"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Before I get into an actually positive review of Supergirl, I want to talk about fruit from the poison tree. The movie is based on Tom King's in my opinion terrible Woman of Tomorrow mini-series which, unless it's an urban legend, started life as a pitch like "True Grit with Lobo in the John Wayne role". He was denied the Main Man's use (which is why the movie goes out of its way to introduce, as an extended Easter Egg), so he forced Supergirl into his story, cuz they're basically the same, right? The result has very pretty art covered by King's pretentious and verbose narration, an off-model Supergirl who drinks and swears, and plays like a fantasy picaresque with Kara and her protectee facing various threats on various magical-looking planets. So the movie had a lot to overcome, and I think it mostly did. First, we don't have to contend with King's prose. Second, the lean into the western (since that was the source) and away from the sword & sorcery, achieving a neat space western with a certain samurai flavor. Like the comic, it doesn't really use DC's rich cosmic iconography, opting for weird-looking aliens rather than any race a comics reader might recognize, and the villains are pretty gross Mad Max/Warhammer concepts, and of which fits Lobo's "space biker" world better than the Kyrptonians'. Kara is still a on a bender, but the more focused story (108 minutes is faster and more compressed than 8 monthly issues) gives us a better ticking clock (she has to save her dog and really DOESN'T want to take part in her charge's revenge) and makes plain that she is suffering from survivor's guilt (it's easier to explain this psychology when the character is fresh and new than when they are pre-established, which is one of the reasons the comic fails). The ending will be controversial in terms of what's to be done with the absolutely foul villain, especially since Lobo could have been used as a proxy and solved the problem (but no, we gotta follow the dumb scriptwriter playbooks), or one might say (and be correct) that Supergirl should never have been put in such a story. Milly Alcock gives a sympathetic performance that, like The Batman's final turn, allows us to believe this adventure was the first step towards "the hero we know and want". And though Lobo is sort of an implant, Jason Momoa has fun with it (naturally, since he was born to play him) and I like how the score changes when he shows up, just it used to on Superman: The Animated Series. So while the movie COULD have had stronger ties to the DCU tapestry, it's more consistent AS ITSELF than if it had. There are many reasons to walk out disappointed, but once you let go of expectations (for who Supergirl should be, or what a DC Comics movie is), it's actually pretty fun.
At home: Directed by The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone, Over My Dead Body is as amusing black comedy that essentially starts with The War of the Roses' third act and builds from there, with a couple - Samara Weaving and Jason Segel - trying to kill each other at a lakeside cabin. When things go wrong, they might need to team up against deadly home invaders. There has to be a better way to rekindle a dead marriage, but it all happens just as we're ready to give up on the leads, one a pathetic shlub, the other a shrewish harpy. The action brings the relationship into focus and we forget the age difference (addressed in the film, but Segel's casting would have made more sense 10 years ago). Where it shines best is in Yorm's ability to set dominoes up and make them fall, revealing new perspectives through flashbacks as we go to highlight domino A or domino B. Fun soundtrack, too, which I'd expect from a comedy musician. The level of gore ramps up substantively in the third act, again, no surprise - Samara Weaving is in it! - but CG gore is less satisfying than the practical kind, so I'm a little meh about it. Some laughs, some thrills, some heart(ish), a better than average entry in the violent romcom subgenre.
At a very basic level, the problem with Pixar's Hoppers is that it asks too much of me. The premise is that someone's invented technology that allows them to put their mind inside a robot that can pass as an animal and allows them to communicate with the entirety of the animal world, but then we find out those animals don't really act like animals and are more like comedy humans, use props, have kinds and councils, etc. Cute and goofy, but the sense of wonder the protagonist feels is undercut by hyperactive Madagascar-type shenanigans. The Wild Robot did all of this better. The hero is a young environmental activist trying to save a pond from the mayor's highway project, but the more she tries, the more she destroys what she sets out to protect, and the movie pushes the babybrained notion that if you see the good in your political rivals, it'll somehow fix the situation (perhaps with the help of magical animals), as if bad faith actors won't just use the opportunity to grift some more. A silly cartoon - and this one's very silly - isn't really the place for nuanced debate on activism vs. lobbying, so it all comes off as (at worst) corporate propaganda and (at best) very muddy messaging. A movie where a human being discovers the life of beavers and maybe saves an ecosystem would have been charming and educational. This is just a sugar rush.
Deragh Campbell is the title character in Anne at 13,000 Ft., a small Toronto indie about a daycare worker who goes skydiving and seems to experience a lightness and a freedom that are denied her in real life. Real life, where she never stops falling... Anne is evidently struggling with mental health issues, but the film is too naturalistic to tell us exactly what. The people in her life don't reference it because they're no reason to blab out exposition when everyone is either in the know or shouldn't be. But I think her anxieties need not be "a diagnosis". She works in a stressful job (looks like they just dropped Campbell at a real daycare) where her playful outlook isn't appreciated (it's one thing to be good with children, it's another to follow strict government/parental guidelines). She tries to find love (Matt Johnson might be the one for her - they and director Kazik Radwanski are all in the same film making circle - but the men tend not to get her sense of humor. But there's definitely a sense that she doesn't what's appropriate and isn't, and so she's heading for a breakdown. Falling is freedom, so long as you don't hit the ground.
