[Film Review] Ghost in the Shell (1995)

 

Cyberpunk isn't all neon and corporations.  The key to what makes good cyberpunk is an understanding of technological growth, of social evolution, social restraint, and neoliberalsim run amok as governance falls to the side of corporate control.  But most of all, it is how tech threads its way through all of this.  Popularized by Willaim Gibson's kinetic novel Neuromancer, cyberpunk has been on the rise since the late 80s, culminating for many in The Matrix, the cultural high water mark for the genre.  The Matrix itself was less an original work than it was a blockbuster amalgamation of multiple different cyberpunk works, Neuromancer (with its wild west internet literally called the matrix) being one of the bigger ones, but at its heart far more like Ghost in the Shell. 

Ghost in the Shell started life as a manga I have not read despite it glaring at me from my bookshelf, and as such you can probably expect a revisit to this film sometime in the future.  As it stands, the manga was adapted into a wildly acclaimed anime film of the same name in 1995.  Ghost in the Shell, the film, followed a government assault team called Section 9, partially led by Major, a cybernetic woman.  In this world, technology has developed to where a person's whole body could be replaced with cybernetic parts.  One part in particular allowed for the brain to be cradled within this body and connected to the net.  The consciousness (sometimes referred to as a soul by certain people) is referred to as the "ghost", the last knowable proof of humanity within a cybernetic "shell".  

Major and the rest of Section 9 are after a mysterious and dangerous hacker known as The Puppet Master who is targeting political officials, but has somehow evaded capture or even identification.  The Puppet Master has an insidious trick up his sleeve, able to implant memories that aren't real in his unsuspecting victims to get them to do what he wants.  The search for The Puppet Master leads to copious amounts of espionage, informed by the fractured state of the Japanese government that is unable to communicate with itself, and seems to be desperately seeking stability after a recent revolution.  The plot itself is virtually impossible to talk about without spoilers, thanks in part to how tightly the themes, action, and story developments all intertwine into a solid whole.  Their search for The Puppet Master becomes a frightening reflection of existential concerns the characters and film are tortured over, coming to an interesting head that talks technology, philosophy, and the limitations of self.

Without getting into spoilers for this review, the primary concern for Ghost in the Shell is what being human really is, anyway.  After so many cybernetic modifications, at what point does the person cease to be human and simply become a robot?  This isn't just a thought whispered between action scenes, it is the driving force for their characters' concerns.  Many of them have been so heavily augmented that retirement is paramount to suicide since they are required such expensive upkeep to keep their bodies from breaking down the way mechanical devices do.  Their tech is military grade, and cannot be simply found on the black market, thus their work is also a sense of self preservation.  Not that they are necessarily complaining.  The true concern the characters have is whether or not their "ghost" is enough to distinguish them from machines.  They noticeably never actually say "human" when referring to who they are, preferring to consider the essence of being over the biological sum of DNA and its follow through.  The tech and the biological are less interesting in themselves than what defines the self entirely.  As Major mentions at one point, it is not her brain that makes her who she is, it is experience, memories, and the ways in which she perceives the world - and this includes her perception through the tech in her head.  Her personality and sense of self has long ago abandoned the solely biological.  To remove some of the cybernetic features from her perception is to remove a part of who she is, and that is the complexity of the issue Ghost in the Shell wants to tumble over. 

Technology isn't just a means to an end in Ghost in the Shell, it is a place and a perspective.  It is integrated with the self, with society, with a person's understanding of the world around them.  You would remain a person if you never had a phone or the internet again, but you would not ever be the same person.  That may sound ridiculous, but it is technically true.  So much of your interaction with the world is through this pocket computer and its connection to the internet, and simply taking that away fundamentally changes the way you perceive and consume the world around you.  And that is part of the point with Ghost in the Shell.  It isn't simply "tech is bad", its "tech makes everything different".  The irony is that while you would probably assume that turning away from the uber-modernity is as simple as turning of a phone, the reality is that your brain has morphed to coexist with this technology.  The "weakness" some perceive in those who are so reliant on gadgets and convenience is a conditional weakness.  There are strengths to the reliance as well, particularly in the literacy of technology and the ability to adapt with new avenues of information and interaction.  It isn't a flat pro and con, because our species did not get to where it is because of our intelligence and adaptability alone, it was because of the way we were able to create, use, and integrate technology into our lives.  That is what fundamentally changed us, and that is what led us not only into the 21st century, but to some sort of evolved being where our creations and ourselves have become intertwined.  Evolution, it should be said, is not perfection.  It is adaptation, it is changing with time as time requires.  Ghost in the Shell doesn't just bring up these questions, it searches through them with intensity and focus.  The film is insanely short for how many thoughts it has, and could have done with another half hour at least to really get into things, but even at its length there is a lot to unpack here.  One of these days I will have to do a spoiler filled review so we can tackle all there is involved in this plot, as well as the ending, but for now consider this a very high recommendation. 

