Yeah Dude, Okay

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

October 7th, 2017

Let’s cut to the chase and tackle the item of most immediate concern: for a 35-years-later sequel to an entrenched classic, Blade Runner 2049 does a remarkable job of not pissing on the legacy of the original. So much so, in fact, that one is willing to overlook the film’s occasional missteps because it so coherently expands on and honors the original work aesthetically and, more significantly, thematically. It’s a little disheartening that that comes as something of a surprise; I want to be optimistic about the current cultural fondness for nostalgia (since I enjoy a lot of the product thereof) but it’s still hard to escape the law of diminishing returns. Like Mad Max: Fury Road before it, this film does–and does so with a greater burden of continuity. So cheers to Denis Villeneuve and screenwriters Hampton Fancher & Michael Green for that.

It helps that the two films are very different, although not at first glance. The Los Angeles of 2049 is still a barren wasteland, no longer belching fire but radiating out from dead-insectile towers like a massive necropolis. The violent overlap of languages and cultures is still there, more intense than ever; the advertisements are no longer confined to animated billboards, becoming hallucinatory holographic giants dancing in the street. But where the first film was hot, sweaty, and claustrophobic, shuttered away in noir shadow from brilliant light just outside, the sequel is cold and expansive, suffused with haze that implies vast, empty spaces between the interlinked cells of civilization.

The story and world similarly opens out, as both films use the premise–manufactured human-like beings called “replicants” exist, but how human are they really?–to comment on the anxiety of their times. The original film was a question mark; it slowly pulled the rug out from under the audience’s basic assumptions until it was unclear whether Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford, reprising the role in this film), a “blade runner” tasked with hunting down rogue replicants, was himself artificial. Or, for that matter, what the implications would be either way for the larger powers that drive the chess game of a plot. But such ideas are passé now. Modern, technologically and socially jaded audiences start from a place of unstable identity and distrust of narrative. So in response, Blade Runner 2049 is an exclamation point. We know our current blade runner, nicknamed K from the first digit of his serial number (and an excellent use of Ryan Gosling’s penchant for looking full of suppressed turmoil; see also: Drive) is a replicant. This plot is less interested in undermining the human (read: normalized) perspective than in following the perspective of the marginalized as they build an identity and a capacity for empathy that resists the exploitation that surrounds them. I want to delve my teeth more into that, to try and unpack some of the film’s images and ideas more thoroughly, but to say more would be doing a disservice to a story that takes its time to unfold. So perhaps the less said the better, for now.

I mentioned missteps and there are some, the time spent unfolding being one. At 163 minutes, it’s nearly an hour longer than the (longest version of the) original film and lacks some of the tightness that is belied by that film’s often deliberate pace (which, in fairness, does vary a bit from cut to cut). Some scenes linger on a little long, there is a hackneyed moment here or there, it’s a little hard to hear Jared Leto talk through the scenery in his mouth, but honestly none of it ends up mattering that much. The experience is immersive and compelling in a way that seems like it mostly respects its audience and the moments that are uncomfortable seem to work toward the greater goal. Throw in some interesting international casting, beautiful camerawork by the always reliable Roger Deakins, and a score from Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch that updates Vangelis’s operatic synths and you have a pretty attractive package.

I’m leery of bestowing classic status on new things. But in even saying so I’ve tipped my hand, haven’t I? In any case, it’s hard to picture this being a film that’s easily forgotten, left in the wake of the disposable-culture machine. Because it’s not a cynical plundering of a beloved memory as much as a contemporary and thoughtful response; that’s what the film is about, narratively and per se. Admittedly, I’m not as rabid a fan of the original as some–Roger Ebert, in reviewing Blade Runner: The Final Cut in 2007, said that he for a long time admired it “at arms length,” which echoes my feelings–but from that vantage, I can’t really imagine a better sequel to it than this one.
Wind River (2017)

