December | 2019 | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! “Knives Out” and the Suggestion that the Rich are Not So Sharp…

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine this evening. This one covers something that I’ve wanted to talk about for a little while, which is the interesting aspect of this year’s recurring theme of class warfare that runs through works as diverse as Joker, Hustlers, Ready or Not, Succession, Parasite and Knives Out.

To be fair, it is not unusual to see this sort of tension playing out on the big screen. After all, American cinema has long been fascinated by working class con men and hucksters getting one over on the wealthy establishment. However, what distinguishes the recent crop of media exploring this theme is the recurring suggestion that the wealthy are not especially sharp. Historically, the rich have been portrayed as canny and suave – often dangerous adversaries because of their ruthlessness and relentlessness. What is interesting about the class warfare dimension of this year’s films is the way in which money and success often seem to have coddled the wealthy leaving them surprisingly naive and foolish despite their arrogance and privilege.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: hustlers, joker, knives out, parasite, privilege, social darwinism, Succession, wealth | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Just Mercy

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Darren

Just Mercy feels like a timely and relevant update to the classic death row prestige picture.

The bulk of Just Mercy unfolds over six years, between 1987 and 1993. This roughly overlaps with a cinematic interest in this subject matter in the late eighties and into the nineties. Mississippi Burning and A Time to Kill looked at the racially-charged dimension of criminal justice in the American South, released in 1988 and 1996 respectively. Dead Man Walking and The Chamber tackled anxieties around the death penalty in 1995 and 1996. Indeed, Just Mercy feels like something of a companion piece to these explorations of the American criminal justice system.

Courting public opinion.

These sorts of films have become increasingly rare in recent years, largely driven by changes in the market. The death of the mid-budget movie has had a major impact on these sorts of projects, with the most recent major examples being films like The Hurricane in 1999 and The Life of David Gale in 2003. These sorts of projects have largely migrated to television and arguably podcasts, developed as limited series like The Night Of or Now They See Us. As such, it’s rare to see a film like this receiving that sort of awards push.

However, what is truly interesting about Just Mercy is the way in which it doesn’t just revive the starry prestige criminal justice drama, it also modernises it. Just Mercy might be set against the backdrop of the late eighties and early nineties, but it feels undeniably current in how it approaches that familiar subject matter.

Conviction.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, just mercy, Movie, non-review review, review | 2 Comments »

New Escapist Column! “No Time to Die” and that Missing Killer Instinct…

Posted on December 5, 2019 by Darren

So the trailer for No Time to Die, the new James Bond movie, dropped yesterday.

I wrote a bit about my reaction to it at Escapist Magazine, primarily how I was a little underwhelmed by how generic it all felt. It lacked the strong statement of purpose that defined the trailers for movies like GoldenEye, Casino Royale and Skyfall. It seems to be designed to assure audiences that all the required plot elements are in place, but it never actually makes any strong statements about what the movie is supposed to be.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: james bond, no time to die | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: 1917

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Darren

1917 is a stunning technical accomplishment.

Effectively hybridising Dunkirk and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), 1917 is a war movie that is shot in such a way as to suggest a single extended take. Of course, the audience understand that it isn’t really a single take any more than Rope was a single take, and 1917 underscores this sense of unreality by compressing time and space on this epic adventure across the front lines of the First World War. The illusory nature of that long-take style is the entire point of the exercise.

Out in the (Scho)field.

1917 does suffer slightly in narrative terms. From a storytelling perspective, 1917 is a big collection of familiar war movie tropes. Indeed, 1917 ultimately serves to illustrate just how bold and compelling Dunkirk was in its approach to this familiar narrative template. All of the clichés and archetypes that were stripped out of Dunkirk have been inserted back into 1917, which repeatedly leans on genre shorthand to make its points about the folly of war and the senselessness of such carnage.

However, the beauty of 1917 lies not in the story that it is telling, but in the way that it tells that story. In its best moments, 1917 is haunting, nightmarish and ethereal. 1917 works best when it steers clear of the genre’s stock dialogue and characterisation, and instead aims for something much more primal and evocative.

Barbed comments.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 1917, film, Movie, non-review review, review, sam mendes, war | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Lighthouse

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Darren

The Lighthouse is a striking, evocative, psychedelic horror. It is also about twenty minutes too long.

Director Robert Eggers made a striking impression with The Witch. Indeed, there’s a clear set of throughlines connecting The Lighthouse to The Witch. Both are fundamentally period pieces about characters who find themselves in extremely isolated conditions, with the unsettling implication that something vague and ominous is lurking in the darkness just beyond the candle light. Both are also highly formal pieces, with Eggers embracing a consciously heightened aesthetic to create a sense of unreality within his film.

Downward spiral.

However, The Lighthouse stands apart from The Witch in the particulars of its exploration of isolation. After all, The Witch was a story about a young woman who moved into the rural countryside with her entire nuclear family. In contrast, the experience in The Lighthouse is much more intense. It is the story of a young man who finds himself offered a (relatively) high-paying position on a remote rock to work as an assistant to a veteran lighthouse keeper. The two men are strangers when they start to work together, and may remain strangers throughout.

The Lighthouse becomes a study of the descent into madness, the collapse of civility, and the horrors of living with a terrible room mate.