I guess you can't trademark a day

If you can believe it, I didn't realize the title of the body-swapping horror comedy from last year, Freaky, was actually a nod to Freaky Friday until I started watching the movie Thursday night. And I can't blame the fact that I only saw Freaky Friday (the original) for the first time earlier this year. Everyone knows that high concept even if they haven't seen the movie. 

What clued me in was actually a reference to a different movie.

When Freaky opens, we see a couple cold open kills after the words "Wednesday the 11th" flash up on the screen in letters dripping blood.

That prompted two thoughts:

1) "So wait ... Thursday the 12th, and then Friday the 13th! FREAKY FRIDAY!"

and then

2) "Wait, are they allowed to reference Friday the 13th in this movie?"

Only at this point did I slap my forehead -- metaphorically if not actually -- and realize that the unending series of slasher movies starring Jason Voorhees does not have sole dominion over references to the unluckiest day on the calendar.

Freaky does lean into the comparisons a bit, though. The Jason Blum-produced film has another Jason it obviously wants us to think of with this appearance of the Blissfield Butcher, the character played by Vince Vaughn:

That may not be a hockey mask, but it's close enough.

Leave it to Blum -- in collaboration with Happy Death Day writer-director Christopher Landon -- to figure out how to allude to something without directly thieving from it. Nothing else about Freaky actually relates to the misadventures of Mr. Voorhees, so plausible deniability abounds. The shrewd move here is to make us think of Jason if that's a good thing for us, or allow us to discard the associations if that works better. Blum has gotten to this point in his career by figuring out how to give all sorts of different people what they want.

They could have taken steps to steer clear of the association with the existing franchise, but why would you? The movie owes a more obvious debt to Freaky Friday, and if the Friday part is already a fixed part of the "adaptation," then why wouldn't you take the next obvious step and make it Friday the 13th?

Besides, according to the internet, the associations of Friday the 13th being an unlucky day go all the way back to the year 1307, with the arrest of the Knights Templar on that day, and may have come into public consciousness exactly 600 years later with the 1907 release of Thomas Lawson's novel of the same name. It was another 73 years after that that the first Jason movie was finally released. 

Also, I don't care what might be begged, borrowed or stolen from that franchise, because Freaky is way better than any Friday the 13th movie I've ever seen. I simply loved this movie -- everything about it, really, but especially the performances of Vaughn and Kathryn Newton in the key roles. It's also way better than Landon's Happy Death Day movies, and this is with me liking the second one quite a bit more than the first.

I mightn't have written this today -- this marks posts on nine straight days, and both you and I could probably use a day off. But how could I miss the chance to publish this on a Friday?

You know I couldn't. Might as well tell Jason Voorhees to wear a fencing mask. 

Movies named like soft drinks

Sometimes you notice stupid little themes in the names of new movies coming out and you just have to write a blog post about them. 

If you're me, anyway. Which you aren't, so, you do you.

Me, I'll do me and write this post, even if it ends up being thirsty work. 

You'll see what I mean in a minute. 

When the Netflix movie Moxie, directed by and co-starring Amy Poehler, came out earlier this year, I mentioned in my review that Moxie is also the name of a soft drink that used to be available when I was growing up, and may still be in certain New England novelty stores. It looks like this:

What does it taste like?

Dirt.

Sorry, correction. It tastes like a cross between root beer and dirt.

But I once drank it semi-regularly because some friends of mine liked it and we thought it made us very eccentric.

Just to be completist, this is what the poster looks like:

Now, a new movie is out on Amazon that I've just reviewed called Jolt. And guess what Jolt also is?

A soft drink.

It looks like this:

What does it taste like?

I have no idea. I don't think I've ever had one. But probably not great if I had to guess.

What does the movie taste like?

Dirt.

Sorry, correction. It tastes like a cross between shit and dirt.

Yeah, I didn't much like Moxie -- good try, sort of, Amy Poehler -- but it is a masterpiece compared to Tanya Wexler's obnoxious misfire.

Now I just need them to release a movie called Squirt and the trifecta will be complete. 

There was also a movie that came out this year called Cherry -- on yet a third streaming service, Apple TV+ -- and there's such a thing as cherry soda. But I'm not going to stretch it.

Hard as it may be to believe, I do have my standards. 

Silent Cage

At this point in his career, I figured filmmakers had already done everything with Nicolas Cage that they could possibly do with Nicolas Cage.

Then I saw Willy's Wonderland.

On the surface, it is among the least surprising uses of Cage. It's about a badass loaner who has to fight a bunch of singing animatronic characters from a children's theme restaurant. It's dripping with grunge and the exploitation quality that has characterized the best uses of Cage in recent years (such as Mandy). 

But within that there's a small detail that stands out, and though this may qualify as a minor spoiler, it's worth telling you if it gets you to overcome your valid wary preconceptions and watch Willy's Wonderland:

He never says a single word.

That's right, director Kevin Lewis willfully deprives Cage of one of his main cinematic tools, one of the main reasons people want to cast him in the first place: his voice.

Cinema is first and foremost a visual tool, and Lewis understands that -- he's got deceptively strong abilities with editing and with arrangement of characters within a shot. If the movie looks "terrible" sometimes, that's by design. It's supposed to look like a piece of dirty grindhouse garbage. 

Part of his visual instinct is the understanding that a character like "The Janitor" -- that's the only way Cage's character is known, conscripted into cleaning up the titular restaurant after he doesn't have the cash to pay for four flat tires on his car -- needn't be verbal to make an impression. In fact, Cage has got the presence to make plenty of an impression, and can communicate everything that needs to be communicated through nods and discomfiting stares. 

And surely it's also a gimmick. Lewis is smart enough to know that Nicolas Cage not talking for the entire movie is a selling point in and of itself. I mean, I'm hoping I can sell you on it here. 

Cage does come close to speaking on occasion -- he does verbalize sometimes, as when he is letting out cries of rage and exertion while beating to death one particularly stubborn animatronic monster. But no words actually emanate from him. 

It's possible there would be an exception somewhere in his career, but more than likely this is Cage's first ever wordless performance. "Crazy Cage" -- that quality that has made him a top name for a project like Willy's Wonderland -- often requires the ranting and raving of a man going off his rocker. 

However, Kevin Lewis realizes you can also get "Crazy Cage" just by having him repeatedly whale on demented animatronics until the black oil that serves as their blood is spattered all over his face and clothes.

Willy's Wonderland is no Mandy. Don't take this recommendation as more than it is. 

It's a movie worth seeing, though, for more than just the novelty of Cage never speaking. It's not the first time a movie has tried to make children's characters sinister -- in fact, it's probably not the 100th time -- but I don't specifically remember a movie set in a ghoulish Chuck E. Cheese's, so it's got that going for it as well. 

One for us, one for him

My younger son has sat through a lot of movies and TV shows he probably didn't understand.

I think he was pretty much with The Mandalorian, but WandaVision? Loki? Who knows what his seven-year-old brain made of the existential themes and space-time conundrums of those shows. 

The same has probably been true for many, or at least some, of the Marvel movies we've watched. I don't suppose our Saturday night family movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp, was too taxing on his noodle, but he was showing a propensity to talk and squirm, despite all other evidence that he was enjoying himself.

Whether or not he gets the same things out of these movies and TV shows as we do, he sits through them dutifully, never complaining that they are beyond him, and only asking a minimum of clarifying questions. I imagine at least part of the time he is just going with the flow.

And sometimes, we just need to compensate him for his good nature.

Which is why our second family movie of this past weekend was the one you see in this poster, Dog Gone Trouble. 

Look, it wasn't nearly as bad as you might expect. It wasn't good, but I liked it better as it went along. 

But my younger son liked it the whole time, and that's the point.

And his mother did a great job pretending that she liked it. She laughed at only the slightest provocations, moments that I knew she did not actually find funny. She's good that way. Our roles seem to have become established here, where she plays it up while I sit there in a mostly stony silence, half-heartedly praising it if forced to make a comment on the topic. I mean, being a film critic has to count for something, doesn't it?

