871. Some personal reflections

So I caught some of American History X on TV yesterday, and it got me thinking.  No, I've never been in the situation Edward Norton's character finds himself in, but I wonder how much intolerance really does seep in.  Now, I am generally a pretty tolerant guy, but like anyone else I find myself forming opinions when I hear what the news is reporting.  Last year this blog imploded in part because I attempted to mount a defense of Bill Cosby.  I happen to be someone who thinks everyone is redeemable, given the chance, but I also believe that rushing to judgment is wrong, regardless of what circumstances may suggest.  I talked about how I thought Cosby might have been targeted due to his opinions from a decade earlier, in which he voiced the black community's lack of accountability.  This was a conclusion I'd reached in part because I was skeptical about all the defenses people were formulating around the series of police shootings of black males, which has become a regular feature in the news over the past few years.

American History X made me think about what I was really advocating.  While I believe that circumstances sometimes dictate unfortunate situations, which has been the case for African Americans, for American Indians, for everyone who has ever come to this country, in fact, I found myself thinking the victim was worth blaming.  That's the bottom line.  I have to own that.  The victim is never worth blaming.  In attempting to come to a full understanding of what was happening, I found myself thinking along lines that were the opposite of what I believe.  I say I'm a tolerant guy.  I was raised Catholic.  Catholics have some pretty strict ideas about certain things.  Some of those ideas I agree with, and some I don't.  It's never okay to say someone isn't allowed to do or be something because of who they are.  We're all individuals just trying to fit in.  The more we work together, the better.  Coming from someone who definitely has had problems fitting in, that means something to me, maybe not the same way it means to a black man, or a gay man, or any other version of the basic human model you can think of, but it connects me, it means I belong in the same quagmire, and that I have no right muddling things just because I don't understand something.

A blog I used to follow, which isn't particularly active now, was part of the implosion, in part because it was increasingly advocating certain things without following my particular criteria, which when I say it like that it sounds ridiculous.  The problem became, I felt isolated from an experience I had previously been a part of.  And hey, that happens.  As much as we struggle to fit in, we have to also realize that the irony is, nothing lasts forever.  The thing we try so desperately to be a part of is the same thing we will eventually leave behind.  Things change. 

The UK exit from the European Union happened, and at first I didn't get why it was such a bad thing.  But again, it's the separation effect.  Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, I just didn't get why people loathed the idea so much.  But advocating walls around the country?  Listen, I rationalized that he says whatever he thinks people want to hear.  I say to myself, this is what happens when the Democrats spend years isolating Republicans.  The truth is, Trump isn't presidential material.  And maybe I've been too hard on the Clintons.  They just finished announcing more ways in which a Clinton has failed on a human level, but the truth of the Clintons is the same today as it was twenty-five years ago: these are politicians through and through, and they are, despite themselves, very human, too.  There's a Clinton in contention again for a reason, because they know how to play the game.  Everything else is divisiveness.  I talked recently about how the Democrats have played that game this millennium, because the Republicans played it before them, etc.  But the truth is, regardless of what a Clinton does, I think we're at a point where we're going to emerge from all this nonsense.  This whole campaign season has proven that we've all pushed too far.

And really, that's what it's all about.  My working life has been pretty mediocre.  At one point, I worked alongside immigrants who were more likely than not completely illegal, and I was the one who felt isolated.  It made me feel uncomfortable, but then, I'm generally uncomfortable with the concept of other people in general, not because of who they are, but because of me, because I've never gotten the handle of other people.  I'm an introvert.  Hear me roar.

I can never reset to how things were before last year, and in truth, it was probably inevitable, this exodus.  I once had an idea that I could overcome my clumsiness around others, but the truth is, and I'm not bemoaning my fate, I can't dictate how others view me, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.  All I can do is try and be fair toward others.  This began because I suggested we needed to talk about Bill Cosby, when the real subject was something else entirely.  We're once again at a cultural crossroads.  We've recognized that society hasn't made as much progress in tolerance, in fairness, as we've sometimes led ourselves to believe.  There are those who are rallying to the defense of victims, of those struggling to find their footing, and generally they're absolutely right, and it's generally wrong to say otherwise.

I just thought I should acknowledge that. 

870. The Blockbuster Numbing Effect

There've been plenty of people who wondered what was to happen to the superhero movie, once the bubble finally bursts.  More often than not, the answer is that it'll go the way of the Western, that it'll gradually lose all relevance in the popular culture.

I don't know about that.  I think of superhero movies in terms of the sci-fi genre.  Once that box exploded, with Star Wars, it became very hard close up again, in a way that Westerns haven't really experienced since the end of their heyday, when they held a virtual monopoly on the public's imagination.  Half the reason superhero movies exploded in the new millennium was because Hollywood finally figured out how to duplicate Star Wars' blockbuster model.  Suddenly, there were hot new franchises all over the place, of viable endurance and massive popularity.

The problem, if anything, is to keep superheroes from becoming like horror movies.  Horror movies have long had their sway with audiences.  In the '80s they took on new life with a slew of franchises.  The problem is, horror films became increasingly hard to translate to wide audiences, unless a true breakout occurred, which does continue to happen.  The thing is, no one thinks of horror movies as dominating the box office, the way they did in the '70s, before Star Wars.  Tastes change.  Something will replace superhero movies as the hot new thing, but superhero movies won't go away, like Westerns have for the most part.

The problem will be in finding the balance that prevents them from appearing too insular.  In this age where the massive Avengers franchise exists, this can seem like a ridiculous dilemma, because eight years and over a dozen films later, no one's arguing that it's tough to keep track of what happens in these movies, because they're designed to operate independently, with little need to know what happens in any one film.  You can watch one of them and simply expect a good time. 

That's it, really, the expectation that you don't need to invest too much into the experience.  Anytime a blockbuster goes beyond that expectation, barriers begin to form, and opinions sharply decline in their generosity toward the film.

It's not that difficult to see how this tracks.  Everyone loves Star Wars, because the original movies were filled with romantic breeziness.  The second one, The Empire Strikes Back, deepened the story just enough so that fans thought it was a worthy follow-up to the original.  By the time the prequels were made, however, you suddenly needed to know so much more, such as why it was at all important to care about the little boy Anakin Skywalker.  It wasn't simply a matter of expectations, but having to invest in the material something beyond sheer enjoyment.  In fact, under circumstances like that, sheer enjoyment becomes the last thing possible.

Where superhero movies started looking for something other than entertainment was the misleading success of The Dark Knight, which proved to be a spectacle for reasons other than Batman's adventures, but the spectacle of the unexpected performance from the late Heath Ledger, whose death alone brought attention to the movie.  People loved Spider-Man as a lovable sadsack, and because watching him swing through New York City was a life-affirming exercise post-9/11.  They didn't particularly want the Goth dorkiness of Spider-Man 3 or Marc Webb's deeper analysis in the Amazing Spider-Man films.  Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has proven a powderkeg precisely because it tried to be operatic instead of just a big dumb fight between its title heroes.

These ambitious superhero movies have their place, but they'll never be as popular as the lighthearted, irreverent material that continues to dominate the box office.  You try for anything else, and people will just crap all over it, because this is not the kind of stuff they want to think about.  They go to the movies to escape.  That's how hits are born, the ones that are still fondly recalled years later.

Hollywood has developed a new problem, in that there are so many movies with blockbuster expectations, they can't possibly all end up blockbusters, and suddenly there are more and more blockbuster box office busts.  This can't at all be surprising.  The more demand you make of your audience, the more careful you'll have to be to find it, because otherwise, it simply won't be there.  It's the blockbuster numbing effect.  What otherwise might have become a generation's defining movie memory will have been lost in the shuffle, simply because you didn't expect it would be so difficult to get lost in the story.  Sometimes, it really is.  The hit movies are the ones that make it look easy. 

869. Person of Interest comes to an end

I thought I'd observe the airing of the final episode of Person of Interest, which was broadcast on Tuesday night.  In this era where the flashiest, or just most comfortable, programs get all the attention, Person of Interest set a new standard for network television.  On the heels of hits like Alias, Lost, and Fringe, CBS acquired this latest idea from J.J. Abrams, who developed it with Jonathan Nolan, expanding on concepts Nolan had originally conceived along with brother Christopher Nolan in the blockbuster The Dark Knight.  In an age of terrorism and surveillance scandals, Person of Interest explored the nuances of both in surprisingly personal ways, expanding from an initial focus on tech savant Harold Finch and his pitbull John Reese to include the likes of Root and Shaw, as well as police counterparts Carter and Fusco as they worked on the behalf of the Machine, and later against the corruption of its doppelganger Samaritan. 

This was a show I was eager to watch when it debuted in the fall of 2011, which just happened to be when I lost all track of regular TV viewing.  When CBS begrudgingly dumped the final season this year (I have no idea why the network became so grumpy about a show that had been one of its biggest hits in recent years), I took it as a chance to catch up and pay my respects as it concluded its story.

