Movies | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: The Day Shall Come

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Darren

The Day Shall Come is an ambitious piece of work that suffers from some very fundamental flaws.

Chris Morris’ long-awaited follow-up to Four Lions treads on relatively familiar ground. The narrative unfolds along two threads in parallel. The first of these focuses on Moses Al Shabazz and the Church of the Star of Six, a vaguely radical (but completely non-violent) religious organisation built around addressing historical injustice and using psychic powers to bring down construction cranes over Miami. The other narrative thread is build around the bureaucratic machinations of local law enforcement, desperate to justify the bulking up of their budget after the attacks on the World Trade Centre.

My ami.

Separately, these elements feel like they should work well enough for Morris. The opening credits promise that the film is “inspired by one hundred true stories” and the set-up is absurdist enough that it feels entirely believable. Morris’ knack has always been in articulating the heightened and surreal aspects of the modern world while grounding them in mundanity, so that even the most outlandish of concepts feels anchored in a world that is recognisable and convincing. Like all great satirists, Morris holds a mirror up to the world that he sees and produces a caricature that feels as true as an naturalist portrayal.

However, The Day Shall Come just doesn’t work. A lot of this is tonal, with one of the film’s two central story lines occasionally veering into trite sentimentality that feels completely at odds with the rest of the film and which plays as an attempt to soften Morris’ more conventional and abrasive style. The result is a film that has a few compelling elements and solid (if bleak) gags, but which often feels unjustly worried about how its audience will respond and so sands down its rough edges to make something more palatable. The problem is that the rough edges are by far the most interesting parts.

He can preach until he’s horse.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: belief, chris morris, counter-terrorism, fbi, Florida, Movie, non-review review, racism, religion, review, satire, terrorism, the day shall come, the war on terror | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Joker

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Darren

The most interesting parts of Joker are inevitably going to be drowned out in shout matches about the least interesting parts of Joker.

Before the film was released, it seemed to have a totemic power. Critics (especially American critics) seemed tied up in how “dangerous” this cinematic origin story of a killer clown could be. Entertainment Weekly refused to assign the film a simple letter grade. Vulture ruminated on whether mainstream audiences were ready for a film that combined the moral ambiguity and grit of seventies cinema with the trappings of superhero blockbusters. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and director Todd Phillips did his bit to stir the pot by complaining about the “far left” or “woke” culture.

All of which seems to combine to suggest that Joker is a film of the moment, to imbue the live action R-rated autumnal release about Batman’s arch enemy with a powerful cultural resonance. Joker seemed to exist as a Rorschach test, even before anybody arguing about it had actually watched a full scene of footage from it. Listening to the chatter, reading the churn of the internet, it seemed like Joker had to mean something. Even if the film refused to provide a simple meaning, that meaning would be imposed on it. Joker was to be the best and worst of the current moment. It was to be a film that spoke to the “now.”

As such, it is almost a relief how stridently Joker refuses to actually say anything particularly insightful, and to trollishly chide the conversation around it for trying to force meaning upon it. In one of the film’s most absurdly on-the-nose moments, the camera passes over a demonstration outside a city opera house as protestors wave signs in the air. “We’re all clowns,” the sign proclaims. Amid the cacophony around it, how right Joker is.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Joaquin Phoenix, joker, Movie, non-review review, review, Todd Phillips | 12 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Judy

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Darren

Judy is set primarily against the backdrop of Judy Garland’s time performing in London in the late sixties within the six months leading to her death.

As such, it’s no surprise that the film features more than a few sequences of the protagonist taking to the stage and performing to the sold out crowds. In fact, there are very few surprises in Judy at all. The film hits most of its marks and delivers pretty much everything that is expected of it. After all, what would be the point of a Judy Garland biography that didn’t include renditions of old favourites like Somewhere Over the Rainbow or even The Trolley Song? The film’s framing device allows director Rupert Goold to fold these classics in without having to embrace the musical sensibilities of something like Rocketman.

Let’s Judge Judy.

The most revealing and indicative of the performances peppered through the film is not the one where Garland falls to pieces, nor the one where she makes a triumphant return and pours her heart out to the audience. (Naturally, the film hits both of those marks.) The most compelling of these sing-on-stage sequences is the first. Having arrived in London, Garland has refused to rehearse. As opening night approaches, she sits in her bathroom drinking. She is micromanaged and guided to the stage, thrown out in front of the first crowd. She is palpably nervous. The audience is anxious. It could all fall apart.

And it… goes okay. It isn’t the best night ever, nor the worst. Garland’s voice cracks a little even when she finds the right tempo, her movements are slightly robotic rather than spontaneous or energised. However, despite these complaints, everything holds together long enough for Judy to finish the set. The crowd gets what they paid for, and Garland delivers what she promised. It plays almost as a microcosm of Judy as a whole.

A familiar song.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, hollywood, judy garland, Movie, non-review review, renée zellweger, review, the wizard of oz | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! “Rambo” and the Re-Staging of the Vietnam War…

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine yesterday, looking at an aspect of American pop history that I find fascinating.