It's funny the role my cinephile snobbery plays in it, though. My starting to like it a bit better was, in part, the result of realizing that there was legitimate vocal talent involved. I don't really know Big Sean, who voices the main character, but I know he's famous. I was more interested in seeing names like Pamela Adlon, Joel McHale, Harland Williams and Snoop Dogg appearing among the supporting cast. I mean, none of those people are exactly A-listers, they're just people who aren't willing to turn down ten grand for a day's work. I probably wouldn't be either. 

It did make me wonder though -- changing topics slightly here, and this could be its own post if I weren't getting so prolific and so backed up on my writing -- how many times Snoop Dogg has played an animated dog. (Yep, that's about typical of the level of cleverness of Dog Gone Trouble.)

Now, this is not nearly as easy to research as you might imagine. Do you know how many acting credits Snoop Dogg has on IMDB?

250.

Quite the round number there, and it includes some projects that are only rumored or in pre-poduction. But it gives you some idea how busy he's been, in all sorts of different projects that might make their way onto IMDB. Music videos make up a big share of those. 

Interestingly, this does not include credits where he's credited as himself. I was sure that it would, but that list is ... wait for it ... more than twice the length. He has 513 'Self' credits on IMDB. (Which I guess is mostly appearances on talk shows and the like, as his credits playing himself do appear as acting credits.)

Don't ever sacrifice that street cred, Snoop.

Another thing I learned about Snoop Dogg? He has the same birthday as I do. He's two years older than I am. That's pretty cool. (So yes, I still think Snoop Dogg is cool even though he now shills and writes raps for the Australian food delivery service Menulog.)

(Whoa, just after I wrote those words, Snoop's Menulog commercial came on while my son was watching YouTube in the other room.)

Weirdly enough, I could only find one other instance of Snoop playing a dog, and you have to go all the way back to 2005. He played a bloodhound named Lightning in the movie Racing Stripes, which I saw and reviewed at the time. 

I have no idea how that's the case, but I did scroll through the credits a second time just to be sure. How he wasn't in The Secret Life of Pets or something, I don't know. (He's done other animated voices, such as a snail in Turbo and Cousin It in The Addams Family, but they weren't dogs.)

It's too bad because I had a bit all worked out for when Snoop received the script for Dog Gone Trouble from his agent. Just imagine him saying this with a touch of both disdain and self-loathing in his signature voice: "Sure I'll play a fuckin' animated dog. Again." 

Hey, there's always Menulog. 

Action figures can only take you so far

Snake Eyes was supposed to open here on Thursday. I guess it did, in some parts of the country that aren't locked down. But the country's most populous two states -- Victoria and New South Wales -- are both locked down, so I'm sure it was a pretty lame domestic opening weekend.

But I like to think it might have been lame anyway because of the subject matter.

A strange comment to make about the brand that helped bifurcate my childhood obsessions after I grew out of playing with Star Wars figures. 

I'm not sure exactly what age it was that G.I. Joe figures supplanted Star Wars figures for me. Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, when I was nine. My best guess is that the third (and then final) Star Wars movie would have sustained me for at least a year after its release, so let's say I transitioned to G.I. Joe action figures from when I was ten until when I stopped playing with toys, probably around age 13. (If you stopped playing with toys earlier than that, don't judge.) So I might have played with Star Wars figures a little longer, but I was into G.I. Joes just as intensely.

I'm still into Star Wars today. I treat the release of every new Star Wars property with the same glee that I experienced when I played with the toys. 

I could not give a shit about G.I. Joe.

Or maybe I couldn't give two shits. Which statement is stronger?

I remember when G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra came out in 2009, there was no doubt I was going to see it. But was I excited about it? Not in the least. I ended up seeing it at the drive-in, and it was just as disappointing as I imagined it might be.

I didn't see the sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was released in 2013. Which is kind of funny because I thought it actually looked like it might be better than the first, and it had Bruce Willis, which was still a good thing back then, in addition to Dwayne Johnson, who might have still been called The Rock. To this day, I have not yet made time for it.

Now that the third blockbuster film with the G.I. Joe brand is being released, I don't have any more interest in seeing it than I have in correcting the Retaliation omission. I kind of thought I'd have to see it for ReelGood, since the bigger releases get more clicks, but maybe this lockdown has bailed me out of that particular obligation. 

So why have I stayed loyal to Star Wars and shunned G.I. Joe?

Some thoughts:

1) The G.I. Joe figures were maybe cooler than the Star Wars figures. Not because of their design, as such, but because of how they could move. While the Star Wars figures didn't have elbows or knees, the G.I. Joe figures had both -- did some even have rotating wrists? I think not yet. But their arms and legs could go to the side in addition to going forward, as they had shoulder and hip sockets. They were much better equipped than Star Wars figures to meet the demands of my advanced tween action figure play. 

But because of that ...

2) I was overlooking a mythology that didn't mean much to me. Although I did watch the G.I. Joe cartoon and had some sense of the progression of the story over time -- I remember when Destro and Zartan came into the narrative, for example -- I didn't ultimately care about the characters the way I cared about the characters in Star Wars. It was more about the toys themselves.

So therefore ...

3) When only the mythology remains, it has to be a lot better than the G.I. Joe mythology is. Could I even tell you today what is driving any of these characters other than beating Cobra? Could I tell you anything about the personalities of any of the characters? I could not.

And also ...

4) When you come down to it, it's a property that glorifies the military. I'm not saying I don't "support our troops," but "our troops" are not something that I want to rest my fantasy dreams upon. There's something just a tad too right-wing about it to really resonate with me.

The thing is, the Hasbro and Paramount people are not stupid. In resurrecting the G.I. Joe franchise, they've concentrated on what is undoubtedly one of the most memorable characters (and coolest action figures). I might have preferred Snake Eyes' Cobra counterpart, Storm Shadow, in terms of character design, but Snake Eyes was damn cool. Every kid knew that.

Not only that, but Henry Golding is a great choice to play Snake Eyes. Coming off Crazy Rich Asians, he may be today's most marketable actor of Asian descent. He's got charisma to spare and he is handsome as fuck.

Still don't care.

Is this a betrayal of my childhood in some way? I don't think so. I think it's fair to say that the part of childhood that we feel most sentimental about ends by the time you hit double digits, and all of my G.I. Joe play was from ten onward. I suppose if I want to find a parallel in, say, my sister, she would probably not feel disappointed in herself about not giving a shit about a New Kids on the Block reunion tour. We don't have to always be proud of everything we liked when we were young.

But given that I watch almost everything that comes out, whether I have a personal history with it or not, my shunning of Snake Eyes is a real indication of how far G.I. Joe has fallen since then, or how little I feel they've done with it so far in its existence as a cinematic franchise. A judgment I'm prepared to make, apparently, with having only seen one of the three movies they've made.

My guess is that I will ultimately catch up with Snake Eyes before the end of the year, as the end of our lockdown will probably find me prioritizing other things that were supposed to have been released in the interim, like Old. And when I do, maybe I'll come back here and let you know what I think of it.

And yes, you read that correctly -- I did just say that M. Night Shyamalan is more of a priority for me than G.I. Joe. 

Missing the telltale scenes of Bound

I watched Bound on Friday night for the first time in nearly nine years, an uncommonly long drought for what I consider to be one of my very favorite "me movies" -- as in, movies other people tend to not know or not appreciate as much as I do. It's currently #30 on my Flickchart, and after this wonderful revisit, I'd say it's poised to jump back into my top 20. 

I also realized, as I was watching it, that it is the ultimate example of the possibility of me coming to embrace the film noir genre -- which I am struggling to do with this year's monthly Knowing Noir series. I never previously considered it, but this is a noir -- a "neo-noir crime thriller," if we want to go with its exact description in the first sentence of its Wikipedia entry.

It's also the 25th anniversary of the film's release. 

But none of those things are what I want to write about today.

Today, I want to again tell you about an instance of watching something without my wife wondering why I was watching it.

Now, it hadn't occurred to me that the hot lesbian sex in Bound -- and it is hot -- might be reason enough to save it for a night when she's not walking through the living room a half-dozen times. (My wife tends to do a lot of chores before relaxing for the evening with her TV, while I need to get started earlier for the longer running time of a movie.)

