From Asteroid City to What's Up, Doc?

July 2023 at the Movies

July of 2023 will go down as the time Hollywood fought back. With both SAG/AFTRA and the WGA on strike, film production has ground to a halt as people fight for their rights. I support the strikes fully and completely, as those who entertain and who create the machines of empathy that are films should reap the benefits of their success. This blog is a small enough endeavor that I do not feel I am breaking any moral lines in writing it and discussing films. I’d even say that talking about why film is so effective and artistic helps the artists themselves. My position is not solid, of course, and I highly encourage you to comment if you have a different stance on writing these reviews during the strike. With all that said, let’s talk films. This month at the movies…

Asteroid City

Wes Anderson has, for better or worse, one of the most distinctive directors in modern mainstream cinema. Precision craft and twee ideals have become his bread and butter and have often left audiences alienated from the heart of his stories. In Asteroid City, this push and pull of art and heart, precision and freedom, is one of the many themes at play. Following a TV show about a play that is shown to us as a movie, the layers of the story each indicates different aspects and threads that Wes is playing in. Our main story, that of the movie about the play, follows a group of scientifically minded children as they and their families encounter an alien. Faced with a complete shift in perspective from everything they knew, these characters must reexamine their lives in order to decide what matters, what doesn’t, and what we do in tragedy.

The second layer, that of the playwright, his director, and his cast, follows much the same: what do we do with tragedy? Can we find answers in the art our loved ones have left behind? And what happens when no answers can be found? The layering of these stories allows deeper context for the questions, allows the film to be about many things instead of just the one, and makes for a much more complex emotional journey. Beautiful as always, with more yearning and innovation than Anderson has shown in nearly a decade, Asteroid City is his best in years.

Barbie

Hi Barbie! When a film stuck in development hell for well over a decade comes out, rarely is there any hype at all, let alone enough hype to become the film of the summer. Yet Barbie is exactly that, an incredibly funny and flashy film that left me rolling in the aisle. Greta Gerwig proves herself in the realm of blockbusters with this bright, fun flick that also has just a slight amount of pervasive feminist undertones (really overtones in this case). Everyone is doing their best hear, from Margot Robbie as the titular heroine lost in the real world, to the already heavily lauded Ryan Gosling as Ken, just Ken, a man who doesn’t exist outside the gaze of his love.

But much like the toy itself, the film does have its flaws (quibbles, more than anything else). The story is at times messy and the themes don’t always connect well. But the film is aware of this and chooses to lean into the messiness and the silliness instead of self-correcting into overly serious messaging. This is a film meant to entertain first, provoke thought second, much like the toy herself. A perfect popcorn flick, and the best comedy of the decade.

The Darjeeling Limited

As previously stated, Wes Anderson is not always for everyone, and arguably one of his lesser films is The Darjeeling Limited. A film following three brothers (Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody) on a spiritual journey through India a year after the sudden death of their father, the film is unbalanced. Wanting both to mock the pretensions of our rich, white protagonists while still leaving room for true emotional growth, the film is forced into certain contrivances later in its story simply to allow for a change in our characters. None of these brothers are particularly likable, and the bonding that forms between them is unnatural and forced. The script dictates, and thus the characters follow, instead of the other way around.

The film of course is still masterfully crafted, with Anderson’s distinct stylings working well when turned on a country as different from the midwest townships he is familuar with. The set decoration, the costuming, and props, everything has a lived-in quality and gives what could be a cold film a bit of warmth. I only wish the script more naturally came into this warmth as well, instead of making shortcuts to resolutions. A single event rarely actually changes a person, or a relationship, especially one so deeply engrained as sibling rivalry, and yet the film expects us to accept this change. The film sacrifices story for design, and suffers for it.

The Devil’s Wedding Night

Rarely can you watch a movie and have next to nothing to say about it. Films are art, and art can be endlessly discussed. But what of the movies that aren’t art? The ones that were not made for passion, nor joy, nor seemingly with anything to say. A copy of a copy. The Devil’s Wedding Night is one such movie, a slow-motion yawn of a film. Telling the story of twin brothers who travel to Transylvania in order to acquire a powerful ring, the movie has not the money nor the artists the talent to make this into anything enjoyable.

