A funny thing happened on the way to the movie thread. In the last three weeks, we saw five films. All of them were new releases. All but one were good. Two were legitimately great. It got me thinking about how, over recent years, I’ve seen fewer and fewer of the top 40 films. If I can find the time, I’ll make a chart and post about the progression.

I thought about it this fortnight-and-a-half because I found myself wondering if the trend could be changing.

Then I look at the top 20 and realize, no, I’ve only seen three of them. It just seems like I’ve seen more because I’ve seen a few more aggressively marketed recently releases.

The five films we hit:

Together, a body horror film on that most horrific of topics: Marriage. Tight, short, sweet, with a light story that’s fraught with potential symbolism, so people can write think-pieces on Zoomer relationships. Body horror, though, so definitely not for everyone.

Shari and Lamb Chop, a documentary about Phyllis Naomi Hurwitz, better known as Shari Lewis. This is the puppet version of Together, and I’m only slightly kidding, as we see a bit into the astounding work ethic of a woman raised in the vaudeville tradition. If you’re an older 29-year-old, you might remember her from inventing children’s television in the ’50s, where she did five or more hours of live TV every day. But if you’re a younger 29-year-old, and you remember her from the (very slightly) saucy Lamb Chop years of being on game shows, and you might have wondered what the big deal was. 1990s kids will probably remember her PBS shows. She was so good at what she did, she made it look easy. Anyway, great documentary. The Boy (who was reticent to go see it) came out raving.

The Naked Gun. Surely this can’t be any good. It is, and don’t use that 45-year-old joke. Liam & Pamela have a blast on this excellently executed update. I can, and probably will, write a whole thing on the good choices made. (For example, updating the spoof from a ’70s police show to a 21st century action flick.) It’s not that all the jokes land. Few, if any, comedies manage that. It’s that if you don’t like a joke, the next one’s coming along in five seconds. Running gags, without relying solely on running gags. Pop culture references but not only pop culture references. The ZAZ formula died in the hands of guys making movies built solely on references to better movies, and that’s very light here. A good time, can’t complain. Still, doesn’t look like it’s going to make a profit.

Fixed. This Netflix movie from Genndy Tartakovsky (“Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Samurai Jack”, “Clone Wars”, and the Hotel Transylvania series) is genuinely awful but I couldn’t exactly hate it. It’s adult animation about a dog that humps everything and lives in terror of being fixed. It’s entirely scatological, but this brings very little joy. I mean, I happily ate popcorn through The Substance, the Evil Dead series and Schindler’s List but this movie is wall-to-wall poop and pee and testicles. Way more misses than hits, with a completely incoherent worldview—I mean, obviously it’s a comedy and it doesn’t have to make sense, but it has to have enough grounding for the audience to grasp what they’re supposed to care about. These dogs aren’t dogs but they’re dogs for joke purposes. It’s not good. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

Now, on to the main event.

Weapons

One day, a young 3rd grade schoolteacher goes to her class to find that none of the children in her class have come to school that day, except for one. All the other classes and children are there. Just hers are missing. Because at 2:17AM the previous night, they all ran out of their houses into the woods and were never seen again.

Everyone of course assumes the schoolteacher has done something, and we’re off to the races in Weapons, a mysterious story that actually isn’t mysterious at all, much like Zach Cregger’s previous work Barbarian.

If you remember Barbarian, you may recall that it started out with a mysterious premise, as a woman discovers hidden depths in the awfulness of her judgment when renting an AirBnB. By the end, it’s very clearly a well-known horror form, and while there are twists, Cregger emphases character development and twists over plot twists.

This is really refreshing, as a longstanding trend in indie films that has seeped heavily into horror in the past ten years is: “If we don’t ever explain anything or resolve anything you can’t identify what you’re watching enough to describe how derivative it is.”

Derivative is not bad, people. Everything is going to be derivative. If it’s in English, it’s going to be derivative of the ideas and themes English uses to express things. If it’s silent, it’s going to be derivative of silent movies. If it’s entirely original, it’s also completely incomprehensible.

You can totally shyamalan yourself into making nonsensical trash trying to fool people.

What Creggers does, again, in Weapons, is give us a story from multiple perspectives: The schoolteacher, the cop, the junkie, the obsessed parent, and the kid, and as we see each part of the story from their eyes, we get a little more clarity. In the end, we have a story that “makes sense”. It’s not a realistic story, or even sci-fi, it’s straight up supernatural horror, and yet it still “makes sense”.

This is good. It means you don’t feel ripped off or manipulated at the end.

I’m harping on the story because it seems like Hollywood’s forgotten how to tell them lately, but the whole movie is top-notch.

