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A take on “Crazy Rich Asians” from a lazy poor Asian

Posted on September 5, 2018 by babemoby

Because this site is Asian & Entertained, and the cultural event of the summer happens to be about Asians, I thought it would be a good idea for take a break from my ’80s excursion and offer my thoughts on “Crazy Rich Asians.”

Well, it’s a pretty decent romantic comedy, isn’t it? A lot of rom-coms are fantastical journeys in normalizing gender roles aren’t they? Sure, the woman is usually empowered because she generally has her own career and isn’t really in dire of need of a man, but the supposed Mr. Right comes along anyway, and despite his flaws, which happen to be THE WORST, they usually decide they’ll both make sacrifices for the other, or the woman realizes the guy’s best friend is just as thirst-inducing and not nearly the douche her first pick was, and everything works out in the end one way or another.

The biggest way that “Crazy Rich Asians” is a success is that it minimizes the worst rom-com tropes, and though many are still present (montages of trying on clothes, the gay friend, a big breakdown, where the woman nearly gives up, etc.), they don’t threaten to take over the movie. There are enough divergences that it works as a light, refreshing romantic fantasy, when it’s not exploring the vast divide between middle- to upper middle-class working people and the obscenely wealthy.

Rachel (Constance Wu) is an economics professor who is dating the ever-so-slightly mysterious Nick Young (Henry Golding). Things are heating up between them. He’s ready to take her home to meet Mom. Rachel doesn’t know too much about Nick’s family, and he withholds on the details about them, except the fact that he doesn’t get along extremely well with them. But Rachel, sensing that deeper relationship goals may be looming, decides meeting the family might be a good step in that direction. So, away to Singapore they go.

Rachel’s gotta spruce up if she wants to impress Nick’s family.

The flight is the first sign that Nick is seriously underplaying his own significance in the world, as he sweeps her away into a first-class cabin that’s so nice, it might make American renters wish they could move in. Yes, they do fuck right there on the plane.

Nick eventually does reveal that his mom basically owns everything. She might best be described as a hotel empress, whose vast wealth and business expansion would make Donald Trump thirst. Rachel will soon discover that everything is more lavish in Singapore, and she’s about to take a tour de force of sheer extravagance.

It would be completely accurate to describe “Crazy Rich Asians” as “wealth porn,” to steal a phrase from the more common phrase, “food porn,” though that would also be a totally accurate description of the movie. It’s not your wildest dreams of swimming through a vault full of gold coins, a la Scrooge McDuck. It’s actually a shit-ton more than that. From spas on the beach to party barges to rare, exotic flowers to all-expenses paid shopping sprees, there’s so much here to make you feel like the poor, unrefined peasant that you are, and you’ll absolutely never taste a fraction of the disgusting, gold-plated lives these people live.

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What do rich people even do? Damn!

But Rachel is, as any of us would be, here for it. Maybe. Her biggest reservation is that Nick’s mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), might not be OK with her son being attached to such a disheveled upper middle-class commoner as her, and her Spidey-sense totally right about Mom’s disapproval. Yeoh nails the disapproving mom role. Imagine how condescending your mom would be if she basically owned an entire country. Deciding whether to work to please her potential mom-in-law or fly back to home to California becomes the crux of Rachel’s struggle in the film.

Essentially, the film is a story of the divide between classes. Once Rachel reaches Singapore, the movie almost starts to feel like “Game of Thrones.” Don’t get it wrong, no one dies. Well, no humans die, but there is one very unfortunate fish. But the way Eleanor plots to undermine Rachel and her desire to marry her son off is very much business first, love second, it feels a lot like Cersei Lannister arranging her royal sons’ marriages. Make no mistake, Eleanor and Nick don’t wear crowns, but in status, they are royalty. If they want something, it’ll be delivered via helicopter within the hour.

Rachel discovers that for the uninitiated, this magical gold kingdom is a nice place to visit, but she doesn’t necessarily want to live there, and she definitely has misgivings about living under the judgmental gaze of her would-be in-laws. It’s kind of a “Cinderella” for the well-off (without the evil step-sisters), but the princess here decides that, in terms of the lifestyle, she finds the wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

For a movie advertised as a romantic comedy, the movie is a bit light on the comedy. Most of the humor is delivered by Rachel’s former college roommate, Peik Lin (Awkwafina), who Rachel discovers comes from a family whose wealth pales in comparison to that of Nick’s family, yet they still live in a gold palace of their own. The always funny Ken Jeong is Peik Lin’s creepy dad, and he delivers some laughs. Also, “two girls, one cup of noodles,” may be the one-liner of the year. Besides that, the movie is pretty heavy on the drama.

But as cultural events go, as far as how representative of the common Asian person this movie is, the studio may as well have done Crazy Rich Caucasians, as the same story with most of the same issues could have easily been done about white Amercans/Europeans, whose wealth would no doubt be just as extreme as the Youngs’. It’s not really an exploration of differences between Asian cultures or the meaning of Asian identity, in the way “Black Panther” is about what it means to be African-American. This movie actually much more of an examination of how people in different classes behave and how business can color the decisions of people whose life revolves around wealth.

She finally looks rich enough.

In fact, Rachel’s family’s story is much more relatable to an Asian-American such as myself. Her mother’s story of how she fled China to escape an abusive family to America, where she worked her ass off to provide as a single mother so she could send her kid off to college, bears many similarities to my own family’s immigration story. In short, my great-grandmother in China married a man who was not from her clan, so her family killed him, and, out of fear for her own life, she fled to the U.S. That’s just how things went during the Industrial Revolution era.

As for “Crazy” being THE CULTURAL EVENT OF THE YEAR!!!!! for Asian-Americans, it is cool to see a movie where Asian characters played by Asian actors make up the entire cast. But if we’re comparing MAJOR CULTURAL EVENT MOVIES, I’m still wondering when we get our “Black Panther.” When do we get a “Ms. Marvel” movie with Kamala Khan? “Crazy Rich Asians,” though purportedly grounded in the “real world,” is just as much of a fantasy as any Marvel movie is, just without the geekiness.

The triumph of “Black Panther” made it feel like everyone who wanted to be, could be proud to be Wakandan (except the colonizers, of course). “Crazy Rich Asians,” on the other hand probably left even most Asians feeling like outsiders because most of us are much more like Rachel than Nick, and not all of us run across a charming business prince like Nick to sweep us away to Singapore. Again, it’s wealth porn. It’s a fine fantasy, but that’s all it is.

Asia and being Asian are hardly monolithic concepts anyway, much like the many diverse cultures of all continents or races. You wouldn’t say Germany is basically the same as Britain. And you wouldn’t say South Africa is basically the same as Egypt. This movie takes place in Singapore, yet there are many other Asian countries with vastly different cultures, and nowhere near the wealth present in that country. China is not like Singapore, which is not like India, which is not like Indonesia, which is not like Afghanistan, etc. In fact, in terms of culture, Singapore closely resembles the U.S., in terms of being more of a crossroads of Asia and Europe or a melting pot, because of the strong British influence. One of the official languages is English, even.

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The Rock says, “You can’t just put Dwayne Johnson in everything and say diversity in Hollywood is solved!”

And sure, many Asian countries have their own robust cinema industries, and the best ones are imported to the U.S., and they’re not nearly as hard to find as they would have been as recently as 30 years ago. And there are more Asian stars in American movies and TV. Who doesn’t love Riz Ahmed, John Cho, Rami Malek, Mindy Kaling? And, of course, there’s Dwayne Johnson, only the biggest action star in Hollywood. But he’s usually the sole Asian/Islander actor in any given blockbuster he smashes in. Yet, he is only one man (even one Rock).

But my worry was that we only get one shot at having an “Asian-American” Hollywood blockbuster every quarter century, and “The Joy Luck Club” did not kick off an American cinematic revolution back in 1993. Thankfully, “Crazy Rich Asians” is kicking ass at the box office, so maybe we’ll be here to stay, fellow Asians. But I still want my big, soaring epic, like “Black Panther” that really delves into the complex experience of being Asian in the U.S.

And it’s not as if our stories aren’t being filmed in Hollywood, it’s just that Asians aren’t being allowed to participate in them. When do we get to see Asian-American versions of “Infernal Affairs,” “Ghost in the Shell,” “Battle Angel Alita.” If rumors of Taika Waititi being on board to do “Akira” truly come to fruition, maybe that could be our shot. But, white people, come up with your own movies please. You’re creative, so you have to steal Asian stories. Though they are pretty awesome, aren’t they?

But calling “Crazy Rich Asians” THE CULTURAL EVENT OF THE YEAR!!!!! sounds much more like clever marketing schemed up by a studio. Hey, in terms of box office, it worked. But it came on the heels of “Black Panther’s” success at really being the phenomenal force that it is, which came about much more organically by being crowd driven, rather than force-feeding by marketers.

That’s not to take anything away from “Crazy Rich Asians” being a pretty good film that happens to be made by and about Asians. By all means, please, go see it, but, no, you don’t get you “woke” points for doing so. Yeah, it’s a hard-knock life out there, what can ya do?

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You can see the lazy poor Asian for free.