September 29th, 2017

I chose Wind River for this review on the strength of writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s previous work. Both 2015’s Sicario (written by Sheridan but directed by Denis Villeneuve, himself emerging as one of modern filmmaking’s premiere stylists) and last year’s Hell or High Water (also written by Sheridan but directed by someone else, in this case David Mackenzie, a Scottish director with whom I’m not terribly familiar) both ranked among the strongest Oscar-nominated films of their respective years, contrasting brutal violence with the quiet force of their emotional and psychological intensity. This film works in much the same mode, but feels slighter and less developed by comparison. I don’t consider it a failure, but I do feel a little less certain what to take away from its various elements.

The premise is that of a fairly conventional thriller: on the eponymous native reservation in Wyoming, the body of a young woman is found in the snow by US Fish & Wildlife agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who is then recruited into helping track down the killer by the only available–and still relatively green–FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen). But the film is less concerned with the mystery aspect, instead–much like the films mentioned above–functioning more in the tradition of the western. Like a western–a revisionist western in particular–it sets up a series of familiar oppositions: native and white, male and female, civilization and wilderness, and probes at the power dynamic between them.

The distrust of the native population re: white authority is palpable in ways both big and small. The chief of the tribal police, a resigned and weary Graham Greene, reminds Banner that they cannot expect backup, in no small part because the response of the authorities to their problems is usually less passionate than she, but a more subtle and telling moment comes when a woman lends the unprepared agent some winter gear to go out into the (literal) field. “This isn’t a gift,” she warns firmly, speaking indirectly to a legacy of violence and entitlement that underscores the film.

This dovetails with the violence and entitlement towards women that makes up the mechanical aspect of the film’s murder plot. In an unexpected bit of narrative structure, the film jumps in time in its final act–we watch the inciting incident play out before we witness its climax. The choice is an intelligent one; it throws the audience off balance for a moment, giving up on mystery in favor of a more visceral tension. But more importantly, the sequence distills how a white, masculine dominion over physical space translates to a (perceived) dominion over the people–particularly women–in it.

Even in this final conflict, Lambert is literally a man apart, traveling his own path, his white hunter’s camo melting him into the landscape itself. He is an archetypal western hero–solitary and stoic with a tragic backstory, most at home in the wilderness and not quite able to belong. It’s immediately made clear he is an ally who values the culture of the people around him–in an early moment, teaching his son to ride a horse, the boy asks if his moves are “pretty cowboy,” only to be gently corrected that they’re “pretty Arapahoe.” But he’s also reminded by one of the reservation’s angry young men that he can’t really identify: “the only thing native about you is an ex-wife and daughter you couldn’t protect.”

To his credit as an actor, Renner is more than up to portraying those interior conflicts. His performance is sensitive and rich, even if he is occasionally saddled with dialogue that comes off a little overly self-conscious and a bit like a dour motivational poster. His character is interesting and sympathetic but his complete centricity is also what ultimately feels like blunts the message. Olsen does a solid job with what arc her character has–she becomes visibly more comfortable wielding authority as the story progresses, going from “not that I’m much help or anything,” to being able to diffuse a standoff between several armed men. Likewise Gil Birmingham makes a relatively brief but powerful impact as the dead girl’s father (particularly in the film’s closing moments), hanging on to his identity and choices in the face of them crumbling around him. But even the two of them aren’t given much background or narrative space to breathe and change in a really impactful way. This is ultimately a film about a white man, even as it feels like it’s trying not to be.

Perhaps that’s somewhat the point, I suppose, because it does feel like it’s about the use of power and its corresponding violent capacity. And it is a violent film–one of the first images we see is of a predatory wolf being shot as it stalks a herd of sheep. That violence punctuates the desolation of a beautifully shot landscape, and it is to the credit of the filmmakers–Sheridan, cinematographer Ben Richardson, editor Gary D. Roach, and the cast–that the film is taut with its constant potential. But where Lambert finds a personal redemption in holding that very power against those who wield it irresponsibly, it’s hard to really say what to make of that conclusion when the power itself seems to be the, by implication at least, insurmountable problem.

