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Well, gang, with winter very nearly over but a pandemic gamely tagging in to set upon and batter us up something fierce, what better time to hunker down indoors and revisit some horror films of yesteryear?   As it happens, your intrepid writer took it upon himself to get the jump on this in the past couple of weeks, revisiting—or, in one case, first-time-visiting—The Ring, The Boy, Candyman, and Cube.  Way ahead of you, Corona.

Faring least well of the lot is Cube, so let’s start with that.  Often hailed as a sort of proto-Saw, for all the good or ill that implies, and predating it by seven(!) years, Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi-cum-horror debut is, without question, a formative work, cult classic, and true touchstone for the consistently-twinned genre(s).  (14-year-old me, already a latecomer, absolutely ate this movie up.)  It’s also, upon reflection and in several ways, truly more akin to Saw 2, but we’ll come to that.  Cube basically has the feel of a feature-length bottle-episode of some SyFy (nee SciFi) anthology series that never made it past its pilot*, one which cleverly color-codes the various rooms of its namesake in order to disguise its limited sets and budget.

(*Call it Waaay Outer Limits. Or, from another angle, you could call it an especially gruesome forebear to Black Mirror, right down to its ham-fisted yet still somehow vague social commentary.)

The cleverness, alas, doesn’t extend far past that logistical ingenuity—and, part and parcel, a smattering of set-pieces that make the most of these constraints.  The booby-trapped rooms, which would seem to offer up a myriad of opportunities for grotesquery, turn out distressingly limited—owing in no small part, surely, to the minuscule budget.  Still, a melted face here and noise-triggered trap requiring total silence to bypass there provide some grisly and tense curveballs, respectively.

Most everything else comes up wanting.  The fault lies at the feet of no single source, but rather, well, pretty much all of them.  The acting here ranges from community-theater-grade to openly petulant, and is done no favors by half-baked characterization and what my viewing partner pegged, rightly, as an apparent total lack of direction*.  There’s a soliloquy slightly past the halfway point that I think is supposed to be cathartic, caustic, and cynical in equal measure, but ends up, above all else, confusing**.  Maybe that’s me—again, I’m sure 14-year-old me was suitably impressed—but it also sheds light on both this film’s faltering, false parallel to Saw, as well as its actual closest companion piece.

(*It’s surprising, and oddly a little bit heartwarming, to see that while Natali’s big screen career has been sporadic at best, he did eventually graduate to directing half a dozen episodes of Hannibal, which was the most gorgeously staged show on television when it was airing.)

(**For those who’ve seen, it’s probably clear I’m talking about Worth’s “headless blunder” speech; I get that pointlessness is the point, but it feels symptomatic of the film’s overall tendency to try to get in front of criticisms by putting them into character’s mouths [another example: that noise-activated room is “programmed” not to react to the sound of its doors opening or closing, so that’s nice and tidy], but here the elaborate handwave of a non-answer kind of comes across as, “Well, you’re an idiot for asking.”)

Saw—which I’ll confess I’ve not seen incredibly recently, but did have the chance to revisit (read: stumble upon on Showtime Beyond) within the past few years—actually holds up decently well.  This is due far less to its hyperkinetic direction and bludgeoning reliance on montage (thank heaven James Wan learned some restraint) and instead to its surprising depth of character.  Make no mistake, there’s still some thin scripting plus overacting aplenty in Saw (“You’re a liar! STOP THE LIES!”), and unlikeable people, too; however, and crucially, there’s no one of Danny Glover or Cary Elwes caliber to overact in Cube, or even of then-neophyte Leigh Whannell*.  That film’s fairly limited cast also allows it to drill down deeply on some greater nuance, which makes even heel-turns and twists feel earned and consistent in a way that Cube doesn’t really take the time or effort to achieve.

(*Whannell, on the other side of the camera, recently surprised me again with his slick-yet-sophisticated take on Invisible Man, but that’s another post.)

In this way, I found myself time and again thinking the more apt spiritual successor is Saw’s notably inferior immediate sequel, which upped the head- and bodycount, along with the number of graphic, gory traps to match*, while sacrificing character and the coherence of vision that were the economically staged first entry’s secret weapons.  Even the heroes are hard to like in Saw 2 (and Cube, where they span the gamut from pedantic to psychotic), and while, again, you don’t have to have likeable characters to make a great movie—in fact, I’d argue you rarely do, especially in horror—it helps to at least have their flaws and irksomeness clearly, consistently defined, rather than retrofitted on the fly.

(*Also like Cube, there are a couple of diamonds in the rough in terms of trap design that work on a visceral level, like the pit of hypodermic needles, or the box with the razorblade hand-openings, the latter of which, especially, is elegantly gruesome, and clever if you ignore the stupidity of its victim.)

Saw 2 has its fans, and so does Cube.  They’re both entitled to them.  I was—and, to an extent, still am—one of them (although, alas, I don’t get Showtime Beyond anymore, so the chances of encounters in the wild have diminished exponentially).  I also remember being disappointed by the former, even in my high school salad days, but sticking with that franchise to the bitter end half a decade hence.  Horror can do that.  And I’ll still (and, I guess, just did) defend the first Saw, which I contend takes the basic schematic laid out by Cube and imbues it with the better-fleshed-out victims that make the rending of said flesh more impactful and upsetting than just, “Oh, hey, neat kill.”  Then again, the one wouldn’t exist without the other, so you see the stickiness; traps indeed.  I didn’t intend this from the outset, I swear, but the irony has steadily dawned on me that Cube’s biggest issue is its lack of dimension.

Sorry.

Speaking of unfair comparisons, Candyman, despite having aged the better part of a decade longer than Cube, has matured far better by my estimation.  Tune in next time for an unpacking of much superior, if still queasily problematic, 90s horror keystone.

Also:

-Among the creative decisions that’s aged poorest is Cube’s inclusion of an “idiot savant” (which, oof) type to help distill down some of its mathematical gobbledygook.  It’s not only a questionable crutch of a creative trope to start with, but also feeds into the greater conundrum of the overall aimlessness of purpose: Who’s picking these people, and are they supposed to escape?  “Teamwork makes the dream work” seems an awfully pat, too-tidy-by-half message for a film that prides itself on its cynicism.

-Surely our buddy Worth would tell me I’m dumb and it doesn’t matter anyway, but also, how the hell would his self-professed office drone of an accomplice even know that it’s headless?  I’m pretty sure that fallacy’s what’s most confounding for me.

-Incidentally, character quibbles aside, David Hewlett’s is the best (read: most consistent) performance in the film, which makes sense, given he’s the snide slacker, and doesn’t have to do much reaching (truly not a knock, just true of and to the character he’s portraying).

-Meanwhile, Maurice Dean Wint as Quentin seems like he’d rather be doing Shakespeare in the Park (and a cursory glance at his IMDb page bears this out). Nicky Guadagni’s Holloway swings to and fro from ostensible voice of reason to wingnut conspiracy theorist with alarming velocity (though, fun fact: She’s the uber-intense Aunt Helene in last year’s Ready or Not, so good on her for sticking with it). And Nicole de Boer’s Leaven oscillates, as well, mostly between de facto audience surrogate and unpleasantly arrogant math wiz, unfortunately without the script, characterization, or charisma to fully bridge that gap; these days, I could see her role going to Jane Levy, especially if Sam Raimi were to finance a reboot (which, I was just kidding to begin with, but…).

-Lastly, and of special note, Mark Korven’s original score to this movie is also something to behold. It’s a mystifying collection of industrial-ish chirps and whirrs, drones and moans, and what feel like honest-to-god vocal warmups. It’s weird as hell, and while Korven’s no Charlie Clouser, I’m still absolutely obsessed with it.

Well, gang, we come to it.  In the wake of an Oscars that oscillated intensely between cumbersome and compelling (glad I ended up catching Parasite beforehand—but more on that below), the cinematic news we were all truly waiting for is here at last: My vaguely sorted musings on other significant films from throughout 2019 that didn’t, for varying reasons, make my prior ranking.

In terms of films that came just shy of hitting my “official” list properly, Ready or Not is right up there.  It’s an entertaining, tight, good’n’gory horror flick with some salient class critiques in the mixture, as The-Rich-hunt-their-lessers stories are wont to contain.  Still, there’s enough tongue-in-cheek goofiness to keep things moving along, and more fun than stodgily polemical.  It also features a breakout performance from Samara Weaving as heroine Grace*, as well as welcome reemergences from Andie MacDowell and Adam Brody, neither of whom have been hurting for work, sure, but who both get meaty, surprisingly nuanced parts to play and grace notes within their archetypal patrician-villain trappings.  If only the film as a whole wasn’t so on-the-nose.  Still, sly fun’s not nothing, especially in a genre as prone to tonal misfires.  And the final moment is grimly gratifying in the way that many final twists aspire to, horror and elsewhere alike.

(*Weaving has had several prior roles, most notably in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, though you’d be forgiven for not realizing that was her.  By which I mean, I sure didn’t realize that was her.)