But it did occur to me once we watched the second episode of the new season of Never Have I Ever with our pizza dinner.

See, among other things this clever Netflix series does -- which include inexplicably and hilariously being narrated by John McEnroe -- is to have a lesbian subplot. One of the main character's two besties is Fabiola, a wallflower who hasn't yet started to have any physical relationships with other women. She's played by Lee Rodriguez, and she's only just gotten a girlfriend. I can't remember if they've kissed on screen before -- probably -- but in this particular episode, they definitely do, and she talks about how she's about to hook up in her best friend's bedroom.

Pretty tame stuff.

But hot enough to get me all worked up to watch two naked women going at it, in pretty risque graphic detail?

Such was my worry when it came to my wife's perspective on the subject of me watching Bound.

I had decided earlier in the day -- maybe the day before, I can't remember -- that I was going to watch Bound Friday night. I can't remember what triggered my interest to watch it on this particular night, but it actually happened to come up semi-organically on a Facebook chat during the day on Friday, after I'd already made my decision. That sealed it.

Now if I decided not to watch it based on what happened in this innocuous scene in Never Have I Ever, that would be admitting that my baseless paranoia on this topic was getting the better of me. Besides, I was primed and ready to watch it, and my reasons had nothing to do with lesbian titillation. (Let me tell you sometime about how this is one of the best and most clever scripts ever written.)

So I just decided to go for it, and hold my breath that my wife wouldn't walk through the room while Jennifer Tilly's finger was inserted inside Gina Gershon's vagina.

It worked out that way. Whew.

One time she came through during an overhead shot of the four mobsters beating Shelly in that bathroom immediately prior to starting to cut his fingers off. I didn't know if this qualified as a telltale scene from the movie, but she didn't say "Oh, you're watching Bound?" (She may have only seen it once.)

The next time was a scene with Joe Pantoliano and Tilly, with not much obvious happening. 

And that was it.

So I remain safe in the knowledge that my wife thinks I watch movies for altruistic and upstanding reasons only. (In this case, it's actually true.)

Now that I've written this, I'm thinking "Damn, it would have been awesome to talk about some new takeaways from this viewing of Bound, or at least things I was reminded of loving about it."

So let's finish with a little Bound speed round. Warning, spoilers. 

1) I love the character Mickey, played by John Ryan, the gangster with a heart of gold. In a world in which all women are disposable objects, Mickey treats Violet with respect. He's in love with her -- I think that's true of every character in the movie -- but his sense of what's right for her overrides all else. When she kisses him at their final parting and he gets this look of unbelievable longing in his eyes, overshadowed by the understanding that he can or will do nothing about it, his body makes a slight, almost imperceptible twitch toward her -- an amazingly subtle and perceptive choice by Ryan, the Wachowskis (have I not mentioned them yet??) or both. He'd like nothing more than to lean in and sweep her off her feet. But she has already politely declined his "offer," which presumably was for her to become his girlfriend. He doesn't want to trespass any further. So he forlornly gets into his car and drives away.

2) "Who's dead now, fuckface?" Spoken by Joey Pants while he holds the corpse of Christopher Meloni by the lapels. Still my favorite line of the movie, followed closely by Pants' "Fuckin' dark in here." (Joey Pants is like a walking quote factory in this movie.)

3) The ominous theme that plays twice when we see gangsters walking shoulder to shoulder to a fateful showdown is just gold. It's gold, Jerry.

4) One of my favorite details is that when Violet and Corky finally get alone, where Joey Pants ain't going to walk in on them ("Fuckin' dark in here"), their lovemaking is so intense that it pulls up one of the edges of the fitted sheet on Corky's bed. The next morning, when we get another overhead shot of them in bed, that corner of the sheet is still untucked. Great continuity.

5) A great callback is not the flawless repetition of a good line, but the little changes when a character inaccurately remembers it, as human beings are prone to doing. When Mickey starts cutting off Shelly's fingers, he says "I'm going to ask you ten times. Any time I don't get an answer, I'm going to cut off a finger." Obviously trying to imitate his mentor, Caesar repeats the same threat to Violet later on. But the Wachowskis aren't laboring under the misapprehension that a callback needs to be worded identically, because that's not realistic. When Caesar makes the threat, he says "I'm going to ask you ten questions," not "ten times." Some people don't notice these details. When it's a movie I love this much, I do.

I could go on. I won't. I'll just finish by repeating my standard recommendation about Bound: If you want to see a movie where all the characters are smarter than you are, but the clever decisions they make are all based in reality and as a believable outgrowth of their ability to improvise, then Bound is your movie. Also, if noirs have notably complicated plots that detract from the enjoyment for a certain type of viewer (such as myself), this is the absolute exception to that, as clear to follow as it is smartly conceived. 

The titillating lesbian sex ain't half bad either. 

Non-coincidental resemblances

The following disclaimer at the end of films has always struck me as a bit disingenuous:

"This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental."

It's legalese they slap on a film to try to stave off lawsuits, though that probably would not really stop a determined plaintiff.

Also, it's complete bullshit.

Because we know writers are supposed to "write what they know," we also know that most characters in most movies are based, in whole or in part, on someone they know. While the direct line of descent is sometimes obscured -- most people don't know a person who swings a space laser sword, for example -- often times it is a lot less veiled.

But then there are the times when it is transparently bullshit, as in Good on Paper.

The new Netflix film -- well, it's a month old, but I just watched and reviewed it out of desperation while we are in lockdown -- is quite openly based on star Iliza Shlesinger's own experience. She's a talented comedian who was the first female winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing in 2008, and has since done five comedy specials for Netflix as well as dabbling in a number of other projects. She's also recently tried her hand in acting, most notably Spenser Confidential (which I've seen, and I enjoyed her albeit outsized performance) and Pieces of a Woman (which I haven't seen, but I understand that's some pretty heavy material, which says promising things about her range as an actress). On a personal note, she hosted a comedy event in a really small location that I attended more than a decade ago, where a friend was also appearing as a comedian, so I almost feel like I know her -- though not really. 

In 2015 she revealed an extended comedy bit called "Lying Bryan," about a dating misadventure that was ultimately the basis for Good on Paper. I don't think anyone is trying to pretend this is not the source of the material, nor that this dating misadventure didn't actually happen to Shlesinger.

But the character in this film (Dennis by name, played by Ryan Hansen) is not based on the real Bryan, who was probably not actually named Bryan? Really? This is a purely coincidental resemblance?

This is of course not the only film that has done something like this, though as with anything I write about on my blog, it takes one particular example to inspire me to put fingers to keyboard. 

However, this does create an opportunity to talk about another funny thing that I'd stuck in my back pocket and did not ultimately expect to use here.

When I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few weeks back for my I'm Thinking of Kaufman Things series, I happened to be watching the credits more closely than I normally would or than anyone should. When it got to the above disclaimer portion, I noticed a typo that somehow got by them before they released the final version of the film.

The disclaimer explained that the characters were "fictious," not "fictitious."

Certainly just a typo. But now that I'm writing this post, I'm thinking a couple (Kaufman) things:

1) The characters are obviously not fictitious. Donald Kaufman may be fictitious, but Charlie Kaufman, Susan Orlean, John Laroche, Catherine Keener and John Malkovich obviously are not. 

2) The characters might, however, be "fictious," because no one knows what that means. Could this have been Kaufman's cheeky attempt to defend himself in court before the fact? "I never said the characters were fictitious, I only said they were fictious."

Regarding Good on Paper, whether "Bryan" is likely to sue or not is uncertain -- though the chances are greater if his name is actually Bryan (or Dennis). If anything, he should sue for "lameness of premise." The movie's whole point seems to be that if you go against your instincts/standards and date someone who's a little pudgy and/or dorky, he will be a deceptive creep who will try to gaslight you for months on end. It's not a good look, and you know it pains me to say this, given my "personal relationship" with Shlesinger. (Better watch out or she might write a movie about me!) 

James Gunn continues to not stop talking about himself

This marks the fourth time I have complained about James Gunn on my blog.

That's too much. Even I know that. 

But it's the first I've written about him in three years, so you know, I have to catch up new readers on my thoughts.

