"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Does anyone call The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent that? Or does every one just call it "Nick Cage"? Looking for anecdotal evidence and ready to take it for Truth. The movie is Nick Cage as Nick Cage (and also as Nick Cage and at one point, Nick Cage), a version of Nick Cage who is struggling financially, creatively and personally. Once you get used to the all-star cast around him NOT playing themselves, the laughs start coming more regularly, and there was a lot of giggling all around me. Nick Cage is a real film nerd and the movie does portray him that way, leading us to think "one of us!", and that's a good feeling. Then he's invited to Spain by a millionaire, and there's this wonderful bromance that blooms between Nick Cage and Pedro Pascal (or his character, but who knows, there's so much chemistry, it could be both)... but the CIA says he's a ruthless arms dealer and Nick Cage must help them. And that's obviously the weakest part of the movie, though they do weave it into the metatextual conceits of the movie. Everyone in the cast is pretty funny, and just a little bit badass. My soft spot for comedy spy films was definitely tickled.
At home: While Moon Knight has a lot going for it - Oscar Isaac in a dual role, May Calamawy, the intriguing story telling created by the blackouts, all the Egyptian lore, and a slam-bang finale - it also tends to frustrate. At times, it wants to be Legion (the Marvel show starring Dan Stephens), but never goes as far. Ethan Hawke, a very different, more reasoned and subtle villain may not be grandiose enough for the MCU. And at only 6 episodes, you might think there's way too little actual MOON KNIGHT content. I had all these thoughts even if none of these issues actually bothered me. Within the MCU, the show had its own identity - Batman (or maybe Hawkman) meets Raiders of the Lost Ark - and told its story in an unusual way. It has the moments of humor, action and spectacle we expect, but was surprisingly gory compared to Disney's normal fare. And it never shows a connection to the rest of the shared universe, which is also surprising. Oscar Isaac is a MOVIE star, so it's probably only a matter of time before the Fist of Khonshu shows in a film. Between him, the Black Knight and the upcoming Blade reboot, the MCU's darker, more mystical side is slowly evolving, but into what?
It's hard not to think of OtherMindBenders when watching Australia's OtherLife, whether that's Brainstorm or Inception or, in with the specific premise of a prison stay inside one's mind, Deep Space Nine's "Hard Time", even if it is a pretty slick techno-thriller that looks better than its indie roots would have you expect. The gimmick is a programmable chemical that can give people instantaneous experiences/memories, but lead programmer Ren Amari is also trying to save her comatose brother with it. Things take a dark turn when she's forced to agree to a year of incarceration (one minute in real time) to test the product for the penal system and from there, well, you know how these things go. What's real, what's not, and we've seen enough of these to know what's what pretty much all the way through. What remains original is, I think, the way the experience changes her especially in terms of dealing with her brother's accident, playing with the metaphor of the "prison of the mind", and then the satisfying climax. The vibe is much more restrained than bigger budget head trips, but it has enough to say that it can stand on its own despite the derivative premise.
Richard Linklater's 2001 staging of the 1999 play Tape is a tight little two-then-three-hander, set in a single motel room, and shot on cheap video tape. More than a pun, it gives the piece a kind of vérité look and a documentary energy that makes it all a bit too real even though we recognize all the actors. Dead Poets Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are reunited as old friends who haven't seen each other in a while, but Hawke's character has a personal agenda to make his old judgmental pal admit to wrong-doing when they were in high school. Who the villain of the play is twists in those moments, moving Tape from talky naturalism to psychological thriller. Uma Thurman shows up in the third act as the once-object of both their desires and absolutely refuses to be part of their narrative and defying all their (and our) expectations. She absolutely kills it. There's no doubt as you're watching that this is sourced from a play, but a play doesn't get you so tightly in the characters' spaces, and what results is a powerful piece that'll make you think, cheer, and squirm.
