, but overall it feels more like a few stand-out images tied together loosely by a traditional classic horror movie plot.

But some of those images are amazing. Princess Katja’s appearance, standing in the ruins of a chapel holding two black dogs, is one of the most famous. There are long sequences that feel like a big swing for a filmmaker in the late 50s, with pervasive darkness punctuated by small areas of light. In particular, there’s a pretty lengthy sequence of a man following a lantern-carrying guide through the dark catacombs underneath a castle, and the shots get darker and darker until we can see nothing but the light coming from the lantern itself.

My favorite shots, though, are just before that. A carriage has arrived to pick up one of our protagonists to take him to the castle. It’s full-on gothic. Solid black, led by two black horses driven by a partially-decomposing man-out-of-time all dressed in black. Black Sunday doesn’t use camera effects anywhere else that I could identify, but the shots of the carriage are done in slow motion. The horses gallop through a dense, pitch-black forest through fog, and it’s strikingly dream-like. Or more accurately, nightmare-like.

Mario Bava is often named as one of the progenitors — if not the creator — of giallo. I’m still not familiar enough with the genre to be making any blanket statements, but it feels as if the roots are here, even without the addition of lurid color.3Or maybe more accurately, even if the lurid colors here are pure black and bright white. Stories that fade into the background to allow strikingly stylistic images take prominence and become unforgettable.

The 1960 poster for Black Sunday
  • 1
    As is a common theme lately, as part of my break-up with Amazon, as I try to watch as much as I can on Amazon Prime Video before my subscription expires
  • 2
    Not to mention being even more of an influence on Young Frankenstein than the original Frankenstein, like I’d always assumed.
  • 3
    Or maybe more accurately, even if the lurid colors here are pure black and bright white.

Somehow, irony feels good in a place like this

My favorite thing about the much-parodied AMC ads

Achieving the coveted status of A*Lister — please, no need to bow, I’m really just a regular person like you are — means that I get to see Nicole Kidman’s pre-show ad a lot.

It’s become only semi-ironically “iconic,” with way too many obvious parodies, and an increasingly-less-amusing ritual in the theaters. Back when it was still fresh, I was at a screening of Glass Onion where a couple of guys gave the ad a standing ovation as soon as it started, and that was delightful. Now, at least here in Los Angeles, the ad still always gets a round of applause, which is still cute I guess?

Anyway, there is one part of the ad that is still consistently funny, every time. Kidman describes, “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights go dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before.”

And every time, it cuts to a shot of the gate opening in Jurassic World. A movie that is literally, explicitly, about people choosing to go back to a place where we’ve been before.

Last night before Mickey 17, they showed the ad again, and I was a little disappointed to discover that they’ve “fixed” this in the version of the ad that runs currently. When Kidman talks about going somewhere that we’ve never been before, it no longer shows Jurassic World.

Now it shows Pandora, the planet they go back to in Avatar: The Way of Water.

One Thing I Like About Mickey 17

The science fiction comedy about an expendable space colonist and his clones feels like a smarter and subtler movie is running just below the surface.

Mickey 17 is masterfully made. Just in terms of production design and special effects alone: the scenes with Robert Pattinson interacting with his clone could’ve been the showpiece of a different movie, and they were done so seamlessly that it started to feel like it would’ve been cheaper and easier simply to invent an actual machine to print a duplicate of him.

And that’s before we see the Mickeys interacting with swarms of alien creatures — in a snowstorm! — and they all feel so present that I had to keep reminding myself that I was looking at special effects.

But it was overall too broad for me to really love it. It is completely and unapologetically a comedy, almost always avoiding the temptation to deviate into clever satire when a much bigger and more obvious gag is available.

I think Toni Collette is wonderful, but as with a lot of great actors, she clearly chose this project for the chance to let loose, have fun, and go completely over the top. Still, she gets a scene at the end in which she has to be menacingly evil instead of just cartoonishly evil, and it’s so effective that you understand how so few actors would’ve been able to make it work. Mark Ruffalo seems to be feeding off of her energy, and he somehow manages to make his performance in Poor Things feel like restrained naturalism.

A detail that’s a good example of how Mickey 17 is a smart movie playing things cartoonishly broad: the scenes of a new Mickey being printed, which happens a lot, as you might expect from the premise and the title. Each time, the body does a quick jerk back into the machine as it’s rolling out, keeping it from feeling like some miraculous wonder, and instead making it clear that it’s just another ultimately clumsy and analog piece of dehumanizing technology. I loved it as a wonderfully understated gag.