“An American Werewolf in London”

Posted on May 30, 2018 by babemoby

It’s not the Warren Zevon song. John Landis went for literal werewolves in his 1981 movie “An American Werewolf in London.”

When I stopped in a London movie theater, I luckily didn’t run into any werewolves myself, just this movie (it also wasn’t a porno theater). With several hit comedies under his belt, Landis moved on to horror, which could also be considered the dark side of comedy. Only, he really didn’t move on, as he stuck with all his comedic beats for “Werewolf,” which go for a lot of laughs to go along with the terror.

It’s a pretty standard horror setup really: Americans David (David Kessler) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) go backpacking in Europe, and they do some foolish things and get themselves attacked by a strange creature. Jack dies, and David (who just so happened to be played by the better actor) is spared, but is also left haunted by the prospect of turning into a werewolf himself and mauling the people around him.

Landis offers his own comedic touch to it, with Jack returning from the dead to check in on David numerous times, with mangled flesh (a lot of great makeup in this movie) and a grudge against David for getting him killed (he finds being dead to be a pretty dull experience). Jack, waking up in the hospital finds himself attended to by Pretty Nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter), who — it being the ’80s — almost instantly falls madly in love with him and decides to take him home with her. It makes you wonder if it’s common practice in the U.K. for nurses to take home their patients. Talk about your work following you home. Plain-looking dudes have it good in the movies — especially in the ’80s — with beautiful women constantly fawning at the very sight of them. In this case, Alex practically falls directly into David’s lap.

The moral is don’t get killed by a werewolf.

The movie does a good job of playing up David’s creeping fears that he, in fact, was bitten by a werewolf — despite his doctor trying to convince him that it was an “escaped lunatic” who had attacked him — with the next realization naturally being that he will become a werewolf himself and attack and eat people.

David’s apparent lycanthropy is strongly played up as an allegory for mental illness or trauma. David is haunted by dreams of himself running through the woods naked and attacking a dear and a pack of werewolf Nazis invading his house and killing his family. The audience finds out David is Jewish, which Alex joked about, having seen the state of his penis, so it makes sense that he has a nightmare about Nazis. Once David has actually made the transformation to werewolf and gone on a deadly rampage, he fears it will happen again, but can come up with no way to stop himself from turning again. Jack’s ghost or apparition continues to appear to David (in increasing states of decay each time), along with the other people David has killed. They all tell him he needs to kill himself to stop the bloodline of the werewolf and to prevent himself from killing more and risk spreading the disease onto some other poor unassuming soul. These are all variations on devices movies tend to use to denote mental illness.

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Not just werewolves, not just Nazis, but werewolf Nazis.

Comparing a furry killing machine to a person with mental illness borders on demonizing the mentally ill. Fear and mistreatment of the mentally ill has long been a major failing in society, and especially in the U.S., and continues to be today, as mentally ill is the term the media and politicians continuously use to describe the perpetrators of tragic massacres, such as school shootings.

The cry from the U.S. government has consistently been that there needs to be better treatment of mental illness, even though no improvements are ever made, and the government usually responds by shrinking health coverage even more than it already has. Despite racism, misogyny, easy access to guns all being seemingly common factors in these types of attacks, mental illness and violent movies and video games are usually treated as the culprits.

Mental illness is a serious issue, as someone who suffers from it can be a danger to themselves, and sometimes to others, and it does need to be addressed for the sake of people who live with it. So, it’s good to see movies take on the issue, though it is a sensitive one.

But if you narrow the scope of “mental illness” to people who have a propensity for violent behavior (or sociopaths), then there is certainly an important conversation to be had.

Once undead Jack warns David that he’s going to turn into a werewolf, David’s main concern becomes that Jack’s prophetic message will come true and that he will transform and kill people. Despite David desperately not wanting that to happen, there is nothing he can do to stop it. David’s doctor eventually does come to the realization that David might indeed be correct in his worries, but he comes to that realization too late to do anything. When David does begin to seek help, people treat him as if he is “insane” (which would be debatable), but they don’t do anything to help him. He finds himself alone in his problem, left to his thoughts and his demons.

The eventual solution to David’s problem is that the police kill him. That’s trending a little too much toward a fascist solution for dealing with violent or even potentially violent people, and a solution police in the U.S. unfortunately seem to be taking more often. But it doesn’t seem as if Landis wanted his audience to be comfortable or satisfied with that grisly ending. The director basically offers up his worst-case scenario for the situation, in which everything goes as badly as it possibly can, and he leaves it up to the audience as to how things could be done differently.

He looks like a good scratch behind the ears might calm him down. The actual werewolf might have looked good in 1981, but he has not aged particularly well.

Obviously, better access to mental health care would be a great step in the right direction, but that would cost the government (and taxpayers) money it isn’t willing to spend. Making access to deadly weapons more difficult would help (could you imagine a werewolf with a gun?), but the NRA has a stranglehold on the government in regard to that issue. How about taking steps to address virulent racism and misogyny propagated on the internet? A common response lately tends to be that the victims are actually the ones at fault (walk up, not out). There is a necessary conversation to be had here, but in truth, the conversations have been had, and ultimately, the people who have the power to improve things don’t want to … so things are the way they are.

The question the movie poses most prominently is in a similar vein to the question posed pertaining to the Joker in the “Dark Knight,” and that is: What do you do with a person who poses an uncompromising threat to others? It’s a little different in that the Joker has an impenetrable ideology predicated on perpetuating violence and chaos, but David is unable to control his propensity for violence. But the intent of the “violent person” really isn’t as important as coming up with a solution that both protects the people around them while still being respectful of their humanity. There was no end to the Joker’s scheming, so there really wasn’t a solution to that issue. There could have been a means to protect David from others, as well as himself because he had the desire to do what was right. But the societal pieces were not in place for him to be treated for his condition.

It’s a question that society has been plagued by since way before 1981. Of course, there is no be all, end all solution for what to do with violent people. But there are ways to curb violent behavior, like taking steps toward better mental health programs and gun control. Maybe none of those things would stop a werewolf, but luckily, werewolves don’t exist (that anyone knows of).

There’s probably something to be said about an American who travels to Europe and winds up terrorizing a city. Maybe it’s intended to be a darkly humorous take on Americans’ propensity to take advantage of other people wherever they go, or possibly just taking the annoyance of tourists to a new, ridiculous level. Perhaps it’s a mildly exaggerated recounting of some of Landis’ own personal experiences, since he wrote the movie along with directing it.

This wasn’t the first comedic horror movie, but the subgenre has really taken off since then, offering up many great entries, like Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy, and “Shaun of the Dead” in particular, which billed itself as a “Romantic comedy. With zombies,” and also the best picture nominated “Get Out,” which took blurring the line between comedy and horror to a new level.

But in the end, “An American Werewolf in London” makes for a fun and frightful freak show that doesn’t require any deep thinking to enjoy. You folks back in 2018 would do fine to give it a look.

I’m going to continue my globe trotting, next looking at “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” That one’s pretty popular from what I remember. On my way, I’ll make sure to stay on the road, keep clear of the moors. Oh shit, the moon is full! I’d better get going…

“Diva” (1981)

Posted on May 16, 2018 by babemoby

When the author of this piece made his stop in France, he stumbled into a small theater, whereupon, ooh la la, he happened to catch an early new wave gangster film called “Diva.” Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, “Diva” is pretty unique for the subgenre, following a young French postman as he tries to escape from the gangsters who are after him, looking for an incriminating tape that unfortuitously falls into his possession.

Jules (Frederic Andrei) is a pretty unassuming guy, though he’s hardly “normal.” The man lives in a garage that doesn’t even have a door on its entrance and is filled with wrecked classic cars and his own audiophile equipment. You see, he has a healthy appreciation for music — opera in particular — along with a rather unhealthy appreciation for American virtuoso, Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhemenia Fernandez), more specifically. In addition to getting himself into trouble with a pair of unsavory looking guys who are after a tape that happens to fall into his mail carrier on his moped, he also gets himself into a bit of trouble with a recording he made of Cynthia singing at one of her concerts. That’s a big deal because Cynthia is solely a performing artist, who doesn’t do recordings. That makes a tape of her performance a sought after item due to her status and her incredible voice. There happens to be a couple Taiwanese mafia members looking to get their hands on that tape so they can cash in on it.

It turns out the police are also looking for the gangster tape as Commissaire Jean Saporta (Jacques Fabbri) believes it may be the key to cracking an international prostitution ring that happens to operate in Paris. He puts a pair of his best cops on the case, and they set out to track down Jules.

Jules also happens upon a young Vietnamese lady, named Alba (Thuy An Luu) thieving records from a local music store, and they quickly become friends for some reason. Alba also lives with a purportedly wealthy benefactor, Mr. Gorodish (Richard Bohringer), though their relationship is never concretely defined. Alba and Gorodish take a liking to Jules. Luu has the standout performance in the movie as the sassy, intelligent Alba. There are a lot of pairs of characters in this movie, who are concerned with Jules, to go along with the pair of tapes he has in his possession.

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Who even knows what’s going on with Alba and Godorish?