 

 

 

9.0

[Film Review] Naked Lunch

 

On paper, David Cronenberg adapting the wildly controversial William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch sounds like a perfect storm.  Cronenberg had a history playing with horror, surrealism, and themes of repression, culminating in what had to feel like a pseudo-tryout for Naked Lunch in Videodrome.  Cronenberg's forte, in particular, was in the sub-genre of horror called "body horror", where the human form morphs and mutilates into something horrific.  The general concept behind this genre is to make us feel like the source of horror, not just on a psychological level, but on a "dig the bugs out of my skin" while tripping kind of horror.  The horror was within, but it was externalizing.  You could see this most clearly in one of Cronenberg's earliest horror films, The Brood.  The Brood was about little humanoid creatures that budded from a host like fungus, spreading violence wanted by the host.  It was a gross but effective film.  This sort of surrealist horror, disturbing and thematically layered, was perfect for adapting something by Burroughs.  Burroughs' Naked Lunch was infamously unfilmable.  It had a sort of non-structure, intended for you to be able to start the novel at any point and still come out roughly the same.  It was also unflinchingly graphic, with repulsive depictions of debased drug use and sexual violence on nearly every page.  It still remains one of the most controversial novels of all time, contentious in even the most broadly minded literary circles.  

And Naked Lunch sincerely deserves this contention.  Burroughs' style of writing - where sentences feel crammed together anxiously, as though gasping for air between rapid heartbeats and often without proper punctuation, all the while slipping between one reality into another without so much as the ending of a sentence to remark the break - is invigorating if you're into this type of modernist/postmodernist writing.  His style is truly original, and incredibly influential on the postmodernists that would come after him.  His writing is also extremely difficult to read if you are not accustomed to this sort of thing, requiring you to often read sections multiple ways, flipping between versions depending on what is happening next in the "story".  Burroughs has surrogates in the novel, infamously holding at least three names, but I suspect a fourth as well, with different levels of separation depending on the depravity the character has to either witness or partake in.  If one were awfully optimistic, you could consider it to be like peering into the stream of consciousness of a reflective patient in therapy, but that disregards the intention Burroughs places in just about everything in the novel.  

Adapting what is literally in Naked Lunch is not just impossible from a practical standpoint, it would also be revolting to the point that no one would ever dare see it, and would more than likely have never been released.  Smartly, Cronenberg decided on a new tactic, instead converting the odd story of how Burroughs wrote the novel into something of a similar vain.  Naked Lunch, the film, follows a Burroughs surrogate as he loses touch with reality in a hazy drug fueled binge.  After he accidentally kills his wife during a party trick, Bill Lee (the Burroughs surrogate) runs off to a place called the Interzone, someplace in northern Africa.  He is under the impression he has been enlisted in some sort of covert op, where he is to study and translate the goings on of several key people revolved around sexual depravity and the drug trade.  In particular he is to find and report on a Dr. Benway.  Bill Lee repeatedly sees giant bugs, often doubling as typewriters for him to work from.  These bugs have an anus like apparatus in their back in which they can talk out of, where they give him directions as to who to pursue, and what to write.  Hints of the novel are layered within this story, in particular the setting of the Interzone, and the occasional subject of homosexuality, but neither are given the significance they are given in the novel.  Instead, the film prefers to focus on Burroughs' drug binge, his tortured writing experience, and his delusional state in which he decides to process this information.  It becomes quickly apparent that what Lee thinks he is writing and what he is actually writing are two completely different things.  He thinks he is writing concerns and reports over what is happening in the Interzone (occasionally, he writes about his loneliness and his fear of getting off of drugs).  What he is actually writing is the manuscript to Naked Lunch.  

Cronenberg does a relatively good job not just showing the odd, feverish quality to writing complex and often unconventional fiction, full of doubt and paranoia and dissatisfaction.  Lee doesn't necessarily not believe in what he is writing, so much as he struggles with being as forthcoming with the information he has to write.  Throughout the film one of his conflicts is in whether he trusts the giant bugs (or the alien Mugwumps, which act at times as counterpoint to the bugs and facilitators) or whether he considers them hostile and dangerous.  Both the bugs and the Mugwumps secrete a drug when what Lee has typed pleases them, a disgusting representation of the dopamine secretion when you've written something you are proud of.  The complex relationship Lee has with writing is tied up in a particular tragedy in Burroughs' past.  Burroughs, back in 1951, accidentally shot his wife in the head, killing her.  He has said that it was his wife's death that was responsible for his writing career, which he described as an "appalling conclusion".  This line, it would seem, is the thesis behind Cronenberg's adaptation, following Lee's trauma and drug induced state as he tries his best to run away from this particular tragedy into a career as an author.  

The issue with Cronenberg's take is that it largely ignores, or otherwise simply teases, the real underlying concerns and personality of Burroughs himself.  For a film about Burroughs, it leaves out quite a lot.  Burroughs, first of all, was gay.  This is toyed around with here and there throughout the film, but hardly made as a particularly poignant point.  The novel Naked Lunch shows extreme interest in not just homosexuality, but any sort of non-normative sexuality (but also includes rampant fetishism, so while the above sounds progressive it is much more speculative and, often times, offensive).  Burroughs' novel is driven by the conflict of drug addiction and the culture that comes from it.  It is full of people who have fallen through the cracks of society into a dark underbelly that exists in the fringe of the glossy "normal".  Burroughs may use drug addiction and the horrific lifestyle and emotional trauma of addicts to tell his story, but he continually brings these issues to the conflict of societal norms.  Burroughs, if his novel is anything to go by, seems to think all sense of societal norms are oppressive.  He talks aggressively about the depravity of capital punishment, of lust for violence, of the animalistic nature of sexuality, and of, essentially, the obscenity of society.  Burroughs, however, never sees this as an issue to be solved.  There are numerous passages in the book Naked Lunch that show potential overthrows of authority, almost always ending in an orgy of violence and depravity.  There is no winning, Burroughs seems to say.  We are doomed to our torment.  

