Death by Lightning (5/5 Stars)

“Death By Lighting” is a miniseries, streaming on Netflix, about the unlikely election and unfortunate assassination of James A. Garfield. Whenever anyone decries the state of movies and bemoans that great movies of the past couldn’t possibly be made in the present, it is perhaps helpful to point out a mini-series such as this, which is an example of a very good cinema that would have been impossible to produce as recently as fifteen years ago.

This miniseries is four episodes of approximately 50 minutes each, so around 3 hours and 20 minutes long. It consists mainly of talking (so a focus on writing and acting), there being only one real action scene, which takes place in the last thirty minutes. Before digital and streaming, a running of 3 hours 20 minutes needed to be an epic movie. There needs to be a great deal of spectacle in order to keep an audience in the seats for that amount of time. We can bemoan the decline of movie theaters, but at the same time, this is something that wouldn’t fit in a movie theater. For the first 100 years of movie history, there wasn’t any long form drama outside of television, which was generally an inferior product, interspersed as it is with commercials and prone to inefficient storytelling due to the perverse incentive to maximise the amount/length of episodes and thus the amount of advertisements shown.

The advent of digital/streaming makes a miniseries like “Death by Lightning” possible. It is longer than most movies, but it is also much cheaper than most epics. (Indeed, because of digital movie-making, it is a bit cheaper than a two hour movie would have been in the 1990s). The exception that was HBO has become the rule. You can watch the whole thing at once (if you wanted to), but the product is best consumed over the course of 2-4 nights. And it is as long as it needs to be, no longer because there isn’t a commercial incentive (i.e. the product is paid for by advertisers) to draw it out unnecessarily.

Because it is cheap to film drama (just writing and acting) and cheap to stream it outside of theaters, Netflix is allowed to take chances on a not-so-obvious subject matter. President Garfield was assassinated within three months of the start of his presidency. So, unlike other murdered Presidents (Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy) there was hardly any accomplishments to remember him by. You likely do not know anything about him. But that is fine, because the audience’s lack of familiarity with the subject matter only lends to the dramatic unfolding of the narrative. The less you know about a historical event, the less spoilers are involved.

There are two main storylines. The first is Garfield’s (played here by Michael Shannon) unlikely nomination as the Republican candidate in 1880. We are introduced to the party’s main players that form the supporting cast. Roscoe Conkling (played by Shea Whigham) and Chester A. Arthur (played by Nick Offerman) represents the influential and well-funded New York faction. James A. Blaine (played by Bradley Whitford) represents the less influential and less well-funded New England faction. Then there is the second storyline which only has one character, the would be assassin Charles Guiteau (played by Matthew McFayden) who is a delusional nobody who has the tendency to show up uninvited in scenes from the first storyline.

As coincidence would have it (and it is a coincidence because Guiteau is a crazy person), Guiteau’s motivations line up with and seemingly comment on the main controversies of this historical era. The Gilded Age (say post-Civil War and before World War I) is a time of weak federal government, mass industrialization, and the formation of unfettered big business. One thing the TV series could have explained better is why the New York faction has the power that it wields. It is mentioned that three quarters of the economic trade of the country goes through the port of New York City, but what is not mentioned is how exactly that results in most of the federal revenue coming from New York City. The reason is because the federal revenue at the time was based not on income taxes but on tariffs upon international goods. I’m not sure why, but the word tariff isn’t even mentioned.

This situation along with traditional wheeling and dealing amongst politicians induced much bribery for the sale of federal offices and federal land out west. Guiteau believes he is entitled to his fair share of corruption. He is a pathological liar and suffers from delusions of grandeur. McFayden is miscast simply because of his good looks, but apart from that, he does a very good job of portraying a person that at first glance may seem sane enough, but upon further reflection is straight up crazy. It’s all in the eyes.

Normally, I would bristle at the idea of giving a real-life assassin such a prominent role in a story, and I especially liked Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” for its example of not taking that route. But here it works, because, well, the character of Guiteau, all nerves and bristle, is a foil to Garfield, who lets face it, is kind of boring. In fact, if the miniseries was mainly Garfield, it would be a boring miniseries. But instead, Garfield is just one character among many men who are either crazy, cynical, or just kind of weak. This has the effect of making Garfield’s presence, when he appears, a pleasant one. Indeed, out of all these flawed men, you would very much want the stoic and serious Garfield to be the President of the United States. When he is picked out of the crowd for an unlikely dark horse nomination at the Chicago convention, you feel, as a citizen, to be tremendously lucky. And when he becomes the victim of a freak assassination, you feel, as a citizen, to be tremendously unlucky. The miniseries makes a strong argument that Garfield could have been a remarkable President.

What is interesting about this story is that its historical constraints inhibit standard character development. Guiteau, because he is crazy, cannot really change as a person. Garfield, because he is assassinated before he can accomplish much, cannot really change either. This leaves a supporting character, Chester A. Arthur, who was nominated as a Vice President because he was part of the New York machine but not the head of it (that would be Roscoe Conkling). Chester A. Arthur is a corrupt soul, beholden to machine politics and grieving the recent death of his wife with more drinking and partying than usual. He is outright disloyal to President Garfield and sees his ascent to the Vice Presidency as a bit of a joke. He is gobsmacked when he is not asked to immediately resign by President Garfield and horrified by the prospect of actually becoming President.

But, and there is historical evidence to this, the good nature of President Garfield apparently induced a moral change in Arthur and when Guiteau kills Garfield under a deluded belief that Arthur, upon ascending the Presidency, would grant him a federal appointment out of gratitude, it deeply affects Arthur. Arthur breaks off his ties with the corrupt New York machine and helps pass civil service reform out of a duty felt to the now deceased President Garfield. So, in a way, Chester A. Arthur is the main character of this miniseries because he is the one that changes. Nick Offerman (typecast as a cynical politician) gives one of his best of many performances as a cynical politician. (A sequel anyone?)

Assassinations are senseless and it is sometimes foolhardy to insist that we can learn anything from them. The motivations of the perpetrators are almost so depressingly irrelevant. Still, “Death by Lightning” perhaps succeeds more than usual, even if in a contrived but forgivable fashion. As Guiteau is awaiting his execution, he is visited by the widow of Garfield, Crete Garfield (played by Betty Gilpin), who gives a great if kind of unbelievable speech about how nobody will remember the assassin because she has exercised her influence to exact her own form of revenge, buying up the manuscript of his autobiography for the purpose of burying it. And we in the audience are also given one last moment of comfort during the execution of Guiteau via McFayden’s performance. The historical reality of Guiteau is that he wouldn’t have come to any late realization of his errors, and the miniseries mainly hews to this reality, except for that one last moment, when we see it in his eyes and we hear it in his last word, “oh”.

