Film has always been critically important to me, and recently, it’s become even more so as I’ve realized how necessary art forms are to taking back the culture and returning the people and our country to a healthier, more spiritual and God-fearing state. Below are all my reviews I’ve published on this blog, linked so you can easily access them. I’ve written many (over 300, I think), but I chose not to publish many older ones because they are either mediocre, or they don’t have much to say. A lot of what’s here is also older, and I no longer stand by all of it.
Originally published on December 8, 2022 on Letterboxd
*****
Growing up, seeing my friends interact with their parents was always strange, because I always had a great relationship with my parents (at least, I’d like to think so), and no one else I knew seemed to. Every time my friends and I talked about girls we liked, they’d be afraid to talk about that stuff with their parents. Every time I wanted to do something with my friends, several of them were always afraid to ask their parents about it. I felt like I was one of the only people around who had a really good relationship with my parents. I could talk about anything with them, ask them about stuff, and trust them to not tell their friends about everything I had going on. My dad and I have our differences, but I’ll still follow him anywhere.
The problem that parents and children both face is that kids tend to adopt resentment as part of budding individuality, and parents, in an effort to control this growth instead of work with it, either smother their kids in unnecessary authority, or neglect them almost entirely. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry Jones Sr. chooses the latter, never really telling his son what he needed to hear, while Indy became his father in an effort to gain his approval. The problem is compounded by the fact that both are men, and so vulnerability seemingly threatens the ego as well as the parent-child relationship. There’s an interesting dialectic going on between Indy and his dad for much of the film, that being Indy’s need for his father’s validation clashing with his father’s hands-off approach to parenting. The film ultimately takes Indy’s side, as maybe it should, because to do otherwise would seem coldblooded, and sharing your love for someone else is a noble thing to do. However, the film seems to draw a bit of a false dichotomy between hands-off child rearing and parental apathy. Henry should have told Indy how much he loved him every day that he could, but his choice of letting Indy develop on his own was obviously successful. Indy became his own man, the one his father wanted him to, and while things may be rocky between the two, Indy is a true “man’s man” (noble, honorable, kind, trustworthy, tough, unflappable), and he only calls out his dad for this after coming into his own as a man, which was his father’s intention.
I didn’t fully connect with The Tree of Life when I saw it, since I accidentally watched the extended version and it was already very late at night, but there is a definite truth to the film’s “way of nature/way of grace” themes that stem from its acknowledgment of the natural differences between men and women. Men and women are different, so naturally, how they parent will be different. Henry should have been a “better” father in the sense that he should have been more open about his feelings, but he equipped Indy for all that was necessary. Indy’s resentment also comes from the fact that he grew up without a mother, and so he looks to his father to fulfill both roles, and that’s not possible. But, when all is said and done, Indy got what he needed from his father, though, not in the way he would have liked, and because he’s joined his father in manhood, they’re now equals and friends. Indy’s arc, and his father’s, ends once Indy receives the more maternal love he was looking for from his father after fully becoming a man, truly beautiful stuff. This is definitely a “way of nature” film, although it ultimately acknowledges the necessity for both in art and life.
This film sort of offers a counterpoint to Temple of Doom‘s “fortune and glory” thesis, that being the spiritual warfare inherent to the archeological adventure. The whole film is rather playful and laid-back, save for the glib violence (this weird marriage is what makes these films so charming), but the freewheeling nature of the story is halted about midway through, where we get a very on-the-nose speech from Henry.
“The quest for the Grail is not archeology. It’s a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the earth. Do you understand me?”
This comes after he slaps Indy for taking the Lord’s name in vain. This moment cemented this series as one of the most wholesome for me.
Other small things I liked: while this isn’t the absolute pinnacle of Spielberg’s craft, it still feels like the best movie ever for pretty much the entire runtime, and while the action isn’t quite as spirited as the previous two films, the practical effects and sprawling use of locations and sets helps balance out the gonzo nature of some of the sequences. I was out of my chair for the whole tank sequence, and I was filled with joy at the realization that this was not only not the end of the film, but that we still had an entire thirty-forty minute stretch that I’d forgotten about. The level of personality and character that Berg lends to the thrills works because this character and personality spills over into every aspect of the story and is constantly developed instead of teased and superficially imposed. The key to entertainment like this is to maintain a constant sense of movement that translates into drama as well as action (so that the story does not feel stop-and-start when people start talking), and to never lose the intimacy of the characters amid the splendor of the spectacle. This is all really simple and obvious, but maybe the problem is not that people don’t understand this, but that they’re simply of replicating it with this level of quality. This is just so effortlessly paced, so confident in its goofiness and mature in its ideas, and so expertly constructed to maximize adrenal thrills to make us lizard brains feel intellectual for appreciating the themes, that I can’t help but just kind of sit in awe. The fact that Berg does all of this so well that it comes off as almost lazy is astounding, but he diverts himself with the themes. This really just becomes a buddy movie for Ford and Connery, and for the better. I saw an article a few days ago claiming that Connery improvised the line about Elsa “talking in her sleep.” Not sure if that caused the whole subplot of Indy and his dad boning the same girl to come into play, or if he just added that line, but it’s that kind of wild energy that makes something like this so incomparable as entertainment.
Truly, a film for the bros, and one of the best ever made. I don’t trust anyone who would take the original Star Wars trilogy over this series. This has to be the best Indy, but it’s at least the one I think about the most. No movie has helped me appreciate how well my father walked the line between the parenting types discussed here like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Originally published on December 3, 2022 on Letterboxd
Honestly, I don’t have much to say about this one. It’s allegorical, obviously, but it also fits right in with Spielberg’s other films about fathers and sons. It’s about a dad racing against the end of the world to save his own crumbling world. This is such a depressing movie, not just because of the large body count and unforgiving nature, but because the movie constantly reminds you of how bad of a father Cruise’s character is, since that’s ultimately what this movie is about.
