All posts by David Harms

Twenty movies Mandy and Davey can watch together

We might be two peas in a pod but me and Mandy have basically zero crossover as far as entertainment choices go.  Nonetheless, through painstaking research we’ve found 20-odd movies that we both like. Enjoy!

Clueless

Mandy – Davey likes this movie because of the skaters and political activists, I like this movie for the humor and style.

Davey – Great movie that I immediately forget everything about as soon as I watch it.  Not sure exactly why this happens but I’ve seen it at least four times since it came out, always enjoyed it but can’t for the life of me explain what happens in it. Anyways, looking forward to watching this movie again for the first time!

Eighth Grade

Mandy – This is probably one of my favorite movies of the last year. I cried during this movie because boys are gross and stink 🙁

Davey – Watched this again recently and liked it as much as the first time.  A unique movie about a painful period of life that’s treated with the dignity it doesn’t usually get.  Found it quietly devastating that every time the movie’s plot pivots, it’s on a small act of kindness.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Mandy –  My all-time favorite scene in a movie is the dinner scene where everyone sings “Say a Little Prayer”. Everything I do is inspired by it and I hope that explains who I am.

Davey  – Mandy showed me this for our mandatory Feb Rom Com and I loved it.  Julia Roberts flexes reality in this one, playing a character who is on paper so completely unlikable but that you can’t take your eyes off of or stop rooting for.  Say a little prayer scene is incredible and was used to great effect to pump people to great effect before a party recently. Still thinking about the background kids singing voices full of helium.

Edge of seventeen

Mandy – I deep and loud cried through about a quarter of this movie. Coming of age, mother/daughter conflict movies always really kill me. I can’t tell if Davey enjoyed the movie or my psychotic laugh crying more.

Davey – Very good and watchable while still being weirdly devastating. Hailee Steinfeld’s scenes with Woody Harrelson are incredible, will write a little more about it later, but highly recommended.

Dazed and confused

Mandy – I’ve probably watched this movie at least 20 times. It was my favorite movie as an up and coming alternative youth-child and is probably still one of my favorites.  My favorite character is Slater and Davey’s is Wooderson.

Davey – Technically speaking my favorite character is Darla, but Wooderson is iconic and a close second.  Probably the biggest crossover for us, a movie I also watched many many times in high school and based on recent watches will continue to watch for the rest of my life.  A perfect prism of teenage years that shifts in meaning based on how old you are when you watch. That Linklater could make a 20+ character mini story formatted movie so enjoyable for so many people for so long is a towering achievement.  One of the greatest of all time.

Inside out

Mandy – Davey and I saw this in theaters three times. I cry every time and feel this message is important for all. 🙂

Davey – We could probably use more movies that are overtly about emotional development, the trick is actually coming up with a good premise for one.   This one both did that and made a very good movie out of it.

Booksmart

Mandy – Booksmart was an effortlessly funny movie about 2 cute friends. Seems like the kind of movie you could watch no matter the mood or weather.

Davey – Super funny with a lot of great performances that was woke in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was being pandered to.  Exceedingly breezy, would also basically watch anytime.

A Simple Favor

Mandy – I think i’ll probably elaborate on this at a later date, but this movie really messed with my head in a lot of ways. I recommend watching the pilot or whole Gossip Girls series before seeing this movie, as it does a great job following Serena Vanderwoodsen after her time as a NY socialite and on into her life as a psychotic suburban mom. It’s not really about Serena, but played by the same actress basically acting as Serena because she probably only has one character she can act as. A simple woman in A Simple Favor.

Davey – Me and Tom are gonna write about this coming up so gonna have to keep my powder dry for this bad boi.

Jennifer’s Body

Mandy – This movie rocks the house down and is basically an anthem for women of the world which is chill and I respect.

Davey – Mandy’s mandatory Oct scary movie from last year, been a while since I’ve seen but a really unique and good horror film that was ahead of its time.  Started my reevaluation of Diablo Cody who has another entry on this list.