But as more and more Mickeys get printed, the crew becomes increasingly blasé about the whole process, so we see Mickey’s body unceremoniously dumped out of the machine until the techs can scramble to get the bed in place. In a later repeat of the same gag, no one even notices, and he just flops out of the machine naked onto the floor. It’s really the same idea as the small jerk of the print bed, but it’s played so broad that nobody could possibly miss it.

And throughout, it felt like there was a more clever and understated movie floating just below the surface of the cartoon. I suppose it’s a virtuoso piece of filmmaking simply because it still managed to play on my emotions even though it was a cartoon.

One thing I liked in particular was a scene early on, when we see Mickey’s love-at-first-sight introduction to security officer Nasha. Ruffalo’s character is on stage making a bombastic speech, and that’s all that we hear — we can see Mickey and Nasha meeting each other, and we can guess at what they’re thinking because of their facial expressions, but we can’t hear anything that’s being said.

I thought it was a fantastic way to suggest that it doesn’t matter what was being said. For key moments like that, we often don’t remember what we said, but we definitely remember how we felt. It seemed like such a poignant way to show a key memory for someone who is nothing except for his memories.

It also didn’t go in the direction that I’d expected it to go, which was a welcome surprise. But explaining exactly how requires spoilers. To sum up my review: I thought Mickey 17 was very, very good, and I just wish that it had allowed itself to be great.

Continue reading “One Thing I Like About Mickey 17”

The Only Thing I Liked About The Monkey

The new horror movie based on a Stephen King short story reminded me of when I first read the story, and not in a good way. (Spoilers for the movie)

On this blog, I’ve pledged to elevate the stuff I enjoy and not spend any time writing about the stuff I don’t like. That’s not just part of the “Good Vibes Only” policy I’m more strictly observing since the 2024 election, but because a negative review is almost always worthless. Not only is our time better spent promoting the stuff we love, but it’s time wasted to dwell on the negatives. It won’t (and shouldn’t!) dissuade anyone who’s eager to enjoy something, and it won’t (and shouldn’t!) change the opinion of someone who’s already enjoyed it or disliked it.1Also, tonight I’ve been reading some of my old posts where I just trashed a movie or TV show, and I invariably came across as a smug little shit.

I’ve worked on stuff that has been panned by reviewers, multiple times. And even after I got over the initial impulse to take it personally, I was left with a feeling of impotent frustration. You’re never going to like this, we’re never going to get anything out of the reviews, and it’s never going to change, so just move on, pal. There’s literally nothing to be gained by complaining about it over and over again.

So I’ll mention one thing that I genuinely liked about the new movie The Monkey, written and directed by Osgood Perkins based on a short story from Stephen King’s collection Skeleton Crew. There’s a scene where our young protagonist Hal is sitting in his bedroom, growing increasingly convinced that the toy monkey he found in his father’s belongings is somehow the cause of the horrible misfortune that’s started to befall his family and their acquaintances.

It’s a quiet scene, and when he looks up, there’s a sudden close-up shot of the monkey at the top of the dresser, with a jump-scare stinger of horror movie music as the frame is filled with the toy’s malevolent stare. Like the best moments in Longlegs, it’s horror movie artistry perfectly timed and executed, and it’s funny because it’s so discordant and such a non sequitur.

That’s also the last thing I liked about the movie2Okay, I did like the detail that Elijah Wood’s loathsome parenting guru character was wearing some kind of sweatshirt with a flesh-colored stripe in the center that bizarrely and needlessly accentuated his nipples, which I really, really disliked.

If anyone’s been looking forward to seeing the movie, but is on the fence, like I was, about how scary and gory it would be: I won’t (and shouldn’t!) dissuade you from seeing it. It’s not at all scary, and it quickly establishes itself as going for black comedy instead of unsettling horror, and it is not at all subtle. So there’s not even the drawn-out tension of the best moments in Final Destination, which it’s frequently compared to.

I’d also heard it compared to the Peter Jackson movie Dead Alive/Braindead, which is an over-the-top zombie movie.3If it doesn’t sound familiar, it’s the one where the priest shouts “I kick ass for the Lord!” and a pack of zombies are taken out by someone holding a power lawnmower like a shield. That worried me, because I have a fairly low tolerance for gore, and Dead Alive is one of the few movies that’s made me actually feel like I was going to throw up, even though it was clearly intended to be so over-the-top that it was funny. The Monkey is very bloody and gory, but it’s all done so cartoonishly that to me, at least, it neither registers as scary nor as nauseating. There’s one bloody death scene4With the kids’ mother. that seemed intended to be intense, but it’s not very gory. Most of the gore moments are done in quick succession as 5-10 second punchlines.

