The French Dispatch (5/5 Stars)

 

The masterpiece train keeps on rolling. That makes four in a row from Wes Anderson and the machine, an ever expanding cast of remarkable actors, production designers led by Adam Stockhausen, musicians led by Alexandre Desplat, costumes by Milena Canonero, etc etc. This time, Mr. Anderson, writer/director, spins an appetizer and three course meal of the fictional Ennui-sur-Blase, France in the form of a travelogue and three stories of the French Dispatch, a fictional satellite production of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.

This movie is delightful. I came to that conclusion about two minutes into the feature when the movie takes about a twenty seconds to film a French waiter stocking a tray with an assortment of apertifs, confections, and hors-d’oeurvres for delivery to Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (played by Bill Murray), editor of the title production. Like Wes Anderson’s best work, there is a loving attention to the detail here that most movies lack the ability to attempt.

The French Dispatch is in a newspaper but is not really news. It tells offbeat stories about curious people. It is a pleasant diversion about a small corner of the world that nobody in Kansas would likely visit. I believe that would be the whole point. There are many small things in life that lack formal importance, but as an antidote to the daily grind, are essential to living well. This idea is voiced with beautiful particularity in the third story by writer Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffrey Wright) when he is asked why he devotes so much space in his articles to the experience of dining. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would you choose? You could do much worse than a curated evening with Wes Anderson. (Actually you can choose this, but without the Wes, he curated a version of pullman dining on a British Train. https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/uk/belmond-british-pullman/search-results. Tickets are around $600, give or take).

The danger of the Wes Anderson experience, as evident in his first fifteen years of making movies, is that his upper class tastes can come off as tone deaf or snooty. He has by and large avoided this pitfall in his last four great movies by focusing not on the rich people, but the servants, artisans, (dogs) that cater to them. It is a delicate balancing act to be sure. Since Wes Anderson is so very much rich himself (I highly suspect), to speak for the poor could easily come off as presumptuous and contrived. He avoids this by showing an unsurpassed appreciation for the artistry, whether it be a lobby boy attending to his duties in a hotel, a boy scout troupe leader searching for his charges, or a dog looking out for his master. Wes Anderson merely supposes, rightly I believe, that the people who curate his experiences care about their art in a manner that is separate and apart from the status of the ultimate consumer. Do such people like the celebrated police chef Nescaffier (played by Steve Park, yes that Steve Park from Coen Brothers’ movies like Fargo and A Serious Man), exist. They must. If they didn’t, how could there be so much beauty in the world?

To consider Wes Anderson’s movies chronologically, is to witness a writer-director become increasingly competent and confident in not only his distinct cinematic voice but the very tools of cinema. The French Dispatch is notable in its sheer amount of sets and cinematography techniques. To take one example, the first story, is a news article by J.K.L Berenson (played by Tilda Swinton) that turns into a lecture, which narrates a story of a psychotic inmate named Moses Rosenthaler (played by Benicio Del Toro) who might be a genius of modern art. The lecture is in color, but the story with Moses is in black and white, until of course, it isn’t. That is, Wes Anderson is not just using black and white because he wants to be artsy, he is doing it to make important scenes in the story “pop” with color. There are several of these moments in this movie whether it be a first glimpse of a fresco, the taste of a delicious apertif, or the blue eyes of Saorise Ronan, and the effect is undeniable. The realm of moviedom has not seen an artist with such innovative control of film, as a medium, since Oliver Stone was at the height of his creative powers in the early nineties (see JFK and Natural Born Killers). Add to this is Wes Anderson’s interesting use of foreign languages (In the second story, that concerns itself with insufferably woke university students, all the boys speak English, and the girls speak French with subtitles. To be clear, they are all speaking French, Wes is just being interesting) and his absolute refusal to shoot anything resembling a conventional action scene (a prison riot is shown in freeze frame, a car chase turns into a cartoon).

But more than anything, what is particularly impressive about The French Dispatch is the writing. The movie’s screenplay, which Wes Anderson wrote by himself, is based on four fictional articles by four fictional writers with four different styles. Each story, though all written by Wes, leaves a distinct impression of a unique artistic voice, each one a very good writer in their own regard. I ask you, could there possibly be a movie this year that is more “written” than the The French Dispatch. Have you ever seen a movie, more “literary”. Can we just give him his first Oscar ever for Best Original Screenplay right now?

If there is a criticism to be directed at this movie, it is that there is too much of it, at least in one sitting. I think this movie, or something like it, would make a very good TV show. That is, since each story could stand on its own, you could split the movie up into 30 minutes segments like say Documentary Now, thereby giving the audience a chance to catch its breath between stories. The French Dispatch is an appetizer and three entrees in a row. We need more time to comfortably digest. After all, I haven’t even mentioned Adrian Brody’s brilliant dissection of the economics of modern art, or Timothee Chalamet’s hair, or the fact that I got to see Lea Seydoux naked (worth the ticket price by itself).

Dune (5/5 Stars)

 

Frank Herbert’s epic novel “Dune” has long been the white whale of movie adaptations. After its popular publication in 1965, several filmmakers have attempted an adaptation only for their efforts to more or less fail. Jodorowky had great ambitions but lacked funding. This became the subject of a 2013 documentary. In 1984, director David Lynch successfully produced a feature film of the book, an absolute mess of confusing exposition and fast forward plot which stood as an expensive warning to the impossibility of a coherent adaptation for over three decades. I tried to watch that movie and did not venture past the first twenty minutes. The overarching problem, once solved, is Dune’s greatest strength. Dune is a fascinating, exotic and dangerous world, but in order to tell a story of anything that occurs there, much world-building needs to occur. The 1984 version attempted to accomplish this through voiceover, a tedious succession of name dropping that succeeded in explaining thousands of years of fiction, but not why the viewer should care. Like I said, I lasted twenty minutes.

