"Accomplishments"
In theaters: The strangest and most wonderful costumes AND the strangest and most wonderful fight scenes you'll see this year (possibly, ANY year), Everything Everywhere All at Once also has the most appropriate title of the year. The Swiss Army Man directors have done it again, only moreso, and pretty much beaten all the multiversal superhero movies that are about to come out in the process. Michelle Yeoh is great as an overwhelmed (remember that word, it's one of the over-arching metaphors) laundry owner whose destiny may be to stop a powerful force from destroying all possible worlds. And while Yeoh can of course still do action and the movie fits the kung fu category, she can only win by providing an alternative (to save alternate worlds, natch) to nihilism. Help and hindrance are given by the likes of the ubiquitous James Hong, a very funny Jamie Lee Curtis, and Short Round himself, Ke Huy Quan. Everyone is amazing, especially Yeoh, and the film is extremely clever, blazingingly original, gorgeous to look at (and one day, freeze-frame), at times outrageously blue, and surprisingly poignant. Guys, we have an early front-runner for my favorite film of the year.
At home: Though by the same people who gave us The Toys That Made Us, The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek doesn't adopt the mocking tone of its forebears. The 10 episodes (really 11, with that double-length finale) have a sense of humor, but it doesn't scapegoat anyone to showcase it, opting instead to use footage from the shows and outtake expressions to punctuate the behind the scenes stories. Gates MacFadden was a fine choice as narrator, clear and upbeat. This is a documentary series that has watched the other documentaries, or at least it feel like it, because it doesn't overly retread material you can find elsewhere, and manages to give many people their due, whether being honest about Roddenberry's problematic management of the franchise or praising some of the unsung heroes. There were stories here I'd never heard, which is a minor feat. Of course, its proper subtitle should really be 55 Years SINCE Star Trek because it really doesn't cover much beyond the Berman era (and no movies after ST IV or First Contact, depending on the franchise. The Kelvin timeline films, Discovery, etc. rate mentions, but let's just say we don't see very many people since under contract in this tell-all (Jery Ryan and Kate Mulgrew notable exceptions). Obviously, it's too big a story for just 450 minutes, but what's there is certainly pleasant, informative, sometimes grudgy, but overall a fine celebration of all shades of Trek through the early 2000s. Maybe History will commission new episodes some day, who knows.
At the turn of the 1990s, Marvel licensing its characters to absolutely everyone in the hopes of finally getting films made. B-movie outfit Full Moon, for example, was meant to do a Dr. Strange movie, but the option expired and rather than shelve the project, Full Moon's waste-not, want-not attitude decreed the movie should just be rewritten with the numbers filed off. And so was born Doctor Mordrid, which is somehow more on model than the 1979 Dr. Strange TV pilot. This back story gives the cheap B-movie an extra layer of interest, as you squint throughout wondering what might have been (like, was Kabal Baron Mordo?). Jeffrey Combs is fine as an off-puttingly disconnected immortal sorcerer, but man, it does not serve the romantic subplot at all. He's too creepy for his charms to work on his co-star, Yvette Nipar. X-Files' slab-faced alien bounty hunter himself, Brian Thompson, plays Kabal with the expected gusto, but his scenes are often stolen by a henchman with ridiculous dialog, who looks like Andrew Garfield as a heavy metal fan. The effects are at least a decade out of date, and the climax's pacing really needs better editing, but you can count on director Charles Band to have fun with it, and at 74 minutes, this strange take on a Marvel hero doesn't overstay its welcome. Now how about writing Full Moon a check and giving Mordrid a cameo in Multiverse of Madness?
/2012: The oddly shoehorned-in "Brave" is a better title than Hair Physics: The Movie, but it's pretty generic considering they have to epilogue an explanation. In any case, the bones of a good story are there, but the Pixar/Disney collaboration fails on a number of fronts. The tone, for one. With the three little scamps, we're in Loony-Tunes territory, but the third act has animal and mother jeopardy that's too intense for the kiddies it's trying to amuse. It's hard to empathize with Merida once she decides to essentially brainwash her mother, and seeing her play with her mom-turned-bear as if she were just another cartoon pet (and is bear mom really that magical when their horse is also anthropomorphized?) gave me the grumblies. Mother and daughter coming to a compromise is, all in all, better played in the similar Turning Red. While there's a fun Scottish flavor (may or may not fly in Scotland), the world's lore is sadly under-written and leaves the film with gaps you'd have rather seen filled out. So it's okay, and wouldn't be half as frustrating if it didn't sometimes hint at how much better it could have been.