If it isn’t clear, the Euro quirk is strong with this one. This is a quite odd little movie here, and no amount of description can truly capture the quirkiness this film exudes. There are lots of little goofy things from one of the gangsters’ apparent vocal dislike of just about everything, as well as his fondness of murdering people with his signature ice pick, to the weird aquatic motif Alba and Gorodish have, which goes unremarked upon in their dimly lit apartment.

Beineix has set his movie in Paris, but shies away from the city’s abundant majesty most movies set there are lavished with, opting instead to have his characters reside in places like Jules’ strange garage abode or Gorodish’s warehouse home or tiny residences that are tucked away in the corners of alleys in the city. It feels like Beineix may have been trying to portray the more common side of Paris that generally goes unnoticed by the world, at least in the movies.

The structure of the movie is strange too, as Beineix has basically mashed together two completely separate stories, each of which probably could have been its own movie, and perhaps they were intended to be, only he didn’t have enough material to make a complete feature of either. The only connecting factor between the story of the titular diva and the gangster tale, is Jules, who plays a central role in each. Maybe there’s some novelty in that each story involves a taped recording, both of which are in Jules’ possession, which the characters in each section are after. The crime story is fun and thrilling, while the thing with the opera singer is an exploration of the issues surrounding pirating of what today is called intellectual property. The separation of the two stories makes for an awkward viewing, especially as the gangsters are really more interesting than Jules’ relationship with Cynthia, and the diva kind of disrupts the momentum of the other story.

Both stories do appear to take on anti-authoritarian undertones, which likely will be a common theme in this exploration of movies from the ’80s (the time in which the writer of this piece, and those forthcoming, happens to find himself).

An anti-police and generally anti-government undercurrent runs through the gangster tale. The two gangsters looking for Jules pose as undercover police, blurring the lines between lawless criminals and the supposedly good cops. The actual cops seem to be well-meaning, yet very inept at their jobs, not particularly succeeding in anything they attempt to do. But as Jules goes on the run, both the fake cops and the real cops are looking for him. Jules stops to spend one night at the house of a couple he knows. The next morning, the woman calls the house to let Jules know one of the pairs of cops was asking for him (though it’s uncertain which set of “cops” that would be), and that they look like fascists. But Jules, and the audience, do eventually discover that the scheme the gangsters are involved in does indeed go all the way to the very top. It seems very intentional that the director is trying to lump the cops in with the crooks. Sure there are good cops, but they don’t do enough to make up for the harm the police department does, at least in this movie. People around the world know that police are bad news, it’s really only folks in the U.S. who seem to hold “Blue” in high regard.

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They look like fascists

In Cynthia’s story, there is a lot of conversation surrounding music pirating, as music journalists ask her thoughts on recording. She isn’t against recording or making money with music, she just has personal reasons for not doing so herself. She really hates pirating, however, believing it to be basically the same as rape. Even though Jules has his own private recording of Cynthia’s performance, he only keeps it for his own enjoyment, and has no interest in selling it or distributing it in any way. But there is the ethical question of whether he should have the right to have a recording of Cynthia, when it would be expressly against her wishes if she did know about it. It does weigh the conundrum of how important an artist’s compensation for their work is, compared to the distribution and propagation of that work and who has the right to enjoy it.

Things take a creepier turn regarding Jules’ relationship with Cynthia. Jules has stolen a dress, which he saw Cynthia perform in, which he makes a prostitute put on before having sex with her. Then, he uses his status as a courier to personally deliver a bouquet of flowers to her hotel room in order to introduce himself to her and return the dress, letting her know he stole it, and that he had traveled around Europe to see her perform numerous times, as far away as Munich, which he had ridden to on his moped. Cynthia is understandably weirded out by all of this information and nearly calls the police. But she eventually sees that Jules is harmless, takes a fascination to his obsession with her, and even agrees to go on a date with him. That’s far beyond the best outcome Jules should have expected as he was carrying out his plan.

Because everything that Jules did to get himself into contact with Cynthia would be stalking and the epitome of male entitlement. In the modern day, “Diva,” isn’t exactly a well-known film, but this is the sort of story that might be encouraging to stalkers, and there are a lot of popular films that also promote men’s beliefs of their entitlement to women. Jules is a harmless person, but he is a character in a movie. In real life, stalkers — especially those who stalk celebrities — which seem to be in the news more and more, sometimes turn out to be very violent people. Look at Taylor Swift’s stalker, for instance. Society is now at a point where “incel” is a word that’s in the public lexicon, and it’s hard to ignore that popular movies have played a role in promoting the idea that men “deserve” women rather than promoting healthy views of relationships, boundaries, and how to deal with rejection. Movies aren’t the only source of influence in this area, but they are a major part of pop culture, and they can hold a lot of suggestive power. Jules’ behavior shouldn’t be seen as fun and quirky, nor as romantic, even though in the end, he “gets the girl.” It should be recognized for the harmful ideas it seems to suggest are OK. Unhealthy masculinity will probably be a running theme for the ’80s.

On the flip side, as Cynthia and Jules do enter a relationship together, the movie should get some points for having a successful woman be able to turn the tables and take agency in choosing the relationship for herself. Cynthia is not in any way a manic pixie dream girl, as she has her own career and her own life, not necessarily looking for any relationship. She is the dominant partner in the relationship, being the one with money and fame and Jules just being an ordinary guy. It is refreshing to see the woman be successful and choose to have a less successful partner. Jules is almost treated as a pet, as he doesn’t sleep in the bed, and when they go out, Jules holds the parasol for her. But he’s happy in his role, which he also freely chooses, because he gets to be with the woman he loves. Some of the horrible aspects of this relationship aside, the two actually make a pretty healthy couple. It’s definitely a European film thing; you really don’t often see stuff like this in American movies very often.

Speaking of American movies, you also don’t often get to see people of color in strong roles, especially women of color, and especially in the ’80s. Cynthia and Alba are both very enjoyable characters. Cynthia is obviously pretty well fleshed out. Glimpses of Alba’s character are offered, but the bit of mystery makes her more interesting. She’s interesting enough that a spin-off movie about her character would not be unwelcome. But take note, angry “Star Wars” fans of the 2010s, every aspect of a character does not need to be elaborated upon in order to make them interesting and effective in a movie. Not even Asian characters. Alba and Rose FTW.

“Diva” seems to have been largely influential for stylish gangster films with ensemble casts. “The Godfather” came earlier, of course, but the quirkiness of this movie shook down the stuffy old guys in suits and served up something young and hip instead, something fresh for a new decade. Quentin Tarantino may owe his entire career to this movie (what was Samuel L. Jackson’s name in “Pulp Fiction”?), and fans of “Snatch” and even “Ocean’s Eleven” (even though it’s a remake) probably ought to be thankful for “Diva’s” influence.

So, my friends back in 2018 where I left you all, although “Diva” might have been better served as two separate movies, it’s worth checking out for anyone in the mood for a fun crime thriller.

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Strange couple. Strange movie.

Next time, I’ll continue my reporting on my early-’80s Eurotrip from the U.K. (though it’s actually an American movie) with “An American Werewolf in London.”

Where I’m going, I won’t need roads

Posted on May 16, 2018 by babemoby

Are you ready? Are you ready for the ’80s, a time when the things were even stranger? Are you ready player done with fake-ass nostalgia? I hit 88 miles per hour in my car, and I’ve found that I’ve landed in 1981. Everyone has weird hair and funky clothes, which are probably considered chic. The president used to be an actor.

Since I’m here, I may as well do what I always do, and that’s check out some movies. I’ll continue to offer commentary on historic movies (and probably ruin them for you) and advocate for foreign films like I always do, but with more hot pink.

Hasta la vista, baby.

What shape is the water? Frog shape (“The Shape of Water”)

Posted on April 24, 2018 by babemoby

***MILD SPOILERS***

Just to get it out of the way, what everyone’s thinking about “The Shape of Water” is, it’s the movie where Sally Hawkins fucks a fish man.

For the record, however, despite the sentient creature in Guillermo del Toro’s film commonly being referred to as a fish person, it’s clearly stated that he is amphibian. So, stop calling him “fish man,” as it would be much more accurate to refer to him as “frog man.” Thus, “The Shape of Water” is the movie where Sally Hawkins fucks a frog man. And don’t say it so flippantly, as if they only did it once, because she and the frog man have a good relationship, OK?

Anyway, “The Shape of Water” stars the aforementioned Sally Hawkins as Elisa, a mute woman who performs janitorial duties at a government science lab in 1950s America, in the city of Baltimore to be precise. There’s never anything good going on in movie government science labs, and that’s true here too.

This lab in particular is run by Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who is working on an important find for the U.S. government, an amphibious humanoid they captured after finding him in South America. It’s not totally clear what they intend to use the creature for, but there is talk of trying to gain an advantage over Russia in the Space Race. It’s the 1950s, and the Cold War is in full swing.

One day, an accident happens in the lab, and Elisa is put on cleanup duty, and she discovers this poor creature who is being tormented by his captors, and obviously kept against his will with no regard being given for his well-being. The creature doesn’t speak english, or any human tongue, but being mute, Elisa finds she is able to communicate with him through a universally understandable means: sign language. Being the only person in the facility with knowledge of the creature’s existence who is kind to him, they develop a relationship.