Speaking of Brody, he shows up for a stretch in Shazam!, too, though it’s very much Zachary Levi’s show (though Marc Strong is well-fed on the scenery).  I talked a bit back in Act I about 2019 being an overall lackluster year for blockbusters, and while that’s a statement surely inspired in large part by the bad taste Rise of Skywalker left behind, I’ll stand by the overall sentiment.  But, naturally, a couple caveats: Shazam! is easily DC’s best work since Wonder Woman, and hopefully a sign of things to come from the studio.  It’s the anti-Suicide Squad, which was both cynical in keeping with David Ayer’s directorial voice and focus-grouped into absurdity, and worse for both*.  Shazam! is its naturalistic, wholesome, occasionally-hokey-but-never-hacky counterpart; expect a post about that, called “A Tale of Two DCities”**.  Coupled with the shockingly positive buzz around whatever they’re calling Birds of Prey this week, I’m much more intrigued by their future over there than I’ve been at any point post-Nolan.

(*I realize the irony, Joker apologist that I am, for criticizing another DC work for floundering under its director’s cynical worldview; I will say, Joker does a much better job putting voice and shading to the disenfranchised.)

(**Am I kidding?  Dear reader, I’m honestly not sure.  I have a lot of thoughts about Suicide Squad, none of them especially nice.)

Meanwhile, Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a lot of fun, too, though busy in a way that felt like kind of an overcorrection in the wake of criticisms of Gareth Edwards’ underrated 2014 venture*.  It also arguably overcorrects in doubling down on a stacked cast for mostly stock roles.  But, come on: Surely those itty bitty people up there onscreen aren’t the reason you’re going to see a Godzilla movie, right?  Still, Kyle Chandler acquits himself nicely with a few ace line readings (Ex: “I wanna start a boat tour!”  Maybe you had to be there…)**, and Charles Dance can play this sort of glowering heavy in his sleep—you just wish they got more use out of him before he up and disappears.  Call that the Bryan Cranston effect, with this franchise.  Still, for all my salt, I had a pretty great time with this movie, and am looking forward to this year’s impending Godzilla vs. Kong, even as I scratch my head at the logistics.  Oh, well.  As the film itself would likely put it, just shut up and watch the big monsters beat the hell out of each other.

(*I’ll go to bat for that movie.  It’s not an all-timer, by any stretch, but I like the way that it toys around with distance, scale, perspective, and fore- and background interplay—in much the same way his Rogue One, unequivocally my favorite post-prequel Star Wars story, does.)

(**In a bizarre little rabbithole I plunged myself into, I kept thinking back to Chandler’s role in Peter Jackson’s 2005 take on King Kong, and the curlicue plot-logic it would take to make his character here that character’s grandson, or something.  I’m still not quite there with my unified theory, but I’m working on it tirelessly, dammit!)

I don’t know that it technically qualifies as a blockbuster—or would even necessarily aspire to the distinction—but Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep was both a largely gripping, atmospheric Stephen King adaptation and a largely gripping, atmospheric sequel to Kubrick’s The Shining, which is something of a feat in and of itself.  (It also outruns it in length by all of six minutes, which seems a little petty.)  Full disclosure: I haven’t read King’s novel—either of them in question, actually*—but was struck by how immediate and immersive the film felt nonetheless.  I do get the sense that I might have missed the terminus of a few threads—King has a tendency to intertwine them, or sometimes let go and lose track of them himself.  Huge credit to Ewan McGregor, then, who grounds everything and imbues his all-grown-up Dan Torrance with a wounded bearing and trauma-incubated flaws that belie his recalcitrant, resurfacing heroism.  He carries the film.

(*In my defense, I’ve read all the Dark Tower books, as well as The Stand, which cumulatively counts as, like, 40.)

I’m a bit less sure of Rebecca Ferguson as antagonist Rose The Hat, who feels more like a menacing collection of mannerisms and quirks—I mean, she’s called “Rose The Hat,” after all—than fully-fleshed character.  Then again, I’m gonna go ahead and guess that might be true to King’s text, as well.  Frankly, the whole business of steam-vampires (yup) is strange in a distinctly King way, but almost managed to make the movie feel, in my reading, like a YA series adaptation.  I don’t know if that’s due to Kyliegh Curran’s Gifted One co-protagonist, literally named Abra (yup), being a young adult herself, or if it’s simply a product of Twilight’s position as such a pervasive cultural keystone.  Chalk it up to what you want, but the sensation was there, nonetheless, and while it’s not inherently pejorative, it did sort of end up grating against some of the more genuinely horrific sequences—the abduction of a baseball-playing boy (Jacob Tremblay of Room); a tense, wooded showdown involving Fargo alum Zahn McClarnon, the ever-welcome Cliff Curtis, and rising star Emily Alyn Lind—to the detriment of the film’s tone and overall cohesion.  That’s more my problem than the film’s, I guess; good thing I like Ewan McGregor.

Alas, I knew his odds were slim for any nominations—horror’ll do that to you—but honestly, Doctor Sleep caught my eye and held my gaze more than many of the movies actually up for major awards.  I bear no ill-will towards Ford v Ferrari or The Irishman, but neither of them are priorities, per se, even with my love for the director’s cut of The Wolverine and The Aviator (both directors may or may not have made other movies).  I’ve started A Marriage Story, but stalled out after half an hour, though that has more to do with Quixotically firing it up near midnight than anything.

I did see and mostly enjoy Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, especially the easy, naturalistic rapport of co-leads DiCaprio and Pitt (“Supporting Actor”?  Right, sure.), but wasn’t as taken with Tarantino’s fairy tale as many seemed to be*.  It’s clearly lovingly, meticulously constructed, probably rightly won best production design, and home to a multitude of superb sequences: The sudden, jarring fourth-wall break while DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton is on-set and flubs a line (plus, his subsequent, reportedly improvised trailer meltdown–which, goddamn); basically the entire queasy stretch on Spahn Ranch; and, of course, Chekhov’s flamethrower, in all its appearances and permutations.

(*Then again, this comes from somebody who’d put Hateful Eight in his top three Tarantino, so your mileage may vary.)

On the other hand, there are some unignorably problematic aspects—including that supposedly cathartic violence at the film’s climax, which for me soured more each time I reflected on it.  Obviously, the Manson Family aren’t a bunch of innocent wee babes, but there’s still something discomfiting about watching these brainwashed kids brutalized with the same signature violent retribution Tarantino previously unloaded upon slave owners and Nazis in his ongoing trek through revisionist history.  As well, the entire Bruce Lee sequence—already dissected and diagnosed at length, all over—seemed, at the very least, poorly thought through.  One solid quip exchange (excerpted in the trailer, because why not?) is hardly enough to justify the long, long, likely-offensive walk.  And then, why bring Emile Hirsch into the mix at all?  That just reads like purposeful baiting.

Despite my qualms (and my personal druthers for 1917), I’d also considered Once Upon a Time… pretty much a lock for Best Picture, especially given Hollywood’s tendency towards patting itself on the back.  Color me stunned that Bong Joon Ho’s Little Satirical Thriller That Could ended up pulling the upset—and color me thrilled, while you’re at it.  Parasite easily would have made it into my best of 2019 had I seen it in time—but hey, better late than never.  I’m particularly glad I was still able to catch it on the big screen, since its dynamic use of lighting and framing—things that, honestly, I rarely find myself actively aware of while watching, or at least in a positive way—was spectacular.

Much of the knowingly Hitchcockian film is.  Parasite is sinister, tensely coiled, and often hysterical, sometimes within the same scene (as when a certain camping trip ends up coming to an abrupt conclusion, and some uninvited houseguests are left scrambling).  It’s also got a more shaded, complicated philosophy on class relations than Ready or Not (different ballparks, maybe, but not altogether separate sports), and is richer (ugh) for it.  Bong Joon Ho himself put it this way: “[The film is] a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains.”  He has it right; how refreshing, to side with a director for a change.  Honestly, one of the shrewdest subversions the movie pulls is not making its upper-class characters unrepentant, dimensionless monsters.  They’re ostentatious, and self-absorbed, but more than anything, they’re just oblivious, which seems as apt and accurate a take as you’re liable to encounter.

It’s this obliviousness, along with the rigged system that enables and perpetuates it, that draws the film’s true rancor.  The lower classes, brilliantly physically represented by varying levels of semi- and sub-basement, become pitted against another through hardship and, well, necessity, while the privileged people overhead stay ignorant*, willful or not, to the conflicts they’re largely culpable of creating, or at least allowing to fester under rugs proverbial and literal alike.  That is, until one especially bad day, after the infection can no longer go unacknowledged.  Collateral damage ensues.  Doesn’t it always?  And people are blamed, and none of it is fair, and man, that’s kind of a downer.  So is Parasite, but it’s a hell of a ride, including the decline.

(*Oh, to live like that.)

And as for this bleak, bluntly political, grim and graphic Korean import managing to trounce heavyweights like Tarantino and Scorsese on Hollywood’s big night?  Refreshing, too, and thrilling indeed.

Also:

-I wish I had a better, wittier point to make out of the fact the Bong Joon Ho has now made films called The Host and Parasite, but here we are.  They are both pretty great!  (So is Snowpiercer, but that doesn’t really work with whatever it is I’ve tried to do here.)

-Another link between those, I have to give special credit to Joon Ho mainstay Kang-ho Song for his work in Parasite; there’s one moment, especially, where his character, whom we’ve seen mostly affable and passive, if not outright downtrodden, turns on a dime, and it’s frightening—all the more so in how he attempts to play it off (as well as how the beat pays off later in the film).  Chills.  That neither he nor any castmate was nominated might be nitpicking given Parasite’s overall haul on Oscar night, but it does demonstrate there’s still progress to be made.