It never disappointed me.  From the return of Shaw (following the unexpected death of Carter, Shaw's apparent demise was one of the moments that registered in the mainstream media, in part because of her budding relationship with Root) to the closing moments of the brilliantly orchestrated finale, in which the whole reason these characters were fighting was spelled out (because human lives matter, which in any other hands would have come off as a trite message indeed).  This was a whole series that bucked the trend of providing easy answers about its weekly mysteries, famously giving the group clues leading them in the direction of people who could be victim or perpetrator.  In an age where we've steadily lost our trust in others, Person of Interest struggled to affirm that it can still exist.

This was a 9/11 drama ten years in the making, exploring the world that resulted from the worst catastrophe of the modern era, and coming up with a hopeful message.  That may not be what everyone else is saying, but that doesn't matter.  Thank goodness Person of Interest did.  This was a TV classic, folks.

868. Ted Mosby is very happy right now!

Cleveland native Ted Mosby is really happy right now.  I mean, he geeked out when LeBron came back home, and now there's a championship to celebrate.  Life doesn't get much better, right?

(The preceding was brought to you by a dedicated fan of How I Met Your Mother.)

In all seriousness, congratulations to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, celebrating Cleveland's first championship win in fifty-two years, defeating the Golden State Warriors in an epic Finals rematch, and LeBron winning with Cleveland.  I'm not a huge basketball fan, only insofar as anyone mildly interested in the '90s craze will be today, but I can always appreciate a sports superstar winning the big one (unless their name is Peyton Manning).

867. The End of Anicetti, the 155th of Big Bethel

I'm not going to talk too much, but I felt it was important to mark the retirement of Frank Anicetti, who for years continued his family's (a hundred years' worth) legacy at the Kennebec Fruit Co. in Lisbon, ME.  Frank's the one who helped initiate Lisbon's annual Moxie Festival, and he was featured in Stephen King's 11/22/63.  Earlier this year he started toying with the idea, and now it seems he made it official.  He's a true icon in that town, and I hope this year's celebration of Moxie remembers that.

Somewhat conversely, I was a part of a different kind of history on Saturday, when the 155th anniversary of the Battle of Big Bethel was commemorated in my backyard.  I've been living in Hampton, VA, for about half a year now, and it's been interesting to observe the plaques and memorials so close to home.  I imagination it should always be interesting to have history near you like that.  It's not the first time, and it probably won't be the last.  This time, it just happens to include the present conditions of a battlefield that's dubbed the first planned land engagement of the Civil War.  Hampton is already very near the "Historic Triangle" in Virginia (Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown).  Anyway, there was a ceremony, and I stopped by to hear some of what was said.  The speaker compared the battle to Bunker Hill, which was certainly an interesting thought.  (When I took the historic trip of Boston my freshman year of college, I visited Bunker Hill.) 

866. Mock Squid Soup - June 2016: What Dreams May Come

Every month various bloggers come together to celebrate movies with the Mock Squid Soup society.  This month I'll be talking a little about 1998's What Dreams May Come.

Released a few months prior to one of Robin Williams' last big hits, Patch Adams, this was a big artistic statement about death that kind of landed with a thud, and has never quite recovered.  I kind of figured this was my kind of movie from the start, but for whatever reason I've only just sat through the whole thing.  Call it confirmation bias if you like, but yeah, I loved it.

What Dreams May Come is the story of a man who dies and discovers the afterlife is an unexpected window into not only the way he lived, but his family as well.  He appears in a full-scale version of a painting his wife made years ago (honestly, this is one of the great pieces of artistry in film, without any danger of overdoing it).  He eventually meets his son and daughter, who appear into different, and surprising, guises.  They both died in a car crash years earlier, and the grief sent their parents in different directions as they struggled to cope.  After Williams dies, his wife commits suicide, which ends up informing the rest of the movie.

I don't know, I think this movie was simply released at the wrong time.  Culturally, we'd stopped accepting the Christian view as the dominant outlook on life, and so a movie that accepted a generally Christian view of the afterlife couldn't have been received comfortably.  The same thing happened because it was a Robin Williams movie, because critics had kind of decided they were over him.  His supporting turn in Good Will Hunting was basically the last time they liked him (other than a few later roles, in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, where he played psychopaths, which was about as far against type as he could get).  Critics also didn't particularly care for Cuba Gooding, Jr., whose own Oscar win (Jerry Maguire) marked the only time they liked him (despite a lot of good work following his breakthrough, including the equally critically hapless but no less brilliant Instinct).

Chances are you won't be thinking of whether you care about a Christian view of the afterlife, or whether you always liked Robin Williams or Cuba Gooding, Jr.  If you've seen What Dreams May Come for yourself, what did you even think about it?  Was it a movie you found easy to dismiss because it seemed so easy to dismiss?

For me, I always liked how bold it was, unafraid to take a look at the moodier side of Williams, which in dramas usually meant he had a beard and acted solemn (this was a good mode for him; see Awakenings, for instance).  Like Patch Adams, though, Williams was able to bring out his playful side in What Dreams May Come.  It may not have been a mistake these two are often seen paired together in home video release.  These are human portraits.  Where Patch Adams played up the comedy, What Dreams May Come plays up the tragedy.

(Fitting, for a movie that in its title alludes to Shakespeare.)

To watch it was to see how intricate the story was, too.  The reveals of who two of Williams' guides are, and why they chose these guises, are just two of the wonderful surprises in the story, which never really flirts with the obvious risk of melodrama for this kind of movie.  It's all pretty frank, and by the time we meet Max von Sydow, even wonderfully fantastical, in a way we'd have to wait for the later Harry Potter movies to see again.

Me, because of the literary tradition with Dante's Divine Comedy, I like to believe that a culture's current impression of what the afterlife looks like is a window into its soul.  I don't know what the immediate reception of What Dreams May Come says about that, but the film itself bridges more than breaks the gaps that have formed between different circles of our society, and I think you only need to see it to believe that.

This is not a story about faith.  It's the story of humanity, broken and then mended, and perhaps found.  I think it's pretty profound, and worth considering as one of the great artistic statements of the last hundred years.

865. X-Men: Apocalypse, otherwise known as the best X-Men movie yet

The thing about setting benchmarks is that it can be a terrible burden.  Earlier this year I determined that Captain America: Civil War was the best Avengers movie yet.  It sent a new benchmark for that franchise.  And yet, it's not as good a movie as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which is not the best Superman or Batman movie, an honor that still resides with The Dark Knight) or, as I have now determined, X-Men: Apocalypse.

Apocalypse is the sixth movie in the X-Men franchise, not counting three spin-offs (two for Wolverine and one Deadpool), and it completes the second trilogy while rounding out as a statement for the whole series to date.  It does so brilliantly, by learning all there was to learn from the previous entries, something Civil War did before it, too, but because there was more substance to build on, the achievement is greater.

For me, it's always about substance.  Like Batman v Superman's nod to Excalibur, a genre film that broke new ground and helped set the tone for what was to come, Apocalypse makes a big deal about how a few of the characters go see Return of the Jedi, which sets off a similar conversation.  Most viewers will take away that Bryan Singer is still annoyed at what Brett Ratner did with X-Men: The Last Stand, the finale of the first trilogy, the previous two having been directed by Singer before he attempted to move on with 2006's Superman Returns (that was the whole period when the early millennial fascination with superheroes was either going to die or evolve, and you can see for yourself what happened).  And maybe Singer is, but the greater point is also how crucial Apocalypse is to the second trilogy, and how its story is reflected in Return of the Jedi.

If there's a weakness to the film, I would call it blockbuster hangover, which is something that began with Independence Day, the need to have as much destruction as possible in the story, most of which is usually unnecessary.  Putting that aside, we can look at the story itself.  Apocalypse assumes the role of the Emperor.  That's all he basically is, an evil presence forcing moral decisions on the main characters.  The key players, as always, are Professor X and Magneto.  This has been the case since the start, because of the initial casting for these roles with noted British actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, whose performances helped drive interest in the series even as their roles tended to be lost in the shuffle of other character conflicts.

Ironically, it was in Ratner's Last Stand where they truly began to drive the plot, with the character of Jean Grey caught between them.  Apocalypse, if anything, might be seen as Singer's version of Last Stand, but with all the history of the film series behind it.  With First Class and Days of the Future Past having put such a heavy emphasis directly on Professor X and Magneto, Apocalypse had to deliver, make a thesis of the conflict between them, and decide, once and for all, if they were truly worth rooting for.

This is why I say the X-Men have been doing what Batman, Superman, and the Avengers only just got around to, all along.  Apocalypse helps prove that, in elegant fashion.

So many opinions that you have to wade through have already made predetermined judgments about certain aspects (critics hate long genre series; they were complaining about Harry Potter movies even as fans were still rabidly buying the new books, as if they would have no way of keeping up with the mythology).  A lot of the people who will tell you Apocalypse is a failure have joined the camp that says only Disney/Marvel can do it right, and that you have to have a fairly light tone to make a superhero movie. 