Frog man!

It would be easy to see this as a simple tale of girl-meets-frog man, but not only is the main story emotionally affecting, the side stories are wonderful too. Elisa’s next door neighbor is a mostly unsuccessful advertisement painter named Giles (Richard Jenkins), who has an affection for key-lime pie and for the male attendee behind the counter at the pie shop. There’s also Zelda (Octavia Spencer), Elisa’s coworker who continually covers for Elisa’s lack of timeliness and complains often about her husband. And finally, there’s Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), a medical expert at the lab, who it turns out, is actually a Russian spy named Dimitri, who, as a loyal Russian spy, is trying to steal the creature for the motherland. There is actually quite a bit going on around Elisa and the creature while they put the moves on one another, and all of these characters and stories are pretty interesting. So if the human-frog person love doesn’t do it for you, maybe there’s something else in the movie that will.

Del Toro’s film has the distinction of being the most quirky film in the Oscars’ best picture category. More than anything, it has that whimsical French romance feel and style that is beloved among critics, but rarely garners attention from awards committees. Maybe the fact that this one is in English and set in the U.S. helps it. But, despite the Oscar buzz it began attracting months before its release in late 2017, it seems like an odd choice for a best picture nominee, and an even odder one to win the award. In any other time, say, an era in which Donald Trump wasn’t president, it’s hard to see this movie getting the attention it received, but with its sci-fi bent and its general good nature, it’s refreshing to see a movie like this get so many accolades. It’s great to see del Toro finally recognized too.

Elisa may not be a particularly deep character. She likes to eat hard-boiled eggs, take baths, and take food to Giles, so they can watch TV together, and that’s about all there is to her. But she is so good-natured that it’s easy to root for her. Since she’s mute, she speaks sign language, which is cool because it’s rare for a main character in a movie to only sign. It’s also impressive how strongly Hawkins is able to emote through her body language, since she doesn’t speak, and she’s especially amazing in a scene where she tells the overbearingly evil Richard “thank you” (she doesn’t actually say “thank you,” she says… something else). Elisa also makes a convincing case for why she sees the frog man as a romantic partner rather than just feeling empathy for the poor creature. The gist of her reasoning is, humans — men specifically — are cruel.

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She’s not saying “thank you.”

Del Toro movies always feature a monster and monstrous humans, and almost always, it always shakes out that the humans are the real monsters. It should come as no surprise that the same is true here, though what sets this one apart is that the monster here is a love interest for the main character and, though not harmless, is well-intentioned.

And the real monster is, of course, the government, the U.S., Russia, but mostly, Richard. Michael Shannon is probably a nice enough fellow, but he just has an evil face, which makes him predisposed to play a character like Richard. You’ve probably seen Richard’s evil act before: a measured, collected, confident professional, who is more focused on the job than even his own well-being, but he truly believes he is really the good guy here. It is easy to write him off as your typical Evil McEvilface: a one-note, obvious bad guy with no redeeming qualities tethering him to anything relatably human. But he’s actually the most fascinating character in the movie.

When he’s not on the job, his life looks like the the lives of those people Elisa and Giles see on TV. It’s the ’50s, and Richard is living large the suburban life. He’s got the house with the white-picket fence with regular visits from the milkman. He has two children and a wife who takes care of the house. Richard makes love to her while he fantasizes about buying a new car. And he’s a God-fearing white man who believes that God probably looks more like himself than say, Zelda, a black woman.

Not only is Richard the vision of the ’50s that the current U.S. president’s supporters have in their minds as they angrily shout “Make America Great Again!” but he’s also the embodiment of American capitalism and the American Dream. Elisa and Giles are the poor deviants living in tiny three-room apartments, as they toil away unfulfilled at their work, while Richard literally destroys other people to maintain his quiet, peaceful, boring lifestyle. But again, in his mind, he knows he is the righteous one.

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Richard may think he’s the good guy, but, true to his name, he’s a real dick.

Del Toro movies generally have a reputation for their wonderfully imaginative imagery and ideas but always falling short of making for a satisfying film. “Pan’s Labyrinth” was previously his greatest achievement. Although del Toro tries to do a lot of things in “Water,” he pulls off everything he wants to do expertly, and this is by far his most coherent film, if not his best. Though maybe in part the lack of coherence in some of his other films comes from them being in another language and their heavy references to the Spanish Civil War, which most American viewers sadly have so little knowledge of. “Water,” in contrast is simply more American and easier to understand for Americans.

Also, despite the movie winning best picture, that might be more hype than the movie and its viewers might be able to stand. With 2017 being somewhat of a down year for movies (and the Academy ignoring some good films in favor of some questionable choices), “The Shape of Water” seems like a fine pick for best picture. But it is not your typical “best picture movie,” and it’s easy to see how viewers might be let down because they were expecting more from a best picture winner. Not everything has to be ridiculously epic or overly dramatic to be a great film, and again, it’s refreshing to see a movie that has such a kind-hearted message.

In the end, the film is an exhortation to people worried about the extremity of the vitriol not only the U.S., but also other countries struggling with the rise of virulent nationalism: Be kind, help those who need help, and fight to save what’s good.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

-This quote can be attributed to many.

WWII 2017 part 2: “Darkest Hour”

Posted on March 20, 2018 by babemoby

Not another another war movie! And “Darkest Hour” made it two movies in 2017 covering the same event (British army’s retreat from Dunkerque, France).

But, if “Dunkirk” was the war movie, “Darkest Hour” is the behind-the-scenes war movie, or the boring, talky parts of the war, mostly involving aging men huddled in front of a huge map in a dark room shouting at one another.

But mainly, director Joe Wright’s film focuses on Britain’s leader during most of World War II, Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman), and it also serves as a biography for the prime minister, focusing on the tumultuous environment in 10 Downing Street during the harrowing event, which was key to the British front.

The movie largely serves as a vehicle for Oldman’s multi-faceted take on Churchill, as the viewer sees the man from the perspectives of the many people who worked with him while he was in office. Oldman’s performance begins as a rather typical old, crotchety Englishman routine (probably an apt description of Churchill anyway), but it does evolve over the course of the movie, as he gets wrapped up in the war and the politics that come along with it.

Although Oldman puts in a good performance, the movie functions as a pretty standard biopic. Opposing Churchill is Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane), who appears in the mood to become prime minister himself, but vehemently opposes Churchill’s plan to continue to fight the war, a legitimate point of view as the army was facing near-certain annihilation. Halifax even suggests meeting with Hitler to call a truce as a matter of preserving peace, as well as England itself, which was facing the prospect of being invaded by the daunting German war machine. It’s not easy to present an event as extreme as a world war as overwrought and melodramatic, but this movie comes close to reaching that threshold.

Stannis never showed as much fire as Lord Halifax does

The film explores not only Churchill’s tactical war prowess, but also how he relayed the war’s successes to the public. That is, he put out a radio bulletin touting the great successes the British army in reality wasn’t having, and boasting about the triumphant conquering campaign the British army also wasn’t having. This makes the people around him question the wisdom of straight up lying to the public, especially during the time that his goal was supposedly to oppose the scourge of fascism that was staring Britain dead in the face. It certainly makes the viewer question whether he was a man with a master plan or a brash madman who simply got lucky in his successes with a resolve born out of delusions of grandeur. But in the end, he does get those men off the beach.

Essentially, the movie is fine, while being nothing special. For a leader carrying on his shoulders the weight of trying to secure the lives of 400,000 young men while trying to assuage a nation’s legitimate fears that, if things go badly, they could soon be facing occupation, the drama is real, and the actors carry it admirably. Even if Dillane plays Halifax as much more antagonistic than he was reputed to be in real life, most everyone else does very well. Kristin Scott Thomas as Clemmie, strikes an enjoyable balance of sassy and supportive befitting Churchill’s wife. Ben Mendelsohn is fun to watch as King George, who takes a while to warm up to Churchill even after making him prime minister. Lily James is a bit understated as Churchill’s secretary, but at times, she does offer an empathetic grounding for the movie, as a someone who was much closer to the madness of political turmoil in wartime than any other “normal” person.

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Kristin Scott Thomas is enjoyable as Clemmie.

The cinematography is very impressive, from the opening scene in Parliament, to the few war scenes with an eagle-eye view of the battlefield, the movie is visually impressive throughout. There is no end to the amount of creative camerawork. There are the wide shots where Churchill enters a small space, like a phone booth or an elevator, with the rest of the screen blacked out, during moments of intense pressure for the leader. Then there is the long, awkward scenes of King George’s apprehensiveness filling the massive space between him and Churchill, as George tries to gauge whether he made the right call in enlisting Churchill as PM. The technical side of this movie is much of what makes this film a worthwhile view.