-I feel bad burying it here at the very bottom, but maybe there’s potency in it being the final thought: Crawl was another quite good, very efficient horror picture.  An apex predator, if you will.  Usually, when I told people I was going to see/had seen “an alligator movie,” that made them laugh—and why not?  But it turned out to be a simple-but-smarter-than-it-had-to-be genre exercise with some great jolts and at least one gruesome, lasting image.  Plus, Barry Pepper!  Have yourself a horror double-feature and watch it back to back with Ready or Not, and you’ll still come up half an hour short of The Irishman’s runtime.

Let’s get right to it, folks:

The Lighthouse – An unlikely contender for best dark comedy of the year, Robert Eggers’ bracing, brilliant follow-up to his “New England folktale” The VVitch is another period piece, once again tumescent with roiling tension and pent-up (until very-much-not) peccadillos, anxieties, and frustrations.  It’s also, it would happen, hilarious, and in an awkward, lurching way that the stuffy audience I saw it with really only enhanced.  A masturbation scene that ends with a smash-cut to a wave crashing into shore?  Met with silence.  Come on, now*.  Eggers seems too sharp and savvy a filmmaker to not realize that should get a laugh.  More important still, jabs of humor like this (or the ominous running gag of an especially angry seagull, as another prominent example) largely serve only to enhance the grit and severity of their setting, rather than detract from it.

(*Come on indeed.)

Speaking of which, I’ve heard Willem Dafoe’s irascible, binge-drinking, flatulent (seriously, Eggers must know, right?) lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (a nice touch) called the Simpsons’ sea captain character come to flesh-and-blood(-and-crust-and-phlegm) life, and, well, yes, 100%.  Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson—whom I, like most hipper-than-thou college freshman coming of age in the Twilight epoch, ridiculed and loathed (read: very-probably just envied) at first, but now, in the wake of Cosmopolis, Good Time (see below), and The Rover especially, have come to admire and stan—is every bit his match as scene partner.  Their dynamic, a by turns combative, oddly tender*, then right the hell back to combative rapport, is bolstered by their dueling vocal acrobatics.  Pattinson, at one point, calls Dafoe “a parody,” which is accurate, funny, and self-aware.  To wit, Pattinson apparently studied intensely at Eggers’ behest to perfect a certain dialect of Maine circa-19^th Century, which, why not, I’ll believe it.  He mostly sounds like a mopey, petulant, slurring drunk.  That’s not a criticism; it’s perfect.

(*There is unquestionably some latent homoeroticism undergirding their codependency.  Or is that “blatant”?  Tough to tell.)

From these shouting match centerpieces on outwards, there’s an unbridled “bigness” here, which winks at us while scowling, and which I think works tremendously.  The Lighthouse’s dual tendencies toward stern, stormy miserablism and glint-in-the-eye gallows humor help the movie outmaneuver some of its own self-important black-and-white, boxed-in-aspect-ratio posturing as a (semi-)modern retelling of the Prometheus myth (or, y’know, something).  They feed off one another, in much the way that Dafoe and Pattinson do, forming some serpentine seabeast that grins while it devours from the deep.

So yeah, comedy of the year.

Midsommar – In what fortuitously works quite well as a thematic successor to the prior pick, Midsommar is yet another sophomore effort from a rising star in horror—here, Hereditary’s Ari Aster—that also doubles as a dark (though oddly bright) comedy.  Confession time: I’m agnostic-at-best on Hereditary.  It’s got some tremendous performances—especially that of Toni Collette—but the movie, which begins grippingly and features a shocking early pivot that’s still haunting over a year later, completely falls apart in its final act in my estimation*.  I can’t see anybody arguing that of Midsommar, though I can see them disliking it from the outset.

(*Hereditary also has some troublesome ideas that verge on ableism, or at the very least easily seem to; it’s not exactly alone in the horror genre when it comes to that, and there’s a sprinkling of it here, as well, though it’s thankfully less central.  Regardless, if he, too, is aiming at auteur, Aster would do well to scrub that particular flourish from his signature sooner rather than later.)

Case in point, a friend of mine who saw the film (separately from me, and a little while later, if that makes any difference) put it this way: “Something so dumb shouldn’t be this long.”  Long, it is.  You feel the length, even if you haven’t caught the three-hour director’s cut (which, full disclosure: I have not, but would like to, which says omething).  But dumb?  I’d contend the contrary.  Now, silly, yes.  There’s a bizarre sunniness—both literal in the Scandinavian locale, and in many characters’ odd demeanors—that, not unlike The Lighthouse’s farts and crabby birds, could puncture the entire enterprise.  But I think the choice elevates Midsommar, while also shedding a glaring, unflattering light on what is, in its broken heart of hearts, a breakup story.

The failing couple, played by Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor, ground what could be a simple Wicker Man retread and, in so doing, make the film make this list.  Pugh, in particular, deserves ample praise for her cathartic, believable, often wordless wild-mouse coaster of emotions*, which starts in the film’s early, arguably most intense sequence, and doesn’t really relent from there on through.  Too, I’d be lying through my teeth to say I didn’t feel a frankly uncomfortable affinity for Reynor’s deadbeat partner, who passive-aggressively takes his own aimlessness out on people around him, while heaving sighs and play-acting the sympathetic, sensible one.  He’s a liar, a gaslighter (that’s a word now, right?), and, above all else, a truly nuanced cautionary tale for relationships both romantic and among friends.  They’re complemented by William Jackson Harper (Chidi himself, basically playing a variation on that theme, but playing it well), Will Poulter as an idiot Ugly-American wannabe lothario, and relative newcomer Vilhelm Blomgren as the smiling, sincere face of the film’s chipper menace.  Chipper menace might sound dumb, to some, and I get it; but I was gripped, and am now far more excited to follow Aster than I was after his debut.

(*Pugh has gotten quite a lot of praise for Little Women—another movie I meant to see, so much so that I even forgot to put on my list of those in Act I—and a friend of mine said that after her performance there, she’s goin’ places.  I feel like this was actually that performance, and Little Women is the start of those places, but whatever; fans of Lady Macbeth or Fighting with My Family probably said the same.)

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek – An unsung and underseen film whose year of provenance is a bit questionable (I’d initially heard of it back in 2018, I think), The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is something of a lean-and-mean companion piece to Knives Out, albeit it a far darker, more brutal breed of mystery.  Hailing from first-time (astonishing, that) writer/director Henry Dunham, the piece is entertaining, no question, but simultaneously topical in a way that, ironically, probably helps explain its lack of mainstream exposure, dealing as it does with matters of police violence (in multiple senses), torture, firearms, and self-“regulated” militias that are curiously, conspicuously monochromatic in their membership.

The film clocks in at 88 minutes, not one of them wasted, so I’ll attempt to match that brevity here and keep my praise pithy: Standoff’s further proof that James Badge Dale should be a far bigger star.  It’s spry and surprising and in total much smarter than a potboiler action-thriller like this needs to be.  The film’s social commentary plays as an organic, intrinsic part of its story, not a stapled-on screed to generate artificial relevance—though relevant, it remains.  In this way, it’s reminiscent of the very best work of Taylor Sheridan (think Hell or High Water, or the first Sicario), and also in rarely letting up on the throttle even as it insidiously starts to pick at and split your sympathies.  Movies like this are the perfect antidote for the vacuous antics of Michael Bay and the …Has Fallen franchise.  Henry Dunham, like his debut film, is a talent to watch closely.

Tie (Not Actually): They Shall Not Grow Old + 1917 – So, this is a blatant cheat.  That’s obvious.  I also don’t want to do disservice to either film by reducing them to a joint blurb here (expect a full unpacking in a separate post), but I will provide my rationale: Past their WWI trench warfare starting point, Peter Jackson’s stirring technical marvel of a documentary They Shall Not Grow Old and Sam Mendes’s stirring technical marvel of a scripted drama 1917 are both obviously deeply personal passion projects that offer decidedly different lenses on their shared subject.  I loved them both, and look forward to unloading on you about them sometime soon.

Uncut Gems – I joked a few months ago that my top five films of the year would include the trailer for Uncut Gems.  (You can, and should, watch that right here.  Yes, even if you have already.  Never stopped me.)  Maybe I was half-joking.  It might read as snide, or at the very least odd, to say that Josh and Benny Safdie’s movie has almost lived up to the trailer, but I mean it.  The trailer is honestly a work of art unto itself, transfixing and pulsing and in perpetual motion.  The film, coming on the heels of the Safdies’ propulsive but arguably overlong Good Time (R-Pats in the house!  Call the cops!), is yet another cinematic shark, constantly moving, and maybe a tad bit bloated.  And it can occasionally be exhausting, but apologizes by virtue of being viscerally thrilling and, at times, unexpectedly poignant.

About that exhaustion: I enjoyed it, particularly the longer I sat with it after.  Uncut Gems as a whole—and Adam Sandler’s central…well, ‘protagonist’ doesn’t feel like the right term, but there’s only so many synonyms for ‘asshole’—anyway, he’s designed to be exhausting.  The praise has already come his way in torrents (from all directions other than the Academy’s, that is*), and more eloquently than I’m likely to string together on this self-imposed deadline, so I won’t belabor that, other than to say this: Sandler is elemental in the role, bellowing and sweating and delivering one of his career-best and the film’s best performances, which he claims was based, in part at least, on his own father. Yikes.  I say “one of,” because a legitimately surprising wallop the film packs is populating the world around Howard—especially Idina Menzel as his soon-to-be ex-wife (and not soon enough, it would seem), Judd Hirsch in a smaller role as his obliviously supportive patriarch, or Succession’s Eric Bogosian as Arno, a bookie ready-to-collect who actually comes across as one of the more reasonable guys you’d ever want to be in arrears with**—with people genuinely hurt, manipulated, and yet still believably taken in by him.

