Challengers Represents a Challenge for Zendaya.

“Challengers” the latest from autuer Luca Guadagnino is the tale of a couple Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) who then becomes a throuple when they meet the enigmatic and stunning Tashi (Zendaya) and the torrid stormy road they take to being able to fully become who they are, who they want to be. A movie so tethered to a foundational need, to desire, to sex, to hunger couldn't have been more bland and worse still, clumsy. Guadagnino’s latest is supposed to feel like a light hand under your shirt, in the small of your back, gliding upwards pressing on some muscles, sliding in others until it reaches the nape of your neck and pricks you deeply with a sharp fingernail. Instead Challengers "sex scenes" and it's ploys for lust and desire feel like someone making a bunch of racket as they try and sneak up behind you only to grab you by your neck and bang your head on the table. Every single moment felt forced, abrupt, there was no sense of timing, no sense of patience, and no true willingness to go “there”. Guadagnino likes to give us tantalization as pure presentation and it never works for me. He keeps his camera still and at a distance, it sits there like an observer who is outwardly about as moved by it as Spock. The camera is never there with its subjects in the ways Adrian Lyne voyeuristically enjoys Fatal Attraction, or the way Paul Verhoeven allows the camera to make it a throuple in “Basic Instinct”. In “Call Me By Your Name”, there is the infamous fruit scene, the camera nearly falls asleep as Chalamet commits to the act with all the passion of turning a doorknob..Where is the writhing, the self touching, why are his shorts still on? For an act so based in unbridled desire it feels like Ben Stein giving a class on lust. The director always seems trapped in a purgatory where longing and lust are in direct conflict. He never wants his subjects through the camera, he's rarely interested in their faces when they're burning for each other, just when they're attracted to each other. His choices are dull and it effects or maybe shows itself in his choice of actors who are the hinges upon which this doorway into desire hang. Zendaya in what many are calling a movie star showing is the prime manifestation of this conflation. Some have said this movie doesn’t work without her and they’re right…it doesn’t.

Zendaya is one of cinemas great movers, I believe that is what people most see when they talk about her movie star power. She is elegant but forceful, composed and lithe. It shows in the scene where Patrick first introduces her to us and Art, her body commits to every end position with force, but the getting there is smooth and wave like. Its much like the catwalk, the step into the ground is a earth, but the body before the step is water. Zendaya in so many ways resembles a cat, but she hasn't met a director yet who is interested in or wants to play with that energy and she's seems too interested in protecting herself to bring it out on her own. Sex and playing “sex” or “sexy” is about letting go. You have to be unafraid to let the camera as a disembodied partner see your primal self. Think about the way Jamie Lee Curtis performs this exact act in James Cameron’s “True Lies”. Playing a woman who has never done anything truly adventurous, who has always been prudent, a woman who wants more but has no idea how to get there -Curtis starts off stiff very aware of herself, and her watcher, but slowly, surely, she stops protecting herself and begins to lean into feeling her body, opening up the camera to her most sensual self, and by consequence we voyeuristically join, the man in front of her all but disappears. Zendaya’s Tashi is no Helen Tasker, but Zendaya herself reminds me of her in this small regard; she has made to date, prudent choices, smart choices, but she has not been adventurous in choosing her roles, and though this is her attempt, much like Helen Tasker in the beginning of her dance, she doesn't seem to really know how to get there. Zendaya has no moment in Challengers, where sensuality, sex, or unbridled emotion feel as if they have taken over her body even while she is in control. No encapsulation of Meg Ryan's orgasm scene in “When Harry met Sally”. In essence some true sense that while everyone is turned on, or appalled by her being seemingly lost in the throws of her own self passion, she was in full control and putting on a show the entire time.

I feel much of the same way about Zendaya as I do Michael B Jordan, two actors with untapped potential that remains corked under the fact that they never seem to let us into that hidden self, or to that creation of self that appears knowable, that calls us to peer inside them on camera. They have the looks, they have to a certain extent - the energy, but they seem to always be protecting themselves. Image production is of course a responsibility and an aspect of any acting career, but as with all things it's a spectrum that is in a different place for each actor it represents. Those actors we revere for their acting not for their image production is a result of their leaning being further on the spectrum towards the craft than it is towards the image, with Zendaya and Jordan, it's more image production than craft to an extreme. True vulnerability almost always seems to escape them, and any true sense that they are giving themselves over to us escapes us. Tashi may move as if she is always aware the camera is on her, but Zendaya should move as if the the camera is apart of her. Tashi may not be open to letting anyone in, but Zendaya should be sneaking us in through the back door. In one of her stronger scenes in the movie, Tashi and Patrick are involved in a conversation where her true desires have been have been exposed, it is in essence quite possibly the summation of Tashi as a character, and yet it's telling that outside of aesthetics nothing profound occurs in Zendaya's face and body. Whenever there comes a time for an interesting emotion of expression Zendaya performs the one that would get you the least points in “Family Fued, because it is the one that would come most readily to just about anyone. What Patrick is telling her is meant to cause a mixture of shock, hurt, attraction, and anger, because it is based in truth, (we know by what she does later) Zendaya only plays anger. One eye widens larger than the other, the rest of her face appears pained, constipated, as if Patrick is speaking is foreign language she struggles to understand. This is not bad if the only idea is that this idea is detestable to Tashi, and she wants Patrick to feel that way, but the audience should see what's going on underneath as well and the “underneath” is what Zendaya has trouble playing. Critic Angelica Jade Bastien was absolutely right when she connected Zendaya's acting with the Katherine Hepburn quote about Meryl Steep, you can most certainly “hear the wheels turning“, because Zendaya is thinking more than she's feeling . If you only pay attention to how she moves, how picturesque she is, you might be impressed but when you listen to how she cuts Patrick down, and you watch her face it's banal, far too straightforward there's no knife to it, it sounds mean, because the words are there, but she delivers them in exactly that energy with no interestimg curve. Often the most interesting and cutting words we've seen on screen have been delivered in the opposite energy, you don't get angry, you smile. You don't play emotive anger you calmly and cooly say “You're nothing to me but another dead vampire”, or you if actually pierced you allow a tiny face drop, near imperceptible, but a clear receipt. Zendaya'‘s face does not betray her, and Zendaya is not vulnerable enough to break through facade in the least, especially subtly. When she walks away it's a thing of beauty, if you're just watching the walk, but in her face, nothing. The anger she shows provides no interesting choice, merely furrowed eyebrows. The opening salvo between Michael Douglas's Dan Gallagher and Glenn Closes's Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction” is a Master class in the importance of A; a director knowing the value of direct close ups in titilation and anticipation, and B. two actors that understand the subtleties of facade and how and when it breaks. Gallagher wants to play the loyal husband merely here for an innocent drink, Alex sees through it and start sending arrows directly at him. Glenn Close’s poker Face and the subtle brakes in Douglas that ultimately lead to the sex scene are vital to what makes Fatal Attraction one of the sexiest movies of all time.

Zendaya does not appear to be a good poker player, Tashi needs to appear that way. The bedroom is one of the few places that Tashi can exert control and uninhibited desire, where her true face should come through crystal clear, not necessarily to the boys, but to the audience. Guadagnino could've helped her. A bedroom scene with Patrick is so stilted as to conjure no appetite whatsoever. He shoots it from medium wide, (why?) this is a form of intimacy, even if Tashi is a bit mathematic about sex we should see Patrick's desire for the fantasy in contrast to Tashi's desire for control and power. On the surface level Patrick and Tashi have this in common with Catherine Trammel and Nick Curran of “Basic Instinct” ; Patrick like Nick knows exactly who and what his “Catherine” is, he just doesn't care. He wants her badly enough not to. These are the moments for interesting choices in a scene, from all involved in that dirk room. See Eihi Shiina’s wildly over the top movements as she saws off Ryo Ishibashi’s foot in “Audition”. In that scene, mutilation is made decadent. This is Asami’s bedroom, and the mutilation is her sex, and the reckless abandon and joy she receives is thick in Shiina's movements and expressions. Director Takashi Miike's camera goes in close and personal, intimately because here is where Asami finally has control, here is where the facade breaks, where her true self is revealed and the coy child like fantasy is peeled away. In contrast Challengers will have no such moment with Tashi, nor with Zendaya. There's a scene where Tashi deeply hurt by something that has happened to her, you can't tell it's supposed to have hit her hard, she nearly drops under a tree and it all kind of comes crashing down. Again, there are no interesting choices. Zendaya isn’t patient enough, she isn't open enough. She sits there for a moment and nothing radiates, no rage, no sense she is truly trying to hold back against a rising tide in her body. Guadagnino goes in for a close up on her face and nothing really happens. These are the moments where actors are made. The emoting with Zendaya is never bad, it's just never great, or distinctive, or provocative. Tashi is an example of a number of women I've seen on screen the kind that are aware of this stipulations and gendered expectations the world places up on them and in this case most especially as a black woman or even more specifically a biracial black woman, and yet Zendaya seems as disinterested in this aspect as the movie is in it. There may be the tiniest of hints and illusions as to how her race plays into all this but there is definitely no sincere interest to explore this aspect of Tashi. Guadagnino and Zendaya could do to have taken a look at Viola Davis and Steven McQueen in Widows where despite the fact that Viola's character clearly moves in white circles her blackness within them plays a significant role in what we are seeing in the movie as well as what we see in Viola herself. Veronica Rawlings is overall quite a different woman from the much younger Tashi, but they do have in common the shared desire to keep it together. They are both manipulators and they both deeply understand the value society places on appearances, they have to. Yet Viola creates these profound moments of breakage, moments where the mask slips where she must find some place for this energy to go. Whether after being slapped by Elizabeth Debicki, or in her final scene. The most representative of what the vast difference is, is in the opening scene when she finds out that her husband is dead. The stare in the mirror that turns into a primal scream and then the immediate fixture, back to work, “I will not let this consume me” even as it is consuming her. I believe Tashi seen under the tree should have been that kind of moment, not the exact same moment but the same art in a sense that she needed to be somewhere where she could let it go for just a moment, pull it back together, and get back in the game. Zendaya doesn't omit, she clearly emotes, she just simply doesn't do anything interesting with it and maybe more importantly neither does Guadagnino. Challengers and its star ends up a missed opportunity for the kind of potential that exists for films to make a return to eroticism and for movie stars to make a return to form. There are suggestions, there are implications, and there are a few exciting moments where it feels like we are back, but for most and much of this movie it feels like wanting to play in the snow but only being able to watch it on the inside of a globe. There's something there, but I wasn't able to feel it and as such eventually I just put it back down.

Dune Part Two: Hollywood Doesn't Really Want Frank Herbert's "Dune"

What Hollywood wants from Frank Herbert's Sci-Fi epic “Dune” is a blockbuster film, this is its first and primary concern. This is not an insight, nor a damnation in and of itself, but it is a fundamental block in my ongoing issues with this franchise and the repeated tries at making a successful on screen adaptation. If the marriage was more successful, (and by successful I mean balanced) I would love Dune, but this Dune is a diluted, convoluted, distilled Dune, maintaining almost none of its capacity for thought provocation, and only a certain portion of its sense of wonder. Denis Villanueve is a director who deals in ambiguities and the incomplete. Frank Herbert's canonical Sci Fi text is as comprehensive a bit of storytelling-weaving as you can get in the genre. Well-beloved by many not just for it's exhaustive attention to detail in world building, but as a challenging narrative allegory of western power, ecological decimation, and imperialism, but is also as German historian Frank Jacob refers to it “Anti-Colonial Colonialism”. It stands against the idea in theory, but in practice it's still upholds it. The ongoing nature of this conflict of perception is representative of the cohabitative nature of the deconstruction and reconstruction of orientalist themes, symbology, and interpretation in the original text. The ongoing conflict between the original text and it's on-screen adaptations is a product of the cohabitative imbalance of capital and art in the industry, the latter of which is represented in the choice of director and holds an unsuitable amount of influence over the former in which both work to reduce a dense, rich text to pure artifice and almost no edifice.

In Denis Villanueve's two part adaptation of the first Dune, the book’s dense characterizations and cacophony of political machinations are reduced to broad strokes. There is no interest in building the interdependent and volatile nature of these relationships and the characters that represent them. The emperor’s integral role in what happened to the Atriedes being completely absent from the first film, is introduced in the second mostly through scenes that fly by and tell you absolutely the bare minimum about who the Emperor is as a character, much less that of the triumvirate of the noble houses, the navigator’s guild, and the emperor. Much of the political intrigue, tactics, and infighting which reinforces the prescience not only in events, but in incisive portraits of the psychological approach of colonial powers are also gone. Paul's doubts and unease about being a messiah are highlighted and over-represented, his foibles and ego silenced until he drinks “the water of life”, which then makes it seem the water of life caused it, rather than his own deficiencies. Villanueve’s own way into the book is a tell as to what he sees and values as the important thrust and even moreso, what he doesn't by way of silence. On the podcast “Q with Tom Power” Villanueve is asked what drew him to Dune in the first place, he answers; “There's something about the journey of the main character Paul Atreides, the feelings of isolation, the way he was struggling with the burden of his heritage, family heritage, genetic heritage, political heritage, climatic heritage, all this weight on his shoulders, then finally being able to find freedom through the contact with another culture.” Villanueve’s words are indicative and representative of Villanueve's focus on the hero's journey and since our “hero” is Paul, the Fremen are merely a device by which Paul is catapulted to self discovery. The hero’s journey aspect of Herbert’s book has always represented the source of Hollywood’s fervent attraction to this series, as it to them is what defines its potential as an intellectual property. The dollar signs in the eyes of industry executives easily push aside the fact that in some respects the source material is a rejection of that narrative, and the choosing of a director (a very skilled one) who shares the belief, means that by consequence of the machine through which it is produced, any chance for any meaty meaningful reconstruction or deconstruction of the original texts’ obvious themes is jettisoned, and that is a choice in every sense of the word. The spectacle which is what is wanted and desired by most of the execs, and most of the general public is not unimportant, (especially in a era so devoid of any true examples of it) but it is very much standing in the place of the politics and thematic breadth of Herbert's vision.

The spectacle of Villanueve's Dune is as oppressive as the book’s various houses and characters. Alot of thought was put into building this world and it's clear in the design; from costume, to set, to technology, and beyond. Harkonnens float like spacemen in an early Hanna Barbara cartoon above arid dunes and rock formations. A helicopter on fire freefalls in the background as we watch Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet race across the sand under the shade of the Harkonnen version of a John Deere for the desert. Sandworms slide through earth parallel to each other from a birds eye view. A harrowing supremely well choreographed fight occurs more than once, with a finale sure to be on the minds of everyone long after they have left the theater. All of these things are such forceful sights to behold, it's difficult to dismiss Dune part two’s success as spectacle. They take up so much air in the film you can almost forget to take a breath and remember that Dune is essentially a space epic with alot more than spectacle on its mind and far too politically intricate to be reproduced on screen by an entity so dedicated to the reproduction of the very things the book seeks to deconstruct. In essence how are you going to faithfully adapt such an anti-Star Wars book through the funnel of an enterprise that wants exactly Star Wars? The aspects of these films that most align themselves with the aspects most fetishized by both those in the industry and consumer at-large are in rare form. This version has alot more in common with those intitial Star Wars films than the difference in execution and skill might allow one to believe. The delayed introduction of the emperor, the reluctant hero with a family name that rings out, the focus on languages, creatures, clothing, weaponry, world building in essence, these are the parts of Dune that sell it. The parts that make it consumable to a vast mass. It has none of the weighted emotional heft of Spielberg's “Minority Report” or “AI” to deter some audiences. None of the narrative integrity to the challenging themes of its source material that “A Clockwork Orange” maintains to repel them. It does not carry the narrative foreboding present in George Lucas's prequels. Much like the initial Star Wars trilogy, characters having names and titles serve mostly utilitary and perfunctory functions to the script. The characterizations are airy, the politics are broad, there is little to detangle, little to sit with outside pageantry. The oatmeal density of the books themes and politics now water, Dune’s transformation to “popcorn movie” is now complete.

Frank Herbert had much more distinctive and specific desires for his book as it pertains to its themes and its political commentary. The parallels in the relationships between the noble houses, the emperor, and Arakkis (which even phonetically sounds like Iraq) are undeniable and as such unavoidable, thusly anyone who adapts the book must in essence agree with the intricacy, the specificity. You cannot deal in the abstract with a text like this. The source material, (which as it pertains to the fremen, also deals in forms of abstractness) lends itself to orientalism, if you then become even more abstract then what is left? The answer is movies that talk like the book about a man seeking to align himself with and become equal to a people no less than him, while asserting his superiority in nearly every image and piece of text. Movies that imply that merely feeling conflicted over your inarguable “superiority” is the same as deconstructing it. In his landmark book on the subject literary critic and academic Edward Said had this to say about “Orientalism”; “In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.” Knowing this, the question here is not whether or not Paul and the Atriedes are white saviors, (Though there could certainly be an argument they most certainly are as both the literature and screen do not truly deny that Paul is the messiah, but rather the efficacy of the role) the question is; “What are the Fremen?”

For all the time spent around the Fremen as a people, they are largely bystanders in a story that largely concerns them. They bookend the first film, appear in the second (as with most of the characters in this film) as a large collective meant to signify one character, and in no way are in charge of their own destiny. In text and then re-creation of the text, they are reduced to pawns. Their land is occupied, they cannot defeat their occupiers on their own and so the ways to defeat them are given to them by the foreigner - “You’ve been fighting the Harkkonens for decades, we’ve been fighting them for centuries” - their prowess as a fighting force is reduced to the swarm like behavior rather than the elite man to man skill that saw even small numbers of Fremen decimate large numbers of Harkonnen soldiers and the Sardaukar. Even their religion is given to them by way of the Bene Gesserit. Villanueve a man heavily drawn to the image seems completely disinterested in any image that shows the fremen people (his favorite in the book) as a mighty force independent of Paul. The interest is not in them as a people, but in the collection of symbols, signs, and cultural iconography that convey their “otherness”. The romance at the center of the movies suffers not only from the lack of any deep chemistry between Chalamet and Zendaya, but from the lack of any specificity around what exactly draws Chani to Paul despite her natural and very valid fears about him as an interloper. Gone is even the patience to suggest a slowburn as exemplified in something like “The Last Samurai”. Paul's whiteness is taken for granted as inherently attractive in and of itself. It is the draw, it is the pull, and as told on film it is irresistible no matter what place white men occupy and felt almost on sight. So, Said’s words remain; at what point in these films is Paul's relational superiority not clear? What are we to say about a narrative that continually highlights a groups mysticism and the abstract symbols of their culture apart from their humanity? One willing to turn “Jihad” into “holy war” as to not invite controversy, but unwilling to use one’s imagination as to how to present the MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) coded fremen in a complex relationship to a complex man? Why chance that potentially mine ridden path, when they can just have the horde remain mostly nameless and faceless save for those descriptors which most reliably tell us who they are stand-ins for? There is no need for a hypothetical about what would happen if MENA actors were placed in this precarious story of jihad, because there are MENA actors in this precarious story of jihad. Hamza Baissa as “Young fremen patrol”, Hassan Najib as “Young fremen patrol” and Omar Elbooz as “Young fremen patrol and on it goes. In the caves, on the worms, and any time we see the Fremen's collective ethnic makeup it is quite clear they're mostly MENA looking, they just don't need to speak or have much agency. What are we to make of a film that reduces Thufir Hawat - feared and revered master of assassins to glorified guide and head of security in one movie? His vital role to the goings on in the narrative cut completely? To the disappearance of Liet Kynes importance and her (gender reversed) relationship to Chani? To the reduction of Yuen's relationships? To the quick deaths of almost every person of color in the first and the reduction of Stilgar to a form of elevated comic relief in part two, almost pointless to the movie except as a pair of shoulders for Paul to sit on? The presence of the opposite or a challenge to any one, or two, or maybe three of these things would still make for a movie taking positive steps in the right direction, and none of them by themselves or in and of themselves harmful to the movie as an adaptation, it is the collection of them that does that.

Since Europeans, Western powers, America, and Hollywood center themselves as the cultural and political centers of the world so too do their literary and cinematic avatars, and as such it remains in Dune. You cannot free yourself from a narrative by adapting the narrative, no more than you can disband hegemonic structures and ideas from the “inside”. You are not subverting the trope of making the “other” a prop to show white superiority, by making them a prop to show the folly of white superiority. You cannot find yourself or seek the “true self” in another culture, (as Villanueve alluded to later in the same interview) this is nothing more than the guiding force behind the whitewashing of yoga or rastafarianism and many other appropriations, Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” where the burden is his guilt over his capacity to consume. This is the flaw in any overall belief in the Hollywood structure to do something that would inflict even minor damage to its self perpetuated mythology. Dune is undeniably a story about a gigantic and enormous conspiracy to rob a people of a resource that rightfully belongs to them and the prophecy that uphold it's players criminal machinations. That POV is not the only read available, but it is amongst, if not its most apparent. That POV would mean trying to build a blockbuster around a hero that is in essence a villain, and the lack of investment in it forbids something as imaginative as allowing the events of Dune to fold out from a fremen perspective beyond a voiceover from Zendaya’s Chani. That POV would mean following through consistently on the implication made by Chani’s narration in the first, that the Atreides are just the fremen’s latest oppressors. Which would mean a blockbuster that played out superficially at least like “Killers of the Flower Moon”. For all the pomp and gravitas, this latest Dune has failed to acknowledge that aspect to even the degree a bare minimum would decree. It is not some understated study of the power and hegemony and in fact borders on a celebration of it, just ambiguous enough to not fall on that side. That alone would still not be enough for me to hold back my excitement for such detail to world building, had that world not been so aesthetically tied to this one, or so clearly the entire point, as film critic Richard Brody said about Villanueve’s vision in a recent tweet; “Nothing distinctive in his filming of gigantic sets, either—they themselves are the idea”. A decent emotional exploration in this movie mined for effect might've won me over to the film as well, but while certain images brought some sense of wonder there was nothing behind them to make them weighted. What's left is a movie that looks the part but doesn't feel it, a movie that feels like it sold out on the books most apparent themes, (nevermind imagining something beyond them) and couldn't even bother to replace them with something more revelatory or inspiring than ugly toys and sad faced boys.