It is then with considerable acclamation that I report that this Dune, directed by Denis Villenueve, is a coherent and dramatic work of art. Yes, I understood what was going on and the exposition was paced in such a way that it did not bore me. That is not an easy feat to accomplish. I am not about to try to explain the plot in depth here. Like I said, that is a near impossible task, but I can attempt the briefest of outlines: “Dune” is a story about power, a struggle between an emperor which we do not meet, several of his vassal states, a mystical sect, and an indigenous tribe of a desert world that holds the galaxy’s most valuable resource. The emperor sets his vassals against each other to weaken them, and fight and weaken each other they do.

The vassals connive and maneuver against each other in elegant architecture, dressed in impressive fashion and surrounded by distinctive cinematography. There are also very ugly bad guys and gigantic sand worms. The look and feel of “Dune” is an artistic achievement. Denis Villeneuve, I’m sure, is a great part of that process having already made several of the best looking films of the past decade with the great cinematography Roger Deakins: “Prisoners”, “Sicario”, and “Blade Runner 2049”. I half-expected Roger Deakins to be present here, but he is not. The cinematographer is instead Greig Fraser, who I did not know on a name basis before, but whose work I have admired in “Zero Dark Thirty” “Foxcatcher” and “Lion” (He also did this thing I’ve heard of “The Mandalorian” but which I have not seen).

As striking as the architecture, fashion, and cinematography, is the excellent cast which is filled with interesting actors like Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarskgard, Javier Bardem, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian and Timothee Chalamet (presently having his breakout moment). It is a truth acknowledged in movies that the best way to procure a great cast is to make each character a main character in the scene that they find themselves in. This is usually done in one of two ways: have an episodic story in which the main characters in each part are not the same actors, or to have a character’s arc begin and completely end within the movie. I don’t necessarily mean kill the character, but good actors that have many different plans and options for work I believe will be more willing to take a bit part in a larger story if they know they don’t have to stick around for the entirety of the production. With the risk of making this paragraph even more of a spoiler than I’ve already made it, I will only say further that I believe it will be difficult for Dune Part Two to have as good a cast as Part One.

As I said, I will not bother trying to explain the plot. I will merely state that Dune mainly concerns itself with power. There are not democracies or republics present. Just empires, feudal lords, religious cults and native tribes. Frank Herbert seemed to understand the dynamics present quite well. We are somewhat removed from the contours of this world and the behaviors that inhabit it, but part of what makes science fiction fun, is that you can set up your own rules and see how people act within the made up system. Sometimes this is as pretentious as you think it would be and the science fiction element seems to just be a disguise for a straw man argument (say Star Trek or The Twilight Zone). Other times, you get something like Dune, which is so different, it hardly seems to be a commentary on anything on Earth. Earth details may have inspired it, but it is its own thing, content to have its message stay on its desert planet. It has nothing to do with anything else. It is pure escapism, which brings with its own type of pleasure.

No Time to Die (5/5 Stars)

 

James Bond was never intended to be the adult in the room. The early films are exercises in juvenile wish fulfillment, specifically those of white boys. Imagine being a very important person (agent of a world superpower government) possessed with extraordinary skills and intelligence in exceedingly dangerous (see exciting) situations that will never have to actually deal with any of the repercussions. The cleanup is another department. As a bonus to all of this, as a very important person dealing with the less civilized parts of the world, you are offered exotic women by the local power brokers, and if other situations, the women just naturally flock to you because you are more handsome, wealthier, the plot calls for it, etc. I like the old James Bond movies, in particular I recommend “You Only Live Twice” but I will admit they are a guilty pleasure, you know like pornography.

I bring this up in this review for “No Time to Die” because it is quite extraordinary how grown up the franchise has become. With massive popularity comes responsibility (via criticism) and the James Bond of 2021 is more an elder statesman than a juvenile delinquent. What is even more amazing is that the quality of the movies have not diminished. “No Time to Die” is just as entertaining as “You Only Live Twice.” Indeed, “No Time to Die” retains many of the old James Bond tropes: exotic locales, gorgeous women, a disfigured villain in an island fortress, but the mood and tone are of an entirely different genre. “No Time to Die” is like a great cover version song of an old classic. You know the song, but you had no idea it could work so well in such a completely different way.

This is Daniel Craig’s fifth outing as James Bond. The story picks up right where “Spectre” of several years ago left with the hopeful retirement of James Bond with Lea Seydoux, that gorgeous French woman. This one is directed by Cary Fukunaga (True Detective Season 1, Sin Nombre) who also shares a writing credit with the duo of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. (Purvis and Wade, IMDB relates, have written the last seven James Bond movies dating back to 1999’s “The World is Not Enough.” They are getting very good at it.) The retirement does not last very long though as Lea Seydoux’s past comes back to haunt her with James as the collateral damage. This movie is two and a half hours long, its locales span continents from Italy, to Cuba, to Sweden, to Japan, the main villain’s plot, and even his identity, comes quite late, yet it never moved slow and I never felt restless. I was in good super competent hands.

In particular, this movie is a course in actions sequences that work. Unlike the digital acrobatics of Marvel blockbusters, the stunts in “No Time to Die” have a down-to-earth visceral feel to them. It looks like that car really crashed and rolled, that the telephone pole fell down on a live set, that the stunt man really did drive that motorcycle up the side of that Italian building (wow!). At one point, in an extended one shot sequence, Daniel Craig shoots and fist-fights his way up a crowded stairwell. Whatever they are doing, it is just so much better than “Shang-Chi”.

A good James Bond movie is a series of fun set pieces, strong men, and beautiful women. The opening car/motorcycle chase with Lea Seydoux through the Italian village is great. So is the spy mission in Havana, Cuba with Ana de Armas as sidekick. Finally the infiltration of a villain’s island fortress with Lashana Lynch. In between there is humor deftly brought to the fore by wisecracking Ben Whishaw as Q and Naomie Harris as Moneypenney and the classic James Bond score providing the punctuation. In the villain department, Christoph Waltz reprises his Spectre mastermind Blofeld now locked away in a maximum security prison while outside a new threat in the form of Rami Malek.