Many have said it, but the novelty of War of the Worlds is watching one of the medium’s most lighthearted and wholesome artists go as hard and dark as possible in a total apocalyptic death-dream that still ends on a hopeful note. There is a lot of crazy stuff happening, since the world is literally ending for most of the movie’s runtime, and so it’s darkly funny that it chooses to focus on the biggest sad sack loser that it could out of everyone. The sequences with the tripods are the best, with the initial set piece of Cruise running through the street as people around him get vaporized being the highlight. I don’t think I entirely loved this movie, but I feel obligated to give it props, because Cruise running through clouds of people ash and being covered in it by the time he gets back to his house is one of the hardest images I’ve ever seen. The movie is punishingly bleak for the majority of its runtime (the son wanting to leave and go fight, everyone around our protagonists dying, the awkwardness and tension between the family, the river of corpses, the whole Tim Robbins sequence), and you really chuckle to yourself when you remember that this is the guy who made Indiana Jones and E.T. There are some problems (the movie stars to lose me during the whole cellar bit, and the son is really obnoxious and unhelpful), but it all kinda fades when you look at the larger tapestry of the story. The CGI is excellent, especially for the time period, and this movie does the thing I like where it uses CGI as a medium-pushing tool to depict things that cannot be done practically rather than using it as a crutch out of laziness. Everything in this holds up better than ninety-percent of anything coming out now.
The tripods driven by the aliens are still as creepy as they were the first time, mainly because they evoke Lovecraftian horror. I don’t care what anyone says, there is nothing scarier than a giant monster that can destroy everything and you don’t know what it is or how to stop it. Every time those things show up, it’s scary, not just because of their appearance, but because Spielberg manages to pull off something that’s really difficult to do in horror, and that is depicting enough violence and bloodshed to make you fear the antagonist without it crossing over into needlessly cruel or exploitative territory (maybe it does and I’m just a desensitized freak now, who knows). When those things show up, Spielberg shows as much as he needs to for the audience to realize how bad things will get whenever they are around. The scenes with them are horrifying, and this whole thing turns into a sort of anti-action movie (I guess that’s what the disaster movie is in general) because it’s just our characters running from everything, unable to do anything, and this is all a little too crazy to be purely entertaining. That said, Berg’s formalism is a nice distraction, though, and some of this is just him going as hard as possible to flex on us (the camera going in and out of the car as Cruise and co. drive away from the destruction behind them is crazy).
I said that this movie is depressing, and it is, but as I think about it, I realize that it’s also deeply beautiful and moving in some ways. As with Hook, this is a film about a father learning to love his kids while they in turn learn to believe in him, except this is a nightmare instead of a fairytale. The ending is a nice little deus ex machina that ties things up maybe a bit too nicely (honestly, if it didn’t end this way, this movie would be truly cruel and nihilistic), but it emphasizes where the movie’s heart is, that being in the relationship between Cruise and Dakota Fanning. This guy’s daughter is on his side in his fight to regain his supremacy in his family and household. The movie’s emotional climax is this guy’s family beginning to trust him again, and while it took the literal end of the world for him to prove himself, it’s something.
I really miss this time for movies, man. I was too young to see a lot of these, but I wonder if anyone in the 00s realized how good they really had it. War of the Worlds was a mainstream release in 2005, and now it feels like some esoteric and marginal film that only film nerds would care about. The amount of darkness and adult themes that people were willing to take back then in their popular entertainment is crazy, we have to go back. Anyway, yeah, awesome flick, but not readily recommended unless you’re prepared for a stressful, depressing story about the duality of man and the redeeming qualities of family.
Originally published on December 2, 2022 on Letterboxd
****
I was thinking about rewatching Hook, and then the folks at HBO Max added it to their catalogue for December, what a coincidence. Always avoid piracy if possible, kids. Anyway, this movie kinda rules, but it’s not perfect. I wonder if Spielberg was just born with this innate ability to make absolutely baller movies or if he really had to work at it. I was talking with my dad the other day about writing, and he said that he said that he used to believe in the Stephen King school of thought where some people are just born with raw writing talent and others are not, but now he believes that anyone can become a master of something if they try hard enough. I tend to agree with the latter, but I think both are true in Spielberg’s case, since he’s so clearly preternaturally gifted when it comes to filmmaking that even a tossed-off studio project like Hook can slap.
This isn’t Top Tier Berg because it does drag in the middle, and it’s one of those films where the themes sort of outweigh the content. If you’re just coming to watch Old Man Pan go up against Captain Hook, then you’re sorta out of luck because this film doesn’t have any of that until the third act. It should really have more Pan vs. Hook, since the movie is about their conflict, and so it should feel like the film is sort of bursting at the seams with it, but it does not. Peter takes too long to remember who he is, too much time is spent with the Lost Boys, and the film does not use pacing to help its bloated runtime (in many ways, this feels like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, since both seem very similar and have similar issues). You’re probably wondering why I gave it four stars then, and the answer is that I just kinda love what it’s all about. Almost all of Spielberg’s movies are about fathers and sons, the sanctity of marriage and the family unit, or something along those lines, and this really isn’t any different. Hook is so evil because he comes into Peter’s home and exacerbates the one big issue in the household, that being Peter’s struggle to be a good father. He kidnaps Peter’s kids, takes Peter’s son and attempts to replace Peter as the father, spoiling the boy and poisoning him against his dad. I’m not a father yet, but this is a truly evil little thing, maybe right up there as one of the most dastardly villain plots, and definitely a particularly cruel thing in a Spielberg movie. It’s a message about how, if you’re not careful or in control with your kids, something else will replace you and influence them. Culture seeks to undermine parental authority all the time, and you need to be careful about what authority governs your life (see also: Star Wars prequels).
That is why it’s so beautiful that the ultimate defeat of Hook and the return of Peter’s powers come from the kids’ belief in their dad instead of in Neverland or whatever. The movie understands the symbiotic, biblical relationship of parents and kids (kids honor the parents, parents love and respect the kids). One thing about this movie that’s interesting to me is that it’s kinda one of the first legacy sequels (revisiting an old beloved character for a proper sendoff), but it’s also sort of the anti-sequel in that it consciously rejects this post-modern, man-child idea of “reliving your childhood.” Peter returns to Neverland as an adult, but can’t get his magic back because he’s grown up, and only when his kids realize their childhood and his importance in it does he get his power back. It’s just really cool, like reliving your childhood means nothing without your adulthood, and it’s also cool that the movie acknowledges the very real idea that parents want to be their kids’ heroes.