Not grimy enough to be grindhouse, not leering enough to be porno-kitsch, the film chooses the obvious and the dull. There will be no surprises here (certainly no frights from the lame-duck screenplay) and the acting is not nearly campy enough to fill in the gaps. No-budget films can often have a joy factor, an attitude that anything can and will happen, that makes them intriguing artistic artifacts. With The Devil’s Wedding Night, the only thing of interest is the end credits.

The Fighter

Boxing films are one of the easier sports subgenres for me to get into. Sports films as a whole are incredibly easy to make work, as few things are as galvanizing for an audience as a good underdog story. Boxing films in particular play well with this trope, as boxing is a sport of the underclass, of the poor. Historically it’s the poor man who punches and the rich man who cheers. With The Fighter, this is the dynamic that it plays and it plays it well. There isn’t much liberty taken with the tried and true, so if you’re looking for something to cheer at this film works well.

Unfortunately, this also makes it, to a point, a somewhat dull watch. David O. Russell never really makes us feel the punches, feel the hits, instead deciding to focus on the middling family drama that is playing on outside of the ring. And while Christian Bale is fantastic as the motor-mouth drug addict former prodigy, his story is not nearly as compelling as it should be. The film wants us to feel the brothers both couldn’t succeed without the other, yet they never truly feel attached to each other, and the lack of chemistry robs the story of its heart. An okay film to throw on in the afternoon, but one that falls short of its lofty goals.

Love Lies Bleeding

The direct-to-DVD market of the mid-2000s is a wild area of film to dive into. There are some absolute gems in the bunch, some have even gone on to relative success and esteem within certain film circles. One of the driving factors for these lesser-seen films is the classic cheap four-pack. Studios are able to put one or two relatively known films that never really made an impact on the cover, and throw in two or three extra films that you have never heard of, starring people who never went on to do anything. It’s an exciting endeavor watching these films, hoping to find something that, while not life-changing, will at least be entertaining.

Love Lies Bleeding is not that movie. This is barely a movie at all, actually, or more of a series of parody-level cliches stitched together into a relative narrative. A young, struggling couple comes across thousands of dollars, only to be pursued by the dirty cops who it belongs to. Shootouts ensue. Whatever the film you are barely sketching out in your mind right now, that’s a better film than Love Lies Bleeding. This is a dull, forgettable placeholder, cinematic white noise. The only thing worth watching this for is Christian Slater, not because he puts in a good performance but because he puts in any performance at all. If you want to see what people mean by charisma on screen, simply watch this dreck and see that little bit of light you feel when Slater first appears.

The Lovers

Louis Malle is one of my favorite directors of all time, a man who carefully entangles love, sex, and desire throughout his films. In his second feature The Lovers this plays out as a contrast between these three elements, where sex and love are separate ideals until they finally combine again into desire. The story of a young housewife, a kept woman, who yearns for more from the world but doesn’t know how to ever reach it. She tried love, only to be kept in a box, caged by an icy husband. She tried sex, pursuing carnal pleasures in Paris with a man who, in other films, would be her savior from her drab existence. It’s in the meeting and falling in love with Bernard, a man who rejects both the faux pleasures of modernity and the engrained ideas of old money, that our heroine Jeanne is finally able to see a way forward.

The film is a deeply romantic portrayal of finding not just the person for you, but who you are as well. We are more than the roles assigned to us, we have more capabilites and desires and destinies than can be contained in the thoughts of little minds. The film is about shedding what is expected of us and embracing what we truly desire ourselves, away from both the glitz of the city lights and the contemplation of the countryside. The sex of the city, the love of the country, the desire for ourselves.