It is the villain subplot that is finally where this movie comes up short. The danger is real enough. The British government was secretly developing a type of airborne weapon that attacks certain genomic sequences. In this way, the government could conceivably release the virus in a room and it would only kill one person, the intended target. Of course, this weapon is stolen and repurposed so that it may attack whole groups of people with similar genomic sequences, maybe an entire race of people. Evil enough, but the movie does not actually go so far as to suggest what group of people the bad guy is interested in killing. The bad guy’s island fortress is located between Russia and Japan and a simulation of the weapon seems to mainly central Europe. Noone in the movie is from Central Europe. Perhaps the franchise felt that to actually pinpoint a target was not necessary given that the members of the audience could all agree that the idea is nefarious supervillain territory regardless of what group is being targeted. Still, the lack of this detail, harms the viewer’s ability to understand the motivation of the villain, which in turn harms the drama. A minor quibble. Otherwise Rami Malek with his creepy delivery and bug eyes are classic Bond villain.

At the end of this movie, you may come to the realization that this really will be Daniel Craig’s last dance and that the franchise will have to turn to a different actor in any new installment. So who should it be? Well, I think whoever it is, they should redo the entire feel of the franchise, taking it perhaps down a few notches from the stripped down, brutish, and semi-seriousness of Daniel Craig. How about Dev Patel and, please, more irresponsible sex. Being responsible is great for a few movies, as a change of pace, but overall, James Bond should be having more fun.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (3/5 Stars)

 

When I penned a review of the “The Guardians of the Galaxy” in 2014, I wrote that within the first scene, I knew I was watching something new, something interesting, and something fun. The Marvel Universe had before that time stumbled into a run of too-serious melodramatic CGI slug-fests (the nadir being Thor: the Dark World), but here came Director James Gunn to liven things up a bit. It would lead to a string of great Marvel movies between 2014-2018. But greatness cannot last, and lately we have seen Marvel hit run of melodramatic CGI slugfests. The problems are not the same. In the first nadir, Marvel was having trouble making some of its very old characters like Thor, Hulk, and Captain America new and fresh. But they got around this by turning Hulk and Thor into comedians and introducing more facets to the personality of Captain America that weren’t so conformist (I’m still Team Iron Man by the way).

This second nadir involves Marvel’s attempt to branch out past the core fans of comic books by introducing more diverse and gendered super heroes. The problem is not that Marvel has superheroes with these types of identities, the problem is that these superheroes are not interesting. Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and now Shang-Chi all have a “Thor” problem. Polka-Dot Man from “The Suicide Squad” is a more interesting character than these three.

Shang-Chi in particular is just too safe of a character. He is a played by Simu Liu who would otherwise be a perfect casting choice for a mannequin. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and devoid of personality. Imagine instead that Marvel had cast Randall Park. Yes, I know that Randall Park is already a recurring character in Marvel’s Ant-Man and is Korean, not Chinese. I’m just saying imagine this character as someone interesting. Shang-Chi emigrated to San Francisco with his motion has a child and now goes by the name Shawn. Shawn lives alone in an apartment that is not really expensive, but still pretty good digs for a single guy in San Francisco. He works as a chauffeur with his best friend Katy (played by Awkwafina). So you know that he’s not privileged, but then Awkwafina quips that she graduated with honors at Berkeley and Shang-Chi knows four languages, so they clearly aren’t disadvantaged either. He’s just right there in the middle, not offending anybody.

One day while riding the bus, Shawn is attacked by a bunch of goons sent by his still-alive and very powerful gangster of a father Xu Wenwu (played by Tony Leung). A martial arts fight ensues and it turns out that Shawn knows Kung Fu (and that Katy can drive a bus under pressure). The action in this movie makes one nostalgia for prime Jackie Chan movies. They take place in impractical locales that Jackie would have used like on a bus, or in the bamboo scaffolding of a building, but the action in Shang Chi is just so computerized. It lacks the visceral qualities of a Jackie Chan film. So by directing the cinephiles attention to these past great action movies, one is rewarded by nostalgia, but also the distinct impression that they are watching something inferior. I wonder if it is even possible to make a Jackie Chan film like the ones he made in the 1980-90s. Perhaps it is just too dangerous. In any event, the computer scientists have yet to be able to perfect an equal alternative in quality.

Shawn and Katy discover that the father thought dead by Shawn is hatching an evil conspiracy and travel to Hong Kong to find Shawn’s sister and warn her. Instead, Shawn’s sister Xia Ling (played by Meng’er Zhang) finds him and reveals herself to be the head of a brutal gambling syndicate that hosts deadly fights in a Shanghai skyscraper. When asked how she came to be so powerful and influential she replies that her father would not allow her to be a part of his club, so when she decided at 16 years of age to run away and make her own. Fast forward ten years and here she is. There are no follow up questions. It is the sort of backstory only Ayn Rand would find believable.

It is further revealed that Shawn’s father is searching for an extradimensional village called Lu’an, which guards the prison of an ancient and evil dragon that would Consume The World if released. We see this village, it is hidden in a bamboo forest and contains large Chinese dream beasts and a water dragon. It reminds one of Wakanda but does not measure up to the experience. For one thing, Black Panther was the first time any corporation spent hundreds of millions of dollars making an African Xanadu. In China, a movie that with the budget and scope of Shang-Chi comes out every month. In 2004, I saw Jet Li’s “Hero” in an American movie theater. That’s a bigger and better movie than Shang-Chi so don’t give me the marketing pitch that Shang-Chi represents the coming out of Asian cinema. It’s only the first Marvel movie with an Asian main character. That distinction is not an important one. Asians have been producing great and influential movies since Japanese cinema came into its own in the 1950s. I have plenty of recommendations if you want them.