This is contrived, but then again, when someone does something terrible because they want to be remembered, sometimes the best revenge, if it is impossible to not forget them completely, is to remember them in the exact opposite way they intended. “Death by Lightning” is a great mini-series and the best anything to be made about our interrupted leader, James A. Garfield,

This miniseries was created/written by Mike Makowsky and directed by Matt Ross, who is best known for playing tech mogul Gavin Belson in the HBO TV series “Silicon Valley.”

A House of Dynamite (4/5 Stars)

This tense thriller takes place in less than twenty minutes and is told three times, from different viewpoints.

In the first act, the action takes place in the White House Situation room, Captain Olivia Walker (played by Rebecca Ferguson) presiding, and an army base in Alaska, Major Daniel Gonzalez (played by Anthony Ramos), presiding. A missile launch somewhere in the Far East is picked up by a satellite. Within a few minutes it is ascertained that the missile has gone suborbital and is heading toward the United States. Within a few more minutes, it is ascertained that the missile is going to hit Chicago. The operators in the first act are the first and only line of defense in what appears to be a preemptive nuclear strike. Although they have trained for their task many times, they fail to stop the missile.

In the second act, the action takes place mainly in STRATCOM, General Anthony Brady (played by Tracy Letts) presiding, and the White House’s Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Bearington’s (played by Gabriel Basso) breathless race to get to work on time and engage foreign leaders to find out what is happening abroad. STRATCOM is located in the Rocky Mountains and commands the nuclear arsenal of the United States. General Anthony Brady acts like he has been preparing for this moment for his entire life. Jake Baerington scrambles around to consult an expert on the North Koreans and the diplomat from Russia, but ultimately cannot provide the President with advice that is conclusive.

In the third act, the action follows the President of the United States (played by Idris Elba) and his belated interactions with Lieutenant Commander Robert Reeves (played by Jonah Hauer-King), the man in charge of the “football”, that briefcase which contains the nuclear codes and follows the President around everywhere he goes just for this kind of scenario. The President’s schedule has him attending a fundraiser with a WNBA star for girls’ sports. Then he is whisked away to make a decision as to whether to commit to an all-out nuclear counterstrike on the USA’s enemies. Each act ends with the President about to decide what to do.

This movie is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, a very capable director who excels at relatively realistic war movies (2008’s The Hurt Locker, 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty) and who, inexplicably, hasn’t made a movie since 2017. Somehow, she hasn’t lost her step. “A House of Dynamite” is a taut thriller that moves along briskly, introduces mainly characters and locations, and explains various procedures. Still, it keeps a clear focus and is, more or less, understandable. Above all, it is an interesting (and maybe plausible) take on a somewhat realistic scenario, which more than anything else, impresses upon the viewer not just the outward stakes in terms of human lives at issue but also the lack of time involved in the decisions that need to be made. Apparently, it would take an intercontinental nuclear strike only twenty minutes to get from somewhere near North Korea to Chicago. And apparently, the United States is so ready and prepared for that scenario, that it could initiate a world-wide counterstrike of apocalyptic proportions on all of our enemies at the same time before the first missile actually landed.

That is kind of amazing when you think about it. I vaguely knew that a man with the Football briefcase followed the President around everywhere just for that eventuality, but I never saw a movie in which that guy opens the briefcase, pulls out the armageddon menu, and ask the President whether he wants to initiate the “rare”, “medium”, or “well-done” plan. This is the type of movie where the subject matter elevates the material. The details in the plot are inherently dramatic. And the more the movie understates its delivery, the more it makes the movie feel real, which underlines that you are seeing a relatively realistic end-of-the-world scenario.

The point of this movie is to impress upon the viewer the importance of nuclear arms proliferation and an urgency for world leaders to once again enter treaties limiting their arsenals. As of next year, I believe there won’t be any of those treaties left. I believe another point the movie is trying to make is that this particular decision is in the hands of one man, the President, who may not be as prepared for this sort of thing as we may all like. In this movie, Idris Elba remarks that he received “one briefing” on this subject. This contrasts with the thousands of rehearsals that the Alaska army base and STRATCOM mention that they have had. Why is the least prepared character person in this movie in charge of the most important decision?

Counterintuitively, I think the people who should really be frightened after seeing this movie are all our would-be nuclear enemies. Although the Americans are shown to be realistically emotional about the situation, they are very competent and have plans in place to deal with it, not only in their attempts to thwart the strike before it happens, but also how to deal with the aftermath locally, and how to seek revenge immediately and on an apocalyptic scale. Consider this movie from the viewpoint of our enemies: one rogue missile is launched and before that missile even touches down 20 minutes later, it shows the American President in the process of confirming launch codes for an immediate and massive counterstrike. Meanwhile, a general impending nuclear armageddon playbook is automatically being implemented with all the functions of government being presently and immediately shuttled to a secure underground bunker in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania.

People are focused on the “House of Dynamite” quote. I think the better quote is the one preceding it, in which the President posits: “I always thought having you follow me around with that book of plans for weapons like that, just being ready is the point, right? Keeps people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war, right?” Hopefully, our enemies see this movie and are reminded of what the United States is capable of.

Current geopolitics affects the screenplay of this movie and also the plausibility of the United States response to the threat. Perhaps because it would be too provocative to actually name the source of the ICBM, the movie provides an excuse for the characters to not know. So there are three possibilities: North Korea, Russia, or China. Out of those three, Russia is the least likely and that is the only country the United States is able to get on the phone to talk about the threat. Not surprisingly, the Russians don’t know or won’t admit to anything. But really, if this was either Russia or China, there wouldn’t only be one missile, there would be at least fifty. It doesn’t really make sense for Russia or China to send over one nuke to wipe out Chicago just to test how the United States would react.

But really, regardless of who has lobbed this missile (and especially if it was North Korea), it doesn’t make sense to present the President with the options that he is presented with. All three options “rare”, “medium” and “well done” are for scenarios in which many nuclear warheads are moving our way, not just one, and certainly not just one from an isolated pariah state. If it is just one, then the most obvious response would be to lob one-and-only-one missile back at a similar target. Tit-for-tat. This shows that the United States will respond, but not in such a way that will necessarily provoke everyone else in shooting off all of their missiles at the same time. It might provoke that response, but not necessarily. If you ever watched “Dr. Strangelove”, you will notice a similar dynamic to “House of Dynamite”. In that movie, a rogue American military officer goes on the loose with the effect of only one nuclear missile being dropped on Russia. The obvious Russian “Tit-for-Tat” response is neutered by its new technology, the “Doomsday Device” which automatically triggers an all out nuclear response regardless of how many missiles have been sent first. Both of these movies present a worst case scenario by involving plot points that prevent the obvious game theory strategy from being implemented. I’m fairly certain our generals at STRATCOM have a basic understanding of game theory.