So that’s my review. Not my thing, but if an over-the-top horror comedy seems like your thing, and you’ve been wary because of word about the gore factor, be assured that it’ll probably be fine if you’ve been able to handle any recent horror comedy.

Continue reading “The Only Thing I Liked About The Monkey”
  • 1
    Also, tonight I’ve been reading some of my old posts where I just trashed a movie or TV show, and I invariably came across as a smug little shit.
  • 2
    Okay, I did like the detail that Elijah Wood’s loathsome parenting guru character was wearing some kind of sweatshirt with a flesh-colored stripe in the center that bizarrely and needlessly accentuated his nipples
  • 3
    If it doesn’t sound familiar, it’s the one where the priest shouts “I kick ass for the Lord!” and a pack of zombies are taken out by someone holding a power lawnmower like a shield.
  • 4
    With the kids’ mother.

One Thing I Love About Paddington in Peru

I adored the third installment in the Paddington movies, where everyone seems to be so happy to be there that the joy is contagious

I haven’t yet seen either of the first two Paddington movies, although they’re high on my to-watch list since they seem to be universally beloved. The beginning of Paddington in Peru, the third installment, didn’t just quickly get me up to speed. It welcomed me into the family with a huge smile and a hug.

The entire movie is filled with so much unrestrained joy, and I hadn’t appreciated how much I needed that until I found myself at the end, sobbing in the theater from sheer happiness.

Early in the movie, there’s a scene in which Paddington receives his British passport in the mail, and a semicircle of British character actors are all around to congratulate him and to give him a gift. It’s immediately obvious that they’re characters from the earlier films, returning for a brief cameo. It also seemed obvious to me that they were all delighted to be there, and they were eager to come back. Their smiles all radiated a sense of joy and kindness that was contagious. It was impossible not to smile back. I don’t know these characters’ names, but I already consider them my friends.

In the same batch of introductory scenes, we see Paddington’s host father Mr Brown at his job in London. He’s delivering a presentation to his new boss, who is explicitly described as American, and who’s played by Haley Atwell.1Who I learned later is of dual British and American citizenship, so maybe her casting isn’t as odd as I’d originally thought. Again, I got the sense that she’d jumped at the chance to appear in the movie, doing an accent, just so she could be part of something so delightful.

And speaking of delightful, there’s also Olivia Colman playing a singing nun at a home for retired bears who’s not at all suspicious. She never seems to be trying to steal the scene, yet she always does, proving once again that she’s one of the best living actors. With just a subtle shift in facial expression, she can take the attention from an entire pack of CG bears doing physical comedy.

My overriding sense from the movie was that everyone involved was delighted to be there, and they’d all jumped at the opportunity to come back for the third movie. So I was surprised to learn afterwards that the director of the first two hadn’t returned, and more surprisingly, that the character of Mrs Brown had been recast from Sally Hawkins to Emily Mortimer. Surprising because that character is the emotional core of the movie, and Mortimer seemed as if she’d always been there. Considering how quickly I started thinking of Paddington as a real bear instead of a computer-generated creation, I probably shouldn’t be so surprised that good actors are good at acting.

It’s such a needlessly beautiful movie, as well, with animated sequences going into Mrs Brown’s paintings, a cross-section of the house illustrating her anxiety over becoming an empty nester, and later, a series of period flashbacks showing the adventures of Antonio Banderas’s ancestors (each played by Banderas). It struck me as such a joyful expression of artistry that it made me even more disappointed that this has become the outlier, and the standard for family movies is to throw as many Hollywood movie stars into the cast as possible to disguise the fact that they’re completely soulless. During the depressing parade of trailers before Paddington in Peru, I saw one for The Smurfs that felt as if an icy spectral hand had reached out of the screen and wrapped around my heart. Then the trailer for the Minecraft movie felt like the hand squeezing.

Whether Paddington in Peru adequately captured the magic of the previous movies, I can’t say. But it’s also irrelevant, because I was completely delighted by all of it. There’s such a sense of kindness throughout that might seem overly juvenile in its pure simplicity, but is in vanishingly short supply since so many of us seem to have forgotten it.

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    Who I learned later is of dual British and American citizenship, so maybe her casting isn’t as odd as I’d originally thought.