As I wrote about here, here and here, Gunn loves the sound of his own voice. Or the sound of his own thumbs on his phone. He wants to be the topic of conversation and so he comes forward with "newsworthy" bits of information that sites like Movieweb will break out into their own non-news articles. If I didn't subscribe to Movieweb I might not be half as annoyed by him as I am.

In the third one of those posts, though, I talked about how Gunn had finally been "hoisted on his own petard" -- and I just noticed I spelled "petard" wrong. (Embarrassing. I've fixed it.) Twitter was the platform Gunn had been abusing as a social media hound and attention whore, and then Twitter started abusing him by producing old tweets in which he joked about pedophelia. He was fired from his gig as director of Guardians of the Galaxy - Vol. 3. 

This did shut Gunn up. For a while.

But he's baaaAAAaaack. 

If it had been just one story I'd heard from this week, I would have kept these thoughts to myself. Gunn can come back out of his hole now, as he is director of both the upcoming The Suicide Squad and of the eventual movie from which he was fired, the third Guardians of the Galaxy. Which itself was probably more than the deserved.

And the first "story" seemed fine as promotional accompaniment to The Suicide Squad, in which he talks about how the movie "saved his life" (puh-LEEEEZE) because of its timing, as it was offered to him when he was licking his wounds over the Twitter pedophelia controversy. (I mean, it probably did save his life, but the self-pity involved in that comment is nauseating.) 

But then another bit of non-news without a non-news peg -- again courtesy of Movieweb -- came along today, and I just can't keep these fingers from typing. 

Today Gunn wants to tell all of us how he is "probably done" with the MCU after Guardians of the Galaxy - Vol. 3.

First, I don't care. You care a lot more about the future of your career than we do, James.

Second, look at the big man trying to reclaim the upper hand over the company that fired and then re-hired him. I guess once you're almost done with the new movie (not sure how far along he actually is) you can start biting the hand that feeds you, even if that hand also temporarily withdrew your food. (Because of something you did, don't forget.)

Third ... just shut up for Christ's sake.

Now, I have to say, in reading what Movieweb chose to single out from his New York Times interview in support of The Suicide Squad, this seems a lot more like a Movieweb writer desperate for content than James Gunn taking to the airwaves to give us his unsolicited thoughts on himself. I should know by now to blame the writer, not the subject, when it comes to Movieweb. 

But the fact of the matter is, no other director out there is so consistently quoted by Movieweb talking about himself as Gunn is. And after awhile, it seems like Narcissus is seeking out those reflective surfaces in which to preen at himself.

Okay, now I myself will shut up about Gunn ... for at least three more years. 

Not the type of Marvel fan I thought I was

Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger were released consecutively in the summer of 2011, exactly ten years ago today in the case of the second movie, which came out July 22nd of that year. When I started writing this a couple days ago, I noticed the fortuitous timing related to the anniversary and ended up being able to hold it until today. (Numbers guys like me get off on stuff like this.)

The release of First Avenger -- when I saw the movie six months later, anyway -- was kind of a watershed moment for me in terms of my MCU fandom. I had greeted Thor with a kind of perplexed bemusement, considering the whole idea of superheroes from space to be anathema to what I expected from the genre. I recognized some strengths to the film, but overall, I didn't like it, and this was already a pattern in the movies that Marvel had released to this point. I rated Iron Man significantly lower than most people, thought The Incredible Hulk was okay but forgettable, and didn't even see Iron Man 2 until more than a year after its release (11/27/11), and about six weeks after I saw Thor (10/15/11).

Despite the way the MCU was regularly disappointing me, I dutifully saw Captain America: The First Avenger on January 3rd of the new year, or another six weeks after that. Something about this film finally unlocked these movies for me. I loved the World War II setting -- a similar setting worked for me in Wonder Woman -- and I really appreciated the set design and artistic direction. The action scenes had a kind of kinetic quality that I hadn't seen before in the MCU.

After that, it was rare that I disliked any other MCU films. There were a few -- I wasn't hot on Doctor Strange when I first saw it, and the second Avengers seemed like a turd at the time, though I bet I'd think differently if I watched it today -- but overall I've been mostly on board with what they do. (He says, with the selective memory of just having not liked Black Widow.)

One thing that was consistent was that I always liked anything with Captain America in it. It didn't have anything to do with Chris Evans, though I've grown to love his political activism and the fact that he's from the same hometown as I am (Boston). No, there was just something about these stories, about how Joe Johnston and then the Russo brothers were telling them, that clicked with me, as the sequels to those movies (The Winter Soldier and Civil War) remain personal favorites. Captain America was my gateway into the larger MCU.

Of course, in time, I grew fond of Thor. Ragnarok is top five MCU for me, which is no small statement given that they now have 24 films, and will be over 30 before you know it. (Sometime next year, to be exact.) The whole "superheroes from space" thing still seemed sort of weird to me, but given how many other times Marvel has gone to that well -- Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel being prime examples -- my objection to dosing the superhero movie with science fiction started to seem arbitrary. I had to accept it or not even bother watching these films, so accept it I did.

Ten years after my Thor/Captain America watershed moment, there happen to be two TV shows on Disney+ that have grown out of those particular storylines, one of which I've just finished (Loki) and one of which I am now just over halfway through (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).

And you know what? I've done a complete reversal.

If Marvel movies are generally split between things that might happen (Captain America) and things that could not happen (Thor), I now find myself in the other camp.

I suspect I'd still love those Captain America movies -- The First Avenger is the only one I've seen more than once -- but this show that uses characters first introduced to us in that storyline? I'm finding it to be a slog. The second episode was better than the first, but then the third and fourth took a step backward again.

Meanwhile, Loki was a constant delight, an example of the imaginations of creative people turned up to 11. It built on what WandaVision had done, the latter also being an example of the outlandish multiverse-type thinking that originally bothered me about a planet populated by Viking gods.

The comparative realism of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier just feels gray and drab and stunted by comparison. In fact, the only thing that really draws me to the show is Wyatt Russell's new Captain America, and only because something about it reminds me of The Boys. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier themselves? Yawn.

Then you've got Loki, fronted by an actor (Tom Hiddleston) whose status as a treasure is just revealed to me more and more all the time. It's colorful, it's shot in a grand style relying on great digital landscapes, it's got a noodle-twisting narrative, and it's even got the best use of Owen Wilson in at least five years. 

And if you told me five years ago, when I was fully in the grip of my Captain America infatuation, that I'd be this enchanted by a show about people trying to fight a purple smoke monster that guards a gate that takes you to the man who watches over the end of time, I'd have thought you were crazy.

Yet here we are. Not only am I fully on board with all things Thor -- Love & Thunder might be my most anticipated movie of 2022 -- but I can't get to the end of this brief six-episode Captain America spinoff fast enough.

Could it be that the thing that initially made me skeptical of Captain America -- its probable self-seriousness and jingoism -- has finally caught up to it? After all, the anointing of a new Cap in this series feels pretty quaint, reflective of a set of values from the past. (As I've watched it I can't help but think that this show is a bone thrown by Marvel to its more conservative audience, who just can't understand Loki and WandaVision.)

But I don't really think that's it. I think that I finally accept that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not just a series of stories about small twists on reality, featuring characters who are super in scenarios that are ordinary. Rather, the MCU is a place for people to dream up crazy ideas, based in whole or in part on existing material, and to get those crazy ideas filmed. 

Its only limits are the limits of our imaginations, and after ten years as a fan, I've decided that's how I like it. 

Exhibit F in the movie/TV debate

As the pandemic continues onward and as entertainment content becomes more and more difficult to pin down, those of us who care about such categorizations continue to wrestle with the distinction between what constitutes a movie and what constitutes TV.

The new Fear Street series on Netflix -- all three of which I have now seen -- certainly profiles as a series of movies in most respects. On a purely objective level, the shortest of the three is 107 minutes, well past the longest single episodes of what gets categorized as television.

But ...

The three movies -- Part One: 1994, Part Two: 1978 and Part Three: 1666 -- were released at one-week intervals since the start of July, every Friday, much like a streaming service waiting to spring the next episode of one of it most popular TV shows. Such as Loki, a very cinematic TV show, which we also just finished.