Finally, this decision is probably best in the hands of the President. The alternative would be to put it in the hands of Congress, which will not have the ability to act with deterrent speed, or the generals, who, let’s face it, have been training their whole lives for this moment. You want Idris Elba, who would rather be at a WNBA fundraiser, making this call, not Tracy Letts, who is unelected and sees every problem as a nail to hit with his nuclear hammer. At the end of the day, the President is a people person and cares about his legacy. He is the one going to try to avoid a nuclear war.

Re-View: Capote (2005)

Twenty years ago, in my one-paragraph review of “Capote”, I summarized the conflict of this story in this one sentence: “[Capote] needs two men to die, so he can finish a book about their death.”

Looking back, I think my summary of the movie is also a window into the dubious nature of Truman Capote’s mission in writing his non-fiction bestseller “In Cold Blood.” After all, the movie is about Capote’s struggle in writing and finishing a book. The book itself is about two men who committed an awful quadruple murder and were tried and executed for it. Neither the book nor this movie is about the family that was murdered or the community they were a part of, the town of Holcomb, Kansas. And that reality, I now have realized after twenty years, is an awful thing. The family and community experienced a horrible crime and this dilettante from New York breezed into town to write a scandalous book about it as if the topic was fit for his urbane cocktail parties. I read that book and was struck how after the first few chapters that led up to the murder, the vast majority of it was about the criminals, and in particular Perry Smith, a man that seems to have captivated Capote (played here by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) for various reasons.

Capote’s first remarks to the lead detective Alvin Dewey (played here by Chris Cooper) include the unnecessary revelation that he doesn’t care if the perpetrators are ever caught. Alvin Dewey makes a point to inform Truman that he along with the general community care quite a lot about whether the perpetrators are caught. Truman has a generally hard time with getting people in the neighborhood to talk to him. He needs to use his research assistant Harper Lee (played by Catherine Keener and soon to be of To Kill a Mockingbird fame) to break the ice with people. It isn’t just that Truman has the affectation of a carefree homosexual that puts people off. In general, he doesn’t seem to understand that people may not be as interested in him as he is in himself. There is a good quote that is in every trailer to this movie in which Truman says “Ever since I was a child, folks have had me pegged because of how the way I talk, and they are always wrong.” Put in context of the scene in which is uttered though, this is a faux pas because he happens to be talking to the friend of the murdered teenage girl when he says it and the subject of the conversation was the murdered teenage girl. It simply was not the time to start talking about himself. The friend and Harper Lee look uncomfortable but politely refrain from commenting on his behavior.

There is a lot of disturbing subtext in this movie that I did not quite catch the first time around. There is far more nuance in the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman then I remember. It really is a great performance. First, it is so against type for Phillip Seymour Hoffman who had made his name before and after playing either far looser or far more authoritative characters. If this was the only movie you had seen of this actor, you would have a dramatically wrong idea of his normal range. Second, the way he plays Truman fits into the ambiguous way the movie itself shows his actions. The movie is directed by Bennett Miller who appears to take stances on Capote’s behavior in dribs and drabs, never really playing his hand as to whether he is sympathetic to him or not. It isn’t all that clear whether or not Capote should be helping the criminals. Or whether or not he is helping the criminals sincerely or to just help the dramatic unfolding of his book. Did he fall in love with Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), or simply identify with him as someone from a similar background, or is he simply using him. He is never directly confronted about his motivations. Ultimately, the men are scheduled for execution and the end (their lives, his book) is finally in sight. There is this extraordinary scene where Truman Capote visits the men immediately before they are hanged and experiences a very tightly wound emotional breakdown. The situation at that point is so complicated that it is impossible to unwind all of the contradictory elements of it. And yet it is emotionally real. All explanations can be found in the choices of the actor. Phillip Seymour Hoffman would go on to win the Oscar for this movie, and as I recall, it wasn’t really a contest. This is arguably the best performance of Hoffman who was arguably the best actor of his time (say 1995-2015). I still miss him.

The Director Bennett Miller is himself a bit of a cypher. Capote was his first feature film and he would go on to direct two others, 2011’s Moneyball and 2014’s Foxcatcher. Then apparently he decided he didn’t want to make movies anymore. It is rare that a person makes three feature films, all of which garner multiple Oscar nominations, and then doesn’t work again. His style doesn’t draw attention to the man behind the camera, instead it focuses on the acting which is allowed to breathe and develop. His movies are notable in that they feature some of the best acting in the careers of the actors in them, Hoffman in Capote, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt in Moneyball, and Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher.

When I first saw this movie in 2005, I didn’t quite get the scene near the mid-part of the movie where Alvin Dewey sits across from Truman and takes an understated midwestern umbrage to Truman’s efforts to help the criminals appeal their sentence on the grounds of inadequate counsel. If these men are freed because of his meddling, the Dewey informs Capote, “I’m going to go to Brooklyn and hunt you down.” I think I get it now. 

The utility of the death penalty does not lie in deterrence. Counterintuitively, people do not fear death. Instead they fear suffering. (This is what was learned by the many policy attempts to stop people from smoking. By far, it was more effective to show an alive person dealing with a hole in their throat than showing statistics about deaths from lung cancer.) And suffering, at least the cruel and unusual kind, is unconstitutional. No, the utility of the death penalty lies in its finality. It allows the community to move on and assuages the very natural impulse of human beings towards retribution and revenge. The state takes on that responsibility so the individual does not have to. Here we see Truman Capote suffer because it takes years for the two men's appeals to be exhausted before their execution. Imagine for a moment, how that same stay of execution affected the people who knew the murdered family and mourned their deaths. For that reason, it should remain, but used sparingly only for the commission of shocking crimes and only if there is no doubt at all as to guilt of the perpetrators.

Unfortunately this is not how the death penalty is used. Instead, it is used as leverage for negotiation (i.e. a criminal will escape the penalty if they plead guilty) making its general application only in those cases where the facts are hotly contested (i.e. the suspects plead innocent) and which require a trial. I say, if you need a trial to figure out what happened and who was responsible, then you shouldn’t apply the death penalty regardless of the outcome. And if there is no doubt that these two particular men decided to break into a house and murder a family of four for no particular reason, then they shouldn’t be allowed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Any argument that we shouldn’t have a death penalty because we are too civilized for it seems to me to be an argument from vanity which doesn’t take into account the details of the crime in question nor its effects on the larger community. But I digress. This movie isn’t about the victims.

Here is link to my original review:

https://maxsminimoviemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/10/capote-112005.html

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (3/5 Stars)

“A single death is a Tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

– Joseph Stalin

I must have missed something. I watched the entirety of Marvel’s The Infinity Saga. I didn’t see all the movies when they came out, but I eventually caught up before watching Endgame. I watched all but one movie from Phase Four (missed The Eternals which looked less like a movie than a presumptuous comic book approach to theology) and saw only Deadpool & Wolverine and Captain America: Civil War from Phase Five.