The Witch

Mandy – This was Davey’s choice for my one scary movie a year at Halloween. It made me really sad and anxious a lot of the time, but an overall success. Would watch again. The goat is weird.

Davey – Another annual Mandy Oct Scary entry, love the puritan vibe, love the sexual politics, love black Phillip.  Works on a ton of different levels.

Step up

Mandy – This movie also rocks the house down. A thing I love is seeing Channing Tatum dance. He’s incredible. Gifted.  

Davey – Channing Tatum is a bad boy from Baltimore on the wrong side of the tracks but Jenna Dewan is a good girl from Baltimore on the right side of the tracks!  Luckily for us they will bridge their differences, through dance. Way better than it has any right being, super tight and fun film with fun characters, actual stakes, and awesome dancing.  

Magic Mike

Mandy- Davey and I have seen this at least 3 times together. Each time with a different group of my girl friends. I screamed and laughed maniacally every single time.

Davey – Easily one of the funnest movies to watch with any group of people who enjoy the male bod.  Put this sucker on and watch the roof get blown off. Also has a lot of Soderbergh’s touches which muddies the waters on the kind of movie it is in a really interesting way.  

Grown ups 2

Mandy – I can’t tell you how many times we saw this one when it was in theaters. Davey talked about it for about three months until I told him I’d had enough and to please stop. I think it may be time to re-watch.

Davey – The first time I saw Grown Ups 2 was on an airplane.  I was watching it with the sound off, but got so curious that I got a pair of headphones to finish it.  I spent several days of that trip trying to explain what happened in it to my brother who was very patient and kind.  When I got home we went to see it at the discount theatre because I needed to verify that it wasn’t a mirage, that what seemed to be happening in this film was actually happening.  It’s since become something of a touchstone for a particular kind of malevolent psychedelic American energy in film. Impossible to describe, must be experienced.

Scott Pilgrim

Mandy – A solid movie about a weiner dude and his relationship issues. If you like nerdy things and computer music, you should watch this. Personally, I could watch anytime.

Davey – Stylistically undeniable but I also think that the actual storyline is deeply underrated and generally misunderstood.  I’d also watch pretty much whenever, deeply enjoyable movie.

Coco

Mandy- This movie made me blubber cry. A beautiful message about keeping people’s memory alive in any way possible and how it impacts their presence on this earth. I have applied this message to my simple life many times.

Davey – A deeply nuanced film about death, complete with practical grieving advice.  Marketed towards kids which is depressing but still important tools for everyone to have.  I honestly get sad thinking about this movie but have been considering watching again.

O Brother Where Art Thou

Mandy – Love this movie and the soundtrack. Didn’t like it as a teen, but now that I’m matured, I enjoy. I think George Clooney has a nice vibe and i like that he’s an escaped bad boy.

Davey – Watched a bunch as a kid, prob not top five or even top ten Coen but still mad good.  Very nice specimen of the Coen screwball style.

Cloud atlas

Mandy –  I’ve seen this movie twice and would watch it a third time even though it’s four hours and extremely confusing. I like the way Tom Hanks talks 🙂

Davey – Watching this movie is like seeing someone dunk from half court and shattering the backboard while still somehow missing the basket. There are scenes where they’re cutting through time and space and you’re experiencing several different climaxes to several different stories all at the same time, which is thrilling and befuddling. Doesn’t always work but still an unbelievable experience and a must if you like movies.

Girls trip  

Mandy – The other best movie I saw this year. I’ve watched this many times with various girl friends and every time we’ve laughed and screamed maniacally. If you want to know how I like to party, watch this movie.

Davey – Hell yeah this movie rules.  Despite the popular myth, I introduced Mandy to this one. The first time we watched, in an act of defiance she immediately fell asleep, only to be woken up 20 minutes later by me and Chrissy laughing our damn heads off.

I Love You Man  

Mandy – This movie makes us think of our friends, Ren and Eric who are endlessly in love. A feel-good movie about men who like each other and aren’t afraid of showing emotion. A rarity.