One Thing I Like About Captain America: Brave New World

I’m still happy that so many of Hollywood’s resources are being put towards weird genre mashups

For quite a while now, the consensus around Captain America: Brave New World was a shrug and “it’s fine.” Critics were eager to dismiss it as yet another symbol of Hollywood’s cultural bankruptcy, a sign of how the MCU is destroying the very notion of art itself, but that’s nothing new. But even long-time fans seem to have been giving it a tepid response.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it! It jumps right into some Mission: Impossible-ish action sequences, playing like a modern action-heavy spy thriller but with a hero who has giant wings that absorb energy. Then it picks up the storyline about Isaiah Bradley from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier1Or more accurately, from Kyle Baker’s Truth comics, and before you know it, we’re at the White House and Harrison Ford is the President on a futuristic podium talking about the Celestial buried at the end of The Eternals and how it’s giving the world adamantium.

I’ve said lots of times how I was never a Marvel guy when I read comics, so it still comes as a pleasant surprise whenever I see an MCU reference work on me the way it’s supposed to. As soon as they mentioned adamantium, I was mentally doing a fist pump and silently saying “Hell yeah!”

There’s one scene in the midst of all that which I especially liked, because it was so odd that it took me out of the movie. The scene had new Captain America Sam Wilson in a room somewhere in the White House having a private conversation with newly-elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. The topic of the conversation is that Ross wants Wilson to re-start the Avengers.

I didn’t put a spoiler around that because it’s about the least surprising thing he could’ve said. Even if you didn’t assume (as I had) that this was the whole reason for having a Captain America in the first place, you’d know that it was going to happen because they’ve already announced the titles of the next two Avengers movies.2It was more surprising when they mentioned Celestial Island, since I’d assumed they were just going to pretend like The Eternals had never happened. This conversation was about as unexciting as it gets… which is why it was so odd that they scored it with suspense movie tension music.

It actually took me a minute to notice it was happening; it just kind of washed over me like the lingering Big Action Movie Soundtrack meant to make every punch and explosion seem momentous. But this was different. It was going for actual tension, clearly implying that I was supposed to be on the edge of my seat while watching this innocuous conversation between an old man with heart problems and a superhero I’d just seen take out an entire castle full of bad guys.

I don’t think that the choice worked, exactly, but what I like about it is that it reminded me just what a weird mashup of genres this movie is. And how remarkable it is that the MCU has grown so huge while making these bizarre, nerdy movies that, for the most part, don’t give a damn about awards season. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was one of the best in the franchise, and a huge part of that was how it transitioned from big-budget action movie to super-paranoid 1970s spy thriller and then to something far weirder.

Continue reading “One Thing I Like About Captain America: Brave New World”
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    Or more accurately, from Kyle Baker’s Truth comics
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    It was more surprising when they mentioned Celestial Island, since I’d assumed they were just going to pretend like The Eternals had never happened.

Let me in now and it can be nice

Overthinking the idea of Longlegs as being horror movie drag. Lots of spoilers!

After I saw Longlegs the other night, I was content with my take that it was an extremely dumb movie, brilliantly executed. That was that. But it seems to have occupied a mostly undeserved place in my brain, forcing me to keep thinking about it, not once, not twice, but as many times as it likes.

I’ve been trying to balance David Lynch’s philosophy of “the movie is the talking!” with the hope that I’ll find the one comment, review, or video essay that explains why I feel so conflicted about it. The best I’ve seen so far is from Erik Odeldahl on Bluesky:

For me it had the same vibe as the late 70s – 80s Argentos (Suspiria, Phenomena, Inferno). Super stylish and incredibly beautiful, with stories that kind of make sense but not really 🙂 With Longlegs, I kind of interpreted it as one big Satanic Panic joke too.

The Suspiria comparison is dead on: I have no problem thinking of that movie as a masterpiece, even though its story is pretty dumb. So how come I can accept that a European ballet academy would have a big, spare, liminal room full of razor wire, but the FBI not knowing the most basic personal information about its agents is too much for me to suspend my disbelief?

One of the differences is that Suspiria seems to me to have a sense of earnestness about it. I don’t think that Argento or any of the other filmmakers actually believed in ballet witches, but I do think they meant for the movie to be taken as it was presented, as a fantasy horror. With Longlegs, I could never shake the feeling that it was being insincere.