After watching WandaVision and Loki: Season 1, I chose not to spend any more of my time on the multitude of TV series. I never quite got the point of those TV series. If the character was popular, they would get a two-hour movie. So why are the more obscure characters getting two-to-three times as much screen time in a TV series? Who asked for six hours of Hawkeye?

And something must have occurred in those many hours of obscure television because The Fantastic Four: First Steps appears to take place in an alternate dimension. Now, I know about the whole multiverse thing, but I figured the Marvel movies would remain essentially in that one Infinity Saga universe. After all, that is the universe which supposedly aligns with our own existence.

(I for one think it was a grave mistake to ever give the impression that the events of the Infinity Saga were of so little importance in the greater scheme of things. Marvel essentially threw a decade’s worth of narrative development onto the trashheap for the service of a throw-away joke in Loki Season 1. Infinity stones as paperweights? Really?)

But we are told at the beginning of this movie that this is Earth 848. We aren't told the year, but it looks like a different version of the early 1960s. It must be because had the events that take place in this movie occurred before Iron Man (2008), we would have heard about it in Phases 1-3. So, this must be an alternate dimension. I have no idea why this is Earth 848 as opposed to Earth 2 when Marvel only has the capacity to tell us stories from a few of these dimensions and the audience's ability to care about what happens in any single universe decreases inverse proportion to how many universes there are in total. See Stalin’s epigram above.

Still, one can intuit the reason for the reboot. My best guess is that the original comics took place in the 1960s and likely had a distinctive style to them. Is this style worth starting a whole new universe for? Yes, I would think so. The best thing about this movie is the production value. The look melds 1950s-1960s modernism with anachronistic superhero technologies, sort of like a real-life Jetsons episode but much better. The Fantastic Four are a quartet of astronauts (think Apollo missions) that were exposed to cosmic rays in space and gained superpowers. Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) can stretch his body and write math equations on chalkboards. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and create a magic force-field thing. Those two seemingly separate powers appear to be connected though I am not sure how. The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) can light himself on fire and fly. The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is made of rocks.

I don’t know anything about this particular quartet of superheroes. I never read the comics (I’ve only read a handful of X-Men comic books. It's not my thing) and I haven't seen the movies from twenty years ago. I’ve heard they are like a superhero family, meaning that they live together and complain about each other’s cooking. Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm are husband and wife and, as of the beginning of the movie, are expecting a child. The Human Torch is Sue Storm’s brother. The Thing is made of rocks.

This quartet appears to be very famous and wildly popular, so much so it would seem they have replaced the government. I believe their giant mansion/tower exists on the east side of Midtown-Manhattan where the United Nations building is supposed to be. During the exposition, we learn that Sue Storm negotiated a treaty with a foreign power named Subterranea, which is led by Mole Man (played by Paul Walter Hauser). Putting aside the strange resemblance of MoleMan with that of the Underminer in the Pixar Incredibles franchise, why is a superhero negotiating treaties with foreign powers at all unless the Fantastic Four are essentially the representatives of the people. Is this quartet the government? How does that work? And if they are, how are they so popular? Isn’t it natural for at least half the population to hate whoever happens to be in charge.

I think the movie takes for granted that I know something about these comics when I don’t. The plot develops when a silver woman on a silver surfboard flies down from outer space to announce that the Earth has been chosen for destruction by the hand of Galactus. First, what’s with the surfboard? Second, if you were going to destroy a planet, why would you announce your intentions? The importance of those questions are not necessarily in that order.

The Fantastic Four head to Galactus to try to negotiate the non-destruction of the planet. To do this, they utilize faster-than-light-speed travel through a wormhole, which apparently is so commonplace in this alternate dimension that no-one bothers to explain how it works or how it was invented. The quartet reach Galactus just in time to see it devour a helpless planet, for fun I think. Galactus, a giant robot looking ancient super-god thing, scans the contents of the spaceship (magically, I think) and draws the quartet’s spaceship into his alien lava lair with a tractor beam (or whatever) whereupon he offers an ultimatum. From the information gleaned from his magic eye-beam, Galactus comes to the conclusion that Sue Storm’s unborn child has god-like superpowers. He is willing to trade The World for the child straight up. Give him the child and he won’t destroy The World, he says.

This proffer is not seriously considered by the quartet. Their dismissive attitude towards The World reminded me of a previous movie, also starring Vanessa Kirby, called Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, where a similar tradeoff was proffered: one person for The World, which was also dismissed out of hand. This seems to be a Hollywood thing. You see, movies are about headliners. It is the fate of movie stars that drive the plot and set the budget. The World is just a bunch of nameless extras. See Stalin’s epigram above.

When The World finds out that the quartet haven’t chosen the easy and obvious solution, their reaction is distinctly tepid. They seem more disappointed than angry. And when Sue Storm meets a perturbed but otherwise well-behaved crowd outside her fantastic mansion/tower, she explains that the quartet and The World will meet this challenge as a family. An odd choice of words given that The World is in danger because Sue wouldn’t sacrifice a member of her actual family to save The World. And here she is asking The World to potentially die for her son in the name of family. You’d think she would have the good taste to not insult The World’s intelligence by so blatantly invoking a double-standard.

Is there an alternative? After all, we just saw Galactus eat a planet. It is a thing he can definitely do. Mr. Fantastic comes up with a solution. Earlier in the movie, he utilized his superpower of writing math on chalkboards to conduct an experiment. He successfully teleported an egg ten feet across the room. Having proven to himself that teleportation is scientifically possible, he proposes to avoid Galactus by TELEPORTING THE WORLD TO AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT GALAXY.

Yes, you heard that right. Now, I know what you are saying. Hey, this is a comic-book superhero story that takes place in an alternate dimension. Chalkboards full of math have enabled faster-than-light travel. The Human Torch can fly. The Thing is made of rocks. Sure, you can teleport The World to a different galaxy using technology that enabled the teleportation of an egg ten feet.

No. No. No. No. No. No. That is stupid. That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard proposed in any movie, and definitely the stupidest thing I have heard proposed in a Marvel movie (Remember, I didn’t see The Eternals). That is stupid. I cannot suspend my disbelief that far. I won't do it.

Movies have always been fantastical, but there is such a thing as diminishing returns as it concerns impossible things. You want to introduce something that shouldn’t be possible, say a giant robot named Galactus with a spaceship big enough to eat a planet, then this thing needs to at least follow its own rules. So, it matters just how large Galactus and his world destroying spaceship is. Is he as big as the Earth, or is he much smaller but still large enough to cast a shadow over the length of Manhattan, or is he much smaller than that and able to walk down Broadway between the skyscrapers a la Godzilla. Pick one and stick with it. Every time the movie changes its mind, it breaches that movie-audience understanding of the suspension of disbelief.