Davey – Very beautiful and sweet film that is also very funny.  Makes me feel good and gives me hope.

Step Brothers

Mandy – This is another movie that I have a love/hate relationship with because of Davey. When he watches this movie he laughs so loud that i can’t concentrate. I do enjoy the movie though when he can keep it together and secretly it makes me happy to see husband laugh and smile 🙂

Davey – Probably the best movie made about what it’s like to be a man.

Madagascar 3

Mandy – A film that really captures all the beautiful things in this world. I also love Andrea Bocelli and the scene where the animal is singing.

Davey – This movie is good as hell, my boy Noah Baumbach helped write it and it’s got the second best use of Andrea Bocelli of all time (First is in Step Brothers).  The ones got some serious zip, don’t sleep on it.

Tully

Mandy – The only movie I’ve ever seen about post-partum depression and mania. This movie really fucked me up emotionally which I love lol.

Davey – A great movie about post-partum, goes a lot of places you don’t normally see touched on in a film.  Does a really nice job of being non-literal and actually taking advantage of the fact that it’s a movie to help tell its story.  Has a wonderful and strange ending.

Yes, Technically there are 22 but we are not sticklers for the rules or symbols and meaning and we like a nice round number.

Harms in March 2019

Roar

Watched this for a third(!) time, my feelings on this move are well documented but Mandy who was watching it for the first time said it was the worst movie she’s ever seen :/

Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon

Damn dude, this still rules.  When I first saw it I was more of a film snob and really focused on the writing and beautiful cinematography, now that I’m older and dumber I focused primarily on how dope the fight scenes were.  And they are so dope.

Captive State

Very grim unique movie resting on the premise that if we were invaded by aliens that people high up in power structures would quickly sell everyone out in order to maintain any amount of hierarchical advantage they enjoyed previously. Told meticulously from the perspective of the human terrorist sect, with lots of nuts and bolts operational stuff.  Structurally really interesting, has a second act composed of a huge looping detour that meets up with the main story for the third. Quietly smart, not wearing it’s brain on top of it’s head a la Arrival other ‘thoughtful sci fi’ movies, a genre that (as I predicted *toot toot) has been obliterated by our current state of affairs.  

Memoirs of a Geisha

Didn’t finish this movie so this isn’t really a review.  I would just like to point out though, that it came out in 2004, was produced by generally progressive guy Steven Spielberg, and although set it Japan has a primarily chinese cast speaking english for the whole movie.  Apocalypto was made in 2006, by extremely unchill Mel Gibson, featured a cast of Native American and Indigenous Mexican actors and was spoken entirely in the indigenous Yucatec Maya language.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

I kinda think the filmmaker Alex gibney is bullshit tbh.  Dude knows how to make a documentary but he just kinda picks sensational hit non-fiction books, lets them do all the heavy lifting and research, then basically films them afterwards.  Maybe I’m way off on this one but it just seems like it’s his M.O. between this and Going Clear. As far as the movie goes though, it’s fun. Elizabeth Holmes is a wild lady who is fun/scary to look at and ponder and I, like a seemingly large subset of America am enjoying these tales of flim flam artists trying to maintain a constructed reality while it crumbles around them.

Captain Marvel

After initial reviews said it wasn’t good I drew a hard line in the sand saying that I was not going to see it.  Then someone asked me if I wanted to see it, so I went. Guess what?  It’s another totally fine and fun Marvel movie.  More of the extremely “do you like these movies?  Then you’ll like this one” vibe. Samuel L Jackson really cruises with a great energy, the Skrulls are super funny and the main one has an Australian accent which rules, and there’s a cute cat.  Not as distinctive and good as Thor:Ragnorak and Black Panther but miles better than Avengers: Infinity War which honestly, totally sucked.