Burroughs' hellish depiction of, well, reality is not something anyone in their right mind could turn into a movie.  I enjoyed Burroughs' novel despite myself, finding it consistently off-putting but always interesting.  It is the kind of book I think virtually no one should read outside of literary people interested in the medium for its own sake, because, while Burroughs has good points to make, he certainly doesn't make them all that well.  He is unendingly offensive, continually trying to either make you sick or piss you off.  It is incendiary art, the kind artists like to say they want but here it is and all it amounts to is hate and remorse.  There is a pinch of value in Naked Lunch, but not enough to make up for what it does so horrifically.  Cronenberg was right to start from scratch, essentially, looking into Burroughs' life for inspiration, but in his attempt he somehow missed what was actually so great, the buried, sand and shit encrusted diamond that meekly glinted but glinted with a white hot fever of inspiration.  Cronenberg tosses out the novel in favor of an outsider's glance towards Burroughs, and he doesn't do the man justice.  

Cronenberg's overt attempts may have failed, but, somehow despite itself, the film is still rather good.  Taken on its own and only partially inspired by Burroughs and his infamous novel, Naked Lunch is a good movie about the creative process and the self destructive nature of creatives.  It glamorizes nothing, makes creativity out to be a hostile and self destructive entity willing to tear a person's life down if only to escape from the head that conceived it.  Cronenberg gets these themes across well, and we see that process as less masturbatory as it is frustrated, wishing for a sign that the process was worth it.  It takes quite a stomach to watch Naked Lunch given its graphic nature and pervasive drug use and bugs, but if you have it then you won't be disappointed.  It is a somewhat sanitized take on Burroughs, but one that does still feel an awful lot like him.  It is creative and unique, and though it doesn't add up to its potential, it is more than impressive enough.               

 

 

 

8.0

[TV Review] The Mandalorian - Season 2

 

One of my darkest secrets is that I am a rather big Star Wars nerd.   It was something I was more than open about some years ago, but ever since the contentious release of The Last Jedi, saying you are a fan of Star Wars has felt a bit like admitting to leprosy.  Not necessarily due to external pressures where others will react with revulsion, but more of an internal feeling of illness.  I'm like these people?  You think to yourself.  Am I that bad?  The rampant toxicity of the Star Wars fandom aside, the reason I've become such a Star Wars fan over the last twenty-plus (my god nearly thirty) years of life is as complicated as it is annoying.  The texture of the world has always appealed to me - especially in the original trilogy - and the complex politics and commentary on religious or political dogma - especially from the prequels and The Clone Wars TV show - has kept my attention magnetized to even the smallest bit of information about this world.  The above points out one of the horrible, contentious issues with this fandom and with involving yourself in this universe.  This thing is pretty heavily split up into different eras and styles.

The Mandalorian came out in 2019, a few months ahead of the release to The Rise of Skywalker.  At the time, the fandom was in a fiery abyss of hate thanks to the mixed reception of The Last Jedi, a film I should really do a review on at some point.  For a lot of people, what made Star Wars special had died with that film.  The problem is exactly that: what was so special about Star Wars?  Because the answer to that question is different depending on what kind of Star Wars fan you are.  Are you annoyed yet?  So am I, frankly.  The Mandalorian became a beacon for some, a herald of classic Star Wars and everything that had originally made it great, but the truth of that is that The Mandalorian appeals most to the original trilogy folk.  For many, The Mandalorian was the one true hopeful future for this franchise where the films had let them down. 

While I prefer the style and character of the original trilogy, as far as plot and themes go I prefer the prequels.  No, the prequels are not good films (although I will defend Revenge of the Sith until my dying breath), but they were at the very least interesting.  The Phantom Menace, boring and poorly acted as it could be at times, was primarily about trade disputes and governance.  Taxation on the outer rim of the galaxy was causing a problem in the notoriously unregulated planets, and in order to repeal these taxes they decide to hold hostage a peaceful and influential planet.  The problems are both economic and bureaucratic, surprisingly informed by real life history.  Naturally, in a blockbuster space opera in 1999, this sort of in depth politics was considered not only boring, but downright ridiculous considering the piece of media it was in.  The execution of this plot in The Phantom Menace is absolutely poor, no argument here, but credit where credit is do, George Lucas was tapping into the complex fantasy narratives we would enjoy in the 2010s post-Game of Thrones world.  The horrible irony of this is that, just as the world is catching up to their media having this type of complex investment, Star Wars has reverted to something simpler.  

