"Accomplishments"
In theaters: There's an early scene in Deadpool & Wolverine when Wade realizes he's an MCU movie and that it will mean lots of cameos and unlimited use of variants (if you haven't watched Loki, parts of this will seem even weirder than they are, but we run through enough exposition). It's a herald of things to come and even mentioning what other characters appear is a spoiler. I'll just say that this is a tribute to the movie continuities that have been undone by Marvel/Disney recovering the rights to various characters, and therefore a goodbye to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine that both desecrates Logan (the film) and adds a beautiful epilogue to it. Jackman is acting his socks off here despite the fact that this is a meta-textual, potty-mouthed spoof of superhero movies (and the Marvel formula in particular). If I put this one at the same level as Deadpool 2, it's largely due to his contribution. Full props to Matthew Macfadyen as the nominal villain too - I was surprised at how well he did comedy. So lots of deep cuts, for movie fans, but for comic book fans especially. Marvel really takes its recent failures on the chin in terms of allowing the movie to laugh at them. The wild action is a lot of fun. The plot is a bit of a picaresque to hang the jokes onto, so nothing too great there, but it does act as a cathartic palate cleanser as we head, perhaps, into a new phase of Marvel movies that hopefully renounce the sins of the past couple years.
At home: What if you could unburden your stained soul by putting it in cold storage? Giving off Kaufmanesque vibes, Cold Souls stars Paul Giamatti as a shade of himself, hoping just such a service will help him perform Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", but finds soullessness abjectly terrible. Russian soul trafficking might provide a solution, but also big problems for him as the oddball sci-fi story takes a thrillery turn. Well, I'm into it. The obvious comparison is to Being John Malkovich, but it's not quite as weird nor as funny. When it is (and there's a savage swipe at soap operas that made me burst out laughing), it's in the same way Chekhov is (oh you didn't know he wrote comedies? yeah, it's not always obvious), in an existential, absurd way. Initially, the operating metaphor explores how medication for mental health issues can affect creative work (as soul = connection to one's emotions), but its scope becomes larger when we move to Russia, where other things "deaden" the emotional spectrum (whether poverty, oppression or trauma). Quite interesting and purposefully as bleak as a Russian winter.
Gregg Araki's Nowhere is the wildest possible "Not Another Teen Movie", using young hot actors of the day (that day being 1997), whether from television or movies, a blend that might include 90210 and The Craft, but with alien abductions thrown in. We're only three years after Reality Bites, but the generation presented already seems completely dissimilar. Or perhaps, you need to be part of the Hollywood scene for it to make complete sense. My 10-year difference with the characters is enough to make it opaque. I see it as a psychedelic art house spoof of a YA soap opera, where you follow too many characters and relationships (which would make sense week to week, but not in isolation), with kinky sex and bloody violence. The environments are expressive, the language is idiosyncratic (prefiguring Buffy the Vampire Slayer's style), and the the emotions are heightened beyond even the CW's propensity for teen angst. The casting alone...
The movie that, back in the day, made me realize "Steven Spielberg Presents" didn't mean he directed it, *batteries not included really does deserve its lower-case title because it's a lower-case Amblin film. It's a little bit E.T., a little bit Cocoon, a little bit Close Encounters, made from a script originally meant for the Amazing Stories anthology show. It's got cute outer space robots mingling awkwardly with adult protagonists and real estate schemes, so I'm not always sure who this was FOR. I guess I was 16 when I saw it and it didn't leave much of a mark at all. Looking at it now, it's got its charms, but also a lot of characters that don't act in any reasonably realistic way, and lots of stock movie tropes, whether the silent gentle giant, the romcom between neighbors, the Latino gang banger, the evil businessman (who doesn't get his just desserts, oh 80s...), etc. Everyone's watchable, especially Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy as an older couple desperate to hold on to the past (each in their way), though there's no coherent theme rising from that central idea.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days is chronologically the first film where Makoto Shinkai perfects his style - stories about isolation and loneliness in a sci-fi context, beautiful skies, and the use of emotional stills and inserts - though there is the sense that he's working in the shadow of Miyazaki (the flight motif), only with a science fiction sheen added. The always-present theme of loneliness is present in a number of ways - the boy separated from the girl he was taken with in his youth but still sees in his dreams, his strained friendship with another boy, the setting which involves a parallel Japan divided after the war in a way similar to Germany or Korea, and the tower between them which is connected to inaccessible parallel worlds. It's a lot, and often obliquely told, so I was disappointed in the ending which failed to resolve the plot as satisfyingly as I wanted it to. In trying to do too much, it does too little. It's still a gorgeous film to look at, and Shinkai would soon take things to the next level (producing his most iconic film next).
Though Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars apparently has its roots in Digimon, which I know nothing about (is that why the characters play a card game?), it feels to me a bit as if Ready Player One had a good plot. A lot of imagination has gone into creating an avatar-navigable internet, now under threat from an aggressive A.I., with the potential for civilization-ending disaster. And yet, it's really about a large family coming together to solve a problem, and indeed, humanity doing the same as things become more epic. It's Hosoda, so the fantastical elements are really just a layer atop a more potent and personal message. This is about reconciling our differences and setting old resentments aside - it's absurd that this family is both the cause and solution of the problem until you realize this - and that sometimes, an outsider (a new spouse, etc.) can be the key to changing an offending perspective. And just as the family must allow that point of view to add to its whole, the outsider - here one of our heroes, roped into attending a family reunion as someone's beard - must also accept their place in the group and that their perspective has value. Extend family to mean society if you want, because it's all there.
My Companion Film of the week features Sophie "Ace" Aldred... The Search for Simon, out of the UK, is a UFO hunting spoof with strong homemade vibes, dropping a lot of geeky references the writer-director-lead Martin Gooch likes. Most potent among these are the presence of Sophie Aldred (Doctor Who), Chase Masterson (DS9) and Simon Jones (Hitchhiker's Guide). Gooch plays an obsessive UFOlogist searching for his abducted brother and tragically destroying his life in the process. Can he find love in the middle of all this and could it bring him back from the edge? While the film isn't without its laughs - there's a good Doctor Who gag, a dig at Warhammer gaming, etc. - it also can't pick a lane. Early on, you think it's going to be a mockumentary dressed up as a vlog, but it doesn't commit to that. Sometimes, it's grounded and aliens don't exist except in the imagination; sometimes, they exist quite outrageously and they're spoofing sci-fi material rather than conspiracy theorists. It's all over the place. Between those script problems, the dead-faced protagonist and the film's inherent cheapness, I can't really give this a recommendation. But SF geeks might find it amusing like I did.
Books: Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller reads like a detective/spy thriller version of a Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett novel. The noirish first person narration is almost TOO clever, as Laurie's anti-hero Thomas Lang (or whatever other identity he's using at any given point) usually remarks on his word choices and the usefulness of the English language. It's kind of the book's best feature, but you can also get lost in it. Especially since the story often makes wild jumps in time which would work cinematically, but make you ask "where am I, right now?" at crucial points. I did start caring for the characters (or hating Lang's enemies - investment is investment) after the first act, but couldn't get away from the sense that this was a spoof of such Noir classics as The Maltese Falcon. In other words, the story is convoluted and pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure everything matches up, but then, that's not really the point. It's clear from the prose that STYLE is the point, and while there are sincere moments, the comedy is really the thing here. Entertaining, but flawed. Honestly, if a celebrity hadn't written it, I'm not sure it would get this much interest.
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