Mr and Mrs Smith: “Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave”

Two thoughts reigned supreme as I watched Donald Glover's reimagining of the 2005 Pitt/ Jolie vehicle “Mr. and Mrs Smith.”; “Spy movies are very cool and Donald Glover is not’, and ‘there is a underlying contempt here for the things he's mimicking”. Ultimately I could end this entire thing with just that sentence. There are a lot of reasons why I didn't fall for this show, and why at a certain point it started to become a chore to watch it, but most of them could be housed under the statements above. What I found fascinating about the show was the contrast of what the interviews leading up to the launch wanted us to believe the show was going to do, and what the show actually did. The mission (at least by what has been said in interviews seemed to be to subvert the genre, push something deeper out of the marriage angle, and embrace something opposite of what the film possessed. But for all the conversation about how different this was going to be from the film, this was pretty much the same, just with people, places, tech, lighting, cinematography, vehicles, fashion etc that were less cool or interesting than both the original film and most of the movies/TV shows in the spy genre.

There had been a couple of quotes from Donald Glover that had made their way around Twitter prior to the show's debut. I found them somewhat annoying and misguided, but once I started watching I thought initially Mr. and Mrs. Smith had done a great job building a relationship between two people, with two people who had such glaringly astonishing chemistry. Erskine and Glover really do bounce off of each other magnificently. They have similar timing, similar forms of self-depreciation, and are a match aesthetically and spiritually, but they were right when they said in interviews that they are not Brad and Angelina and they “can't replicate that”. Episode five was the beginning of the scratch to an itch I had even while mostly enjoying the show up to that point. “Do You Want Kids” had all the ingredients for an unforgettable banger; Ron Perlman, a subject that is very much so worth deep conversation and commentary, a car and foot chase with hand to hand combat, expensive homes, and Lake Como, Italy. What came out was completely forgettable unless you count how forgettable it is as memorable. Perlman is a stand in for a “trial baby” in an episode about the couples different views on having kids. Unfortunately it's handled with all the subtlety of a mack truck in space, from the title to Perlman’s performance (which is very good, but also very obnoxiously on-the-nose ). It has nothing interesting to say about parenting or about the two potential parents, (outside of their differences of opinions on children) and nothing very interesting or memorable besides Perlman. Leaving the episode I thought “You had far more time to explore the issue of rearing children in this career field and you've come away with something not much deeper than what the original film had to say about it.” Worse still, the film made very clear that child rearing was something that they didn't necessarily need in their lives. In a country that has pushed child rearing on woman's bodies like crack cocaine, and is currently doing everything it can to force them into it as an inherent duty, which is more refreshing?

“I watched it and honestly, I was like, ‘I don’t understand it’ . I mean, I get why it’s iconic because of the people starring in it - it’s just two gorgeous people in this situation. But the story I didn’t quite understand. I called my brother and he was like, ‘This is just a great date movie. It’s boys vs. girls. What else do you want?”

— Donald Glover, Entertainment Weekly

“There's this huge space between us and it just keeps filling up with everything that we don't say to each other what is that called?” This is something Jolie's “Jane” says to their therapist less than a quarter of a way through the movie and it is reinforced by the imagery and conversations we see both before and after she says it. Near the end of the film that same therapist tells them that marriage is about battling through obstacles by battling together. Why reduce all of this to “two gorgeous people in this situation” and “boys vs girls”? In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Maya Erskine said “Angelina and Brad are untouchable in that you can't recreate that and Donald and I are just so different it felt exciting to play a couple that you might recognize as your friends or yourselves”. Tabling the fact that I don't agree with the idea that you can't recognize your friends or your selves in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie simply because they look good or are incredibly cool people - underneath these words is that ever present suggestion that by the mere fact of being beautiful, you lack profundity. That particular idea comes out clearly in the wash of this show. Later Erskine says; “No, I'm kidding I obviously couldn't be further from her. I tend to play characters that feel like the rejects of society, and my Jane felt like it was a reject version of Angelina, it wouldn't ever be her it couldn't be”. That sentence is representative, of a repeated theme in these interviews and by consequence the show that suggests that they are doing something that is not present in the previous adaptation or the actors in it, when in actuality it is very present in both. It makes a lot of what's said feel pretentious and guarded, which at times is what the show felt like too. The “I tend to play characters that feel like the rejects of society” implies a difference that doesn't exist. In actual fact that defines Jolie's career as well, in “Gia”, in “Hackers”, in “Girl Interrupted”, in “Gone in 60 seconds” and more. When you get wrong what it is that may need correcting, adding, or improvement in a project, then usually, you end up with something worse than.

If the goal was to dress this thing down, to make it something more akin to reality, (nothing in movies is ever a true reality) the pathway to that was made very clear in something like 2011’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. In Tomas Alfredson’s hazy adaptation of Le Carré’s story every single aspect feels like a repudiation of everything cool about spy movies. The clothes are lovingly austere, the locales poetically mundane, the photography is strikingly drab, each item so uncool that they reach out, wrap around and somehow end up right back at being cool. Mr. and Mrs. Smith would have been far more interesting if Glover would have accepted that and joined in with Sloane and the rest of the co-creators to try to create something that truly acknowledges and embraced that un-cool or embraced that he wants to be “it” and maybe more importantly why he wants be “it”. It's an inferiority complex that as a consequence creates a superiority complex. This finds its way into Mr. and Mrs. Smith by way of it's acceptance of the most banal ideas of beauty represented in its vehicles, in the clothing, and represented in the inflated sense of depth as it pertains to the shows discussions of relationship dynamics. Most of what this show aims to do relationship-wise as stated was already accomplished by FX’s brilliant “The Americans”, and done a thousand times better. John's insecurities around manhood and masculinity are interesting bullet points in the show, but never become a full treatise. The hunting, the therapy, the asthma. It shows them, it brings them up, it jots a note down, but it doesn't have anywhere near the kind of depth or complexity displayed in how The Americans drew and handled some of the very same issues around masculinity and having your better be your female partner in Matthew Rhys’s “Phil Jennings”. Its only slightly more complex than the original. Most of what Mr. and Mrs. Smith seeks to subvert as a show about spies, or as a show about relationships is either common, superficial, boring, or try hard, especially the action. What is left after both the cool and the un-cool fail is a show that wasted alot of its talent, it's locales, it's subjects, and is neither as deep as it thinks it is, or as cool as it thinks it is. Bland and tasteless, a box of grape nuts.

Mimicry is a superficial recreation of the most commonly recognized (and many times stereotypical) aspects of a person(s) or thing. It is an impoverished version of imitation mostly due to the fact that it is not knowledgeable of the subject and is sometimes willfully ignorant about it, because underneath it is a conflict between disdain and admiration for person (s) or a thing. Charlie Sheen's diatribe to Chris Tucker in “Money Talks” which includes the words “G posse on a fly tip” is a great example. It is impoverished because you can tell hes never been around black folk and even while admiring them on some level doesn't like them either. Donald Glover, Francesca Sloane, and the shows other authors suffer from a lack of reckoning with their conflicted feelings about cool and about beauty. Consequently that lack of a reckoning is what pulls the rug out from under their attempt for this deeper show they were clearly so intent on creating. You can't claim to distance yourself from something you're so obviously trying to recreate. If you're trying so hard to distance yourself from what they created, why are you dressing like them? Why are you so manicured? Why is everything around you so adherent to the most normalized ideas of beauty from cars to clothes to homes? Why not admit that you thought Brad Pitt looked awfully good in those form-fitted sweaters and shirts and that you tried to recreate that? Why not lend something to what you clearly liked other than backhanded compliments about their movie stardom? Why not go for the aesthetics and values in Apple TV’s Gary Oldman starrer “Slow Horses” and Season 1’s lack of alot of gun violence and action? Why have the far more unique idea of a wife who just refuses to have children and stands on that ground and all that could spring forth out of that, rather than copping out and having her admit she actually wants them while on truth serum? You went to the school dance and you don't fit in and so your knee-jerk reaction is to claim that the cool kids and the beautiful people are dumb and superficial, even while you came in your best tuxedo, asked your mom for those new Jordans, and tried to talk to the cheerleader. In that way the show doesn't really do what so many of the quotes from the interview claim it set out to do which is defy the status quo of this genre and of the people in these relationships, it merely gives the pretense of it. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not reimagining anything. It's not reinventing, nor challenging anything in the genre or from that film, it's just poorly mimicking both and passing itself off as more because they're not the “beautiful people” and that's pretty shallow.

Maestro: Men at a Distance

We open with the words of Leonard Bernstein; “A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them and it's essential meaning is an tension between the contradictory answers”. They are meant to function as both as a guide into understanding Bernstein and to understanding Director Bradley Cooper’s intention for this film. I left it wondering if it had accomplished either. There is a desire to reckon with a man, a desire to reckon with the distance between us and him, and most importantly it's director and him, that unconsciously sits in the womb of the entire movie, but is never birthed, and thus I left the movie stunted. Disconnected from any deep feelings of emotion or intellectual revelation and/or connection. I was left at a distance from Cooper’s authenticity and consequently from his subjects.

The tensions between these distances are most certainly presented, or at least they are talked about or mentioned a lot. Between his work life and home life, his straight marriage to Felicia Montealegre, and his queer selfhood, between his authentic self and the performer. The latter is the aspect most presented within this movie. It's in his words to a reporter, his words to trusted friends, it's in his sometimes overhearing need to share, and his over bearing needs which can “swallow up” those around him as Felicia says in one climactic argument. He is in constant performance, whether in show, in love, or in conversation, and it is the friction between that performance and his actual self the movie tries to reckon with, but also seems afraid to come close to. The other aforementioned tensions are merely dressing to the dressing, and in concert with this very ostentatious cavalcade of technique and the artifice of craft and genius, it gives one the feeling that you visited a grand costume ball that had absolutely little to no meaning save to prove the ability of the person throwing it. For a movie about love, there is very little in it. There is loyalty, and lots of understanding, and respect, words thrown at you at 100 miles per hour, camera movements to astound you, close ups, and pulls, wide shots and all other manner of accoutrements that are meant to accentuate this supposed story of the tensions on creativity, brilliance, and selfhood, but not love. The problem is all of these apparatuses serve to distance you from the subject and the music rather than bring you closer into. Instead of hugging us, Maestro’s incessant plays for prestige shrug us off. One scene has Bernstein being sort of cautiously nudged by a man he has a deep respect for to hide his name, one feels like this may be an entry way to a story about the tension in the sometimes short, sometimes long distances between Bernstein's (and really any non-white protestant male) Jewish identity and his very American success, but before we can even acknowledge what we are watching, Mulligan's Felicia is whispering into his ear to be his authentic self and whisking him off into their love story presented with an over head bird-eye shot that whips us into an entirely different space both physically and mentally. It's not a bad choice, falling in love can feel alot like this, but love isolated in a vacuum is not a story, the story is in its relation to subjects, it's distance from them -to them, so we still need to see how it is found between these two subjects, but before we can appreciate their love story we are treated to a flamboyantly shot dance scene with no actual flamboyance most especially when Cooper enters the scene ( a dancer he is not). The point here being tensions are presented in the same way a child may reply “present” during roll call, but they are not reckoned with, consolidated, or interstitched in any meaningful way. This all happens as Bernstein's queer life is as quietly placed into storage in the movie as it is depicted it was in his life.

Bernstein's queer-ness feels like an unfortunate aside, like bait to get is into caring about his all encompassing precarious but sweet love for Felicia and not just because of how little screen time they're given, but because whenever his sexuality does show up it feels as if the investment is cheap and disinterested. Matt Bomer’s David Oppenheim is not a fully realized person at all, he is a series of reactions stacked on top of each other in an overcoat pretending to look like one. We see him and are made privy to stifled butt taps, stiff kisses, and looks that are meant to communicate the subtext of longing, and laughs, but there is nothing there, in commentary or chemistry. His other trysts and affairs are not given enough time or energy to create friction, they merely pass by without rubbing up against. When they are intimate it seems so contrived and forced , I half expected to see Cooper wipe the kisses off after. There is no sensuality there, no fire. To be fair, it is the same with he and Felicia's relationship, but it's just that much more noticable when the foundation is next to nothing. Save for the beginning, we only see his queer lovers to see how they draw Felicia's ire. They seem to exist in a very rigid “either/or” of friendly, or implied sexual nature (sex itself is off limits) but there is not a modicum of the depth and nuance afforded his straight relationship. How can we reckon with Bernstein's “authentic self” when such a massive part of it is so obviously treated with petit disdain?

Cooper's film is at its best when it is focused on the silences, the unsaid between the beloved couple. When the distance it maintains from each, actually serves it's emotional objectives, and when it focuses on Carey Mulligans outstanding performance. In an over the shoulder shot of Mulligan peering out from underneath her facade of shiny acceptance to reveal her natural jealousy over the moments Leonard shares with his paramour, you feel as if she is a thousand miles away. The deafening silence in a room after an argument as a balloon passed a window from the parade outside, betrays a dire loneliness in both of them. The distance between the camera and Leonard and Felecia as the camera sits well outside the fence of the pool area from which they try and talk about what is going on between them, and a close up of Mulligan in a monologue detailing her revelation that the woman she claimed to be was merely a conjured ideal to try and reconcile her love for the entirety of Bernstein with her organic sense of possession. These are scenes where I felt strongest that the movie was near accomplishing it's goal of reckoning with these tensions without answering them or preaching them to its audience. It was most distracted when it focused on its own obtrusive beauty and Coopers equally showy performance. Let me be clear, I did not like Cooper's performance. It is without a doubt the most distracting aspect of this film, and one of the worst in contention for an Oscar in recent history. Sure it is fervently ambitious, and there is detail, and I do see love there. Cooper's own tension as an artist I believe are a mirror image of sorts to the Bernstein he sees, and in moments Cooper's own vulnerabilities shine, but there are moments where that ambition and that desire overtake and choke out any ability to actually connect with Bernstein. It is an aggressively nasally performance, in which everything extends out from Bernstein's nose. A lot was made of that nose in particular, and while I don't agree with the takes that were presented to try and paint this as somewhat anti-Semitic, the focus is a poor choice to decide that this is where Bernstein vocally, in some ways spiritually speaks to us from. You have the prosthetic nature of the nose, but you also have the fact that Cooper is speaking through it to try and imitate Bernstein's vocal tenor. The experiment is a cinematic failure, it doesn't serve to bring intimacy between the audience and Leonard, but rather it distances us, constantly reminding us that this is Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein. We are supposed to say “My god he has really channeled this man” but best I can give is “Look how hard he is trying”. The gestures and the movements feel accurate enough, true enough, but everything coming from the inside reeks of effort that we should not be seeing, and in this veers it into the realm of Oscar bait. Once again this is also a place where the silences are the best. A scene where he has to put a pillow to his mouth to muffle his tear filled grief, a concert hall scene, (maybe the only) that in its movements , along with Cooper's show Bernstein's love and affinity for the music he was making even while Cooper himself is silent.

This is not a film that (as it states in the beginning) in any way sticks to one's bones to reckon with the tensions and agitations it is happy just to put on display. Its a movie that puts the clothing in the window to draw the eye, but the door to the store is locked. I came into the movie knowing very little about Bernstein and I came out of the movie still knowing very little about Bernstein. I came in very far removed from him, and left only a few steps closer, enough to we that he lived his wife deeply. If that was the movies one true goal it is fine enough of a goal, but those opening words in the quote do not speak to simply a complicated love story, but to something more, much more. A complicated man, a complicated genius, living in a complicated world in a complicated body. Cooper and co. seem to misunderstand and mistake the presentation of complexity as the expression of complexity. The complexity on display is banal, it's just presented with the sort of pomp that makes it seem like more. I wish more of the movie was like those scenes of silence. I wish the movie had the agitative daring of Mulligan’s compartmentalized performance. I wish Bernstein’s queer self was more welcome to the party, and I wish someone else was playing Bernstein instead of Cooper to allow Cooper to remain completely and totally married to the man, the subject, from the perspective he most seems comfortable with …a distance.

“All Truth is Crooked, Time istelf is a Circle”.

A room full of anxious unsure black men sit in a dark room with almost no identifiable tokens of place or time or identity even, save for their clothing which could still pass for a number of time periods. One by one they will renounce their own languages, and with them their very identity, - I immediately recall the words of Franz Fanon “A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language”. After all of these black faces (and one seemingly white face, who is later revealed to be mixed race) another white man appears, he is shot profile, and he has on the garb of the church, he is the first identifier of the possibility of space (the church). His first words; “To live with Christ is to love God and man”. I ask myself what kind of love would ask of people to shed themselves of the things that make them who they are? The irony is intentional. Hondo like Fanon is acutely aware of what is being asked and what the consequences of the asks are. Hondo is also aware that to stamp a date, to make clear the space, place, time, is to create a distance and he is not interested in distance, nor time, to be clear he is not very much interested in the presentation of “factual”.

The film is a series of juxtapositions made stronger and more agitating by their inability to reach any compromise with truth, with morality, with time. As the film is semi autobiographical this too is intentional as it connects the personal to the political. The personal being Hondo's experiences in a number of professions, and his experience with the country who overseered under the rouge of a sort of national adoption. The attitude, the documentation of colonization and imperialism and it's consequences, the agitation present in “Soleil O” reminded me of Costa-Gavras's “Z” (1969) and Ousmane Sembene’s “Ceddo” (1977). The period within these films take place, the lack of compromise in plot, craft, and commentary, the usage of technique and style to frustrate, stir, and indict audience and empire alike are all pervasively present, but maybe more than anything is the way in which these films play with time.

In Sembéne’s “Ceddo” a date is never said or mentioned, we have only a vague idea what period this takes place in, based off of costume and technology, but not much else. This is again intentional, as the lack of date implies the flux, or continuum of the behaviors and strategies on display. In Sembéne’s own words; “I can’t give a date. These events occurred in the 18th and 19th century and are still occurring”. In the epilogue of Gavras’s “Z” a reporter gives the news chronicling the events that happened beyond the reach of the film, when suddenly he too disappears as we find out he too was murdered from the voice of a woman. The time of his death is not acknowledged, the time that lives in between his absence is not acknowledged, because again time is not relevant to the actors nor the actions. In Hondo’s “Soleil O” we see a similar tactic to Sembéne's where a time is implied but never stated and in his film we jump forward and back through time with no announcement or confirmation. One could be the other, the other the one. Uniforms change, clothing changes, but as with “Ceddo” ( which means the outsiders) the behaviors and strategies remain the same. “All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle”. The Nietzsche quote is not an argument as much as an invite to agitation and question. Time is meant to signal a great deal of things but in the historical context it is many times used to signal the beginning and ending of things. In that way time (a construct itself ) is a useful tool in the construction of propaganda and of a false sense of historicity that assumes that events of the past lived and died there, and the purveyors of it depend on that assumption. The radical nature of these films lie not only in the purity of the fire of their anger, or the straight forward force of their dedication to a deconstruction of truth, but in their resistance to the framework of time that allows the audience the peace of mind that comes with knowing this is not the here, the now, nor the present. Extending out beyond even the now of our own events (see Gaza, Congo, Tigray, Sudan, Haiti) to imply the future in the space of time between when these films were made, when the events occured and now, which then leaves the audience with no safe place to go save to action.

A Reckoning, but not thee Reckoning”

“It is a reckoning, but maybe not the reckoning I needed or wanted” were the words that came to me what would have been about midway through the movie and persisted until the very end. Sitting in the dark as I heard Lily Gladstone’s primal scream of bereavement and unrequited anger, I felt it beating through my chest and head like a drum. I do not think Scorsese or subsequently his film is afraid to go where he needs to go, say what needs to be said, show what may need to be shown. It's a film indicative of all of Scorcese's powers, and Thelma Schoonmaker’s too for that matter. The issue here is the issue that has ever been, which is that it is being told from the perspective of a white person. In the sense of who's directing it, in the sense of who's starring in it, and in the sense of whose perspective is most being represented. This conundrum haunts and elevates the movie simultaneously. It's inertia, it's profundity all live in the places where it is strong and where it is weak, and where the movie is strong and where the movie is weak lives in its perspectives.