But for a film that seems to exist mainly for the purpose of winning Gary Oldman some awards, it’s necessary to address his wife’s accusations of violent behavior from him, as well as his own defense of other men who have behaved abhorrently. Especially in light of major awards organizations, like the Academy embracing the #MeToo movement of women speaking more publicly about sexual abuse from men, which ought to address non-sexual physical abuse too, it seems hypocritical to laud a man accused of being violent toward women. And these awards shows are coming off last year when Casey Affleck, who has been accused of sexual harassment bordering on assault, won scads of awards for best actor, to the dismay of many women, especially Allison Brie who publicly showed her distaste at the ceremony. The Academy seems to show that it hasn’t learned its lesson by honoring Oldman this year, and that makes it hard to see its emphasis on #MeToo as anything more than lip service.

OF course, it’s not a matter of whether these people are talented, because obviously Oldman and Affleck are. But in a industry that is still not as friendly to women as it should be, where it’s a challenge to find people to fill the actress categories because of a continued lack of representation, the message sent by honoring people like Affleck and Oldman — and by extension, more powerful people like Harvey Weinstein, even though he appears to be on his way down — is that guys can still get away with being abusive to women. It’s a reminder that movements like #MeToo need to not be just a passing trend, but there needs to be a new standard to which powerful industries like Hollywood need to be held, if abuse against women is to be fought against.

Speaking of toxic masculinity, the sort that abuses women and gets away with it is also the sort that engages in the most toxically masculine endeavor there is: war. After all, for the most part, war is simply powerful men brandishing their militaries as codpieces, in a massive dick-measuring contest that just so happens to kill millions of ordinary people. Sure, the aggressive leaders convince their supporters that war happens because of the ever-ethereal economic strife or something. But everyone knows this stuff is really all about Winston trying to show he’s really a Churchmountain, and Adolf trying to spread his Shitler. Even if there were other underlying reasons for going to war, it’s toxic masculinity that eventually convinces two sides that diplomacy has failed. Neither man is going to back down, because that would look weak, so now it’s time for each side to blow up the other.

Anyway, “Darkest Hour” is a biopic. For people who have seen “Dunkirk,” this movie offers a different perspective on the same event, but it’s much more compelling to watch young men try to survive the war than old men sitting in a room sweating over it. Thankfully, the cinematography is beautiful, but between a movie that doesn’t make a strong case for its own existence and a star accused of abusive behavior, it’s understandable that many might not want to devote 2 hours of their life to this movie. As far as the Oscars go, the Academy loves its British movies, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s hard to see how there wasn’t another movie from 2017 that really deserved this movie’s nomination for best picture.

Regarding #MeToo, hopefully the Academy starts to get its act together if they want the ratings to come back.

WWII 2017, part one: “Dunkirk”

Posted on February 27, 2018 by babemoby

You know what the world needs? Another World War II movie!

Christopher Nolan has taken his audiences to Gotham, to space, even to the dreamworld of the inner mind, and last year, it was his turn to take viewers back to the 1940s, to the Great War, as Americans like to refer to it.

Thankfully, at least this one comes from a non-American perspective for once. The title of the movie, “Dunkirk,” refers to the French town of “Dunkerque,” which was the site of one of the war’s early key battles. The British invasion (not the one with the Beatles) into France occupied by the vaunted forces of Germany had failed, and so it was time to go home.

The movie follows multiple Brits as they all try to survive long enough for transport ships to come and pick up the troops. “Survive” is the key word there, as Nolan frames his war movie as a thriller, approaching horror, in which the characters are simply trying to survive.

That’s the major difference between this and the war epics Hollywood churns out, and it doubles as a reflection of the U.K.’s perspective on the war as opposed to the U.S.’s. Whereas the stars of American war films somehow find the time amid the relentless action to pontificate on bravery, sacrifice, the meaning of life, etc., “Dunkirk” has a minimalist script, and its characters are simply working for their own survival and, by extension, for their nation’s survival. This battle was a matter of survival for Britain too, as the bulk of their military had been invested in the invasion, and the failure to bring 400,000 troops home could have potentially led to not-so-jolly ol’ Nazi England. Contrast this with the tales of glory, bravery and proud victory the U.S. lauds upon its soldiers, its military and its wars.

As the movie follows multiple characters, there’s no real lead, though army soldier Tommy (Fionn Wolfhard) is the one who has basically decided his entire goal is to make it home. The film also focuses on a pair of fighter pilots patrolling the sky trying to keep the beaches safe (Tom Hardy and Jack Lowdon), Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh), and a civilian boat captain (Mark Rylance).

Tommy’s just done with this shit, and who can blame him.

It has been noted that this is the first war movie to cover all three phases of war: land, air and sea. It is interesting to watch Nolan juggle these three perspectives and show how each supports the others, especially in the way he covers multiple angles of a sole event.

Now, this is Christopher Nolan, who is known for inserting major and sometimes bizarre twists into his plots. But, no, it doesn’t turn out that Adolf Hitler had a secret twin brother who infiltrated the British military and escapes to the U.S. at the end, where he’s welcomed with open arms by FDR himself or anything weird like that. In terms of telling a historical story, Nolan plays it straight this time.

But Nolan is never one to just make a simple straightforward movie, and he innovates here by telling hi story in a fairly non-linear fashion. The viewer will see the results of an event from one character’s perspective before actually witnessing the event from another character’s perspective. It can be a bit disorienting and confusing, at least on the first watch-through, and it might be more rewarding to see the film more than once (like any Nolan movie) to figure out where those puzzle pieces fit.

As the narrative jumps around, it doesn’t stick with any one character for too long before switching perspectives, and it’s fair criticism to say that the movie doesn’t do enough to build its characters. But, by the same token, that is a reminder that a soldier is just a soldier, just another common, ordinary human trying to make it, and not some superhero — or Tom Hanks — whom the audience is expected to swoon over.

Perhaps the most endearing character, however, is Rylance’s Mr. Dawson, an older, but not elderly, civilian yacht captain, who is simply trying to do whatever little he can to help England. He’s aware that he has nothing to offer in the way of destroying the enemy forces, yet he has the drive and hubris to aid the war effort in any way he is able. Cillian Murphy’s downed fighter pilot who had been rescued by Dawson tries to convince him to turn away from the fighting and go back home to England because he’d personally had enough of the hellish chaos. But Dawson replies, “Well, there won’t be any home if we allow a slaughter across the Channel.”

If there is a heart to this movie, it’s found in Mr. Dawson.

Nolan obviously set out to create a very intense movie, and even in slower moments, he ratchets up the tension, through the soundtrack and through unnerving images, like the huge lines of soldiers waiting for rescue on the beach. It always feels like something bad is about to happen, and, thus, something bad frequently happens. It’s not that the troops are caught unaware, but they are always vulnerable. The Germans constantly apply immense pressure on the Brits, and the British soldiers have no way to retaliate or defend themselves. They are almost always sitting — sometimes standing — ducks, whose only hope is that someone else comes through for them. Nolan alternates scenes of horrors like naval crew desperately abandoning a sinking ship next to a scene like a bunch of soldiers boarding a rescue boat, where they are taken down into the hold and given bread and jam. Even in an environment where something as small as bread and jam seem like a luxury, it almost assuredly serves as false comfort and a mere distraction from the terrors that lay ahead.

As the director put all his efforts here into making war look like hell, could it be that he was trying to make a statement about the nature of war? The notion that “war is hell” is not exactly an new approach for movies about war, as enough war movies from “Apocalypse Now” to “Saving Private Ryan” make the audience feel as if they’re passing through Dante’s Seventh Circle or a Hieronymus Bosch painting. “Ryan,” considered possibly the greatest war movie of all-time, goes on to set aside its damning of war once it gets past Normandy Beach, going on to resemble everything a middle-school boy dreams of when he watches “GI Joe.” Other war movies like “Apocalypse Now” or “Full Metal Jacket” or “Platoon” are heavily introspective on the inherent evil of mankind and shit like that, comtemplating on the soldiers’ emotions and inner turmoil. More recent movies like “American Sniper” are little more than pro-war, often anti-Muslim propaganda. It’s a departure to follow the characters of “Dunkirk,” who are simply wide-eyed kids who just want to go home.

But the U.S. and European countries have such disparate viewpoints on this war. For the British (and the French), the war effort was a matter of fighting for existence against the onslaught of the relentless and brutal German war machine. Those countries are all right next to each other, being far across the pond from the U.S. Germany did conquer France, and they were on the doorstep of Britain, which was on the brink of being conquered as well. For these soldiers, to lose potentially meant the annihilation of their country.

On the other hand, other than Pearl Harbor, the U.S. has never had to deal with any invasion or even any threat of invasion from any other conquering regime. The biggest wars on American soil were the Revolutionary War, which — from a purely objective standpoint — the U.S. started, and the Civil War, which was entirely self-inflicted, and those both happened hundreds of years ago, far beyond the memory of anyone living. The U.S. was provoked into WWII by Japan’s attack, but although the prospect of interjecting itself into the German side of things had some immediacy to it, that effort was still on the other side of the ocean, distant from the American homeland. All that said, it’s a little bit ridiculous how much the U.S. idolizes war and only considers the sacrifice of its human soldiers as a marketing tool to get more people to join the military.