Earlier, I described it as “camp horror”1Camp as in straight-faced mockery, not as in the place where Jason Voorhies kills people, but that’s not right. I think it’s more accurate to say that it feels to me like “horror movie drag.”

It starts with something that’s stylized and artificial, but is often treated as if it were dead serious (gender expression, or Hollywood horror movies about FBI agents investigating serial killers). It takes the most recognizable signifiers and exaggerates them as far as possible. Then it presents itself as if it were the real thing, but with everybody involved knowing that it’s a performance. Turning the dials to maximum on all of the signifiers turns it into something else entirely. And if it “passes” as the real thing, that’s fine, but that’s not the point of it.

Continue reading “Let me in now and it can be nice”
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    Camp as in straight-faced mockery, not as in the place where Jason Voorhies kills people

One Thing I Kind of Like About Longlegs

Longlegs is absolutely a case of style over substance, but that’s not actually a bad thing. Mild spoilers for the movie.

Before I say anything else about Longlegs, I should make it clear that it worked on me. I can tell because my watch was buzzing every 5-10 minutes, warning me that my heart rate had gotten too high. It is extremely creepy, right from the start.

But it’s also bonkers. Near nonsensical. By the last act, it had given in to its goofiness to such a degree that all of its creepiness had evaporated, leaving me to wonder what I really thought of it. (But I still turned the lights on when going upstairs).

There are two highlights: one is an extended sequence where the protagonist is inside her absurdly creepy home alone at night, and she gets her first solid clue to crack the case. There is a ton that doesn’t make sense about the scene. Does she commute every day from DC to a secluded log cabin in the woods? Why does she turn on the outside light and then go out to the dark portion of the house? Why does she immediately go outside? How did an intruder get past her and into her house?

But it still all works in the moment, because it’s filmed not just like a classic suspense movie scene, but like a super-heightened version of one. The house itself is both dark and exposed. The protagonist is small in the frame in a tiny island of light, surrounded by dim spaces around the room where an assailant could suddenly appear, an open doorway to the next room that a killer could jump out of, huge windows just waiting for a face to appear in a jump scare.

The other highlight is the opening scene, a bizarre encounter between a young girl and a stranger, in a small, ViewMaster-like frame that the movie used for flashbacks. Everything is framed weird. The stranger’s car doesn’t get close enough to the house, and the camera never gets close enough for us to see what’s inside it. The girl is completely expressionless, and her mood and even motivation is impenetrable. She looks at trees around the yard, each accompanied with a discordant jump-scare stinger. The stranger is cut off by the top of the frame, until just before you can see their face, which cuts immediately to the opening titles.

It’s all so eerie and unsettling, and it sets the mood perfectly. Why is any of it scary? We don’t know, really, but it must be, because the movie is telling us that it is!

And ultimately, that’s the best thing about Longlegs. I can’t really say that I liked it very much, but I absolutely respect the style of it. It commits so hard to being creepy that you have to appreciate how much it works, even while you’re completely aware that what you’re watching is absurd.

There are a few sequences in the middle that seem deliberately arranged for sustained weirdness, and specifically to let one of the actors show just how fully they’ve committed to the movie. Kiernan Shipka as a girl still under the thrall of some kind of evil. Nicolas Cage as Longlegs (not a spoiler!) freaking out in his car. And it starts with the head of a psychiatric home who is, for some reason, over-the-top flamboyant and careless about the condition of the patients.

After that barrage of performances, I decided that Longlegs is something that I haven’t exactly seen before: a kind of camp horror. Not a horror comedy, not something over-the-top in its gore (it’s actually surprisingly restrained on that front, in fact), not a lazy slasher, and not a parody that’s winking at the audience. Instead, it’s as if they took every aspect that makes Silence of the Lambs work and turned it all up to full volume, while refusing to take any of it that seriously.

Instead of calling it style over substance, maybe it’s more accurate to say that the style is the substance. In any case, I think it’s bullshit, but that doesn’t keep it from being gloriously creepy bullshit.

One Thing I Like About Hundreds of Beavers

The live-action cartoon is exactly the right kind of so-lowbrow-it’s-clever, especially when it’s acknowledging its own artifice

I only intended to watch a couple minutes of Hundreds of Beavers last night, just long enough to verify that it was included with Amazon Prime video, but I was caught up in it pretty quickly, and I ended up watching the whole thing.

It was released in 2022, and I’ve been hearing people raving about it for the past two years. And it seems very much like something that would’ve blown my mind had I seen it without knowing anything about it. After the opening song, it’s filmed like a silent movie, in grainy monochrome, with a handful of actors and a ton of people in animal suits acting out all the parts of a hyper-violent, adult-oriented Looney Tunes cartoon.