The Matrix
Used it’s twentieth anniversary as an excuse to revisit this movie I haven’t seen in since it came out.  Not the most philosophically interesting Keanu Reeves action movie from the 90s (that would be Speed) or the best Wachowski siblings movie (that would be Speed Racer). Holds up as a pretty entertaining watch until post ‘I know Kung fu’ sequence where it starts to drag and turn into a real bummer, though it does have for my money it’s best scene at the very end of the movie (Keanu absentmindedly fights Agent Smith with one hand, then flexes reality after beating him).  Unfortunately we’re currently living in something of a post truth/reality society so a lot of the Matrixs gentle riffs on big ideas don’t seem as much fun anymore, and drawing a line from q supporters to anti vaxxers to this movie isn’t a stretch.  Pairing that with an extremely slick ‘cool’ sequence where two people walk into an office building and kill everyone in sight with machine guns, because “they’re not real people” and you’ve got a recipe for a troubling vibe in 2019. It’s heavy a real touchstone movie, and if we’re still here in 20 years I’m looking forward to checking in with it again to see how deep those ripples went.

Harms February Watchlist

It was a Feb and there were a lot of movies:

Out of Sight  

I didn’t really like this movie the second time around, good performances across the board but the dialogue never felt as sharp as I felt it should be.  Had a tough time with the cross section of fun criminal action and the rape-y sub- and fore-text. Movie has a lot of drift but not a lot at the center.

Oceans 11

Couldn’t figure out if this was a rewatch or something I was seeing for the first time.  The dialogue snaps, the performances are great, and the heist is good as hell.

Paddington 2

Last time I watched this with the wife she fell asleep in 5 minutes. Had better luck, with her getting to the climactic train chase before she hit the Z’s.  No real revelations from the 3rd(!) viewing but still good. Realized that I think about the husband hurling his pregnant wife stomach-first towards revolving doors in Paddington part one on a weekly basis.

Old Man and a Gun

Really beautiful breezy film about a dude who expresses his love of life through robbing banks and breaking out of jail.  In my memory of the film every scene is at sunset which isn’t the case but gives you primer on the lense I remember it through. Robert Redford’s last film, it works as an end of an era piece and as a thank you to the world for letting him do what he loves.  One of the nicest breakdowns of passion I’ve seen in a while: doing what you love (robbing banks) will have consequences (going to jail) but if you treat dealing with the consequences (breaking out of jail) with the same passion that you do the things you love (robbing banks), pretty soon you’ll be robbing banks again (doing what you love).  I’d be remiss to not mention that Sissy Spacek is in it as well, and she’s incredible.

High Flying Bird

Super compelling and sharp film with a bonkers performance from André Holland.   Thought about it a lot for about a week after but having a tough time thinking of anything to say about it now, nothing wrong with a movie burning bright and fast though and I would still recommend it.

The Meyerowitz Stories (new and selected)

High marks for this Baumbach beaut.  Incredibly funny movie that’s got a lot to say about the wake of “being an artist”, but is mostly a well drawn portrait about the invisible lines that connect family, for better or worse.  Lots of good scenes of Adam Sandler trying to park in Manhattan.

Deadpool 2

Watched again because I wanted to see what Mandys take on Deadpool was; her take: “Deadpool is not annoying he’s just a regular man.”  Realized that one of the reasons these movies work for me is that when his mask is off he never smiles and always looks like he’s in pain while he compulsively jokes.  

Dude Where’s My Car

Ended up watching this one due to a game of high stakes movie selection chicken with Dani B.  Has some funny bits but basically terrible. Rented it from the library and picked up a copy of Straw Dogs at the same time in an attempt to throw the librarian off the scent.  

Alita Battle Angel

Had a very nice time watching this deeply imperfect movie in the theatre.  A lot of what’s good besides the character of Alita you can find in the backgrounds and edges if you’d like my expert opinion on how to watch.  Great crowd scenes, often populated by several dads roaming freely, or ‘loose dads’ of which there are presumably a lot 500 years from now. Pretty much every character and performance in the movie is a waste except for the motion capture performance for Alita by Rosa Salazar which is weirdly super compelling.  Lots of robo dismemberment and cool super violent future sports round this bad boi out into a winner.