There are bright parts to this movie. For one thing, everything Awkwafina does is funny. At another point, Ben Kingsley reprises his actor character from “Iron Man 3” and he too is consistently funny. Here’s a novel idea. How about making the Shang-Chi sequel about Awkwafina and calling it “Katy with the No Powers”. It could be about her and Ben Kingsley’s efforts to sell a screenplay based on their adventures in this movie and then attempting to remake this movie with no budget. (I bet the no-budget car chases would be better than the ones in this movie). That fake movie could also have a great subplot about Katy’s efforts to kow-tow to the strictrues of the Communist Party of China in order to get the movie a release inside the country. Katy could be like “this is funny,” and CCP would be like “too funny,” and “this is interesting,” and CCP like “too interesting,” and then this is something, and then CCP like “make it nothing”. At the end Katy could come to the realization that communists won’t be okay with anything because they would rather people not say or think anything other than what they tell them to.

I’m throwing shade. It is Marvel that should come to this realization. This year they might. They have gone to great lengths to present China and the Chinese in the least controversial most boring light possible. For all their efforts, CCP still won’t allow “Shang-Chi” to be released in the country. CCP has also made it clear that the next Marvel movie “The Eternals” will not be released because it is helmed by Oscar Winning Director Chloe Zhang. Marvel must have thought it would have been a plus with CCP to hire a Chinese-American Director like Ms. Zhang for one of their movies. But no, Ms. Zhang once had an opinion about China, calling it a “place of lies” and CCP decided that it was insulting to China and the Chinese for anyone, and perhaps especially a Chinese person, to point out all of CCP’s lies. This may be a good thing. Perhaps Marvel with stop positioning for the approval of a totalitarian government and, as a result, make better movies.

Pig (4/5 Stars)

 

The “John Wick” franchise stars Keanu Reeves as an assassin retired from the life whose dog is killed. So he comes back and kills a lot of people. “Pig” is sort of like that. It stars Nicholas Cage as a chef retired from the life whose truffle pig is pignapped. So he comes back and devastates a lot of people emotionally.

This is a simple movie. The setup is as described above. Nicholas Cage lives alone in the woods with his pig. He strolls the woods looking for perfect truffles which he sells to a young wanna-be restaurateur (Alex Wolff) for big money. The truffles are then used to enliven the dishes of pretentious Portland restaurants. Nicholas Cage speaks little and does less. He has no technology, no electricity or even a phone in the woods. Then one night, a couple of junkies break into his shack and steal his pig. Nicholas Cage goes into the city to search for it. The movie is competently made has some sublime moments and a few confusing scenes.

Since there really isn’t much action and the plot is bare boned, the movie relies on the acting. And here Cage and the supporting actors put in fine work. Nicolas Cage is well cast in the main role. The man himself has been sort of in the movie wilderness for over a decade now as well. He does about five films a year almost all of them straight to video (I hear they are terrible, but admit I have not seen any of them). As an explanation, he says that he needs the money (he has made bad financial decisions before like buying a castle in Bavaria) and that he likes to work (he says that when he does not have the structure of a work day, he can be pretty self-destructive on his own). So it works to see him come in from the woods, walking around the city and refusing the take a shower or put on a fresh set of clothes. In one particularly good scene he explains to his anxious co-star that none of this matters. Every 200 years the Pacific Northwest suffers a catastrophic earthquake, the last occurring approximately 200 years ago. Those that survive the earthquake will die in the resulting tsunami. Cage delivers this line in a perfect monotone. It’s pretty funny.

Playing the foil is Alex Wolff, who I have seen several times before (Hereditary, Jumanji, Patriot’s Day, Bad Education) but still did not immediately recognize. I think it might be because his skin color seems to vary wildly depending on the lighting. I’m sure to recognize him next time. He does a serviceable job of not really holding his own with the Nicolas Cage character.

Pig has some sublime moments usually consisting of two men in a room talking to each other about meaning, grief, and pigs. It also has some confusing scenes. At one point, we are transported into an underground fight club for restaurant workers. Except it isn’t really a fight club. The fights consist of one person tied up and the other just punching them a bunch of times. I’m still not sure what that was about. But overall, I would recommend this movie. It’s likely better than the other four Nicolas Cage starred in this year. (Although I must admit I am generally intrigued by a movie coming out next year called The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in which Nicolas Cage plays an actor named Nic Cage. That sounds fun.)

The Suicide Squad (4/5 Stars)

 

This one is for all us losers.

The conceit of “The Suicide Squad” is a classic stock plot. I couldn’t tell you where it first was used, I expect B-movies have done something like it many times over since the early days of cinema, but one of the best examples is the 1967 movie “The Dirty Dozen”. The idea is that there is this important military objective that needs to be accomplished, but the chances of successful mission are minimal, so a bunch of guys with no future, like criminals serving life sentences, are given the opportunity to take a shot at it. They will probably die in the attempt, but they were going to rot in prison anyway, so what do they have to lose?

“The Suicide Squad” updates this premise with a modern comic book movie twist by making all of the criminals super-heroes. But you wouldn’t send Batman on a suicide mission. He’s a billionaire that works for himself. You need some more expendable product, super-heroes that wouldn’t be too much of a loss if they were going to die. Turns out, D.C. Comics has plenty of them. So much so that within the first fifteen of the minutes of the movie, at least half the squad is dispatched, and I don’t think anyone is going to miss the Swedish guy with the javelin known as (...looking it up by IMDB…) “Javelin”.