It’s extremely clever, alternating between absurd slapstick, lowbrow humor, and ingenious gags with a rhythm that keeps you engaged far longer than you might expect. (Hence my “accidentally” watching the whole thing!) There were more laugh-out-loud moments than just about anything I’ve seen recently. One of my favorite gags was our protagonist Jean Kayak unsuccessfully using lady rabbit snowmen posed removing their bras, in an attempt to attract a couple of rabbits that turn out to be gay. Another had Kayak joining an experienced trapper with a team of sled dogs; when they camped every night, the humans would lie by the fire while the dogs would sit around a table and play poker. The dogs were picked off one by one, until the only survivor would stand at the table and play solitaire.

But possibly because I went into the movie knowing what to expect, I ended up liking it but not entirely loving it. I love that the filmmakers approached it as a real work of art, and they committed to making something that’s completely unlike anything else being made today. And I love that it felt as if they’d used everything available to get the look exactly right — cartoon drawings, video effects, puppets, overlays, some computer-generated imagery, whatever it takes. The end result is unique and completely true to itself, and also pretty damn corny.

One thing I like a lot is that as the movie progresses, it starts to embrace the absurdity of stuff that it’s spent the last hour asking you to accept as if it weren’t absurd. Throughout the movie, most of the animals are played by humans in animal suits, and as far as the movie’s concerned, they’re animals. Even though they’re walking around on two legs and doing human type stuff. When Jean Kayak manages to kill a raccoon and take it to the furrier, we see the autopsy, which includes pulling out lots of felt intestines and a heart-shaped pillow.

Later, when we meet a Native American trapper, we see that his horse is two men in an even cheaper horse suit, with the face of one of the men clearly visible underneath the misshapen head. A while after that, we see the Native American try to mount his horse, which clearly involves clumsily climbing onto a man’s back and trying to hold on.

By the end of the movie, Jean Kayak is fighting dozens of beavers, and he’s literally knocking the stuffing out of each one. A head will fly off, sending bits of padding and styrofoam peanuts flying everywhere. During one brawl, he picks up the body of one of the beavers and spins it around the room, and it’s clearly just his twirling around an empty suit. Then the beavers retaliate by throwing him into a wall, and it’s clearly an empty human suit.

There’s a rigid set of symbols in the movie, one that it establishes over time. When a character does this, that happens. When we see this shape, we know it means that. It builds up a language of gags over time, as (for instance) we learn what bait attracts which animal, which animals prey on which other ones, etc. So it’s neat that towards the end of the movie, it starts to deconstruct the language it’s been constructing this whole time. The symbols start to fold in on themselves. This guy in a beaver suit represents a beaver, and he is a beaver, except now he’s also a guy in a beaver suit. The Treachery of Furries, maybe?

I don’t think any of that was in the mindset of the filmmakers, or at least I hope it wasn’t. I just think that it’s an interesting side effect that happens when you so completely commit to the bit. From watching Hundreds of Beavers, I learned that the filmmakers have an earlier movie called Lake Michigan Monster that’s also on Prime Video. From the trailer, it seems to be almost as committed to being visually distinctive, and every bit as committed to being unapologetically silly.

One Thing I Love About Companion

Companion is so confident and clever that it feels like a fresh and insightful take on some fairly well-worn ideas. Lots of spoilers in this post.

I thought Companion was excellent, and it benefits from knowing as little as possible about it before going in. I’d classify it as a “comedy thriller.” It’s been labeled as a “horror comedy,” but that seems like overkill to me although it is quite violent. If that feels like it’d be up your alley, I strongly recommend seeing it based on that alone.

It doesn’t depend on its reveals, but it is improved by them, and even the trailer feels as if it gives away a bit too much. The magic of it is that it all still works even if you go in knowing the premise. And it still manages to pile on new surprises and new complications, even when they feel obvious in retrospect. Whether you’re getting the shock of the new, or you’re feeling rewarded for being able to pick up on the clues, it all works.

The cast is filled with some of the most appealing actors working today, and every single performance is flawless. The core cast — Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Harvey Guillén, and Megan Suri — each gets at least one moment where they transcend their role and make it feel “real.” And there’s a moment with Jack Quaid’s character in particular that I’m calling out as the One Thing I Love. (Last warning: spoilers after this point).

Continue reading “One Thing I Love About Companion”