(*Do yourself another favor still, and take a look at this for the ramifications of Sandler’s snub.)

(**His muscle, meanwhile, embodied by Keith Williams Richards’ screen debut as Phil…not so much.  Goddamned terrifying.)

You feel their exasperation more and more deeply in your bones, and then end up stricken with it, too.  That’s the central tragedy of the film, and of this mad maelstrom of a man who is also, we come to realize, powerless in the grip of his gambling addiction.  The resignation that we see cross like storm cloud over Arno’s face in the film’s final stretch is, in an odd way, wrenching.   So, too, is Howard’s fraying connection to his kids, be it the already-fractured sparring with a teenaged daughter wise to his shit or, more so, the dawning disillusionment of a younger son who clearly still idolizes his deeply flawed father.  Again, it’s tough to look at that, especially in light of Sandler’s comments, and not feel some quiet stirring, despite the sound and fury.

That’s thanks to Sandler, sure, but also this greater menagerie of the Safdies’ making, where typically no fewer than two to three subplots at a time are snapping at each other like starved animals (Howard’s usually the ham-hock thrown in to the kennel, to torture this analogy).  It’s a lot, is what I’m saying (and have said).  And, it bears repeating, it’s exhausting, but in the way a good run is exhausting*.  I was surprised, after leaving the theater, to discover it had somehow become so late. I hadn’t realized the film was over two hours long (two-and-a-quarter, to be precise); I honestly would have guessed between 90 and 100 minutes, and it’s a testament to the kinetic, dynamic storytelling here that something so exhausting also felt like it could have run longer.

(*Or, I imagine, other types of exercise might be, but I don’t do those.)

Us – This, too, deserves a longer write-up that this space offers, and I swear one will see the light of day.  It’s too complex, and it’s this same complexity that I think put me off it, at first.  But, like Arctic before it, I’ve rewatched it a few times, and while I’m still not sure I fully parse the intricacies—not all metaphors are allegories, after all—I think this was another one of the at times funniest, at times most unsettling films of the year.  Plus, not for nothing, composer Michael Abels “Pas De Deux”—which I realized, belatedly on the first rewatch, is wholly indebted to the diegetically referenced “I Got 5 On It”—is a jam all on its own, and even better when used to supplement the best-choreographed climactic fight scene of the year, including Endgame’s.  That counts for something.

Next Time – As promised: Odds!  Ends!  Neither-here-nor-there’s!  Orphans and also-rans!  Other films I’d like to see, and a few I did and liked but didn’t love (sorry, Quentin), as well as ones I loved but not enough (Ready or Not, here we come!).  Also, barring acts of God, I’ll probably have seen Parasite, and will likely have some initial thoughts on that.

…aaaaaand we’re back!  What better way to kick off the triumphant 2020 return of the Hargablog than recapping some big touchstones from 2019?  In honesty, the trickiest part of coming up with my Top 10 films of 2019 (hereafter subdivided into two parts and presented alphabetically, for the sake of convenience and cowardice) was figuring out which of the movies I saw over the past 12 months* legitimately hailed from the year itself.  As such, there are at least two entries here that may not, exactly, qualify.  Very probably, there are more.  Then again, it’s my list, so I think the authorities can look the other way just this once.

(*Well, technically 13 at time of writing, but counterpoint: Please shut up.)

I also feel obligated to preface this infodump with another still, by mentioning just a smidgen of the films I intended—and still intend—to see (if not necessarily review in-depth), but which I simply did not get around to in time this past year.  These include—but certainly aren’t limited to—the following:

Ad Astra, The Art of Self Defense, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood*, Dragged Across Concrete, The Farewell, Fast Color, Her Smell, High Life, Honey Boy, I Lost My Body, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote**, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, A Marriage Story, The Nightingale, One Cut of the Dead, Pain and Glory, Parasite***, Tigers Are Not Afraid****, A Vigilante, Waves, and probably at least two dozen others.  All in due time.

(*Usually I don’t love biopics to begin with—after all, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story already perfected the art form—and one with Tom Hanks-as-Fred Rogers seems almost deliberately like the blandest scoop of vanilla available; yet the buzz I’d seen around this, coupled with the pedigree of director Marielle Heller’s also-surprising and actually-quite-stunning previous effort, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, has me eager to give this a shot upon its home/streaming release.)

(**I’m frankly shocked that this finally got made.  And, with each passing interview that Terry Gilliam gives, am kind of dreading that it didn’t happen either a lot sooner or not at all.)

(***Knock on wood, but I’m actually primed to catch this bad boy this weekend, just in time to wail lamentations at its loss to lesser rivals at the Oscars on Sunday.)

(****This film has achieved nearly mythical status in my head, ever since crossing my radar at least a year ago.  What’s as striking as anything is its seeming utter unavailability between the festival circuit and the Shudder streaming service, with nary a theatrical [wide or otherwise] nor physical release [I know] to be found.)

Arctic – I already wrote a bit about this film right here, so I’ll make like the movie itself and keep things brisk: I’ve rewatched Arctic at least twice since seeing it in theaters*, and each time have been struck by how moving it makes the smallest of touches.  I’m still convinced the screenplay can’t have been over ten pages long, and most of that would be setting descriptions and stage directions.  It unfortunately seems to have flown largely under the radar both on year-end lists and within the past year proper, so if this one passed you by, do yourself a favor and take the 98 minutes to stream it.

(*Yeah, I know—I’m a pretty cool guy.)

Avengers: Endgame – And already, we have a maximalist counterpart to the above; I contain multitudes, people.  At the risk of upsetting scores of Scorsese-ites, ‘amusement’ is, under the right circumstances, one of my key metrics of quality.  In a year of blockbusters that featured big-budget bellyflops including a woefully conceived Hellboy reboot nobody in particular wanted, deflating second chapters to one of the strongest Stephen King films in years (there was another good one, at least) and unlikely Lego hits alike, and a culmination in the form of the remarkably underwhelming whimper of a conclusion to Star Wars’ “Skywalker Saga*,” Endgame felt more and more like the quintessence of what a Popcorn Movie crowdpleaser could and should aspire to be as the year progressed.

(*There’s a whole other post to be had in unpacking how Endgame and The Rise of Skywalker are kinda sorta photo-negatives of each other, with the thesis that both try to appease fans by selectively culling from their own histories and mythologies.  In the parlance of Pokemon [does Disney own that yet?] it’s super effective in one, and in the other, decidedly less so.)

The blend of ambition and familiarity here is staggering in how it dovetails so snugly, and it’s a true credit to the film that it doesn’t sag beneath its own bloat, something that quite a few Marvel films—fellow tentpole entry Age of Ultron paramount among them—fall prey to with far more frequency.  Endgame’s not perfect, not by any stretch.  A couple threads are cut monstrously short—Black Widow, you deserve better, as is pretty much perpetually the case in the MCU*—while others are stretched a bit too far (the pairing of Thor and Rocket, so unexpectedly compelling in Infinity War, may have played a beat or three too long here).  But the chills I got as we (spoilers, I guess?) jumped back to the original Avengers’ battle of New York?  Unabashed fan service, absolutely, no question about it, but goddamn does it work.

(*Part of me wondered how they’d manage to sideline the character in her own upcoming solo feature back when it was first announced—but then, having three other heroes in the trailer alone already started to provide a serious answer to what I’d thought was a jest of a question.  Old habits and all that, I suppose.)

More than that, it feels earned, and in a way that few franchises aside from Peter Jackson’s inaugural Lord of the Rings trilogy in recent memory, maybe ever*, have.  I mention that pairing of ambition and familiarity, and one of the most apt comparisons I can think of is when I saw Smashing Pumpkins in concert a couple of years ago.  Bear with me.  They played their hits, with a few new flourishes and embellishments** throughout.  And to the fans (which, if you’re not a fan, why see Endgame?  Movie tickets aren’t cheap, and trolling mustn’t pay that well) the hits are incredible, and the show ended up lasting for three hours—maybe even more.  I was gripped and grinning and having a grand old time the entire time.  I’m also, as it happens, very happy I got to sit down for most of it.

(*This sounds hypey and fanboyish—I think back to everybody hailing The Dark Knight as the greatest movie of all time—but for sheer spectacle and precedent, the MCU in general and Endgame in particular genuinely is one for the record books, in a multitude of senses.)

(**They also played a cover of “Stairway to Heaven” in its entirety, which, leave it to Billy Corgan, I guess.)

Joker – I’ve already talked the talk of ten men about this movie, so I’ll spare you another soliloquy.  Suffice to say, I’m pleased that Joaquin Phoenix may need to reorganize his trophy display to free up some room, and while I don’t know that the film as a whole deserves all the accolades coming its way this awards season, necessarily, any praise for Phoenix—and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s aching, marvelous original score—is absolutely, unequivocally earned.  Also, and I say this in the true spirit of the DC Black Label, Todd Phillips can still go fuck himself.