Though the model for Typhoon Club is that of a coming of age film - Breakfast Club for natural disasters, with a group of students stuck in a school during a storm, and one of their number having run away from home to Tokyo - making them 9th graders means they're only teetering on the edge of "age", still children, but children interested in dipping their toes into adulthood, only to find the water too cold and pulling it out. Sometimes, this is charming - such as when the kids dance in their underwear, Shinji Sōmai's camera pulling back, giving them their moment and avoiding prurience. Sometimes, it's kind of terrifying - there's a prolonged attack on a girl from one of the boys that will stick in the mind even though the dog doesn't know what to do with the car it's caught. It's not like they have adults to emulate. Their favorite teacher is in arrested development, and indeed, the only one whose parents we really see. The kids are just loose and about during an emergency event. Adulthood is not something they see as a goal, and they try to resist its arrival. So if there's a coming of age, it will come after the film, as one particular sacrifice could spell the end of their innocence, whether they want it or not.
I've never been to the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, but I feel like I have - it's one of Quebec's Acadian regions, and we might as well be on the New Brunswick coast (give or take the exact accents) in Gaby les collines (Gaby's Hills), a rather sweet, 20-minute coming of age. Gaby has just come back to her dad's home on the islands after wintering in Montreal for school, and she's self-conscious of how she physically developed in that time. Her more expansive bosom draws stares and teasing (that song!), but not all the attention is negative. It's a lot, but it's also a simple part of life, and not the end of the world. Sometimes a short is just the right length and you don't feel like it tested your patience nor was missing something. Sometimes, you'd love for the short to have been a feature because you want to live in its reality longer. This one is both. It would have made a great feature, but I also got everything I needed from it and it feels complete.
Set in the flippy-haired 80s - with a fun, nostalgic soundtrack attached - Dirty Girl follows the budding, and at first contentious, friendship between the "school slut" and a repressed gay boy in small town Oklahoma. Something's gotta give, and it results in a road trip to California so the girl can meet the father she's never known, and both kids can undergo a complimentary coming of age. Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier show all the range in this one - they're jerks, they're funny, they're heartbreaking, they give it their all singing and dancing and making it look unprofessional. Throw in some big stars as the parents (although the bio-dad isn't a big name, so I don't know why the movie keeps hiding him like it's going to be a big reveal - I guess it is to Temple's character). The kids are also taking care of a bag of flour (one of those "scared-abstinent" or "parenting" school projects I see in shows and movies all the time) and it becomes a character all its own, adding a bit of welcome whimsy.
Though many would call Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy "problematic" or "dated" or worse, it served as film maker Sav Rodgers's introduction to queer identity as a young teen and "saved his life". Now, that kid from Kansas explores the film's legacy in Chasing Chasing Amy, why it was rejected (or embraced) by LGBTQ+ communities, and even reaches out and connects with the film's director and star. Now, if you're going to make a documentary about a movie, it really has to a) be a film I've seen and enjoyed, and b) make it personal and idiosyncratic. And I think I can check both boxes. Rodgers also turns the camera on himself and on his own relationship as he comes out as a trans man over the course of the filming and transitions. It becomes a testament to what film (or art in general) can do. If Smith's take on lesbians isn't quite on point, he did, perhaps inadvertently, manage to mainstream sexual and amorous fluidity in a way that would only really be widely understood decades later. And those complicated relationships are mirrored in the real world, not only in Rodgers's life, but in what he uncovers speaking to the particulars. He just wasn't ready for what Joey Lauren Adams, Amy herself, had to say about it.
[1975] Shampoo: Though nominally about a hairdresser who sleeps with his "heads" (Warren Beatty, apparently playing a shade of his own reputation), or really, any pretty girl he meets, setting it on the day America elected Nixon makes everything low-key political. Perhaps Beatty and director Hal Hashby were trying to "shampoo" the Nixon era out of their hair by examining politics through the lens of the sexual revolution. The film's characters are all looking to trade partners - to go from Democrat to Republican, as it were - perhaps by returning to their exes (in a two-party system), Beatty's character especially ambivalent in his affections (a swing voter). And they're all flirting with danger as a result, ending up at the same election parties where their lies may be exposed, realizing they trusted the wrong people, and so on. But they're also ready to compromise their values, work with their rivals to advance their own agendas, it's all "fashion" anyway. You'd think a movie about great hair would have better wigs, but what's under them is more important, and a very strong cast brings this political allegory/character exploration to life - Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Jack Warden, and in her first feature, a young Carrie Fisher. And everybody gets screwed as the Nixon era begins.