Anyway, technically speaking, it’s a Spielberg movie, so even when he’s at his laziest and most disengaged, the film still feels sprawling and fun. One sort of gets the feeling with his movies that he cares more about the themes than the actual stories, and so he just tells whatever stories are necessary to convey the ideas that he wants to, and I think that’s the sign of a truly great artist (i.e. someone with something to say). Technically speaking, this movie has some of the coolest set design I’ve seen in a minute, which makes sense since it’s a 90s movie and the 90s was probably the peak of set design as a thing. The costumes are all perfectly on that line of ridiculous/cool, and Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman are both really trying. Williams feels weird in the role, and I’d be interested to know how much of this was a paycheck and how much was genuine passion for the part, but he and Hoffman prove themselves to be the consummate professionals that they are (major respect to actors willing to look goofy and stupid to push themselves or not get typecast). Like I said, very little happens until the last thirty-or-so minutes, which has a big ship battle and a cool final duel, and it’s cool to see Speilberg sort of do his version of an old Michael Curtiz swashbuckler movie or something. The movie’s tone sort of falters in these bits, because it’s this lighthearted children’s movie, but it’s about a dad reclaiming his sense of fatherhood, and also it’s pretty violent (kids and pirates getting bloodlessly stabbed with swords, Hook threatening to kill kids, etc.). I really miss this type of kids’ entertainment where they could still be sort of adult and go-for-broke, and being for kids did not automatically equal complete thematic sterility.
I was a big Peter Pan kid when I was younger, and my mom has often recounted how many times I watched the original Disney movie, so it was no surprise that I loved this when I saw it years ago. Watching it now, so far removed from my love or knowledge of anything Peter Pan-related was weird, but it really reminded me of why children’s entertainment is so special when done right. Younger me was caught up in the joy and adventure, and older me was preoccupied with the pacing issues, lack of incident, and general technical features and bugs, and I think a net negative of getting older is not being as able to give yourself so wholly to stories. I had this same issue with The Princess Bride. Obviously, I’m not saying we should try to be like kids or only watch kid stuff, but I miss the ability to simply enjoy simple things. So yeah, anyway, Hook is cool.
Originally published on November 12, 2022 on Letterboxd
A friend said that “Blade Runner was already a film about the last human feeling, the last emotion, before everything dissolves into media.” This line really helped me to connect with the film more this time around. Few films have really managed to articulate what it’s like to be alive in 2022, what it’s like to go on the internet. Harrison Ford, the quintessential leading man, is like us. Jaded, cynical, deadened to the empty stimulation that culture has to offer. Even the city here is ahead of its time, showcasing large screens with Japanese girls on them (predicting our culture’s obsession with Japanese culture by decades). Everything is dark and dreary. Everything is fake. Everything is noise. We struggle through it, searching for any sort of real connection. I prefer Blade Runner 2049 just because I feel like more happens, I love Ryan Gosling, and the imagery and “literally me” memes really appeal to me, but this still perfectly encapsulates a generation that came to be long after it, which is why it justifies a sequel more than most films.
This movie is pretty boring in spots, and it’s hard to keep engaged. This is a minor issue when the movie is taken in full, and the lack of humanity and life is the point, so I don’t dock the film points for that. This is generations of pop culture, past and future, distilled into one bewildering package. Few other films look or sound like it, and its practical effects and set design are unparalleled. We’re all just lonely film noir protagonists, wandering around empty cities looking for purpose. We’ve lost our ability to understand things. This movie asks the question of what it means to be human, sure, but I think it also raises the question of how we are able to answer the aforementioned question in a world that makes it harder for us to do so everyday. Deckard’s emotional arc climaxes in his being able to recognize humanity, or regain the ability to do so. Why is our world becoming more alien and mechanical each day? In a way, this is a lot like the films Michael Mann was making at the time, and it’s especially reflective of Blackhat in its view of such a terrifying digital death dream. The only solution to the society that so carelessly marches on is to find someone you love, and defiantly strike out on your own with that person. Deckard only changes his perspective after witnessing death and looking to Heaven. Roy’s death is one of the most beautiful moments in all of cinema. It’s a film I appreciate more than I like, but it’s filled with great little moments like this.
Is Deckard a replicant or not? Are the replicants good or bad? Who cares? This movie predicted a hellish future that’s coming to fruition, and people can’t be bothered to put aside their fan theories enough to see it. This movie’s whole cult following and fanbase proves the film’s whole point. Culture is just media saturation, there’s so little to grab onto. God is in Heaven, and every day we reject Him, spit on Him, and further march toward the cliff overlooking oblivion. Today, tell the people you love that you love them. Kiss that special person and hold him or her tightly. Be nice to the people you see around you. Culture’s dead, it always has been. But you’re not. You’re alive. Why not live like it?
Originally published on November 10, 2022 on Letterboxd
*****
Marriage: His Greatest Adventure Yet!
The Indiana Jones series’ mission statement, “fortune and glory,” is a joke, because that’s what all films and filmmakers are chasing, what all artists are chasing, hell, what all people are chasing. People like Indiana Jones are always looking for a way to matter, to make a name for themselves, and to leave some sort of impact. This series is a struggle with life and history. Time is marching on with or without us, and you can either be like Indiana Jones, and literally chase the past, or you can move forward and accept what’s coming, which is what Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is all about.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is very much a film for children, like the others in the series, but unlike other sequels, it’s about growing up and moving on. A lot of people have said the same thing about stuff like Twin Peaks: The Return or The Matrix Resurrections, and it’s true with this film (which predates both). The interesting thing about this movie, though, is that it’s not a legacy sequel or an emotional sendoff. It’s still just tooling along and telling an Indiana Jones story, but it’s just about him growing up a little, something many of the franchise’s fans needed to, and still need to, do. This movie is effective because it starts out in classic Indy fashion, setting the whole thing up to be like a normal adventure, and it indeed recaptures the magic of the original trilogy as well as it can. It puts us in the minds of children, of the children we were when we enjoyed them. But slowly, as the film progresses, we realize things are different, and so are we. We grow with the movie.
