Streaming Annihilation, paying for Lady Bird

It's been a busy week involving various deadlines, so I haven't had a chance to catch you up on two bits of relevant personal movie news. Well, relevant by the standards of this blog, anyway. So I'm going to crank both of them out now.

Both involve watching movies I very much wanted to see, in ways I didn't really want to see them.

The first was on Monday, when Alex Garland's Annihilation finally became available to international viewers on Netflix.

It was a day I had been looking forward to on face value for some time. There was a while when I had been lumping together Mute and Annihilation as similar films I was anticipating about similarly, and when they both were given distribution by Netflix (in Australia) anyway, it cemented them further in my mind. Mute started getting terrible reviews, reviews with which I concur (see here), and I thought word-of-mouth for Annihilation was bad too at first. But then I started to hear the raves for Garland's sophomore effort after Ex Machina, and the appetite was whetted to unbearable levels -- especially unbearable because the movie came out three weeks ago in the U.S., and my various film outlets have been alive with chatter about it that I've had to avoid.

My desire was only to get my hands on the movie, and how didn't exactly matter. I mourned in a general sense that it would only be available on the small screen, though of course that had a certain novelty to it as well. I don't want to compare these levels of anticipation, because they wouldn't be accurate, but it would be like if someone told that you that a new Star Wars movie was suddenly going to be streaming. You'd wish you could see it in large scale, but you'd still be awash in a certain kind of thrill about it being available for free on your TV.

I also planned to review the movie for ReelGood (see here), so I thought I'd see if I could "sneak it in" before March 12 actually arrived. Even though I'm in one of the earliest time zones, I went fishing for it Sunday night, to no avail.

And then when I got home from work on Monday at about 5:45 -- nearly 18 hours into March 12 -- it still wasn't there. Stupid Netflix.

I immediately went to my Flickcharters Facebook group, where I knew various international viewers would be plenty awake and also trying to watch Annihilation, possibly also frustrated by this same lack of availability. Within minutes a couple chimed in that it was appearing where they were, and lo and behold, it turned out it dropped at 6 p.m. on March 12th. If Netflix is trying to emulate other film delivery methods, it should know that movies are available starting at about 11 a.m. on the day of their release in time for the day's first matinees -- or even midnight if they are highly anticipated.

Anyway, my wife and I did get to watch it that night as planned, and I immediately realized it was something I should be seeing on the big screen. From the opening moments I was reminded of the type of visual stylist Garland showed us in Ex Machina, and even though that had just about peak visual style, Annihilation might have been an improvement on it. I just think of those opening shots of the asteroid breaking Earth's atmosphere and striking the base of that lighthouse. Gorgeous.

I spent most of the rest of the movie trying to convince myself I was loving it more than I actually was. I was loving it a fair bit, but by the end I had to admit I merely liked it a lot. My mind was blown for individual moments here and there, and as I hinted at in my review, I don't know if I've seen something more frightening recently than the sounds of a dying woman coming out of a mutant bear's mouth. (Spoilers.) In the end, though, it felt like a lot of interesting strands, ideas and individual moments that don't totally coalesce -- though they certainly could on a second viewing. Which Netflix will easily enable me to have.

Thursday night it was another viewing with my wife, this time out in the theater for the first time in as long as either of us could remember. Seriously, is it possible that the last movie we saw together in the theater, just the two of us, was Selma? It might be.

The kids' grandparents are in town right now, and they wanted to give us a date night. What better date night than to finally, finally, FINALLY see Lady Bird?

But it wasn't easy, as I might have expected from a month of shenanigans related to seeing this movie following its release, some caused by me, some out of my control. A month to the day, in fact. (And it being February to March, that month was also exactly four weeks.)

We were supposed to go to a 6:45 showing at the Sun in Yarraville, and we even thought we might grab a quick bite to eat or at least a drink beforehand. But then the grandparents got delayed on their way back from the city, where they'd spent the day, and didn't arrive until just after 6. That was just him, and not her -- she had to go back to pick something up from their house, about a kilometer away from us, in order to make the dinner. So I went to pick her up as well, something they didn't need me to do, but accepted once I offered.

I immediately realized I'd been a fool to offer it. The drive between our house and theirs is under ten minutes round trip, but that trip is usually made just after 8 o'clock, when we've been delivering them home for the night. At just after 6, I was slogging through traffic, and it was closer to 20 minutes than ten.

As I realized I'd probably cost us Lady Bird, I went on my phone in traffic to research alternatives and found that -- weirdly enough -- there wasn't a 6:45 showing at the Sun. There was every other night in the next week, and there had been a 4:30 show that I could see there, meaning that it wasn't just that the 6:45 wasn't appearing because it was too late to buy tickets for it. Showtimes that had already passed were still displaying. This happens sometimes in Australia. Posted showtimes disappear mysteriously, as if they'd never been there.