It is strange to such large problems with internal logic in a movie that looks this good, is basically well-acted, and is generally witty. Marvel is usually better than this. Without spoiling anything, since you know there is going to be a sequel, Galactus does not end up destroying The World. And he isn’t defeated either. (Actually, how they get rid of him, makes so much more sense, takes so much less effort, and has so much less chance for catastrophic failure than the original plan, you wonder how they could not have considered it in the first place.) So Galactus is going to be back, maybe.

The Infinity Saga was an incredibly wise plan for narrative development. It was rare for any particular solo movie to involve plots that endangered the planet. Such stakes are exhausting, unnecessary, and hard to take seriously if they happen in every movie. You build towards those types of stakes and when you are ready, call it an Avengers movie. The Fantastic Four: First Steps would have been a better movie had Marvel heeded its own example and started small.

Re-View: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

“If, having reached the age of forty, you still find yourself despised by others, you will remain despised to the end of your days.”

Confucius, The Analects, Book 17 Verse 26

To be a virgin at a later age confers a certain stigma on a man. I can think of no apt metaphor then the stock market. If you consider a person like you would a share of stock in a company, your view of the value of such a person is not only based on what features that are generally important, the fundamentals, but also the company’s reputation with the public. So a blue-chip stock, though perhaps overvalued in terms of fundamentals, is a safe bet if only because other people already find it valuable. Whereas a penny stock, though perhaps underrated based on fundamentals, is to be avoided because everyone else is avoiding it. And if people follow the herd when they buy/sell stock, you can bet that they do it even more so when picking romantic partners. After all, who you are romantically attached with confers a certain status. A male virgin, let’s be honest, is clearly not valued by the general populace, and although he may be underrated in terms of fundamentals (maybe, or maybe not. Maybe there is a good reason why he is avoided), what does it say about the purchaser to be rooting around in the bargain bin in the first place. I mean, right? You know?

You will see this play out in the most innocuous of ways in all sorts of movies. For instance, in The Notebook, during that time period when Ryan Gosling is estranged from Rachel McAdams, the movie takes pains to make clear that he is still having sex with other women. It is important to show that he is capable of finding women that will have sex with him. This is important to his appeal.

(The above analysis applies more to men than women. A woman that remains a virgin promises exclusivity, which is a prize to the preternaturally jealous male mind.)

This sense of stigma is what Writer/Director Judd Apatow sought to explore in his first feature The 40-Year-Old Virgin. According to the audio commentary, it is based in part of Judd’s own experience of a multi-year self-imposition of virginity after multiple poor sexual performances on his part. That sense of shame forms the underlying base of an emotionally honest but also crude and very funny movie. Steve Carell, in his first starring performance as a male romantic lead (at the age of 43), is Andy, the titular virgin. In a sneakily great performance, he at once combines the self-conscious terror of his shame with the frustration of not having any idea what to do about it. Invited to a poker night with his fellow employees at a local electronics retailer, he tries to bluff his way through an exchange of dirty stories but gives up the game when he describes a woman’s breast as akin to a bag of sand. On the spot, his fellow employees (played by Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco) decide it is their mission to get Andy laid. Andy has the look of a deer in the headlights, scared witless but unable to avoid the primal forces of nature about to engulf him.

What follows is a trial-and-error journey through several layers of bad advice. It is taken as a given between the employees that the first time will be full of bad sex, so Andy shouldn’t waste it on someone he cares about. Romany Malco suggests he picks up a drunk woman. Although this could conceivably work, it doesn’t consider Andy’s generally upstanding character. After all, if he was the type of person who would or could screw a woman under the influence, he wouldn’t still be a virgin. Seth Rogen also gives bad advice, until you consider its logical corollary, which is ultimately helpful. “Most men don’t understand how to talk to women,” he observes. He advises Andy to, “just ask questions.” This works because what a man has to do when he only asks question, is to listen to what the woman is saying. Actual good advice is given by Paul Rudd who merely confirms that sex with someone you love is a great thing that is worth the effort. Of course, the problem with Paul Rudd’s example is that the woman he is in love with doesn’t reciprocate his feelings.

Ultimately, Andy succeeds with Trish (played by Catherine Keener, aged 46 in 2005), a woman with her own stigma. Trish is a grandmother. That is, she had a child when she was about 20 years old who just had a child at the time of the movie. This is a stigma for women (not men) because of the previously mentioned prize of exclusivity. Regardless of stigma though, solely based on the fundamentals, both Andy and Trish are catches. They are gainfully employed, in great shape, and are generally good people. As a bonus, they do not have current substance abuse problems. It really shouldn’t be so hard for people like this to find each other. But then again, this was 2005, right about the time families and friends stopped being matchmakers but before online dating. It is not like you are about to meet either Andy or Trish in a bar.

[Spoiler Alert: Andy and Trish totally do it. In what is the most old-fashioned and charming detail about this frequently crude movie, there isn’t any sex that is premarital.]

Looking back after twenty years, this movie is notable in just the sheer amount of supporting actors/actresses that someday would become movie stars. Catherine Keener was already established, but this is Steve Carell first starring role. Seth Rogen, still in his early twenties but looking as old as anyone else, and Paul Rudd would start headlining their own string of movies within a few years later. Then there are single scenes of Kevin Hart trying to buy a stereo, Jonah Hill trying to buy shoes, and Mindy Kaling at a speed-dating event. Kat Dennings and Elizabeth Banks (in a thankless role) are here in supporting roles as well. Good ensemble movies have a way of boosting the careers of everyone involved in them.

This was the directorial debut of Judd Apatow and it came in the early part of a string of produced/directed movies that would establish him as the most reliable force of comedy between 2004 and 2011. He went on to direct Knocked Up and Funny People in that time, produced Will Ferrell’s Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers, early Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Jonah Hill movies like Pineapple Express and Superbad, and finally, the great Bridesmaids in 2011.

One of the hallmarks of these movies is the room given to the actors for improvisation. This was part of an early 2000s trend (see also Christopher Guest and Curb Your Enthusiasm) that set up a scene on the page but gave actors the ability to just spit out lines on the spot. The B-Roll from these takes would become special features in the DVD or the basis of an unrated director’s cut that was always inferior to the movie originally seen in the theater. (What movie wouldn’t be worse if you added 10 minutes of jokes not good enough to be in the original cut), Some actors are much better at this than others. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, when an actor is trying to improvise comedy, they just say the most obscene thing that comes to mind. There is an Indian character named Mooj in this movie (played by Gerry Bednob) that can’t seem to do anything but spout foul language and tell people to fuck goats. Much better is the improvisational master class given by Jane Lynch as Andy’s boss. She keeps her lines understated and tells stories, like the one about being seduced as a girl by her household’s Guatemalan gardener. After 20 years, Jane Lynch is much funnier that Gerry Bednob in this movie.