The Mandalorian season 1 was somewhat disappointing to me. The style, look, characters, and setting where the kinds of things I had been dreaming about in a Star Wars TV show for years, the kind of thing I'd always have to squint and project onto The Clone Wars (a great show, I'm not saying it isn't).  Finally it was here, with everything I had always wanted in look and feel but . . . where was the plot?  I had grown accustomed to a complex, political narrative in my Star Wars content, and The Mandalorian was largely devoid of that.  There were hints of it here and there, showing roughly how the remnants of the Empire operated, how the remaining Mandalorians were something of a hidden culture of people now that their planet was destroyed, and how the New Republic was still having difficulty in a post-Return of the Jedi world.  The elements were there, but mostly as set dressing and context, not as a driving force in the show.  That's fine, of course, I can adjust.  I don't need that complex world, I suppose, but then what we were left with was a vague quest over a force-sensitive child (the already iconic Baby Yoda) and a Mandalorian whose primary element is that he is cool.  It was thin goings, as far as plot and world building were concerned.  Rather than evoke the operatic episodic plot that the prequels tried to capture (or The Clone Wars), The Mandalorian wanted to be more like the Flash Gordan serials from the 30s that originally inspired Star Wars.  This meant a lot of one-off conflicts with minor echoes of an overarching plot.  Most episodes would see Mando touch down on a planet for help and get roped into a Kurosawa-type defense-of-the-small-town scenario.  It happens in season 2, as well.  These small, action set pieces with minor characters we only see once is something that a lot of people have appreciated in the show, but for me it feels awfully regressive.  The Mandalorian, for all of its style and technological impressiveness, feels so much like a TV show form the 90s or early 00s.  Think pre-Battlestar Galactica, something akin to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995). 

Again, this is what most people seem to actually like about the show, but for me it felt a bit off putting, as though the show didn't want me to invest in it, it wanted me to be thrilled.  When season 2 was released, I decided to taper my expectations, to give the show a new perspective and let it play with what it wanted.  Season 2 does a few things different than season 1, but it certainly takes its time getting there.  For one, it embraces the larger Star Wars world, adding in favorite characters (that I won't spoil) that did add quite a bit of engagement to the show as a part of this universe.  The first Jedi we come across in Mando's journey to give Baby Yoda a master is one of my favorite Jedi in the entire universe, a character I have always wanted to see given a better platform.  The fact this character is now given their own TV show has me excited about Star Wars for the first time in years.  Likewise, the show works a little more inclusively with the history laid in The Clone Wars.  If you've seen that show, there is a lot of payoff here.  Suddenly, The Mandalorian feels officially engaged with the greater universe in a way it never did in season 1.  It's baby steps, largely, but the kind that feel swollen with promise.  

The ending of season 2 had me a bit confused, however.  I had to look up whether a season 3 was planned, because things seemed to have been wrapped up in a bitter sweet ending here.  No cliffhanger, no "wonder what happens next".  Simply put, the central conflict set up in season 1 is mostly completed here, so I'm curious as to what season 3 plans to bring.  Conclusive feeling or no, season 2 also ended bringing about the themes of dogma back into the Star Wars fold.  Questions over various traditions and their potentially disruptive nature are brought up a couple times, particularly with regards to the extremely dogmatic Mandalorians.  The Mandalorians, for those uninitiated, are problematic and difficult at the best of times.  Their belief system is full of machismo and Sparta-esque proof of superiority.  Pieces of their culture can be picked up throughout The Mandalorian, but for a truly in-depth coverage on their culture and history, you'd have to have watched The Clone Wars.  They have a strict set of beliefs and traditions, so strict they often cause civil war or general contention with the greater universe.  The Republic couldn't deal with them, the Empire couldn't deal with them, and, most importantly, even the planet Mandalore couldn't deal with them.  Elements of this had been touched on in season 1, particularly with regards to Mando's refusal to take off his helmet and his following of a code ("This is the way").  In season 2, Mando is forced to meet with other Mandolrians, and finally within this show we get to see how, even within Mandalorian culture, there are severe conflicts.  Mando himself is hardly a traditional Mandalorian (depending on your perspective; this universe is just too much to sum up here).  After all, in The Clone Wars the Mandalorians had no problem taking off their helmets.  This cultural segmentation is brought up in the latter half of season 2, but again it feels more like a tease than a full-on dive in.  

The Mandalorian season 2 was more enjoyable than season 1 for me, feeling as though it at least tried to pay off my investment in this world a little more without alienating those who want a simple space show.  That said, it still feels like it is wading in the shallow end.  At the end of season 1, my primary thoughts were I'd give it another season and see what they did with it.  If they didn't shape it up by then, I'd check out and wait for something more my speed.  Season 2 seems to be something of a repeater, again catching my attention to what is possible without really delivering on what I want.  Again I say, I'll see what season 3 brings, but I am as of yet not invested in seeing this thing all the way through.  Perhaps if one of these spin-off shows gives me the thing I want, it will better make The Mandalorian easy to swallow.  But as of now, while I liked season 2 quite a bit, The Mandalorian is still on probation.        

 

 

 

8.0

[Film Review] Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

I've never been one of those people who disliked Quentin Tarantino on some sort of contrarian principle.  The guy has obvious talent, and though people like to counterpoint about the length of his films, his whole sale taking from exploitation films and hardly remembered Hollywood fodder from the 70s, and his inability to not write a movie not involving copious amounts of murder or without a bounty hunter character at some point somewhere, I generally dig what Tarantino is trying to do.  His films feel like movies shuffled around together, tied off with his specific pulp style to make it into something grander, more epic (both in the literal sense and the filmic sense) than the low budget films that inspired him.  Arguments against his originality miss the point: it isn't the stories and characters themselves that make Tarantino shine, it is how he uses them.  All that is to say that I like the guy, so that when I say "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is the most indulgent Tarantino film, bar none", you know I really fucking mean it. 