The movie most closely takes on the appearance of a masterpiece (if not outright one) when you examine it from the angle that they (the white folks ) are the wolves. Scorcese’s film in its entirety gave me the feeling of watching one of those movies where they have the graphic for the way a virus begins to eat up cells over time, or even better a pandemic film where they have the electronic map show in elapsed time how rapidly a virus will spread. We start out with the near lack of existence of whites in Osage, and the markers of success and community amongst a native population made rich by the oil under their land, (even while we see in their appearance and spending the tokens and golems of white supremacy) and by the time we are near finished we see DiCaprio's Ernest Buckhart sitting in a room where he previously sat, which then was made up of mostly Osage people, now almost completely White. This imagery bookending either side of the film as well as a rather vast timeline of multiple murders and vicious animus through banal faces is jarring. The beginning of the mysterious rot (wasting disease AKA White People) and extraction of the Osage wealth is already in effect, by the time Burkhart arrives, but his presence will at the very least make it personal for Mollie (A phenomenal Lily Gladstone) an Osage woman whose life becomes a living hell upon meeting Ernest Burkhart. Even the title then, most especially in imagery begins to take shape. Through Ernest’s uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro) and his conglomerate of ne’er do wells, ambitious boot lickers, psychopaths, and morons, we see the killers, we see the physical terror, the existential terror, the ecological terror, both malevolent and benign. “Friends” are shot in the head from behind as they commiserate or watch over their baby, and white overseers watch over and control Osage money, Osage spending, even though it's Osage money! No police are ever brought in, we repeatedly hear how “no one cares” about the deaths of Indians” a double scoop of apathy and mockery. The murders are sanctioned both explicitly and implicitly, the apathy comes standard. We watch as white supremacy slowly waves it's collective shadowy hand over the lives of these people and their land darkening everything in their path with blood, greed, cruelty, and more blood. We see clearly how so many of the lies then, connect directly to the systems now, with the lies now transformed into law, tradition, and possession. The first half of Killers of the Flower Moon is the best half of this movie precisely because of the choice to go in from the perspective of the wolves, to let us see what the wolves see. Scorcese's willingness to dive into and portray the animus, the audacity of the mendacity, and frankly the stupidity on display is so sharp and fresh as to take you there in the flesh, and it is frightening especially because the movie isn't afraid to show sternly, truthfully, and without romance the depravity of it. In combination with the fact that even while it is still being told from the perspective of the wolves, it is more multidirectional than the second half of the film, this trapeze act of empathy, and truth, storytelling, and capital is absolutely stunning. It moves in waves from one perspective to another, balancing Osage and White narratives of the seemingly innocuous interactions that doom an entire people. The small things matter here, like the inherent commentary in the words voiced by a self aware, but also still white co conspirator when Leo tries to recruit him into service of a dastardly act “Why you always trying to get someone like me to do your work?”. It is the half of the film I most enjoyed and found to be the most brilliant. We see and hear a lot more from Mollie in the first half or so. Her joys, her reserve, her intelligence. We see the town, more specifically, the portrayal of what the town was before much white involvement, the integrity of it; to show mother's that have favorites, secrets that are kept by good women, alcoholic sisters who are short tempered, and depressed men, searching for reasons to live, even while they are rich, and now themselves a petit bourgeois class amongst their ethnicity is an important counter to victimized cinema that not only paints victimhood as an identity, (which is also caricaturization) but also reinforces the idea that victims have to be perfect, saintly. The portrayal of the decimation of an entire group of people so callous and disturbing it appears as nothing more than the rising of the sun, in juxtaposition with the banality of tactics used to murder, the slow drip of genocidal mania and the consistent re-creation of it with almost no residual effect on those who schemed and plotted it is all too close to home as we witness what is going on with Israel and the US backed decimation of Palestine and Palestinian peoples. Scorsese is as plain as we've ever seen him even while still he maintains his visual audacity. He's quieter here, more restrained. He rarely intervenes, interjects, or distracts us with the watermarks of his signature style, and the movie benefits from that. He's concerned here with letting us see with as few frills as possible, the plain wretchedness and decay inherent in the white supremacist enterprise, and juxtaposes that lovingly with the hearts, humor, pain, philosophy and spirituality of the Osage community. Never once condescending to them, most especially the women. The best representation of the latter, the one I believe is going to stick with me for quite some time; is the death of Mollie's mother (Tantoo Cardinal ) and the tangential pause that Scorsese takes to honor her meeting with the ancestors. The simplicity of it, the unceremonious nature of it, the lack of invasive ego in it. It represents in a microcosm so much of why Scorsese is so beloved in the film community, and the legitimacy of Scorcese's intent and ability in his work and especially in this film.

Its a third of the way through and I am reminded of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's “Can the Subaltern Speak?” the conclusion of which arrives at the same place as I did at the end of this film. I was left considering all the ways in which the hegemony of power in storytelling as it concerns the medium of film - prevents all but a very privileged few the right to speak to their own pain in the making of this colonial project turned empire. The obstructions present in the film, are present in the reality outside of it, and in the making of it. A white perspective is nonetheless a white perspective, and no matter the level of mastery on display, (and the level here is arguably as high as it could go considering) it is still what historian Michel -Rolph Trouillot calls a silence. A sort of confluence of variables that assist in the obstruction and impediment of the ownership of the narrative from the POV of anyone but those in power, which then leaves a silencing that passes down through history. The second half of this movie - where it begins to turn into more of a police procedural - is an example of this, as the combination of variables like profit needs, the star of the movie, running time, for example, shift the perspective almost completely to that of the white man and men around Mollie and her people, leaving their voices only to be heard in suffering. It is a scale size model of the original trauma and as such is evidence of the cracks, crevices, nooks, and crannies created by the lack of precision, the lack of understanding, inherent in a perspective outside the veil of something one can never fully be immersed in or touch. This is the portion of the movie where if anything it would have benefited strongly from a shift straight into Mollie's perspective. When I say Mollie's perspective I do not mean change the story much, nor that she should have had all the scenes that they gave to Leonardo DiCaprio, it means that all the events that we are seeing should be seen from a perspective that clearly is watching the precedings with an invisible eye from the marginalized position, imagine for example what Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” would look like if a sequel took place right from that ending, fulfilling the promise of its conciets by being written and directed by indigenous people. In Killers, it's hard enough to gauge what it was about Ernest that Mollie fell so in love with in the first place, but by the second or third the procedural aspect will eschew experience for process and beats familiar to true crime. How the Osage and more specifically Mollie feels in all this is a bit obscured. The portions that would feed much of what she can see, observe, and what she can feel, as we saw with Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's earlier release “Oppenheimer” are all but gone. We should still be able to watch all that's going on with DiCaprio, but with a lean toward viewing from her perspective, whether by voiceover, suggestive camera eye, or exposition and language. The Osage people’s decimation is Mollie's. She is a microcosm of their collective pain. Dealt one heavy blow after another, as the people with whom she shared close and intimate communal space with are murdered one by one. The first half (which in actuality might be more like three-quarters) was adept at this. We have voice-overs from Mollie’s perspective, we sometimes see through her eyes as she makes her way through crowds of white faces in the midst of contemptible peering. We get moments spent with her family laughing , gossiping, sharing. The third act appears and we can see the walls closing in on the Ernest and Hale and it is at this point that it becomes most clear in the movie that the fluctuating struggle in the relationship between the movies need for Leonardo DiCaprio and DeNiro to be the star and the importance of the story and it's subjects POV are at cross purposes. DiCaprio's character and his cohorts all but erased the agency and existence of a people who had already been beset by numerous tragedies in their upheaval from their original homes to this place -the need for the procedural aspect to follow the line of criminals to their rightful end overshadows the alternative need to hear from those most affected. I found myself asking what is she thinking, through all this? I realize she is getting sicker and sicker but a few scenes from the perspective of her in that bed, a few scenes about her grief, a few scenes about where and when she can find reprieve to go on, joy to stand, would've increased the power of everything else for me. I wrote “She has to know something is up, but she is also dead in the center of it unknowingly, it puts her in the eye of the storm, ignorant and yet at least unconsciously aware of what is happening and being created as around her” but I had to guess at all of it. I didn't want answers, I just wanted scenes where she was either directly or indirectly was prioritized, or that her perspective of these events was being represented to a degree that would then allow me to make my own conclusions about what is happening. Mollie keeps getting sicker, these strange men keep insisting on strange amendments to her treatment, her husband is growing further and further apart, her forest is becoming a pile of ash, and as her husband makes fun of her culture and her heritage to get her to take the poison that is killing her, she comforts him. It is sickening to watch, not much less to recall, and by the end I left wanting so much more from her, especially in lieu of the revelation of her husband's consistent role in all this. I love the idea of the movie taking place from the eyes of the wolves as it concerns the enterprise and the scourge, but when we got to Ernest and Mollie I wanted that perspective benched. Watching a movie about Tina Turner from Ike's perspective is not appealing to me. Returning to Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” another movie that contends with the massive weight of destruction at the behest of imperial and colonial forces as executed by a useful idiot - we see how all these events crashed and honed in on Oppenheimer, as it assails his role in it. As I wrote before in my piece on that film, there is a visceral anger directed at Robert, one that finds voice in the character of Emily Blunt. Here our anger finds no voice, and Mollie doesn't either. Can the Subaltern Speak? We should have been made to feel her world getting smaller as so many of these murders were of direct family members. Made to live in the amount of grief she had to be going through at that moment at that time, in the same way we are made to live in Oppenheimer’s persecution, shame and guilt, in Ernest’s shame and guilt? It is not that these things are completely erased or non-existent within the film it is that they are from the distanced, retracted, and reductive perspective of an outsider, which cannot be helped for the most part, and what parts can, are part of the inherent flaws of the ask.

In those movies about infections -and as a consequence zombies, - we are engaged in those films from the perspective of those who are besieged. The Mist, The Fog, the blood transfers, they corrode, corrupt, cause decay, destroy and we watch how those left behind cope. I don't see those stories as being much different from this. The effects of white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, consumerism are much like what is depicted in those films. It is well documented many of them are commenting thematically on those very subjects. John Carpenter’s “The Fog” is pretty easily framed as one such commentary with its meditations on the costs of genocide, it's insistence on accountability and it's depiction of how the denizens and edifices benefitted both then and now from barbarity in a nearly all white town. It too is from the perspective of the wolves as they are being attacked by the avatars of their ancestral harm and their collective guilt. These stories and this story are similar in their tale of devastation. One day you're at home cuddling with your husband and the next your entire family is dead and so is the entire community from which you lived from which you had formed bonds and connected with folks and we see what the effect of that is on those who are left over, (That is the plot for Dawn of the Dead by the way) my point being, even though the subject matter is similar, these films center the besieged, not the horde, the besieged are understood to be universal, the “other” is the horde. What happens when you depict the horde and the horde is the storyteller? Are they the horde if they are the storytellers? Never mind that the size and proportion of white guilt is an obstruction to their ability to see fully the ways in which they have harmed irreparably the peace and agency of an entire ecosystem and people, there is also the natural obstructions created by history and the lack of on the part of those who have had history imposed upon them. If the idea is to see us, hear us, feel us, as every bit the equal of all peoples - to reiterate our position as both one and “other”, depicting truthfully the savagery of the those who labeled others “savages” is noble, and real, and so too is depicting the history of those who were silenced both before and after and in the between. Depicting the anger, the frustration, the intimate pleasures of our existence apart from the tragedy of our oppression. In that spirit the moral complexity of a man knowingly aiding a genocidal act cannot be so lopsidedly intertwined with the anxieties of the woman who lives with it, and whatever the reasons behind the decision it takes a distant, distant, distant second to my supreme interest in any aspect of what Mollie's inner life must’ve been at these points in her life, especially considering what Lily Gladstone is doing in this movie with her performance. It should not be left to the eyes of Lily Gladstone only, and in fits and starts to give us clues as to her interiority. Mollie is not yet bed ridden, she's not the ghost of herself she eventually becomes, but the sickness has clearly taken effect, and at this point in my mind, I asked “What are her dreams like now?” When she's alone with nothing but her grief, her thoughts, her racing mind, what does she see?…Is it just the owl when it comes for her life?”. “When it crosses her mind that her husband might be apart of this, what does that feel like for her?” “What is she wrestling with” What about her, what about her, what about her, go back to her”. One of the most vivid representations of this happened near the end of the movie when their child dies. We get a few seconds of Molly leaning over her child, but when Ernest finds out we linger, we sit with how deeply this hurts and affects him. It's a gut punch of a scene that DiCaprio acts without a single shred of ego or protection, and it lays bare the fallout of his avarice and deceptions, including ones of the self, but it was all about him, the only place with which Scorcese and DiCaprio could seemingly find success in putting this story together was in the relationship between Ernest and Mollie, so why does it feel like Ernest story, not theirs? Scorcese in a wonderful interview with critic luminary Richard Brody talks about the trouble he had getting into this story, and ultimately it is Leo who finds it in the relationship between Ernest and Mollie, yet that relationship isn't exactly detailed, nor followed intently. Now, the fact that “they were in Love” is something uttered by the descendants of Burkhart to Scorcese in the process of finding the story is instructional as it is, but there is also the fact that the core parts of strictly-on-paper story telling is mostly taking place without the aid of the Osage people of today and those facts obscure and hazy in the first three quarters of the film, become transparent in the final portion. Ernest’s righteousness at the end, his moral wrestling, and his supposed befuddlement and reckoning at the fact that he has played a knowingly active role in eviscerating his life, and the life of the woman whom he claimed to love being accepted as genuine seemingly without question is a perfect representation of why we talk so much about giving these kinds of opportunities to those who have a direct cultural understanding of them. The idea should not be that no one of any identity but the identity being represented should be able to tell these stories, but simply that these stories are BEST told when told by those who share the cultural markers and identity around it, and that the real story is in the spaces and areas in between and outside of rigid concepts like righteousness and morality (the latter of which I'm in no way accusing Scorcese of pandering to). That it's best when we speak, because when it's us we don't have to think about perspective we are it. You're asking people outside of those communities to do something that is foreign to them, especially if those people are part of the fabric of the group that maintains hegemony and power through it. Simply stating that fact should not be controversial, but I have a sense that it will become controversial once this movie starts making its rounds. Especially those for whom it's easy to kick the can down the road to some magical, but unspecified time in the future where we will be able to tell our own stories. It's not Scorsese's fault that white supremacy is so inextricable from our institutions that it makes telling stories about it from the POV of the oppressed feel near impossible, but it nonetheless comes with all the accoutrements that come with being considered in the fabric of whiteness. The fact that he is interested in this story, the fact that he dedicated what had to be considerable time and energy to get it out there, and to make sure that it was told in a way that maintains such overall integrity in its depiction of visceral cruelty in such veracious detail should be commended, and highly, but it should also be consistently and constantly tied to the “why” behind it. The idea that Hollywood thinks or will only allow him to be the one in the first place. If we do not (as a recent article explained by way of data and experience) accept that white leads are vital to a movie selling, then why accept that white directors or white writers are needed? Scorsese who has worked long enough as a white man, who is mastered as a craftsman and trusted as selling point is so as a result of opportunities he received(s) in part because he's an artistic genius and in part because he's white. Who can sell, what can sell, cannot be left to the collective racist feelings of Hollywood executives unchallenged, even when the chosen champion is arguably our greatest living director, and a champion of all perspectives of cinema from his own individual perspective. Hollywood executives insistence that these stories need a white lead, or white storyteller in order to bring people to the theaters is a re-creation of the racist principles that created the incident of the subject matter and the silence of that event that followed. By parroting the talking points of the white supremacist industry that upholds the idea that the story of the “othered” is not something people want to see, we uphold them ourselves, and that is not the job of the critic. As it pertains to Scorcese's “Killers of the flower Moon” we are left with the devastation, with the rot, the audacity, the cruelty, the intransigence of whiteness, white people, colonialism, capitalism, and westward expansion, told with the genius that only Scorcese can bring, the force multiplier in DiCaprio's depraved and pathetic interpretation, and Lily Gladstone’s once in a lifetime ode to the power of the eye. Once again from the perspective of the wolves. It is a reckoning indeed, but not the reckoning I was looking for or needed.

Film Diary: “Hard Times”, Comradery in Survival.

Almost everything is almost ugly, the clothes, the city, the cars, the people, even our protagonist. There's a poetry, a beauty, singing underneath them all though in their desire to be better than what society gives them as derelict people in the margins; poor, women, or criminal. Bronson is part homely, part silver fox, as as some say “All man”…The movie is too for that matter. Walter Hill has never had much time for women in his movies and I don't know that that's fine, but that's him and he doesn't shy away from it, or try to pretend he has much to offer in that realm, even though at times he really does. My point is “Hard Times” looks and feels exactly like that. The streets are worn, the buildings are ratty and tattered, most things are green or brown. The people are cheats, louses, addicts, fighters, and other forms of societies supposed ne’er do wells. A line that sticks is “Some people are born to fail and some have it thrust upon them”. The way it's put forth is as a statement of fact, but if we accept it as such, (at least for this movie) we might ask who in this movie was fated as such, and who has had it thrust upon them, but even more important, is to ask who the film empathizes with of the born to fail, and thrust upon. The answer provided in the narrative is very clearly both. You might say that James Coburn's glorified pimp “Speed” is the identifiable born to fail. You might say Strother Martin’s “Poe” is the one that had it thrust upon him, or you might say it's Bronson’s “Chaney. Doesn't matter, they all have both, and they are all deemed worthy of good fortune, good will, respect, and community. It's the foundation of this movies heart, for as ugly and mean and cold as this movie can be, on the surface it has a very strong vein of warmth underneath it in the form of male comraderie and brotherhood as all Hill films do. The films final act is the ultimate reveal. These three temporary fellow travelers one of whom almost discarded Chaney once he wouldn't save him from his predilection towards gambling, who would've pimped him into the ground unintentionally given his predilection and selfishness, end their dealings with a gift from Bronson. A generous bounty considering they deserved nothing, but in this movie deserves has nothing to do with it. The men who lose to Bronson don't lose to Bronson because they're bad guys, they lose because they're not fighting with what he's fighting with; a strong sense of self. They find their worth in the fighting, in the work, in the money, Bronson knows his exist well outside of it and he's willing to fight merely as an extension of it. One man named “Jim Henry” (Robert Tessier) is so much the case of a sense of worth trapped in your work, that he seems to become smaller after he loses to Bronson. The movie (again like all Hill’s movies) is not interested in morality in an unjust and many times unlawful world. Hill is a working class director and his characters are the underclasses. They are guided by individual codes and that they stay true to them is the mark of righteousness, not objective blind obedience to authority and those who would trample them. This movie is as underground as Denis Leary in Demolition Man. It feels subterranean and it deals with subterranean people. Those unseen, uncatered to, left to fend for themselves anyway they can. They all only want to survive and Hill finds - as any great storyteller - a profound nobility in the will to survive, and it shows whether it's Nolte's “Jack Kates” keeping Murphy's “Reggie Hammond's” stolen money from him despite knowing it's stolen in 48 hrs, or the mutual respect between “The Warriors” and “The Riffs” or in this case between Chaney and his temporary partners, Hill always seems to suggest that there is honor amongst thieves, because ultimately they're just trying to survive, and that is honorable.

OPPENHEIMER: A Divine Allegory on the Terrors of Neutrality.

There is a point in “Oppenheimer” Christopher Nolan’s treatise on not just the creator of the atom bomb but the confluence of events that led him to his fate as the “Father of the atom bomb”, where you realize Nolan is most definitely not doing a movie about white guilt, or a three hour bit of revisionist history with the hope that we all think kinder of the man. It comes about midway through the movie when one of the great loves of Oppenheimer’s life dies, and Oppenheimer (or “Oppy” as his friends call him) seeks solace to drown himself in guilt. His wife ( a rattlingly fantastic Emily Blunt) finds him off in the woods folded up like a baby in the cold ground of a the land he is in the midst of destroying and immediately runs over to grab him. What one would expect here, what usually follows- a pep talk from the wife who understands his genius, a loving confidence boost from the woman that acts as a kickstand in the mans moments of weakness - is not what's said, instead we get a viscerally livid Emily Blunt all but slapping him before she utters the magic words “You do not get to commit sin and make us feel sorry for you”. It is arguably the thesis of the film, and it was at this exact moment that what had only been hinted at, what felt like it could go either way, became definitive in a movie about a man that was anything but.

Nolan's film jumps from one location to another, from one room to another, from one conversation to another, sometimes in the same conversation. The imagery shifts perspective, shifts time, and is not as aesthetically pleasing as his previous works. Its rough work and craft, not rough as in rough draft, rough as in the sound and feel is abrasive and disruptive. The cuts and edits are part and parcel of the movies anxiety, its frustration. The sound on occasion impedes upon one's ability to hear what it is people are saying, furthering it's appeals to a sense of neglect. Nolan, who famously placed the quote “You should feel it rather than understand it” takes that maxim and uses it to it's most successful effect to date, because it not only lives in service of story but in service of perspective. This is not fully or only from Oppenheimer’s perspective , this is also for the benefit of ours. The imagery, the editing, the sound, the amount of characters in the movie all work in concert to provide this feeling of anxiety, of scattered-ness, inexactitude, and chaos, the fragments of which eventually become angrier and angrier until they explode. There is anger at the lack of concern for what seemed obvious, anger at the lack of focus and the clear blind spots that extend out from it. Anger at the glee of the American military industrial complex to dive in and take advantage of a power they had no business wielding with no conscious about the suffering it may inflict. Several times throughout this film I could feel that anger being transformed into those famous words that flung forth from Dr. Ian Malcolm’s mouth in “Jurassic Park”; “You were so concerned with whether you could, you never stopped to think whether you should”. Nolan, a director largely thought to be something akin to apolitical for the first time feels like somebody who is properly taking a stand on his subject matter, and that stand is one that is searingly frustrated with a man who wouldn't take one.

Nolan's depiction of Oppenheimer is as a man with a mind that could never seem to be in one place at one time, going from singular focus, (Preoccupation with getting the bomb done before the Nazis in order to stop them from possibly annihilating the world ) to one of almost no focus at all, (Most of what happens at Los Alamos) constantly adding more and more to his plate when focus was needed, or singularly focused on one task when he needed to be multi tasking. Several times we see or hear some version of the line “You're spreading yourself too thin”, and Murphy makes sure it shows in his body, in his speech, and in his movement. As the film goes on this turns into something more frightening, more terrifying, as we start to see Oppenheimer as a man who mistakes integrity for righteousness to a callous and cruel degree, and then to a destructive one. Moments when he should take a stand for one woman or the other in his life, he takes a stand for neither. Oppenheimer won't take his eye off the ball, except to save those who in the end wished him the worst. He'll fight for Teller (Benny Safdie) and stomp to get Bohr (Kenneth Branaugh) but can barely be bothered to do the least with the family he made, or the woman who asked only that when she need him every once in awhile, he be there. Moments where he should take a clear stand on his communist-ish principles he teeters back and forth between that and soft jingoism. On one occasion earlier in the movie his friend Isaac Isidor Rabbi (David Krumholtz) finds him in the office in Los Alamos and notices that he has on a military uniform. Isidor is quick to remind Oppenheimer that he is a scientist and that that is his community, so he should take the uniform off and be that, but this reminder only serves to reinforce the movies suggestion that Oppenheimer is a man who too many times can be moved from one position to the next, flopping around like some dead fish on searing ground hoping to be saved. He is a man apart, apart from social allegiances to his friends and lovers, apart from political allegiance to his country’s definitive social system (capitalism) and apart from his birthrights ethno-religion. When Einstein tells Oppenheimer “If your country doesn't love you, then you should tell them to go to hell”. Oppenheimer refuses, replying “I love my country”, but loving someone or something in no way means that you should tolerate such abuse as he has already received by the time this scene arrives, and as many true patriots like W.E.B. Dubois have remarked, loving your country is critically and sometimes harshly reprimanding it, it's just another example of Oppenheimer taking a principled stand when he should be taking an ethical one.