The remaining squad are as follows:

Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) superpower: competence, moral compass, leadership

Bloodsport (Idris Elba), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Peacemaker (John Cena), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchio) superpower – can control rats

King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) superpower – indestructible sharkman

Polka-Dot Man (David Dasmalchian) superpower – throws polka dots at people

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) superpower – likely insane, innovative with melee weapons

Writer/Director James Gunn has a long storied history of juggling misfits in a group setting. He is the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies after all. Now, you are not supposed to switch between rivals like Marvel and D.C. Comics like he is doing here, but then again Marvel fired him for uncouth Twitter jokes (before waiting a year while the cultures vultures attention went elsewhere and then hired him back) so I figure he doesn’t owe anybody anything. He does a very good James Gunn here. I especially liked the fact that Bloodsport and Peacemaker have essentially the same superpower which sets up a childish competition between them; how King Shark is so big and dumb; and how Polka-Dot Man, who shoots polka dots at people, is as sad, crazy, and pathetic as he sounds. (It is revealed that his motion injected him with radioactive stuff because she wanted superhero children which gave him polka dot powers but also daily polka dot rashes and he has to puke rainbows each day or die of polka dot exposure.) He fits right in. Rounding out the suicide squad is the only half-way well known superhero and the only one that also starred in the original and lessor “Suicide Squad” movie from a few years back, Harley Quinn. Harley gets the full James Gunn treatment in a scene where she dispatches plenty of nameless bad guys to the tune of Louie Prima singing Just a Gigolo.

This movie is frequently funny and has plenty of good action set pieces. And the final battle, which involves an especially B-movie type boss monster is big and ridiculous in a good way. There is also real pathos here (via certain cameos by fellow director and character actor Taika Waititi). In particular, James Gunn is decidedly for the underdogs, a very sympathetic note to take. However, his glorification of the underappreciated is a little belied by the many many gratuitous deaths of unknown extras. Let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw a SWAT team head into a combat zone in any movie vaguely like this one and thought that a single one would leave alive. These guys have all the body armor and automatic weapons yet they never don’t stand a chance. You want an underdog, make a movie about a SWAT team that fights superheroes.

What is left is the politics of this movie. It isn’t meant to be front and center, but it is interesting to talk about as, like many comic book movies, the message it contains is meant for a very large mainstream movie, and therefore kind of needs to be safe.

The mission is as follows: A fictional South American banana republic has recently suffered a military coup. The previous government was corrupt and so is this new one, but the previous government was tolerated by the United States because, it is revealed, it was willing to serve as a base for the United States to develop alien technology, which involves the experimentation and torture of political dissidents. This would not be the first time it was revealed in a movie that the American led team found out that the United States was really the bad guy, and like everything in this movie, it is a trope competently recycled. But what does this trope mean? Why do American movies so often reveal that America is the ultimate bad guy?

First of all, we should point out that the reveal of America being the bad guy leads to conflicts between the members of the Suicide Squad, which is a diverse group of people and at least one fish. How will this mainstream movie sidestep awkward political battles that may double as racial conflicts. Easy, the conflicts will be mano a mano between members of the same race. For instance Colonel Rick Flag (white) has his major conflict with Peacemaker (white) while Bloodsport (black) has his main conflict with Amanda Waller who is played by Viola Davis (black). Whew, dodged a bullet there.\

But why is the mainstream movie so hesitant to sidestep racial conflict but it still quite comfortable with laying an evil fictional plot at the feet of the United States government. There are a few possibilities to explore.

The most obvious is the movie industry’s leftist tilt. It is an urban industry, mainly centered in two very blue cities Los Angeles and New York City and, like seemingly all businesses within the realm of the arts and humanities, it draws a certain type of person with blindspots. For example, Oliver Stone who can brilliantly articulate all the bad things America has done in Latin America in the past one hundred years and in the next breath make a puff piece documentaries about autocrats like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Second, it may have something to do with corporate cowardice. The movie business is well acquainted with its free speech rights and is not fearful of retaliation from the American government. In contrast, a hint of any criticism towards the Chinese government may result in an American movie being completely banned from China’s gigantic market. Because of this, America’s government gets routinely trashed while China’s government, which is presently disappearing its citizens into gulags, is never criticized.

But there may also be something else at work here. I recently read Charlie Kaufman’s latest book Antkind which was about a ficitional movie critic B. Rosenberg Rosenberg, an insufferably woke white man who rails against white privilege and toxic masculinity (and expects credit for it), uses non-binary verbs (that he invented and only he uses), and calls himself an ally of every last victim on Earth (without asking whether or not they want his help). Half-way through this hilarious book it dawns on the reader that this character’s obsequiousness masks in even deeper pretentiousness. After all, in order to feel like you need to apologize for everything, one must first believe they are responsible for everything, which, if you think about it, is an extraordinarily egotistical view of the world. B. Rosenberg Rosenberg inflates his own importance by constantly apologizing for the terrible influence people like him have on the world. Perhaps the trope of America being the ultimate bad guy is but an exercise in vanity. Ultimately, it matters less whether or not we are the good or bad guy, what matters is that we matter. Think about it.

The Green Knight (5/5 Stars)

 

“The Green Knight” is an adaptation of a medieval poem popularly known as “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” I read part of it in my high school English class and in anticipation of seeing this movie, reread the entirety of it. The poem’s origins are obscure, its language long forgotten. The version we have with us today comes from the skillful translation from that great professor of languages, J.R.R. Tolkein. The fact that something written in English in England would need to be translated grants the subject matter an ancient solemnity. After all, if this is the only thing that still survives from a time when the earth was understood through magic and religion, it feels like it should hold profound and time honored wisdom.

Mystical wonder and ancient solemnity is the mood and atmosphere that screenwriter and director David Lowery has set out to achieve here and I would argue, succeeds admirably at establishing. More than anything, “The Green Knight” is an achievement in mood and atmosphere. The colors are lush, the soundtrack evocative, the language profound and poetical. David Lowery has set out to tell a mysterious tale and succeeds perhaps too much. I doubt anyone will completely understand what is happening the first time around (what with the giants and spell sashes and talking foxes). I have seen the movie twice. The second time I saw it with subtitles which helped quite a bit. When the language has that Olde Worlde feel to it, it can be easy to miss words and phrases. Does the movie actually have a point? Yes, I believe it does. The original poem had a definite moral to it made explicit by a verbal explanation of it at the end. This movie inverts the ending and through the magic of movie montage expresses the same moral, but without an explicit explanation. Its actually an ingenious adaptation of the poem in that respect.