Now, Tarantino does have a point to make with Hollywood, something hard to believe if you stopped the film anywhere in its first two hours.  Tarantino veers away from his usual plots involving murder, war, or revenge, and this does something really strange to his story.  It takes some of the oomph out of it.  Credit where credit is due, Tarantino is trying something different here.  Hollywood follows Rick Dalton, an in-the-process-of-being washed up TV actor who passed his opportunity to step up into the movies, and his stunt double and best-friend-in-the-world Cliff Booth, simply hanging on for dear life as all other prospects have dried up.  Most of the film follows these two, as Dalton plays a guest appearance as a TV show villain, contemplating flying out to Italy to star in one of those western films out there, and Booth crosses path with the Manson family.  These two round the drain while Sharon Tate lives life simply and joyfully, seeming not to have a care in the world.  Tarantino at the very least knows he needs some sort of pull for his story, and where that is usually relegated to some form of revenge, here it is around the anticipation of Tate's inevitable murder.  It's the kind of idea that makes sense on paper, but when you start to iron it out, you realize that instead of driving the plot of the movie - being a source of anticipation that the rest of the story feels as though it is building towards - it distracts from the disparate parts.  Booth and Dalton hardly have anything to do with the Tate murder, outside of Dalton being Tate's next door neighbor.  The obvious knowledge of the Tate murder, one of the most infamous murders of all time, drags down the film as you work overtime trying to figure out exactly how all of this is supposed to tie together.  

Surprisingly, it does tie together in the end, but not until the last 40 min.  For those of you keeping score at home, that is 2 hours into the film.  The first two hours can be summed up rather well, showing Booth to be a poor mingler in the Hollywood inner circle, and generally listless, while Dalton tries his best at his current acting gig before being inspired to try out the Italian film market.  Everything else is indulgent filler, comical send ups to the 60s (and late 50s) Hollywood culture, and a love letter to the films Tarantino grew up on.  There is a tad bit of meta commentary as well, where Tarantino has a massive all-star cast, a slice of modern Hollywood, to tell a story about another era of Hollywood, but it matters less to the story or its effectiveness as it is an intentional quirk: again, indulgence.  Tarantino could have cut an hour of this film easily (there is a lengthy flashback that acts as pretty much a joke and lasts nearly 20 min, where its primary content would have amounted to a minute or so in a different, more modern director).  

For the first 2 hours of this film, Tarantino seems to cram every idea he ever had about 60s Hollywood into near-vignettes.  They are so diluted that they eventually and tangentially tie in with the overarching narrative he wants to tell like a collage with a thin concept.  That narrative, when all is said and done, is essentially just a joke.  In some ways, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood is something like Tarantino directing a Cohen Brother's film, albeit with heavy rewrites from the legendary auteur.  There is a quirky punch line at the end of the film - the kind you may notice as the climax starts to head its way to you, headlights flaring on the road ahead - and, for what it is worth, the punch line is pretty good.  But it certainly wasn't worth 2 hours of meandering to get to.  The idea that Tarantino coded this film his "Magnum Opus" while trying to get it made makes sense, but only from a completely delusional standpoint.  I would not doubt Tarantino thought his love letter to 60s Hollywood was his best film, crammed to the piss-threatening gills with references and asides until you frustratingly give in and let the film do whatever the fuck it wants, story or no.  It is downright masturbatory at times, but it is never boring.  Tarantino has not made a particularly great film here, but it is entertaining.  

Spoilers below.

Tarantino's big joke, the one he builds toward the whole movie, is essentially a revisionist version of the Manson murders.  It was probably predictable from the first mention to Sharon Tate Tarantino ever made when promoting this movie ahead of release, but the Manson murders are heavily rewritten.  Rewriting history is something of a motif with Tarantino, most expertly done in is last truly outstanding film, Inglorious Basterds, and here he does it again.  At the last minute, after being yelled at by a drunk, hippie-hating Rick Dalton, the Manson family members decide it would better serve the world to kill this has-been TV star.  "Kill the people who taught us to murder!" one of them screams, referencing the fact that they grew watching TV, which was predominantly about death.  The Manson family, unfortunately, aren't truly expecting Booth to be tripping on acid, or for his trained pitbull to be standing by.  The Manson family didn't stand a chance, and thus the joke has been sprung: those that killed classic Hollywood and the 60s have been killed by a has-been TV actor and his stunt double.  It is Hollywood taking revenge on its loss of innocence (or something to that effect, anyway, since Hollywood has never been anything close to innocent).  It is, at last, a revenge film, the kind that Tarantino thrives on, but incognito.  The ending is rather funny, watching it all transpire well after you know it is going to, and you're left with an odd taste in your mouth.  It was a funny end to a bizarre movie, one where you can see why he structured it this way, and what he was trying to develop in most every scene, but you can't help but think how overwrought a lot of it is.  So much time is spent watching things we don't need to watch, seeing whole scenes of fictional TV shows progress just so we can see Rick Dalton's feelings about it.  Likewise with Booth, who spends a lengthy amount of time with the Manson family mostly to tease the unknowing threat around him, but it all eventually doesn't amount to anything (that said, this was probably my favorite scene in the whole movie, so perhaps I can give this one a pass).  Tarantino is simply out of things to prove, narratively.  He has used it all up, playing to what he likes without any more charm or interesting perspective to bring.  He's still quite talented, but I just think he likes playing with his toys.  