And more convincingly ... 

Each of the final two movies begins with a recap of what has happened so far, with the damning words:

"Previously on Fear Street ..."

There are two things about this that are troubling from a categorization perspective:

1) The preposition. Things happen in a movie. They happen on a TV show.

2) Movies generally don't recap what happened in the movie before them, even if they are part of long-running series. They assume either you saw that movie or you did your homework to prepare yourself for this viewing.

This doesn't make me reconsider whether Fear Street is a trilogy of movies or a limited television series. For one, Netflix itself refers to it as a trilogy. (A "film trilogy event," as you can see on this poster.) "Trilogy" is movie terminology, not TV terminology. Then there's the convincing piece of circumstantial evidence, which is that the three movies all have the typical end-credit slow crawl that you only see on movies, not on TV shows.

What the slight ambiguity does do, though, is make me think about others that have ended up on the other side of the categorization debate after I completed my analysis.

And that gives me a chance to tell you that I still cannot watch Steve McQueen's Small Axe [movies/TV shows] to be sure my analysis holds water.

If you recall this post from December, you'll remember that I decided that the five "movies" in the series that ran on the BBC and then were carried on Amazon did not qualify as such and I would not be watching them in order to rank them with my 2020 films. 

There were a number of reasons I cited, one of which was their length (some of them barely cracked the hour mark) and one of which was the place they originally ran (the BBC, a television station). 

But the reason that seemed to convince me the most was that I didn't think it was possible for a director to direct five movies in one year. 

After Fear Street, I'm starting to reconsider that.

Fear Street director Leigh Janiak has, demonstrably, directed three movies in one year. Sure, they could have been shot at different times and all released consecutively as a kind of gimmick, but I doubt it -- since some of the cast appeared in all three movies, it would make no sense to scatter them to the winds only to bring them back together again.

Plus, the combined running time of the three Fear Street movies (330 minutes) actually would exceed the combined running time of the five Small Axe "movies" (406 minutes) if not for the extraordinary length of Mangrove, which is 127 minutes. If someone can direct 330 minutes of movies in one year, why not 406? (Increasing the difficulty factor is that McQueen had five different casts and five different settings, but maybe that doesn't increase the difficulty as much as I'm suggesting.)

But I still can't watch Small Axe to see if they "feel" like movies. Know why?

They are not available on Amazon internationally. 

This would have been the biggest reason I couldn't watch them for my 2020 year-end, if I'd bothered to check. 

I determined one night earlier this year, when I needed something short, to watch Lovers Rock, by the far the most acclaimed of McQueen's pieces. Neither that title nor Small Axe came up when I searched on Amazon.

Thinking it might have been an aberration limited to that particular night, I checked again recently, at which point I discovered that they just aren't on Amazon in Australia. If I want to watch them here, I have to do a deal with the devil with Rupert Murdoch's Foxtel, and I just ain't going to do it.

So they are stuck in the TV ghetto until some future point where Murdoch get his grubby mitts off of them. (I can't even rent them on iTunes.) Then, and only then, can I possibly renege on my initial conclusion about them. 

As for Fear Street, it was a project that got significantly better for me as it progressed. I actually disliked the first one. Got much better after that. Full review here. 

Apple, meet my computer

If Apple wants to freak me out about someone hacking my account, they're doing a pretty good job.

At comically regular intervals, they tell me that I am renting a movie from iTunes using a device that has not been used before. It happened most recently on Saturday night, when I rented the movie What's Up, Doc? for viewing sometime before the end of July.

And truly: What is up, Doc?

(I should ask Bugs Bunny since I only just last week watched Space Jam: A New Legacy.)

I've had this computer since about November, and in that time, I have rented at least two dozen movies using it. Yet because I tend to save all my emails like the filthy hoarder that I am, I can tell you exactly how many times they've considered this to be a foreign device.

Going backward:

June 13th:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent What Lies Below on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

January 24th:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent 'Le Labo' by East Ave on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

(It's not only movies, it's music too.)

January 22nd:

"Dear Vance,

Your AppleID, vance@vance.com, was just used to rent Being John Malkovich on a computer or device that has not previously been used."

How could a device that was used two days before this message not previously have been used?

The one before that was in September, which I guess was probably on my old computer -- but that wouldn't have been nearly the first time I rented from that computer either. 

I'd get it if it would "forget" me every six months maybe. I'm not that memorable.

But it sent me this warning for What Lies Below, which was only a month ago. Come on, I don't blend into the scenery that much.

It's almost as though some sort of algorithm has been run on the titles that has alerted them to potential fraudulent behavior. "Warning! Warning! This same person would never rent Being John Malkovich, What Lies Below and What's Up, Doc. Truly: What is up, Doc?"

Each of these messages also advise that I could be getting this message because I had recently changed my password. But I damn sure know I didn't do that. I mean, part of my password is the numbers "2018."

I also know that you can have iTunes wiped from a computer and reinstalled, which resets some kind of code that Apple has to relate this computer to this iTunes account. But that didn't happen in this case either.

The best clue might lie in this sentence that appears in each email:

"This purchase was initiated from Australia."

Aye, there's the rub. They know this is a U.S. iTunes account but they know someone is accessing it from Australia. That's where the laptop stolen on vacation (as if people are vacationing internationally right now) sets off red flags for them. 

But this still doesn't totally explain it, because if they did any digging into the purchase history, they would know that purchases initiated from Australia are consistent with the activity history on this account, not divergent from it. 

So the mystery remains. We don't, in the end, know what is up, Doc. We don't know what lies below, but we do know it might just be an infinity of things that look the same failing to identify each other:

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. 

Missing milestones

Earlier this week I watched my 5,900th movie ever -- and completely blew past it without even noticing.

This is very unlike me.

Every hundredth movie watched is not a milestone worth recognizing in a venue like this, unless you want your readers to start slapping you for your self-indulgence. But I certainly recognize it privately. In fact, I feel a little excitement as that benchmark approaches, wondering what title it will be. Once I hit the benchmark, I bold the text when I record that title in my Word document where I keep track of my viewings in chronological order. 

So it's very unlike me to get so far behind in my documentation that I don't even notice which movie is the landmark movie.

I don't think I'm particularly busy right now -- in fact, we've just entered into another "snap" five-day lockdown -- but for some reason I have gotten behind on recording my new viewings. I left off after my viewing from last Thursday (ten days ago), when, I now see, I had watched my 5,897th film (The Tomorrow War). I'd already watched five more movies by the time I got back to this Word document to record any of them.

So it was with a different kind of excitement that I discovered, in retrospect, that my 5,900th viewing was the long-delayed Black Widow.

I'm not saying it wouldn't have been Black Widow if I'd known that I'd seen 5,899 movies when I sat down to watch it. It was a planned second movie of the night after I went to an earlier critics screening of Gunpowder Milkshake on Monday night. 

But I usually prefer a movie like Gunpowder Milkshake to be a milestone movie; it's just more memorable. (For the great title, not for the quality of the movie.) At the same time, I am quite determined not to specifically steer my viewings toward a milestone viewing. That's not to say you can't make subconscious decisions that affect this outcome.

And the two movies I watched before Gunpowder Milkshake were both rewatches on Sunday, as you will remember I wrote about here. Would I have made one of those a new viewing if it might have lined up Gunpowder to be #5,900?

I like that it worked out that I didn't know, as it made the whole thing more organic. But this is the first time I can remember missing the milestone in, I don't know, thousands of viewings? I've been marking these milestones for close to 20 years now. So I don't expect this organic experience to happen again anytime soon.

And definitely not for my next milestone, which is a milestone worth writing about here: 6,000 movies. And a big milestone like this is also the only time I do steer myself toward a particular viewing, to celebrate the milestone, and just hope I'm in a convenient position in my life to work it out -- not on vacation or something, for example.

Having watched a few more movies since Black Widow, I now have 97 more movies to figure out what landmark #6,000 might be. At my current pace I estimate that might arrive in late November. 