I’ll repeat that I don’t think this renders the film a failure, but it does make it more difficult and less satisfying than the director’s previous work. It’s worth seeing as part of the continued evolution of a promising filmmaker and for its understated central performance. And it’s engaging throughout–the film is anything but boring, but it comes with a lot of baggage that the final payoff doesn’t quite address to even the morally and intellectually complex degree I’ve been led to expect by this developing auteur.
Mother!

September 22nd, 2017

I didn’t really know what to expect going into Mother! I knew it had an interesting cast–Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristin Wiig. I knew I had a generally favorable impression of Darren Aronofsky’s previous work-–I liked Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and Black Swan all in an over-the-top, Grand Guignol kind of way. But what interested me most about the limited information I had was the divisive critical opinion surrounding the film. I try not to read articles about a movie I plan to write about before I’ve seen it, but the general impression seemed to be that the film inspired strong reactions, both negative and positive, with little in the way of a middle ground.

After seeing it, this makes complete sense. On the one hand, it feels like a half-baked, near incoherent mess, chock full of obscure motivations and deranged fantastical elements that cram uncomfortably into a narrative space not big enough for all of them. And yet… that very uncomfortable feeling seems to be crucial to the film on a more guttural level. I left the theater overwhelmed and breathless, having undergone a visceral experience that I did not fully understand but which was all the more nerve-shredding because of it. The reasons it fails on one level are the same reasons it succeeds on another.

It’s clear, at least, that Mother! is an allegory of some sort. It takes place entirely in a single house in an unspecified location. None of the characters have names–the crawl is a list of archetypal designations like Damsel, Philanderer, Fool, Wanderer, etc. There’s copious use of unabashed symbolism–the mysterious crystal in Javier Bardem’s office, the bleeding hole in the floorboards of a side room, Ed Harris’s lighter, et al. But the nature of the allegory, beyond a basic struggle between creation and destruction, is elusive. The artistic process, familial and relationship dynamics, feminism, communism, fascism, religion, environmentalism, existentialism, and on and on, are all thrown into this kitchen sink of possible interpretations that make it hard to pin down the movie as saying anything at all. Images and ideas push against the periphery without context or development, ending up in a space of basic epistemological doubt; when it comes down to it, I’m not really certain what actually happened in this movie.

But boy, did it happen. It’s worth noting the exclamation point in the title because the movie works to earn it from its first moments. It plays out like a home-invasion film; the camera stays uncomfortably close to Jennifer Lawrence’s face throughout in a claustrophobic space that keeps getting penetrated with escalating violence. At first it’s… well, not subtle, but more grounded, letting the audience feel like they know what’s happening before wrong-footing them with a bizarre narrative decision or nightmarish image. A backhandedly aggressive performance from Michelle Pfeiffer in particular sets a tone that begins plausibly but becomes increasingly surreal, ending in a balls-out apocalyptic horror-movie of a third act.

And it’s the complete inexplicability of the unfolding situation that makes it so terrifying. It’s easy to feel for Lawrence’s character, being left out of crucial information and feeling increasingly helpless; the harder she fights to get a hold on what’s happening, the less effect she’s able to have on the cataclysmic events going on in what is supposed to be a safe, personal space. Javier Bardem looms over her as tormentor/protector, but we ultimately know very little about even him and her pleas only seem to make the situation worse. There’s an energy in being pulled into that kind of terror and it’s one Aronofsky and crew exploit with a not insignificant level of thought and craft. I feel like this is a film that will reveal a lot of minute detail on rewatching, but it’s hard to speak to it now because I was so physically caught up in the moment.