Apocalypse is the bold statement this franchise has been building toward from the start.  When Singer first made an X-Men film, he built his vision around the gay community, where he saw the most obvious mutant analogy.  Yet in Apocalypse, you can see where he has expanded that vision.  Black viewers can see these X-Men as analogous to their struggles, too, which have been plastered all over the news for the past few years, all over again.  The struggle never ends.  And that's the point of these X-Men movies.  The way to respond, in this franchise, comes down to whether you will reject the greater community (Magneto) or attempt to join it (Professor X).  Tellingly, Mystique is the one straddling the line and drawing the sides closer, once again.  It may also be relevant to note that, along with Rogue, it's Mystique that was left depowered in Ratner's Last Stand.

The confidence Singer brings to these movies today is totally different from the tentative, if bombastic (driven by the early love affair everyone had for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine), steps he took in his first two movies.  It's best understood in the Quicksilver scenes, which have stolen the show in two movies now.  It's in how he allows Magneto to be human, not in a forced way, as has been the direction in other movies, but as someone we don't need to be reminded was born in the Holocaust (but this time, it doesn't seem exploitative to remind us, again).  It's in how he allows Quicksilver to avoid telling Magneto that he's his son.  That's the Usual Suspects version of Singer I've been looking for all along, the one capable of withholding information, for the good of the story, the characters, and the audience.  Because it makes everything better.

This is how it's done, folks.  For all those still upset about the second Star Wars trilogy, you now have a genre franchise with two trilogies, where you can hopefully see how the last in them rounded out the story, in hugely appropriate fashion.

Mock Squid Soup May 2016 - Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Cherdo previously covered for the Mock Squid Soup gang, hosted by Mock and Squid.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) was the movie that kept on giving.  It gave us Jason Segel as a movie star, introduced the world (yay!) to Russell Brand, featured a spin-off for Brand's memorable Aldous Snow in Get Him to the Greek (2010), and led to Segel successfully rebooting The Muppets (2011).

That's a lot to accomplish, plus an instrumental version of Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole's iconic "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"/"What a Wonderful World" (which is appropriate, since the movie is set in Hawaii and, y'know, Iz was Hawaiian).

Instead of going on and on (as I usually do), let me just focus on my favorite scene from the movie: the puppet show.

 



I don't have a clip from the movie itself (the above comes from Craig Ferguson's since-ended late night talk show), but the song, "Dracula's Lament," expresses for itself that unexpected moment when you realize the puppet show that is so crucial to Segel's character is actually pretty awesome.  It's the whole movie in a nutshell.  You can watch the rest of the movie and kind of dismiss it as just another post-millennial comedy, but that song is what launched Segel's Muppets (which gave us the Oscar-nominated "Man or Muppet").

863. Captain America: Civil War, or, The Best Avengers Movie Yet

So here's what my Avengers cycle best-of looks like now:

1. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
2. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
3. Iron Man 2 (2010)
4. Avengers (2012)
5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

As you can see, two of three Captain America movies make the top five.  When it was released, 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger shot close to the top of the list (you can see 2010's Iron Man 2 in third) thanks to Chris Evans' endearing performance as Steve Rogers and the general tone of embracing the history of comic book superheroes in light-hearted but warm fashion (particularly Cap's early days in uniform as a glorified spokesman).  So it wasn't surprising that its sequels interested me even more, as they delved more deeply into superhero psyche and the further pitfalls of wearing even the spiffier uniform.

What this amounts to is depth in presentation, something that's usually lacking in these Avengers movies.  I mean, that's why I liked Iron Man 2 so much, because it was the rare introverted Tony Stark that looked for things that were well beyond the surface.  (Iron Man 3 was a shell, pardon the pun, of this accomplishment.)

But other than that, Civil War also works on the visceral level of the Avengers films at their best, the interplay that's so key to entries like Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy.  These are screwball flicks at heart, perhaps more so than superhero movies.  They will never match the vision of, say, The Dark Knight or even Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (something that always sticks in the craw of fans and critics, who routinely find holes that aren't there in DC's movies, and gobble up the relative mindlessness of Marvel's).  Even Civil War, like The Winter Soldier before it, full of moral bravado, plays sleight of hand in its plotting instead of looking for real answers.  You cannot compare the conflicts in Civil War and Batman v Superman, no matter how similar they are.  The much-mocked humanity of Batman v Superman is met with hollow characterization in Civil War.

And yet, I still say Captain America: Civil War is good.  It's a different kind of good, a different level of achievement.  It's not wrong to say it's a lesser one.  It's not wrong to say that a movie with loftier ambitions and greater technical achievement is better than it.  It is wrong to say that you have to aim lower to be a successful superhero movie. 

Calling Civil War my favorite Avengers movie is acknowledgement that it did succeed in what it set out to accomplishment.  That's all you can ask of any movie.  I rate them lower when they haven't, and don't even realize it.  I do that with books, too.  I see no difference except in formatting, between movies and books.  They're different art forms.  But to be a good movie means the same thing as being a good book.  Standards don't change.  I can like, very much, a book of little ambition, or one that does not dazzle me in its language, but I'll always like the one that has both, better.  It's the same with movies, even ones with superheroes.

There's a lot that's just sloppy in Civil War, clumsy in how plot threads come together.  When they meet up, the right moments do happen, and the ending is good, and that goofy clash of champions at the airport is a true highlight, something that couldn't, and probably shouldn't, happen in a DC movie.  But that's what defines these Avengers movies.  Obviously, they make entertainment that's easy to enjoy.

So sue me if I still like DC better, even when I've found perhaps the perfect Avengers movie.

Box Office 2015

U.S. box office results for notable movies from 2015...(mil = million)

1. Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens ($936 mil)
After the huge success of Jurassic World, there was some doubt that the next Star Wars wouldn't top the yearly box office (which has been done before; Attack of the Clones landed in third behind Spider-Man and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in 2002).  But then it just completely exploded.  Fans are still debating if JJ Abrams was too faithful to the original trilogy...

2. Jurassic World ($652 mil)
The last entry in this series (Jurassic Park III) was released back in 2001.  So fans were ready for the unofficial reboot, and more from the suddenly heroic Chris Pratt.

3. Avengers: Age of Ultron ($459 mil)
Marvel's Avengers franchise just keeps clicking along at the box office.  Captain America: Civil War features ramifications from this as well as its own previous entry, Winter Soldier.

4. Inside Out ($356 mil)
The Pixar machine rolls along with this entry about the inner workings of a little girl's mind, personified by wacky characters.

5. Furious 7 ($353 mil)
The late Paul Walker makes his final appearance in the series with this entry.

6. Minions ($336 mil)
A spin-off of the Despicable Me franchise gives the wacky little yellow dudes their own movie at last.

7. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 ($281 mil)
Interest in this saga cooled over the years, leading to a somewhat underwhelming performance for the finale.

8. The Martian ($228 mil)
Matt Damon gave a career performance in this latest astronaut disaster movie.

9. Cinderella ($201 mil)
Disney has been producing live action versions of its animated hits since 1996's 101 Dalmatians, and they remain viable box office fodder (see this year's massive success with The Jungle Book, for instance).

10. Spectre  ($200 mil)
Daniel Craig's final appearance as James Bond was a subdued success.

And selections from the rest of the list:
11. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ($195 mil)
13. The Revenant ($183 mil)
14. Ant-Man ($180 mil)
15. Home ($177 mil)
17. Fifty Shades of Grey ($ 166 mil)
19. Straight Outta Compton ($161 mil)
21. Mad Max: Fury Road ($153 mil)
23. The Divergent Series: Insurgent ($130 mil)
24. The Peanuts Movie ($130 mil)
27. Spy ($110 mil)
28. Trainwreck ($110 mil)
29. Creed ($109 mil)
30. Tomorrowland ($93 mil)
32. Terminator: Genisys ($89 mil)
33. Taken 3 ($89 mil)
37. Ted 2 ($81 mil)
42. Bridge of Spies ($72 mil)
44. The Big Short ($70 mil)
45. War Room ($67 mil)
47. The Visit ($65 mil)
52. Joy ($56 mil)
53. Fantastic Four ($56 mil)
54. The Hateful Eight ($54 mil)
59. Jupiter Ascending ($47 mil)
60. Sicario ($46 mil)
62. Spotlight ($44 mil)
69. The Age of Adaline ($42 mil)
73. Pan ($35 mil)
75. Concussion ($34 mil)
94. Ex Machina ($25 mil)
95. In the Heart of the Sea ($25 mil)
100. Aloha ($21 mil)
111. Room ($14 mil)
117. Carol ($12 mil)
119. Strange Magic ($12 mil)
121. Self/Less ($12 mil)
156. Anomalisa ($3 mil)
186. Legend ($1 mil)

Source: Box Office Mojo

861. Good and bad news for fans of Lost and its enduring legacy...

I remain an unabashed fan of Lost, the maddeningly ambitious TV series that ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010.  It's one of my favorite stories from any medium, and true highlight of my experiences to date.  Entertainment Weekly recently released a special magazine detailing its favorites from the past 25 years, and in the TV section it included Lost at seventh out of twenty-five.  I was a regular reader of EW for fifteen years or so, and so know full well that it was as obsessed with Lost as anyone else, possibly even moreso, possibly even using it to shape the course of the magazine's whole future.  Well, maybe, but at long last it seems, after years of joining the trend of backlash that followed the controversial final episode, EW is ready to embrace Lost again.  Here's its write-up:

This exotic survival saga about redemption and community started earthy and existential and finished esoteric and mystic, sparking endless discussion and frustrating some of its fans in the process.  What is inarguable is that its tantalizing, labyrinthine mysteries helped change the way we watch and talk about television.