Also, a few more items that we may notice while looking back:

1. You can’t call and just hang up anymore. We have universal Caller I.D. 

2. That “We Sell Your Stuff on Ebay” store, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

3. Andy’s advice not to buy a new VHS machine is spot on. 

4. Finally, and I suspect this has always been true: Sex, it is a great thing. And Love, arguably the best.

My original review may be found here: https://maxsminimoviemagazine.blogspot.com/2010/10/40-year-old-virgin-092105.html

One Battle After Another (4/5 Stars)

For the first fifteen minutes of this movie, I wasn’t sure what year this movie was taking place in. The setting seemed vaguely contemporaneous, but the characters and their actions seem to exist in the 1960s-1970s. We are introduced to a domestic terrorist outfit called the French 75. Leonardo DiCaprio plays their bomb expert. The main baddie is Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Teyana Taylor. They stick up banks and declare that the money is being used to fund black liberation and civil revolution. What they lack in a coherent plan is made up for with narcissistic delusions of grandeur.

It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes of screen time before reality sets in. The United States Government, led by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (played by Sean Penn), arrests if not assassinates most of them. As Perfidia is being wheeled away in shackles, the arresting officers take out their smart phones and take selfies with her. And that is how I finally understood that this was taking place post-2007. Which is ridiculous when you think about it. Because no matter how crazy you believe our politics presently is, it still isn’t as crazy as it was in the 1960s-1970s when you had real domestic terrorists bandying about the country planting bombs (Weather Underground), engaging in shooting matches with the local police (Black Panthers), and sticking up banks (Patty Heart’s Symbionese Liberation Army).

The details of terrorism morph over time. Like criminals in general, terrorists live on the cutting edge of technology and infrastructure. In the mid-20th Century, the new interstate highway system and the arrival of civilian air travel allowed criminals to complete their activities and escape with unprecedented speed and distance from traditional authorities. The government took some time to catch up, but they did, which is why we no longer have such a scourge of serial killers and international terrorists. The new frontier today is in cyberspace, but “One Battle After Another” is stuck in the past. I am informed that Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson adapted this screenplay from a 1990 book by Thomas Pynchon titled “Vineland”. That would make sense, because the conceit of the movie would play much better if the prologue had taken place in the 1970s and the rest of the movie took place at the turn of the nineties.

Still here we are. Countering the 1970s vibe of leftist extremists, we are introduced to a very Reaganesque vibe of right-wing conspirators. They call themselves the Knights of St. Nicholas, gather in expensive tunnels beneath a California suburb, and seem to concern themselves solely with fighting the equally fictitious French 75. Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is presented with an opportunity to join this fabled league of white supremacists but encounters a difficult problem with a background check. You see, Col. Lockjaw had an affair with Perfidia Beverly Hills and the child she bore around the time of her arrest, could either be his or Leonardo DiCaprio’s. If it is his, he will have to dispose of this child. If not, well, its not that big of a deal, but I think the plan is to kill her anyway.

As is usual in the USA, the idiocy of delusional left-wing extremists fuels the excesses of the more formidable and much better funded right-wing kind. If the French 75 create an annoyance akin to a housefly, the Knights of St. Nicholas provoke a solution akin to swatting the same with a baseball bat. Col. Steven J. Lockjaw creates a false emergency to utilize his military force to infiltrate a small town in Northern California to search for his potential daughter, now about sixteen years old, named Willa (played here by Chase Infiniti). Colonel Lockjaw uses the army – not a SWAT Team, not a cadre of FBI agents – to search for a private citizen. He interrupts the prom of a local high school with a squadron of soldiers armed with assault rifles. Then he detains and interrogates the children to find Willa. (A very good performance is given by James Ratterman as the main army interrogator. He has very good screen presence and I was not surprised to learn that he is not an actor. He is an actual retired army interrogator.)

This is an extraordinary crime and fuels a chase around Northern California in which the French 75 abduct Willa to save her from Lockjaw, who relentlessly chases after her, all the while Leo DiCaprio tries to find his daughter and save her from everybody else. Meanwhile, the false emergency concerns an underground trafficking pipeline of illegal immigrants from Mexico. This pipeline is conducted by Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (played by Benicio Del Toro) who moonlights as a karate instructor while upstairs/downstairs of his dojo illegal immigrants sleep on mats. With all the crazy Americans on both extreme sides of the political spectrum around, Benecio Del Toro has done well to immerse himself in the calming stoicism of eastern philosophy. I am reminded of the hustler in Sean Baker’s “Prince of Broadway” whose illicit store on Canal Street is raided by the authorities and who, in the next scene, tells an employee to stick around because he will have something else going on in a few weeks. He just takes it in stride. I can only imagine what real illegal immigrants think of our cultural conflagrations. I presume it is not so different. After all, for every day they get to work and earn money in this country, they are playing with house money.

All these characters are well drawn, and the movie moves along at a fair clip. Del Toro and Sean Penn put in good work. Sean Penn is the type of movie star who seems to lose and gain inches of height between roles. Here he is at his shortest. Leonardo DiCaprio, more than anything, is a very good tastemaker and producer. He lends his star quality, no better or worse in this movie than in others, to get the movie made, which are always interesting stories told by very good filmmakers. He seems to be going through the list of all the best directors of his generation and will at the end have worked with most of them. I hear he will be working with Damien Chazelle next on an Evel Knievel biopic. I bet that one will be good too.

What can we say about Paul Thomas Anderson? He is one of the best moviemakers around and has quietly over a few decades has produced a kaleidoscopic portrait of California at varying times and places. (The sole exception is Phantom Thread which could exist just to confirm that P.T. could locate his movies anywhere if only he felt like it). It would have been a bit more interesting if he hadn’t changed the temporal setting of the book or at least updated the crimes and criminal outfits to fit the 21st century. For instance, there is a lot of crime being enabled by the dark web and Bitcoin. Wouldn’t it have been better if this movie was about that sort of criminal network. But maybe we don’t quite understand how that works yet. There isn’t that clarity that comes only with hindsight.

 

 

KPOP Demon Hunters (5/5 Stars)

In a blitz of exposition during the first 5-10 minutes of this animated movie you will learn: A K-Pop Girl’s Band Trio named Huntr/x also doubles as secret superheroes that defend the Korean peninsula from underworld demons that suck the souls of its human inhabitants. Huntr/x protects Korea by physically fighting these demons with gleaming blades but also by their golden voices, that when amplified by the adoration of their fans, provides a protective golden aura that saps the strength of the head demon. The moment is nigh when through the power and popularity of an impending hit single “Golden” they will defeat the head demon once and for all.