Mississippi Masala

In university almost a decade ago I took a class on Orientalism in cinema, taught of course by a man from Quebec. The course material involved diving into the biases both in film and in ourselves when looking at American films that turn the camera toward Asia. One of the films we watched in that class was Mississippi Masala, and while I doubt I was terribly engaged with the subject back then (movie time was sleep time for me in university), upon rewatching this film I fully am embraced by its greatness. A modern Romeo and Juliet, the film follows Mina (Sarita Choudhury) and Demetrius (Denzel Washington) as their love blossoms before threatening to tear them apart.

The film is absolutely simmering with sexual tension and is easily one of the sexiest films I have watched in years. Choudhury proves her skills in her very first film, going toe-to-toe with Denzel, their chemistry radiating from the screen. This tension between them makes it all the more palpable when their love threatens their respective worlds, as Mina’s carefully restrictive community of Indian emigrants is distrustful of outsiders, while Demetrius’ family is reliant on his reputation to stay in business. The wider political ramifications of their relationship take center stage while the couple tries desperately to hold on to each other. A gentle, lovely, and truly steamy film, one that reminds us why sex on film is so damn good.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

This year I decided to celebrate Christmas in July (as one does) and had my first-ever viewing of the perineal classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I am not a child of the 1980s, and I do not hold any nostalgic love for this movie or this family (I watched the original film only a few years ago and it was okay at best for me). With this film we find the Griswald family being bombarded by family during the holiday season. Tensions arise as things go awry, from an over-cooked turkey to a squirrel in the house. In the end, the family, along with us, all learn a valuable lesson, and we’re left remembering what the true meaning of Christmas is.

At least, that’s what the film wants us to believe. And while many of the gags work great and the performances from both Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are wonderful, the overall message of the film is clunky and dumb. A victim of Reagan-era consumerist ideals, it’s hard to relate to a hero whose main goal is to get enough of a Christmas bonus to buy a swimming pool. This cheapens what can at times be a relatively sweet and quite humorous film, and since the film isn’t winking at all at the absurdity of this goal, it leaves a bitter taste. A funny film that falls short of Christmas classic status for me.

Oppenheimer

The power of ego is the most terrifying thing we each hold. That is the main thesis of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the story of the man who made the bomb. The film, a propulsive three-hour epic, follows a man of science, blinded by ambition, creates something unimaginable in its awesome and awfulness. Only after he has succeeded, after doing the undoable, that the true terror of his accomplishment dawns on him. He asked not why, but if, and in this he is left haunted and broken.

Cillian Murphy turns in a career-best as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a gaunt skeleton, a corpse of a man by the end of the film, with the best supporting cast assembled this year. Nolan blends the undeniable dread of science with the ferociously personal, sifting through Oppenheimer’s life work not for redemption but salvation. Can a man ever repent for such sins? Can there be a God even aware this was possible? An undeniable, powerful piece of filmmaking, a dreadful prognosis for the ambition of man, and the best film of the year so far.

Safety Last!

When looking at the big names in silent comedy, Harold Llyod can only ever accept the bronze. Chaplin has the little tramp, a character who still lives on today. Buster Keaton, old stone face, takes the prize for the grandest and most dangerous gags. So one must ask, what elements did Lloyd bring to make him stand out? In Safety Last! we get our answer: he’s a damn good schemer. While censorship of the time makes it so he can only accomplish so much, Llyod’s humor relies on his moral ambiguity and willingness to do anything so he can come out on top. He lies, steals, and tricks everyone around him, and wins our hearts because of it.

The tool that Lloyd is best at using is simply balance. He’s able to push the envelope of what we’ll allow him to get away with without turning on his character completely. The little white lies he presents are almost always at the cost of someone in power, a puffed-up boss, or an all-too-serious cop. By making the targets of his gags people we naturally are against, we are far more willing to let him deceive and dupe his way into success. And, in the end, he still is made to pay for these transgressions, when his final scheme falls through and he must scale a building himself (instead of the double he had planned). The death-defying stunt in the end plays well and is enough for us to feel any mild quibbles with his morals can be set aside. Lloyd pushes only those who deserve it, and his punishment is mild and fun enough for everyone to enjoy.