Scandinavia in a single image

You may recall this recent post in which I saw a poster for a German film festival, and dissected why the single image chosen worked for what they were trying to convey.

When I saw that the equivalent Scandinavian film festival from the same distributors had arrived at Cinema Kino, which is downstairs from my office, I thought it would only be right to put it through the same analysis.

Unfortunately, this one does not accomplish its goals with as much success.

For one, this image does not really appear to be extracted from one of the films. It occurs to me now that the one for the German film festival probably wasn't either, but the fact that I did not immediately recognize that means they did a good enough job suggesting that it might have been. It had the specificity (blue hair, bejeweled forehead) to appear as though it came from one particular narrative, from one particular film appearing at that festival.

This image? Just a blonde white girl.

I mean, it does make reference to the elephant in the room, which is that the vast majority of native Scandinavians are blonde and white. But you might say the same for Germany, only Germany wanted to make a nod to its attempts at multiculturalism in its own festival advertising, and Scandinavia did not. (Pretending for a moment that the countries themselves are actually making these choices, and that Scandinavia is actually a single country.)

The white background further emphasizes the whiteness, though that's likely an attempt to allude to the frequent wintry conditions of Scandinavia, which are always the backdrop to the Scandi noirs that have taken the literary world by storm over the past two decades. However, its generic nature draws more attention to the fact that this cannot be confused as a still from one of the festival films.

Also, what are we to make of the defiant upturned chin, the slight look of righteous superiority on this woman's face? I think I'm stretching here a little bit, but if you want to find further indications of white supremacy in this image, you don't have to look too hard.

The interesting thing was that Germany was the country of white supremacy in World War II, while the Scandinavian countries fought on behalf of the Allies or were neutral. 

But in the end it's just a single image, and if you are going to advertise a film festival on a poster and don't want the messaging to be scattered and diffuse, you have to land on one.

I just think someone could have worked a little harder on this one. 

Perfect Pauses: 6 Underground

Don't worry, I'm not going to start telling you about it every time I pause a movie to go to the bathroom.

But this one did stand out to me, not for capturing a felicitously frozen moment, or for being an apt commentary about something going on in the story. No, this one stands out just for its beauty.

It may sound like I'm tiptoeing dangerously close to ogling actress Adria Arjona, one of the stars of the 2019 Netflix movie 6 Underground. She is beautiful, but that's not what I'm doing. The beauty I'm really talking about is how she is captured in a single moment that a fashion photographer would envy.

That hair could not be more perfectly blown astray by the wind, and the light giving her eyes the appearance of two different colors also adds an alien quality to her appearance. And anyone who's ever seen a model walk down a catwalk knows that they are considered the most optimal specimens of modeldom when they have a confrontingly alien quality to them.

I was actually going to initially write that 6 Underground looks so beautiful, overall, that every pause was a Perfect Pause. This was undone a bit by the fact that I paused it a half-dozen more times and none of the others were particular noteworthy.

But I was also given pause, so to speak, by a realization about 25 minutes in (after this Perfect Pause), when I was prompted to finally check my phone to see who the director was. 

Lo and behold, it's Michael Bay.

Which makes perfect sense given the subject matter and general appearance of the film, but I guess I never thought it was possible to forget that Michael Bay had directed a movie, and usually not possible for me to miss one of his movies at the time they came out. (I see them all if only so I can rip on them when I review them, as happened with Transformers: The Last Knight, but which did not happen with 13 Hours: The Secret Solders of Benghazi.)

I'd be lying if I said it didn't taint my enjoyment of the movie just a bit to know that Bay was the one responsible for it, though I've liked Bay films before. I still found it hugely entertaining overall, as it's both kinetic and funny, and never drags even at a very Michael Bay-like 128 minutes. 

It was also a reminder that Bay is indeed capable of some legitimate cinematic beauty, even though it's always undercut by one too many shots of helicopters or hot women (both of which appear plenty here). I do wish I had not discovered it was Bay until after the movie was over, as it would have created the rare unbiased consumption of a movie without knowing who is behind the camera.

I might have even given 6 Underground four stars out of five based on pure entertainment value. Learning it was Bay did not make it the 3.5 stars I gave it -- it's still the same movie that entertained me -- but it did make me conscious of some of Bay's regular preoccupations and cinematic tics that he should have progressed past at this point. That he's still stunted in some of his more pubescent tendencies is a weakness for the film when he's the director of it, maybe not so much when someone else is.

In any case, his films always produce good fashion photography stills, and probably always will. 

Welcome back from movie jail, Jason and Casey

There are two main reasons why an actor or actress might go to "movie jail."

The first one is obvious, which is that they did something shitty that we, collectively, cannot forgive them for, often times because they fail to take responsibility for it themselves. 

This is what happened to Casey Affleck.

The second one is more nebulous. It has to do with people losing interest in you, sort of. With reaching a certain age. With burning through your allotted 15 minutes and not being able to renew for another 15, for reasons maybe we can't even identify.

This is what happened to Jason Segel.

Both actors are back in the movie Our Friend. They should have been back two years ago, but after the movie premiered at TIFF in 2019, the pandemic happened. The release was pushed to January of this year.

I didn't real hear about it when it came out. Or maybe I did, because it was on my Letterboxd watchlist, but then I forgot I heard about it.

I remembered I heard about it when I saw it was available as the 99 cent rental on iTunes. This was almost a month ago. My 30-day rental was in danger of expiring.

Thankfully, it did not. Thankfully, I watched this remarkable film on Tuesday night. 

It's directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. She directed the killer whale documentary Blackfish.

This is an entirely different skill set, and it's only one of the things I should write about this movie that looks at a man (Affleck), his wife dying of cancer (Dakota Johnson) and the friend who helps them through it (Segel).

But today I want to just welcome these guys back.

I don't know if I've forgiven Affleck. But he was on the very leading edge of the #metoo movement, which is probably the wrong way to describe it -- it makes it sound like he was an early adopter of something great. Instead, he was just one of the teasers for what Harvey Weinstein would bring fully into our consciousness.

I don't remember exactly what Affleck did. Something about holding a girl in a hotel room against her will. Not good. But maybe not unilaterally reprehensible either.

But he's always had the skills, as we saw in Manchester by the Sea around that time, and in numerous other films. He's ten times the talent of his brother, in any case. And for a person who tries to separate the art from the artist -- when possible -- I'm of the opinion that the art trumps, assuming I can't be 100% certain of what a shithead the artist is.

In the past few years, Affleck has worked, but it hasn't been regular. His most prominent performance during that time was as a detective in The Old Man & the Gun, though his appearance there might have as much to do with his relationship with director David Lowery -- who worked with him on Ain't Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story -- as any kind of indication of being welcomed back into the fold. There was also Light of My Life, The World to Come and Every Breath You Take, none of which I've heard of. Not a great slate for a recently anointed Oscar winner.

With Segel, it's been more mysterious, and I guess it's something like professional failure, unwarranted though it may seem. Since he received rave notices as David Foster Wallace in 2015's The End of the Tour, he's appeared in a misfire from a good director (2017's The Discovery) and then one other feature, something called Come Sunday from 2018. Fortunately he does also have two films in post-production, so maybe this is the start of a new stretch of regularity.

Life is messy, a truism captured perfectly by Our Friend. It's certainly been so for Affleck and Segel, for very different reasons, and in the latter case, reasons we may never be privy to. In a way, their recent lives have resembled their characters in this film -- Affleck a talented journalist who is absent and sometimes a dickhead, Segel a sad sack who can't progress in his career. 

I hope Our Friend brings them both back to us, so one can atone, and the other can just remind himself that he's really good.

The movies have missed them while they were behind bars.

Breaking up is hard to view

I've written before about the movies I save to watch when my wife is out of town, enough times that it probably does not serve to try to link to any of those previous posts, if I could even find them. It's obviously a topic that interests me.

Usually, though, those films would be either of a prurient nature, something erotic designed purely to titillate, or something so gruesomely violent that it would raise all sorts of different questions about where my head's at.

Of course, I don't mind writing about them here -- if she does read the post, though she's not in the habit of it (my content volume is pretty high you will admit), it will come complete with the explanation that I always laboriously write. What I worry about is her noticing what I'm watching and not asking about it, leaving her to reach her own conclusions about why I'm watching this particular movie now -- or leaving me to stammer out an unsolicited explanation, which is probably worse.