Sir Gawain is not a knight. He is called a “sir” because of his noble blood, being nephew to the great King Arthur, the legend that pulled sword from stone. Besides his title though, Gawain is a bit of a letdown. He spends his time in brothels and taverns and does not appear to have any particular ambition. When King Arthur, at a Christmas Party, asks Sir Gawain to tell a tale of himself so that he may know him better, Gawain thinks about it and then relates that he does not have a story to tell. Fortuitously (but perhaps not coincidentally) a tale presents itself at the Christmas Party. The Party is interrupted by an unearthly knight made of green bark. He asks for a challenger to his game. He will let whomever takes up his challenge to strike him if they promise to meet him at the Green Chapel one year hence so that the Green Knight may give back the blow. Gawain takes up this challenge and, rashly bowing to peer pressure, summarily strikes off the Green Knight’s head. Gawain perhaps thought that by beheading and thereby killing the Green Knight he would not have to make good on his end of the bargain. Not so, the Green Knight picks up his severed head, tells Gawain he will meet him in a year, and leaves. It is a great scene, both an effective and faithful adaptation of the same scene in the poem.

The rest of the movie concerns Gawain’s deliberations in whether he should go to the Green Chapel at all (he does not have to) and the quest itself whereupon many strange and dangerous happenings occur. What is the Green Knight? Well, the most apparent metaphor of the Green Knight is death. Less apparent, and equally important, the Green Knight symbolizes the inevitable reactions to a person’s actions (death being the ultimate reaction to a person’s life). By living up to his end of the bargain and facing the Green Knight on the terms he has already accepted, Gawain is taking responsibility for his actions. The word used in this movie for why Gawain does or does not take responsibility is “honor”. Honor, explains Gawain at one point in the movie (and perhaps still not understanding what he is saying), is the reasons why a knight does what he does. Under this interpretation, the movie can mean almost anything from keeping one’s promises, to being faithful to romantic partners, to man’s stewardship of the natural environment. All of this is tied into the concept of honor presented here as the simple act of showing up to face one’s fate without excuses, without spells, without flinching.

Sir Gawain is played by Dev Patel that ambassador of color-blind casting. Dev is British born but of entirely Indian heritage. Here he is in England at the time when only Anglos and Saxons were on the island. It is kind of illuminating as to how little of an issue this is. As I brought up before in the “Personal Life of David Copperfield” (which also stars Dev Patel as a distinctly not-Indian character) since the movie takes place in a time of homogeneous racial identity, the race of the particular actors matters less to how the characters interact with each other. Everyone has the same Olde World accent and none of the characters’ choices take race into account. Secondly, is the otherwordly cinematography of the movie. David Lowery leans into the natural in this movie and presents everything in a lush verdant tone. The greens are dark green. The sky at dusk has an orange hue. The movie’s locations do not quite look like England. Actually, they look sort of like India (a country known for Green and Orange, take a look at its flag) and the color palette of Dev’s skin fits in quite well with the color palette of the cinematography. Third, Dev Patel is a very good actor and performs the role admirably. He just has the right look while wearing chain mail, sporting a kingly beard, and wielding a longsword.

Filling out the cast is Sean Harris as King Arthur. He performs the role like Marlon Brandon in the Godfather, with no need to speak louder than a whisper to get all the people in the room to listen. From a very good movie called “The Witch” produced by A24 which also produced this movie, we have Kate Dickie as Queen Guinivere and Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight. These two actors look right at home in the ancient past. Performing dual roles is Alicia Vikander as Gawain’s romantic interest in his brothel travails as well as The Lady to Joel Edgerton’s The Lord. These two prompt Gawain with another game before his appointment at the Green Chapel. Finally there is Barry Keoghan, his sweatiness, who shows up to do something dastardly in the intervening chapters.

“The Green Knight” is a very good movie that has something to say, albeit in sometimes obscure and round about ways. Like reading an old book with strange language, it may take more than usual effort to glean all of its secrets, but like taking the time to understand Shakespeare, it is worth going to it rather than having it come to you in a more modern updated form. Sometimes the place to see something new is the long forgotten past.

Black Widow (3/5 Stars)

 

QANON Marvel.

What a relief. The last movie I had seen in a theater was the underwhelming Wendy in early 2020. It was good to be back and watching a popcorn blockbuster no less, Marvel’s long delayed “Black Widow” starring Scarlett Johansson as the title hero. Critics deride these movies, but having been deprived of watching them on the big screen in a dark room with a bunch of other people for so long, their pleasures are more apparent. I wanted action, funny quips, ridiculous set pieces, and just enough pathos to be interested in the characters. I got that. “Black Widow” is a mediocre Marvel movie about one of their lesser superheroes. That’s fine. Marvel understands (unlike say D.C. sometimes) that not every movie should have apocalyptic stakes. After the end of the Infinity Saga, it was a good idea to scale back the ambition and start anew. “Black Widow” does just that, ridding itself of aliens and magical superpowers, and focusing on martial arts and relatively plausible special effects. Not that a flying fortress is plausible its just more plausible than an infinity stone.

“Black Widow” holds a strange place in the pantheon of Marvel movies. It has been released after the end of the Infinity Saga but contains the origin story of a character that was first introduced in “Iron Man 2” and that has appeared multiple times, with major roles in the Captain America and Avengers films. In the last Avengers film, Endgame, the character died. The main plot of this story takes place between “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War”. After taking the time to explain all of this, I can now inform you that it doesn’t really matter. Somehow any standalone Marvel movie can exist by itself. There are references to other events in other movies but I don’t think you really need to know what they are to get what is happening immediately on screen.