So, it is refreshing to see another nation’s perspective on WWII, one that is not so gung-ho about war. You couldn’t show this movie to prospective soldiers and expect them to want to join up because retreating doesn’t look like fun, especially when you don’t even get to shoot back. You’d hope world leaders would see something like this movie and understand that the suffering of young people being sent to do battle with one another would be enough to deter further conflicts or at least approach such situations with some sort of caution.

Unfortunately, the U.S. seems to want to be more of a “fire and fury” type of country right now, and a movie about WWII doesn’t seem likely to change anyone’s minds in a nation whose leadership and a portion of its populace doesn’t show much respect for foreign perspectives. There just doesn’t seem to be much care or caution coming from American leaders when it comes to getting involved in foreign conflict. To be fair to current leadership, that’s mostly been the U.S.’s policy since WWII ended.

There are other, obvious ways the movie differentiates itself from other war movies. First of all, it isn’t an epic, especially looking at the 106-minute runtime. There is a lot of action, and those sequences are almost uncomfortably long at times. Yet whereas many war movies rely on heavy, realistic gory effects, copious amounts of swearing, or horrific atrocities to drive home the severity of the situations, this movie contains none of those. It does utilize more subtle, Hitchcockian effects at times, like Tommy running through crowds of soldiers on the giant piers set up in anticipation of the coming rescue ships, and coming upon an enormous hole in the flooring, a remnant of what (who) used to be there. It’s a reminder that, even in quieter moments, there is really no safety for these troops, which helps raise the tension even more. But the movie is so “tame” by war movie standards, it even gets a PG-13 rating, whereas war movies almost always automatically are assumed to garner an R rating.

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Then, there’s that foam on the beach that looks gross and off-putting. The tone is so unpleasant for the entire movie.

Anyway, this one is difficult to compare to other Nolan films. Other than the excellent cinematography and the unique plotting, being a historical film, it doesn’t really feel much like Batman, “Memento,” or “Inception.” If anything, maybe all of Nazi Germany is kind of like the Joker, though he was more into psychological torment, whereas the German military directly bombards “Dunkirk’s” characters. The Nazis did the psychological torment thing too, just not in this movie. But this is another great Nolan film, and a welcome return from a messy, disappointing “Interstellar.”

And finally, whose decision is it to put Tom Hardy in a mask in these movies? Hardy plays a fighter pilot, who delivers all of his dialogue — much of which is distorted by the vibrations of the plane — wearing an oxygen mask and speaking by radio to his fellow pilot and home base. The man is an excellent actor, and he does not need to be muzzled. Nolan was one culprit in the masking of Hardy in his Batman trilogy finale “The Dark Knight Rises,” where Hardy played Bane, who also required an oxygen mask. In “Mad Max,” he had a steel muzzle for good portion of the movie. This would be his third masked performance, and, assuming he gets into the full symbiotic costume for “Venom,” that would put him under a hood yet again. People, he’s a fine enough looking gent, let the man breathe freely!

The masked man

“Dunkirk” is a different kind of war movie, and it ought to seem like a fresh take on the subject to anyone who’s seen enough American war films. It should help one appreciate the sacrifice of soldiers who fight to keep their country free, while understanding that they’re mostly just young people who don’t really know what they’ve gotten themselves into until they’ve already gotten themselves into it. In a crowded Oscar year, it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely that Christopher Nolan will get his first best picture win this time, but it more than earns its spot at the table.

2017: #oscarssowhite; 2018: #oscarsalright?: Get Out

Posted on February 10, 2018 by babemoby

It is kinda funny how things change. With the new and improved, more diverse Academy, the Oscars appear to be on a new track toward a more representative awards ceremony, which is nice. Not perfect, but nice.

This awards season looks like it could be the rise of Jordan Peele, and any fans of his sketch comedy show with Keegan-Michael Key, the appropriately named “Key & Peele” will agree that it’s awesome to see how many things Peele has lined up for the future.

But the Oscars is still about last year, when Peele made his directorial debut with a divergence from the comedic work he’s generally known for, this time coming in the form of horror, in his acclaimed movie, “Get Out.”

Peele’s film stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a young black man who has a white girlfriend named Rose (Alison Williams), and for the coming weekend, he’s going to be making his first visit to her parents’ house. There have been so many comedic, bordering on horrorific, films about visiting a significant other’s parents. It’s always awkward enough trying to make that good first impression on your significant other’s parents. But there is a history of black men having bad run-ins with white women’s parents, which ramps up the trepidation for Chris. The horror is real, but he has no idea just how much pain he is in for.

Knowing what he does know, Chris makes his discomfort known, as he asks Rose if her parents know that he’s black. She explains that no, she hasn’t told them, but she tries to assure him it won’t be a problem and that her parents are very open-minded. Specifically, she says her dad would have even voted for Barack Obama for a third term if he could have. It’s not enough to assuage Chris’ fears, but like jumping into a cold swimming pool, there’s only one way to get the discomfort over with.

The initial meeting between Chris and Rose’s parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) is awkward, but not as horrible as it could be. Yet, they commit enough faux pas that Chris reminds Rose that he told her his race could be an issue. Little does he know about the creepy shit hiding beneath the surface of Rose’s parents’ awkward demeanor (and their house).

Her brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), is another story. In his first meeting with Chris, this guy comes off as one of those dudes on the internet who is way too into “Fight Club.” Jeremy even adopts many of the mannerisms of Tyler Durden as portrayed by Brad Pitt, spouting the weird, self-destructive nihilism the character ascribes to, but without any of Pitt’s charm, as that sort of person does. He immediately gives off a very hostile vibe toward Chris, though Chris is quickly able to deescalate the situation with an amount of skill that suggests this is probably not the first time he’s had to do this with a white boy.

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Has “Fight Club” on repeat

On the outside of the situation is Chris’ pal Rod (Lil Rel Howery), a TSA agent, who has a thing for creepy conspiracies, as any good TSA agent should. Chris and Rod keep in touch by phone throughout the movie, and Rod has a bad feeling about Chris going to a white girl’s parents’ house. Chris doesn’t realize he’s in the hot water until it’s too late for him to GET OUT, of course. Rod is that guy who says a lot of things that might sound paranoid, but he’s right about 90 percent of it. But it wouldn’t make for much of a horror movie if all Chris did was listen and make smart decisions.

As Chris explores Rose’s household, he runs across a few black people who appear to be “the help”: a groundskeeper, a maid, etc. Rose’s dad explains to Chris that those folks worked for his parents, and when he inherited the house from them, he decided to keep the help around because he liked them and didn’t want to put them out of a job. It doesn’t look great, he admits, but it seems fair enough. Chris eventually begins to notice those people behaving oddly. There’s enough to tip him off that something isn’t quite right, but he can’t put his finger on what exactly is wrong with this picture.

The movie features a lot of standard horror beats, perhaps in part because Peele is attempting to make a clean break from his other, more humorous work. You have some music in a creepy key over shots of woods, suicidal animals, hypnosis, and lots of foreshadowing (some of which is very nicely subtle). On the other hand, people who have seen some of Peele’s other stuff may recognize some similar elements, which came off as funny in “Key & Peele,” but come off as creeping glimpses of what lies beneath in this case. It’s kind of an interesting study of the thin line between horror and comedy, as there are some portions of “Get Out” that are clearly meant to be scary, some which are clearly meant to be funny (much of which is provided by Rod), and a lot of stuff where the audience might be unsure of whether to laugh or be creeped out, or maybe a bit of both.

But it does manage to avoid a lot of the common modern horror movie tropes or subvert them, like jump scares (and false jump scares), excessive gore, or heavy CGI. It’s much more in the vein of classic horror, like Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg and much more in line with the new trend toward more artistic horror movies like “It Follows” or “The Witch.”

Of course, it’s easy to look at movies focusing heavily on racism, and the differences between white people and black people,, etc. and simply come away with reducing it to: White people are racist, and racism is bad, blah blah. Of course, that is part of the point, and it is true, but to not think further than that is to miss out on a story with deceptive depth.

Most horror movies that feature “evil white people” as the monster are about blatantly racist, psychotic hillbillies, who mostly behave like animals and mostly terrorize white Yankees who made the mistake of wandering where they didn’t belong. If there’s a black character, he (because black women rarely appear in these things) usually ends up being among the first ones killed, so there goes any legitimate exploration of racial issues.

“Get Out” flips the script pretty easily by making Rose’s family more like coastal elites: Liberal-minded people who are well off and come off as well-meaning on social issues and seem open-minded but just don’t have “that black friend” in their lives to make them very streetwise for when they actually do encounter a person of color. They almost seem to see black people as a monolithic issue than as individuals. It definitely eschews the “evil, white Southerner” stereotype for something different, and something unexpected, especially for those well-meaning white folks in real life, who also might have been willing to vote for Obama for a third term.

White people

The weekend after Donald Trump was elected president (a dark day for many people, especially people of color), Dave Chappelle hosted “Saturday Night Live,” which had a sketch about a group of people watching the 2016 election. The white people at the party were excited at the beginning of the night at the prospect of having Hillary Clinton become the first woman to hold the office of president. Also in the room was Chappelle, and eventually, Chris Rock shows up, and the entire night, they are feeling pretty unsure that white people as a whole would do the right thing and vote against the very apparently racist Trump. Throughout the night, the white folks become more and more distraught while Chappelle and Rock continually laugh at their discomfort. Eventually, it’s announced that Trump has won the election. One of the white people says that “this is the most shameful thing America has ever done,” and Chappelle and Rock look at each other and laugh.