 

 

 

7.0

[Film Review] Thor Ragnarok

 

Whatever your opinion of the Marvel movies, they have done something that no other film franchise has ever done.  We've had long running series like James Bond, epic plotting with The Lord of the Rings, multi-sequel franchises like Harry Potter, Star Wars, or X-men, but nothing comes close to the consistent (for the most part) continuity of the 23 Marvel movies.  What is more remarkable is managing to thread that all into such an event as Avengers: Infinity War, and have it be essentially the best film in the franchise.  So many things have to work for all of this to have come together, and with the potential death of movie theaters, the experience of the Marvel franchise up to Avengers: Endgame will more than likely never be replicated again.  An unbelievable cap to an unbelievable franchise.  But though Infinity War may be the best, and though Endgame gave us a rather comfortable end (despite their insistence to continue on forever more), it is Thor Ragnarok that holds the special place in my heart as my personal favorite of the franchise.  

It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when Thor seemed just too ridiculous to work as a feature super hero film.  Back in 2011, we were still in a post-Nolan superhero world.  Iron Man went toe-to-toe with goliath The Dark Knight in 2008, and though one ended up with more critical favor than the other (causing a revamp of the Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards in the process), it was Iron Man whose legacy would prevail in the next decade.  But even with Iron Man's more comical take on the superhero genre, it was still steeped in realism.  Generally speaking, Iron Man was trying to appeal to a more light-hearted take on the Nolan Batman films, maintaining the realistic world but with more fun between the cracks.  Thor, with its fantasy driven Asgard and ridiculous leading character, looked to stray too far away from the formula that was working.  Thor indeed came in as an underwhelming film, and its sequel, Thor: The Dark World, is generally considered the worst in the entire Marvel franchise.  Thor as a character just seemed to not work very well with what everyone else was doing.  Before Dark World, Joss Whedon and co working on The Avengers proved that Thor could work in an ensemble, particularly as a slightly comedic foil to Tony Stark.  For one reason or another, however, that didn't translate well into the Thor sequel.  

Fast forward some time, and Guardians of the Galaxy is set to release, and again people are talking about their doubts as to whether the film is going to work or not.  Far more than Thor ever was, Guardians seemed a fully bizarre, cartoonish entry in the Marvel Universe, throwing away completely the ties to realism in favor of a more comic book type aesthetic and tone.  Director James Gunn, however, brought all his medal firing humor, slapstick action, and interesting and funny characters into a bright and colorful world.  Guardians, by most people's metric, is the real turning point in the Marvel franchise, the film that figured out the proper formula for the series to carry on.  Another Avengers movie, some sequels (even a soft Avengers film in Captain America Civil War) and we were staring straight down the path towards Thanos, the cosmic villain that wanted to end half of all life in the universe for his own sociopathic beliefs.  And none of that was sounding ridiculous anymore.

It was plain to see, however, that if they were going to go for another Thor movie, they were going to have to revamp things.  In comes Taika Waititi, New Zealand filmmaker at this point known for his work with Flight of the Conchords and What We Do In Shadows (and, if you were keen on the indie film market of the mid 00s, Eagle Vs. Shark, a film I couldn't like no matter how hard I tried at the time).  Waititi injected some much needed humor into Thor's character, allowing him to be as self absorbed as everyone would assume he was, and stretching Chris Hemsworth's comedy chops, chops it turns out he is very skilled in.  What's more, the decision to adapt not a Thor comic, but a Hulk comic for this film worked to let Thor act as something like a deluded everyman in a spectacularly strange world.  It is fish-out-of-water, where the fish is a gorilla with gills.  Everything about Thor Ragnarok is absurd, willing to have fun even at the expense of the Marvel universe itself.  The film stretches the believability of what the Marvel films had become in order to play with them smartly.  After all, though people may be taking the pathos seriously here and there, the world itself was little more than a connection of points.  The more serious this world got, the more tired the films became.  You can look no further than Avengers: Age of Ultron, which, though being a classic comic book story, felt like a tired threat compared to the fantastical that we knew could happen.  Age of Ultron wasn't a bad film, it was simply a boring film, one that played a little too closely to what the earlier Marvel films did, and in so doing began to feel like it was treading similar ground.  It would take post-Civil War to really inject some much needed life into The Avengers again.  