The Trio is composed of Zooey (voice acted by Ji-Young Yoo, talking, and Rae Ami, singing/rapping), the cute one, Mira (May Hong, talking, Audrey Nuna singing), the emo one, and Rumi (Arden Cho), talking, Ejae singing), the leader. Each is gorgeous in their own way, have the best fashion and live in a skyscraper in Seoul that reminds one of the Stark Tower in Manhattan from the Marvel Universe. At the same time, they like Ramen, crash relaxing on the couch, and adoring their fans.

In a last desperate gambit, the head demon heeds the advice of a cursed man who sold his soul for a golden voice and material comfort over 400 years ago. He points out that the fans are the source of Huntr/x power, so the best way to sap their strength is to form a competing KPOP group. Enter the Saja Boys, a quintet of gorgeous boys, ready to do dance-battle for the hearts and souls of the Koreans.

KPOP Demon Hunters is a prime example of what contrived absurdities a story can get away with when the movie is composed of wall-to-wall great music. Now, I am not a fan of KPOP or much of a fan of pop music in general. But great music, well, you know it when you hear it, and this soundtrack is replete with good to great songs. And I believe that the songs in this movie were made expressly for this movie, which explains why the lyrics all directly relate to the plot. This makes them all eligible for the Best Original Song Oscar. (That category only made sense pre-1970s when original musicals were a popular genre). That category is so weak and the music in this movie so good, it is entirely possible that KPOP Demon Hunters sweeps the nominations to the exclusion of every other movie this year. If I had to choose five songs from this movie, they would be “Takedown”, “How It’s Done”, “Soda Pop”, “Golden”, and “Your Idol.” The winner would be “Golden” which should take over “Let it Go” from Frozen for the most popular karaoke song for a new generation (if it hasn’t already done so). Several times during this movie, I wished that it was live-action so I could watch live performances of these songs. You can do a lot with animation that you can’t do live, but nothing beats watching a real human deliver a musical performance. (Maybe someone like Edgar Wright can remake this movie.) I would watch next year's Oscars just to see these songs performed live.

KPOP Demon Hunters and its songs are in English, with the odd Korean sentence or phrase mingled in here or there. I was surprised when I looked it up on IMDB to find that this was not a Korean movie. All the directors, writers, and voice actors are American and Canadian. They are all Korean of course, but they live over here and are citizens of our country. South Korean culture is a prime example of just how stupid any argument against cultural appropriation is in practice. Because South Korea got to industrialized culture so late (post-1987 when it became a full democracy), almost everything it does has a pre-existing Western inspiration related to it. But it is also very much its own thing and in turn has influenced culture elsewhere. KPOP is such a good example of this normal creative cross-breeding that it is impossible to tell where the creativity begins and ends along racial/class lines. Looking at it one may come away with the common sense conclusion that cultural creativity requires many sources of inspiration and that cultural appropriation is not a crime but a landmark of civilization. You know which culture has remained entirely authentic over the years: North Korea.

Because of when KPOP came into being, its shape and content was noticeably different from the American music industry. The most important distinction is that KPOP came into being post-MTV and music videos. So, the appeal of KPOP has never been solely auditory the way it was in the American experience for its first fifty years (1930-1980). Each song had a music video and, in all practical terms, there wasn’t really a difference between the music video and the song.

The American music industry for its first fifty years didn’t have a mass-produced visual aspect to it. You heard the songs on the radio or on an album. The audience became fans based on what they heard and generally before they saw the band live. For this reason, The Beatles felt no need to get a better looking drummer. It was a great time to be a normal looking musician. As Jack Black said in “School of Rock”, “you could be the ugliest sad sack on the planet, but if you’re in a rocking band, you’re the cat’s pajamas, man.”

MTV and KPOP changed that. If you aren’t gorgeous, you can’t be on stage, sorry. And It also puts more of an onus on dancing, something you can’t really do with a musical instrument. So now we have Boy Bands and Girl Bands, the deliberate product of corporations manufacturing that Beatles appeal, but this time with gorgeous people who can dance. Musicians are still employed in pop music I’ve heard, but they are somewhere in the background, in the orchestra pit, or in the studio writing and recording the songs. Clearly the quality of new music reflects these new priorities. Really, it is a surprise to me whenever I come across something like KPOP Demon Hunters that has an album full of really good songs. I wonder if it has anything to do with its animated style: the creatives have essentially ditched the performers and put out a KPOP product without a KPOP band.

American music fits its culture, or rather counterculture, of a diverse individualistic society. Rocking out is about freedom and sticking it to the man. Jim Morrison of The Doors was on stage for himself, usually stoned, and damn the fans (“You’re all slaves!”). KPOP fits the culture of East Asia which is homogenous and conformist. Huntr/x and Saja Boys appeal to their fans with respectability (a competitive polite-off between the bands raises the biggest laugh of the movie) and they seem to care far more about their fans than any American rock band would dare admit to. The authenticity and sincerity of KPOP or just pop music in general is debatable. It is quite frankly a corporate product meant to appeal to your vanity amongst other base instincts. The appeal of it though is made apparent by KPOP Demon Hunters. The movie is a manufactured fantasy that moves your body and makes you feel good about yourself. Is that a noble purpose? Well, maybe. Would people pay for it? That, now, is beyond debate.

20 Years of Movie Reviews

On September 21, 2005, I attempted to post a comment on Rotten Tomatoes for a movie called “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”. I didn’t know what I was doing and ended up accidentally creating an account that included a blog. Since I was seeing several movies a month in theaters and was reading Roger Ebert religiously, I started to write movie reviews. In or around October 2010, I forgot the password for my RottenTomatoes account and couldn’t retrieve it because I no longer had access to my college email. So I copied the posts and moved to Blogger, which as of this writing, is still a thing that exists. About that time, I wrote the blurb “A Guide to this Blog” which is now dated and preserved right below. In the spirit of preserving a record of thought, this Guide Update will not fully replace it.

I am writing this in September 2025. So twenty years have passed since I started writing movie reviews. I think it is appropriate at this time to reflect on what that means and what, if anything, has been learned from the experience. And really, more than that, something else needs to be addressed here: the fact that very very few people read this blog. It has never had more than ten followers and I think those people stopped actually following it a long long time ago.

What is the utility of writing about movies? When I think of this question, I go back to the first couple chapters of Fever Pitch, a novel by Nick Horby. That book was about a football obsessive (European football, Arsenal respectively) who was trying to justify the depths of his fandom. One of the things he pointed out was that knowledge about the most recent football scores was a social boon. He reported that upon commencing any new social situation (school, job, anything really), all he had to do was study the morning sports page and he would have something he could talk about with the most random of strangers (as long as they were men of course). A similar insight was proffered in the Billy Crystal movie City Slickers. A trio of men are queried by a woman as to what utility there is to knowing sports trivia. In response, the movie utilized its special ability to throw off a joke before delving into deeper, more emotional territory. The joke I will not give away, but after it is told, one of the men describes his strained relationship with his father and how when he was growing up they got into a lot of arguments and had trouble seeing eye-to-eye on many issues. But, he notes, we could always talk about baseball.