Ant Man and the Wasp

I basically like all these movies and this one isn’t an exception.  Michael Pena is super funny, lots of stuff gets shrunk down or embiggened, and an ant plays the drums.  It’s not Black Panther, it’s a run of the mill fun Marvel movie. I dunno man we’re all adults here, at this point in time you should know if this is your cup of tea or not.

Incredibles 2

I loved the character design in this movie, there’s a kind of marriage between the doll like construction and hyper expressiveness that really worked for me.  Otherwise it’s a totally good well-constructed movie that I didn’t care about while watching.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Watched on Valentines day as a part of a cultural exchange program with the wife where she watches a horror movie in October and I watch a Rom Com in February.  Julia Roberts at the height of her powers, playing a character that’s imminently unlikable transformed into peak likability by her crystal clear performance. It’s tough to name another actor who is as good as Roberts at conveying a character’s inner life through constant small touches. She’s as well gracious enough as an actor that she steps back to help Rupert Everett steal every scene they’re in together.  The scene where he leads the family in singing “I say a little prayer” is an all-timer, both for its expression of joie de vivre but also for how he completely takes her apart while doing it. Giamatti later shows up and gives her sage advice, which sealed the deal for me.

Star Wars – The Last Jedi

Watched this again on the anniversary of my brothers death, who loved Star Wars but didn’t get to see it.  A strange movie that I think is more laudable for its weighty themes than for the movie itself. I realized while watching that a big reason these most recent films aren’t that great is that while the original Star Wars trilogy was a conversation between George Lucas and what he loved as a child, mashed up with a heaping of interrogation into Joseph Campbell’s mythic archetypes, the newer films are mostly a conversation with how we feel about Star Wars.  I do think this one finds the right themes to elevate, and find the last third to be very moving and thematically complicated in a way most blockbusters aren’t, but understand what it’s missing which is the ability to tell a new story (weirdly, also one of the largest themes in the film). I wish I’d gotten to talk with Jonny about it, but can’t so instead I’ll just cherish my memory of him spoiling the ending of Rogue One for me with such speed and lack of guile, that I was both completely taken aback and extremely impressed.

Behind the Curve

Documentary about flat-earthers which had a very empathetic and kind angle on them.  I always felt like it was odd that I hadn’t run across more flat-earthers in the noise scene but after watching this movie I got a pretty good idea of how it’s a pretty complete scene in of itself, which seems like it could be pretty fun to be a part of if you’re interested in believing the earth is flat.  Has a lengthy subplot where flat-earthers do scientific experiments that continually prove the world is round, which is very nice. Strong possibility that I’ll be ashamed of watching this film in 9 years or whatever, when we elect a flat-earther as president.

Arrival (2016)

In an addendum to Tom’s review of The Martian I mentioned that although I appreciated there being a movie that held such trust in a rational response to problem-solving, I pined for a time when the more acceptable cinematic solutions were those of chaotic-neutral variety. Well, I have good news for cinema goers with a yen for that particular streak of dark insanity. I predict that we’ll be seeing a lot more films about the failure of rational decision-making and its fruits in the future, as well as more films dispensing with rationality altogether.

Which makes Arrival in some ways already a dated movie. Much like The Martian it prizes a rational and methodical process, and places extreme trust in it winning out. This is an extremely optimistic film which, though it doesn’t take a completely unrealistic view of what problems people make for themselves, still manages to place rationality on a high pedestal. This can make it rather tough to stomach in current times. Luckily it has many other strong defining qualities, chief of which is heaviness. Cosmically heavy, intellectually heavy, thematically heavy and heavy emotionally. A potent brew for fans of being crushed by the cosmos and life on earth.

It’s best to go into Arrival pretty cold on specifics, so plot stuff I’m not really gonna get that far into. To skim, it’s primarily about language. This extends to its use of some well-learned tropes of film. Bits of dialogue and characters can seem lifted from other tested sources, which is usually a major bummer but in Arrival it proves to be an effective shorthand, off-loading tons of busy work so it can get to the big questions. It’s extremely visually inventive, replete with sweeping vistas, a hand-rolled visually-based alien language, and an incredible scene that uses seemingly only white and shades of gray.  Acting wise, Amy Adams is in the film and she rocks.