But there's a category of film that I also save for a night like Sunday night, when my wife was on an overnight out of town, that aren't embarrassing in the slightest -- but could send her mind to bad places if she were so inclined. (She really isn't, making this whole discussion sort of academic.)

Those are movies in which characters are breaking up.

And, just to capitalize on the opportunity, I watched two of them. 

There shouldn't really be an issue with me watching either The Break-Up (which I watched Sunday afternoon) or Marriage Story (which I watched Sunday night) on a random Tuesday evening, when my wife is making her usual trips back and forth through the living room where my viewing is taking place. They are mainstream movies with big movie stars, and they have artistic credibility, one more so than the other.

But she knows I've watched both of these movies before -- definitely Marriage Story, since she watched it with me -- so what I'm trying to avoid is her jumping to conclusions about why I'm rewatching these movies now. Is the last argument we had sitting with me particularly poorly? Am I finding something all too relatable about two people arguing and dissolving their relationship? 

The answer to both of those questions is "no." We haven't been arguing much at all lately (during lockdowns it was sometimes inevitable), and at this particular juncture I'm not examining any of the little difficulties in our relationship (also inevitable when you've been married for 13 years).

But I do find the themes explored here perpetually interesting, as I think they both contain astute perspectives about what it means to be in a relationship, especially as it relates to your obligations to the other person. These movies actually help quite a bit, I imagine, in the perennial goals of being mindful, doing your share and not taking your partner for granted.

Can I rely on her to intuitively understand this is my motivation for watching these movies? 

I cannot.

And so I watch them when she's out of town, like a criminal. 

Why these two movie in particular?

I've always been part of a vocal minority -- including two of the Filmspotting hosts -- who thought The Break-Up had more to recommend it than it was generally given credit for. The film was judged at the time as a romantic comedy, when that's not really what it is -- it uses some of the romantic comedy tropes, but is mostly turning them on their head to show a relationship in disrepair. It wasn't trying to have a happy ending, as should have been clear by the fact that it did not have a happy ending.

(Interesting sidebar, though: The ending I originally saw in 2006 was different than the ending I saw on Netflix on Sunday. Similar in spirit, but different in execution. In the ending I saw 15 years ago, Jennifer Aniston's and Vince Vaughn's characters cross paths at the end when they are each with a new partner, a partner who actually looks remarkably like their ex in both cases. The meeting is a bit flat and, therefore, so was that ending. I now see that this is the alternate ending -- why I got it as my primary ending in 2006, I'm not sure -- and the standard ending now has them crossing paths when they are each by themselves, with a twinkle of the possibility of reconciliation. This is more of a rom-com ending, though I think the other ending might be more true to the spirit of the movie.)

(Second sidebar: There is something about the five-year intervals as it relates to The Break-Up. I saw it in 2006, and then had occasions to mention it on this blog in both 2011 and 2016, though without actually revisiting the movie either time. When I did revisit the movie, it was another five years later in 2021.)

Anyway, back to the movie proper. When I watched it this time, I felt it worked even better than when I watched it the first time. I'd remembered many of the set pieces being very broad, but for the most part, that's not how they struck me this time. There needs to be some levity to distract from all the arguing, but it was not nearly as oversized as I'd remembered it.

And the real reason I love this movie -- the scene where Aniston cries at the end as she gives up hope of a reconciliation -- struck me just as hard. I'm sad the ship has probably sailed on Aniston ever getting an Oscar nomination, because she just kills it in that scene, and her natural sympathetic quality just makes me want to run over and wrap her in a big hug. (Not to mention that this scene also reminds me of one of my own break-ups, undeniably contributing to its power.)

As for Marriage Story -- a movie in which a sidebar is explicitly evoked -- I'm pretty sure it's the better film, but I didn't like it significantly more than the first time, when I gave it four stars out of five and ranked it #20 in 2019. (That's compared to the three stars I retroactively gave The Break-Up on Letterboxd, which now seems ungenerous, and came from a time when I thought it was more broad than I do now.) Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are both great here, though I don't feel the details of their fights the way I do the details of the fights between Aniston and Vaughn -- maybe because I can relate to characters who are not famous better than I can relate to the lives of a celebrated actress and director. Or more specifically, because I can relate more to the spats over domestic duties ignored or forgotten, plans to do fun things not initiated, than I can relate to strife caused by competing ambitions. (That said, Marriage Story is more pertinent to my situation in terms of moving to a place for the other person's career, which I did for my wife when I came to Australia. If we ever broke up and I wanted to return to the U.S., things could get verrrry sticky.)

One funny similarity between the two: Both Vince Vaughn and Adam Driver are very tall, like me. Appearance-wise, I'm more of a Vaughn than a Driver, though. 

Part of the reason I rewatched Marriage Story was because some people I know absolutely loved it, particularly one friend who called it the best of 2019 and in his top five of the decade. I'm pretty sure he loved it as much as he did because he's gotten divorced, so it really spoke to him. And though a common-law marriage ending (as in with Aniston and Vaughn's characters, who share a condo but not a wedding certificate) and a real marriage ending shouldn't feel that different, maybe they are. Even setting aside professions and specific points of contention, I related a little more to the feel of Aniston's and Vaughn's breakup than Johansson's and Driver's. (Again, this could be because of that protectiveness I feel toward Aniston, whom I have always loved, and who was dealing with the end of her relationship to Brad Pitt at the time as a little bit of extra-textual information.)

I do think the actual comedy may be more successful in Marriage Story. Still love that scene where Driver accidentally cuts himself while doing the knife trick and then rushes the court-appointed evaluator out of the house before he bleeds to death. Conversely, I actually didn't find either of the Sondheim songs as impactful as I thought I would find them, given that a big deal was made about them in all the 2019 year-end discussions I consumed after I'd already seen it the first time.

In any case, I was glad to say that I really welcomed the return of my wife from out of town, and may have hugged her a little more forcefully than I otherwise might. 

I'm Thinking of Kaufman Things: Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine

This is the fourth in my bi-monthly 2021 series revisiting the films of Charlie Kaufman.

"... of the Spotless Mind." Yes, I know. I usually do include a movie's full title on first reference, especially in the subject of the post. But this allows me to get the whole post title on one line, so you'll just have to forgive me. Besides, who doesn't know what you're talking about when you say Eternal Sunshine?

So we go from a Dangerous Mind in May to a Spotless Mind in July. Did not even notice the parallel construction of those two titles until just a few minutes ago.

This is the only month in the series in which I am watching two films, which was necessary to fit all of Kaufman's movies (minus the one that inspired it, I'm Thinking of Ending Things) into a one-year bi-monthly structure. I chose these two to lump together because they are easily his films I've seen the most, as they were each my #1 film of their respective release years (2002 and 2004). I can be sure of five viewings of each now, three apiece since I started recording my rewatches back in 2006, and at least one apiece in the years between when they were released and 2006. If we just say it's five viewings for both, that'll make their pairing together this month seem even more predestined. 

I wasn't sure how much I'd have to say about Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, thinking that my familiarity with them would rob me of fresh insight. As it turned out, I ended up taking a decent number of notes for each.

The first thing I wanted to point out is how they relate to each other. I noticed both films begin with a neurotic voiceover from the main character, though Kaufman's voiceover as himself is a lot more self-effacing and contains a lot more self-loathing than the one he writes for Jim Carrey's Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine. Both characters speak as though they are writing a journal, though only Joel actually is. They both talk about their personal tendencies, particularly their poisonous, self-defeating ones. Nicolas Cage's Kaufman concentrates in particular on his encroaching baldness and perceived fatness. Joel probably doesn't because he is neither bald nor fat.

A few scenes later, Joel says "Why do I fall in love with every woman who shows me the least bit of attention?" This could be a question every Kaufman character asks. 