So getting back to the house, I found myself proposing alternatives to my wife like Game Night and Tomb Raider. She proposed the alternative that we go to a different theater to see Lady Bird.

Indeed, it was playing at 7:10 at Cinema Nova, and we could still make that. But I knew they wouldn't let me get in on my critics card after the first two weeks, a standard the Sun does not adopt. So I would have to -- gasp -- pay if we wanted to see Lady Bird.

That seemed like the least of our problems though. We got caught in awful traffic on the original route we'd chosen, traffic that would have spelled doom for our showtime if I hadn't heeded my wife's suggestion of forging a different route. I usually take the "first thought, best thought" approach to traffic and think I'll make it worse for myself if I change horses midstream, but darn it if she wasn't right. The other path was almost obstacle free, and we were looking for a parking space by 7 p.m.

The final obstacle in my month-long quest to see Lady Bird came when we found our spot. It was in a permit parking area, but that's okay -- it's the neighborhood where the kids' Australian grandfather lives, so we have single-use parking passes in our glove compartment at all times. The thing about these single-use passes is that they need to guarantee they are only used a single time, so you have to write the date on them in pen. A pen we did not have.

It's right next to a school, so I quickly scooted down the footpath (sidewalk) to see if I could find a lost writing implement, not even considering that a pencil would not suffice. My wife did more or less the same. We both came up empty, and the bar on the corner was not open to pop in to ask someone for help. It was becoming a calculation of how far do we have to walk to accomplish this vs. how much time do we have before the movie starts when a woman walked by who turned out to be our savior. I always like the moment when the look of horror on a person's face softens once they realize you are only asking to use their pen for ten seconds.

The clerk at the ticket booth was someone I didn't recognize, so I made a final attempt to get in to Lady Bird for free, feigning ignorance of the two-week rule. He sniffed me out (without prejudice) but did give me an industry concession. So it was "only" $18 rather than the usual $21.

It seemed almost surreal that I was actually finally seeing the final best picture nominee of 2017, but here I was.

And my reaction was very similar to Annihilation. I spent most of the time convincing myself that I was loving it more than I actually was. Though I think, especially with the benefit of a few more days of hindsight, that I probably do come a bit closer to loving it than loving Annihilation. Both are still only four-star movies for me, and I finally answered the question of whether Lady Bird would have been a candidate for my top ten (top 20 maybe). But Lady Bird is very solid and has a couple unforgettable scenes, plus that magnetic performance by Saoirse Ronan, a personal favorite of mine. If you want a full review of a movie that's already been reviewed by everyone five months ago, you've come to the wrong place.

Now I can truly put the business of 2017 behind me and go see Tomb Raider.

On Oscar eve, the last bird left town

I have no one to blame but myself, but for a while there, it was tempting to blame my wife.

See, I had a secret plan to sneak out to see Lady Bird on the night before the Oscars telecast, which would have actually been the morning of the Oscars telecast in America. A secret plan that I fully deserved after a full day of looking after my kids, solo.

It was so secret, unfortunately, that my wife knew nothing about it and unwittingly ruined the plan by staying out until after the last showing had started.

See, she'd been in an all-day workshop that she was running, and had been planning for weeks. I knew it ended at 5, and I also knew she planned to go out for "a drink" afterward -- a drink she richly deserved. But "a drink" turned into, well, more than one. I guess she needed to decompress from the event more than I thought she did, though she didn't even really seem tipsy when she got home.

I didn't think it was actually possible she'd be home so late. I mean, even setting aside the parental guilt we both feel when we leave the other with both kids all day, I thought she'd still get home at least in time for me to make a quick awkward exit but still get to the movie on time. I mean, we'd been texting and she said she'd be home in time for dinner. Not the kids' dinner, which I had also been preparing solo, and which usually goes up between 6 and 6:30. But our dinner, which usually goes up between 8 and 8:30, and if eaten quickly, would allow me to run out in time for the 9 o'clock showing.

But as time marched along, I could no longer play it cool and just wait for the text she planned to send when she was leaving the bar. So I texted again, still not revealing my intentions, asking "Am I still expecting you?" This was about 7:45, and if she used that text to spur her to leave, she could have still made it home in time to relieve me. But her response -- "Leaving soon" -- lacked urgency, and when she told me to go on with dinner without her at about 8:15, I knew all was lost.

I'd thought my biggest problem would be whether Cinema Nova would even let me into the movie for free on my critics card, since the two-week window since it opened has elapsed by three days. Oh, I'd considered other theaters, and Lady Bird is playing at just about all of them. But weirdly, as if by some industry consensus, each of the others had a final Sunday showing at about 6:45. Nova was the only one that had the traditional 9 o'clock time slot, and it was also the only one with grounds to deny me based on how long the movie had already been out.