You can see “Get Out” as a sort of satire of the “woke white ally,” who argues so fervently that the country needs to do better for black people, while ignoring how deeply entrenched are the country’s policies that are harmful to black people, that even a Clinton administration might have overlooked because there are “more important issues.” There are some white people who are so passionate about arguing on racial issues, that black people with a strong sense of humor might imagine a situation like the one in “Get Out,” where it seems like those white people are so enthusiastic about their support for African Americans that it’s because deep down, they actually wish they were black. The serious effect that this sort of activism can have is that it can shut actual black people out of those conversations in order for a white activist to be heard and take over. You can see that sort of co-opting in movies like “12 Years a Slave,” where Brad Pitt’s character ultimately is the one who wins freedom for slave Solomon Northup, who isn’t afforded the opportunity to be his own salvation from slavery.

On another level, however, “Get Out” is simply the recent story of the black experience in the U.S. African Americans have had moments of great gains and triumphs, like winning the right to vote, winning greater Civil Rights, and electing the first black president. But obviously, those gains had to be made because black history in the U.S. is a bit of a horror show in itself, beginning with the traumatizing institution of slavery, followed by the struggles of desegregation, emphasis on law and order, and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated, which occurred only 50 years ago. Slavery itself only ended about 150 years ago. Obviously, it was long enough ago that no one is still alive to remember it, but in terms of history, that’s relatively very recent, as it’s only four to five generations ago.

The U.S. in the last couple of decades has prided itself on overcoming some of the very ugliest times in its history and having a new level of acceptance, with the election of Barack Obama being seen as a major sign of the country turning over a new leaf. But even under Obama, there were so many problems for the black community, which lingered or even worsened, like disproportionate poverty rates; police brutality; privatized prisons and mass incarceration; de facto segregation by zip code, which effectively worked to segregate by race. These issues manifested themselves in highly reported events like the Trayvon Martin case and the Ferguson riots.

It felt like a de-masking of the US and all of the problems that were woven into the nation’s fabric for such a long time, which the country had attempted to forget about with an overly rosey view on its own progress. And that de-masking obviously culminated in the election of Trump, who championed himself as the man of the white people, with his own history of racial insensitivity and Twitter rantings about the first black president.

Much in the way that Chris has a false sense of security about his girlfriend that she helped create in order to lure him to his own demise of sorts, many black Americans must have felt the same way about the U.S. and the transition of Obama to Trump. There are so many aspects of the movie that play off of those fears black people may face simply living in the US and being aware of the day-to-day happenings in ways that non-black Americans don’t notice in the same way.

But, in digression, the movie does an excellent job of keeping a constant feeling of creeping dread, until the family’s master plan is finally unveiled. Even though the movie eventually devolves into an “escape the house” finish, Peele finds ways to keep it fresh enough until the excellent, surprising, suspenseful, and eventually cathartic ending. All of the actors are fantastic in delivering basically a long-form, high-powered, star-studded version of the creepiest deleted “Key & Peele” sketch.

Something’s not right

Peele is obviously a master in telling stories that get an audience to react, and it’s wonderful that he becomes only the third person in the history of the Oscars to have the honor of being nominated for producer, director and writer, along with having his movie get nominated for best picture. In a way, it’s doubly impressive that he was able to get a horror flick nominated for best picture, as the Academy nearly always gives a nod to one (though sometimes two) “geeky” pic (that being sci-fi, fantasy, or horror), and it’s especially rare for a straight horror movie to get the nomination. “The Shape of Water” could kind of be considered a second “geeky” nom this year, since it’s about a human woman’s romance with a fish person, and it’s Guillermo del Toro, who exclusively does fantasy movies, but that one has also had the feel of a prestige movie with its glowing reputation. For reference the last pure horror movie to be nominated for best picture would be 1975’s “Jaws.”

It’s good to see a movie that was made specifically with a black audience in mind dealing with race get so much attention from a mainstream awards show like the Oscars. “Moonlight” was entirely about black people, but it didn’t overtly deal with race. “Selma” was good in that it portrayed MLK for a black audience and from a black perspective, but that and “12 Years a Slave” are both historical movies, whereas “Get Out” is its own beast entirely. But the movie is obviously aimed at a black audience first, in that there are aspects of it non-black people simply won’t get because they haven’t lived those experiences. That’s very important in terms of representation, as it’s always obvious when movies about black people are made by white people for white people, and even though they can have some good things to say, non-black directors almost never truly “get it.”

Whether or not you’re looking for a deep metaphor on the deconstruction of racial issues in the U.S., if you watch “Get Out,” you’ll be in for a thrilling, creepy, and highly entertaining horror movie that’s in many ways a throwback to classic horror flicks that moves the genre in a good direction. Peele himself said it’s not a comedy, it’s a documentary. It’s unlikely to win best picture at the Oscars, but it is one of the best films from 2017.

Get out, Chris!

Rockin’ a “Tan(gerine)”

Posted on January 16, 2018 by babemoby

“Merry fucking Christmas.”

Christmas movies are one of those things that are overabundant with so little actual demand for them. But director Sean Baker made a great one, and he made it using iPhones.

It is impressive that someone managed to make a feature-length movie using a pocket device originally intended for people to make phone calls with, and it makes for a great minimalist movie that drags the viewer into a world they might not be particularly familiar with.

The film follows Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), a pair of trans prostitutes, throughout their day on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles (though lacking snow or any sign of winter, it doesn’t feel much like Christmas). Sin-Dee has heard a rumor that her boyfriend, Chester, (also her pimp) cheated on her while she was in prison, and she is not having any of it, so she decides it’s time to find the alleged cheater and set him straight. And with that, the journey begins.

The movie makes for a great contrast to any other Christmas movie, as Christmas here feels more like an incidental setting, while the pair of women, dressed in crop-tops and skirts, make their way around the grimy shadow of Hollywood. If you thought that a woman looking for her cheating boyfriend would make for a pretty thin plot, you’d be surprised to see how much mileage Baker manages to get out of it. It’s a tale filled with humor and insight, and a roller-coaster of emotions.

Much of the humor is provided by the bright, charismatic performance from Rodriguez, which should have catapulted her to stardom (maybe if Hollywood and the general public were more openly accepting of trans people). Taylor’s more subdued performance provides balance as the emotional, sympathetic center of the film. They make for quite the dynamic duo.

You don’t want to piss off Sin-Dee.

The movie also follows Armenian immigrant taxi driver Razmik (Karren Karagulian), as he tries to navigate his own day, while transporting passengers — some polite, some impolitely puking — and maintain his own sanity while doing it. He also has a thing for the ladies. Specifically, he likes to pick up trans prostitutes between fares. He even gets upset when he mistakenly picks up a cis woman and discovers a pussy where he’d expected to find a penis. He’s apparently a regular customer of Alexandra’s, and they even get a sweet moment together (as far as sex workers and clients may have anyway) that feels like a godsend after a rough day at the office for the both of them. You’ll never look at an automated car wash the same way. That’s as close as this movie gets to having romance in the Christmas air.

Razmik and the ladies serve as an interesting contrast to each other, coming from different cultures that are each repressive in their own ways. Razmik works to support his wife and child and her family, all of whom are immigrants. Armenia’s national religion is a conservative form of Christianity, which makes for a culture rather unaccepting of non-heterosexual relationships and anything outside of binary gender norms. The fact that he’s soliciting prostitutes on the regular makes him a cheater, but he’s not entirely unsympathetic either, considering his background and his family situation.

Razmik is in for a rough day.

Though transphobia is entirely present and dangerous to trans people in U.S. culture, it’s refreshing that, for the most part, the movie doesn’t treat its characters’ identities as a tragedy or a hardship that they need to overcome, but rather simply allows them to be people trying to get by. Certainly, there is room for entertainment to address the difficult issues surrounding non-cisgender identities, but it’s nice to just be able to see the characters as people rather than them being reduced to social issues, as is often the case in movies about race or LGBT issues.

Yet, especially in the U.S., LGBT people and immigrants (especially immigrants from Western Asia), find themselves in a similar — though not identical — dangerous situation. It’s easy to understand how there could be solidarity between people of two groups that find a lack of acceptance in the U.S.

At the same time, the film emphasizes the importance of identity for people groups that are disenfranchised. At one point, several members of Razmik’s family discover his “unacceptable” activities, and his wife rationalizes it away, admitting that sometimes a wife has to turn a blind eye, for the sake of the family, though it’s obvious she isn’t particularly happy about discovering Razmik’s secret.

Sin-Dee eventually tracks down Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan), the woman Chester has purportedly been cheating on her with. After dragging her all through town (it’s an impressively extensive dragging), Sin-Dee finally collects herself and manages to have a sit-down conversation with Dinah. Dinah reminds her (tauntingly) that Chester is a pimp, and does she really think she could ever be his “one and only”? It makes the whole episode seem pretty foolish, and you wonder why Sin-Dee took out her anger on Dinah, rather than Chester himself, as he’s the cheater.