In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy he notes a specific kind of hell for those whom he was told “Were not rebels, nor faithful to their God”. He asks “What is it master that oppresses these souls compelling them to wail so loud” His guide answers: “I shall tell you in a few words. Those who are here can place no hope in death and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other fate. The world will let no fame of theirs endure, both justice and compassion must disdain them, let us not talk of them but look and pass”. “The world will let no fame of theirs endure, justice and compassion must disdain them”. This is Oppenheimer's hell, and in the end, Oppenheimer is a tragedy of the distracted man who in his obsessions and passions of principle, and inability to stand tall when it mattered most became egregiously short sighted, when he needed foresight. The “tragedy” not of the man himself - which might breed sympathy or martyrdom - but a tragedy of what extended out from that folly. What he created and the events that rumbled and shook his quiet confidence in who he was and in what he was doing to pieces, and from there the world that sprung up out of the ashes of it. Oppenheimer's neglect ended up causing two massacres if not a third, killing hundreds of thousands of people in one fell swoop, causing another mass of people to suffer with varying illnesses for generations. Through the rumbling stomping sounds of Ludwig Göransson’s score, the cold aesthetic grotesque beauty in Hoyte Van Hoytema’s photography, the imagined bodies he steps in, the kangaroo trial he endures, the non stop boiling vexation created by those who saw it coming a mile away, and the claustrophobic guilt of Oppenheimer once he finally came to see what was so obvious to those around him, there can be no other conclusion, but that this film is viscerally angry at Oppenheimer, while in recognition, that not only was he not alone, but was not fairly treated, even as he got what he karmically earned. In this sense “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” is not an opportunity to whip up a sense of mourning, nor a finger wag, but a stern clear eyed warning of the terrors of any form of neutrality when the time calls for a definitive stand… In essence, If you stand for nothing, you fall for anything, and anything in this case was a fall into the catastrophic devastation of man and world.

They Killed Tyrone : How it Happens is the Point.

There is a tendency today to watch movies through almost a purely political/moralistic lens. To judge a movie not based on its storytelling merits and attributes, but on the lessons it provides, the strength of them, and subsequently their morality, but messages are a consequence of stories, not the point of them. The power of stories is never primarily concerned with messaging, it's concerned with how they are transported. Newcomer Juel Taylor’s fun but poignant Sci Fi flick “They Cloned Tyrone” is such a story, and it's a great story. Two things define Taylors film; experience and perception. More specific to the movie, the Black experience in a racist patriarchal capitalist state and as a result of, our perception of ourselves and of our realities all of which have at the very least two ways of being seen, but this is not new to nay of us. The power is in the inventiveness, the creativity of the visuals, in the way we receive these messages, and that the audience is treated to this in the same way that the characters in the movie are, realizing our perception of things is off in real time along with the characters in the movie. Experiencing the terrors and the joys right along with them.

We are initially introduced to the small urban area of “Glen” and all its colorful denizens and various pit stops where these citizens engage in commerce or fellowship, legal and illegal activities, and work. It is presented as a reality, until it is not, but even as it's being presented as reality there are signs that something is off. Sometimes it's the silly titles to the names of businesses like the liquor store called “Got Dranks”. Sometimes it's in the performance of a character like John Boyega’s “Fontaine”, who carries in his performance a certain sadness that alludes to something not quite being right, something beyond what we are seeing. Sometimes it's in things exterior from the context of what's happening inside the film like the production design whether it be the cinematography which is eerie and all together real and unreal at the same time, or the clothing which is both lavish and gawdy. As we begin, Fontaine is looking for a drug dealer who appears to be selling on his turf. He pays a young boy to find this person, hunts him down and runs him over with his car. His various hustles for the day not finished, he then pays a sex worker to find a pimp named “Slick Charles” (A riotous Jamie Foxx) who owes him money, where we first meet Teyonah Parrish’s delightful “Yo-Yo” a sex worker with ambitions to be more, but his reality and ours is interrupted when he is suddenly shot by the very same drug dealer whom he had run over earlier that day. Things from here begin to take on double meaning and serve double purposes as well as perceptions.

The local liquor store is no longer just a pit stop for those who work (and those who don't) to commiserate and share the day's gossip, it is also one of a few strategically selected destinations where the cities inhabitants are being made compliant by way of imbibing (the liquor store), eating, (local fast food chicken chain) or congregating in worship (The church). The homeless man who sits out in front of the liquor store is not what he seems either. The semi slurred incoherent sentences that charismatically slide from off his tongue are revealed to be actual clues as to what's going on, as the movie insinuates, this is a Nancy Drew mystery by way of the hood. About a quarter of the way through the movie as Fontaine is starting to unravel the threads of this conspiracy, the old man gives them a clue as to where to go next. “The big man will point the way everytime" he says, referring to God, this too has double meaning; there is the spiritual sense wherein for those who believe in God recognize he acts as a compass many times providing answers that they need for a life that has been trouble some and burdensome and filled with terror since we arrived in this American experiment, but also it has a more literal connotation pertaining to a picture of Jesus inside the local church where his hand points directly to the secret entry way to the underground lab beneath their town. This is a consistent and constant theme within the film, whether it's in word like, “the trap” as an actual trap, or from one context to another like when Yo-Yo and Slick Charles make fun of Fontaine's predicament telling him he is both dead and not, here and not here.

The centerpiece of the film comes pretty much midway in the film when we are introduced to one of the major operatives behind this experiment, and the conspiracy that authorizes it, (which is also meant to be a stand-in for the American experience) recalling such films as “Undercover Brother”, “Get Out”, and “Black Dynamite”. In a wonderfully spirited performance, Kiefer Sutherland’s nameless character gives the characters a choice (which is really an ultimatum) die or run with the game, even as they know the score. When Sutherland is threatened by Yo-Yo he immediately shouts a word that instantly sends Fontaine into a trance where his body and mind now belong to Sutherland and he is force to act out anything that's Sutherland commands him to do. This is the most terrifying this movie gets. It is an evocation of the horror of possession, and invites parallels to Dracula, and zombification, in movies like “Sugar Hill” (1974) and in the case of possession “JD’s Revenge” (1976). It is through the visceral nature of watching Fontaine and Slick Charles eyes as they are commanded to either murder a friend or stand by and watch, each powerless to help his friend - that we the audience are transported to similar feelings and experiences of our own under the state. This is not real, and it is just distant enough and wild enough that it isn't traumatic or overbearing, but it simulates the experience well. Thing is though, they do have an actual choice and the recognition of this in the film begins the revolution. The pathos and poignancy of this film lies in this particular section when Fontaine grieving what he feels is a preordained life, resigns himself to his fate. Just after the big reveal of the entire operation Yo-Yo comes back to Fontaine’s place to galvanize him for a fight, but Fontaine wants no parts of it. Yo-Yo says “This sh** is bigger than you, it's bigger than me, it's your f***in home”. Fontaine's response is egregiously despondent, “Who gives a f***, this ain't no f***in community, it's just a bunch of broke-ass niggas with nowhere else to go”. Yo-Yo’s physical/hierarchal position vs her political position within this movie despite experiencing the exact same woes and some more-so than her male counterparts is a whole nother piece, but I digress. The key to this scene is that Fontaine's experience and his revelatory peek into his reality has in this moment dictated his perception of himself. His predicament is out of his control, so in his mind he might as well play it out and play it out he does, day in and day out. Again while the event /experience that causes this melancholia -as -living is outlandish, the actions themselves are the sad state of not only his reality but many of our own.

Fontaine wallows in his sadness, until he runs into the same child who at the beginning scouted out the drug dealer for him. Despite the fact that the child acts more grown than he is out of survival instinct, Fontaine sees in him innocence, and is reminded of his past and subsequently of a future. He is reminded that even with all that he knows and even with all that's going on, all the terror, all the violence, all the cruelty, that there are still joys to be found and that even though his humanity has literally been stolen from him, he is human nonetheless and that he deserves to live, not just survive. It is interesting then that the final boss of this particular film (it seems pretty clear they're setting up for the possibility of a sequel) is the original version of himself. It says that in order to move forward Fontaine is going to have to kill the version of himself that sees no hope, that is resigned to his fate and acts thusly. To expel the part of him that having experienced the pain, having experienced the trauma, having experienced the feeling of inevitable failure, had decided it's better to reign in hell than to serve in it and that “assimilation is better than annihilation”, rather than it's better to do away with hell all together.

Watching this film or any film to receive a poignant message is not wrong in and of itself, its simply misguided . Not only does it misunderstand where the power of stories resides, but its a reckless and immature understanding of the film industries position within the same capitalist/racist/patriarchal state, and the precarious position it places them in as moral vehicles. They Cloned Tyrone is not a great movie because it tells the right or wrong message, (it is of course arguable whether that message is terrible, banal, or great) it's a great movie because it invites us to consider our experience through a number of inventive, thoughtful, devices and images, through a contextual historical understanding of the genres it employs to do so, and through it's ability to make us laugh, cry, or become angry through it all, cloning just just Tyrone but the communal experience of living here in this country in this time, and more specifically in the various hoods of America.

“You People” is Made by and for the Wrong People.

I had been here before. I knew the road well. “Coming to America 2” as a viewing experience bordered on trauma. It was like someone bringing a loved one back to life just to get me to watch them wither and crumble away for two hours in front of my eyes. Pound for pound one of the absolute funniest movies of all time was drained of every bit of its essence, of its physicality, of its variety of personalities, and of its own personality. I had watched “Black-ish” and grown tired and weary of it because its commentary was flat when it wasn't shallow and most times it was both. I've never been a big fan of Jonah Hill's brand of comedy and interracial romance as portrayed in film and television today is the bane of my existence, and Barris is the King of that domain, so I really should have known not to believe that Eddie Murphy, nor Nia Long could save this movie from it's creator, because while his actors may have the range, Kenya Barris does not.

The plot of Barris’s latest “You People” is cut and dry. Jonah Hill's character Ezra is looking for love but can't seem to find it. Lauren London plays Amira, an up and coming costume designer whose most recent relationship was broken off because she felt as though her ex wasn't really seeing her and only said things that “he thought she wanted to hear”. Ezra's close black friend, (his ONLY black friend in the movie) makes the observation that she's “Never seen a man that desperate to be in a relationship, but what that could mean or say about Ezra is never addressed in his budding relationship with Amira. Neither is his relationship with Hip Hop housed within any sort of meaningful critique of the history of cultural appropriation within the culture. A white male with exactly one black friend, two well intentioned but still racist parents and a couple racist friends is never questioned within the context of the movie about his bonafides, or whether or not his own blindspots play a role in the couples future troubles. If “You People” had positioned itself as a light but raunchy romp that only seeks to have fun with the subject I would question why, but still deal with it on these terms, but if there is any doubt this movie wants to say something to you its finale -from London’s checking of Julia Louise Dreyfus, to Eddie Murphy’s mea culpa- cements that it is indeed. The fact that Ezra spends the entire movie repeating the exact same sin as Amira’s ex is also never brought into play, despite the fact that he takes it a step further by way of hyperbolic obvious lies because he doesn't just want to say he doesn't know about a subject or that he's never done or experienced it, many of which he does because he thinks its what they want to hear and wants to please both Amira and her father Akbar (Murphy). In this movie arcs become dead ends, commentary becomes a cul-de-sac. I don't think “You People” is aiming for Oscars so this is not about having them aim for a comedy the likes of “Doctor Strangelove”. I'm not even asking for Mel Brooks “Blazing Saddles” even though that movie too is hilarious and has some scathing commentary for white people. I'm asking for “Meet the Fockers”, or “Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins”. My biggest issue with “You People” is not just the fact that it's commentary is as basic and wrong headed as it can get, it is also that nothing he’s saying here is at all new or fresh, in fact its very very stale. It is that what could be an insightful, incisive, hilarious but honest look at what it means to date interracially in 2023 is ditched for a farce that illustrates the limitations of Barris’s mind and black representation. A farce in which its main joke is the 2023 equivalent of Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s Ebony and Ivory lyric “We all know that people are the same wherever you go there is good and bad in ev'ryone”. Arguably worse still its just not executed well. The characters are not characters they're just props for the punchlines, it could be argued they are the punchlines. Jonah Hill and Lauren London aren't characters, their pawns in Barris’s Green Book version of romance. Eddie Murphy’s Akbar (despite a laudable effort from Murphy to create one) doesn't have characteristics he is a caricature, there is nothing really there outside of the fact that he is a member of the Nation of Islam and all the jokes extend forth from the fact that he is a member of the Nation of Islam. Nia Long’s character (in a completely thankless role) can only be described as “Wife of a member of the nation of Islam. Barris pits those extremely vague characterizations against the other in Duchovny’s and Dreyfus’s Jewish “White People” and we get some comedy fireworks, but a struck match of a romance and dumb racial commentary.

By comparison 2004's “Meet the Fockers” is a far superior example of how to employ this type of familial comedy in writing and how important drawing out believable people helps reinforce all the other aspects of the film. Bernie and Rozalin Cohen (Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand) are exaggerations of real people grounded in a specificity that contains all kinds of details. The fact that the Fockers referred to their home as “Focker Isle” on a sign posted outside their home is an example of one of those tiny but informative details. That Bernie erected a small shrine to all of his sons small victories is another. That shrine represents an important and very endearing detail of Bernie's form of love towards his son which is in direct contrast to the very rigid, literal, authoritative, pass/fail style of DeNiro's Jack Byrnes. The laugh that later comes from Jack Burns line “I've never seen such a celebration of mediocrity” comes from the specificity of Jack Burns worldview, and subsequently so too does any commentary that one might derive from this particular character. There's none of this kind of character building or world building in “You people”. Eddie Murphy’s Akbar Mohammed doesn't want his daughter with Ezra because he's not black, why does that matter to Akbar? ..the only thing I can derive from the movie is because Akbar is a member of NOI. All the real reasons black people have to be leery of interracial dating are left unexplored which ultimately leaves the viewer with only one real summation; that it is as hard for white people in black spaces as it is us in white spaces. Which may be the aspect of the film that grated on me the most because it's by and large not true. Black people do not make it anywhere near as tough for white people to be in our spaces as they do us, and that includes our familial settings. We are far more likely to to be incredibly gracious in front of white folks even if on the inside we have something more to say. That is in no way to suggest that we are docile or anything of the sort, but that is to say that the kind of situations that are created in “You People” where black people like Akbar are the instigators of issues with white folks is mostly a fantasy and one I don't see the point of engaging in even for comedy. This is one of the rare occasions I found myself asking that ever-present online question “Who is this for?”

Following the lead of a film that is so reductive in its wisdom about just about anything from character, to romance, to racial commentary I'd like to give some reductive wisdom of my own. If no one can imagine or even desire to see you're two leads fu****g in your romantic comedy it's already in trouble. Jonah Hill is to put it kindly nobody's romantic lead. It's not about aesthetics, it's about energy and he just doesn't have it. Jonah Hill is not a particularly introspective actor, I don't mean he's not an introspective person he's just not an introspective actor. There's very little he gives to us that comes from the inside. Like alot of funny people, his comedy acts as a buffer to letting you know anything real about him, unlike many of the people that came before him (like Eddie Murphy) Hill’s dramatic turns have been largely uneffecting, this effects the people that he plays, so most of the time when he's played great characters it's been the writing/direction that put him in the position to use the traits and skills that he does have in a way that works around the circuitry and blockages that he has in the way of giving any insight to what he's doing and why he's doing it (think what the Winter/ Scorsese combination does for him in WOWS). To fall in love with men on screen you have to give us the keys to who that person might be and you got to give us the keys a little bit to who you are, true TRUE vulnerability is key. Barris is not the kind of writer or director to illustrate what the actor cant see, and he also doesn't seem to understand romance or how it works at all, save through banter and hijinks. In the meet-cute of the movie Ezra meets Amira when he mistakenly believes she's an Uber driver. Magically through Kenya's writing it just happens to be that Ezra wasn't making an unconsciously biased decision based on expectations, but was himself the victim of an absolutely magical set of circumstances because there was a woman who looked exactly like her, who drove her exact car, who was due to pick him up at this exact time as she was parked out there to get directions. When the issue is seen for what it is and Ezra says that he can show Amira where she needs to go as a way to make up for this incident, Barris cuts the scene right there. Its a head scratching choice, because in actuality that would be the place to introduce us to the beginning inklings of what Amira may see in Ezra. Left as is are we to assume that an almost “racism” was so cute that she decided a date was next?… Because there was nothing there to suggest ANY connection and yet the very next scene she announces to her brother they’re meeting for lunch . When they meet there is again little in the way of any real connection between these two. A few words are exchanged and there’s a montage that shows their connection not any actual exchanges.

Everything that makes James L Brooks 1997 hit “As Good As it Gets” memorable “You make me want to be a better man” line so grand extends out from the very real work put into showing how these people connected in the first place, and that from building very real, three dimensional characters to fill out the world of the movie from Ivan Reitman’s charming doctor to Skeet Ulrich’s sketchy hustler. We collectively as an audience connect to Nicholson's statement because we've seen it throughout the movie. We've watched his evolution so it means something. We also know what it means to Helen in the context of how unpredictable it is to determine what might come out of this man's mouth and and how surprising it must have been to hear something this genuinely sweet and endearing even if in a certain context its a little bit problematic. To be fair, “You people” is not without its charms; the David Duchovny piano scene will fold anyone into hearty belly laughter. Lauren London's monologue to Julia Louise-Dreyfus is a potent commentary, (its also the only good one) Mike Epps and others are funny as hell in their cameo like roles, and Eddie Murphy, Nia Long, Julia Louise-Dreyfus, and David Duchovny are a delight the entire movie, but the movie-goer shouldn't be asked to survive by the breadcrumbs of talented actors trying to scratch together a meal on their skill and one good monologue alone. Worst of all it's quite jolting and telling to see a movie written and directed by a black man that feels so easily figures to be one written and directed by a white man. “The white boy who deeply understands black culture, but rejected by a form of reverse racism”, the “funny black gay friend”, the “good white people and the bad white people”, the “I don't see color I just see a human being” bow on top. It's 2023 we shouldn't be accepting these kinds of films from White creators and it doesn't make it any different for me that this one happens to be black with a white friend on tow. It's just further representation of the fact that all representation isn't good representation. Exemplified by the fact that Kenya Barris’s shows and films don't really get us, and mostly exist to give white people palatable content about black people for a profit.

The “Last of Us” is not the first good video game adaptation, it's just the first to believe in them.

I'm not interested in discussing the best video game adaptations over the years. It bores me and these things often turn into hyperbolic slugfests. As with many things video game adaptations have been more successful than some people give them and as bad as some others say. What I am interested in discussing is why with just one episode in I feel comfortable saying that HBO’s stab at video game adaptations “The Last of Us” is so obviously in love with the craft placed in the source material that it places the exact same amount into it's version. Relying on the power of the story not the property to propel istelf into greatness. There have most certainly been good video game adaptations. Mortal Kombat, (1995) Resident Evil and it's immediate sequel, Jolie's Tomb Raider films, and Silent Hill, are all examples of solid cinema, Street Fighter II: The Animated movie is a great adaptation, a bonafide classic that deserves it's laurels, but outside of that, all video game adaptations up until this point have approached these stories with either a philosophy or form of execution that is focused on celebrating the adaptation itself rather than the story.

The first cinematic adaptation of a video game was 1993's “Super Mario Bros”. It made sense for the first video game to have mega blockbuster success to be the first video game to be made into a blockbuster. The movie is truly it's own thing; a bizarro, surreal LSD-like trip into a grimey sewer textured world befitting a game where a plumber used pipes inter-dimensionally to save a princess from a prehistoric turtle. The problem was that Super Mario Bros the video game was not story driven it was an action-driven game. There just wasn't much there to make an entire movie out of, which in and of itself tells on the core motivation for making the movie. Street Fighter (the 1994 live action film) is a dumpster fire, from it's direction to its story, to its absymal casting, save for Raul Julia and JCVD. 95’s Mortal Kombat is a hoot, but it's one of the worst acted adaptations ever and especially so when it tried for heart. Everything about Mortal Kombat’s aesthetics and story suggested no one really cared about story they just wanted to give the fans what they want (Not the worst idea by the way, just not the best). By the time we got to the Jolie and Alicia Vikander led Tomb Raider's, video game storytelling had advanced by leaps and bounds, many of them borrowing from movies. The Tomb Raider films thusly got right Laura Croft's Indiana Jones-like ancestry, but the sentiment and pacing always betrayed it's intentions to add depth. Silent Hill definitely tried with an opening that sought to set up the tightness of it's characters, but the main three's relationship (Father, Mother, Daughter) feels sterile and clinical. It wasn't until it got to the relationship between the spectre and her original mother that a genuine flicker of emotion appeared to compliment and contrast it's savagely brilliant visuals.