School Daze

My continued completion of the Spike Lee filmography has brought me to his sophomore effort School Daze. The dreaded sophomore slump does rear its head in this intellectual kaleidoscope focusing on two opposing groups at a historically black university. In his first film, Lee showed he could get the work done (no small task), and with this one, he really wanted to show that he had things to say and ideas to show. He throws everything he can at the script and screen, from intricate dance numbers to fourth-wall-breaking calls to action. Lee is mad as hell, and damn it he’s going to let you know about it.

It’s in this approach that the film does get lost though. There are plenty of important issues and ideas touched upon, from colourism to the nature of African culturism as expressed in American black culture, to the treatment of women within the black community, and these are just three of the almost countless things Lee wants us to think about. It’s unfocused, sifting through cultural criticisms without truly landing any blows on the issues. The characters (much like many of Lee’s) are simply mouthpieces for the director, but in this case they lack much interiority and self-reflection. An interesting blueprint for where the director will go, with a stellar ending sequence that will be the lasting legacy of this piece, but altogether just a footnote in his career.

Talk To Me

Another entry in the A24 “elevated horror” genre, Talk to Me follows a group of teens that become involved with possession as a game and the consequences that follow. The cast of young stars (along with their young, first-time directors) are phenomenal in their portrayals, and the directors are great at building tense and bloody setpieces. The film is a somewhat blatant metaphor, and it doesn’t always land when it’s too heavy-handedly pushing its themes, but when it’s pushing its scares it works plenty.

When discussing horror films there is usually an easy indicator as to whether they are successful: were you scared? Did you look around your darkened room later that night, searching corners for shadows that weren’t there before? With that criteria, I can positively say Talk to Me is effective. The film creates an overwhelming sense of foreboding, and the final few scenes cement it as one of the best horror of the year.

The Truman Show

This month’s featured film in my paid tier exclusive The Favourites. Subscribe and read about free will, God complexes, and truth in the lies as seen in The Truman Show.

The Vanishing

There is a genre of horror that doesn’t get as much attention as others, it doesn’t have the flash of the slasher or the crafted shocks of more modern “elevated horror”. Instead of jumpscares and gore these films rely on simple storytelling and the slow, inevitable progress of dread. The Vanishing, the 1988 Danish film, may be one of the best in this little-discussed category. The film doesn’t hide the horror from us, doesn’t disguise the killer in a murder mystery, instead showing the methodical nature that his evil manifests in.

The three acts of the film slowly unfurl the dread at the heart of the story. At first, we watch a young couple, deeply in love, as one of them seemingly vanishes into thin air while they are at a gas station. The second act follows our villain as we see him before the act, the precision of his planning, and the morbid normality of his day-to-day life as a husband and father. In the third act, the kidnapper and the lover left behind meet, discuss, speak on the world. Even years after his lover vanished, Rex has never given up searching for her. Similarly, Raymond has never been able to desire anything more than another crime. These two lonely, pathetic men meet at a crossroads, and what follows will change them and the viewer forever. The film is a haunting cry for help in the middle of the night.

What’s Up, Doc?

“They don’t make them like that anymore.” A complaint of modern filmmaking that has been around for decades by now. It’s only when you come across something so singular, so unique in its approach to comedy, that you truly understand what we’re missing in theatres. What’s Up, Doc is that kind of film, a madcap comedy of errors, a live-action Looney Tunes. Nearly nonsensical in its story (which involves the switching of four identical suitcases containing various ill-gotten goods) the film lives and dies in the chemistry between Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand. Streisand, falling in love with O’Neal at first sight, endlessly stalks him, intrudes on him, and in short ruins his life. Ryan, a stickler and uptight bookworm, is forced to go along with Streisand’s games, and love and comedy follow.

The film is a parade of gags. Slapstick and wit and double entendre, the type of humor that would’ve made a writer on The Simpsons say they're putting too many laughs on laughs. The cast is hip to everything and knows just how outlandish the film is, and plays it up to perfection. A delightfully endearing romp that undoubtedly could never, ever be made today.