Linklater's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's play SubUrbia is (re)set in a Central Texas town (of course), but it could be anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, one of those turnpike developments - gas stations, strip malls, convenience stores... and disaffected youth. Or not-so-youth, since we catch up with a group of friends who ought to have moved on from hanging on the corner causing trouble like dumb teenagers. In the Western world, if you don't have the miseries of war, famine, fascism or plague (things have changed since the 90s), you invent the misery of boredom. The group's world is shaken up by the return of an old pal who "escaped" and became a music star, exposing their arrested development. This might just be the night when they each blow up their lives. The greatest contrast is offered by an immigrant character who can't get behind this nihilistic and wasteful streak in American culture. Different pairings throughout the story help us explore this dark and grungy generation, and of all of them, Steve Zahn playing Steve Zahn (you know what performance I mean) can be a drain on one's patience, but generally, everyone brings a nice naturalism to the piece, as they should.
While The Newton Boys' true story has value (its particular quirk among bank robber narratives something I will not spoil for the reader), it comes across as a little dull because it's too much if a biopic. This happens, then this happens, then this. The overall effect is that it changes modes a number of times, with the fortunes of the four brothers (dubbed America's most successful bank robbers, for good reason). Their early career makes it seem easy, with almost no opposition to their schemes, so that's half the movie boring. If everything had been like the Canadian heist, leaning into the comedy, I think it would have been a more memorable movie. Even the Elmore Leonard-type train robbery could have supplied a more sustainable tone to the rest of the piece. Sometimes it's a big romance. Bottom line, the more the film felt like a comedy of errors, the better it was, so while it definitely has its moments - including a silent film-era opening sequence - it just never finds a consistent atmosphere.
When it comes to talky movies, Richard Linklater is the master. Though Last Flag Flying is essentially a road movie and makes its characters move, it's still a series of conversations between three Vietnam vets whose common dark past has led to different destinations. Steve Carell, always good as the hurt fowl, accepted his fate after the mysterious incident, or rather, his character did. Bryan Cranston's turned to alcohol, and Laurence Fishburne's to religion (initially played as the devil and angel on his shoulders). Decades later, they nevertheless feel bound by their service together, and choose to help Carell retrieve his son's body from the Marines after his death in Iraq so he can bury him, and indeed, the past. More a psychological piece than a political one, even if the three men's experience have soured the on the Big Lie about war. They nevertheless hold their service to be precious and integral to who they are. It's not about making a definitive statement about Vietnam or Iraq, things are more complicated than that, a paradox human civilization will no doubt continue to struggle with. It could have been a big downer, but Cranston in particular brings a comedic element, establishing the true-to-life roller-coaster of grief. There's something a bit pat about the ending (the letter), but otherwise, it's interesting and poignant.
I've decided that whatever weaknesses Where'd You Go, Bernadette? has, it has because it's too novelistic. As a film, it's all over the place, not in terms of tone or aesthetic, but in terms of plot. Bernadette was a rising star in architecture when real life got in the way, and now 20 years later, she's a floundering mother and wife, at odds with the neighbors, and on the verge of being committed by her well-meaning husband. So how does all of this end in the Antarctic? In a novel, you can hit themes a little harder, but they're there in Linklater's adaptation - the inventor of telepathic hardware ironically unable to understand his wife, the architect who works with found objects and spaces questing for herself, the back to basics reboot of the South Pole - but they can get lost in the shuffle. Regardless, Cate Blanchett is unsurprisingly good, and indeed, Linklater was smart enough to keep her alive throughout the film instead of taking the novel's approach that hides her from the reader. I very much love the relationship between her and her daughter (Emma Nelson), a very different teenager/mom dynamic than we are used to. So yes, it may seem like the film is a bit rudderless, but so is the character, and sometimes I think we're too used to formula to appreciate it when a movie deviates from it.
When they say Sandra Bernhard is a fearless performer, they mean it. The film version of her deadpan one-woman show Without You I’m Nothing is an absolute take-down of white privilege and celebrity status, a satire at once savage and subtle that some might not get, and others might fight too difficult to take. Chief among the "difficulties" is that Bernhard pointedly appropriates elements of black culture, poaching songs from black artists while talking head interviews say SHE was these originals' influence. Brown-face make-up and lyrics about blackness create malaise, even though the arrangements are pretty great (especially the final performance of Prince's Little Red Corvette - it's a show stopper in more ways than one). But we know she's punching up at white culture, her characters celebrity monsters, because the cabaret audience is quiet, bored, and dismissive, the camera often cutting to black audience members whose opinions are not heard, but felt. High quality cringe.