This is like a breath of fresh air for someone who never stopped loving it.  Finally, the bitter years of disappointment, in which the whole thing looked like it would be whitewashed from history, seem like a memory.  As someone who was astonished to find himself buried in an avalanche of praise for something he was enjoying, and being thoroughly unused to such things, this is reassuring.  But it also suggests that the new praise may also suggest that all the previous love will amount to something, in the future, that will make it harder to rediscover than, say, The Prisoner, something that continually enjoys revivals precisely because it didn't have an ending, or The Fugitive, because its ending defined the whole thing.  What good is a cult following if it completely collapses?

As a fan of Star Trek, I know what it's like to see something you love lay dormant for years.  But the thing that keeps Star Trek coming back is that at its heart, it's relatively simple and durable in new iterations.  What about Lost?  Fans tend to binge-watch things that continue giving them visceral thrills. A lot of people came to Lost because they wanted to know answers, and they kept finding them in strange and unexpected places.  But when they saw where it was all headed, what the last answers would be, they lost interest.  The ending of Lost is the same as its beginning.  At its heart, Lost is an examination of the human condition, far more demanding, and ultimately forgiving, than anything else in this moment has proven to be. 

 But maybe it's too demanding.  Fans saw something flashy, and so came aboard for that.  Do fans of old television really come back for substance?  Absent from EW's list was the cathartic, short-lived Boomtown.  I've never found much interest in reviving interest for that, but it remains a truly treasured memory for me.  Theoretically, it'd be easier to rediscover.  A lot of the key players resurfaced in Justified.  And yet...?

This is the strange place in the cultural ether I always inhabit.  Maybe it explains me.  I don't think I'm a contrarian, but that's what I end up seeming like.  I don't know.  Maybe I just shouldn't worry about it.  Let succeeding generations do that.  I have my memories, right?

860. Mock Squid Soup April 2016 - The Fall

Hey, everyone, I'm joining the Mock Squid Soup movies group for another month.  Hope you don't mind.  Soup's hosts are Mock! and Squid (although at least one of them would deny it, and we all know which one).  This month I'm going to talk about The Fall.  It's been a favorite of mine since I originally saw it in theaters, completely on a whim, and it becomes more and more a favorite in the years since.  It's just that good.

Hey, so you know The Princess Bride?  Well, The Fall is like The Princess Bride as an art film.  It's the story of a stuntman from the early days of Hollywood recuperating from, well, a fall.  His name is Roy Walker, and he's played by Lee Pace, who at the time was best known for the quirky TV series Pushing Daisies, but has since appeared in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies and Guardians of the Galaxy.

This movie was a passion project for director Tarsem, by the way.  He labored for four years and largely financed it himself, and finally saw it hit the film festival circuit in 2006, although its theatrical release didn't happen until 2008.  Championed by David Fincher and Spike Jonze, The Fall garnered a rapturous review from the late Roger Ebert, but has otherwise languished in obscurity in the years that have followed.  It doesn't help that Tarsem has since become better known for The Immortals, Mirror Mirror, and Self/less, all of which failed to connect solidly with audiences or critics.  His earlier film The Cell, like the rest of his work, is well worth considering in the context of Tarsem's creative vision, and by itself.

But I'm here to sing the praises of The Fall.  If nothing else, please watch this film.  Here's a list of IMDb quotes from the movie to get you into it.  Most of the exchanges are between Roy and Alexandria, the precocious girl who's half the reason this movie works so exceptionally well.  The interplay, the pathos, and the humanity exhibited between them is breathtaking.  What Alexandria can't possibly realize, or appreciate, is that Roy is contemplating suicide the entire time she knows him.  He's heartsick over the loss his girlfriend to another member of the film production.  He spins incredible tales to amuse Alexandria, and the more time they spend together, the more the tales become a collaboration (whether Roy likes it or not).

The Princess Bride is an ingenious fairy tale told by a grandfather to his ailing grandson.  Yet you can forget the layers of The Princess Bride the more you get into its many fascinating characters.  Well, how about Governor Odious?  The name alone is outstanding.  He's the villain of The Fall, the enemy of a whole host of heroes, including a young Charles Darwin. Like The Wizard of Oz, Roy draws from people he and Alexandria know from the hospital, so that we get to know characters in various guises, including Roy himself, whom Alexandria eventually makes the star of the story as it takes shape, and she becomes his daughter.

Yeah.  And the art of it is a whole different level of what's to appreciate about The Fall.  If The Princess Bride is impossibly romantic, then The Fall is impossibly beautiful.  I think the only reason it's not better known is that it wasn't widely released and it's so hard to completely explain, except by analogy.  Which is why I'm making such a hard sell with the Princess Bride comparison.  Except some people won't give something a chance if it evokes a cherished experience, because some people will never let something touch their cherished experiences, and The Princess Bride has only become more and more beloved as time has passed.

The Fall is like that.  I'm not just saying that because it is for me, but because it's such a complete experience, something you really do need to see to believe, that you will watch again, and again, and still feel as if you haven't fully appreciated it.  It's a truly great film, and it's life-affirming in the best possible way, with an ending that you will laugh over and cheer for, and possibly even cry during...

Just watch it already.  You'll thank me later.

859. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Deadpool

Well, shoot.  Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is about as perfect a superhero movie I've seen since The Dark Knight.

I loved his Watchman, his Man of Steel, and Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man 2, but Dawn of Justice is about as escalated as they get in terms of what Christopher Nolan achieved.  (Also in the running?  Oddly enough, Gore Verbinski's Lone Ranger.  Last thing you should ever do is listen to what the critics say.  Unless their name is Roger Ebert.  Which of course is completely impossible these days.)

There were two things about Man of Steel's ending that stuck in the craw of viewers: Superman killing Zod, and the wanton destruction of Metropolis.  Both of these are addressed in Dawn of Justice.  How often has a sequel so directly commented on its predecessor?  Go ahead, I'll wait.

What Snyder obviously hopes to accomplish is recontextualizing superheroes, at least in the movies.  There are plenty of viewers who want Avengers-style faire, obviously, and that's all well and good.  But some of us want something meatier.  Snyder's aim is to discuss superheroes in the grand scheme of history.  And actually, he does it by positing Superman (Republicans) and Batman (Democrats) as emblematic of the political shift post-9/11, as well as the wars of the past, with Lex Luthor boldly comparing Superman to the British (and by extension, Batman to Americans).

It's also a bold piece of psychological profiling.  Snyder is not particularly kind to Batman.  He likens the young Bruce Wayne, and the man he becomes, to someone suffering from PTSD in the wake of his parents' murder, plagued with dreams he sometimes can't differentiate from messianic visions.  He literally can't tell fact from fiction.  Although driven by the best of intentions, he can be easily manipulated by the likes of Lex Luthor, who is his opposite number in much the way Superman is.  What separates them is someone who truly does understand the past, who's been there.  Which is to say, Wonder Woman. 

Snyder's Superman has always been the boy who grew up troubled by his own potential, convinced by his father that he would never be accepted.  And throughout Dawn of Justice, we're reminded just how many angry voices there really are out there.  Superman, in this interpretation, is George W. Bush.  So, yeah.  Critics will hate him, because most voices in the media are liberal (liberals hated Bush, in case you'd forgotten), just as they were lukewarm to Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight because he had a Mexican as one of the bad guys in the era of Donald Trump.

The whole thing is a brilliant depiction of what happens when ideologies collide, and are either forced to obliterate each other or compromise, or even discover that they're not enemies after all (in this political climate, it's a truly sensational message).  From the introduction of Tim Burton's specter in 1989's Batman, superheroes lost their ability to exist in a black and white world.  When forced back in, audiences either chafe (Joel Schumacher's Batman) or go along with it (Joss Whedon's Avengers) because of the spectacle.  Because audiences can't refuse spectacle.  That alone will make Dawn of Justice a hit, despite all its nasty complications.  People who hate complicated will hate it.  That's just how it always is.  If they can't ignore it, they'll hate it.  But the spectacle of it will bring in loads of money anyway.