But what about movies? Unlike sports, it is impossible to talk about movies (or art in general) on a purely trivial basis the way one can and does discuss sports. When you form an opinion about a movie, you necessarily infer something about your tastes and personality. Importantly, you are not talking about yourself, but you are there, somewhere, in a way that you aren’t in a conversation about sports. The more pronounced and articulate your opinion is, the more of yourself is revealed. The very act of laughing at a joke reveals that you already knew the truth of it (that is, the part you “get” without it explicitly being stated). Indeed, what makes a movie review something different from a movie’s IMDB page is the movie reviewer, who as Roger Ebert succinctly put it, is telling a story about a person who watched a movie.

It is perhaps easier to describe the social abuses of watching an above average amount of movies then the social utility of the same. I think this is ably demonstrated in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris whereupon the main character (Owen Wilson) knows as much about the 1920’s Lost Generation in Paris as the antagonist (Michael Sheen), but only the latter uses that information in social situations, and they do so to demonstrate superiority, as if the act of acquiring knowledge (or credentials) made a person more intelligent. There is a rank snobbery amongst movie reviewers that dismays those of us that want other people to actually experience good movies. I have seen almost half of the 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die and can report that a lot of the earlier movies are relatively bad. This should be expected if one considers that nobody really knew what they were doing in the first thirty years of movie history. It is kind of amazing when you see a movie that actually works from this time period (I recommend Buster Keaton, Alfred Hitchcock, Citizen Kane). With this common sense approach, beware of any movie reviewer that argues the best movies ever made are in black and white. They probably make their declaration with ulterior motives. They either presume that you will never watch the movies they are talking about, or if you do, you’ll just assume you are too stupid to appreciate these old movies. Or, and this is a distinct possibility too, they just have poor taste. I mean, there are people, tenured professors especially, who swear by Soviet cinema. And you can take my word for it, everything the communists have ever produced is mindless trash. The Man with a Movie Camera from 1929 is not the 9th Best Movie Ever Made (as reported by Sight and Sound's famous best movie poll). You don’t need to see it at all and certainly not before watching a thousand other better movies. Watch Baraka instead if you want to look at compelling things without the distraction of narrative.

Given that a knowledge of movies is routinely weaponized by insufferable snobs against the general public, what again is the utility of having a deep knowledge of movies. After all, if you paraded it, you may be mistaken for (and just might be) an insufferable snob. The same problem occurs to the person who reads an above-average number of books. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure that a deep knowledge of movies/books/albums has a social utility. Watching old movies, reading books, writing movie reviews: these are all solitary activities. You do them alone. Frankly, I got into watching a lot of movies because I didn’t have many friends and lived in a socially isolated place. The more extensive my social life becomes, the less movies I see each year.

I am reminded of Roger Ebert’s promise in his foreward to his Great Movies book, “The way to know more about anything, is to deepen your experience of it. I have no way of proving it, but I would bet you a shiny new dime that it is impossible to experience the films in this book without becoming a more interesting person - to yourself anyway.” Looking back, I think that last caveat “to yourself anyway” is important. Because regardless of whether the outside world gives you credit for it, experiencing great art indeed changes one’s inner life. I recall reading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities and feeling like my brain was expanding. I have spent a lifetime trying to get other people to read that book and have yet to be able to have an extended conversation with anyone else who has read it. Even so, I state now emphatically, that reading it was not a waste of my time.

There is a further utility in not just watching movies, but writing about them. This insight I first read in the autobiographical The Education of Henry Adams. The author noted that as he started his career as a professional writer, he noticed a difference in how he experienced those subjects he knew that he was going to write about. I can confirm this. When watching a movie that I know I will write a movie review about, I know that I am more focused on what is happening on the screen. And with the more movie reviews I have written, the more I actively think about what I am watching. Watching movies/television is a passive experience. Writing about them is an active experience, and that activity bleeds into the passive act of watching.

This is true for regular life. The writer, confronted with a life experience that he knows he will write about, must actively think about how it should be expressed into words on a page. Again, the social utility of this is still unknown to me. I can report though that this hobby of writing about movies has helped me as an attorney. The practice of studying narrative on the screen and writing about it in a blog, if not directly applicable, hones similar skills that a litigator uses to convince his audience: judge, jury, adversary, client. The format and professionalism of a lawyers’ work and attire are like the lighting, audio, and production design of a movie. You don’t really notice them unless they are not performed competently. And when you do notice them, you can’t think of anything else (i.e. the story and/or the legal argument). I’ve listened to countless audio commentaries and these are instructive because what is usually talked about is not the high-falutin theoretical philosophies of movie critics. Mostly the commentators talk about showing up and doing a job. It is illuminating to hear “great directors” talk as if they were just normal people who try hard and care.

For this reason alone, even if no-one ever reads another blog post, I presently plan to write this movie review blog indefinitely. I may have not made a cent off this publication, but I most certainly have become a better writer through the practice of it and especially during those years I was not gainfully employed 2011-2015 in substantive lawyer work. That in turn has made me a lot of money as an attorney. Money is important to happiness and is most rewarding when you earn it. Indeed, I cannot imagine the attainment of my main sources of happiness: my marriage, my growing family, or my residence in New York City without the help of money and the ability to make more of it. I make a point of this because it is said so little it may no longer count as common sense. Tell it to all the young people you know. They will thank you for the wisdom later.

Interestingly, the only thing that would probably stop me from continuing this blog is the event of its unlikely success. That is, for some reason, it became popular. I shudder to think of hordes of random people leaving their mental droppings in the comments section. Indeed if I ever became famous for any reason, there is potential for someone to mine these pages for the purpose of publicly shaming me. There is twenty years of material here (and I can think of several specific examples) so it is inevitable that there's something for people to dislike. It is the continuing policy of this blog to not take anything down, since the most interesting thing about it is the progression of thought over time. But this policy kind of depends on the convenience of no one actually taking the time to read the thing. I don’t owe you people shit. If this ever comes back to bite me, I will take it off the internet. I will continue writing, it just won’t be public.

But to end on a realistic note, such scenarios and defensive declarations are an act of vanity, the same arrogance told of in my 2010 Guide to a Blog. I enjoy writing them and that is why they are here, but at the same time, I hold the following truth as a token of well-earned wisdom: That people are generally concerned with themselves and that their thoughts towards others and yourself are fleeting. Once you no longer see the world as a conspiracy of mean girls, you have indeed graduated from high school. Even great movies, if no one remembers them, have little cultural impact. This becomes obvious whenever a movie critic suggests a movie's worth is determined by its influence, i.e. the credit it deserves for doing something for the first time. Most likely, that movie critic simply has not seen all the older movies that did that "first thing" first. And so it goes. All things must pass.