“The Last of Us” doesnt seem concerned with selling us on the celebration of it's being a live action adaptation. It seems confident in the power of that story being expressed through a medium that allows it to do different things, and allow that to reinforce just how good this story was. You can start with its opening, which unlike Mortal Kombat doesn't begin with techno music screaming its name, while various popular phrases from the game are spoken out over the credits. Mortal Kombat wanted you to know that you are now sitting down and watching the “live-action” adaptation of your favorite video game…It shouldn't have needed to. The Last of Us instead opens with an unnervingly eerie setup about the apocalyptic possibilities of fungi, (which of course turns out to be true) which sets tone, mood, and the embers which will become the spreading flames of the story. Immediately after that it centers the bond between it's lead Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Sarah, (Nico Parker) and it's not that it centers the emotional bonds first that's necessarily new, it's how well it executes them that sets it's apart as a video game adaptation. There's a loving attention and care put into this world that exists before we even get to the “present” from within the story. My favorite example of this came about a quarter of the way into the episode when Sarah takes her father Joel's watch to go get fixed (this watch has some importance and bearing on the story going forward but we're not getting into that) in town. When the (extremely well casted) watch repairman announces the price to repair the watch she is taken aback. The watch repairman, says “Twenty” she says “Thats it?” He responds “Okay Thirty”. She says “Twenty’s good”. The repairman lets her know that he'll get on it right away but only a few minutes later his wife comes rushing in exclaiming that they must close the shop and he has to stop his work right now. She moves over to Sarah let her know that unfortunately he will not be able to finish, he exclaims immediately “I'm already finished”. On the surface this may not seem like much, but there are layers of storytelling happening in this very small scene. It serves as set up for an aspect of connection as it pertains to Joel's trauma, and for further foreshadowing the event. It makes a three dimensional character of the repairman by showing us his attitude in dedication to his job, his efficiency, his integrity ( he doesn't upsell her) and his relationship with his wife. It reinforces the dimensions of the town through that ever present sense of intimacy amongst inhabitants in stories with mythological small towns or suburbs like this. Through this one very small scene you're getting a sense of this town before the event, of the relationship between Joel and Sarah, and you're getting a build to the horror. That's the amount of detail and care they're putting into the story, that's the amount of trust they have in this story.

It didn't take long into the lifespan of video games before they started imitating movies, not only in the desire to want to use it as a form of storytelling, but in borrowing the traits of certain characters, themes, and genres. Video games got popular enough to have movies made of them, and they started making video games that act like movies, and now movies are adapting those games, and so the cycle evolves. There's really no need for either medium to condescend to the other, but there has subtly been a sense of that very thing in most adaptations until The Last of Us. These adaptations have largely not trusted, nor believed in the material enough to not do things like rushing to your premise, or to introducing your characters. To resist the impulse to place neon lights over every single easter egg and call back, and most importantly to find a way into the story that genuinely expands upon the lore and the tale in the ways that only film or TV as a long form medium offers beyond the limitations of what is inherent to gaming. By the time the Last of Us gets to its white-knuckle action sequence I was already beyond invested in a story I knew like the back of my hand. That's the power of this story. That's what sets it apart, not that it's the first good or great adaptation of a video game, but that it is the first one to in all ways possible show a deep respect for the power of video game storytelling. I'm reminded of a scene in Steven Soderberg's “Traffic”. Michael Douglas's new drug czar let's his cabinet know that when the cartel sends a message by hiring the best defense attorney in the land, he responds by hiring the best prosecutor. To quote Pedro Pascal in the Mandolorian; “This is the way”. The best should be given the best. Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, Silent Hill, Uncharted, etc, are some of the best of the best in the medium and when transferring them to another medium they don't deserve any less than that in direction, in casting, in writing, in detail, theme, love, and craft, and that's what I hope “The Last of Us” trends for, and gets trending in Hollywood.

“The Autopsy" Found Profoundness in Friendship and the Right Actors to Build it.

“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.” - That's the way David Fincher's seminal detective vs serial killer showdown “Seven” ends. In its own way My favorite episode of Guillermo Del Toro's captivating horror anthology “Cabinet of Curiosities” will end that way too. The episode is titled “The Autopsy”. It is a masterpiece of television horror. A bit of noir, a bit of a procedural, a bit of a buddy movie, and surprisingly a great superhero movie about the “super” in us when we have something worth fighting for, that ultimately proves the elegant co-existing relationship between what is ugly and what is beautiful. A great deal of which is accomplished by way of craft in direction and Goyer's language, and to my focus here - the graceful, poetically large performances hiding in the well detailed husks of normality.

The dread in “The Autopsy” is existential. It's both very specific and nebulous as bodily invasion usually is. It is specific in its terror, the taking of our bodies without our consent (The very idea of being both intimate with something and also non intimate because the thing has no interest in the knowing of you) and unspecific in its horror, the varied, multi-layered and ultimately nonsensical fear of death. The balm for the tension caused by these two competing themes is very specific, it is the indomitable spirit of friendship, of connection, which in this story is one thing the enemy never counted on, never saw coming, and neither do we. It is at this intersection of fear and security our protagonist Dr. Carl Winters (F. Murray Abraham) arrives at one Sheriff Nate Cravens (Glynn Turman) to take up the sword and prepare for battle. Neither we nor the protagonists know what they are here for and this makes for another tension as the story unravels these two become aware of each other and so too do we. The specter of death around and on the shoulders of both protagonists and antagonists, and this friendship, refreshing in its organic purity- is what makes the episode, and what makes all of this abundantly clear is in the performances of F. Murray Abraham and Glynn Turman.

The noir element makes it so the story unravels backward and forwards in time. Detail upon minor detail is discovered and piled up one after another until they coalesce into a clear understanding of what exactly is happening, still the thing we are introduced to right after the inciting incident is two friends reconnecting after years. Why? Because the writer and director want us to feel the connection between these two. The villainy and the heroism, the horror and the pleasure, intertwined and separate. The complexity is the central force of the narrative, and more importantly what is behind it. It is tied to their friendship and not just the bond in and of itself but what kind of bond. It's one built on principles and honesty the unusual kind that allows for unusual honesty wherein one cannot take themselves too seriously, where to some it could be seen as ugly to say as much. “You're so thin I could use you as a whip”. Interesting on two levels; it's bluntness and its inherent bite and how Winters will come to be Craven's whip of sorts. Its also in the way Dr. Winters upon being asked what’s going on with him thinks on it only a moment before telling his friend he has stomach cancer, (that most insidious and cruel villain) and most endearingly, and maybe most important to the story the way Dr. Winters corrects Sheriff Craven when he insists he is “cursed by God”. Bathed in the warmest most relaxing light of the episode F Murray Abraham's Dr. Winters reminds Sheriff Craven directly that “he's just not that important, that's ego”. This (ego, arrogance) becomes a repeated theme. Turman relays a horrid story and ugly sentiments in glorious lighting, the mortifying and the beautiful always hand in hand, toe to toe in a dance. Murray's reaction is swift, Abraham says the words “thats ego” with a genial plainness tat belies his intention even before he continues with the rest, still, Glynn Turman is taken aback. Abraham says; “Who are you to claim special qualities of sin from the rest of us?” (Pouring himself a drink he had earlier scolded his friend about) “If you're cursed we're all cursed (beat) and I meant that in the nicest possible way”. As he says the last line Abraham gives Turman a cheery salutation with his drink. Turman holds a stern face a couple seconds, (his eyes already betraying the fact that he knows he has heard the truth ) but cracks before he can even give it any legitimacy and the laughter tumbles out of him already half into it's summersault. Its the kind of everyday poetry that escapes most storytellers, the kind that needs two actors with their skill and their sense of the grandiose and the simple to make it work. The details of what marks true friendship are often portrayed in wonderfully grand gestures to make them feel more powerful and robust to the audience, so that they resonate. Slow motion, a freeze frame of the moment, and close ups are all consistently used as signifiers of the moment. But Prior and Goyer trust the elegance of the moment (the ability to talk in this sort of straightforward fashion is a marker of deep friendship) and the grace of their actors to illuminate the poetry without pomp and it works

There is something to be said for the almost magical air of complex simplicity both Abraham and Turman bring to their characters. In both F Murray Abraham's Dr Winters and Glynn Turman's Sheriff Craven we find two actors who can cut through the fog of what classism has told us about the middle class, age, power, or nobility. A small town sherriff using words like “Maudlin” and “Posse Comitatus” doesn't feel right to common conceptions around the type of person holding these jobs. You need an actor like Turman who can bring a sense of grandeur to a school teacher who dies feeding a gremlin a candy bar to be able to pull off giving the common man an authentic sense of gravitas. Old men arent commonly heroes either. You need someone who inspires cunning and brilliance with an air of vulnerability like the man who once played to the hilt an insecure but talented hater in Amadeus in order to achieve a properly smooth subversion of the tropes and make a withered cancer ridden old man feel righteous as exactly the adversary this particular evil needed to he extinguished. There are all these tiny gears at play in their faces, hands, and bodies connecting you to both their seriousness and their playfulness. They're down home sensibilities, and manners, and their immense intelligence, and how that ultimately bonds them. A hand gesture, the jutting out of a lip, a lazy but deep sigh that lives only in expression. Each “tells” on just how important life is to them, how how precious their friendship is, and subsequently how precious humanity is to them. When Abraham shows concern for his friend he grips his cup tighter. Turman’s response to Abraham asking “if the situation is as bad as that” (in reference to his pouring a drink) is a sophisticated facial expression that more than anything undergirds the level of communication they’re on where most things don’t need be said. While Craven and Winters regard each other with deep affinity and professional courtesy, they care about people in general despite being in two professions not known for this type of care. In movies/TV and I would guess sometimes in real life the common refrain for people in these career fields (Coroner/Police) are things like “remain detached" “don't get too close to the case” “Don't get too close to the victim" “Don't make this personal”. The autopsy goes opposite not only in taking it and making the personal important, but making it central to what gives them an edge. Cravens speech about his own “uselessness” is a dead give away to just how much he wants to be of use, of service. Their powers are not only in the cliché powers of deduction but in attachment and explicit constant empathy. Sheriff Craven's complete bafflement at the heartless nature of the murders, comes not just from a clinical more sterile want of understanding what the hell is going on, or the obsessive desire to get his man, but from a deep respect for the sanctity of life, shown in how this thing tears at him. Every time someone disappears or is found dead Sheriff Craven reacts freshly as if it were brand new. Dr. Winters feels it too, even though his job requires a less emotional connection, there is still a very philosophical and poetic respect for life. He politely asks each body for forgiveness as he opens them up, a detail that shows and tells on the level of empathy the character has for humankind far better then any speech could. Abraham’s provides a majestic refined touch to the expression of these small pleas which directly addresses the discourse we have around how victims are treated in true crime as after thoughts. Here are two men deeply wounded by and not merely angry or enraged by the loss of life. That same empathy, combined with the fortitude of his friendship with Craven, supersedes the murders, the stomach cancer, and their egos. Dr. Winters who upon revealing the nature of his affliction and it's impending doom remarks “We're all headed to the same destination” maybe reserved and capitulating about his own death, but about his friends life or the treatment of others as insignificant, he is not for play. When the story finally arrives where it arrives it is that friendship with Craven, that kinship with humanity that motivates him to sacrifice the unthinkable, to keep going even as each pain is more excruciating than the last. Abraham's cavalier response to his impending doom - not just with the cancer - but in the face of the monster, as compared to his response once the monster tells him of its plans for his friend is discernably different. From that point on his resolve becomes more ..well resolute. This is so explicitly relayed and so beautifully understated it dulls even the sharpness of some gnarly mutilation and the tragedy of Winters sacrifice somehow ends up feeling…good.

The notions that those who hold power or authority or who are chosen by some version of divine right, blood, entity, or position in a hegemonic system, are the ones who need to save us is far too common of a narrative that doesn't really empower us. The power of “The Autopsy is then two fold; A. It lends power to the idea that heroism is in the hands of the common man as well. That we can all fight and win and scrap and thrive, even while being honest about the cost. B. It brings catharsis with that win. By the end of the episode, just when it seems death and gloom have won over we find our Daniel Webster has outsmarted the Devil and in that has won the day or at least a reprieve for humanity as represented in their friendship, a friendship illustrated by way of nuance and fine stitching. Craven’s power was in his reaction to being powerless, which shows his character. He willingly accepts help, growls, hurts, drinks, but he doesn't punish anyone else for his shortcomings. He doesn’t start lashing out on the town, throwing power around and arresting errant “punks". He mourns these losses and resigns himself to the idea that he may be up against something bigger than him while (without actually making a decision to do so explicitly) continuing to work the case. Winters sees this and offers his own life (which is a death sentence and a divine sacrifice) to stop this monsters task, but again mostly to save his friend who to him represents everything right with humanity. That's cathartic. In film and television catharsis, a release of tensions arriving from emotions held in suspension for any elongated amount of time can be powerful, maybe one of cinema’s most potent weapons as well, but its power is in having had tension in the first place, holding it for as long as possible for the third of your story. Too many times catharsis arrives with little stress. The characters don't feel genuinely threatened, the stakes don't feel genuinely impressed upon, death is never really on the table until the very very end, and no one is ever really truly dead until their contract is up and then there's just a new “Dread Pirate Roberts”. So Catharsis may come but it comes in a form that is dimmed. Something akin to a candle in the sun. When it's done right though, when the stakes are clear, concise, and impactful. When the tension has a vice grip on the audiences imagination, when death is absolute and then suddenly, out of the darkness, you show a hand reaching in to pull us up out of the abyss, well then that story, that catharsis it sticks, and that release is never really forgotten. To make the gist of that impact the sword of that death blow friendship? That may not be new, but it is refreshing and more to the point it’s not far from the truth. To have two actors with as much poise, elegance, passion, intelligence and charisma lends it even further weight. There is a desire that you have right from the gate because these are two actors you want to see win, then through the skills they embody the characters with it extends to the characters they create. Their on screen chemistry injects a richness to the authenticity of the love between these two that friends that says it more profoundly than had the words been actually uttered. The philosopher Epicurus said of friendship; '“The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is eternal or even of long duration also enables us to see that even in our limited conditions of life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship”. “Nothing enhances our security so much as friendship” is a proper ending to a show where the darkness in every single way imaginable seems poised to win. It places the episode firmly in the same sphere that made “Seven” so appealing to me, which is that it isn't an argument for all of humanity as beautiful and worth saving in and of itself, it's an argument that those places where humanity as one of nature's best ongoing experiments does work, works so profoundly, so beautifully that it makes all the rest worth saving. And in these dark days a much needed balm if nothing else.

Hereditary:The Ghosts of the Living.

When I first saw Ari Asters debut I was blown away by its profound meditation of grief, but the horror aspect escaped me. The story was a bit too nebulous for me to fully grasp, the sign posts he gave with revelations as to what and who was doing what arrived at the door of my understanding with more mysteries. On that front it seemed to me a movie that existed almost totally beyond understanding to anyone but Aster, I couldn’t even see certain dots to connect them. This was more a function of the way I process information in film where to be honest though I don’t necessarily have to be spoon-fed and philosophically am adamantly against it, the more nebulous and impenetrable works of directors like Malick, Lynch, and even one of my faves Nicolas Winding-Refn fly right over my head like a Boeing jet. So I sought the knowledge of those who did seem to understand, and especially listened to Aster himself. It took until now for me to decide to actually revisit with my new understanding and I got to tell ya, this revisit of Hereditary was much like the experience of sitting on the quarter edge of a chair for hours. Always aware of the edge, never able to get comfortable, finding yourself day dreaming about that moment when maybe the person(s) occupying the chair will get up allowing you to finally sigh in relief. That moment never arrives in Hereditary, and the discomfort is mostly due to the unrepentant relatability to both the grief and the location of the terror in writer/director Ari Aster’s terrifying debut. Although his film resides in the supernatural, thats not where it buries its stakes, or builds its foundations. Ultimately Hereditary is what I would call a living ghost story. All its main characters are already figuratively dead. They walk around unable to communicate beyond longing looks and stares. They repeat and refrain incongruous sentences that speak to some greater meaning behind them, or scribble on notebook pages what they feel. And it’s not at all unlike many families in this new era of technological disassociation, distraction, and economic unsureity. This film is about the decomposition of the nuclear family, under duress from the constant assault from outside forces that we can't see and can barely detect including those from within our homes . The secrets, the lies, the disconnect, the patriarchy. And it’s not the only film exploring this.

The Conjuring, The Witch, Sinister, The Babadook, – all explored similar themes in albeit in their own unique ways- about the passing down of familial horrors and trauma, grief, panic, sin, murder, through a conductor of some sort, dolls, homes, farm animals, necklaces. There is always a passageway for evil in these films. Some door opened by curiosity, innocence/naivety, or vanity, in the case of Hereditary it’s avoidance as a coping mechanism. But, where those movies provide catharsis, closure (if only until the next movie) and safety from the damnation of these experiences and emotions, Aster’s provides no such release. In this way it shares cinematic bloodlines with films like Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby”, Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession”, and Phillip Kaufman’s paranoid invasion fantasy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. All of these films in some way explored the corruption of bonds and bodies by insidious forces from within and without. For the Graham family and especially it’s central character Annie (Toni Collette in a raw, slowly unhinged, barn burner of a performance) it’s communication from within the very American tradition of tying sacrificial suffering to success. By the time we arrive at possibly the most traumatic event of the film – a scene that is grounded in familial terror rather than the supernatural, – we know there’s a history uncovered. The hardships of parenthood, marriage, the masked truth about many of our so called sacred bonds, blood thicker than water and the like, and the made up importance of a patriarchal male lineage. You not only have the implicit and explicit idea that this family struggles with secrets, (The eulogy Annie gives at her mother's funeral) or patriarchal attitudes as it concerns both lineage, and treatment ( The father son relationship, and the grandmother’s “wish”) but there is an unsaid economic concern, (the work place calls) and the desire to attain status and riches (Paimon and his gifts here can easily stand in for capitalism) we can feel the stressors, and we are faced with a grim reality; Hereditary is a dark fairy tale about deconstructing the fairy tales around family. It is as unrepentant about what it might conjure in us, as the forces who work from just outside the parameters of the story are about their roles in an entire family’s harm , and it is eerie, unnerving, upsetting, and difficult to watch for that reason

The spectres of this movie are alive, but they are not well and neither are we, much like the family in Hereditary we are all each one of us finding our own various ways into numbing, fighting, and defending ourselves to various attacks on various fronts many of whom live at the edge of shadows. Apparitions of our traumas haunting and moving us towards some inevitability of change whether it be evolutions or death. In an outstanding video essay for PBS, host Mike Rugnetta outlines what the popularity of any given movie monster tell us about the current epoch. Invaders from outer space and McCarthyism, nuclear Japan and Godzilla, serial killers and slasher films, and of course ..Zombies. in that context it's interesting to frame films like “The Babadook”, “Stoker”, the “Pet Semetery” remake, “Doctor Sleep”, and the “The Night House” not just as mediations of personal grief or a dubious desire to “elevate” horror, but rather an unconscious response to a collective expression of a society exhausted and crushed by the social and economic anxieties produced from dealing with a barrage of micro-aggresions and debilitating attacks from the most legitimized institutions. It could be said that alot of what we are experiencing right now is the death of our most beloved and commonly held beliefs about civilization and the various consequences and outbursts of grief that stem from the tensions at the source of one portion of the populus's need to move onto new realities and the others desire hold on to our most decrepit and hideous institutions and constructs even while they actively harm us.

In an age where we are confronting the generational effects of handed down racism, homophobia, and misogyny, while exploring the “chosen family” as an alternative to blood ties and the economic traumas that have produced a new kind of family dynamic, it’s not a stretch to see these films as conscious or unconscious expressions of societal tension and concern. Insurging evil as insurmountable because of it's resources and stealthiness is a difficult pill to swallow because of the necessity in our lives for hope, but on film it can serve the purpose of pointing out rots and virulences underneath the most beigm and accepted idealogies and conceptions. In fact I think Hereditary’s most impressive contribution besides being one of the most realistic portrayals of grief in very recent history is to criticize blind allegiance to those ties, and to alert us to the fact that what we don’t confront today and the yesterday we refuse to come to terms with will eventually meet us on its terms. Time and time again the family at the center of Hereditary have a chance to deal with and face the deep seated issues that plague and haunt them, and time and time again they bail out for safer ground. The central dinner scene that might have been cathartic, but stops short of any true healing, and is cut short by the ardent appeals to a return to comfortable avoidance. Having to face this tension ourselves second hand we relive our own first hand experiences. The supernatural element adding fantastical shock value to existential dread. A dread viscerally illuminated in the dastardly nature inherent in the scheme of it's Rosemary's Baby-like cult. In an interview at Tiff Ari Aster discussed his intention to make the movie or have the audience feel the terror and horror of a group who is not really in the movie but is smiling the entire time as they watch all these horrific events happen to its as he calls it “sacrificial lambs”. He succeeds mightily and that becomes even more evident in subsequent viewings where the surreptitious craft of the Paimon cult (Her mother and Ann Dowd's characters are particularly vicious in a revisit ) becomes clear as now knowing that all these events have been into action by her own mother and her compatriots. That she willingly sacrificed a husband, son, her granddaughter, grandson, and ultimately even her own daughter for Paimon’s “Rewards” is a vicious statement about our society in general. The final monologue by Ann Dowd's character nails it home. “We've corrected your first female body and give you now this healthy male host. We reject the trinity and pray devoutly to you, Great Paimon. Give us your knowledge of all secret things, bring us honor, wealth, and good familiars. Bind all men to our will as we have bound ourselves for now and ever to yours. Hail, Paimon!” The last word you hear is Hail which could easily stand in for Hell.

Hereditary through performance, written word, and tone created by an accompanying masterwork of sound design and eerie lighting portrays the absolute horror of exactly what happens when foreboding light shines into the darkness of the propeitors and landlords of our suffering and our own trauma and meets with our own inability to confront it, creating as unique a horror experience as I’ve seen on film, continuing yet another age of great horror filmmaking, by exploring the horror in everyday life.

"Prey": We Didn't Need Another One Until We Did.