Though technically Black Panther would release between Ragnarok and Infinity War, it is Ragnarok that truly leads into the final act.  Infinity War picks up right where Ragnarok left off, with Thanos' ship intercepting the ship Thor and co. are on at the end of this film.  Ragnarok was the stage setting, placing the final pieces into place for the most devastating thing to happen to this universe to occur.  The focus, largely, is in bringing Hulk back after his disappearance after Age of Ultron, and in rebooting Thor into a character we can actually give a shit about.  Hulk and Thor, it turns out, are a rather ornery buddy-cop paring when you put them together.  Thor in general is just rather selfish, and his attempt to appeal to the immensely powerful but rather unstable Hulk and then later to the fragile yet intelligent Bruce Banner is some of the best work either actor or character has received in the series. Thor may have multiple movies under his belt where Hulk has one (and even then, not this Hulk, not really), but both somehow feel equally sideline, unable to properly hold a film on their own to any great degree.  Together, however, their oddness is allowed to play out in full and with conflict.  We don't just get to laugh at Hulk and Thor, we get to understand them and their motivations a little better.  We are allowed to disagree with them, to empathize with them, and to embrace their flaws.  As funny and outlandish as the setting and villain are in this film, it is really the conflict between Hulk and Thor, two people who just can't work together because they are both so stubborn, that really makes up the primary focus of the film.  It is a character work, through-and-through, and Taiki Waititi's soon-to-be-trademarked style is what knits these parts together so seamlessly. 

Thor Ragnarok is my favorite Marvel film, hands down, but even saying that comes with a caveat.  First and foremost: I don't really like the Marvel films.  One of the reasons this franchise has worked to carve out such a lengthy and demanding series is because they have to tread lightly on certain conflicts, lest they write themselves into a corner they cannot get out of.  Power creep (oof, Captain Marvel), inconsistent characters, and sometimes ludicrous decisions or villains has made the series at least partially difficult to keep up with and truly invest in beyond simple entertainment.  There is virtually no hidden depth in this franchise, no possible artistic worth outside of the craft involved making this work, but that is okay.  As Thor Ragnarok shows, you can make a hell of a good time with something fun.  

      

 

 

8.0

[Film Review] Toy Story 4

 

The Toy Story franchise is an enigma in the animation world.  Each story in the series avoided (to some degree) rerunning the plot of a previous entry, always looking for the next progression point for its characters.  Part of this is due to Toy Story's not-so-subtle analogy with the work force.  Woody is the boss of a company of toys, whose one product is the entertainment and well being of their kid, Andy.  It isn't too much of a stretch to claim that the creative leads at Pixar can probably relate most to this series of any other.  They run a company, leading others in producing the most entertainment they can for families around the world.  Toy Story, then, has always been one of the most artistically led series in Pixar cannon, and is probably why the series has the greatest track record for sequels within the company.  

Toy Story 4 looked to be a bridge too far when it was released a few years ago.  Hell, Toy Story 3 felt like it was one too many before the release of that film.  There is skepticism with sequels in any series, primarily because what makes the original so good often does not work well with further information.  Movies, like a lot of art, work best with extrapolation, with the viewer having to take what they saw and projecting it further, either between moments in the film or after the credits roll (sometimes retroactively, projecting out before the start of the film such as with John Wick).  Toy Story 3, it turned out, was not one too many, and turned out to be a somewhat messy story with the strongest emotional wallop the series has ever seen.  It has been a decade since Toy Story 3, and I still think about the climax of that film.  But with that emotional toll came with it the feeling of finality, of this series finally ending and saying everything it probably could.  The first film talked about being upstaged by a new employee and letting yourself get aged out, the second film was about dealing with new opportunities and their cost, and the third film was about middle age and the inevitability of death.  What could a fourth film possibly offer?

Toy Story 4 doesn't bring as much new to the table as previous entries, but it doesn't waste what it retreads either.  Toy Story 4, by and large, is about retirement and the acceptance that comes with it.  Elements from previous films, such as forgoing a leadership role in favor of a different leader, being aged out of your job, and potentially finding a new career are all touched upon with referential significance.  Yes, we've seen these things before, but where each were a problem to reckon with before, now they are slots in an equation with a difficult answer to accept. 

Woody is still having trouble not being the leader in his newfound job being Bonnie's toy, a development that happened at the end of Toy Story 3.  Woody understands this time around however, and it is simply bad habit that he sometimes oversteps.  But that habit recalls a problem that Woody was dealing with last film: he doesn't have nearly as much of a purpose anymore.  Bonnie doesn't like the cowboy doll as much as the other toys - particularly Jessie, the cowgirl equivalent to Woody, which makes sense with her being a girl.  Woody sees the writing on the wall, but his choices in the matter are much more complicated than the obvious one.  When Bonnie goes to her first day of Kindergarten, she creates a new toy out of a used spork, putty, and pipe-cleaners she names Forky.  Forky, no longer trash but a toy, gains sentience but does not understand his new role as Bonnie's favorite toy.  To Forky, he is still trash, and feels far more comfortable in the garbage bin than he does in the arms of his kid.  Woody takes it upon himself to look after and coach the weird guy, having to explain what is so significant to being a kid's favorite toy, something that pains him just a little bit as he longs to go back to a time when he Andy were all that mattered.  When Bonnie's family goes on a road trip in an RV, Forky is lost and Woody decides to go after him, meeting up with Bo Peep, his love interest in previous films, who, after being given away, ended up a lost toy.  Woody is uncomfortable with the lost toy life, even as Bo Peep shows how exciting and freeing it can be.  They had their time with their respective kids.  Isn't it time to, you know, retire? 