In the seventies and eighties, American pop culture seemed preoccupied with restaging the Vietnam War. While a lot of that was reflected in films like Rambo: First Blood, Part II, which sent elite combat units abroad to enact brutal vengeance and to settle accounts, one of the more interesting trends was the way in which action movies like Star Wars, Predator, Red Dawn and even Die Hard very aggressively reframed their protagonists in the style of the Viet Cong; as insurgents squaring off against tactically and numerically superior foes who were often invaders or occupiers. This dynamic was best expressed in Rambo: First Blood, which found a Vietnam veteran waging a one-man war against a local police department in the forests of Washington.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: first blood, rambo, United States, vietnam | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Laundromat

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Darren

The Laundromat is as messy and awkward as it is ambitious and creative.

At the very least, The Laundromat demonstrates that director Steven Soderbergh is as playful as he has ever been. Soderbergh is fifty-six years old. He is supposedly retired. However, Soderbergh remains vital and energised. Soderbergh’s filmography is ecclectic, with projects varying wildly in terms of tone and quality. However, a willingness to experiment and to try new things remains one of the most unifying threads within his expansive filmography. While some older directors get stuck in familiar patterns and routines, Soderbergh seems pathologically anxious about the possibility of stasis.

A wealth of revelations.

This is most obvious in terms of craft, with Soderbergh often tweaking how he produces and distributes his output. Soderbergh directed the entirety of The Knick, embracing the potential of television as a storytelling medium beyond the familiarity of cinema. He has spent his retirement re-editing classic films, reflecting the ascent of “remix” culture. He shot all of Unsane on an iPhone, seizing on the potential of new technology to alter the film-making paradigm. He partnered with Netflix for the release of High Flying Bird, taking advantage of the streaming service’s deep pockets and esoteric sensibilities.

The Laundromat is not a huge leap for Soderbergh in terms of craft. Instead, it’s an ambitious film in terms of narrative. The Laundromat represents an effort on the part of the director to map the complicated and corrosive mechanisms of global capitalism through a series of sprawling and open-ended vignettes intended to sketch the outline of something far larger than any single story. It’s a familiar Soderbergh premise; the director has long been fascinated by the way in which systems and structures work – especially those built around capitalism or globalisation. It doesn’t always work, but is never less than fascinating.

Boxed in.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Movie, netflix, non-review review, review, Steven Soderbergh, the laundromat | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! How “The Empire Strikes Back” Invented the Modern Sequel and Franchise…

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine late last week, hopefully one a little bit less contentious than discussions of Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi.

The piece takes a look at Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, and the impact that it had on shaping a lot of modern blockbusters. We tend to think of Jaws and Star Wars as the cornerstones of the modern blockbuster movie, and that’s certainly fair. However The Empire Strikes Back has arguably had an even greater impact on the way in which franchise movies are built – from ballooning budgets to the idea of the perpetual second act.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: blockbusters, escapist magazine, films, franchise, Movies, star wars, the empire strikes back | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Goldfinch

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Darren

The Goldfinch is bizarre misfire, lurking somewhere within the uncanny valley of prestige awards fare.

The film looks just enough like a standard end-of-year prestige piece to convince at a distance. John Crowley knows how to frame a shot and how to edit a sequence, particularly when setting it to music. The production values are impressive. The presence of actors like Jeffrey Wright or Nicole Kidman help to sell the illusion. The film itself is built around a variety of familiar awards-friendly tropes, charting the struggles of an orphan who drifts through the social strata twenty-first century American while struggling with his emotions and his drug addiction.

The Goldfinch is decidedly artless.

However, there’s also just enough wrong with The Goldfinch to push it into some weird liminal space. No three members of the cast seem to believe that they are in the same movie. The film decides to spend two hours as a reflective mood piece, before cramming a fairly generic thriller into the next twenty minutes, and wraps up by having a secondary character explain an ending that happened entirely off-screen. Large passages of the movie consist of time-lapse montages of characters staring into middle distance as overwrought monologues discuss concepts of grief and guilt.

Most of The Goldfinch is dull and lifeless, but there are moments when the film swerves wildly into surreality. Those moments aren’t necessarily good, but they are at least more interesting than the hollow prestige trappings that surround them.

I sense a laboured metaphor.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: ansel elgort, art, film, John Crowley, Movie, non-review review, review, the goldfinch | Leave a comment »

Escapist Column! “It: Chapter 2” and the Dangers of Nostalgia…

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Darren

Another In the Frame column from Escapist Magazine!

This time, taking a look at the recent release of It: Chapter 2, and what the film has to say about the gulf between memory and history. It: Chapter 2 is a story about coming home, and processing the reality of what happened, so that it can be truly put to rest.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: history, it: chapter 2, legacy, memory, nostalgia | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! Luke Skywalker, “The Last Jedi” and “Star Wars” as a Saga of Generational Failure…

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine this week, looking at the (in some quarters controversial) handling of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.

The Star Wars saga has always been – at its heart – a story of generational failure, about how the older generation inevitably fails the younger one. This was true of the prequels with characters like Qui-Gon Jinn, Mace Windu and Count Dooku. It was also true of the original trilogy with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader and Yoda. “We are what they grow beyond,” Yoda tells Luke in The Last Jedi, and that has always been the franchise’s core philosophy. The only problem is that some of the audience grew up with Luke, and are not yet ready to grow beyond him.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Luke Skywalker, star wars, the last jedi | Leave a comment »

Escapist Column! “It” as a Coming of Age Film…

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Darren

Hey there.

Another sample from my In the Frame column over at Escapist Magazine. This one taking a look at the success of It as a Stephen King adaptation. In particular, the fact that it works in large part because it draws more overtly from Stand by Me than from The Shining, understanding that the source novel’s horrors are the horrors that face every child growing up.

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