If you were to ask me whether or not we needed to have any more “Predator” movies out there on general principle and based off of what we already have right now I would say no, but when you have an idea this interesting this unique that it almost flips the old property into an original idea then now you've got something and that “something” is what director Dan Trachtenberg found in “Prey”. Movies like this are exactly why I maintain the philosophy that there is a very tiny community of movies that I actually believe you can't do anymore of, or you shouldn't do anymore of. I simply ask if you're going to do them make sure you have an interesting way in...

The problem for instance with the latest iterations of other legacy films like the Star Wars films and the Terminator movies, If you look at them closely is anything that was changed for the most part in the new films is superficial, and aesthetic in the most surface way possible. Characters have new identities on the surface, but the core traits, arcs, and even the beats are still almost exactly the same. Rey in The Force Awakens is just a stand in for Luke, Poe is very much like Han and so on and so on. Very little is done to change what those movies were and more importantly what they can BE. The problem with the Terminator movies was much the same, an ardent refusal to go off the rails, to see what lies beyond the tracks already laid by the predecessor. This amounts to storytelling vampirism and much like vampires you can't feed off the dead, but with a movie like “Prey” what you have is that in almost every way that matters, This movie feels like an entirely different moving while maintaining the actual spirit and soul of what makes a predator movie a Predator MOVIE.

There is something more important than the “what” here and it is the “how” this movie “Prey” finds its way into telling a rich fun unique story that compliments and treasures the lore, but decidedly forges it's own path - That “how” is identity and culture. Much has been made of both the importance and the complications around identity and representation. As we argue for it we also reckon with the fact that representation alone is not enough. Throwing Amber Midthunder as “Naru” into this with the currency or cache still being around nothing but men telling a “man's” story with her as an inanimate prop would not have the power or profundity that this movie has. The “freshness” in Prey is in Midthunder herself and in the culture that surrounds and punctuates her choices as well as the films. The combination of a woman at the forefront of your movie and a woman of a particular identity in addition to her culture revitalizes and refreshes every possible angle and approach that we have. The Predator movies that have always mostly been about the triumph of individual man over beast and good ol’ American exceptionalism over everything now become a movie about the triumph of community over invading threat.

Near the beginning of the movie there is a scene where a member of the tribe is it is taken off by a lion, once Midthunder's character is alerted to the problem Midthunder's facial expression (pictured above ) elegantly folds into a distinctive portrayal of desperation, ambition, and hope. Midthunder as a performer has a sense of resolution that makes her perfect for a role like this. Her presence, her assuredness- effortless and well crafted- makes meals of scenes where she must take a stand or move past her fears. Its her moment and she knows it, but it's also just outside her reach thus the intensity of focus. Its representative of the kind of power that Midthunder has at her fingertips (especially of quiet expression) that this one look is so immersive and consequential that it acts as a setup of all of the stakes and all of the power of her eventual triumph. It was a high point for me but it was also just a part of a tapestry of performance from eyes to physicality that changes the entire energy of this film. What Midthunder brings as an actor to this role as the main protagonist of a “predator” movie is so different from anything we've seen in the lead role of a predator movie, then backing that you have what women bring that is always so distinctive from what happens when a man is in the role, and then her ethnic identity and her culture which is again so different from anything we've ever seen in these movies. Take for instance the fact that unlike all of the other “Predator” films and for that matter even “Alien” films that the tribe is not being picked off one by one in individual standoffs. Every time that we see the tribe being attacked by the predator they are together, it is always a communal experience, everything about this movie is rooted in a communal experience. From her relationship with her mother - to her relationship with her brother - to her relationship with the rest of the tribe, even while having a very charismatic lead whose POV we can funnel the movie through. In previous iterations the power of the movies were in each man going off to fight the predator alone seeking either personal glory in triumph or a Warrior's death, here the power is in the collective power of Naru and her tribes dedication to each other over all. Her final triumph is not merely an individual one, it is shown on screen to be the product of sacrifices by other tribesman, her mother Sumu’s (Stefany Mathias) medicinal teachings, and her brother Taabe’s (Dakota Beavers) instruction. I found it interesting to note the similarities in the role and Naru and the role of Emerald Haywood as played by KeKe Palmer in Jordan Peele’s “Nope”. Both young women who felt left out of their fathers legacy, both with deep connections to their brothers who do support them, both who triumph in major ways at the end.

The landscape in Prey as compared to the other films too is markedly different. In the other movies it felt more closed-in, more hot, darker even while taking place in the light of day. The jungle that always was a site for white tensions around fears they had about the peoples, became synonymous with “darkness” and “barbarity” and in that setting it only made sense that as much take place there. In “Prey” it is now the vast open plains and the “barbarians” are the civilized. It cannot be missed that this is one of what might be less than a handful of films told distinctly and ONLY from an indigenous POV. The value of this cannot be understated. It's why this movie feels so new even while revisiting the extremely familiar, but beyond that it's a reclamation of storytelling with the good being that it exists and the only one hope is that it opens doors for future indigenous to tell even more stories from their pov AND from behind the camera as well. As is Trachtenberg and co have done with privilege exactly what should be done while it exists, which is share decidedly in amplifying different stories, adventures, tales, with the added bonus being they almost inherently come with a refreshing coat of paint on past and future myths re-upholstering at the every least and reconstructing at the most the way we view and see other communities and the construction of America and what heroism looks like.

The Black Phone : Together We Go.

What is interesting and thusly to me successful and amazing about Scott Derrickson's “The Black Phone” is not in its plot or it's or it's clever premise or the way it makes the most of it. It’s not in its runtime which is lean, mean, and without any fat for it's just over 1 hour and 40 minutes runtime. The story of a child serial killer who preys on a small rural community held some special moments of horror and terror for me, (especially a centerpiece scene involving a locked door) but those as always are subjective as to whom they will please. Its unique nature is also not found in any particular aspect of its horror or in this case terror, No, what makes “The Black phone” stand out most honorably and spectacularly to me is where it's focus lies, who it focuses on and who it cares for, and what it leaves us with.

In most horror films we are quite used to the idea that the central focus of the movie is the “horror” or the “terror” and whatever form that horror or terror takes, - usually embodied by whom ever the antagonist of the film is. In the Texas chainsaw massacre (which is dutifully mentioned as well as homaged to some extent) Despite his many victims leather face is the central focus of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Freddy Krueger is the central focus of “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Jason Voorhees is the central focus of “Friday the 13th”, and Michael Meyers of “Halloween”, and on and so on it goes. But also in most horror films second only to the characters that embody terror and horror is the locale. The focus becomes where the horror and the terror takes place, whether that be in something more metaphysical like the heart or the mind, or in a physical setting like Leatherfaces’ house. It's dreams for Freddie, Camp Crystal Lake for Jason, Hell by way of a portal opening cube for Pinhead in “Hellraiser”. These locales are very specific and the evil that lives within them lives on in continuum. This is important to note because to try and contextualize or even compare “The black phone” to films like this is misguided, this movie shares DNA with them in only the most superficial of ways. The same goes for drawing comparisons from this to something like “IT” or a show like ”Stranger Things”, to which it again only bares the most basic similarities . It's most proper kin or antecedent is the two David Fincher films that so clearly influenced this year's earlier monster hit ..”The Batman”, - “Seven” and “The Zodiac”, and even in this case Fincher's other project Netflix's “Mindhunter”. Both or all of these projects are concerned with locale, setting, time and place as integral to the characters and the specific depiction of urban or rural decay. They are also most obviously set around serial killers and not monsters, though serial killers are pretty close and slasher pics share an obvious relation. The settings of those films/show were not merely decorative, and it isn’t in this one either. The late seventies early eighties is essential to setting not only mood and tone, but ethos, which powers and informs the terror and the catharsis due to come. America had by then shifted from the counter cultural revolutions that came to define the decade that preceded it and started to move comfortably back into the false security of respectability and civility while also tenderly hugging and embracing a return to faith, superstition, moral and ethnic superiority, Even as it ignored systemic racism, sexism, abuse, and worse yet apathy. When the movoe begins it too starts of nice enough, and it too is a false sense of security. A clear serene day frames a Rockwell like setting as America’s pastime plays before an enthusiastic multi-racial crowd. Our main character Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) pitches to the towns most feared hitter Bruce Yamada (Tristan Pravong) as his sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) cheers him on. After two well placed strikes from Finney, Yamada cracks a home run over the fence much to the young Shaw’s dismay. Shaw looks defeated as Yamada rounds the bases and continues to hang his head until in a moment of great sportsmanship and solidarity Yamada comes over to let him know that he “almost had him” and that “his arm is mint”, (this will cycle back around in a somewhat inventive if not clumsy way). somewhat visibly comforted by the comment Finney stays after and sets up a bottle rocket, as Yamada rides gleefully down an empty the street nodding to neighborhood admirers as “Free Ride” by The Edgar Winter Group plays in the background..it is the last time the films characters will seem peaceful, the city clean, or it’s inhabitants particularly functional. Immediately after a black van rolls up towards Yamada the screen goes dark, credits roll revealing the rot and underbelly of a town under siege by smog, traffic, and far worse child kidnappings. From then on the film shows the rot both in terms of structure and humanity. Children are bullied, bloodied, abused, and forgotten, other folks too. Finney and Gwen's father Terence (an almost perfectly off beat as usual Jeremy Davies) seats himself early in the morning with a cup of coffee and a clear demand for silence as he reads the paper whose headline reads “COMMISSION FINDS MILITARY PENSIONS INEQUITABLE”

This minor bit of subtext goes on to become a constant in the movie about who is seen and who is unseen, who is remembered and who is forgotten and it is exemplified by how the movie goes out of its way to make the unseen seen (like making this headline visible thus illuminating the apathy towards the soldiers who came home from an unnecessary and unjust war ) and the normally seen, unseen or peripheral in text and outside of the context as a viewer we can see the people usually in the forefront of these stories (like cops) as now ancillary. Which then interweaves itself into the fabric of a story that wants to discuss or talk about a rural and urban decay its inhabitants seem unwilling to acknowledge. The black phone makes it abundanly clear in its subtext that the social institutions which are supposed to be designed to protect, to educate, and to guide its people, especially in this case children- are instead oppressing, repressing them. The parents don't parent, the detectives don’t detect, the school teachers don’t teach ( one kid remarks to Finney that his teacher fails at making math accessible and understandable). It’s untenable that children would flourish in this environment and they don't…until they do, and when they do its how that matters. It makes for a fascinating story to plant an unknowable, impenetrable, nameless terror that is inextricable in its traits and make up from the urban rural social indifference, apathy, and inattention and subsequent cruelties of the society/culture that created them. There is evidence of the cinematic genetics The Black Phone shares with Fincher’s and Reeves's films provided right within the names or rather the namelessness of their antagonists be it “John Doe”, or “The “Zodiac”, “The Riddler”, or here “The Grabber”. The namelessness of these characters be they historic or made up allows or gives them a sense of omnipresence which further emboldens their action. As no-one they can reach further, be more, terrify more deeply, they can become boundless which is in direct contradiction to the people that seek to stop them, who are rigidly defined by the institutions in which they occupy. Institutions with names and reputations, tradition, hypocrisy, and routine, but who and how the opposition foils the evil is where the black phone truly excels and finds its own unique place in these stories of terror.

It is very common in these types of films to see a thread being made that nods to the idea that the predators main weapon is to be able to see the unseen. All of the grabber’s chosen victims are outcast of some sort who in some way shape or form are never truly seen. An Asian and Hispanic kid both drowned out in a completely white community. A tough white kid from outside the community uncared for and disliked by the same community. A paperboy who himself over the phone alludes to the fact that no one ever really noticed him when he was alive. In “Seven” many of John Doe's victims are the unseen and unloved, fat folks, sex workers, housewives, evil or good they are unseen. In mindhunter season 2 with the Atlanta child murders it was black children, hell even in the latest season of Stranger Things, Veccna goes after explicitly those who have been harmed and bare the marks and traits of trauma, but are also forgotten or alone. What is uncommon is for a film or a story is to refuse to rely on the very institutions which either in part or in whole, directly or indirectly play roles in the cause of the various harms to both victim and victimized - to then be the balm or the savior. “The Batman” names Batman explicitly as part of the problem and then presents him as simultaneously the balm and savior. It makes talk of an idea of a sense of the the city itself needing to be a part of its own solution, but for the most part what we see explicitly is Batman doing all of the leg work. Seven, The Zodiac, and Mindhunter also make a allusions to the idea that the FBI or the police are part and parcel of the problem even as it too presents them as simultaneously balm and savior. In the horror films that resemble the the black phone (especially slasher pics) we see that usually the savior has some identifiable trait that makes them singularly equipped to defy or handle this predator, be it the ever present falsehood of virginal purity, or being the “Chosen One” or some physical skill. In the black phone it is not about any one particular person or any one particular trait that Feeney has. While the movie has a clear through line about Feeney being able to learn to stand up for himself and to discover his own particular fight - that is directly subsequent to the connection to comradery, solidarity, and community that aids him, a community of those who have been abused, community of those who have been harmed, a sense of community so strong it reaches out from even beyond the grave. Every single advance Feeney makes towards freedom from his imprisonment, every single move he makes that counts as a small victory is the direct result of the contribution of his predecessors. The people who protect Feeney, the people who help him discover his own power, are singularly and only those who themselves have been victimized or count as future targets. He has a friend who in life and in death directly protects him and guides him towards freedom not only in the sense of the escape from his predicament, but escape from seeing himself in such a limited perspective. His sister Gwen is his foremost champion both when he is free and when she takes on a group of bullies, and it is she who even after being beat by their father Terence for mentioning and using her clairvoyant ability , does not hesitate to use it to find her brother. The power of the black phone is not only that it centers the power of community, but also that it centers its victims rather than centralizing the victimizer or the abusers or those who are part and parcel to the urban and rural decay that surrounds these children. The film spends much of its time showing the victims lives whether it be in play or in various forms of socializing, and it carries itself not on the terror of the evil, but the impact of it on a city and its victims. It spends very little time explaining “The Grabber” though it is extremely clear he himself has been abused, and this does not seem to be done for the purpose of avoiding empathizing with the killer, but more-so so that it can be far more concerned with spending its ever dissipating runtime with the stories of the victims. Though the film is most certainly terrifying and anxiety ridden, those tensions are not built purely on jump scares or even geography, and proximity to the killer, ( through that too is there ) but the anxiety of whether or not these underserved children will be enough of a match for this omnipotent evil, and it is then that it surprises us with maybe its biggest one-up on those films.. That it suggests without impediment or help from the forces we depend on in real life of story and without qualm that the heart is enough, that fight is enough, that they are enough …together that is.

Ray Harryhausen: Respect for the actor.

Monsters have always been at the corner of our imaginations, a gnarled personification of not only our fears but of our nature, our identity, our suffering, and our preoccupation with suffering. Good monsters the ones that truly terrify us as well as capture our imaginations deal with this. From Frankenstein to Dracula to the Mummy, and beyond. The job of the actors who played these cinematic monsters from literature was not simply to imply to animate horror or terror, but to animate our human soul and the human soul from within these creatures as reflections of our own darkness. Physically and thematically they tell us as much about ourselves as they do themselves or our heroes. These motivations , perceptions, even the physical characteristics are what makes playing monsters such a powerful draw for actors as well as directors, writers, special effects, and other such artists and creators. One of the greatest creative minds ever as it pertains to the creation of monsters was Ray Harryhausen. It was not just the imagination of the monsters themselves, but the detail not only in application, but function that made Harryhausen unique in his time. Alot of that thought process was no different than the one an actor goes through thinking about how to live in a character, how to embody their physicality, and to think about what motivations given them. Actors must live in their creations and make no mistake Harryhausen lives in his. Harryhausen never spoke to any desire to have been an actor, but the instincts are there just the same. He gave his alien saucers a flight pattern indicative of the life inside . He gives a bronze statue stiff movement and creaky sounds to give it the feel of life but trapped in a metal not made for human flexibility. Every Harryhausen creature had personality, every one had objectives, and every one had instincts, but here I just want to identify five of my faves and share not only why I loved them, but where the actor in this master craftsman shone through.

5. Prince Kassim (Sinbad and the eye of the Tiger)

“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” is probably my least favorite of the Harryhausen projects directed or special effects managed, and Prince Kassim is not a monster, but rather a man put under a spell, but hell, I was under a spell too watching then and may very well still be under one now via some incredible work by Harryhausen . The arc of Kassims transformation ( he becomes more animal like as the movie goes on ) gives the movie a very unique version of the “ticking clock” and it really is something to watch stop motion from so many years ago (with nearly a one man crew of himself) do the work of creating a character whose movements and facial expressions begin to denote a growing vacancy, and loss of intelligence. Rage and beastial simplicity take the place of complex emotional cues, and acute personality traits. Its clear even before doing research on Harryhausen that he had done his research on how and these animals move, and interact. The complex gears in the face of Kassim's cursed new form allow the performance to be convincing, and the less he uses them the more it seems the human is taking on the form of his curse. It’s a recocurring theme in Harryhausen's work attention to detail and an actors sensibilities in concert to create uniquely empathetic characters that would provide the foundation for later creations like Jack Skellington and Coraline. In Eye of the Tiger it simply makes Kassim without a doubt the best part of the movie and far more interesting than anything the rest of the movie had to offer. By the time Kassim is transformed again to human form it makes little difference, we've already seen the best transformation and actor in the movie

4. “The Snake-Woman” (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad)

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is arguably Harryhausen's best , the crown jewel of his achievements not only in the special effects work, but the film overall itself. It is a dedication to wonder, adventure and fun, in the same spirit as classics like “The Thief of Baghdad,” or “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. Bernard Herrmann's score rumbles and dazzles throughout each and every scene, scheme, conflict, and resolution providing temperature and temperament. Its a beautiful whimsical work of music by another master in Herrmann which lends weight to Harryhausen's belief that “the music was very important” that it was “Fifty percent of the success of a fantasy film, that heightened the emotion and made the whole thing bigger than life”. The acting dome by breathing actors is mostly missable much of it alerting you to the irksome white washing of the era, (though Torin Thatcher's scheming sorcerer “Sokurah” is the best villain featured in any of these films largely due to Thatchers wild eyed dedication to the spirit of the character though a visually pleasing histrionic performance which fits the overall scale of the movie) but this is a film about Harryhausen's abilities. In fact most of Harryhausen's films were really this more than anything else. As the movie hums along ( credit must be given to Nathan Jurans pacing which is magnificently brisk ) there are many Harryhausen delights to choose from, two of which seem to be the trial runs or prototypes for two of his most well known creature effects. A skeleton that fights Sinbad to the death, and my favorite of the film- The Snake lady. In order to charm the king at a celebration in which the sorcerer Sokurah wishes to gain some favor for a mission of his own, he throws a snake in a pot with a woman and using magic, bakes them together to create a unique Harryhausen creation that stands up even to later movie incarnations like the snake woman featured in Eddie Murphy's semi surreal magical comedy “The Golden Child”. The effects may be slightly more crude but again what Harryhausen understood was the power of the effect as a performer. The snake lady is part snake, part handmaiden one (The Handmaiden ) seems more than happy to be a part of Sokurah's act than the other, the two function more like siamese twins than some form of a hostile bodily takeover…at first. In this early conception we can see the groundwork laid for Sam Raimi's treatment of Doctor Octavious, in Spiderman 2. Indeed Raimi as well as mnay of his horror fantasy peers share ancestry with Ray. Harryhausen allows this conceptual interpretation of what this magic might look and feel like to invoke and inform the effects. This is not the stiffness of Talos the statue, or the stale vanity of Kassim, this is pure joy and a bit of ecstasy. The woman ( now part creature ) moves with immense flexibility. She caresses and careens, her hands and arms flailing and wiggling with exuberance and confidence, as she feels on and engorges herself in delight, which prevents her from paying attention to the mutiny of the new landlord in her body until her tail (the whole time acting in defiance of the act) reaches up from behind her and begins to choke her. Save for a few close-ups all of this is embodied by Harryhausen's craftsmanship. He uses a combination of the actresses face and his animated representation of it to give the dance the approximation of humanity, it runs surprisingly close and with clever editing even the aging of the technology disappears into the limbo of fantasy where the magic the viewer wants to see allows the erasure of any distraction from the fantasy. It’s the most elegant of Harryhausen's monsters and the most fun, pronounced once again by a impossibly complimentary score by Herrmann. Harryhausen recognizes this as a performance within a performance, and that effect needed to pronounce as well as announce the love of the dance, and the evil within the magic. These are separate bodies, and eventually one attacks the other. Harryhausen just as an actor does, uses the tools available to help aid him into the shape and craft a performance that wos not only thw Sultan , but us the audience and thus showcases Harryhausen's abilities as an actor just as well as a director.

3. “The Skeletons" (Jason and The Argonauts)

Perhaps the most famous of Harryhausen's films and arguably his most famous creation, the bewitched skeletons in “Jason and the Argonauts” are amongst the greatest special effect in movie history and count as one of it’s most memorable moments. Even by today’s standards they are something to behold. More than just an effect they are a feat of timing, choreography, and detail and desire for not truth but honesty. The fight with Jason and his soldiers is furious, and the soldiers with no dialogue, no back story, and only movement seem to relay a similar tale as those long dead ghosts in “Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R Tolkein's “Return of the King”. Here for one last mission, resolute, hungry, and focused from beyond the grave on the one task, annihilation. When risen they still move like soldiers, in formation, in precise marching order, and under strict orders. They stand at the ready until their new captain orders them to kill. They fight with a fury, not finesse, there is no sense of valor or glory just a deadly myopia on the targetin front of them. The lack of intent, the purity and simplicity of their objective, the way Harryhausen plays them, they are in effect zombies some five years before we were all introduced to Romero's terrifying undead in “Night of the Living Dead". Harryhausen's approach to these characters was not to simply animate bones, but give each a distinctive personality and trait. There is no story in animated bones they are simply moving skeletons that exist to be a wonder in and of themselves which never has any quality of memory or memorable-ness, which is why no one really cared that much about the attacking “wights” in the Game of Thrones episode “The Children”. There is no animus there ,no holding of past memory of the body or its past, just the threat of an undead horde. When acting, the past is of great consideration, what might your body be like, what might it act like if raised undead? Jow might one be pulled, or how might they be slowed if only bones, these are the considerations of a mind concerned with bringing forth not only magic but some reminder of the human condition and its employment here means that of the varying incarnations of zombiedom I argue the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts amongst the best ever, because much of the inherent fear lies in the fact that they have the same laser focus, but carry the haunted memory of their military past , the creeping dead now equipped with martial ability…..Yeesh.