A terrific cast, with Julia Garner (the Silver Surfer in the new F4 movie, and Martha Marcy May Marlene), Josh Brolin, Justin Long, Amy Madigan, and Cary Christopher as the only boy who showed up for 3rd grade.

Well shot. One of the (increasing number) of movies that aren’t color-coded. Like Together, a lot of the shots are downright beautiful, someone having figured out that you don’t need to paint everything in gray-blue for people to get scares.

Zach Cregger along with Ryan and Hays Holladay are credited with the composing of the music. The use of music is spare, unless it slipped by me. I remember thinking in the film that it was very strategic, with the action doing most of the heavy lifting and the music sort of sneaking in under the awareness level at just the right time.

Would I recommend it? To a horror fan, absolutely. It has a few very violent scenes, like Barbarian, which might be off-putting to some.

Also, I loved the climax and denouement. It could come off as black comedy (because it’s blackly comic), but when dealing with a “children in peril” film, one must tread lightly, and of all the directions Weapons might have gone, all the conclusions the storyline might have arrived at, this was not bleak or nihilistic or depressing, even if it was somewhat sad.

A solid hit that’s already made it’s money back and is on track to finish in the top 20 this year.

The Life of Chuck is a three part story told backwards which, during the first part—actually the last part narratively, gawrdangit I hate it when they do this—created in me a sense of anxiety. Not like Eddington, but more like “Oh, no, what have I done?” You see, the first part shows the world ending. And it’s ending in the way a CNN watcher would perceive it as ending. I don’t know how else to describe it. Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose name I have been struggling to pronounce for half my life at this point, is Marty, a teacher who’s dealing with the death of the Internet, kids not showing up to school, roads literally collapsing, PornHub going away, etc.

Then there’s a speech (by Carl Lumbly), a monologue of liberal pieties about man’s mistreatment of the Earth, which is short-circuited by “but this is even bigger”.

Meanwhile, inexplicably, signs appear all over town, in windows, on TV, “Thanks, Chuck! For 39 great years of service!”

Nobody knows who Chuck is, however.

We meet Chuck in Act II. He’s an accountant, played by Tom Hiddleston, and he’s at a conference when he walks past a busker drumming. But he doesn’t walk past, he starts to dance instead. And he’s good. And he’s joined by a young woman (Karen Gillan) whose boyfriend just broke up with her via text.

In the last part of the movie (Act I), we see young Chuck, and we get an explanation for his behavior and, essentially, what happened in the first part of the movie.

The Boy and I liked this, but for me, the experience was rather odd. There were things that I didn’t like at first that won me over eventually.

Pluses, Delayed Pluses

First of all, I have to call out the movie’s look. It’s a good look. It’s not generic, it’s not color-coded, it’s not ugly. This means it towers over the average 2020s era film.

Second, the acting is impeccable. Hiddleston probably goes without saying. If you only know him as Loki, you might not recognize him. You’ll hear a lot about Mark Hamill because it’s probably his best performance ever as Chuck’s grandfather. Chuck’s grandmother is played by Mia Sara (forever best known as Ferris Beuller’s girlfriend, Sloan, looking lovely and unmodified here). And if that’s not enough of an ’80s cage-rattler, Chuck’s nosey neighbor who lets him in on the family secret is played by Heather Langenkamp, nasal cannulas hanging on her upper lip.

No, no, she’s great. Really. I just need to lie down.

Anyway, the acting is top notch, with many fine actors having small but meaningful parts: Mathew Lillard, Harvey Gullen, David Dastmalchian. On and on.

So, where did it put me off?

Well, there’s a narrator (Nick Offerman). I’m leery of narrators. Show me the story. If I wanted a narrator, I’ll read the book. But this is very well done. By Act II, I had decided it was a good choice.

The music (The Newton Brothers) does this low-toned “bong” at significant dramatic moments which I rolled my eyes at at first. But ultimately it fits with the tenor of the film: This is a movie about a man’s life, and the consequential and inconsequential aspects thereof, and how we don’t necessarily know which is which.

It didn’t forget its mission. It is very United Colors of Moviemaking, with an improbable racial mix, but everyone’s talented so, y’know, who really cares about that?

Is it great? Ironically, perhaps, it’s the philosophical underpinning of the story that is the weakest. Like, the third act (the beginning)—a very writerly concept shoehorned into the Everyman’s head—doesn’t actually make any sense in the context of the story. Literally everyone in the apocalyptic part of the story should know who Chuck is.

Furthermore, the punchline/twist is fine, but also doesn’t comport with human behavior in any very admirable way. Chuck has a choice about living that he makes in a life-affirming way. But he also keeps his choice a secret, which strikes me as very selfish.