The whole film’s kind of a joke, because the entire thing ends up being; “the real treasure was the friends we made along the way!” But it’s true! These films are so beloved not just because they’re technically perfect films, but because their simplicity and earnestness just can’t be transferred to modern media. This whole series has been anti-materialism and pro-relationships. Every film starts with a macguffin and ends with Indy rejecting it, whatever it is, in favor of his friends/family/love interest. Why? Because these things are meaningless. They’re graven images, doorways to idolatry. They don’t really matter, and he realizes this, as does the audience. The only things that last are your relationships and your legacy, and Steven Spielberg understands this. That’s why this film’s emotional climax is a wedding. Indy finally realizes he can’t keep doing this stuff, at least not exclusively, and so he grabs onto what matters by marrying the woman he loves and becoming a father to his son. When Mutt goes to put on the fedora at the end and Indy grabs it from him, it’s a beautiful moment, because this is Spielberg telling us that Indy is a real person, that his story is still going. He still matters even if he isn’t doing what we want him to do. We don’t need someone else to “take up the mantle,” we’re here for Indy’s story, not random people doing Indiana Jones things, and he’s continuing his adventure, entering a new chapter. The film’s tagline: “The adventure continues!” Most filmmakers are too cowardly for an ending like this.
Some other interesting notes: Indy enters a testing site with a fake town full of mannequins that’s modeled after 1950s suburbia. This is Spielberg metaphorically showing the death of that wholesome period of culture through progress. This whole thing is literally blown up. Indy tries to find someone in it, but he’s the only one still living, because this part of history is one culture wants to stay dead, because it’s one of the few ways back to something real. Why does Hollywood consistently pick this period to satirize, subvert, and mock? The answer should be obvious. As for the fridge bit? It’s awesome and hilarious. Culture and the industry refuse to let Indy die. We are his fridge. The digital filmmaking and CGI mirror the film’s plot. As filmmaking and technology advance, the characters in the film advance too, with America developing the atom bomb and the Russians seeking ultimate knowledge from extraterrestrial life to beat us. Old vs. new, forever and ever.
I was five years old when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, so I don’t remember the hundreds of filmgoers, nerds, and neckbeards who hopped on their computers to bemoan the latest step in the supposed slow, unceremonious death of le cinema. The issue with people constantly crying their eyes out about sequels, spinoffs, and remakes is that we really shouldn’t care. I get it, I do, but, like, so what? They’re ruining another one of your favorite brands, are you really surprised? We should grow up and move on, like this film does, which has been completely misread and lumped in with the rest of the much-hated attacks on all that is sacred by Hollywood. People complain about some of the cringey dialogue and bad CGI, but so what? That’s all artifice, as ultimately meaningless as the Crystal Skull itself. I came away from this film in love with the possibilities of life and cinema, enthralled at the idea of living my own adventure and starting a family, which is the adventure that lives in the heart of every man. Who cares about the alien stuff? It’s parody, stretching the limits of Indiana Jones to a humorous extreme. Mutt Williams? He’s great! The action scenes? As filled with thrills, personality, incident, humor, and wild choreography as anything Spielberg has done. Not sure how one could watch the opening or the motorcycle chase and not see that he still has it. I laughed when Indy tried to swing onto the truck in the opening and missed, only to exclaim; “Damn! I thought that was closer!”
Anyway, for me, it’s all about the scene in the truck when Indy and Marion are arguing, and she says, “I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to go on with my life, there must have been plenty of women for you over the years.” Indy’s response? “Yeah, there were a few, but they all had the same problem. They weren’t you, honey.” I almost cried. This may be one of the great movies, but for now, I’ll settle for this series being the best thing Spielberg, and maybe Hollywood in general, ever did.
Originally published on October 28, 2022 on Letterboxd
0.5 *
A friend of mine works at Cinemark, and his benefits include free movies and half-off prices for concessions, so that means I could watch Black Adam for free and pay half price for a large soda and buttered popcorn. This was nice, but I didn’t exactly feel like I was getting a deal, because Black Adam is not the kind of content worth paying for.
These aren’t real movies. How anyone is still fooled by this whole superhero thing, how anyone still goes to see new brand name blockbusters, how anyone can still bring themselves to talk or care about any of these films, is completely beyond me. There’s nothing left to say, I don’t even want to talk about it. A friend wanted me to write this, though, so I’ll try to articulate what about this is so bad, but I’m guessing none of it will be surprising.
Black Adam looks like garbage. There’s not a lot of color, a lot of it is dark, and that mainly just has to do with the bad grading and dull palette. So many movies in this genre now are just grey, dark, blah-looking nothing. They don’t look cool or visually interesting, which sounds unintelligent, but it’s true. Movies can just look visually stimulating. Watch some Michael Mann or Tony Scott movies, watch the Star Wars prequels, just watch anything made by an actual director or aesthete and you’ll see what I mean. Episodes of Twin Peaks in the 90s look more cinematic and “real” than this $195-$200M (according to Wikipedia) budgeted piece of plastic. It just looks exactly like every other movie coming out right now. Nothing singular or unique about it that in any way sets it apart.
I can excuse unremarkable or mediocre visuals if they’re in service to any sort of interesting narrative or characters, but this is not. This has none of that. Also, I hate to sound like a sophomoric high school critic with statements like, “Uhh, this has good acting, good visuals, good story, good cinematography, and good characters.” Those are lame ways to evaluate works of art, and only the absolute most basic ways to assess something’s quality, and even then those can become too subjective. The issue here is that Black Adam fails at these fundamental levels. Aside from Dwayne Johnson or Pierce Brosnan, everyone else here sucks and is giving the most un-engaged and uninteresting performances you’d expect. I don’t even care to look up any of the names of these people, but they’re all forgettable. I always like Pierce, but he has too little to do here, and I know I said The Rock is good, but he’s not that good, especially for having to carry this whole movie. I like his stoic, engine-of-destruction approach to the character that feels in line with an Eastwood or Statham, but he’s not as good at it and this type of thing can’t be the only interesting bit. A major reason for the acting is that the performers are a lot of B-tier performers, except for Brosnan and Johnson, and they don’t have the charisma, charm, or general star power to elevate underwritten characters, and boy are these characters all underwritten. This film takes a bunch of DC staple characters that fans will know and turns them into a basic action movie soldier team that you’d see in like a Predator movie or something. There’s the tough guy (Hawkman), the more cautious and wise one (Dr. Fate), the comic relief (Atom Smasher), and the spunky, whip-smart girl (the girl, don’t care to learn the character’s name). These characters are now just stock action movie personalities that are filled in by uninteresting performers, which means this is now only interesting to nerds who know all about these characters and can clap like seals when they appear onscreen.