[1976] The Killing of a Chinese Bookie: John Cassavetes's contributions to anxiety cinema should never be downplayed (certainly, you see his fingerprints all over the current masters' work, by which I mean the Safdie Brothers), but Ben Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie tries to hold it all in. He plays Cosmo, a gambler who loses big and owes the crooked underground casino a lot, but doesn't want to carry out a hit on their rival to clear his debt. If he does, will it mean his doom, or unleash something in him no one was expecting? But Cosmo's image of himself, and of masculinity, means he has to work through the panic and keep taking risks. Only the camera really knows what he's feeling. You're a man. Never let them see you sweat. Never let them see you bleed. Never let your smile slip or the veneer crack. Not when you're in deep. Not when you lose everything. Not when your employees rebel. And not when you're on the lam and being betrayed by all sides. The audience decides if it's commendable or if it's a path to destruction.
[1977] Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo: The first movie I ever saw at a drive-in, I must have been 6 or 7, though the way of drive-ins, I might have been as old as 9. A young cinephile, I begged for us to stay for the second movie (Freaky Friday), but the paternal unit wouldn't have it. I was the eldest of four, and if any of the others were in the car, it must have been pretty late for them. Speaking of late, Herbie's European Vacation sequel comes 9 years after The Love Bug (the characters say it's been 12 years since Herbie's raced), though only three after Herbie Rides Again, which traded racing for domestic sitcom shenanigans. Regardless, it could have been shown in the 60s. The goofy humor, the jewel heist out of an Audrey Hepburn movie, the cartoon villains... it all would have fit. In this one, Herbie is extremely horny for another car and almost blows Dean Jones's chances to win a race through France and into Monte Carlo, though being chased by crooks who hid a giant diamond in the gas tank isn't helping any. Jones has trades Buddy Hackett for Don Knotts as his mechanic, and Knotts is playing the dumbest man alive. I sometimes felt like Jones was giving his co-star the side-eye, as if to say "is that the best ad lib you got?". But you know, it's about a car falling in love in Paris, I don't think we need to overanalyze it.
Books: I love Charles Yu's ability to take different states of mind and give them a sort of science fiction spin, as if they well really quantum states. And Sorry Please Thank You, being a collection of short stories, provides multiple takes. What if empathy were a service that allowed you to fob your painful moments off to a cubicle jockey? What if the persona you presented in public were another self in a parallel universe you could access? What if your imagination was really a funnel to one of those universes? What if your dream-self had its own consciousness? What if your video game avatar did? Only a few of the wild possibilities in the book. Yu's short stories are generally quite short, sometimes just documents from a world like and unlike our world, letting the reader fill in the blanks in world-building. The categorization of these tales in Sorry, Please and Thank You is a bit musty, but then, I've never been given the Book of Categories, nor does it seem like an easy volume to use. Don't know what I'm talking about? READ IT!
Argentine cartoonist Liniers (real name: Ricardo Siri)'s first collection of his delightful strip Macanudo (it means Awesome), Optimism is for the Brave, is an absolute charmer, at times funny, often clever, occasionally satirical, but never in a cynical way, and gorgeously drawn, the art sitting somewhere between Krazy Kat and Calvin & Hobbes. Though recurring characters are normally the order of the day - a bookworm of a girl and her cat, a boy and his monstrous imaginary friend, love-lorn elves with long hats, philosophical penguins and their whale pals, two witches who live together... - Liniers also attacks various pop culture figures and phenomena, as well as, on occasion, current events (some strips were evidently crafted during the COVID quarantine, for example). Sometimes, he just wants to tell us we should appreciate nature more, or visually explores a quote from a famous author like Blake or Shakespeare. Sometimes, he just wants to play with panel structure and create a fun little meta moment. I'm here for it, and for future collections as well. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. (But you know me, I'll take all the quality cartoon cat content I can get.)
Gaming (of sorts): For the last few years, my friend Clo and I have been having a joint birthday party because we're just one day (and 25 years) apart. Clo often goes all out and prepares games, game shows, that kind of thing, This was their 30th, and round numbers demand something special. And as we're both big fans of Taskmaster, they endeavoued to create a Birthday Edition of the game, with five of our friends competing and pre-taped challenges and a couple of in-person ones, too. I was to play the role of Greg Davies - give out points and generally be insulting... right up my alley. The participants were cast like a regular season of the show, with a "cheater" (Marty from Lonely Hearts), a Taskmaster mega-fan (Clo's friend Symon), a surprise visitor from out of town/chaos agent (Chalif), a straight arrow who would be flustered by the rules (Isabel from the Hot Squad) and a "mum" (Amelie from the Hot Squad). I always put my money on the mum in any season, and I'd get a pretty good return on that investment. I wasn't disappointed here again, and Amelie did win first. It was pretty tight, though. For the prize challenge, they had to present their "best dice" (it's me they have to impress, after all), and everyone was pretty clever, but Amelie crafted tiny polyhedrals using her miniature-building skills - strong start. The pre-tapes challenges included a "find a specific cup" challenge with some light mind-frack to it, and "Confuse the Cat", which was based on one of my favorite Monty Python sketches. The live challenge was an egg drop, resulting in 3 out of 5 broken eggs. I think fun was had by all, and we're not adverse to doing another one to involve all the people we couldn't invite first time around. Obviously, all the credit goes to Clo for organizing, editing and hosting it.
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