Toy Story 4 cleverly avoids creating any sort of villain toy again like it did in the previous two films, instead going for the complexly misunderstood, an angle that provides far more thematic material to work with.  It is to Toy Story's concept that this series has managed four feature films while still feeling like a canonical whole.  Toy Story 4 doesn't feel like an add-on to what was already a complete feeling trilogy.  Toy Story 3, as an ending, focused primarily on the job and on mortality, thematically fit for an ending, but somehow Pixar managed to find an even better one.  Toy Story 4 plays with the themes of working life, of having a career and contextualizing that as a definitive point in your life, but it goes beyond that to look at what the self is, and what the self wants, and why.  To accumulate accomplishments is great, but at some point you have to stop striving for more just for their sake.  Eventually, you have to do something for you.  Retirement is giving up, it is finally living your life without the worry of making something of it.  The pressure is off, and now, though it hurts to say goodbye to so much and so many, it is time to live.   

 

 

 

8.0

[Film Review] John Wick

 

Keanu Reeves was already an internet darling before his silver screen renaissance.  Reeves had become a mainstay in internet memes since about 2010, and though he may be most active in people's lives currently with the all out cluster fuck release of Cyberpunk 2077, what eventually lead him to being in the most anticipated game of all time was the little action movie that could John Wick.  When it comes to action films, I'll be the first to admit that I am incredibly picky.  Movies with people full of guns are rarely interesting to me unless they are something like the original Die Hard, James Bond, or something more operatic like Star Wars.  Because of this, I did not see John Wick when it was released, though that hardly stopped people from recommending it to me left and right for the last six years.  Well, today is your lucky day those who annoyed me, because being knee-deep into Cyberpunk 2077 has gotten me in the mood.

The praise for John Wick was not for its plot, tension, or characters - hell, part of the selling point was the absolute absence of these things.  John Wick is an action movie stripped down to the very core of what we go to see action movies for.  It is a ballistic ballet, one with as little pretense as is required.  The plot is simple enough, but effective in its simplicity.  The titular John's wife died of an unnamed illness, and just before she died she made arrangements to gift him a puppy so he would not need to grieve alone.  It takes all of two days before a group of Russian gangsters break into his house to steal his car, killing his dog for the kicks of it.  This group, it turns out, was lead by the son of the gang's leader, a former employer of Wick's who knows full well that not only is Wick capable of killing every last one of them for such an indiscretion, but also that he is virtually impossible to stop once he gets going.  What follows is something inevitable, a force of nature that drops as many bodies as there are years in a man's life. 

John Wick operates in inverse of what one would traditionally say is good story telling.  The tension isn't in whether John is going to be able to get revenge in one piece, but rather how many people he is going to have to kill before he does.  We are apart of the most media saturated generation by a long shot, and as such we have seen just about every story possible multiple times over.  That is to say, we don't need to see it again.  Post modernism tried very hard to predict this sort of audience member, but even in its most radical predictions it fell short.  Boredom and deconstruction where the right themes and traits for post modernism to discuss in predicting our current future, but what it left out was the subtle way in which boredom and deconstruction would twist our wants in media.  All we need is the intention, the reason, the send-off from placid to chaos, and so long as that is sold right, you can be as quick and simple with it as you want.  It's one reason why critics decried whole-film origin stories for superhero films.  It's why John Wick comes preloaded with an obvious back story that is felt that we can almost tell ourselves without having to have any character give an exposition dump.  We know it already, all we need is the fireworks. 

This may sound, especially to an older generation, that people and things are getting dumber, but the ironic thing is it means precisely the opposite.  One can consider that John Wick is a movie that sloppily chops off the dramatic context to the violence on screen, but you'd be missing the point.  Dramatic context, when used effectively, can make a good movie great, but more often than not dramatic context is simply an excuse to enjoy what we came here for.  It allows the fantasy to play out without the audience to feel stupid for being entertained by vapidity.  This itself is stupid, and John Wick knows it.  The dramatic context of, say, Die Hard, is virtually unnecessary.  Who cares if his wife is locked away in the tower?  It hardly motivates any of the tension or action that happens in the film.  That's all John McClane, baby.  What it did was allow those who were less accepting of the fantasy of it all feel that they could retain some of their intellectual integrity while watching a popcorn film.  In the modern age, we don't give a shit about that.  What matters is that entertainment is done well, with skill and mainline to the audiences emotions, while still giving us something worth marveling at after the credits close.  John Wick, as I said before, is a ballet.  It is a series of precisely choreographed, skillfully shot, and invigoratingly staged action scenes meant to play on our enjoyment of not just chaos, but on the expression of what John Wick is.  He is a force of nature, and we want to watch that in all of its glory and horror. 

Naturally, that means the film is with only minimal substance, but that is hardly any matter.  The color control on this film is very well done, nearing (although not quite achieving) the mastery of filmmakers like Nicholas Winding Refn and David Fincher.  The choreography is ready to be studied in schools for this sort of thing, and best of all it is a thrill ride from beginning to end, full of great set pieces, appropriate humor, and a general tone of fun-over-drama.  This film wants you to enjoy going to the movies again and feel no guilt about whether it was quality enough to share with your friends, or if its subjects were tackled appropriately.  And goddamn, yeah I did.   

 

 

 

7.5