Black Adam in particular is just stupid. This movie acts like his character is a revelation and that he represents a complete upset to the DC universe and the superhero landscape. But does he? He’s just Superman, but he is a mean anti-hero and he has a few more powers? So what? One of the big marketing things that they did when they were advertising this movie was saying that Black Adam “changes the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe.” How does he do this? Well, he defeats a bunch of weak, second-rate heroes, that’s how. For this assertion to ring true, wouldn’t you pit him against the brand’s flagship characters to prove himself? No, because you can’t show Superman or Wonder Woman lose a fight, so you have to have your second-tier character beat up other second-tier characters, and so it goes. Anyhow, I hate to use this phrase, but “in the comics,” he is an antagonist for another character, Captain Marvel/Shazam. Both have the same powers and can do the same things, so if Black Adam’s only selling point is his abilities, well we’ve already got that covered. So what else is there? No interesting backstory, no real character motivations or stakes for his arc, no real lessons he learns. Well, he does learn to use his powers for good, which would be cool if it wasn’t so lame.
This movie tries to be “about something” at times, and this includes making hilarious political statements. Characters throw around words like “imperialism” so that you won’t doubt this film’s maturity. In the opening fifteen minutes, a boy yells at some soldiers about them coming into his country and occupying it and oppressing the people. This movie is trying to make this half-baked argument about American involvement in foreign nations, but the issue is that the occupants in this movie are not American government soldiers who have any sort of political or ideological interest in the film’s fake nation, but rather “Intergang,” a fictional villainous organization in DC media. So this film’s lazy analogy holds no weight or water whatsoever, and also, it doesn’t even make sense in the context of the story because how could an organization control such a large place for such a long period in the world of DC when Superman exists? Doesn’t he have super-hearing? There is a whole Justice League, and none of them at any point bothered to come save this place. I get this vibe from the story that they only deal with certain threats once said threats are deemed “big enough,” and so it’s again hilarious that Black Adam is supposed to change the hierarchy of power, yet he does not get Superman’s attention until the end credits, after he has toppled a regime, stopped a supernatural galactic entity, fought and teamed up with four other heroes, and entered and exited government custody. How are we supposed to take him seriously as a character when Superman exists? Sorry, I’m digressing. Anyway, yeah, hysterically stupid political commentary, obnoxious attempts to hype up the main character, and generally lame plotting really hurt this. Also, this takes stabs at being a “real movie” with little touches like one or two dumb Sergio Leone references, but they feel so out of place and insipid.
This movie also suffers from the same basic issues that all the other films like it do. The quips and self-referential jokes fall flat at every opportunity, and the attempts at wit are too forced and cringey to be taken seriously. There is a running joke where Black Adam adopts a catchphrase, but his enemies keep dying before he gets a chance to say it. Sounds mildly amusing as a throwaway gag, right? The film doesn’t think so, because it milks this like four or five more times. There is also an uncle character to the main boy character, and he is supposed to be funny. He makes jokes and plays “Baby Come Back” by Player during two intense scenes, which reminds me, can we have a moratorium on ironic needledrops in our cinema? Playing inappropriate songs during intense scenes is no longer funny, quirky, or artistic in any way. Sorry, I’m going on a tangent. Anyway, this boy character is lame. He is not a good actor, and his character could be swapped with literally any other child sidekick who follows the protagonist around because he is obsessed with people like him. This movie has a lame villain whose goal is to get some artifact to be powerful, and his plan climaxes with a literal laser beam in the sky that summons an army, which is definitely not something we have seen before. There’s also a whole thing going on where Dr. Fate can see the future, and he sees Hawkman get killed in the final battle, so he sacrifices himself to prevent this, but then we see Hawkman die anyway, before it is revealed that Hawkman used Fate’s mask to create a double of himself and that was the one that died. So Dr. Fate somehow did not see any of that, and only saw Hawkman dying. Before he dies, he says that it feels nice to not be able to see anything in the future (since he is about to die), yet Hawkman would not have been able to save himself in the vision without Fate dying, so it makes no sense. Ugh.
This is just two-plus hours of violence and noise with no humanity or personality, and this is emphasized by one of the film’s big selling points, which is that Black Adam kills his enemies. The fact that a hero using lethal force on his enemies, in the completely desensitized and violence-saturated market of 2022 cinema, is supposed to be novel bespeaks an immaturity and dissonance on the part of the writers that is hard to fathom. The film does not even make a case against it outside of “heroes just don’t do it.” There is a lot of operatic, slow-mo carnage, that, coupled with the darker tone and more epic feel, is definitely a feeble attempt to ape Zack Snyder’s style. This is what they do, ladies and gentlemen. They hinder and hurt good artists, kick said artists out before fully assessing the quality of the work, realize everyone actually liked those artists, then hire D-list hacks to copy those artists in an effort to cover up the obvious quality void left in the wake of the better artists’ absence. Instead of Batman killing because he’s a damaged and messed up person who learns to grow and not project his pain onto the world, you get Black Adam killing because it’s cool, and then not because it’s probably not something one should do. The whole thing just feels like a cheap excuse to include Superman at the end to let everyone know that some sort of effort is being made to get back to basics with Snyder’s stuff. That’s how movies work now. Instead of just making good decisions and letting stuff play out, studios make horrible decisions, and then drop hundreds of millions of dollars to correct them instead of feeding or housing homeless people or starving migrants. Instead of just issuing an apology and inviting Snyder back on, WB dropped 200 million beans to apologize to all of us, while also giving The Rock an easy paycheck that he then tries to seem passionate about, acting as though this was his baby for years. Yeah, sure dude, whatever you say.