Knives Out – Give or take a flawed-but-fascinating Star War, I have no reservations stating that Rian Johnson is a modern master with a nigh-unassailable track record.  He’s an auteur thankfully unfettered by some of the more rigid implications of the term (call that the Wes Anderson effect, if you want), in that one of his chief signatures is adopting the trappings of his round-robin genre choices—be it west-coast noir for Brick, screwball caper for Brothers Bloom, smarter-than-it-seems sci-fi for Looper*, and now whodunit—then pivoting within those parameters at least twice over (in Knives Out it’s more like five) and ending up somewhere beautifully unique.

(*You could, from one angle, argue the same for Last Jedi—I wouldn’t, per se, but one could—but that, too, is a post unto itself.  It also happens to raise a question that I, surprising myself, heretofore hadn’t considered, but would you call Star Wars “sci-fi”?  Is it just me, or does something not sit right with that?  Talk amongst yourselves.)

He also—and this is crucial—often finds a way to smuggle some true pathos into the proceedings, heightened as they may be, without it ever feeling too mawkish, or jarring, or worse yet, didactic.  There’s a reveal slipped in during the climactic recounting of What Actually Happened^TM—again, a necessary narrative device for films of this ilk—that suddenly had me misty.  That certainly wasn’t what I was expecting at that moment.  Most of this film isn’t.  It is by turns goofy, sinister, and sneakily political—yet again, in this biased viewer’s reading, at least, not overly didactic.

I’ve focused predominantly on Johnson*, but the ensemble he directs is also key to enlivening the already-plenty-kinetic plotting on vivid display.  In particular, there’s Ana de Armas’ soulful turn as Marta (whom I belatedly realized I recognized as Joi from Blade Runner 2049, and whose character here works as a good grounding point with an absurd trait or two all her own); meanwhile, our erstwhile Cap Chris Evans joyfully returns to his privileged, arrogant airhead stomping grounds (see: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Not Another Teen Movie); and Don Johnson plays his second glad-handing racist of the season** with uncanny, possibly-concerning humanity.  And Daniel Craig’s Foghorn Leghorn-esque Benoit Blanc has justifiably taken on a life of its own***.

(*This has nothing to do with anything, really, outside of involving Johnson, but if you haven’t yet, you should do yourself a favor—your second from this post alone!—and read this interview with him over at Birth.Movies.Death.  If nothing else, it contains the best take you’re likely to ever get on “Dragula.”)

(**Here’s to you, fellow fans of HBO’s bewilderingly good Watchmen series.  Speaking of HBO repertory players, Michael Shannon is also in the mix, but the biggest surprise of his role is that he’s not playing an unhinged lunatic, for a change.)

(***His doughnut-within-doughnut theory gets a lot of attention, but for me, Blanc’s throwaway delivery of “…while the Nazi child masturbated” should be in Craig’s career-highlight reel from here on out.  I will say, as well, that I view the rumors of another ‘Benoit Blanc mystery’ with some skepticism bordering on trepidation—not because I doubt Johnson [and Craig, of course] can deliver, but in that even if he did, it would represent a stylistic stall-out in a so-far wonderfully varied body of work.)

It’s also no coincidence, nor mean feat, that his goofy-at-first, mashed-potato-mouthed caricature is the one to deliver that aforementioned near-tearjerker.  That’s about as fitting a summary for Knives Out’s unique tonal skill-set as I can conjure.

Next Time — The remainder of the list, along with a few odds, ends, and neither-here-nor-there’s (though those may end up elsewhere, attention span and word count permitting).  I hope to have that out by tomorrow—or Saturday at the very latest, in order to properly beat the Academy to the punch in terms of becoming this weekend’s hottest cinematic takes.  Watch this space, baby!

Or: A palette-cleansing quick-hit companion piece to the behemoth review of Joker, involving yet another dark remix of superhero tropes.

A lean and, mostly, mean bit of business, Brightburn explores the (literally) high concept of a young Kal-El/Clark Kent realizing at a formative age the true destructive force he can actually be—to grisly, gripping, yet ultimately somewhat shallow effect.  Directed by talent-to-watch David Yarovesky but much more promoted-ly produced by James Gunn*, one of the film’s key strengths is not attempting to “say” too much, instead offering a tidy (yet, y’know, pretty messy) little tale of Superman-as-slasher villain.

(*I’m sure an ounce of research into production schedules could put the lie to this interpretation, but my pet theory/head-canon is that Gunn, once and future MCU director, threw his lot in on this film after being fired in order to work through some stuff…)

On the whole, this blend works considerably better than the doubters might assume, especially due to a set of secondary characters variably awed, petrified, or in denial of our titular terror, the alliteratively named Brandon Breyer (nice touch, that).  Elizabeth Banks in particular is, no shock, great as Ma Kent Breyer, letting her protective maternal nature get the better of her well past the point of reason; more on that shortly.  Meanwhile, the always-welcome David Denman makes the most out of his role as the less sympathetic (to both Brandon and, probably, the audience), more skeptical counterpar(en)t.  Further on the margins are a well-drawn “cool aunt” and her drinking-buddy-personified husband, played by Search Party’s Meredith Hagner and erstwhile Albuquerque-an Matt Jones*.  Their reactions, believable all, go a long way towards grounding the twice-tall tale and generating some genuine stakes.

(*Could be the Breaking Bad fanboy in me, but our buddy Badger does a great job filling out his slacker-made-good [or at least -married-good] part.  If you need in-over-your-head arrested development, Jones is your man.)

Tellingly, one of the least compelling characters is our titular Brightburn, which speaks to the certain shallowness that, ahem, dampens the film’s impact.  It’s tough to fault Jackson Dunn, whose young age belies the convincing menace he brings to the role.  Alas, menace is just about the only mode the role seems (allowed?) to have.  That’s where the whole slasher-villain element is, ironically, both most fully realized and most detrimental to the movie as a whole: Michael Myers, mythically terrifying as he is, isn’t much of a character; give or take a Freddy Krueger here or Leslie Vernon there, most slasher villains aren’t.  It makes sense casting Brightburn in a similar place, but in so doing, erases much of the nuance and pathos that it also seems poised to mine, especially in the relationship between Brandon and his mother, who comes off somewhere between woefully and willfully oblivious long past narrative utility.

Had a bit more time been spent in the first act fleshing out a sympathetic Brandon—who gets a few scenes, sure, but not enough to make his “turn” tragic rather than just inevitable to those who saw a poster—this motherly devotion and its outcome may feel more earned.  (As another example, a storyline involving a classmate crush seems like it’s missing a beat or two.)  On a greater level, the film at large might have transcended its super/horror byline, rather than merely fashioning it.  As it ultimately stands, it’s a tight and tidy, grim and gruesome exercise that feels, well, like it’s an exercise: Brightburn elevates its premise to a point, but coasts once it hits the clouds.

Also (Spoiler-Man, Spoiler-Man, Says Whatever…):

-One noteworthy aspect that bolsters the film’s horror cred while also potentially alienating some would-be converts is its gore, which is…impressive.  Jones’s character suffers an especially visceral demise, but there’s some ocular trauma that the squeamish may understandably want to shield their own eyes from.

-On the superhero side, meanwhile, there’s a fascinating flaw to be mined from the film’s MacGuffin, the space-beacon-thingamajig that essentially triggers Brandon’s break.  It’s an interesting idea, but one that smacks of some narrative expedience—as well as making the devolution of the character largely a byproduct of an external force, rather than the maybe-more-compelling illustration of, say, a bad day of bullying eroding and eating away more realistically at a simultaneously vulnerable and dangerously powerful being like Brandon.

-I feel like this review has come out more negative than I intended, so a point worth going out of my way to praise is the film’s downer ending, which is supremely, darkly satisfying. (Weird, trying to offset negativity by praising negativity, but I suppose that says more about me than the movie.)

-Nerd Nook^TM: Most of my gripes about this concept’s execution are likely—and, more than likely, unfairly—informed by exposure to comics, particularly Irredeemable, Marc Waid’s epic-in-every-sense take on the Superman-snaps story, which mines a lot, probably too many ramifications out of its premise, but is well-worth at least 80% of the time you’d spend on it; or, to a lesser extent, Red Son by Mark Millar, wherein Kal-El lands in the U.S.S.R. instead of the States, and explores what that particular arena’s nurture might look like without stooping to jingoism, caricatures, or even too-tidy relativism.  Both worthy reads that offer more nuanced alternate spins on the Superman mythos.

“The worst part of about having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you DON’T.” – Arthur Fleck

“They don’t give a shit about people like you, Arthur.  And they don’t give a shit about people like me, either.” – Debra Kane

“What kind of coward would do something that coldblooded? Someone who hides behind a mask. Someone who is envious of those more fortunate than themselves. Yet they’re too scared to show their own face. And it’s those kind of people…those of us who’ve made something of our lives, will always look at those who haven’t as nothing but clowns.” – Thomas Wayne

Todd Phillips clearly wants some attention, so let’s humor him and get that out of the way first.  The director, who seems cynical enough to know all too well exactly what he’s doing, has had a major hand in making it all but impossible to speak about Joker in a vacuum, as a self-contained piece of art.  Then again, perhaps pretending any piece of art is wholly self-contained is, well, clownish.  So let’s not.  The particular shame of it, though, is what’s an especially gripping and bleak character study and societal critique dressed up with DC garnish* has consequently been hijacked by decrier and proponent alike, and the resulting cultural hurricane has, ironically I think, served to diminish rather than enhance the fantastic but flawed film at its eye.