Black Widow’s story may be summarized as follows. She has no biological family. She was kidnapped by the Soviet government at birth to be a part of a program that trains/brainwashes girls to become deadly assassins called Black Widows. Her first mission occurred when she was ten (give or take?) and placed in a fake family of other spies that acted as a sleeper cell in the USA. After that mission ended, the family was separated, Black Widow did a bunch of stuff, defected to the Avengers, and after betraying the USA in “Captain America: Civil War” (go Team Iron Man) headed back to eastern Europe to lie low for a bit. There she is contacted by her old “family” and pursues revenge against the man and/or organization that indoctrinated her.

Her family is made up of talented actors that make their first appearances in the Marvel universe. First is David Harbour playing Alexie aka The Red Guardian who was Natasha’s fake father. He is the Soviet version of Captain America, except the government got jealous of his abilities and imprisoned him in a gulag. Then there is Florence Pugh (graduating from great movies to blockbusters) who plays Yelena Belova. She is Natasha’s fake sister that has recently taken the antitoxin that reverses the brainwashing. Finally there is Rachel Weisz who plays Melina, Natasha’s fake mother. She is the scientist behind the brainwashing serum. In one scene they have a fake family dinner and engage in fake family fights. It’s interesting to watch.

The evil conspiracy herein deserves to be delved into a little bit. There is this secret Soviet organization that is so powerful that it has outlived the Soviet state. It kidnaps and trains girls from a young age to be martial arts assassins and employs them covertly around the world. Such girls work for shady elites that use their skills at infiltration and coercion to control foreign governments. Does this sound at all like QANON to anybody? There are distinct parallels. QANON says that the world is governed by a secretive elite that worships Satan and runs a global child-trafficking scheme. The only thing really missing here in Black Widow is the pedophilia. The absence of sex doesn’t quite make sense (and I believe Black Widow was introduced way back when with super sexual wiles) because if an evil super secret organization is going to take the time and effort to kidnap and brainwash girls exclusive to boys, why would they use them only for violence. But hey, Marvel is a Disney corporation. Otherwise the sheer ridiculousness of the evil scheme is on the same level as QANON. I wonder sometimes whether a company like Marvel should exert some more thought in how it constructs the reality and philosophical outlook of its blockbusters given just how many people around the world are bound to see its movies. Have you seen the trailer for “The Eternals”. Isn’t Marvel basically creating a new religion? Is it okay for this company to make and market nonsense to hundreds of millions of people? I think it probably is okay, by the way, I’m just asking out of curiosity.

A notable absence from “Black Widow” is any preaching about feminism. This is very welcome. It could have been done in all sorts of places, but instead of the movie “telling” us all about it, it instead just “showed” us and had enough trust that the audience would get it. This is the first time I have seen in which thirty girls in a room perform a martial arts battle royale brawl. I had fun watching it and was grateful that no-one in the movie told me that I should have fun watching it. The movie was directed by Cate Shortland who has proved handily that a woman can make a corporate work of art bereft of individual style as well as any man. She’s got a long and lucrative career ahead of her in this business.

The stupidest thing in the movie is its main set piece. There is plenty of talk in the movie about how the secret organization cannot be found and is not on any map. Turns out, people can’t find it because its a sky fortress that, I don’t know, hides behind clouds or something. It is at least nice to know that our enemies are just as capable of wasting a gigantic amount of taxpayer money on ridiculous bullshit just like the Americans did by building that flying aircraft carrier in “The Avengers”. But I am being unfair here. As it concerns the flying fortress, Marvel follows that sage movie wisdom of “Bridge on the River Kwai”: If you build it, it must be destroyed. The best action in this movie involves Black Widow’s aerial escape from an exploding sky fortress. I must admit, it was pretty cool.

The last thing to mention is Scarlett Johannson’s lawsuit against Marvel. Her deal involved her getting a portion of the box office receipts of “Black Widow”, which would have ran in theaters for many months before being released on DVDs or streaming. However, due to COVID-19 pandemic, Marvel changed the plans for the movie’s release, making it available to stream on Disney+ on the same day of its wide release in theaters. On Disney+, one can rent “Black Widow” for thirty dollars and presumably Scarlett does not get any portion that. It seems to me like she has a case and since the damages may very well be in the millions of dollars, it warranted a lawsuit. I would be very interested to hear how this one turns out.

OSCARS 2021

As I mentioned before in a blog post, 2020 was the worst year for movies in my lifetime. First, there were fewer movies. Second, you could not see those movies in their ideal setting, a movie theater. Third, counterintuitively, since movies were not in theaters, they may have found themselves behind paywalls for a streaming site, which made them harder to see. In finally, the world of criticism continues to fracturing under the weight of ever increasing content making it harder for a cultural consensus to form as to what movies are worth watching. Still, I saw some very good movies this last year. Below are my picks. Bold denotes a winner

Like the Academy, I'm considering movies that did not come out in theaters for the first time. So the HBO movie "Bad Education" is nominated when otherwise it would not have been considered. I probably will keep with that trend moving forward. HBO movies are of significant quality.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Another Round

Judas and the Black Messiah

Minari

Palm Springs

Sound of Metal

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Father

First Cow

The Invisible Man

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Nomadland

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Emma

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Pinocchio

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Emma

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Mank

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Pinocchio

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Emma

The Father

Mank

Tenet

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

The Invisible Man

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Tenet

BEST SOUND EDITING

First Cow

Mank

Soul

Sound of Metal

BEST MUSIC SCORE

First Cow

Mank

Minari

Soul 

Wendy

BEST USE OF A SONG IN A MOVIE

Another Round: "What a Life"

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga - "Song-Along"

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga - "Husavik"

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Sound of Metal: "Cet Amour Me Tue"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Allison Janney - Bad Education

Amanda Seyfried - Mank

Olivia Colman - The Father

Olivia Cooke - Sound of Metal

Yuh-Jung Youn - Minari

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Ben Whishaw - The Personal History of David Copperfield

Charles Dance - Mank

Dan Stevens - Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Mark Gatiss - The Father

Paul Raci - Sound of Metal

BEST ACTRESS

Viola Davis - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Frances McDormand - Nomadland

Elisabeth Moss - The Invisible Man

Anna Taylor Joy - Emma

Krisin Wiig - Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

BEST ACTOR

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal

Anthony Hopkins - The Father

John Magaro - First Cow

Mads Mikkelsen - Another Round

Steven Yuen - Minari

BEST FILM EDITING

The Father

First Cow

Mank

Nomadland

Sound of Metal

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

First Cow

Mank

Nomadland

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Pinocchio

BEST DIRECTOR

Lee Isaac Chung - Minari

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal

Kelly Reichardt - First Cow

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Collective

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Another Round

Collective

BEST PICTURE

Another Round

The Father

First Cow

Palm Springs

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Minari

Nomadland

Sound of Metal

Also here is a picture from Palm Springs, most 2020 movie?