Anyway, I have given Black Adam too much of my time. It’s not the worst thing I have ever seen, but that is not saying much. I hate this film, I hate the corporate, anti-art agenda behind it, I am tired of people like Dwayne Johnson getting cast in everything while all of our better and older stars like Willis, De Niro, Freeman, Pacino, etc. star in cheap, video-on-demand stuff, and I’m tired of only getting a small handful of non-superhero genre films every year now instead of a varied list of interesting and unique titles from people who actually care about movies. Every day, I’m more and more convinced that we are in the worst timeline. When the last surviving masters of the craft die out, who will be left to make our films? Warner Brothers Discovery? Disney? It’s all so tiresome.
Originally published on August 6, 2022 on Letterboxd
****
Nostalgia is tricky. If not engaged with in a cautious and mature way, it can be harmful. People like it because it offers an escape, not just from the present, but specifically an escape into the past, because people are comfortable with what they know. The present and future require growth, but the past does not. I heard someone say the other day that people love superhero movies because they allow viewers to “relive their childhood.” He said that this is a problem because people are often trying to relive their childhood before they actually leave it and grow up. The things you enjoyed in your youth can be experienced again, but once you have grown up and had children of your own. Then you can experience these things through their eyes. You get to live your childhood in your children’s childhood, in a more healthy and intentional way. Without actual growth or change, nostalgia just becomes complacency and stagnancy.
It’s ironic that a sequel for boomers about getting older is still very much a film for children. Top Gun: Maverick works in the ways that it needs to, and its narrative and visceral simplicity are what make it both so childish but also so appealing. A problem with this film and others like it is that they often want to acknowledge change and their age while also clinging to what made them work and what people still want to see. Unlike, say, Lethal Weapon 4 or The Matrix Resurrections, which are all about getting old, Top Gun: Maverick is about trying to stay young, and therefore, it’s childish. That’s not to say it’s not a good film, but it is held back. Maverick, like most of Cruise’s protagonists in this stage of his career, is just a surrogate for himself. Maverick/Cruise is a man out of time, stuck in a world he doesn’t recognize. Unlike Cruise, though, Maverick does not have the glory or recognition he may deserve. He’s stuck in the same position, doing the same thing, and never moving on. He, like Cruise, wants to challenge his superiors and push the bounds of what’s possible. The opening in which Maverick nearly kills himself pushing the plane to its limits embodies the spirit of how Cruise makes his movies, and this is what we appreciate about both Cruise the actor and Maverick the character. They don’t conform, they don’t bow, and they march to the beats of their own drums.
The problem with Cruise, I’m slowly realizing, is that he’s sort of a more authentic version of the very thing about current cinema that he hates. The dichotomy now is almost Marvel/Disney/Warner Bros. Vs Cruise, and everything else is lost in the shuffle. He’s taking on the film establishment, yes, but his stuff is not exactly incomparable. He’s still making sequels to films that may not need them. A Top Gun sequel thirty six years later? A seventh and eighth Mission: Impossible on the way? Again, this isn’t to argue that these films aren’t good, but there’s still a level of hypocrisy, I think. Tom Cruise and Top Gun: Maverick are not the cinematic messiah that many make them out to be, they’re just less controlled opposition, I think.
There’s certainly a lot to like here, of course. Hearing synth and electric guitar in a new movie was revelatory, and it felt as weird as seeing two normal adults have a relationship onscreen. These are good things, but they contribute to the problem of overreaction, which is what happens when we’re starved for real cinema for so long. There’s real heart and emotion in this, but to me, it still feels fake and held back in some ways that it just shouldn’t. Much of the good stuff in the film is often overshadowed by Cruise’s ego. We waste a lot of time getting to where we all know the film is going; he’s the only guy who can do the job. There’s definitely a funny and prescient commentary there, with Cruise trying to stay out of the way and teach the new kids the ropes, before realizing how inadequate they are and deciding instead to just do what needs to be done himself. The film’s ending is basically Maverick moving into a stage of life that he should’ve been in at the start. There’s a whole potential thread in this about whether or not someone as addicted to adrenaline and as independent as Maverick can be a family man, but it’s mostly sidestepped. The action movie parts are as good as you could ask for, and one thing Cruise does get right is, of course, that real things are always cooler than fake things. We’d rather see stuff be piloted and destroyed for real than through computer trickery. He also gets, at least in this film, that practical effects on their own are cool, but people want them back not just for their own sake, but because they represent a spirit of authenticity that permeated all of cinema at one time, and that this carries over into the relationships and story as well as the spectacle.
I won’t connect with this film like I want to, but that’s okay because this isn’t a film for me. It’s unhealthy to long for the past, but it’s okay to appreciate it, and this is a film for people, mainly dads, who want to appreciate the past while reliving it through their children’s eyes, so obviously, viewing this with your parents or grandparents is the ideal way to see it. It gives you a glimpse back into a time that feels so alien now, even though that time was really no better than the current one in many respects.
Film as a medium is almost entirely rooted in propaganda, so maybe this film works as well as it does because it’s honest propaganda, and because the things it’s advocating for are good things, at least for the most part. The better or more appealing ideas are, the less propaganda for said ideas has to hide them, and so Top Gun: Maverick, a film about important things that people connect to on a serious level, unconscious or not, will obviously be flocked to. It also stands in stark contrast to other, more dishonest but equally as propagandized films like Everything Everywhere All at Once or whatever the new Marvel release is. Movies are about ideas, and that’s what you should take away from this film’s success. Every once in a while, people will become so starved for good things that they’ll respond positively to them. I still don’t think Top Gun: Maverick is amazing, but it’s a film that’s crucial to the current moment, and it represents a serious turning point for the medium, hopefully.
Originally published on July 7, 2022 on Letterboxd
*
A friend told me that, while working at a summer camp, he met a girl that he liked, but her brother told him that he’d be friendzoned if he tried anything with her (which makes no sense, since you either are or you aren’t and he would’ve already been), so he gave up hope there. Some other girl came into the picture, but she didn’t like him, and then eventually, he heard from someone else that the first girl had liked him back. If you think that sounds stupid, then you’d be right.