So, what then? Is this a good genre movie? A bad art movie? Both? Neither? To what degree does it have to make sense to be successful? What even are the parameters of success here? How the hell am I supposed to approach a movie like this from a critical perspective? What I find most interesting about it, personally, is that it’s forcing me to have a real think about that question itself. But I don’t know what that means in terms of recommendation, which is ostensibly my purpose here.

I’m reminded of a recent New York Times article that got a lot of play about the film industry grousing about the reductivism of Rotten Tomatoes scores being so ubiquitous and a primary metric by which people decide to see movies or not. Such complaints come off as scapegoating–if the industry were more committed to making more interesting, less formulaic and insulting films, they’d probably get better scores–but a movie like this highlights that point from a different perspective. Trying to assign a number to this movie feels ultimately pointless; it’s too much like a Rorshach test for that kind of metric to carry any weight.

I don’t know if that’s a recommendation exactly. I don’t know if you should see this movie, if you’ll consider it worth your time or not. But I suspect–I hope, anyway–that it’s enough for you to figure that out for yourself.
IT (2017)

September 12th, 2017

One of the challenges of adapting an established property is taking on the baggage that your audience has with that property and I feel like my experience with Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of It kind of illustrates that point. I have never read Stephen King’s 1986 novel but I saw the film with Kat who has read it several times. Conversely, she has only recently seen the 1990 ABC miniseries adaptation directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, a film I have fond memories of seeing in middle school for the first of several times. A lot of this comes from our discussion on the ride home: credit where it’s due.

One of the few things I was aware of going in was the fact that the setting had been changed from the late ’50s in the novel and 1960 of the earlier film to the 1980s and this change is actually one of the movie’s canniest decisions. I’m a little younger than the characters are portrayed–about Georgie’s age, actually–but I’m close enough that identifying with kids in the late ’80s has a more visceral impact than the earlier setting would have. And it’s to the movie’s credit that it nails the millieu–the look, the tone, the speech all feel authentic in a way that’s kind of just beyond remembering concretely. Which, of course, is a huge part of the story of It.

What deflated me about it, though, is that is precisely the part of the story that this adaptation most ignores. I’m fine with the fact that there is no intercutting of time–it allows the film to have a narrative flow without feeling like it’s trying to cram too much in, a major problem in the miniseries (especially the first/primarily-childhood half). But very little attention is given in this adaptation to the fact that these characters, as children, experienced something the adults around them could not. Only one brief scene between Beverly and her father calls any attention to this point. The film does an excellent job of establishing the adult world as equally, if not more terrifying than the fantastical one but it otherwise maintains a clear distinction between the two. Which feels like missing something crucial about the story: the power of what one is willing (or able) to believe; that a werewolf could leap off a movie screen* or, more importantly, an inhaler could spew battery acid. The characters in this movie keep reminding themselves (and each other) that “it isn’t real,” instead of committing to the idea that it is, which undercuts both the non-jump scare factor and the poetry of the metaphor. The climactic fight scene thus becomes a rote how-many-times-can-we-hit-it-fest instead of a daring act of faith. It takes away a lot of the impact.

(*This is another, comparatively minor gripe: there is no use of metacinema despite it being written right into the source material. It’d be a fun way to pull the audience into the film and further blur the line between fantasy and reality, if this version were interested in doing that.)

But for someone coming fresh to this version of the film, I can absolutely see why it’d be hot shit. The cast is fantastic, for starters. All seven kids are engaging to watch–a feat in and of itself–topped off with an awesomely unsettling performance from Bill Skarsgård that plays off Tim Curry the way Heath Ledger played off Jack Nicholson. The moments where the nightmarish CGI scales it back and lets him simply act the part are some of the strongest moments in the entire thing.

And the imagery is nightmarish, in a way that reminds me more than anything of Poltergeist, another film that blends horror with Spielbergian-adventure (its own little subgenre particularly en vogue at the moment). It skews a little more outright horror; accordingly there are more shocks, more gore, etc–but in a way that is aggressively fantastical and that allows the two elements to play off one another well. The movie sustains a remarkable energy across a pretty long running time (about 135 minutes) and does it with a colorful, warm visual style that’s usually pretty interesting to look at. The use of period music is precise and restrained–the whole thing is very easy to get caught up in.