Still, in a very real sense, Joel represents progress for the Kaufman stand-in. I couldn't help but notice that both of these films contain a scene where the Kaufman character is being asked inside by the woman he obviously likes when dropping her off after a date. The actual Kaufman in Adaptation turns down the offer by Cara Seymour's Amelia, despite her evident interest, as well as his own obvious interest in her. Moments later in his internal monologue, he says he's going to reverse that choice and go up to the door to kiss her. Instead he starts driving away. Joel initially rejects the offer of Kate Winslet's Clementine as well, but when she makes a second attempt, he relents. That's progress, but he still takes himself home before things have a chance to get really physical, citing the same thing Kaufman cites in Adaptation -- that he has to get up early the next day. But, this play works for Joel in the long run as he gets into a relationship with Clementine that is plenty physical.

Is this a real increase in Kaufman's optimism and self-esteem over a period of two years? It's hard to say. But if we are looking ahead to September's film, Synecdoche New York, it kind of looks like the answer is no. He actually has several romantic dalliances in that movie, including a marriage from before the story even begins, but Caden Cotard feels as repugnant in general to Kaufman as any of his characters. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though.

Both of these films also contain at least one character, and sometimes multiple characters, that Kaufman aspires to be, who emit a more effortless sense of cool and a far more easy sense of confidence. In Adaptation there are two such characters: 1) His brother Donald, also played by Cage, who is basically Charlie's exact opposite in every respect except for his appearance; 2) John LaRoche, played by Chris Cooper (in his Oscar-winning performance), who is brazen and rednecky while Kaufman is effete and intellectual and timid, though LaRoche is also extremely intelligent, making him even more of an aspirational figure for Charlie. 

That character is a bit harder to find in Eternal Sunshine, but I'd argue it is Mark Ruffalo's Stan. He's a bit of a Kaufman schlub but he's also a real cool dresser and is dating a real catch, Kirsten Dunst's Mary. He's like a Kaufman made good, maybe one step further than Joel. Then there's also a Kaufman gone bad, Elijah Wood's Patrick, who is like a Kaufman who gives in to his latent stalker tendencies. 

Although there's no other character to share Kaufman's neuroses in Adaptation, I'd argue there is one in Eternal Sunshine. Interestingly, that's Clementine herself, the original manic pixie dream girl (or one of them anyway), who also confesses to having found herself ugly as a child, and frequently talks about how fucked up she is. I think we'd see this a lot more easily if she were granted the internal monologue that Joel is granted, but only one of these per film is allowed. 

Speaking of the objects of Kaufman's interests, I noticed that he's got a particular type that represents sort of an ideal to him -- and it's not Clementine, much as she may intrigue him. Seymour actually seems to be the template for this, if we are again looking ahead to his future films. Physically, Seymour has a similarity of appearance to his love interest in Synecdoche, played by Emily Watson, and also to his love interest in Anomalisa, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh -- probably more like Watson as they are both British. I'd even say there is something similar about all these actresses to Patricia Arquette, who appears as a love interest in Human Nature. (Is Drew Barrymore from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind someone we should include in this group? I think probably that's a bridge too far.)

Some other isolated thoughts from my notes:

- In multiple projects we have seen that several characters in the film represent particular sides of Kaufman's personality, and that may have no more literal depiction than in Adaptation. Not only do we have Nicolas Cage playing both Kaufman and his brother, who have very different personalities, but we hear about this within the text of the film as well. Donald Kaufman's script "The Three" deals with a serial killer, a detective and the killer's next victim, who are all the same person. "Trick photography" is his explanation of how you accomplish the effect -- a sly commentary on the current film, in which trick photography is being used to film two Nicolas Cages in the same scene, who represent different sides of the same character's personality, just like the three characters in "The Three." We of course see this splitting of one character's personality revisited in all of Kaufman's films that come after this.

- In talking about the possible film version of the adaptation Charlie Kaufman is writing in Adaptation -- which includes himself and Donald, just as the movie we're watching does (it's all very self-reflexive) -- Donald says "I think I should play me." This is yet another demonstration of just how different Donald is than Charlie. The "real" Charlie does not play himself, casting Nicolas Cage instead. Though one assumes that if Donald actually existed, he would have cast himself rather than Cage -- and also that Kaufman must have, on some level, considered playing the role, if only he'd had a bit more chutzpah or if only he'd deluded himself a bit about his own abilities as an actor. Which is something Donald would have no problem doing, or actually, does without even realizing he's doing it, since Donald is the consummate under-thinker while Charlie is the consummate over-thinker. 

- I noticed the flashback scenes in Adaptation, where we see the early years of the earth as well as certain historical figures, felt more like something out of the Michel Gondry playbook than the Spike Jonze playbook. I'm wondering if Kaufman urged Jonze to film them this way after he worked together with Gondry on Human Nature -- even if he worked with Jonze first on Being John Malkovich. 

- Both of these films feature an interest in science -- in some cases weird science -- that we have seen in most of the Kaufman films to date. In Adaptation, it's this interest in orchids that was part of his original mission statement to adapt The Orchid Thief, though also in all these "creatures emerging from the primordial ooze" flashback sequences. In Eternal Sunshine, it's the very process used to erase the unwanted memories.

- I noted, not for the first time, that the music that plays over Joel and Clementine meeting each other on the train to Montauk is very goofy and whimsical. Clearly that is to a purpose, even though the tone that has been introduced in the few minutes before that is decidedly wintry and melancholy. I'm wondering if it is Kaufman's and Gondry's acknowledgement that this sort of meet cute scene has a history on screen, and is very tropy in nature. It kind of remind me of a sitcom, which speaks to some of what Kaufman is looking at in his Confessions of a Dangerous Mind script. 

- This isn't related to one of Kaufman's other projects, but I noticed a similarity between Eternal Sunshine and another film I love from this same period: Vanilla Sky. And it has to do with that same "uncontrollable slippage of time" concept that I find amply present in both Sky and in Synecdoche New York. When the sleeping Joel inside his own brain realizes he can't control the loss of his memories and that this is extremely distressing to him, he yells at the sky "I don't want to do this anymore, I want to call it off!" In the tone of voice and in the function within the narrative, it reminds me of Tom Cruise yelling "TECH SUPPORT!" in one of my favorite moments of Vanilla Sky. Both films are dealing with the artificial manipulation of memories to wipe out the memory of something painful that has happened to the main character. No wonder I love both of these movies so much.

- Lastly: Both Eternal Sunshine and I'm Thinking of Ending Things end on a shot in the snow, though the former is much more optimistic in its conclusion than the latter. 

One thing from watching these two films that I really did not expect: I enjoyed my revisit of Adaptation much more than my revisit of Eternal Sunshine. Though both are former #1 films for me, my working conventional wisdom was that I liked Eternal Sunshine better, as I ranked it higher both in my best of the 2000s rankings (#5 vs. #11) and currently on Flickchart (#38 vs. #56). However, on this viewing, I felt myself resisting Eternal Sunshine just a little, finding it a bit too twee for its own good in certain spots -- especially surprising since I don't think of Kaufman as this type of person. Adaptation clearly seems like the more mind-blowing achievement on a script level, even as clever as some of Kaufman's notions in Eternal Sunshine are. 

I'm starting to think that the things that are great about Eternal Sunshine are more equally attributable to Kaufman and Gondry, whereas Kaufman's involvement is more dominant in Adaptation, and maybe that I prefer Kaufman dominance. (Which is why two of the three films Kaufman himself directed resonated with me so much.) I'm wondering if part of that was confirmed when I watched a little featurette afterward on my Eternal Sunshine DVD, a conversation with Carrey and Gondry where we get to see some of Gondry's process and the things he was dreaming up on the fly. 

I suspect Eternal Sunshine may have spoken to me more than Adaptation initially, precisely because of its melancholy elements -- when I first saw the movie, I was recovering from a breakup and starting to recognize that we probably were not going to get back together. As I've grown older and have been in a happy marriage for 13 years, I'm probably a little less affected by the poignancy of a lost relationship and maybe in a better position to appreciate the pure cleverness of Adaptation. 

Okay, in September it's time for what could possibly overtake both of these as my favorite Kaufman: Synecdoche New York. It'll be my third viewing, so it hasn't yet had the repeat exposure to really challenge the other two. I could easily see that happening this time around though.