This is done far, far better in the Korean film Be With You.

 

My review of any Ari Aster movie is going to be “I liked it, but I can’t really recommend it to almost anyone.” Hereditary is his most normal of films, being essentially a remake of Rosemary’s Baby, with emphasis on moody anxiety and shocking gore. I consider Beau is Afraid to be a masterpiece surreal picaresque but I can’t blame people for not wanting to spend three hours in anxiety for entertainment purposes.

Well, if you like anxiety, and you especially like it when it hits close to home and reminds you of a bunch of real-world unpleasant experiences, let me tell you: Eddington is the movie for you.

The plot, ostensibly, is that normal, none-too-bright sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix in the most normal role I’ve seen him in since Signs) is fed up with also none-too-bright establishment stooge mayor (Pedro Pascal in the kind of role he shines in), and so decides to run against him for mayor, immediately turning the sheriff’s office into his makeshift campaign HQ (which can’t possibly be legal). Well, it’s a small town, so as it turns out the sheriff’s (mysteriously sexually traumatized) wife (Emma Stone) used to date the sheriff when she was sixteen, and the sheriff’s wife vanished years ago, while his son is getting to BLM activism because the one cute white girl in Eddington is an activist, organizing road blocks and apologizing for her privilege.

Actually, every white young adult in the movie punctuates every thing they say with apologies for being white. Even at a prominent funeral, the eulogizers apologize for daring to speak on “stolen land”. The mayor is a self-serving jerk, but the sheriff is an impetuous idiot who wrecks his own life by trying to tie his wife’s trauma to his candidacy.

This ushers in the end of the second act, when the sheriff’s impulsive nature gets the better of him, and the third act ratchets into increasing insanity and violence.

But Is It Any Good?

The Boy liked it. The Barbarienne gave it 9 out of 10 (which may be her lowest rating). Me?

Well, “good” or not, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to most people. Like, in the beginning of the movie when the sheriff (who is asthmatic) rolls out to the grocery store, and reminds the grocery store bouncers (remember those?) that they don’t really have the authority to police masking, and everyone’s standing six feet apart waiting to get in, and nobody’s wearing a mask properly anyway, but everyone’s talking about all the death caused by Covid-19 (or is it?)—there’s no denying that Aster captures the insanity of the lockdown/masking period.

There’s also no denying that the events of the movie, which has everyone scrolling their devices constantly, and seeing stories about murder hornets, pedophile rings, etc., go by, reflect the distracted, sanity-baiting life a la mode.

The small scope of the film works as a perfect satire. There is one homeless guy who wanders around. He’s genuinely a menace but there’s not really anything anyone can do for him or to him, and he ends up being the catalyst for the sheriff’s denouement. (Keep the word “denouement” in mind. It’s going to come back.) The BLM protests block a road, but there’s really no reason for anyone to care about it. There’s no traffic on the road, and the town appears to be largely deserted. (The Mayor’s son mocks the Sheriff for driving around yelling out his campaign promises to, essentially, no one.)

The sheriff’s crazy mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell) watches a constant feed of conspiracy theories, and her ultimate fate is clearly meant to be satirical—it doesn’t make any actual sense—but I didn’t feel like this was a political film. If it was, it fails at that, and (ironically?) it might have been a better film if it had been political.

Ad Aster

As my children pointed out, this is an Ari Aster film, and as such things that I view as its failings are probably my own in having the wrong expectations.

To me, the brilliance of Beau is Afraid is the largely agency-free Beau struggles to survive and manages, ultimately, to gain some control over an existence which is literally insane. I don’t mean that he’s insane; I mean the world is insane. It is, at times, out to get him, and if we take his struggle literally (or maybe even if only metaphorically), his willingness to forge on become increasingly admirable. In this framework, the indignities and absurdities of the world are not just encouraging us to point-and-laugh.

Here, the Sheriff has apparent agency, but this is largely thwarted by his own impulsiveness. By the end of Act II, he does something to set himself on a path that goes increasingly out-of-control. The movie is over at that point, and the last hour is just a depiction of his descent—the denouement, in other words is a full hour before the end of the movie.

So, while the proceedings were often entertaining—e.g., a Kyle Rittenhouse callback where a young man saving the Sheriff’s life has his phone in one hand and a gun that he’s filming while he’s firing it in the other—they were dramatically pointless. There was nothing to be learned, and no one to root for, unless one wants to root for “mere anarchy”.

I expected better emotional resonance or, as I said, even a political message might have been welcome if just to explain why I sat there for two-and-a-half hours. Somehow, I expected more.

But I didn’t expect anything on the level of The Apartment or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which maybe is actually telling in itself.