It still has some problems, narratively, and their names are Bev and Mike. The former is played too often as a damsel in distress and the latter feels somewhat tacked on and tokenistic as result. Both these issues are especially egregious in light of the source material–Bev is the only one able to hurt It! Mike is the one who keeps them all together and guards the story and the history, not Ben!–but feel a bit off-putting even without taking that into consideration. But neither of those problems are anything new or particular to this movie; they’re part of a bigger discussion of cinema in general. Again, it’s an easy film to get caught up in.

Ultimately, I think a large part of my ambivalence comes from knowing it’s incomplete. The film itself does acknowledge this at the end, but only in a loose way: subtitling itself “Chapter One” on the ending title card. What I’m really curious to see is how the filmmakers build an adult half of the story on the version of the world created here. What I’m hoping for is something akin to the Kill Bill films, where Part One is flashy and interesting, but only really starts to reveal what substance it has when contrasted with the very different Part Two. I can see that as a possibility here. I’m wary, but I am curious.

But brass tacks: should you go see it if you haven’t already? End of the day, I’d say yes. It’s definitely a ride that does manage to tug at some heartstrings while simultaneously shredding other nerves. It’s definitely ambitious–multi-film adaptations of epic novels are commonplace now, but it’s still a risky prospect. If nothing else, it’s very contemporary; bringing the box office roaring back after the most lackluster summer in a couple of decades means it’s going to be one of the films this year is remembered by in popular culture. And I don’t mean for it to come off as though I was not mostly entertained throughout. It’s just I went in looking for a little more than I got. That’s why reboots and adaptations are difficult.
on Heartworms

March 14th, 2017

I think part of the problem when I start blogs like this is I suddenly feel overburdened to explain everything–to write essays, rather than simply catalog reactions, which is what I actually want to do. I don’t know that one can have a critical voice without a certain amount of immediacy, at least I don’t know that I can, and I need to shake the academia off a bit.

So in that spirit, I listened to the new Shins album this evening while I was doing my dishes and really dug it. A lot of it resonated with the part of me that’s conscious of my own aging. It felt sensitive without being overwrought, which seems like a harder and harder line to walk. And musically I liked that it never quite went where I expected it to.

Particular standouts are “Mildenhall,” which has this kind of rambling mix of Americana and Englishness, the sleek new-wavy “Half a Million” (see: what if Weezer hadn’t just kind of given up), “Painting a Hole” because I’m a fat sucker for psychedelia, and the title track, which is exactly what it should be.
San Junipero is the best episode of Black Mirror

February 22nd, 2017

Over the past few days I watched all 13 thus-far-extant episodes of Black Mirror.

It’s a show that has been on my radar for some time, but what finally made me check it out was a particular recommendation from a friend of mine. He said that after certain episodes, in particular “The National Anthem” and “The Waldo Moment,” he had to sit in darkness for a while to contemplate his reaction on a raw, human level. I figured anything that could get that kind of reaction from someone whose tastes I generally agree with was worth investigating.

He was right, in that both of those episodes were pretty powerful, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the episode that I feel most strongly about comes in the most recent, third season of the show. “San Junipero” doesn’t quite come one as strong as some of the other episodes, but not only is it emotionally powerful, it takes the show’s premise in its most interesting direction.

For anyone still uninitiated, the series is an anthology centered around exploring humankind’s relationship with rapidly evolving technology. Most of the episodes (with the notable exception of the dystopian “Fifteen Million Merits”) take place in a world that is more-or-less recognizable, but which have been infused with a technology just a bit beyond where we currently stand. The scenarios made possible by this technology are used to pose questions about things like the value of our ability to forget (“The Entire History of You”), our willingness to set aside empathy for the sake of comfort (“Men Against Fire”), or our capacity for hypocrisy and violence when it fits into a prescribed agenda (“White Bear”).