Arrival as well passes the Keanu test and is chock full of references to his films, including a sly reference to Speed. A film which in one of the great looks behind the curtain of film’s shared language, made clear that a relationship built upon a shared stressful situation may not truly be what it is. It as well shares a great deal with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, a film whose undying optimism is based in the belief that an unmoored relationship to time’s (perceived) linear march is the secret to saving humanity’s soul. Denis Villeneuve has obviously studied Keanu’s films, and here it serves him well.

For these reasons and more, Arrival is definitely worth watching. I don’t really see how you can come out of it without at least a few new ideas. Like most films that seek to achieve such a high concept it doesn’t hit all its marks but I personally think it’s silly to ding something so ambitious that’s mostly successful. Such deliberateness can be seen as a sense of inflated purpose to some, and there’s something to be said for becoming the thing by scuttling towards its side. To become the thing through a mostly straight line though is important as well, and can be a valuable blueprint of understanding more complex and less intentional success.

I do feel it’s important to enjoy this particular strand of victory while we can, for this age of rational cinema may be ending. Films that can explore notions of post-humanity so purely and with such conviction will be heading the way of the buffalo, if only for a little bit. For that Arrival should be celebrated. A powerfully optimistic, mature and above all else, a reasoned approach to our reality. Long live rational cinema, all hail the new era and what insanity we can muster.


screen-shot-2016-12-04-at-10-04-24-pm

I went to the theater and watched it ($15.50; UA Court Street theater 12 “all the way at the top”) on the strength of Davey’s rec. Here’re some thoughts from my Corner.

(I’m never gonna say it again; please assume “Spoilers” from me from here on out on this blog.)

  • It’s like a core opinion of ours that it’s worth watching dumb movies because their failures generate a kind of fun set of inquiry and experience that the movies do not directly intend or anticipate. Arrival is a textbook Good Bad Movie: though it fails to hit its own marks – it’s not a Great Film, or an Instant Sci-Fi Classic, it’s not Smart, and it’s not good at all as a Serious Movie – it’s fun to watch because it maybe accidentally hits some other points instead.
  • Like uhhh if time is a construct of language, but the meaning of the alien language is only understood in translation, how does that translation act not require the inheritance of the human-language-based time-construct onto the interpretation of the pictograms. Even if Amy Adams could use the alien system to communicate human ideas, aren’t those still, ya know, human ideas.
  • And like if the idea is that you can have “future memories” because time is slippery, but you’re still experiencing it in order, I guess I don’t get how this means you can also have “perfect future recall” ? Wouldn’t this be consciousness-shattering at minimum, or like, so fully altering of your reality paradigm, that being able to perform an act like the deus ex machina with the chinese general at the big party would be fundamentally impossible through all the unfiltered noise of “constantly lived” moments? Isn’t this “way more fucked up” from a functional-reality perspective than like, being in the throes of the furthest reaches of psychedelic experience?
  • Or put another way, if language is software for perceiving and ordering reality, wouldn’t there be strict, blocking hardware requirements barring Amy Adams from running the pretty intense software update she I guess downloaded from the critters?
  • Okay okay okay and so all that aside, does everyone have time-insensitivity in the near-ish future, or just Amy Adams, and how exactly will time-insensitivity help solve the world’s problems? And like where’s the minimum viable engagement with the metaphysical implications of future knowledge? Are the rules that “Amy Adams is unavoidably gonna tell Jeremy Renner the bad news,” or does she now know in the past not to, because it’ll make her bummed and lonely, and so she won’t? Or what.