Deadpool is completely different while kind of exactly the same.  It's the logical extension of Burton's Joker, the clown who steals the show because he doesn't take anything seriously while also taking his own life extremely seriously.  Ryan Reynolds is the perfect guy to pull off this kind of role.  (I mean, in both its current cinematic incarnations.)  Deadpool was created to be the logical extension of the wisecracking archetype previously embodied by Robin and Spider-Man, except he never had a story that rooted him into anything of substance until now.  In the comics he's the biggest cult figure around, has been since he burst onto the scene twenty years ago, and is only now being recognized for it.  In the movies?  The only character capable of taking the Marvel approach to its zenith.  You wouldn't have Deadpool without Iron Man, who all but smirks through most of his scenes, but then becomes deadly earnest for whole moments at a time (that's why Iron Man 2 is the best Avengers movie, because it tries the hardest to strike a balance).

Marvel likes to harp on the legacy of the Nazis.  Dawn of Justice sidesteps the villains of 9/11 to reveal how it brought out, in the end, the worst in the good guys.  I mean, it's spelled out so plainly.  Why does Superman have to die and Batman be the one to found the Justice League?  Because that's what happened in the real world, too.

Dawn of Justice is a superhero movie with a big idea at its core.  I'm sure, one day, Superman will revert to being the big blue boy scout again.  But hopefully it won't happen anytime soon.  It's worth noting that this is the first time since Adam West that a live action Batman wears the grey and blue costume.  Snyder's often accused of being too pure to the source material.  This movie cobbles together a number of comic book source materials (Dark Knight Returns, "Death of Superman," Justice League: Origin), but in the end it's his original version of his earlier Watchmen.

Which I consider to be a very good thing.  Deadpool can't touch that.

858. The Circus of American Politics, 2016 Edition

A long time ago, a guy named John Kennedy was shot.  And I'm pretty sure American politics is still struggling to recover from that.

Kennedy's Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, succeeded him, was officially elected himself the next campaign season, did everything he could to build on the New Frontier in his Great Society, and then chose not to run for a second time.  This brought us Richard Nixon into the White House, the man Kennedy had successfully defeated for the office a decade earlier, finally humiliated out of public office, or so it seemed at the time.  Then Nixon resigned the Presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford pardoned him, Carter left office amid the Iranian hostage crisis, and Reagan dominated the '80s, could claim victory in the Cold War, and his Vice President, George H.W. Bush, took office, and after a single term Bill Clinton did his very best to be the new Kennedy, then George W. Bush, and then Barack Obama. 

Now, I've always maintained a neutral voting status even though I tend to think Republicans are generally more honest in what they think than Democrats.  Democrats, I think, are as hung up on Kennedy as anyone else.  Clinton and Obama both fervently courted his persona of cultural popularity while maintaining their status as direct answers to what Democrats at the time were thinking about Republicans. 

Reagan made Democrats particularly mad because he was on the whole one of the more successful Presidents in history, whether or not you choose to believe he more or less singlehandedly finally ended the Cold War nearly five decades after it began in the wake of WWII.  The only President to rival his popularity in the twentieth century would be the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who was successfully elected to four terms as President and has the distinction of ending the quagmire of the Great Depression.  Democrats since his time have been following in Roosevelt's footsteps in all their policies, just as they've desperately sought the mystique of Kennedy.

Kennedy's legacy otherwise is hard to quantify.  Since he was in office only a thousand days, and was known for epic blunders as much as anything else, and Johnson or Nixon got to hit all the big marks he'd set out to accomplish, some historians tend to downplay his impact.  Yet his is the template, as much as Roosevelt's, that Democrats have courted ever since, without ever really considering that it was more than just popularity that created his Presidency.

Yet there you have it.  Clinton undermined the first Bush's chances at reelection in part because he was a born campaigner.  Part of his early legacy was the book Primary Colors, which amply demonstrates exactly what helped drive Clinton to the White House.  There are few people, besides perhaps his wife Hillary, with as much political ambition as Bill, who savors the idea of being great without really knowing how to achieve it.

So Republicans really had a field day during his whole time in office, culminating in a nominal impeachment over his sexual indiscretions.  A lot of people thought he was a pretty great President, though, all told, because otherwise things seemed to go great and he stayed out of international trouble, for the most part. 

Then his Vice President, Al Gore, attempted to succeed him, and Democrats started to show just how petty they really are, painting his rival, the second Bush, as an idiot, because that's the best they could do.  They trotted out States Rights in the disputed election results (because historically, States Rights is a brilliant American legacy) that followed, and decided it was okay to quickly divide the nation in the wake of 9/11, returning to their story that Bush simply wasn't worth supporting, which was in direct retaliation for how Clinton was treated, which was in direct retaliation for how popular Reagan was, which was in strict opposition to everything the Democrats hoped to have achieved with the legacy of Kennedy...

So then Obama became President, and we've become so bitterly divided as a nation that the primary candidates to replace him all seem equally unlikely to unite the country around them, all for different reasons.  Hillary Clinton, because she's what everyone thought was actually the worst about her husband (despite seemingly garnering massive amounts of sympathy in the wake of his impeachment hearings).  Sanders because of the socialism line.  And Trump?  Because he's what results when the Republicans do what Clinton and Obama did before him, shouting very loudly against everything his opponents have been failing to do.

Even if you don't agree with all my characterizations or conclusions, the fact is, we have an election season that has a lot of unappealing options.  I've got Ted Cruz in my pocket in that he once did an epic filibuster, and I wrote about that here, the same way I wrote about Obama years before he became President.  (Like Clinton's legacy, Cruz could at least claim to know how to be a politician.)  It just seemed like a moment signaling the future.  Maybe Cruz doesn't have a shot at getting the nomination, because the Republicans are really all over the place on whether they'll let Trump go all the way, and Cruz looks like the last man standing in his way. 

The problem with Cruz, and with Trump, and with Clinton, and with Sanders, is that none of them are interested in saying how ridiculous partisan politics have become.  That's maybe not what you do when a candidate hasn't even been decided yet, but I think a lot of people would start feeling a lot more comfortable if there were someone out there who put political differences aside for the moment, and just tried to do right by the country.  I don't particularly like Democrats, because traditionally they've been the first ones to badmouth the competition.  I just think that's bad form.  The big Republican names from the '90s, like Newt Gingrich, never had a shot at winning the big office.  I think that's telling.  And yet now we have Trump, who's playing very much the Democrat game precisely because it's been so, so successful for them, in a way that, say, the Tea Party wasn't for Republicans.  Trump is an extreme Reaganite.  Without Reagan, there would be no Trump.  As far as I know, no one has made that connection.  But it shouldn't surprise you to hear something like that. 

Trump gets to say the insane things he says because Obama has spent so much time dodging the big questions, building a legacy that isn't even particularly from the Democratic Party.  I mean, I have firsthand experience with Mitt Romney's version of Obamacare while I was living in Massachusetts.  But Republicans can't admit that anymore than Democrats can, because this is the circus of American politics, circa 2016.  Trump exists, is still surging in the polls, because he's sure of what he says, rather than the extreme caution Obama has consistently exhibited through his two terms in office.  The obstructionism he's experienced is the same obstructionism that Bush experienced before him, which I assume is what Clinton experienced, too, or so Democrats certainly thought.

It's insane.  So we've got an insane election season.  Because, or so I'd like to argue, a guy named John Kennedy was shot.  We'll never know what he could have achieved had he lived.  But we do know he was unpopular, too, in his time, for exactly the same ideological reasons as we experience today, which have existed for as long as we've been electing people in this country.  Jefferson and Adams died as friends, but lived as bitter enemies.  Kennedy became more popular in death than he ever could have been in life.  The same thing happened to Lincoln, and to a certain extent Washington, who was dead in the water as a general during the Revolutionary War.  Like Grant after him, victory meant people loved him regardless of his personal attributes or fitness for the highest office.  History doesn't particularly care about the facts.  Memory certainly doesn't.  And the present absolutely doesn't.  We're a people who believe what we want to believe.  That's literally what it means to be an American.  It's what makes it so interesting, and so frustrating, to be one, and why someone like Donald Trump looks like he has a real shot at becoming President.  As with all the best scare tactics of modern life, his detractors claim Trump would turn out to be Hitler, if elected.  Which is utter nonsense.  Kennedy, and everyone after him, helped prove the limits of power in the United States.

For better or worse.  It's not what you say, but what you do.  And we have excellent ways of curtailing what presidents do here.  Because on the whole we hate them all, until they're just a memory.  And then we sometimes reconsider.  Try to keep that in mind.

857. A Further Reply to Armchair Squid

In which I present a rambling reply that was too long for the comments section and is probably of questionable merit, but here it is all the same...

Winter Soldier is about as good as any Marvel movie has gotten, but I've never for a minute believed Marvel was producing the best movies (let alone comics) despite how popular they are.  There's a huge gap between what's popular and what's good these days.  They're not always contradictory, and not always contradictory, and not always contradictory (all emphasis variations equally valid), and viewers realize this while not necessarily comprehending it (witness the rise of extreme hate for extremely popular movies even when they absolutely don't earn the hate).