Beth B's documentary on Lydia Lunch, The War Is Never Over, presents a true counter-culture (and sexual) icon still active today, but I'd never heard of her. I'm too young to have been exposed to late 70s noise punk, and by the time I was at university in the early 90s, all that seemed still relevant was Sonic Youth. So a bit of a revelation for me. Lydia Lunch is a giant personality, was then, is now, whether through music, spoken word or experimental film, the angry voice of trauma, not retreating into itself, but uncomfortably exposing it, exorcising it, turning it into a weapon, getting revenge on the world with it. Though essentially a talking heads documentary, Beth B also takes us into rehearsal rooms for Lydia's current project and presents enough live performance, from across the whole career, as well as substantial clips from her strange, psycho-sexual films that it also acts as a showcase for the artist, and a window into the New York art scene previously alien to me.
Do we have a contender for Rocky Horror's double-bill partner? Brian de Palma's Phantom of the Paradise is a crazy movie about a rock opera that becomes a rock opera. A rock opera about Faust, which then very obviously because a Faustian story (which its composer is too naive or desperate to notice). And of course, it's also Phantom of the Opera, William Finley having to emote with a single eye (and doing so brilliantly) through much of the movie. That bird mask is part of a bird motif that runs throughout, in character names, iconography and costuming. The Devil, in this case, is a music producer played by Paul Williams, who also composed and arranged the songs. It's important to use that last verb, because I get a lot of joy from the way he sends up popular music of the 70s and previous eras, often using the same compositions. De Palma is as stylish as he's ever been, like a music video director long before such things were commonplace, and Phantom is so crazy at times, you can't help but laugh. In a good way. It's a lot of fun.
Books: The Battle of Britain shows how the Time-Life World War II series covers more specific topics, the air war against Britain a relatively short (if not insignificant) affair. Obviously, there are more picture essays, and that's fine (it is LIFE magazine, after all). Less fine is principal writer Leonard Mosley focusing on certain battles or bombings almost as prose. He favors dialog as if we were in the room with history and though the words are probably recounted in a diary or other, it nevertheless sounds like we're in the realm of docu-drama. You get a little lost in play-by-play aerial action, and bogged down in numbers (planes lost on each side, but there's also the fact that German aircraft have numerical "names"). Despite the problems, the book is still a strong portrait of both countries' air aces, of the British people's reactions to the Blitz, and of course, of Hitler's continual mishandling of the conflict with the isle across the Channel. And while there are some graphic descriptions of the carnage, none of the ghoulish pictures found in the series' Prelude to War.
In the 1980s, Gene Roddenberry gave writer Marc Cushman access to the Star Trek files. The result, after 30 years, additional interviews (both by the author and pulled from publications) is a comprehensive three-volume production diary called These Are the Voyages. The nature of the Trek archives puts the focus on the writing of episodes, with the people involved well represented by internal memos going back and forth. We get a real sense of who the people are, especially producer Robert Justman, the penny pincher with the acidic sense of humor, and Roddenberry himself, both the hero and the villain of the story, but many others, including the network man, the broadcast standards censor, and the show's many writers. Not to say there aren't stories from the set or editing bay, but the real gold is in the first section devoted to each episode (and of course, the ramp-up to getting a series together). I love deep dives into my favorite shows, and while Doctor Who has a LOT of publications that do just that, Trek guides are often shallower and "authorized". Almost makes you wish Cushman could have continued into TAS, TNG, etc., not that it seems doable in a single life time. But Cushman also doesn't have a great handle on later Trek, as one particularly goofy mistake in Vol.1 shows - he mentions a Ramata Klan soldier from Deep Space Nine, Ramata'Klan being the name of a particular Jem'Hadar soldier. So full disclosure, there are weird mistakes like that when discussing things OTHER than TOS, the book is not immune to typos even in its Revised Edition, and because Cushman also wrote books about Lost in Space and I Spy, he mentions them an awful lot. Still, as I finished this 600-page brick, I slipped my bookmark directly into Vol.2. That says something.
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