Also =

  • They truly unleashed the tropes on this one, often without bothering to change the default settings. I think Davey’s read, that this deployment of tropes was meant to intentionally reinforce the core-conceptual language stuff on a film-language meta level is extremely interesting, but, to my viewing, generous.
  • The dialogue is noteworthily sewer-grade. Consider e.g. Jeremy Renner to Amy Adams: “My whole life I’ve been looking at the stars…” can you guess where this is going?!?!…. “…but the most amazing thing I found was you.”
  • They make Forest Whittaker (Species, Ghost Dog, The Crying Game) say his bad dialogue with an unrecognizable accent = I’m into it
  • Why did Forest Whittaker take a helicopter to Amy Adams’s house at like 5am for the followup interview, and how does a college professor live alone in a baller house on the lake.
  • Good luck if you try to watch this on a laptop. Only the big screen

    arrival-inverted
    default avatar: the ship

    will do the image of the giant black default avatar/Mork-egg spaceships justice.

  • There’s no emotional commitment to the characters (or really any character development), and all the drama and tension is super artificial and thin; there’s the sense that someone at the top felt that this movie needed an antagonist, so several(!) antagonists were added, and they’re all thin too.
  • Meanwhile the critters are 100 foot obelisks with tentacle fingers for legs/hands/mouths. They live in a room full of white smoke, that has a glass wall shaped like a movie screen (or cop mirror). But the glass wall doesn’t stop an explosion from hurting one of them, and Amy Adams goes into the white smoke room via a back entrance through a rat turd she boards, and is fine, so I didn’t really get what this staging device was all about (other than “a cost-cutting measure”).
  • Amy Adams has a “crazy dream,” seemingly just to get a non-smoke room shot of a critter into the movie = I’m into it
  • Compare the ship entrance corridor/critter glass screen area to the mind-cavity corridor and behind-the-eyes thing in Being John Malkovich (1999).
  • I thought the movie did a lot of really obvious work, and was frustrated e.g. when Jeremy Renner said “zero-sum game” and the movie cut back to the memory tableau this phrase was a callback to. But Davey told me he thought this was fine – that a movie’s doing more narrative work frees an audience to do the work of dealing with challenging concepts. I definitely feel grated and don’t like it when any text does my reading for me, but I guess mileage varies on that one.
  • All computers seemed to have an inactive terminal window open? Also I guess some government rolled their own Google Hangouts video chat replacement software, and all the different language teams around the world got permission to download and install it = hell ya I’m into this too
  • Do the critters know about the Lucent Technologies logo. What about the Germs logo.

Nine Lives (2016)

I love horror.  Real horror.  A private fantasy can be really excellent, one private fear blown up huge for all to see infecting the viewers with a new terrifying unknown.  I love a public terror.  One everyone shares.  I love it when they’ve tapped into the big one, and you know it’s always been there. Once hid well beneath the surface but now it’s here.  With us.

I love disaster.  With disaster things must first be right, and then they are wrong.  Isn’t it so good, to know right from wrong?  Of all disaster though, one kind is my favorite.  A special kind.  Where a creators intentions good hearted all, are present and on their sleeves.  A malicious glare never shown at any steps of the way.  Yet, somehow… everything still goes terribly, terribly wrong.

With films such as this I love to imagine the creeping dread that slowly manifested on the cutting room, where what was once a light hearted farce began to uncoil into a creature of abject dread.  The creators begin to see what has been wrought, but still refuse to acknowledge.  For if they did, what options would they have?  Would they be able to withstand what they have made with an honest eye?

Anything would be easier, so they smile and they nod and they tell themselves that what they have created is good.  That what they have created walks, a just path.  That although what they have created is maybe not particularly wise, that at least surely it’s good?  If that turns out not to be the case at least, once they are done then they can smile and everyone around them will smile and haven’t they all done something like this before?  Soon this be nothing but a memory.