Whether I'd actually get denied depended on whether I got someone in the box office who's a stickler for the rules (one or two of them) or the breezy types who will basically wave you through (most of the rest). If I did get denied, I didn't want it enough to spend the $21 to watch it, so I had a backup plan of Red Sparrow, starting 20 minutes later. I figured my biggest unknown would be whether I'd write a blog post today entitled "On Oscar eve, the wrong bird got seen" or "On Oscar eve, the right bird at last." (See, both movies have birds in their titles.)

But I didn't see any movie -- actually, I saw Collateral Beauty, which I want to write about later in the week but won't touch on now.

And it's my own damn fault. I've been to the movies twice since Lady Bird was finally released on February 15th. The first time I saw Black Panther. The second time I saw, God help me, Winchester. I had my chances. But I blew them.

By going on at such lengths, I'm painting it as some kind of tragedy that I'm not getting to see Lady Bird before the Oscars. But really, I just liked the idea of kicking off the most sacred day on the movie calendar (to some people, anyway) by watching the last of the best picture nominees I had not seen. It's not only that, but it's also probably the most acclaimed of the nominees, which in itself would have been reason to try to see it before now. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I haven't been thinking about the Oscars much this Oscar season, and this was my way to get me into it.

But it's not worth crying over spilled milk, and not seeing Lady Bird before the 90th Academy Awards is certainly the equivalent of spilling milk.

Now that my first reason to see a movie in the theater (to rank it on my year-end list, if it's released in time) and my second reason to see a movie in the theater (to prepare for the Oscars) have both passed, it looks like a video date between me and Lady Bird at some unspecified date in the future. And that will be fine too.

I'm sure my wife, who has also not seen it, will be glad to watch it with me. It'll be nice to actually see a good movie with her, one I didn't leap on the moment it hit theaters, preventing us from having the opportunity to see it together later on. It'll be a date between the three of us.

I do think that a strange consequence of letting it slip through my fingers, I'm just now realizing, is that I'll be rooting for it a bit harder to win tonight. I don't know why. It's like "the one that got away."

But it's just spilled milk, Vance. Let it go.

Enjoy your Oscars, everybody. I'll be back here in 24 hours to recap what we all saw.

That other time I chose the Aussie film over the best picture nominee

Remember back on February 5th, when I told you about opting for the Australian movie Sweet Country over a chance to see Phantom Thread?

Well, I've done it again, this time with a movie I liked a whole lot less over a movie I'm sure I'll like a whole lot better.

And I also placed that second movie, the best picture nominee, in danger of not being seen by me before the Oscars -- or possible in the theater at all.

That's right, last night I went to see Winchester, or Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built, a subtitle I am happy to report appears nowhere in the actual movie. I opted for it over Lady Bird. And if I don't see Lady Bird tomorrow night -- which I won't, since I'm scheduled to watch my second Audient Auteurs movie of February on the last day of the calendar month -- I will miss the two-week window in which I can watch the movie for free on my critics card at Cinema Nova. (It's playing at other theaters, but this feels like a "Cinema Nova type experience.")

At one point it was going to be a no-brainer, and I hadn't even bothered to find out that Winchester was even out yet. We were supposed to do a podcast on Lady Bird and it was supposed to be Wednesday night. But then one of my fellow podcasters had to go out of town for the week, with the alternate out of town for the week already. We don't do two-person podcasts, so the whole idea was shitcanned. Which is just as well, since I wasn't necessarily feeling LB as a topic of discussion on the podcast. Not only would it have already been out for two weeks here, but it's been out since the beginning of November in the U.S. Everbody, and I mean everybody, has already said everything they need to say about this movie.

I still felt a desire to see the movie, but freed up from this commitment, I decided to do something I hadn't done since the last time I made this "Australian movie or best picture nominee" choice -- watch something I could actually review. It had been three weeks since my Sweet Country review, and if you go too long without reviewing a movie, you start to feel a bit itchy.

Now, Winchester isn't totally an Australian movie, though you'd be hard-pressed to characterize it as something else. To your average filmgoer elsewhere in the world, it probably just seems like the latest off the Hollywood horror assembly line, seeing as how it has a trailer full of jump scares and is set in California. However, the movie was shot mostly in Australia, is directed by two Australians (Peter and Michael Spierig), stars an Australian (Jason Clarke) and features a lot of Australians in bit parts (Sarah Snook and Angus Sampson, and Bruce Spence gets honorary Australian status by being from New Zealand). I also know the film's art director. She was at my wedding.

Well, I'm glad to say that the art direction was the best part. Fortunately I didn't have to worry too much about a conflict of interest or hurting her feelings, as though I didn't like the movie as much as I wanted -- 5 out of 10 on the ReelGood rating scale -- I have nothing but positive words on its production design. My friend kicked the ass that the rest of the movie didn't. Good on her.