It’s by and large meaty work, entertaining and beautifully crafted–the series has amazing photography, production design, and visual effects throughout–and unabashedly philosophical without being overly didactic. I don’t feel like I was oversold on those two episodes either; both are high points for the show. The premise of “The National Anthem”–about which the less is said, the better–manages to be both deeply disturbing and terrifyingly plausible; this is the episode which is to the least degree science fiction and it manages to take a real, ripped-from-the-headlines joke and make it something truly shocking and revolting. As it does so, it pokes with a kind of devilish glee at the boundaries between public and private space, curiosity and exploitation, art and reality.

“The Waldo Moment” is even better. It’s the show at its most unabashedly political, beginning with a stuffy MP being roasted by a cartoon bear and ending in a kind of glorious, nihilistic crescendo. It’s, among other things, a timely message on populism run amok, personalized as the struggle of one insecure man to control his own creation. It’s stirring, terrifying even, and while that’s what gives it its impact, it’s also a weakness of much of the series.

It’s fair that a show about technology should trend toward skepticism, even cynicism. That’s in the DNA of science fiction, all the way back to Frankenstein. But acid commentary doesn’t make for easy watching and it’s hard to find it emotionally satisfying.

The show’s other highlights are when it breaks away from the pervasive dourness. “Nosedive,” the screenplay of which was written by Rashida Jones and Michael Schur by the way, takes a detour into understated comedy, climaxing with a hilariously disastrous wedding toast and ending on one of the series’ most charming moments. But even in this episode, the technological premise–here a social ranking app that has become embedded in the everyday world–is portrayed as an obstacle to emotional satisfaction; the heroine Lacie (a bubbly and exasperated Bryce Dallas Howard) only achieves completeness when she unplugs herself from the hive, so to speak.

This is what makes “San Junipero” different.

At its heart, it’s a love story between two damaged people: the sheltered, repressed Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), whose carefree attitude masks deep pain. These two women draw out one another through their weekend encounters in the eponymous city, a kind of techno-mystic paradise, the exact nature of which comes slowly into focus as the episode progresses. As each becomes more authentically herself, they come to represent different perspectives on the possibilities of the society in which they live and Yorkie’s enthusiasm is put into conflict with Kelly’s doubts.

But where all the other episodes draw their high emotions from portraying human weaknesses (and the devices we create which exacerbate them), no such gut punch comes here. It’s a hopeful story–which alone makes it noteworthy in this context–but it’s also hopeful in a very particular way. The technological backdrop of “San Junipero” is narratively nothing more or less than an arena in which the characters are able to cross improbable bounds of geography and circumstance to strengthen themselves and each other. Granted, the tool these women are confronted with is one imbued with a great deal of emotional, social, even spiritual significance, but it never becomes threatening as it does in the rest of the series. In this episode there is no loss of control.

Which is interesting, not just because it stands against the show’s often cynical outlook, but because it doesn’t portray technology as something to be overcome. The show’s (positively excellent) title makes it clear that our devices only reflect their users–what we see in the screen is just an aspect of ourselves–but this is the only episode to really land on the idea that there’s something positive in that reflective quality. Which is kind of an important consideration, considering one of the themes that keeps popping up in the series is that the technological bell can’t be wholly unrung; this computerized world is out there and must be dealt with. If we lose sight of the fact that we actually can deal with it in a positive way if we learn how to adapt to it, then we’re doomed to the same fate of many of the characters that populate the show. But Yorkie and Kelly’s fate is one to aspire to–it’s about overcoming pain and isolation and allowing ourselves to move forward; it’s about hope. And the presence of that hope goes a long way toward making the rest of the series work.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Wind River (2017)

Mother!

IT (2017)

on Heartworms

San Junipero is the best episode of Black Mirror