Films like this are rare, and only for the very brave.  They will challenge ones very sense of aesthetic demolishing what is known to be enjoyable.  If one can find pleasure in such a sordid brew, does one truly deserve pleasure at all?  Perhaps there is no pleasure in this world and we are all mired in nothing but a sickening, fetid bog of other peoples confused ideas. Struggling to breathe as it pulls us under, our lungs slowly filling.  As we float downwards into nothingness free of the world we find ourselves free to ask of ourselves the big questions.  We can finally ask, did we enjoy the many minutes Kevin Spacey spends getting us to hate him?  We can ask, did we find mirth in the endless sound of distressed alien yowling?  Did we smile watching Kevin Spacey inhabit a creature both sickly familiar but unlike any we have ever seen?  And did we cry, when he said to his long suffering wife

“But I always loved you”

Or is the terror too much to handle?  The emotions too twisted and raw?  Do we strike out and refuse to give our acceptance and pity to this thing so misshapen and wrong?  We struggle to remain free to still hold onto some portion of ourselves, and eventually the vision abates.  We find ourselves sound of mind and believe ourselves to be free.  We are not.

We have been somewhere and now we know about a place.  A place where many minds have tangled together.  Where in their collective vision what they have seen is a being of pure pleasure.  The thought crosses the mind, is it us who pervert and destroy it by being witness?  Is it us, who are wrong?  What kind of cruel beings have we become?  How could we not feel for a daughters love of her father?  Is it possible we have become so cynical that nothing in the film, so full of mirth has brought us joy?  When its ends with a suicide attempt, should we not be sad?  These are the questions Nine Lives asks of those brave enough to watch.  Like the best of cinema it will shake your very belief of who you are to its core.  A sensation not very pleasant but then, worthy cinema rarely is.  

Sausage Party (2016)

Sausage Party is the story of a young hot dog that I think we can all relate to.  After all, who among us does not wish to pierce the veil of misinformation through which we view our lives?  Who among us would not wish to pass our newfound state of enlightenment to our fellow man freeing them from the shackles of profundity?  And who among us would not wish to topple the false gods who hold us in thrall, subject to their capricious and cruel whims?   Sausage Party tackles all these questions and more.  And as some of the more astute readers among us may have noticed, Sausage Party is indeed what we’ve all been waiting for, a The Matrix, for 2016.

Our hot dog’s tale begins, much like Neo’s, trapped in a wrapper next to many of his fellow dogs, isolated from the outside world not only by his physical trappings, but by an omnipresent dogma received as sacrosanct.  The world this food lives in is one where divisions based on aisle and place of origin have grown to become an intractable part of society, and where rules passed down devoid of original purpose must be followed.  It’s important to note that these consumables lack the written word, without which they are beholden to the whims of a society in thrall to an ever shifting oral tradition.  Through this the film raises some important points about the necessity of keeping a recorded history, without which the advancement of civilization is forever in doubt.    

Our hero the hot dog, has his reverie taken from him through cruel circumstance, but while his adventure begins with the pursuit of normalizing his situation, it soon takes a detour as he runs into some colorful characters, a Twinkie, a bottle of Firewater, and a box of Grits with whom he “takes the blue pill.”

While the hot dog is becoming “woke” we are simultaneously being shown the stories of Taco, Bun, Lavosh, and Bagel on a parallel journey to try and return to what they believe is their place in the world.  Although they are able to eventually find it, they find that through unexpected misfortune, there is much to learn even if one does not desire it.  The experience separates them from their companions and leaves them although richer in knowledge poorer for no longer knowing exactly who they are, and what to believe is true.

Sausage Party spends much of its running time exploring how hot dogs and other items of food struggle to find meaning, and how constraining it can be if they prescribe too much to systems built by others.  The film keeps to this notion so strenuously that it does not recommend even its own whole-scale rejection of systems, but recommends that one find their own way.  

I enjoyed Sausage Party and have as well been enjoying pontificating over its myriad insights, but I do have a couple of reservations keeping this from being a full blown endorsement.  One is that Sausage Party is not a good title for this film.  Better would have been  “Naughty Food Adventure” or maybe, “God’s Not Dead, For These Foods.”  I as well think Keanu Reeves should have been in the movie, seeing as how much it owes to one of his pioneering works.  Hopefully that will be rectified in the sequel. Other than these grievous errors, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Sausage Party is a well constructed and thoughtful film, one which does an excellent job of “thinking outside the bun.”