The story is important to The Holiday because it outlines my problems with this kind of film better than I otherwise could have. Love and romance are very serious, mature, and adult things. Romantic comedies, or dramas, or whatever, by and large, are geared toward adults. But in a culture that asks nothing of adults, our “adult” films (har har, you know what I mean) can only come across as films for children more often than not. I hate films about childish adults, about mind games, and about immaturity. These are all issues nearly inherent to the genre, sadly. Why? Is this what love is for most people? Obnoxious, silly power struggles and chess matches between people? People have been trained to view love a certain way, and movies like this only serve to sell more of the Hollywood Lie. Anyone who watches The Holiday or a film like it and finds it relatable or true to life in anyway is pathetic. Not only is it not true to life, though, it’s not even charming.
I think I’ve talked about this before on here, but I think romance often works best as part of a larger story, though, not always. The reason for this is simply that larger stories have more to deal with than just a love story. They have more characters, more conflict, more themes, etc. and they have to juggle all those things. In larger stories, like good vs evil adventure tales in which romance is so often present, the love is simplistic and stripped-down, because the story doesn’t have time to linger on all of the most trivial parts of what people think are necessary in these fictional relationships. There are usually bad guys to fight, people to save, goals to be accomplished, and there’s no time for choosing the job or the spouse, or for tired “will-they-won’t-they” melodrama. Other stories that incorporate romance give their love stories focus. So many “romance films” lose their footing because, when it comes down to it, Hollywood doesn’t have the maturity and moral insight necessary to craft an entire story around something as simultaneously simple and complex as a romantic relationship. The writers are out of touch and ignorant of reality, and we so often get weird subplots, raunchy humor, and trite and stale plot developments that arise only out of a need for manufactured conflict to pad out a runtime. This is no different with The Holiday, a film so repugnant in its juvenile indecision that its protagonists embody and so obnoxious in its unearned and misplaced self-assuredness at what people think is normal for relationships that it becomes a slog very quickly.
Now, not every story needs to be realistic and relatable, granted. However, if you’re going to try to be quirky or offbeat, you still have to make it compelling, and that only comes from real soul and humanity, something that’s not found here at all. Ultimately, we come to romance movies to find a certain level of empathy and relatability because a desire for shared love is innate to all of us, and to see something so special just be goofed around with in so cavalier a manor by “adult” characters onscreen leaves one feeling a bit lost. How many times can you do the thing where the guy and girl meet, bang each other, and then struggle to pick up the pieces afterward? What if, hear me out, you didn’t do that, and tired to tell a story about a relationship built not out of unchecked sexual desire but true romantic passion. Oh right, you wouldn’t even know how to do that, never mind.
If it seems like I’m rambling without really giving examples, then I apologize, but really, what examples do you need? This movie feels like it was written by an algorithm, as though it was a superhero film and not a rom-com. You have the meet-cutes, the awkward sex, the more awkward post-sex interactions, the mix-ups and hijinks, and the tough-third-act-decision that ends with our protagonist making the decision he or she clearly should have made way earlier and with way less consideration. I really couldn’t tell you anything about this movie’s characters except that they’re annoying, unlikable, and immature. Our two main girls’ biggest struggle is that they want a nice vacation? Ok? Am I missing something? I just don’t care at all. Sorry, this is just a bad movie. I can’t believe it’s from the maker of What Women Want, which is unmitigated kino.
I’m not saying every movie has to be for adults, and I’m all for having fun, but can’t we do it without it being so insulting and appealing to the lowest common denominator? At some point, people need to wake up and realize how unhealthy the portrayals of relationships are in these movies, because there is no fun to be had there for me.
Originally published on June 24, 2022 on Letterboxd
I’m a pretty positive person. At least, I like to think so. Sometimes, I’m not. Actually, I’m rather often not. Recently, I’ve been less positive and hopeful, for a variety of reasons both personal and general. One of the few areas that my positivity translates over to is my love of movies. I love loving things, and even though it’s very fun to be the outlier and often willful contrarian, I don’t like disliking things. Negativity will only carry you so far, and while it makes sense to be depressed and down about many things, being a downer when it comes to movies is not worth it. Because of this, I overreact to stuff I like, rate almost everything too highly, and have difficulty with truly defining my tastes or being objective about anything. I’m one of those people who thinks you’re not really living if you don’t have more five star ratings than anything else.
So when I give a negative rating, you know I mean it. When I go as low as I can go, you should know there’s a reason. When I come down off of my lofty positivity clouds to throw some shade, it’s usually important. I’m either repulsed, insulted, or bored to the point of frustration. There are a lot of movies that I’m mid on, films that don’t resonate or that I don’t understand, but outside of modern Disney stuff, there’s little that I would say I hate. Well, I hated500 Days of Summer. This movie isn’t just bad. It’s not just annoying, or one of those beloved films that eludes you, a classic that you don’t see the appeal to. No, the problem is that it’s a classic that I absolutely see the appeal to. The issue is that it’s an insidious appeal. This film is sinister. It’s unrealistic, but unlike a movie that invites you into its fantasy world, it wants you to adopt its fantasy world as your reality. It’s a cancer in culture and it almost definitely ruined an entire generation of men and women.
The opening narration tells us that this is a “story of boy meets girl,” and that it’s “not a love story.” At least they warned us. Basically, it’s a movie about a guy who is in love with a girl, and they have sex and act like a couple on and off again for 500 days. The twist is that, for all of the memories and moments they shared, she never loved him back. They acted like lovers, but he never truly knew the feeling he was looking for, never got what he wanted. He ultimately leaves the period without the girl, and without purpose or direction. This is almost like a blackpilled answer to Vincent Gallo’s ‘98 masterpiece Buffalo ‘66. It’s about how some relationships supposedly can’t last, how some pain is unavoidable, and how life just do be like that sometimes. Well, the film’s thesis is right about some of that. It’s right about unavoidable pain, it’s right about suffering, and it’s right about life sucking. But the pain and suffering depicted here is not natural, not relatable, and in no way reflective of reality. This is supposed to be a relatable move, yet none of it rings true. It’s almost like a video essay someone made about romantic comedies. It centers around the core problem with this genre, that being the dishonesty regarding love and people.