We've grown increasingly unsophisticated as a culture.  I'm not talking sophistication such as classical music (which remains just as good as it ever was), or snappy banter (which is what a lot of Old Hollywood was about, like Philadelphia Story, which I would argue is far more an argument for how women rose in societal prominence in general post-WWII, when they began to shoulder far more of the culture than ever before; in a lot of ways we've been experiencing backlash from Hepburn's day, which is what happens every time society makes a huge push to help a given sector out). 

What most people deem the dumbing down of succeeding generations because of various pieces of technology is actually a reflection of disparate elements shrinking away from each other again and not having the slighted clue how to come back together.  We live in a nation with more land than it knows what to do with.  We're spread out, and we like it that way.  We like our isolation, even when something new comes along to make the world smaller (the phone, the car, the Internet).  And we're in the midst of a huge pushback.  We don't want to know what the other guy thinks.  And it retards everything. 

I keep coming back to this: We're aware that everyone thinks differently, but it's one thing to know it and another to understand it.  (We live in a culture that idolizes memorization without comprehension, and possibly it's always been that way.)  Obviously you like movies for different reasons than I do.  I keep going back to examples like Shakespeare and Melville because these are things generally recognized as genius now that were apparently incredibly easy to dismiss as so much fluff in their own day.  We still admire Marlowe and Twain, but for much the same reason we always did.  We see depth in Twain because Huck Finn gave Jim a chance, but in the end, Huck Finn is a boy whose grasp of the greater world is immature, not wise, and his journey with Jim one of rebellion, not conviction.  Ahab grapples with the fundamental questions of nature. 

We retreat to older things, because there was a time when we weren't so afraid to recognize good things for what they are (alongside the above examples, you understand).  We don't see that happening anymore.  Popular things are assumed to be rubbish.  And never given near the consideration as older things.  The same with new things in general.  Critics invariably like isolated things better.  Not necessarily the good isolated things, just the ones that are similar enough to the stuff they love, the stuff that doesn't challenge them, makes some general point but otherwise saying nothing new.  Because we hate challenges.  It's so much easier when there's a reasonable consensus about what we're supposed to like.  We're exactly like all the people who hated Elvis, who hated the Beatles.  And the people who liked Elvis, who would have had their say, don't say it, aren't allowed to be considered authorities.

So we become more and more unsophisticated, not because the culture lacks sophisticated things, but because we pretend it doesn't.  And then totally misinterpret what is sophisticated.  One final example.  To me, Pixar was both the birth and death of sophisticated animated movies.  It got so far ahead of itself that in its artistic pinnacle, WALL-E, it went for the most obvious, least sophisticated answers about life, the exact opposite of what it achieved with Ratatouille, what I consider to be the studio's best, in the ways it both supported and subverted animated movie norms.  Yet no one argues that Ratatouille is Pixar's best.  Which is completely incomprehensible to me.  Pixar has done a lot of variations on the mold at this point, something for everyone, and yet its best work is also likely to become, inexplicably, forgotten.  (At least for now.)

Technique is a funny thing.  It's very much a thing suited to the era where it originates.  Sometimes there's something so far ahead of its time, it takes a long time, predictably, for everyone else to catch up.  Star Wars is just the most obvious modern example of that.  Took decades for Hollywood to figure out how George Lucas did it.  We're living in that era now.  I agree that technique only exists to serve the storytelling.  That's why I look for the best stories, the best storytelling, and yes, the best technique.  Everyone likes to be entertained.  But the best work, to my mind, should be the hardest to enjoy.  But not this much.  At this point, Beethoven would be exactly what he probably was to countless readers of Peanuts, an insider reference to something otherwise never personally enjoyed.

...And I'll stop yammering now.  Because most of the time we talk in order to understand ourselves, most of all.  If it happens to help anyone else, so much the better...

856. Mock Squid Soup: February 2016 - Gravity

The monthly meeting of the Mock Squid Soup film society, hosted by Armchair Squid and Mock! (and excited bloggers everywhere), occurs yet again!

Here were my clues:

1) Directed by someone who helmed a Harry Potter movie.  Alfonso Cuaron, who was responsible for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  And if you haven't already, definitely see Children of Men. 

2) Something about LEGOs.  There was a LEGO International Space Station.  I still need this.  I still don't have it.

3) Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain were in similar movies, together.  Yes, first as supporting characters in Interstellar, and then enjoying Damon's hysterical hijinks in The Martian.  All three movies highly recommended.

So, I finally saw Gravity.  My sister fell asleep, but I was absolutely riveted watching it.  The 2013 blockbuster was warmly received by critics and audiences alike, but it took me a couple years to catch it myself.  As I assumed I would be at the time, I was impressed with the results.  In it, Sandra Bullock endures a series of unfortunate events, in space (with no snarky narrator), and in the process blows up the remainder of NASA's assets (more or less), but she makes it back, darn it, and that's what counts. 

I may be sounding flippant, but that's just because it makes me easier to read (hopefully).  It really is a great movie, and a sad statement on the state of space exploration affairs, in which disaster really is the best we can hope for these days, as we wait for something better in the future.  Fifty years ago we saw man walk on the moon, and yet in all the time since we've been slowly floating away from such ambition (if you'll, ah, pardon the allusion), with one disaster after another, in real life, curtailing the public's interest and the program's budget, one at a time.  We have more nations in space than ever before (the ubiquitous box office attraction these days, China, makes a cameo in Gravity, naturally), but all we're doing is place-holding.

It's depressing, but Gravity, strangely, isn't.  It's one of the big hits Bullock has had in recent years, a whole string of them after a long period where it seemed like she, too, had been left behind (not quite like, say, Mark Watney, but still).  Although we experience her journey far more than follow her along (she doesn't do a ton of talking to herself), she's far more hopeful about her prospects than the grim suggestions of her fate and inexperience suggested before anyone actually saw it.

It doesn't hurt that George Clooney appears. He sat through a dry spell, too, but nowadays people kind of like him, and for good reason.

Another space movie you should probably see is Moon, in which Sam Rockwell discovers there's more to him than he knows (heh).  The proliferation of astronaut movies in recent years, regardless of their subject matter, has been very good to see for someone like me whose childhood was filled in part by fantasies of going into space.  Even if everything does go wrong, we've done enough so that we aren't completely lost.  I'd call that hopeful enough to think the future still looks bright.

Now, going back to Gravity itself, this is a prime example of filmmaking at its finest, a director firmly in control of his craft, not needing anything more than a relatively simple subject, two characters, and for considerable periods of time not even needing either of them to speak.  Survival cinema (Cast Away, All Is Lost, The Revenant) isn't even where I would classify Gravity.  I'm of the school where if I'm going to be impressed with a movie, it's because there is something sensational about it, not so much special effects (because at this point any movie can do something flashy with that and not necessarily stand out because of them), but simpler things like dialogue (though, oddly, I've never really cottoned to someone like Aaron Sorkin, who's supposed to be the Greek god of banter; my examples from The West Wing and The Social Network suggest he's better at having characters bandy about talking points but never really getting anywhere, with the ambiguity not so much being an asset as an indicator that, really, Sorkin has nothing to say, which is to say, I'll always be more of a Tarantino guy, who builds entire scenes of seemingly inconsequential conversation to speak volumes about the characters involved) or how something is shot (which is why Orson Welles is the Greek god of cinematography).

And the mastery Cuaron displays in Gravity is different from the splendid tracking shot that is Birdman (Cuaron, it should be remembered, still holds the mark for tracking shots in the aforementioned Children of Men; seriously, if you haven't watched it, what are you waiting for?), in that following Bullock in her dilemma is totally different from following Damon in his during The Martian.  We aren't given any prelude material, but rather we're dropped right into the midst of the crisis.  A lot of viewers have assumed that Bullock is simply incompetent, but the disaster began before she had to deal with it, virtually on her own.  Clooney talks her through the early panic, but most people would panic in that situation.  It should be noted that Clooney in fact sacrifices himself to save her.  That's a completely different mindset from the one we follow.  Because Bullock does settle down, and figures out how to survive, just like Damon. 

Like Apollo 13, this is all about damage control.  And maybe it is metaphor, but it's also about resilience and trusting the systems that have been set in place around you.  By the time Bullock is hurtling to earth, we're once again in that scenario where we kind of expect to see her happy ending through to conclusion.  Except the conclusion isn't always what we expect.  When Cast Away settled on Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt not happily reconciling, it tainted the whole movie's legacy, so that the only thing people remember about it now is Wilson.  Which is fine, but it's also basically exactly the same as The Martian, all things considered, or half of Robinson Crusoe.  I've suggested elsewhere that Matt Damon essentially becomes Tom Hanks in The Martian.  I mean, I like it, think it was one of 2015's true pleasures. 

But Gravity is better.  Maybe not for everyone.  I mean, as a spectacle, because we love spectacles, it is, but I think more people would happily rewatch The Martian than Gravity, just as fewer people are willing to give Interstellar its due, much less something like Tree of Life, which is like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but a million times better.