(*Well, technically “DC Black Label,” a carryover from the newly branded non-canonical comics sub-imprint that used to be Elseworlds.  It also happens to sound like a Lego Batman-borne parody of DC’s own cinematic brand.  And also, I guess, hopes to court the biker and/or scotch crowds?  Silly nomenclature aside, the move itself does open up a fascinating new sandbox for DC to play around in, particularly since the weakest entries in the DCU have inevitably been the ones involving literally any element of crossover.)

Martin Scorsese, to whom this film is deeply and unabashedly indebted*, recently made a few waves of his own by stating that superhero movies were “not cinema.”  He went on to expound a bit: “[They aren’t] the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”  Now, naturally, there’s more to this.  Scorsese was referring specifically to the films of the MCU, which this is decidedly not, on multiple levels**.  While there are arguments as to his thesis regardless, and it’s, again, foolish for me to speculate, I do wonder where he’d land on a work like Joker.  It’s certainly not the “theme park” he pejoratively cites as comparison, unless we’re talking about some dingy, dilapidated funhouse fun has long since fled.  And Phillips himself, contrarian that he is, would surely distance Joker from the superhero genre at large, as well, even without his inspiration’s invective as directive.  Still, and very probably because of this very indebtedness, I can’t help but feel ol’ Marty might find the film somewhat wanting.

(*Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy are the obvious progenitors, but the oft-overlooked Bringing Out the Dead represents another, somewhat subtler touchstone, albeit a comparatively benign one.)

(**No crossovers, for one thing.  At least there’s that.)

And yet, by Scorsese’s own definition, Joker is uncannily apt: The entire thing hinges on attempts to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being—and, by and large, failing.  Here we encounter the first, maybe chief of the myriad issues plaguing conversation around the film—and, frankly, one of its more legitimately problematic facets.  Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck (fret not, we’ll get to Phoenix himself in a bit) is clearly and demonstrably not a well man.  In one of the film’s cleverer subversions, his iconic laugh is no sinister affectation, but rather a Tourette’s-esque compulsive medical condition—and that’s just the start of his afflictions.  I’ve talked in this space before about not being well-positioned to pontificate on depictions of mental illness on-screen.  What I can clearly see is the understandable bristling that “mentally ill” automatically translates to “volatile and violent,” especially given how that outrageously reductive narrative has come to dominate the discourse on the sickeningly regular occurrences of mass violence in this country.

However, sticking strictly as we can to just Joker, the criticism storming around this particular point also seems to willfully ignore several bits of context that are literally textual.  First, we have Arthur’s past of squalor and abuse, which is a trope, sure, but one rooted in ugly truth*.  Even more pertinently, though, is that his transformation from troubled loner** to Homicidal Maniac^TM only truly accelerates once the funding for the city’s social services (and, part and parcel, his prescriptions) is scrapped.  It seems fairly apparent that systemic, institutional neglect is what’s actually being pilloried here, with Arthur himself just an unfortunate aftershock. Even that terminology implies an inordinate significance to his station.  In case that weren’t clear, his case worker, one Debra Kane***, goes ahead and spells it out: “They don’t give a shit about people like you, Arthur.  And they don’t give a shit about people like me, either.”  Subtle, this ain’t.  But that very flagrance also makes it hard to square the interpretation that we’re meant to simply stomach the ideas that Arthur was born bad, the mentally ill are inherent powder kegs, and nothing could have been done to curtail his (and their) mania.

(*The acting all around is tremendous, but in one of the film’s mini-masterclasses, Brian Tyree Henry [of Atlanta, Widows, and, in a just world, whatever the hell else he wants] has a tiny role as a record-keeping Arkham employee that’s quietly devastating as he looks over Arthur’s mother’s case file, and decides, largely in his eyes, he really shouldn’t let Arthur see what’s within.)

(**I was initially going to write “misanthrope,” but he’s not even truly that, since he so plainly, achingly craves connection with his fellow human.  His hatred is learned.)

(***Guess “Roberta” would’ve been too obvious.)

Joaquin Phoenix, when asked whether the film could “perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results,” could only reply, “Why?  Why would you…? No, no…” before temporarily leaving the interview.  Upon his return, he reportedly said the question hadn’t occurred to him, and reversed by asking, rhetorically, what an intelligent answer might sound like.  A simple “yes” doesn’t suffice.  It’s left inconclusive.  Personally, I find the thought that it hadn’t occurred to him somewhat preposterous (if not disingenuous) on its face; at the same time, the amount of art, craft, care, and painstaking physical devotion Phoenix so vividly poured into the role does complicate the clearly loaded question.  Phoenix obviously cares deeply about this character, an icon he’s essentially reinventing after no fewer than three prior “definitive” portrayals*, and yet in Phoenix’s hands, a wholly original tragic creation.  It’s far more than just his laugh, though there’s even more to that itself: The guttural, glottal coughs peppering his terrible fits, and then the fact that, in another inspired touch, he has other laughs—his “just one of the guys” (watch his eyes), and the rare emergences of genuine mirth, each of which is distinguishable without being bludgeoning.  There are his soulful eyes, just as important as his cackle in conveying his agony and frame of mind, and his sinewy, Deadhead-meets-methhead “victory” dance, which becomes both more grotesque and cathartic each time it overtakes him.  Phoenix, no stranger to deftly playing damaged outcasts, nonetheless makes Arthur into a uniquely, palpably tormented figure all his own.

(*To be clear, that’s Romero, Nicholson, and Ledger.  Sorry, Jared, check your used condoms and dead rats at the door, you disgusting buffoon.)

And are we not meant to at least empathize, at least a bit, with Arthur’s plight?  To pity, although that has its own pack of uncomfortable connotations?  Does empathizing necessarily equate to condoning his actions?  There’s a reason, I believe, the violence is so gruesome, and you (read: I) wince even when you know it’s coming.  You feel it viscerally, in your gut and fraying synapses, each time.  It’s also honestly doled out pretty sparingly, which makes it all the more impactful*.  In the con column, when it does erupt, the carnage usually only befalls people who Have It Coming^TM, and in this way, Joker can and should give some pause by letting Arthur a little off the hook.  And yet, these outbursts are graphic enough that one wonders: Does it, though?  Did the victims, scummy and cruel and abusive and glad-handing as they are, deserve all this?  This is another instance where the film’s lack of subtlety cuts two ways—and, by my reckoning, works like gangbusters.

(*I was warned before seeing the film about its violent content.  It’s disturbing, and grisly, but always in service to the story, more akin to Green Room than Hostel.)

It’s not always so useful a tool.  The film employs a multi-pronged conceit of unreliable narration, but then goes out of its way to explicate some plot developments best left more ambiguous, as though it doesn’t fully trust its audience to “get it.”  At least one “twist” is so telegraphed that it barely qualifies as such.  There’s a lot of encroachment into the classic “show, don’t tell” minefield, and for anyone confused on that distinction, Joker offers up quite a few textbook examples.  Ironically, with a pair of exceptions, the actual, diegetic links to Batman represent the worst offenders, and certainly some of the most ham-handed and, honestly, unnecessary flourishes of the film.  Or rather, they typify its frustrating tendency to overstate, to allow one or two beats too many hammer home an idea or connection*.

(*I’ll confess: I know a thing or three about that.)

About those exceptions: a minor one involves Alfred, briefly encountered and not even referred to by name.  It’s not necessarily subtle, per se—the accent’s a dead giveaway—but it’s downplayed in exactly the way that a young Bruce introducing himself at the gates of Wayne Manor mere moments before is not.  The other, far more pervasive and prominent exception is Thomas Wayne.  His role is very much at the forefront, but works by dual virtue of 1) his subversive characterization as privileged, holier-(but-really-just-richer-)than-thou patrician, perpetually toying with the idea of a mayoral run, since that’s the sort of thing men like him can do on a lark and for leisure; and 2) Brett Cullen’s suitably, believably oily performance in a role that could have easily curdled into caricature*.  He is the “they” Arthur’s case worker, who just so happens to be a black woman, was talking about earlier, and plays that part to the sterling-silver hilt.  The fact that he seems to buy into his own by-your-bootstraps rhetoric makes him at once both more compelling and more maddening.  In large part through this figure, Joker also lays down some honest-to-god subtext by setting up the authoritarian versus populist bent that’s always been an uneasy undercurrent in the Batman mythos.

(*Back when casting was first being announced, there was a day—literally, one day—when Alec Baldwin was slated for the role.  Thank god that didn’t materialize, since not only would it have been hard to shake the Jack Donaghy off his tux, but Baldwin’s best work these days is showing up to drop exposition to Ethan Hunt and the gang, then leave for the rest of the movie.  In short, they lucked out with Cullen, who’s proven time and again—most recently in True Detective, but all the way back, some ten years now, to Lost—how well he can play this type of self-righteous sleaze.)