I’ll get into some specifics about the movie later, but really, this problem could be contributed to culture and media in general. Everyone is conditioned to believe that actions do not have consequences, that attachments are easily avoidable, that nothing matters. Culture wants you to think that promiscuous sex ain’t nothin’ but a thing, that you can bone anything with two legs and a pulse and never look back. We seem to think that if we saturate ourselves with enough ironic emotional detachment, we’ll be able to get rid of our pain, our problems, and our humanity. This is because, culture, the constant source of unintentional truth, ironically flees from truth whenever possible. Relationships and attachments are innate to us. Sex is sacred. Sex is not something that comes with a deep connection, it is a deep connection. Sex, in both how it biologically and physically functions, and the role that it plays in our lives, is maybe one if the most truthful things in existence. Through it, one can witness God’s beauty and creation, come to fully and intimately know his or her significant other in a previously unavailable way, and also come to understand the fundamental differences between men and women. Sex is a prize to be gained from putting in the work in a relationship, something to be intimately shared with one, and only one, other person.
So what’s the big deal? Well, movies and television want you to believe that you can callously sleep around and then move on, and that such an experience won’t effect you. Kids are being taught about sex at an early age so that malicious adults can control the narrative surrounding sex and teach children that it’s purely this technical science thing that’s super normal and basically no different than driving a car. They are not taught about the deep spiritual and emotional weight of the act, not taught to take it as a serious responsibility. This sentiment is echoed in almost every movie and show in which characters bang each other senseless and then move on. Characters are shown having sex before developing any real intimacy or history, and that all of the other equally important parts of a relationship are just bridges to be crossed after doing the nasty. Sex used to be a reward for commitment, but now it’s been reversed.
If you’re still wondering how this relates to relationships on a broader scale, or 500 Days of Summer, then you’re probably stupid and you’re not gonna make it, but I’ll still explain it. People talk about freedom and liberation and how these more conservative attitudes about sex are “old fashioned.” Do you think those of us who want more accountability and modesty are just angry people? Do you think we just want to see you hurt and unhappy? No, we don’t. We have your best interests at heart because those of us who seem like we want to rain on everyone’s parade understand the same thing that the people entertaining and teaching you do, which is that once sex has been attacked and perverted, relationships have now been broadly attacked and perverted as well, and now things are crumbling and control can be assumed. Thanks to cavalier sexual activity, men and women are no longe able to communicate naturally, at least not like they once did. Thanks to the internet and pornography, women are now treated like unicorns instead of the expected next chapter in one’s life. Sex is broken down, communication is broken down. The unnatural is now natural.
This is the big lie at the heart of 500 Days of Summer, that cute little indie rom-com about how relationships suck. Relationships often do suck, but not for the reasons the film says. They suck because of unforeseen natural trials, not because of manufactured, juvenile drama. This is a film about a weak-willed man with no principles or foundation who grovels at the feet of an immature, selfish, horrible woman. Men and women are different. Men are able to have these little flings and maybe not be as affected as women, but they still will be. However, the relationship in this film is not a fling, it’s a passionate, romantic, lengthy, sexual, and emotionally co-dependent relationship. It is not natural or normal for people to engage in something like that and then move on like it was nothing. If Summer (the main girl character) never loved our hero, she would not have stuck around that long or treated him like that. Doing that to someone is just cruel and wrong.
So what does this movie teach us? It teaches us that it’s ok to waste your life following a woman around like a puppy and throwing all nobility, honor, and self-respect out the window instead of being a man, being principled, and being in control of your own life. One can probably trace the “simp” phenomenon back to this film. In turn, it teaches women that they can kiss as many frogs as needed to find their prince for as long and as passionately as they like with no repercussions. But what’s the problem with this? This idea that you can be in a relationship without ever really loving someone, how’s it bad? Well, first of all, that’s pretty depressing isn’t it? To think that you can love someone for so long and never have them feel the same way? It’s the reason so many marriages end in divorce. Spouses feeling like “the spark is gone.” Well, the reason for this is that, at some point, we stopped defining love as a commitment and action, and started defining it as a feeling. Love, as we understand it, is some emotional response, some chemical reaction inside of us. Actually, it is a choice. The definition of “love” is putting someone or something before yourself, that’s how you love. At least, this is the kind of love we have for other people, whereas there is a different, more emotional kind for things and activities. When you “lose feelings” for someone or something, you may not feel the same way you once did, but your commitment never changes. This is why romance and marriage are not the same thing as a sport or hobby. Imagine how quickly we lose interest in things as people. Wouldn’t it suck to be like that with a person? That is why marriage is so serious, why putting that ring on and saying “I do” matters. You are committing to someone “in sickness and in health.” 500 Days shows two people enjoying the pleasures that come with commitment without ever actually committing, and then wondering why they don’t feel good afterward.
This idea is destructive because it leaves people walking around thinking that nothing is up to them. It teaches that the success of their relationships is entirely up to chance, and that, God willing, they never lose their fire for that special someone. The bucket of cold reality that people who believe this need dumped on them is the lie of the “soul mate.” If you want to believe in destiny and soul mates fine, but that could potentially lead to problems when you find someone. Here is the deal: you do not marry someone because he or she is your soulmate. He or she is your soulmate because you marry them, simple as. To constantly be in a relationship wondering if “this is the one” is unhealthy because it discourages active engagement and cultivation of said relationship. You don’t get to walk away from someone whenever you get bored of them with no comsequences. The end of this film shows our protagonist meeting a cute new girl at a job interview and taking a shot with her in the hopes that things may be different this time, but the crushing reality is that things will never be the same until he fundamentally changes his attitude and realizes that the success of his relationship comes down to more than just a roll of the cosmic dice.
I hate to be that guy, I do. I know people love 500 Days of Summer, and some even find it relatable. if anyone reading this does or did ever find this relatable, then my heart breaks for you, truly. This film is dishonest, cruel, and honestly reprehensible, and I felt worse coming away from it than I had in a while. I’ve rarely seen something so vapid, so deluded, so detached from the pulse of people and so deceived as to its own smug sincerity. This is a dagger aimed at the hearts of an impressionable generation. Please, when engaging with popular Hollywood art, keep your guard up, be critical, and ask questions. Thankfully, despite what this film would have you believe, life is nothing like this movie. Thank God life is not like the movies.
I will say, though, that the dance scene after JGL gets laid is pretty great.
Eye on Everything 