Which, by the way, is what I'd also say of Oz the Great and Powerful over The Wizard of Oz.  The China Girl is a thousand times more fulfilling than the Scarecrow.  James Franco, who fits this material better than, say, the horrid mess that was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, makes a better career statement than Judy Garland connecting with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  And that's cinematic heresy for you right there.  But what are you going to do?

As an art statement, Gravity is exactly in the direction film should be going, letting great filmmakers make great films.  Not comfortable films.  Not small intimate films or big historical dramas.  We've latched onto Star Wars because it reached further than any big idea had gone before, and did it in as simple a way as it could, given the circumstances.  George Lucas had previously made American Graffiti, the cultural predecessor to Happy Days.  So basically Luke Skywalker is Richie Cunningham and Han Solo is the Fonz, and the Millennium Falcon is a set of hot wheels.  Pure and simple. 

Gravity is pure and simple, but it's also big and complex.  If we're not exactly looking like we're making progress in space anymore, or as a culture in general, if you want to be expansive about it, this is a film that says all is not as bad as it looks.  We follow Bullock home.  Pure and simple.  And we let the character worry about the rest.  Because the rest belongs to us, not in the sense that we will use our imaginations concerning what happens next, but we in all our seemingly stagnant progress will have something else to experience tomorrow, even if all the important pieces of the story, of history, have already happened, all the International Space Stations and Chinese units gone.  But not forgotten. 

That's our advantage.  Our wonderful, terrible, inspiring, limiting, source of all our abilities.  Memory.  Like gravity.  It's an anchor.  It brings us home every time.

855. Mock Squid Soup: February 2016 - Three Clues

In anticipation of next Friday's meeting of the Mock Squid Soup film society, hosted by Armchair Squid and Mock!, we're supposed to provide three clues as to what movie we'll be talking about.  Here're mine:

1) The director helmed one of the Harry Potter movies.

2) One of the elements of the movies was featured in a LEGO set that I've been obsessing over since I failed to buy it originally.

3) That second clue is useless to you.  So here's a better one: Matt Damon appears in two recent movies that are thematically similar, and so does Jessica Chastain, actually.  But if you Google to find out where they appeared together, you will inadvertently discover a secret that the NSA will hound you for.

That last sentence is a total lie.  But I will still know, and my sister's cat will judge you harshly.

854. David Bowie Memories

The death of David Bowie has led to a raft of stories exploring his impact on our culture.  I must confess, a lot of the time I didn't really know what exactly his impact was, because he was one of those music acts who kind of became more famous for his persona than his music. 

But he's got some famous music out there, such as:

That's "Space Oddity," his first and most famous hit.  It's one of those songs you probably heard a lot growing up, and maybe never found out who did it.  But there you are, a bona fide David Bowie classic.  Probably the obvious source for the quirkiness of his later career.  Imagine if the Beatles started out as Sgt. Pepper's...

"Life on Mars," which I'm most familiar with from the short-lived Jason O'Mara TV show (which itself was an adaptation of an earlier BBC series) of the same name.  The song recurred and was an anthem in more than one way.  So I'll always have that among my treasured memories.  I loved that show.

"Under Pressure," which he did with Queen.  I discovered this song from the soundtrack to the John Cusack classic Grosse Pointe Blank, and it's long been a favorite of mine (the soundtrack, this song in particular, both).

 

As an actor, my personal Bowie moment is his performance as Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.  Great movie, so I'll always have that from him as well.

That's all I can say definitively about David Bowie's work in my life.  I had to look up "Space Oddity" to find that out, which in turned reminded me about "Life on Mars."  But still, it's sad to see the legend go.  Could be very interesting to see how the culture keeps his memory alive.  Personally, I'd love a Bowie biopic, maybe from someone like Charlie Kaufman, who could really make his more interesting personality quirks pop.

It's also worth noting that Bowie is the father of the brilliant director Duncan Jones, who's given us two great films already, Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011), and hopefully many more to come.

853. The Force Awakens - Refuting the Naysayers Continues

Here's a guy who seems to make a pretty strong argument to not take The Force Awakens seriously.

The first and most obvious mistake this guy makes is assuming the original trilogy was about the fall of the Empire and return of the Republic, rather than the story of Darth Vader's improbable redemption at the hands of his son Luke Skywalker. Little wonder that he fails to understand what the First Order is or why it's significant that Han Solo is killed by his own son.

To wit: The Republic exists in The Force Awakens. The First Order is the remnant of the Imperial military, the muscle the Emperor massed over the years to consolidate his rule, why he was able to officially dissolve the Senate only by the time of A New Hope.  Which is to say, even with his iron grip, he still needed help to effect complete control. Hence, a reliance on big guns like the Death Star and its successors. Also, that's why he needed lackeys like Vader at all. "Unlimited power!" Because even the most powerful Sith, or Jedi for that matter, is still just one person, and therefore limited. Gaining a powerful new apprentice gives Palpatine renewed power, "unlimited" power, just another dude he was able to manipulate to stick around.

Anyway, then we reach the relevancy of Kylo Ren and the significance of his relationship, or lack thereof, with Han Solo. Snoke's power over Ren exists entirely in the boy's lack of emotional control. This is always the downfall of a Force practitioner. It nearly ruined Luke, and obviously it did ruin his father. The Sith thrive on emotion, but even they must control it. Ren killing his father severs a level of emotional turmoil he's had difficulty reconciling with his own perception of his future, and obviously Snoke's as well. Snoke thinks this is for the better. But is it? Without this anchor to what led him to Snoke, Ren is actually closer to redemption than corruption.

As for recurring the Death Star element at all, this is basic military tactics. For almost as long as we've had atomic weapons, we've been trying to get rid of them. But we haven't. They're a permanent weapon of our modern arsenal. They loom constantly. Whether you consider the Death Star as a metaphor or not, it makes perfect in-universe sense to keep building the big gun of the Star Wars arsenal over and over again, just as the Sith keep resurfacing.

The problem with guys like this is that they think they're outsmarting what's already about as smart a Star Wars story as there's ever been.  But ironically, Star Wars was never really about being smart, but about its emotional impact.  It's an adventure that seeks to deepen what adventure stories tend to accomplish.  George Lucas always wanted a complicated story.  He didn't always have the exact details in mind that we've grown to love in the original films, and the most famous examples are the big reveals of Empire Strikes Back (Vader is Luke's father!) and Return of the Jedi (Luke and Leia are siblings!), as any fan who ever read Splinter of the Mind's Eye will have known.  The genius of A New Hope was how Luke is immediately presented as an orphan with an interesting backstory.  That about sums up Harry Potter, too, right?  That's exactly why Harry became so popular, because in seven books and eight films, we find out what made his backstory so interesting, and how it all leads to defeating what otherwise might have been a scary but ultimately generic villain. 

Now, just imagine if Empire Strikes Back hadn't had that big ending.  Would anyone really care about Star Wars today?  Plenty of really popular movies have leveled off to exist in the social morass. They still count for something, but in far more limited ways than when they first debuted.  That could just as easily have been the fate of Star Wars, too.  Yet the story was deepened, with one scene.  One scene!  The rest of the movie is fine, really, but without that one scene, the whole thing looks pretty weightless.  And the thing about The Force Awakens is that it doesn't hinge on one scene.  The whole thing seeks to deepen the story.

The problem is that the prequels did, too.  And fans now think of deepening the story as weakening it.  I think that's insane, I really do.  But that's about where most people are in their consumption of popular entertainment.  They actually crave the superficial.  They like disposable, the shiny baubles that are fun to enjoy and then pass along to the annals of history.  What makes Star Wars so different is that it changed the rules.  We ended up caring too much.  And now we don't know what to think of it anymore.  For most people, it's the happy memories, something that helped build something, that in the books and comics became exactly the disposable landscape they're most familiar with otherwise enjoying.  They don't need to think too much about it.

Now Star Wars is asking them to think again.  For some fans, that's just unacceptable.  Too bad for them.

852. The Force Awakens - Something Old, Something New

As The Force Awakens settles into being a known commodity, the positive reaction that first greeted it has started to give way to more criticism.  One of the loudest voices is Star Wars creator George Lucas, who has begun to call the new film an act of nostalgia.

I'm not here to denounce Lucas's opinion as irrelevant.  As I've said countless times in the past, I love the prequels, unabashedly.  Where others see creative decisions ranging from just plain bad to offensive, I see artistic achievements of unparalleled achievement.  They are, to me, unquestioned elevations in Lucas's talents as a filmmaker.

His biggest problem with The Force Awakens probably stems from what he himself would have done, as he's noted would have been different from what he had done with the previous six films.  The major appeal of The Force Awakens is that it is an act of nostalgia, for the most part.  This was almost entirely necessary to get positive buzz back into the saga.  The dramatic departures of the prequels, if nothing else, certainly succeeded in presenting something that felt totally different from the original trilogy, which fans loved so much because it was raw and dirty.  The prequels are often accused of featuring wooden acting.  At the very least, they featured an era with far more rigged rules of conduct than the originals.  I would argue that the whole point of the prequels was about breaking loose from restrictions that had calcified.  Anakin Skywalker is attracted to Palpatine's vision because it offers him a limitless existence.  Fans abhor Jar Jar Binks because he seems too loose.  The prequels are all about extremes.