As for Lady Bird ... first I diss it in comparison to Black Panther (which I had not yet seen and didn't totally love), then it loses out to a fairly standard issue period horror movie. Will it ever catch a break?

Maybe. Especially in hindsight, I'm thinking I might use my Thursday night to get out there and finally watch this movie before the Oscars on Sunday. If I do, I'll be in a position that has become fairly unusual for me, though I did accomplish it last year: having seen all of the best picture nominees before the ceremony.

And chances are, Lady Bird will be better than Sweet Country, Phantom Thread, Black Panther or -- last and definitely least -- Winchester.

White bird, black panther

Yesterday, February 15th, was an important day on the Australian cinematic calendar. The best movie of 2017 and the best movie of 2018 both opened -- on the same day. (Well, I suppose either of them could be challenged for their respective honors by Paddington 2, depending on what hemisphere you live in, as the movie was released in a different year here than it was in the States.)

That's right, a mere 104 days after the date of its first limited release in the U.S., best picture nominee (frontrunner?) Lady Bird finally graced our shores. A day before its U.S. release, so did Black Panther.

And yes, they both have ridiculously high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. The once unblemished Lady Bird still stands tall at 99%, while Black Panther sits a mere percentage point behind it at 98%. (Glad my editor at ReelGood does not get tabulated on RT, as he gave it a mere 5 out of 10.) Humorously, both movies still do trail Paddington 2, which remains at 100%.

Their release dates and high RT scores is where the comparison between these two movies seems to end.

Though they could be flip sides of the same coin.

Although it has not suffered for this in any significant way, Lady Bird may be one of the last of a dying breed -- a movie craving widespread mainstream acceptance that does not have any characters of color in significant roles. In scanning the credits list on IMDB, it appears that there is a Latino guy and a woman who seems to be of mixed race, though without having seen the movie, I can't comment on the size of their roles. I can say they are 10th and 11th on the cast list, though.

Black Panther is kind of the opposite, though this, paradoxically, does not seem to be as much of a problem in today's climate. (Which, unmistakably, seems like a good thing to me.) Instead of token minorities, it has token whites, as Andy Serkis is the 12th ranked member of the cast, followed by David S. Lee three spots later.

As I said, this is a good thing. Until I came up with the current take on its release, I was going to write a post heralding the opening of Black Panther with a title along the lines of "Marvel makes a movie with a bunch of black people in it." You know, summarizing a very exciting development -- a Wonder Woman-style development in terms of its social significance -- in a provocative manner that would certainly turn your head if you weren't expecting it.

But we also know Marvel only does things that it thinks are in its best financial interest, which is the truly encouraging thing about Black Panther. The movie has proven Marvel right, shattering ticket presale records, because there is a collective hunger for this type of movie, obviously among black audiences, but among white audiences who find themselves poised to embrace the type of movie that might have made them feel alienated just five years ago. White audiences -- thinking white audiences, anyway, which may only be a small percentage of them -- want this. Not as much as black audiences do, but they want it too. And that's fantastic.

You know that thing where you walk into a movie that isn't aimed at you, and you find yourself in kind of a demographic Twilight Zone? "Oh, this is what it feels like to be ... a three-year-old kid, or an old person, or yes, a black person." Well congratulations on this "unique" experience. This is how black audiences felt for years, when only a handful of films each year truly felt like a reflection of their lives and experiences. And since those movies weren't made with big budgets by big studios, they often didn't attract the most talented filmmakers, or actors.

Well, that may be changing. Slowly, but then sometimes dramatically. Black Panther still could have continued taking baby steps by making a movie that was, maybe, two-thirds black. Five years ago, it might not have dared to be any more than 51% black in the cast. And it almost definitely wouldn't have been directed by a black man, though Ryan Coogler is one of the best talents we have going of any race.

But this is 2018, and something has happened -- something in our culture that has allowed this to happen. At a time when things seem their worst under Trump, something is still bubbling underneath, more like a majority than a minority, that celebrates the diversity that seemed to be repudiated by the last election.

And hallelujah, amen.

So where does that leave Lady Bird? I guess the answer is, Lady Bird will be fine. Lady Bird has always been fine, and it will continue to have a place in the cinematic landscape. You can't really make a movie with no black characters anymore, anyway, though some people still try. Lady Bird is close, but not totally there. And it's directed by a woman, so at least that's something. And I still look forward to trying to see it over the next week ... though I will see Black Panther first.

I do think there's an important shift that's occurring, that makes Lady Bird seem like the movie that's a bit tone deaf, a bit antique, a bit in its own hermetically sealed universe in which not only the people are white, but the problems are also white, no matter how many characters who are not quite white it may have in it. I think we are moving closer to a Black Panther world, and that's a world I want to live in.

And hallelujah, amen.