If it isn’t obvious by now, cheating is a common theme throughout the movie too, which is interesting to look at as it relates to identity. People have different feelings about cheating, and different people have different tolerances (or lack thereof) toward that aspect of committed relationships. Obviously, nobody sees cheating as an attractive trait in a partner, but as Razmik’s wife puts it, sometimes you have your reasons for putting up with things. And it’s an offense that can be forgivable, for some. This is not meant to condone cheating, so much as it is to say that cheating is a bit of a gray area that means different things to different people, and humans are prone to making mistakes.

And gray areas can be used to explore how to deal with less gray issues. The #MeToo movement involving powerful people in Hollywood and the government, especially implicating some high-profile, very popular people, does bring up questions about how to deal with them. One thing people are pondering is whether the good a person does can outweigh the bad, and vice versa, and in what light should the good a person does be viewed if the bad they do is particularly egregious, like sexual assault or rape? That’s the way it is for all relationships really. You consider these things in the people you choose to spend your time with, and you have to figure out how much bad you are willing to put up with in order to enjoy the good. But some people have done a lot more bad than others, and some of those bad people have a much higher profile.

For people in disenfranchised groups, this is a challenging issue to work with too. Even if someone in your group does something wrong, there’s a question of how much the group is willing to put up with and still celebrate a person as one of their own. For LGBT people and immigrants, there has to be solidarity among one’s own group, and sometimes it becomes tempting to accept “bad” behavior from a member of that group for the sake of solidarity. The characters in the movie get over being hurt by someone they love because in the end, they need that solidarity, for better or for worse.

In the real world, life comes at you fast with popular people committing sexual violence. One week, Aziz Ansari is the first Asian person to win a Golden Globe. The next, he’s accused of sexual assault. George Takei, a prominent Asian-American actor and personality, who has helped shine a light on Japanese internment camps in the US during WWII and was a champion for LGBT issues, is accused of drugging and likely raping a man. It makes sense to scrub them from the public eye because they are harmful people, and there are and will be other Asians to admire in entertainment. But when it’s someone you identify with taking the plunge, it hurts a little more because you know they are taking your group’s representation down with them.

On the flip side, people with bad intentions often use that sympathy and solidarity as a ploy to gain good will and appear to actually be “one of the good guys,” manipulating the public at their whim. You could say it’s a complicated time to be alive for people who aren’t white, straight men, but truthfully, it’s always been complicated and difficult. The internet and 24-hour news cycle just make it feel like a lot more is happening now than in the past.

It’s cool to see a film that kind of deals with serious subject matter, but is also hilarious. The characters immediately feel like they are going off the rails, and the blasting soundtrack only serves to heighten that feeling. The characters are all so angry and determined that their interactions are incredibly heated and dismissive, which makes for good entertainment.

Trying really hard to make it feel like Christmas in LA.

Though much of the humor comes from being so “in your face,” Baker also has a knack for finding humor in smaller details. The chintzy Christmas decorations littered throughout the city, combined with an atmosphere that feels more like summer, and the rather sordid subject matter create such a wonderful disconnect that the whole affair seems so absurd. And then there are other things, like the cheap spinning shiny lights that decorate a bar restroom as Sin-Dee redoes Dinah’s makeup for her after treating her so roughly over the course of the day. It dials down their epic squabble and also makes for a sweet bonding moment between the two prostitutes. The director is masterful at instilling beautifully complex feelings in the viewer, which makes for a thoughtful watch about serious things without being grim. It all makes for a gleefully anti-Christmas Christmas movie.

With the film’s subject matter, the iPhone thing is more than just a gimmick. It gives the movie a lived-in quality, and it feels like the audience is listening in on the conversations the characters are having and experiencing the situations they find themselves in. The “camerawork” and the excellent acting make everything feel very natural.

And, of course, it’s great to see trans people playing trans characters. In big Hollywood movies and TV, it’s become commonplace for cisgender actors to portray trans characters of the opposite gender, which is a trend that serves to take jobs away from trans actors in an already small market. It’s good to see a movie utilize people who can convey their own life experiences onscreen. It hasn’t felt as if there has been any shift in Hollywood at all since this movie’s release in 2015, but hopefully that will soon change.

“Tangerine” is an excellent film that showcases the apparent power of the iPhone camera. But, it’s the work of Baker and the tremendous actors that should easily win over the heart of any viewer. And in a genre that’s filled with lumps of coal, this is a Christmas movie that’s truly a gift from the people who made it.

Sometimes solidarity is all you have left, and sometimes it’s enough to save things.

Victoria! V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A!

Posted on December 28, 2017 by babemoby

The tracking shot is like the holy grail for technical movie nerds. It is always impressive when a director and their actors go all out and set up an elaborate single extended shot. It’s been used to great effect in movies like “Children of Men,” and “Birdman” simulated the effect of the tracking shot for the entire film. Sometimes it feels like a director might do it simply to show off, like in that famous “True Detective” scene, which was exciting, though it didn’t really feel like it fit into the narrative.

The year after Best Picture winner “Birdman” was released, there was also a lesser-known movie out of Germany, called “Victoria,” which made its debut. Instead of simulating an entire seamless movie, director Sebastian Schipper actually made the entire 138-minute movie in a single shot (and it only took him three tries to get it right).

For this type of movie, it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible, so it’s probably best to avoid sharing too many details, but it is an incredible movie with amazing performances from the actors — some of which is obviously improvised — especially given the circumstances they were working under with the nature of the film.

Victoria, the movie’s namesake, played by Lala Costa, is a young Spanish woman living in Germany who goes out to the club for a wild night, not expecting it would end up being the wildest night ever, beyond even her wildest dreams. While she’s out, she runs into some guys, including a man by the name of Sonne (Frederick Lau), whom she hits it off with. It should seem pretty obvious to the audience that deciding to hang out with these Berliners might be against her better judgment, though as it turns out, probably not for the reasons you’d typically think.

Worst hangover ever

For twentysomethings, this decade has been the decade of ennui, and it would make sense that that feeling certainly fuels Victoria’s decision-making. But the movie also reflects the general “economic anxiety,” which for common people worldwide is pretty much a life-defining issue. Though economic anxiety is no doubt a real feeling people get, it has become a term, at least in the U.S., that gets used to justify any sort of bigoted behavior and to place blame on whichever people group that’s easy to malign at the time. The US president has used the legitimate issue of “economic anxiety” to stir up fear and anger toward immigrants, racial minorities, LGBT people, women, and everyone with a liberal political mindset.

If Sonne and company’s story had happened in 2017, would they have joined some Far-Right movement too, railing against immigration and women in the workplace? Their main motivation in the movie is to get into a club, which they don’t have the money to get into, so who knows? Victoria mentions in the film that she makes only 4 euros an hour at her job, so economic anxiety definitely plays a role in her life. And as the director was a producer for “Toni Erdmann,” which took a humanitarian view on other aspects of Europe’s economy, it makes sense that he would sympathize with the plight of the economically anxious too.

It is interesting that most of the dialogue is spoken in English, but since Victoria is from Spain and the guys are from Germany, that makes sense, as English is the default common tongue. It’s an odd quirk of globalization that people who have different native languages have to communicate through a second language, but, that’s the way it is. The movie was disqualified from the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars because there was too much English for it to qualify.

As the movie is shot in real time, it also takes place in real-time, so everything that happens (and a hell of a lot does happen) happens in that 2-hour, 18-minute time frame that matches the movie’s running time. It’s a cool effect that is still unique from the effect a similar technique created in “Birdman.” It is a bit incredible how a woman’s life could from mundane to a wide range of extreme emotions in such a short amount of time. The late night slowly bleeds into the early morning, which conveys the feeling of the wildest night out ever gone wrong in a million different ways. And the effect certainly adds a feeling of gravitas and even creepiness to the movie. You know something is going to go wrong for these characters, but Schipper keeps you guessing as to when, and as to just how wrong things will eventually go.

In addition to Costa and Lau being excellent leads who expertly and entrancingly carry the movie, also excellent are Franz Rogowski as Boxer, and Burak Yigit as Blinker. And for the time he is present, Max Mauff is very funny as Fuss. They feel like buddies who enjoy partying together, yet they all display a very relatable, human, emotional side at times that makes them both endearing and frightening by different turns. And it begs the question of what could be Victoria’s motivation for spending her night with these guys: Is is that she’s that naive about what she’s getting herself into, or is she simply bored by her current circumstances and desperate for some excitement in her life (she gets it, and then some)?

“Victoria” is a great experience, and an enjoyable film, featuring some admirable performances, and an interesting commentary on the atmosphere of the EU from a couple years ago, which has escalated into the present situation for those countries and the rest of the world. It’s a movie for anyone who’s interested in technical creativity in their films. Instead of getting yourself into trouble having your own wild night out, you can watch someone else have theirs from the comfort of your own home.

Asian and Entertained

Author: babemoby