Not that Wayne’s the only villain, let alone the only viewpoint due some demystifying.  The eat-the-rich mob that swells and spills out into the streets by the film’s climax certainly isn’t full of blameless angels.  But they, like Arthur, also didn’t simply spring forth fully formed.  They were created.  Joker is at its best when showing us how, as protests and dissent fester unheeded around the edges of its central story.  It’s frustrating, as well, in that it’s difficult to have it both ways without backsliding into South Park-ian, “both sides are just as bad”-isms*.  That misses the point.  Is there a point?  Here, again, we butt up against the cultural cacophony.  I don’t find the film as nihilistic as some seem to think.  It would pass Walter Sobchak’s questionable litmus test: It at least has an ethos.  I do think it’s one prone—in no small part due to Phillips’ own edgelord shit-stirring—to be warped by a viewer’s own perspectives.  But there’s that pesky vacuum paradox again: What piece of art isn’t?  My own view is this: you should not admire Arthur, nor should he inspire you to anything other than some introspection.  If he does, that’s the exact reason we, as a society, are supposed to have support networks in place to help, programs that many privileged individuals may consider mollycoddling, when stiff upper lips and self-sufficiency have served them perfectly well, thank-you-very-much.  Well, y’know, that and the inheritance.

(*That’s not a knock on the totality of South Park, which can still rival anything on television or in theaters when it’s at the top of its satirical game.  Look no further than its recent China material.  But the more apt televisual comparison for Joker features another mentally ill misanthrope and a healthy heaping of omnidirectional class commentary: Mr. Robot.)

Marc Maron, who has a small but effective (and slightly meta) part in the film as a comedy producer, recently weighed in on some of the Joker controversy, specifically Phillips’ contributions to it, on his podcast WTF.  It’s worth excerpting a substantial chunk:

“There are still lines to be rode. If you like to ride a line, you can still ride a line. If you want to take chances, you can still take chances. Really, the only thing that’s off the table, culturally, at this juncture–and not even entirely–is shamelessly punching down for the sheer joy of hurting people. For the sheer excitement and laughter that some people get from causing people pain, from making people uncomfortable, from making people feel excluded.”

There’s a scene late in the film that involves an attack with rusty scissors, a chain-locked door, and a little person struggling to extricate himself from the gruesome scene.  How you interpret this single scene, I think, speaks to how you’ll feel about the film as a whole.  If you think the joke—indeed, if there is a joke—is on the little person, we would disagree.  I’m much more inclined to think of it as an encapsulation of the recurring, resonant theme of the disempowered, innocent or not, being at the mercurial mercy of those more well-positioned.  Phillips, on the odd occasion he withdraws his foot from his mouth, is prone to platitudes of let-the-audience-decide; his worst offense to his own work, the eye of the maelstrom, is making me wonder whether he would even agree.

Also (Here Be Spoilies):

-A prime example of the film taking some threads one tug too far: the button involving Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murders could easily have cut out just with them leaving the theater and the nameless goon following them down the alleyway.  Whoever doesn’t “get it,” well, did they wander into the wrong movie?  A few consolation points awarded, however, for the silhouetted “super-rats” in the background of the aftermath.  Nice touch.  And, as it happens, the engine for my own Black Label For Your Consideration submission: this traumatized Bruce Wayne actually ends up becoming Ratman.

-I mostly focused on Phoenix as far as the performances go (I’d argue that’s justified), but it bears repeating: There’s not a weak link to be found.  Robert De Niro, in his limited screen-time, provides one of his least phoned-in performances in years as late-night host MurrAY Franklin, ably switching among modes of glibly mugging schmoozer, seemingly compassionate backstage ally, and sanctimonious pundit.  Maybe it’s the residual Scorsese trappings coaxing it out of him.  Meanwhile, Henry’s fellow Atlantan Zazie Beetz is great in what turns out to be a purposefully underwritten role; and an entire crew of HBO repertory players casts about elsewhere, including an especially grimy Glenn Fleshler, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Justin Theroux, and Bill Camp and Shea Whigham as a pair of detectives who, in a rare instance of a plot thread being cut too short, feel like they got a scene or two too few.  But maybe just because I love those two.

-Back to Beetz, hers is yet another storyline that seems like would have been better left with less.  I personally pegged Arthur’s post-subway-murders rush into her apartment and arms as fantasy from the jump, and so was skeptical at best about the rest, but the third-act reveal that all had been imagined could’ve done without the Fight Club-style flashbacks underscoring the turn.  Again, it’s telling over showing, and demonstrates a lack of trust in the audience.

-This plot thread is also unhelpful in that it, more than anything, is what throws any accelerant at all on the whole InCel bonfire.  I’m inclined to say as little on that score as possible, other than it seems like the exact sort of manufactured controversy that Phillips could’ve killed in its crib, rather than cravenly try to turn into moneymaking buzz.

-Last bit on Phillips, since lord knows this whole thing and his part in particular has sprawled on long enough: What’s most bizarre about his comments on “woke culture” killing comedy is that, unless I’ve severely misjudged his intent, that’s not even what Joker is, outside of a few deliberate instances of tonal whiplash, like a gun falling on the floor at a particularly inopportune time, or an exit-only door slam punctuating a heated exchange with the cops.  Anyway, Maron’s rejoinder says it better than I ever could, but the fact that it’s even a conversation is asinine.

-Let’s not end on a wholly dour note: I have to give immense credit to the at turns mournful and menacing score by Hildur Guðnadóttir.  Don’t ask me to pronounce that name, but the music, even at its most morose, is absolutely gorgeous.  Could well be some power of suggestion at work, but it felt heavily reminiscent of not only Hans Zimmer’s own contributions to Nolan’s chiropteric trilogy, but also Nick Cave and (not that) Warren Ellis’s string-driven soundtrack work, as well as the elegiac drones of the late great Johann Johannsson on Arrival and Sicario.  Oh well—so much for ending on a high note.

–Here we go.  That’s more like it.

A disappointing lack of daffiness undercuts the brothers Franco’s passion project* exploring another passion project, the by-now-mythical The Room.  Starring, directed, written, produced, and very-probably catered by Tommy Wiseau, that movie’s worth a post unto itself someday, so suffice it to say, it’s an experience.  But you don’t have to take my word for it: Disaster Artist opens with a reel of non-diegetic talking heads, which is sort of a tone-setter, mostly in the sense of featuring indie-comedy troupers like Adam Scott and Danny McBride singing seemingly sincere if nonspecific praise for The Room.  (It honestly beggars belief that Michael Cera and especially Jonah Hill don’t show up.  Tough to say they’re too young when Josh Hutcherson and Dave both get seats at the grown-up table.)

(*Although, y’know, come on: mostly James’s.)

Such figures populate The Disaster Artist proper, as well—basically, it turns out, this opening compilation serves chiefly as a vehicle to get some “names” in there who couldn’t be shoehorned into the movie itself.  Unfortunately, it’s also emblematic of some of the missed opportunities that pockmark the main event, which is engaging and entertaining, to be sure, but also much too color-by-number to feel like the true homage to its subject it would like to be.  That’s more a knock on the script, based on eyewitness “actor” Greg Sestero’s book of the same name*, than on Franco the director.  He does a capable job capturing the chaotic sprawl of the highly unorthodox “real Hollywood movie” set and staging.  It’s an environment where Seth Rogen and Paul Scheer get some of the less-underwritten supporting roles, by playing a justifiably (also: formulaically) exasperated script supervisor and director of photography.

(*Full disclosure: I have not read this book, and am honestly not sure whether I have any intent to, lest I learn it’s as dry on the seemingly fertile subject as this script would indicate.)

It’s even less a knock on Franco the actor, who makes a (somewhat self-serving) meal out of playing Wiseau’s maelstrom of a…well, “character” doesn’t sound right, but neither, exactly, does “person,” so let’s go with figure.  Egotistical, vulnerable, ridiculous, ominous, jealous, and by all accounts a “villain,” Franco believably harnesses the energy of this inherently unbelievable individual, whose real-life backstory is still as mysterious as where the millions he used to purchase rather than rent his prohibitively expensive film equipment came from.  Alas, much of the film’s eccentricity starts and ends in this performance—which, one could argue, is also being played straight, in its way, since Franco is essentially just mimicking the already-bizarre-enough Wiseau.  No need to ham up a wild boar.

The cause isn’t helped in the slightest by the choice to append the film with side-by-side synchronizations of scenes from The Room with their recreations in The Disaster Artist.  It’s impressive, on a superficial level.  But it also betrays another nagging suspicion I had throughout this movie, one that, having seen The Room the better part of a decade ago, eluded me until being underlined by that concluding comparison reel: Dave Franco.  The younger Franco, whom I’d initially written off as exactly that and nothing more, but have softened on considerably in the wake of Jump Street* is either too good or not good enough of an actor to portray Sestero.  I should explain.  While Wiseau’s over-the-top absurdity is justifiably notorious, his screen partner’s bland, borderline dopey brand of nonprofessional acting is of a much more straightforward yet insidious variety—one I’d imagine is, in fact, far trickier to play.

(*To say nothing of his brief-but-meaty part in If Beale Street Could Talk—guess there’s something to this guy and his streets.)

The younger Franco gives his all to this straight-man role, which is, ironically, exactly what hampers it, since his “actual” acting belies the amateurishness of Sestero’s.  Part of it, frankly*, feels in service to the plot—and, again, script, which seems to seek to underscore the widening chasm in talent, charisma, and prospects between Tommy and Greg.  This is necessary from a dramatic standpoint, but also ends up feeling a bit forced, overlaying a more formulaic friends-beset-by-jealousy lens on this story than it may have needed.  Surely some of that’s the source material, which would be oddly self-aggrandizing for such copiously documented incompetence, but who knows?  At least Franco gets something to play.

(*Franco-ly?)