Judas and the Black Messiah (3/5 Stars)

 

There is an inherent conflict in the mythology of the Black Panthers. Its supporters want it to be an important group and at the same time deems its enemies as overzealous. The title of this movie, directed by Shaka King, is illustrative. The Black Messiah is allegedly a descriptive title given by J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, to Fred Hampton, the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers. Such a title imposes an importance on Fred Hampton akin to Jesus Christ. This movie wants you to think of Fred Hampton as an important, potentially dangerous, man. It also wants you to believe the FBI was wrong to treat him as such.

What I knew about the Black Panthers walking into this movie was scant. First, their name post-dates the Marvel comic Superhero by a few years. That is probably coincidental. Second, they were heavily armed and “patrolled” neighborhoods with the vague mission of defending the residents therein from the police. Third, they had some ancillary connection to the ideology of Malcolm X.

I was wrong about the third one. Whereas Malcolm X was staunch in his belief that black people had the right to defend themselves, with violence if necessary, I don’t recall him preaching civil war in his book. He seemed to be more interested in black self-reliance, going so far as to advocate segregation. To put it another way, he seemed less interested in affecting the white man and more interested in the white man not affecting the black man.

The Black Panthers, at least the Fred Hampton led ones in Chicago, are Marxists. They are preaching a racialized Marxist ideology. The movie does not shy away from this. Fred Hampton preaches revolution from the stage, and because he uses the terminology of Marxism, it is no metaphor. One listening to it would be justified in believing that Fred Hampton means to bring about a violent revolution, starting with the overthrow of the Chicago Police Department. The movie believes that the FBI thought that.

The movie makes a big deal about Black Panthers’ charitable works in the community. Apparently they ran food services for hungry children. This is hardly relevant as to whether the FBI deems them dangerous and no excuse for them to be considered harmless. Many dictators, gangsters, and totalitarian governments give away bread and circuses to the poor. It is not something only good and peaceful people do. It can be noted however that when good and peaceful people do it (like say the church) they don’t also walk around heavily armed.

Still they probably were mostly harmless. They were not, as argued by an FBI agent using a false equivalency, like the Ku Klux Klan. The Black Panthers did not have the same amount of numbers, had little to no political support in any level of government, and although they had guns, had no knowledge of tactics. A commendable thing about Director Shaka King movie is that even though he is clearly sympathetic to the Black Panthers, his movie is still honest enough in its portrayal to allow them to perform acts of extraordinary stupidity. At one point, after a Black Panther has initiated a shoot out with the police, several police cars nonchalantly stake out the Black Panther headquarters. One particular cop taunts the Panthers with a megaphone. A member of the Black Panthers reacts to this by opening the window and brandishing a shotgun. What results is the world’s most predictable shootout with the world’s most predictable ending: the cops win. What was the plan? Did the Black Panthers really believe that a show of force would intimidate the cops? Did they think that once the shooting started, that the cops would give up and go away?

(For all the bad things said about the moral impact of the video game Grand Theft Auto, one particular mechanic of the game should be taken to heart by all would be revolutionaries: Once you shoot a cop, the only option is to run. Because the cops will keep coming and coming until you are dead, at least in America.)

Fred Hampton is played by Daniel Kaluuya. The title “Judas” is Bill O’Neal, played by Lakeith Stanfield, the Black Panther head of security and also an FBI informant. Interestingly, although Hampton and O’Neal are the characters with the most screentime in the movie respectively, both Kaluuya and Stanfield were nominated for Oscars in the Supporting Actor category, Kaluuya winning. Kaluuya is a fine actor and Stanfield is a favorite of mine. Having said that, both are miscast. Fred Hampton was 21 at the time of his assassination (Kaluuya is 32). Bill O’Neal was 20 at the time (Stanfield is 30). The actors bring a gravitas to their roles that is misleading and blinds the audience to reasons for their behavior that would be obvious if younger actors had played the roles.

For example, Bill O’Neal’s career as an FBI informant started when he was a teenager. He had been caught impersonating a federal officer while trying to steal cars when he was 17. If you wanted a good reason why he was so impressionable and would betray all the Panthers for steak dinners, money, a car, and a business, all you need to know is that he is just a stupid kid. As for Hampton, it is illustrative of the actual pedigree of the Black Panthers (as opposed to their mythologized status as a dangerous terrorist group) that the head of the chapter is barely old enough to drink alcohol. In his wisdom he appointed a paid informant as head of security. These were kids playing dress-up, wearing silly fatigues and berets, walking around with guns they hardly knew how to use.

Really, the main character of this story is Bill O’Neal’s FBI handler Roy Mitchell (played by Jesse Plemons). He, along with the rest of the FBI are the adults in the room. They are the ones with the moral dilemma on their hands, the ones that have agency. The Black Panthers are outmaneuvered and outgunned at every turn, their ranks rife with informants. The movie ends with what can be categorized as an act of war by the FBI against the Black Panthers. It was a surprise attack in the dead of night with overwhelming force, no due process, ending in the assassination of an unconscious Fred Hampton. When such tactics are used against citizens, that’s called fascism. Who is the real Judas here? It’s the FBI and they betrayed all of us.