2. Kali (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad maybe a little underwhelming in comparison to favorite The Seventh voyage, though I think it boasts maybe the best Sinbad in John Philip it lacks the personality I feel some of the other Harryhausen works did, (such as 20 million miles to earth) but Kali is a defining creature of the film is also at the top of the list of Harryhausen's best performances. Kali is a ancient relic of a time even before Sinbad and crew arrive. She is awakened from a slumber and given life reanimated by evil. Harryhausen gives her movements that imply both a sense of surprise and wonder. A bit of restraint, and a performers sensibilities. She appears twice in the movie.. once to perform a dance, once to fight, and there is a clear difference in energy between them. When to dance, there is more energy, less thought. The statue seems more comfortable here. Here she is a performer, a thespian eager to engage with an audience. Its one of a few roles the “Exotic woman” played in films of the day, and even as the statuesque incarnation of a goddess her status is reduced to exotic charm and charmer. When to fight? the statue seems to be surprised as the swords appear in her hand, and though she fights easily, there is not the same vigor and relish as when you watch say the skeletons fight. This is not what Kali was here for it seems. Intentional or not this this seems to be a perversion of Kali's purpose, and a cursory reading of Kali in south Asian mythology proves as much. Kali is a warrior, she is not surprised in valor or by weapons, she is one in a certain fashion, but she is meant to destroy evil not work for it. As presented Koura the sorcerer is a foreign interlocutor, and externally so too is Harryhausen, foreign bodies that have possessed the goddess tainting her. It is all most interesting to me because of all Harryhausen's statuesque creations (Talos, The Kracken, and the statue of thetis in Clash of the titans) she has the most interesting story and there is a cultural clash, an orientalism, that seems to live contextually in the scene, and since Kali is one of the least discussed of Harryhausen's works, there is an air of mystery there that leaves her open for interpretation. Which is all the more fun. She is a technical wonder every bit as precise as the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, and all the more dangerous as a warrior due to the height, weight, and limb advantage. She is further proof of the horror of being disembodied by way of foreign interference and that the most terrifying adversary is the most mysterious, and I think the one of the most representative of Harryhausen's instincts being of the sort that he just has a natural inclination towards understanding acting and building characters, by way of preparation or thought process. Even when he’s wrong.

1. Medusa (Clash of the Titans)

Medusa is one of the most appealing, controversial, and engrossing characters of any mythology, both as a monstrous figure and a representation of patriarchal disdain for womanhood as a consequence of our fear of their beguiling effect upon us. Harryhausen was nowhere near concerned with the latter, but within his own desire to make Medusa more dramatic and terrible, he unconsciously reinforces the latter. It makes his Medusa to this day the most aesthetically effective and the most philosophically interminable. Harryhausen properly noted that up until his Medusa in the 1981 film, she had been in movies depicted as a beautiful woman with snakes in her hair, this to Harryhausen's mind was not effective enough aesthetically, and from another perspective it could be argued previous representations were a half measure on what is unconsciously the root of male panic regarding feminine allure, anger, and power. What it produces in us, how we have reacted to it, and how we have depicted it historically. Harryhausen's Medusa is this terror personified, but she is not necessarily terrible. Even if he did not understand the realities that undercut the myth ( such as the fact that Medusa was raped by Poseidon) Medusa's rage is depicted in her face as not just the rage of a blind erratic Predator, and not just by the physicalscales, (which are a consequence of Athenas jealousy) but in her eyes. When she catches one of Perseus's guard with one of her arrows, and then sets upon him with her gaze Harryhausen gives her eyes an animated rage which if you understand her true story only but makes sense. In her opening reveal her silhouette rattles signaling her arrival as her shadow meanders, never making it above the halfway point of the wall upon which it is cast. Harryhausen gives her an actors life, a sense of the similar execution as one might have noted in the featurette on Benedict Cumberbatch's motion capture performance of Smaug the dragon in Peter Jackson's the Hobbit, ( itself no doubt influnced in many ways by the very same scene) except Medusa is not interested in conversation in the least. She is accursed, doomed, indicted by men to serve a petrified existence in the ruins of mens imaginations. She has to propel herself across the floor by dragging the rest of her body in a low crawl, slithering rather than walking upright. Once again we see snakes and women connected in mythology, in Christianity the story goes a snake convinced Eve, who convinced Adam to disobey God, the implication being she used her feminine wiles. In the Medusa mythos she is punished for much of the same, even the exorcism of rape leaves Medusa as a woman attacked and cursed for merely being the object of philandering gods affections. The mythology of Medusa is the type of demeaning punishment that could only cause rage, and produce terror, and her eyes reflect that terror back at us, Harryhausen ensures it. Harryhausen only did it simply because he wanted her to appear more snake-like, even as he admitted shes another one he felt for, but it is this intersection of empathy and detail that gives actors their power and like many long standing performances construced in the faithful attention to building characters, they take on a life of their own in discourse and criticism. The idea is to animate them to have an approach that seeks to give any person or living being a sense of life through objective and motivations the audience can read and react to. Harryhausen is meticulous about this. Each detail is meant to give the character more life, and to provide the audience with similar sense of foreboding terror as the protagonist., but most importantly to humanize them. A key to understanding Harryhausen's approach is understanding he abhorred the idea that any one would think he was making horror films, and that he empathized with monsters deeply, by way of the effect King Kong had on him. He said he felt sorry for Kong even after the knowledge that he had leveled New York City in the movie that inspired him to do his work. He spoke of something pitiable in the eyes and it had lasting effect on his interpretations. The snakes in Medusa's hair live in his depiction, and they seem to personify her detestablity to men, but they also have a life of their own so they are not only a living accessory but something she cohabitates with. She has a focus, an intention, unlike any of the other creatures in Harryhausen's career, because she is unlike them. She is not an animal, or a statue brought to life. She is probably most like Kassim from Eye of the Tiger, but even then while Kassim is fully the animal with a personality trapped inside, Medusa is more a combination, much like her pre-cursor the Snake -woman in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”. She is a human and she is something other. She is not just a passive actor in someone else’s scheme, she enjoys the kill, and even moreso the use of her power, she is an active hunter. She does not possess the flexibility of her antecedent the snake woman, she does not move easily or with a flow. Each contraction of her muscles feels compressed, her movements feel restricted. There's a sense of surprise and a certain glee when she believes she has noticed Perseus in the reflection of his shield. The thrill of Ray's most recognized scene is in the thrill of the hunt for both Perseus and Medusa and it is in Harryhausen’s creation that that we find just how attached to that thrill Medusa is, as well as how skilled she is at this. It's all there in the face and the composition, and the movement. She is revenge personified, she is mens power, reduction , and cruelty , as an avatar tuned back on them, and they and we cant stand it. Harryhausen's effects reinforce, and add to Medusa's legacy in our collective imagination because of his desire to truly give things life, and his ability to execute by way of living in and through his creations. In the same interview as he mentions his affinity for monsters Harryhausen is told by his interviewer - a gushing Tim Burton - that the flying saucers in Earth vs The Flying Saucers had more personality than the actors. In many cases his creatures and other creations made this true, after all no one went to Harryhausen movies to watch the actual living actors, They went to watch Harryhausen's acting creations live, or rather watch Harryhausen live through his actors. Harry Houston's legacy and effect extended well beyond special effects even as it obviously influenced folks like Rick Baker ( who also acted through his work) and Stan Winston. It extended beyond his effect on future animators like John Lassiter or Henry Selick to include even directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Guillermo Del Toro, and yes actors like Doug Jones and Andy Serkis. Such is the effect power and influence of Harryhausen's work, That throughout his career he laid foundational groundwork in the collective imaginations of a vast variety of Hollywood collaborators and role players. And while largely he will be remembered rightfully so as a special effects and animation hero, he should also be remembered as an actor's hero if not in one particular movie than in all. Because in all his films the animated actors existed and performed well enough that often times in his movies (which regardless of who was directing them they were almost undoubtedly his) His creations, his acting avatars, functioned as the stars of the movies while the living breathing actors merely provided supporting roles. In the Medusa scene, his craft had more personality and performed better than any breathing actor's incarnation or interpretation of the figure and better than any actor on the set, she is the movies star, the reason we all remember the film at all and in a nutshell that is a major part of Harryhausen's legacy as not only a creator, and an artist, but as an actor in every sense but being paid specifically to do it.

The Hustle of “Hustle”

Fifteen minutes into Netflix's latest version of “Here's something to watch while you knit” “Hustle”. I knew what the movie was about and where it was going. Matter fact I knew what it was about and where it was going from the trailer and none of the movies surprises or its comforts were able to make that work any better for me. It opens with an “Up in the Air” like montage featuring Sandler looking like a portable bag of laundry dropped into one strange bed after another, in one strange city after another to watch one player after another break his heart. We see isolation, loneliness, a man constantly away from his family. We also see personality, perseverance, “hustle”. When he comes back with his report on what he has saw - specifically a player named Haas everyone else is high on save Sandler's Stanley Sugerman - we know hes a scout, and not to soon after that he is a very put upon scout. There's a nice subplot story to be told here about the cogs in the NBA corporate machine and the abuses they endure and/or the combine and the way it treats players like livestock, but it/they become the first casualties in an ongoing extermination of any idea that might make this story interesting. Capitalism, race, the loss of craftsmanship and fundamentals these are all interesting approaches to discussing basketball today obvious and yet still unexplored in the history of basketball movies save by Spike Lee. It borders on criminal to me to make a basketball movie in 2022 and have the best idea you can come up be a “Rocky” movie starring Adam Sandler.

Adam Sandler ends up the movies greatest strength and it's greatest weakness. There's something to be said about how much Sandler resembles Sylvester Stallone in quality of self deprecating nature. They both have mastered this hang-dog look, even moreso as their age is accompanied by wrinkles and bodies that feel every bit of their age. They understand that rage that desire to want to prove without being loud while simultaneously being loud with a profoundness very few people could ever understand. Meagerness/Meekness these are qualities of the underdog in cinema. The guy who doesn't want any trouble but can cause immense trouble has been a on screen favorite since the Golden age of westerns. Sandler posseses this quality like Stallone naturally. In fact natural-ness could be argued to have been a defining trait of Sandlers since he started dramatic acting. Unlike many of his comedian contemporaries who so clearly TRY in both choices of roles and films and in choices in acting - Sandler just seems to move towards what moves him and when he arrives, he arrives ready, open, and willing to let the story and what is there take him to where he needs to go. To use a basketball phrase ; He let's the game come to him. It shows here in all his choices. When hes going to raise his inflection, when hes going to slide back into that old familiar scrappy energetic Adam Sandler, and when hes going to snap out of it. It's in his walk, in his ownership of his body and his insecurities, its all on display in increasingly vulnerable and bare performances. I may not be as high on Sandler as others, but I recognize a blue collar like approach to the work that's endearing and in and of itself an attractive quality as it pertains to his stardom and career, but Adam Sandler is still a white man. Any basketball movie featuring a white man in this very black but also very anti black world, just cannot afford to wash over that as if it doesn't exist by meeting aesthetic quotas in regards to representation. Having black people be featured dominantly where they are dominant in service to a scribe who writes a story about an two underdog white men who will beat the odds -one in particular against yet another cocky black player is defeating to any goodwill I may have towards the rest of the story. It's not as much Sandlers and Co's fault( Lebron James and Maverick Carter co-produced this ) as much as it is the fault of exhaustion. Exhaustion with nearly a century of cinema where white men are centered in stories that beg for the consideration of the people it treats as background.

White men have long had an issue taking a back seat, when everything they've told themselves says that seat is reserved for everyone but them. I’m not specifically talking about Sandler, more a generalized sense of the history of cinematic and other forms of narrative storytelling. Any chance white men have to place themselves at the center of it all they will invited or not. Their resilience in this regard should be matched by our collective vigilance, but many times it eventually gives way to exhaustion. After all, the resources, the keys, the gates, the real estate is mostly owned by them, and they can deploy all of them to overwhelm on multiple fronts. It becomes tiring countering everything everywhere all the time, especially when it's so cool and saccharine and non-threatening as Adam Sandler and stories about underdogs. Throw in a charming and willing to try and make it work Latifah as a one dimensional housewife, a bi-racial spirited child, a legion of old and new black hoopers and analyst as also charming props and maybe you might forget how hollow and old hat this all is in the sense of story. The gymnastics “Hustle” has to do to avoid even its most basic and plain truths hurt it's story and its characterizations. Ben Foster's Vince Merrick an entitled son to Robert Duvall's compassionate owner ( A trope that needs to die see “The Replacements”, “Blue Chips”, and the ghost of a father in Any Given Sunday ) looks lost as his hijinks feel completely unconnected or tied to anything tangible. There's implications of a Gladiator/Road to Perdition type deal where Merrick might be jealous of Sandler's Sugerman as a surrogate son who has a better relationship with his father than he does, but that is woefully unexplored, and in that case Sandler's character being black would lend understanding and relief without words needing to be spoken. Many of these situations would explain themselves with a black character being an outisder in this same strange world where black people are almost only on the playing side and not the organizational or operational side. As it stands, Merrick's hate (and its very hateful/spiteful) is just arbitrary and weird, especially since all of his actions actively hurt the team. With any background on him this would make sense, but the movie isn't interested in that either. Kermit Wilts (Played by actual NBA player Anthony Edwards ) has no visible traits other than shit talking. No other personality, defining or driving motive other than to be a black foil for our white hero. At least Apollo Creed had some version of interiority. The movie cares so little about its convictions that even when it repeats over and over again that Bo's main and seemingly only weakness is his lack of a developed thick skin (which Kermit exploits by getting under it) it abandons that theme unceremoniously when the big comeback scene happens. In their final battle Kermit says nothing to rile Bo the whole time and so even in his victory the question must be asked what did he learn? This is a double sin as its simultaneously hobbles Juancho Herangomez's character development, and disappears even Kermit's one defining trait leaving him nothing but a loser at the end.

I really do understand why folks find this movie appealing. It's a steady Adam Sandler ( himself a bit of an underdog considering how most people categorize his career then and now) continuing to grow right before our eyes becoming one of the more fascinating and interesting actors of our time. It's Queen Latifah getting to play just a bit outside of type and doing it with a certain kind of wilful glee that brings a smile to one's face. It's the beat down man, a scout, a small link in a great big chain driving around in a Chevy Malibu somehow able to fund all these various basketball “doctors” and hotel stays by himself without the aid of a basketball team and their corporate money because he's a doer, and a humble man, the great sweet spot that is the underdog. Last but of course not least it's basketball! “We love this Game” is the NBA's slogan, and very few slogans are as simple and true. I love this game, I love it a little too much to watch a movie that centers it and the aspect of scouting and doesn't really talk much about how to deploy actual skill, how to define it in a player. A movie featuring a scout finding a phenom that has no interest in talking about things like whether or not Bo is a traditional center who needs to learn to play more of an outside game with more finesse, or ( more likely ) a player that has a lot of skill behind the three point line, and moving with the ball that needs to learn to play more traditionally under the rim, or get tougher under it. When training there is no talk of what they're trying to train him for or what they want him to do as hes clearly in shape and looks the exact same after all this training. These are details that add to authenticity and engage us further into the story. I was frequently confused about Bo's level. Is he a phenom or a great rotational player? Would you fight this hard for a role player? If he's a phenom, there'd be no way anyone would be dissuaded by the fact that he gets a little ruffled when it gets hot, and truthfully if he was, while it may show up in regards to the loss, he would still be ballin regardless. How many phenomenonal talents have we seen who have weak constitutions or a soft personality, no one denies their talent. Why are we still talking about or allowing the white conservative talking point that being a trash talker is synonous with being a villain, especially when movies almost always make that type of villain black? While I wanted to like or maybe even love this movie I was deterred constantly at every turn by a movie which jettisoned almost every single interesting or fascinating plot point or direction for another that was tired and familiar. Like the way it ignores its interesting female characters be it Queen Latifah or Heidi Gardner as Kat Merrick the daughter of Rex, Sister of Vince - in a way that leaves so much on the table it makes her interactions with Sugarman weirdly off key. My issue with hustle is not just tied to it's impoverished approach to representation, or it's centering of a white man, or it's lack of follow through. It's in its hollow attempt to resurrect a story that had already been told and told better years ago. In essence this movie's “hustle” is not in any workmanship or craft sense, but it's willingness to try to hustle us by selling back to us a story we shouldve long ago discarded.

“Marvel, The Way Out is Through”

The first time I saw Iron Man 2 I saw a Marvel film with an inherent desire to be taken seriously by those in a certain class of filmmaking and the very vague and general perception of what a critic looks for in “high art”. The longing was apparent from the jump when reports surfaced that Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau and Co were going to adapt the “Demon in the Bottle” series from the books. The idea was mostly nixed and there was a righteous and some unrighteous reasons for that, but the effort in and of istelf is indicative to try and get serious and the more buzzy words; “darker” or “grittier” which are directly linked in an indirect sort of way to our generalized misunderstandings about what is expected of singular directors. By the time I actually watched it it was clear. This divide is the divide of most of the films coming out of the MCU ; to lean into their own identity, or try and be “respected” while appeasing the wide assortment of people that enjoy their movies. Marvel's desire is the desire of many studios and streaming platforms ( Netflix, I'm looking at you ) to be everything to everybody. I'm using the word “respect” very broadly, but I really just mean it to be an umbrella under which concepts, terms, and traditions like “prestige”, “high art”, “Oscars”, Peer love from the canonical autuers and so forth gather under. In that sphere you have certain ideas that signal, signify, and relay the general ideas of prestigious filmmaking. You know, that oft imagined kind that gets you Oscar nods, and festivals in your name, and frequent homages in other people's films. The motivation and/or causation for the desire differs from person to person, studio to studio and is a whole nother story, I aim to identify one, but there are many and my point here is to identify it as an issue that punctuates the issues Marvel is having today and what Marvel should do to get what they want, the summation of which is “The way out..is through”.

The opening scenes of each of the first two Iron Man's reek of aspirational elevation. The first film opens with little dressing. It's shot very straightforward with jovial humor and a surprise. It's emotional quality is strong but not heavy and is based in tension and some anxiety, some confusion, but not the sadness, pain, and theatricality so prevelant in the sequel. The second is much of the latter and it's more ostentatious. Wide shots, and slow ponderous panning signify this is the comic book version of “elevated horror”. It's signals the difference in the films tonality as well. A turn from the fun, but stern characterization of Iron Man with some emotional punch, to heavy on the political and serious, with some fun of course. Problem is the tension between what Favreau wanted, what he might be able to execute, and what Marvel wants is clear. Favreau's venture into exploring his alcoholism was turned into a problem with the tech that keeps Tony's heart going, and only one scene with heavy alchohol use was explicitly shown because having him be an alcoholic would've affected….Toy Sales. Barely any dialogue mentioning his usage is featured and what is is clumsy and awkward and the same treatment is given to its political thrust. Ivan Vanko’s ( A hammy Mickey Rourke) interogaion of the truth of Tony's legacy is mostly left to a few sharp tongued words, and nothing in the movie confirms its veracity even a little. It wants so bad to remain fun it stifles any decision that in any way would cement the self seriousness it strives for. It's important to note that Iron Man and Christopher Nolan's “The Dark Knight” came out the same year and the effect the ubiquitous popularity the latter had on the industry and by proximity the former's sequel - can't be ignored. Marvel would course correct to some degree, but the push to be taken seriously would continue in the choices made from directors like Kenneth Branaugh to eventually straight up media blitzes to try and secure Oscar recognition. An inferiority complex agitated by the noticeable difference in treatment of genre films and directors fuels the fires of a somewhat complex issue in that Marvel is right to feel that genre films are unfairly treated as inherently less than, but that Marvel has rarely been invested in actually making them, because of their formulaic insistence on being megazord crowd pleasers, something genre filmmakers and films cannot be obsessed with. The John Carpenters, David Cronenberg's, George Romero's Gordon Parks, Ana Lily Amanpours, Miike Takashi's, Brian De Palma's, Dario Argento's, Kathryn Bigelow's, Seijun Suzuki's, Walter Hill's and so on in the history of genre wanted to make money of course, and they wanted people to like their films, but how much they wanted or needed their films to be major box office and whom they were aiming for is vastly different from Marvel's needs and wants which is understandable on some level. It is also necessary to mention that those films and filmmakers are well regarded but also noticeably left off “Best” lists, as are many of their films. When story, race or gender ( both of maker and subject ) is not playing a role then its also and sometimes combined that the aesthetics lack the sensibilities audiences and especially the governing bodies and gatekeepers of “Prestige” associate with the concepts around prestige like autuerism. This is I believe a motivating factor behind the silly idea to try and rename horror movies “Elevated” not the awards, but the respect, the want to move these films out of genre ghettos and into the same neighborhoods as the Coppola's and Fords, Scorsese's and Hawks. Where maybe “Halloween” and “The Thing”, “Shaft” and “The Learning Tree”, “Scanners”, “The Fly” and Videodrome”, “Predator” and “Die Hard” are counted amongst the greatest films if not necessarilyby number than by being able to move in and outside the vacuums of the genre so that you don't have to add the genre as a precursor to the “greatest” like “Die Hard is the greatest ACTION film of all time.