J.J. Abrams realized, somewhere along the way, that there had to be balance.  He didn't necessarily steal everything he created wholesale from the originals.  Instead, he built on them.  His Star Wars is deliberately more lived-in than even the original films.  For me, that creates an experience that is arguably better than any Star Wars to date.  He creates a landscape where the known and the unknown work in tandem, among the characters and among the fans.  There's a reason why so much of the action looks familiar.  Too often fans tend to great this sort of thing as a rip-off (Star Trek fans in particular, alas).  But the more deeper the material, the richer the experience.

I would argue that The Force Awakens succeeds because of this, because of its deep awareness, which makes it rich, which makes it feel so familiar.  But it's also new, because it wisely builds on the old material to tell a new story, one that may look predictable at this point, but uses the idea Lucas originally had in the prequels, to continue the saga, to see where the story goes next.  In virtually all of the old spinoff books and comics, the writers lost sight of what made Star Wars special.  It wasn't merely the mechanics, but the storytelling itself.  There's a reason why Darth Vader revealing the truth of his identity to Luke Skywalker was so important, why The Empire Strikes Back has long held its place as the most popular film among the fans, because it was the first time the story was deepened.

The prequels told us a story we already knew: that Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader.  As Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy attests, fans are impatient when they already know how the story ends.  For the first time in thirty years, Star Wars fans don't.  That's why The Force Awakens succeeds.  Well, that and impressive filmmaking.

When George Lucas first created Star Wars, he had a totally different vision than what ultimately came about.  Allowing the story to breathe turned out to be a very good thing.  We're seeing that again.

851. I have seen The Force Awakens (SPOILERS)

I have seen Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens.  And I love it.

A storytelling geek like me, and not just a Star Wars geek, is bound to love it.  It's cyclical in the best tradition. 

That's all I will say before I again warn you I have SPOILERS in mind as I continue talking about it.

The least spoiler I can say is that it's very reminiscent of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movies, in a good way, mind you, because I loved them, especially the original trilogy (the fourth is basically for anyone who might want to just experience one of them, because it's mostly unrelated).  I say this not just because Daisy Ridley's Rey ends up reminding me of Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swann, but because of a few other elements besides, like the pirates hideout (more or less) where our heroes meet Lupita Nyong'o's Maz Kanata, which clearly evokes a similar haunt from the Pirates films.  The treasure hunt, so to speak, is right out of them, too.

You'll find, in my Episode VII label, two previous posts I've written concerning my speculations and expectations, which ended up being exactly what happens in the movie (from a certain point of view).  I loved that.  I thought Kylo Ren being revealed right away to be Han Solo and Princess General Leia's son was brilliant.  Because it probably sets up something even greater, which is how the movie ends, very strongly suggesting that Rey is Luke Skywalker's daughter.  It's a strong twist, and an ode, to the original trilogy, in two different ways.  First is pretty obvious.  The second is that the big fight in this new trilogy will be between the offspring of the original heroes, who often were at odds with each other anyway.  And still are, come to think of it.

I love how John Boyega's Finn transforms from a stormtrooper to reluctant hero.  He helps make the whole thing more rich than any previous Star Wars (yes, I just said that).  I love how Han Solo continues the tradition of veteran hero dying in the opening film of a trilogy (even if I'm sad to see him go).

J.J. Abrams is once again true to form.  (Big Red Ball 'O' Doom?  Check.  Greg Grunberg?  Check!)  I've been fascinated with his work since Lost.  (Also, hello, Ken Leung!)  He's got such a strong creative track record at this point, it's only appropriate that he next gets to become the next Christopher Nolan, a guy with the ability to unleash big ideas on the big screen as big as he wants.  The next Star Wars is in very good hands with Rian Johnson (check out Brick and Looper right now!).  So it's great that Abrams got to set the ball rolling, and will be able to what he wants now.  Because we are all in for further treats.

The best part of The Force Awakens?  That it's got its own massive payoff, from the lightsabers duels Ren fights with Rey and Finn after killing Han to Rey's meeting with Luke.  This is the best ending of any Star Wars.  It's dramatic payoff that's so good you don't even care that they just destroyed another Death Star-type weapon and completely downplayed it in favor of the human drama.

The worst part?  Carrie Fisher's acting.  But there's always a stiff actor somewhere in Star Wars.  The good news is, the saga is always filled with enough spectacle where it doesn't matter, from the originals to the prequels, to a whole new trilogy. 

And it's just beginning...

850. Box Office: Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace

The year was 1999.  Once again, Star Wars was the most hotly anticipated release of the year.  It went on to become the most successful release that year.  And then to become known as one of the most maligned movies ever.

How is that even possible?  Not every huge success remains popular.  It's strange, it really is.  You look back historically and it's virtually unthinkable.  Going back just twenty years, and there's not a single such success, the top draw of the year, that went on to become unpopular.  The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Top Gun (1986), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Rain Man (1988), Batman (1989), Home Alone (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Aladdin (1992), Jurassic Park (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Toy Story (1995), Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998)...These were all cultural touchstones of varying degrees, and to varying degrees still relevant and beloved today.  (Quibble about, say, Three Men and a Baby, but it doesn't really matter.) 

After The Phantom Menace?  In fact, immediately after, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), suffered the same fate.  It happened again to Spider-Man 3 (2007).  It's time to stop blaming Jar Jar Binks and do some actual analysis.

It's worth starting with Star Wars itself.  Return of the Jedi was widely panned by fans, too, and for the same reasons (Ewoks being indisputably the original trilogy's Jar Jar Binks).  Over time, fans forgot how little they actually liked the last one, and got caught up in the anticipation for the next one.  Why's that, exactly?  Because it took that long for anyone to come up with another blockbuster idea.

From the moment of A New Hope's release in 1977, Hollywood started scrounging for the next big thing.  That's how we got Superman and Star Trek on the big screen.  For the entirety of the '80s, however, big hits looked nothing like Star Wars.  Go ahead and look at the films that topped the box office during that period again.  To find anything remotely resembling the modern era, you have to look at Batman (1989) at the end of the decade.  And then you'll see that there was still no real follow-up for the next decade. 

In fact, if you look at the '80s and the '90s, you'll find that Hollywood embraced one aspect of the Star Wars phenomenon: its family-friendly atmosphere.  With variations (commonly, action), the formula was eventually adapted so that it was thoroughly safe for kids, kind of like how Disney had such a long string of hit animated films, including the latterday surge in this period as typified by Aladdin (1992) and Toy Story (1995).

It should have been very little surprise that Jar Jar happened at all.  Or was attempted at all.  Or the filmmakers believed he would happen, up until they started hearing the public's vitriolic feedback.

But what Star Wars really accomplished, in 1999, was to finally force everyone else to take event movies seriously, the way everyone assumed Hollywood had starting in 1977.  What were the most popular movies thereafter?  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Spider-Man (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Shrek 2 (2004), Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Avatar (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011), Marvel's The Avengers (2012), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)...In fact, until American Sniper (2014), which snatched victory from another Hunger Games installment at the last minute, every top release since Phantom Menace has been part of a major franchise, with minimal overlap.

In addition to everyone complaining that there are no original ideas anymore (which is always ridiculous), what this means is that Star Wars finally created it own competition, by finally bringing back the concept of mass anticipation.  It took years.  It took about two decades, really.

And it produced the phenomenon of mass disappointment.  Films flop all the time, but it took The Phantom Menace for a hugely successful movie to flop, metaphorically speaking.  Suddenly even a movie people couldn't stop seeing could be nitpicked to death.  And that's what the discussion surrounding Phantom Menace has really amounted to all these years.  Nitpicking is what fans do.  When you produce a culture where fans are no longer a limited phenomenon, you end up with something as absurd as what happened to Phantom Menace.  Now, people just assume it was a bad film, no matter how closely it resembles the same exact tendencies as every Star Wars before it. 

I could go on about the film itself, which I've long admired, if not counted among my most favorite movies.  Hollywood keeps trying to retain the goofy element in these blockbusters, no matter the fan reaction.  That's why Jack Sparrow propelled the Pirates of the Caribbean films to great success, and why Iron Man and his fellow Avengers usually take things tongue-in-cheek.  Anytime a blockbuster tries to play things straight, even the fans are disgruntled.  Which makes it all the more ironic that they continue to insist that Jar Jar was a horrible, horrible mistake.  Hey, you wouldn't have him without C-3PO in...all the other ones.

So here we stand at the precipice of another hotly anticipated Star Wars release.  The question we have before us is: will the fans allow themselves to enjoy it?  The answer could very well define the next twenty years of filmmaking...