Much of the rest of the cast smacks of a “Hey, it’s [blank]!”  Rogen and Scheer, again, stand out by virtue of their roles’ relative prominence in the plot, but other talents like Nathan Fielder and Hannibal Burress may as well not even be there.  Now, granted, those two in particular are, deliberately, dry comics—but this dryness unintendedly pervades The Disaster Artist as a whole, and in a way that makes the whole thing feel like a missed opportunity.  Allison Brie has a thankless, formulaic (there’s that word again…) role as Greg’s supportive-to-a-point love interest, which speaks again to the traditional story beats interfering with what could have been a goofy goldmine.  Fittingly, a climactic confrontation between Tommy and Greg, while well-acted, also feels forced.  I mean, does it really matter that Tommy is obviously not from the bayou, as he repeatedly, ridiculously asserts?  This movie seems to think so.

With that, I’ve already written much more on this movie than I’d had any inkling or intention to, so I’ll try to wrap things up: It’s always a fallacy judging something on what it might have been.  But it’s a fallacy that seems oddly befitting a movie about The Room, rife with thwarted expectations as everything evidently turned out.  To its credit, the in-film premiere of Wiseau’s opus manages to mine some genuine (and, on this end, unexpected) pathos out of the proceedings.  But even then, try as I might, I can’t escape the impression that even that sequence would have been even more impactful if things until then had been more freewheeling.  I look at McBride—an acquired taste to say the least, but a formidable one—and can’t help but wonder how a character like the braggadocious buffoon persona he often adopts on-screen would fit into a zany environment like the set of The Room, rather than sidelined to its opening appreciation reel.  Sadly, too much of the film feels like this same sidelined, starry-eyed tribute, too in awe of its subject to say or do much more than stare.

A double dose of Mads Mikkelsen minimalist storytelling, Arctic and The Salvation (from 2015, but new to me) may be divided starkly by bleak locale (and, y’know, nearly half a decade), but they make for interesting companion pieces.  The films are unified by the undergirding theme of by-any-means-necessary survival, and both buoyed chiefly—and critically—by their performances.

Arctic, especially, lives or dies by this element, as it’s essentially a one-man show throughout.  (There’s technically a second character, but she’s largely silent, practically comatose, for the duration.)  Fortunately, Mikkelsen is a particularly expressive actor, although not in the broadly emotive sense that normally implies; rather, he’s capable of making the slightest nuance of his severe features speak volumes—a squint here or brow furrow there connoting vast veins of inner…well, not necessarily struggle, but at minimum a deep and grappling consideration.  He’s also got both a type and a range: Look to his two more famous roles (please, do this), at least Stateside: In Valhalla Rising, he’s literally mute as a stoic pagan warrior-turned-prisoner—a genuine Viking gladiator; yeah, it’s badass.  Meanwhile, in Hannibal, Mikkelsen’s performance as the erudite, fastidious title character almost single-handedly helped elevate what should have been an utter disaster of a show into the most beautiful thing on television at the time*, and quite possibly ever since.

(*An aside on Hannibal: “Most beautiful” does not, necessarily, indicate “best,” per se, but the fact that a psychosexual horror-dramedy [yes] about a cannibal earns even that honorific should tell you it’s earned its cult for a reason.  Fuller’s erstwhile follow-up American Gods gets a bad rap for not living up to that series’ potential, but really, what could?)

Both those roles also happened to be hyper-violent, and while that’s not necessarily the exact case with Arctic, the chilliness with which Mikkelsen sells the sporadic brutality most assuredly is.  A late scene in which his leg ends up caught within a crevice is gruesome, but without much onscreen gore, just mostly Mikkelsen’s face to convey the visceral intensity.  It works.  So, too, does much of the decidedly sparse narrative, which is a masterclass in show-don’t-tell, and for much the same reason: Mikkelsen is the proverbial iceberg in a setting full of literal ones.  The script, which I’m assuming must have come in at under five pages of actual dialogue, mostly involves him saying “Squeeze” and “It’s okay”—the latter, in particular, gaining further resonance and shading with each new, desperate variation.  The film nobly resists the urge to have him soliloquize at his largely unresponsive charge, and even avoids flashbacks, too often a humanizing crutch for this type of narrative*.  It’s lean, and while the environment is mean**, the story itself is not, suffused with a wounded but warm humanity, persevering despite its icy climes from the first frame to one of the most intense, moving cut-to-blacks in recent memory.

(*It shares this quality with another interesting potential companion piece, The Grey, which also centers around a snowbound survival story and eschews flashbacks.  That’s two, countem, two references to The Grey in this space—which, hey, at this rate, Liam Neeson vs. the Wolves might very well get a write-up of its own one of these days.)

(**Including, it must be noted, an especially realistically-rendered polar bear, which seems like a silly and specific thing to praise, but as any fan of Lost and, more recently, The Terror can attest, is evidently no mean feat.)

It’s no doubt an unfair comparison, now being that aforementioned half-decade on and all, but The Salvation doesn’t fare quite so well.  That’s through no fault of Mikkelsen, who brings his taciturn intensity and efficiency with violence to the wild west, as a widower out for vengeance.  He’s let down by a pretty formulaic plot (hint: he doesn’t start out as a widower), which begins almost elemental in its simplicity, but is eventually so overburdened by tropes that it tips into cliché.  Again, obviously a bit of time has passed since the film’s initial release date, but the shopworn narrative devices of encroaching nefarious business interests, a small town willing to sell out its own for self-preservation, and (especially) women in peril weren’t exactly new decades ago, let alone four years.

Still, there’s enough to recommend the film, at least to fans of the western genre.  Mikkelsen’s performance is hardly the only one of note, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan playing a sort of proto-Negan (in the most complimentary way such a statement can be intended and interpreted) as the vicious but vaguely charismatic black hat.  Meanwhile, Mikkelsen’s fellow Casino Royale alum Eva Green makes the most out of a role that is literally voiceless.  Her silence is justified—explained, at least—in-universe and perhaps intended, in the larger context, as a comment on that time-and-place’s view and treatment of women.  Still, her key abortive act of agency and ultimate utility as little more than wild-card within the film’s inevitable climactic massacre put the lie to that charitable read; she ends up more archetype of vengeful woman than character.

That’s true of most of the movie, really, and to the degree that it goes out past primal and loops back into facile.  I realize that the problem with recommending it to fans of westerns (as you may recall I just did a few sentences ago), is that they, more than most, will recognize the tropes and trails being trodden here.  While it’s always nice to see some more-than-capable new faces out on the dusty plains, it’s just a shame this sandbox couldn’t rise to the level of those playing it.

We’ll always have Arctic.

Also (Spoilers Follow):

–Arctic-wise, two particular moments stand out as skillful subversions, the first being the early arrival and even swifter dispatch of a rescue helicopter.  Since it’s made clear our hero’s been stranded for a while already, the choice not only works as a good illustration of starting a story as deep into the action as possible (my very first thought was, “Well, that was quick,” followed momentarily by, “Shit, that was quick!”), but also sets up the second.  The final sequence, with a helicopter in the distance, very possibly oblivious, is excruciating in isolation, but exponentially more so because of its echoing of that prior sequence—and its different outcome ends up as that impactful cut-to-black, right at the moment of triumph.  Just stellar stuff.

-There are a couple curious but under-tugged threads around the seams of The Salvation, including a preacher/sheriff who seems, as the film wears on, not especially capable in either capacity.  The most interesting (to me), however, is the oft-repeated backstory of Green’s silent, deadly Widow, having had her tongue cut out by Native Americans.  Much in the same way her station could be read as commentary if you squint, there’s a parallel element/critique of using indigenous peoples as a boogeyman.  It’s then complicated (in a good way) by the fact that the folks repeating this story are, inherently, not first-hand sources, highly unreliable narrators, and sick bastards, to boot.  The implication of this, unfortunately yet perhaps appropriately, is left unaddressed.

–I hesitate to bring this up, for fear it dooms the idea to the same Phantom Zone as my long-fabled reviews of Us and Endgame, but I intend to catch Mads’ new(ish) Netflix joint Polar, where he’s an assassin with an eyepatch, so we may be continuing this sub-stream of Mikkelsen reviews some time soon.

A touching but slight little film, Alex Lehmann’s Paddleton feels right at home in its inauspicious Netflix release.  Starring Mark Duplass and Ray Romano in what seem like less-and-less “uncharacteristic” dramatic roles ever-so-lightly tinged with comedy, the movie’s main strength stems from their rapport, which feels authentic and lived-in, largely escaping artifice.  The plot, such as it is, details a too-little portrayed course of action after a terminal diagnosis—and admirably mostly resists the mawkish uplift that tends to temper these sorts of stories.  There’s certainly (and almost unavoidably) a bit of melodrama, as well as a coda that rings a bit rote, but by and large—and particularly when Duplass and Romano are given license to bounce off one another in their believably grubby environs—there’s a low-key hum of codependent desperation that comes off quite believable, and helps inform the gripping tragedy of the final act.  You get the sense that these characters are clinging to each other in no small part due to having nothing else—but hey, hasn’t proximity forced many a friendship?  Ironically, the very casting of these leads may be the same thing that vaguely undercuts the film—had Lehmann cast two unknowns, or at least lesser “names,” things might have felt even more genuine, the verisimilitude amplified by lack of recognizable stars from the sitcom circuit.  Then again, had that been the case, who knows whether the film, which truly seems to do justice to an under-told tale, would have even made it to Netflix, let alone Sundance?