The problem of it is though, that Marvel makes tentpoles which can be genre films ( Spielberg for instance has been doing it for years ) but in the current environment is extremely difficult to do or be allowed to do. Then they further discombobulate themselves by hiring genre filmmakers and cuffing their instincts so that while they may snatch a few genre lovers and a few of those who think a movie has to be X or Y to be an important or vital piece of filmmaking, they get no truly passionate fighters save for their core audience of comic book geeks. The others may love the movies but recognize for the most part that they are neither genre films, Oscar material, or genre films that are Oscar material. If you hire Sam Raimi to do a Dr. Strange movie and then hinder greatly his true personality, then his core audience instantly recognizes the mediocrity and tepidness in the movie instantly, and the gatekeepers.. well even when you reach the heights of various aspects of filmmaking quality in genre ( Hereditary, The Dark Knight, Terminator 2 ) you're still not guaranteed of getting into those circles…The way out is through. As times have started to change in this regard, as more and more folks stand up for genre films and for a more inclusive idea of what qualifies as important or great filmmaking, the few examples of genre films that have made it into that place that Kevin Feige and some of the other talent at or working for Marvel want to be in so bad, provide some insight as to how it can be done and the Marvel films that have done it do too. The Lord of the Rings films may be the most resonant example we have to date.

Huge in scale and scope, Jackson's penchant for a strong attention to detail and a sincere sense of love for the material shown through in the detail and in the love expressed in the actual characters. Genre filmmaking simplified could be said to be about obsession with certain ideas, subjects, people and style. With Peter Jackson its our ability to love through the most fantastical opposition, be it death, or the ultimate evil, or greed in King Kong, the fantasy is meant to be a stand in for size and size meant to show the power of our bonds. That size is also part of his style as well as a warmth that shows up everywhere from his chosen cinematographers to dialogue and blocking. With John Carpenter, its dissidents and evil, and the idea that least of society be it Snake Pliskin, or “Nada” (Roddy Piper) in “They Live” shall be the first when things get hot. These are boiled in his style which is extremely subtle which, a subtlety which aids the creation of a paranoid and anxiety ridden environment in all his films punctuated by the very sound of his movies. These are the type of filmmakers wherever they may exist that Marvel needs to go after, the movies they should try and make. Prestige and the honorifics around it are very hard to receive not in any sense of inherency, but because it's mostly about perception and Marvel has an incredible uphill battle against them because a they are already have a set perception about them, A; Due to the combination of the formula and the house style. B. Because the regularly exhibited phenomenon amongst social groups as it pertains to forced hierarchies is that the harder you try to belong the more the group you're seeking to belong to seems to want to create distance. The way out is through.

Marvel has always split its audience. The folks that love comic books on one side the folks that love movies on the other. It's a bit of an over simplification but it serves the purpose of my argument here. Out of 28 films to date in the MCU only two have worked on anywhere near that goal of being Oscar nominated; “Black Panther” and “Captain America: Winter Soldier”. While the latter is very highly regarded in that specific conceit relative to MCU films, it still didn't get didn't get a nod in any other category but special effects. Meanwhile the films that have aligned these two groups while maintaining being well regarded films in the MCU it could be argued are the films that got the closest to being genre films. “Thor: Ragnarok” is arguably the closest of all films to being a straight up genre movie. Not only does it display certain elements of a buddy action film but more importantly it is the Marvel film which arguably most allowed its directors personality into the blood and bones of its creation. The other films that have an argument are James Gunn's “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies but even with Gunn's films I would argue that there is a sense of the reigns being tugged a little bit . Whatever the issues with these films and their problematic directors are ( a lack of congruency in style, Marvel's need to set up the next film ) I actually don't think they at all overwhelm their personality. Ragnarok, Two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Doctor Strange, “Captain America: The First Avenger” all of these movies have in common not only a pretty damn good to all world reception when they came out but even more importantly they have enjoyed a deep and rich post life in the minds of comic book lovers and film lovers alike. Even with “Doctor Strange part 2 it could be said that the disappointment with that movie lies in the fact that they didn't let Sam Raimi put all ten of his horror genre toes down into that movie. All of this..All of this to suggest that maybe the way for Marvel to get that Oscar attention they so desire or at least that recognition they so desire, is not to keep hiring directors from indie films in the broadest of sense, regardless of whether or not they actually have any sort of love, any sort of obsession, any sort of desire to make these kind of films on their own, but to to hire folks for compatability to the house, to the characters, and to the genre that
may best represent them. They need less Chloe Zhao's - who is an extremely talented filmmaker but one who so very clearly did not have a true vested interest in these films - and more Ana Lily Amirpour who at least showed an influence from genre and comics in her sensational debut “A Girl Walks Home at Night”. Zhao's efforts in “The Eternals eschewed its extremely weird elements for things more grounded in the ethereal functionality and romanticism of her work. She may have had an idea for what she could do with this particular film, but you can feel that distance, that coldness. It's also not by hiring cutesy indie directors like Jon Watts or Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, The former who has made some extremely profitable “Spider-man” movies but also extremely forgettable ones to anyone who isn't raging about the appearance of the three Spidermans. These people may be able to work with you and on a certain spectrum of varying possibilities, and they may do well in spots, but the consistency and that deep affinity that lasts comes from being able to see the compatibility between the director’s vision and style, and the medium of comic books and their characters. What those folks do is so clearly incompatible with Marvel's house style that inevitably one gets swallowed by the other and that's usually the personality of those directors. Never mind that with Fleck and Boden it could be argued that their previous movies didn't have a connecting vibrancy of personality in the first place. No, just hiring those directors who are indie ( and frankly maybe easier to control ) because their movies earn them entree into the sphere of prestige is not the answer, the answer is to acknowledge who Marvel is and which category of American filmmaking you most closely resemble and that is without a doubt genre films. Each one of these things even just by the identity and personality of the character lend themselves over to a different genre. In a generalized sense Thor seems to have found a comfortable fit in comedy, Dr Strange is clearly more horror than anything, Guardians of the Galaxy is very specifically a team up movie, think Predator ( By the way Shane Black was a much better fit for a GOG movie than Iron Man, just putting that out there ) and if Marvel dived into them, they could keep the overall sense of connection while not losing not only the personality of these directors, but the personality of each of these characters and what makes them different. The movies previously named have done that to some varying extent. Each one of them has come the closest to escaping that sense of one style for everything, one personality for everyone, and so stood out to inform the audience as thoughtful, fun, and intelligent as to why those particular heroes matter, the only thing that has kept them in my opinion from what Marvel may see or want is that they didn't get to go all the way. It is Marvel's restraint from being what best suits them that is holding them back from the kind of glory they seek. As it is these awards ceremonies are pompous and blind and because of it and its long term effects are now desperate themselves to latch on to some kind of relevance in a time where their main audience is becoming increasingly dispirited, and their casual audience no longer cares or finds them that interesting. They're in a very vulnerable state right now and reaching for that relevance, so IF ..IF it will ever happen, now IS the perfect time to start investing into who you are. To start paying attention to the way that those genre directors are starting to now be treated. The growing narrative amongst cinephiles who are now of varying ages that all were coming of age as children, or critics, honors profusely directors like David Cronenberg. John Carpenter is credited as a major influence amongst new directors, and Gordon Parks is recieving the Criterion treatment. Those still living and working are now enjoying the best of both worlds; they can make movies like “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” that still reflect their personality and chosen themes and garner prestigious attention and respect and still makes movies that go all the way into their bag like “Crimes of the Future”. All of these filmmakers and films got to where Marvel and Feige want to be by acknowledging fully whom they are and living in it, bathing in it, because consciously or not they understood that concept that thus far has escaped Marvel..The Way out is through.

The Northman: To Be or Not to Be.

The Northman is the kind of movie that signals itself to you over and over again, and not necessarily in a bad way. It's a boastful kind of movie, the kind of movie that if it were a person you'd like their confidence up until the point you discovered there's not much else there at least in first light, (subsequent viewing may reveal more to me) but in this initial viewing I found a movie that revels in its accuracy and “realness” and accepts the magic its subjects believe in on a “responsible” level that simultaneously loves on and passes no judgement on their beliefs while still serving its grounded feel, but also a film that never truly committs to its higher goals of social commentary on whiteness and masculinity. It's touts its realism everywhere as all director Robert Eggers movies do. In its use of language, in the costumes, the attitudes of its people, and their cruelty and even in the title cards. It boasts an noticeable but not yet gross admiration for hyper masculinity in ways that are more articulate careful and interrogating than movies it borrows from like Gladiator and most closely “Conan the Barbarian”. A Scene featuring a group of muscular alpha men murdering and pillaging carry on for what can seem awhile. A pre battle ritual where they act as close to exactly like the single minded animal like predators they will become in battle- hangs on for sometime bathing in its night air, allowing its actors to fully immerse themselves into the mentality and space these men gave themselves over to, but the scene does not give istelf over to it. It passes no judgement, engages in no emotion, and that could be said of the entire film. It's so engaged in the currency of the real it reduces the power it most needs to emphasize its goals..emotion and point of view.

I do not at all kid when I talk about how much this movie borrows from John Milius's hyper masculine operatic fairy tale “Conan the Barbarian”. The chords and notes all pretty much match. In tonality, in its brutality and wildness, and in certain cases scene for scene. The way Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård ) finds and obtains his sword is almost frame for frame the same as in Conan, ( when he meets “Crum”) but the other scene that strongly resembles one from Conan also tells on the difference between these two and why The Northman just missed my heart.

There's a rich sense of emotion in the opening of Conan where the inciting incident for revenge occurs that is not present in The Northman. Milius's movie fully embraces the operatic elements. Every moment feels outsized, larger than life, drawn out, and overplayed just as it might be in the mind of a child who watched his father and mother be slaughtered right in front of him. Basil Poledouris's soaring melodrama by string is a large part of that particular magic, doing much of the emotional labor for the scene drawing attention to the trauma of this moment. The music in “The Northman” ( Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough) is in unison with Eggers approach dutifully true to the time, ( or at least what we envision it would sound like) but it too lacks the more sensitive emotions, or the confidence in its softness as a magnifier of where it and it’s characters are hard that Poledouris's score has. That aspect of the music; confidence in what it has chosen too is in unison with the movie which never truly feels settled in its times of sensitivity. It’s a bit off putting in a film that seeks to be a reclamation of the worser aspects of the singular infatuation of this culture in particular, and with toxic masculinity in general. Conan bathed in the glory of its Viking heritage and other such civilizations it borrowed from, almost to the point of drunkenness, but it found its purity in that openess to something so ridiculous. Giant Snakes, Snake arrows, and cult leaders who turn into snakes, and it’s all like “hey, that’s what happened man I swear!”. It didn’t just give credence to how real the mythology felt to its people, it played it as if its supposed to be real to us. The Northman let’s us know it’s engaging with mythology on the terms of the people but the use of drugs and near death experiences as the portal to these visions and places lets us know this is not a reality. That is an example of the constant need for this movie to be “realistic” or true as possible to its historic background. Another is its centering of men, when in many ways from who comes out as the most fully realized character to who Amleth's journey is going to announce the coming of the movie signifies this should've been a film centering the women. That commitment would be the exact energy to invigorate The Northman with the radical but entertaining ferver it tries for.

As it stands “The Northman” ends up a an animated body with no spirit, an ancient epic with very little soul. Like all Eggers projects to date it keeps the audience at a distance with its stoic masculine filmmaking with no dressing to mask that distance, unlike The Witch and The Lighthouse that doesnt suit the films ambition, leaving these issues bare. Thematically the movie wants to have a conversation about a certain kind of masculinity and whiteness and the falsehoods of both, and in ways it does and does not commit enough. Nothing about the whiteness of our ideas around of Viking culture is said loudly enough or profoundly to notice, same with its dealings with. The lack of commitment is seen in its casting and choice of leads. If Eggers film truly wanted to be the tale of male excesses and debauchery it sought it wouldve been told from the pov of one of its main women in either Nicole Kidman's “Queen Gudrún” or Anya Taylor Joy's “Olga”. It wouldve gave Olga more fight, not just in physicality but in word and action, because in truth Olga is not all that impactful beyond having Amleths child in this movie. Queen Gudrún has a scene where she gets to really spill life into this theme of the outsized egos and narrative manipulations of men, but its undercut by the films need to disguise a plot development. This is a major theme of this film, this conflict of desires both in and out of context that show themselves in the form of ineffective and effective guises. Robert Eggers is very much a director in the same spectrum as Nolan, and Mann, their filmmaking is very straightforward and restrained, save for in these hot culminating moments of exstacy still dedicated to a grounded sense of cold realism, but Mann has raging currents of emotion under his characters and layers them brilliantly, and Nolan disguises the lacking of character and warmth to the best he can in his films with magnificent set pieces/sequences and puzzles. Eggers tries for the former but it fails in all but one character that is aided pretty magnificently by a fierce performance from Nicole Kidman, the rest of the characters lack the gravitas to match the movies ambitions. The latter, those inventive action sequences that have pushed Nolans blockbuster career to the forefront of the genre ( that also stylistically borrowed from Mann or at the very least 1995's “Heat” ) are not present in The Northman. That is not to say The Northman doesn't have some great sequences, but it is to say they aren’t wild enough, imaginative enough to distract one from the fact that these characters aren’t necessarily three dimensional, and this story, has been told before. So we are left with a film that doesn't have the spirited excess of its previous incarnations, fails to in any serious way challenge the excess of patriarchy and toxic masculinity and still wants to be pleasing to its core male audience, and since the former might require a more peaceful ending, or a more disappointing one it balks. No one can serve two masters is the saying..and it seems that Eggers struggled serving the audiences lust for blood and spectacle and the films desire to challenge and critique our collective ideas around the culture. The two ultimately stalemate in this movie, and then leave a movie that should’ve been a fizzy pop sensation with fresh indie flavor stale and somewhat flat. A movie that manages to be a swing for the fences that ends up a base hit, which is fine, but not fit for the outsized expectations the film might have brought with it…but who knows maybe those expectations too have something to do with biases and beliefs about that culture.

Bel-Air has an Issue with Class

Television and black television in particular has always had a fascinating relationship with class. While there most certainly have been shows that seek to depict with a degree of nuance and warmth the lives of the working class, and or middle class (Good Times, ROC, and to some extent A Different World and Atlanta) far more shows have been devoted to the depiction of black uplift through the lens of upper middle class folk and the wealthy. Enter the latest crop of black television shows in this new black TV renaissance like “Empire”, all the “Powers”, “Our Kind of People”, “Sistas”, “Greenleaf”, “Black-ish”, and “Dear White People”, hell even shows like “Insecure” by the time they're finished moved from working class depictions to rigid definitions of success by way of aesthetics buried in wealth and luxury and now comes the latest ..“Bel Air". A re-imagined version of the beloved “Fresh Prince of Bel Air" the show seeks to take a more serious dramatic approach that delves into some of the issues that were present in the original but limited by the 30 min run time and its comedic lean. Of course one of those is class..the problem is in that regard Bel Air is a regression.

In the first episode we see Will (Jabari Banks) arrive at Bel-Air enamored as anyone would be by the Bank's wealth. He is taken on a small tour and then brought to the event Uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes) is holding in the backyard. Uncle Phil is put off by Will's gregarious usage of slang and lack of etiquette, (so far so true to the original where Phil also had some funny respectability politics) after being introduced to some of the other family members and announcing that he is hungry, he is told he can order anything that he wants from the master chef who is catering the event. Longing for anything resembling home he orders a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Initially wary of the chefs ability to reproduce the the famous cornerstone of Philadelphia's cultural cuisine, he takes a bite and is instantly pleased. Now, In the original the family stops by a fine dining favorite and seeking to give will a taste of home, brought him back a philly cheesesteak sandwich as envisioned by this fancy restaurant. Will took the sandwich out and immediately asked “what it is” noticing that in no way does it truly resemble a philly cheesesteak sandwich save the fact that it has sliced steak and cheese. He further goes on to elaborate the distinctive qualities and traits of a good philly cheese steak sandwich. This is a valuable truth about the culture around food that made Anthony Bourdain so beloved. Fine dining cuisine is not superior to the creative prowess of the working class, and we all know that Po' boys, Cheesesteaks, and Soul Food could hardly be recreated by fine dining because they would try and class up the food when the heart of it as Will says is in some of the culture around the unique palate from things the upper class deem as unsavory like flavor and grease. In this version its what makes Ashley’s arc around food work so well. The problem with this difference is not that it is different, it is in the dichotomy of the representation of these two worlds from one show to the other. This tiny event is a recreation from the original episode titled “homeboy sweet homeboy", but the entirety of the episode will be recreated later in “PA to LA". The plot goes like so, Will's best friend from back home “Ice Tray” (an uncanny resemblance in Stevonte Hart here as Don Cheadle in the original) comes to visit Will in order to ease away some of his home-sickness, in both episodes Will and Tray reminiscence, and then discover their newfound differences, but in the new version that discovery is violent and paints Tray in an unfavorable light because most of what troubles Tray seems rooted in jealousy. The original tray wasn't bothered at all by the fact that Will decided to stay in Bel-Air, it barely registered. Sure Cheadle lended a slight bit of sadness to show that Tray was indeed disappointed, but Tray almost immediately shrugs it off and wishes his friend well. As a matter of fact one line in the beginning of the old school version from Tray is “You've got a good thing going here Will don't mess it up”, but here in this version Tray becomes livid at the idea of Will staying here mostly because he is leaving him behind to poverty and lacking. This suggestion of a certain kind of jealousy from the have-nots is a continuing theme in this rendition of Bel-Air. We see it in word when after visiting some fairly tame and aesthetically middle class looking friends Ashley is warned by Geoffrey that there are “unsavories” who would like nothing more than to basically hold her for ransom. In light of where she was at it's a ludicrously extreme statement that is delivered as if it is a matter of fact. We then see it again in a much smaller context where Will, Tray, and Uncle Phil go to a concert and and being VIP walk straight through the line. The camera suddenly makes sure to capture several folks who don't have this access commenting and asking “who are these N!&&@$?” . I can tell you having lived in Los Angeles for 13 years I can't recall one single moment where anybody didn't understand the idea of VIP lines and back entrances that are made available for those who have more money than others. It would be quite a rarity to see this kind of carrying on because it is a widely accepted aspect of life in a place like LA that caters to the wealthy. The most it would garner is a “damn I wish” sort of response. The show's lack of desire to want to discuss the differences in class with any sort of nuance and it's lack of desire to want to do anything with the working class save to portray them as as inferior, small minded, and vulture-like (Rashad Denton for example) is troubling especially when compared to the way they were depicted in the original. Wills defense of Ice Tray to Aunt Viv in the original is poignant, and heart warming and when placed against Aunt Vivs fair criticisms of Ice Tray’s lack of ambition makes for a nuanced understanding of the value of their friendship and of people beyond what they produce.

The show's problems with class continue in the decision to change the the core meaning in the episode titled “Yamacraw” which is a loose translation of the original episode titled “Not with My Pig You don't”. In this episode in the original Uncle Phil's mother Hattie visits him, and excitedly reminisces with Will about Phil's youth on a farm. It's a funny and sweet depiction of Uncle Phil's working class roots, but Uncle Phil in the midst of receiving an award for his help in the black community, takes exception to that part of his life being brought up, his mother hears this and tells him he has no resason to be ashamed of his roots and even though he denies he is, its clear some part of him is ashamed. The most consistent and persistent theme of that episode is that Uncle Phil has nothing to be ashamed of regarding his background, and that there was love and beauty in his upbringing, it was an important distinction because far too many of us do not make a distinction between hating poverty and hating the impoverished, between painting poverty as somehow noble and painting the people in it as having no value whatsoever. Bel Air's “Yamacraw” doesn't villainize anyone but it jettisons an important aspect of Uncle Phil's youth and changes it to a story about him losing ties with his community and and his brotherhood in the fraternity, which again is not in and of itself a problem.. Where it becomes a problem is in its resolution. Uncle Phil had had a serious problem in the way he was dealing not only with his brotherhood but with the community and the end of that episode the resolution of this very serious conflict is not to apologize and claim his connection to the community but to literally “Step" his way back into the brothers good graces. By the time Phil finally starts to take steps towards re-ingratiating himself to the community he has left behind in a later episode it feels like the damage is already been done.

To be clear Bel-Air is not at all a terrible show, it has plenty of elements to keep anyone just entertained enough to keep watching, some of the re-imagings are fairly creative ( Geoffrey -Jimmy Akingbola ) and others give far more character and depth to the characters like Hilary and Aunt Viv ( Coco Jones, Cassandra Freeman ) But both aesthetically and thematically the show can be far too uniform in it's depictions, and its continuance of the worst traditions around storytelling are too reminiscent of Cosbiness, wherein a “talented tenth”are our saviors and the rest of us just fodder for their fears and props for their PR. It's not like the original was particularly good at this either, but it makes no sense for it over 30 years later, with hindsight available to be worse than the original in this regard. It is not wrong to ask a show whose goal is to be more dramatically effective and socio politically charged to spend more time on and around those it claims to care about even while some of its main characters may not. It would behoove the show to give characters like Will's mother Viola Smith a hard working woman more of an inner life, beyond face time. To either make Tray's arguments more nuanced by showing the audience the way Will has maybe lost his way in all this in something more then wearing nice clothes, and having nice things (which no real friend would begrudge a friend) or by just allowing that one aspect of Tray being supportive to remain the same. There is nothing new about reducing the working class poor to the vulture class, when in fact that is the wealthy. We see enough of that in black and white television, what we are missing are the wonderful depictions of the working and middle class present in films like “Car Wash" (1976) and “Friday" and TV shows like “Sanford and Son” “Martin" and “The Jamie Foxx Show" and though black people have reason to want to see ourselves draped in luxury and comfort in film and television there is nothing fresh about that coming at the cost of the other classes, there is enough of that in real life.