Also from that year: The Hobbit begins, Rise of the Guardians, Snow White and the Huntsman
2013: If you played D&D in the 1980s, you'll smile at the references to the old manuals made in Knights of Badassdom, a LARPing comedy that might make a fun double bill with George Romero's Knightriders. Amid the dumb jokes about role-playing, LARPing culture, scuzzy DungeonMasters, and getting roped into playing monsters at these things, a real demon is accidentally summoned, turning the movie into a gory monster feature/slasher (Romero's LARP epic did NOT, surprisingly). And it all leads to an epic confrontation between our weekend heroes and the Beast. It's silly, it's violent, it's irreverent, and it's so, so, so METAL. I recently admonished the 2011 Conan movie for using heavy metal, but then failing to turn the movie into a heavy metal album cover. Knights of Badassdom actually knows what it's doing. Plus, Danny Pudi playing RPGs, Peter Dinklage being a better fighter than in Game of Thrones, and Summer Glau being Summer Glau. A lot of people have given this a thumbs down, but I think if you've ever partaken of the role-playing culture (table top or live action), you're gonna get more out of it. Frothy fun.
Also from that year: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Frozen
2014: I'm not entirely sure what to think of The Voices. It's original and well-directed, but its turn into the darkest of comedy is grotesque and ugly. Ryan Reynolds gives a cracker of a performance, not quite convinced that his pets are really talking to him, but compelled by madness to lean into the delusion, but then he uncontrollably kills someone and this Dr. Dolittle is on a different path entirely. Now if the film wasn't trying to make the character sympathetic with all the tools at its disposal and if he wasn't specifically killing women (forgiving women, according to the voices they're handed after death), I'd be more inclined to enjoy it. Knowing this was made by a female director (Persepolis' Marjane Satrapi) takes some of the sting out of it, but if a satirical filter is in place, it's just out of my reach. So The Voices is original, but off-putting. (Delusions, unless ambiguously proven true in at least one scene, should not afford a film the "fantasy" label, but that's not really the movie's fault.)
Also from that year: Into the Woods, The Book of Life, The Boxtrolls, Maleficent
2015: You've got to get out of bed early to show me something new about the curse of immortality. Vampires, Time Lords, etc. have nearly exhausted the topic. The Age of Adaline overslept. The movie is a romance, but the romance is dull as dishwater, in part because Blake Lively gives the unaging lead a serenity and a way of speaking that's possibly meant to evoke the way people USED to speak, but it doesn't track. We speak the way people speak in our own era, and though we might keep a few words from our pasts, we're pretty good at updating, especially if "stay in the world", which she does. The other problem is that Michiel Huisman's character is a real stalker who won't take no for an answer, and so the love affair is initially creepy, and ultimately forced (just like the ending). Things get a little more interesting when Adaline is recognized by a beau from the past, but not by much. I also had an adverse reaction to the narrator who seems to have been told this was Magnolia II (but he's no Ricky Jay). Forget Adaline, how much did *I* age while watching this movie?
Also from that year: Cinderella, Krampus, The Lure
2016: Though I always wince at obviously CG elements in 2D animation (even if it's pretty standard today), Big Fish & Begonia nevertheless comes across as incredibly beautiful. We are witness to a world of Chinese spirits, unseen by the human world, yet evidently connected to it, or its reflection. The story concerns a flower spirit who feels responsible for the death of a human and vows to bring him back to life, even at the cost of her own existence. The natural world is none too happy about this, and tragedy is in the offing, but it's hard to predict just who will meet this tragic end. Beyond the delight of exploring this world and its rules, it's the unpredictability that keeps you invested. The story is grand myth and doesn't seem to follow the usual movie rules. At first, I'd thought it a flaw that the rat spirit thread was sort of left dangling, but then I think of our world as context, and maybe it wasn't. I've seen a lot of bad reviews of this and I wonder if there's something wrong with the English dub, so better stick to the original Chinese to be safe.
Also from that year: Moana, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Jungle Book
Books: As an improv player and coach, Pirandello's Tonight We Improvise seemed of course intriguing. Dressed up in amusing "outrage to the public" shenanigans in which the director of the play is an intrusive character resented by his players, the work asks deeper questions about theater, the role of the actor, where authorial power actually lies, and if you want to think more expansively, human self-deception and our relationship with God (the Author). The players are caught in a well-timed theatrical machine and therefore unable to truly improvise (within a text that scripts even the naturalistic improvised parts, including interludes in the theater's lobby, and tries to gauge the actual audience's reactions and how to react to them - I say actual audience, because there are a lot of comperes IN the audience)... Is this not the very essence of theatrical improvisation, where naturalistic truth must somehow be generated by truly "living" the life of the character, even while you are reciting words, moving in established staging, and following cues? Pirandello merely exposes the process through theatrics. But on that higher plane - which the play invites us to think about through various references to religion, the lord of the house, etc. - we can also see the actors' dilemma as a very human affair, expressing the need for freedom, but at the same time wanting authority to make most decisions for us. It's a realization that makes the ending rather depressing, but nonetheless truthful. My one criticism is that it's VERY Italian/Sicilian even in translation, with sung opera and other references that I can hardly be expected to get without an education I don't have. No matter, the ideas and theatricality are enough to make the play fun, clever and insightful.
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